TEXT: 65
  Player Map
  Frog God 
  Games
  Richard Pett’s Crooked City
  Richard Pett’s Crooked City
  TB4: The Crucible
  TB4: The Crucible
  Richard Pett
  TB4
  TB4
  
  Credits
  TB4: The Crucible
  Frog  
  God 
  Games
  ©2016 Frog God Games. All rights reserved. Reproduction without the written permission of the 
  publisher is expressly forbidden. Frog God Games and the Frog God Games logo is a trademark of 
  Frog God Games. All characters, names, places, items, art and text herein are copyrighted by Frog God 
  Games, Inc. The mention of or reference to any company or product in these pages is not a challenge to 
  the trademark or copyright concerned.
  Product Identity: The following items are hereby identified as Frog God Games LLC’s Product Identity, 
  as defined in the Open Game License version 1.0a, Section 1(e), and are not Open Game Content: 
  product and product line names, logos and identifying marks including trade dress; artifacts; creatures; 
  characters; stories, storylines, plots, thematic elements, dialogue, incidents, language, artwork, symbols, 
  designs, depictions, likenesses, formats, poses, concepts, themes and graphic, photographic and other 
  visual or audio representations; names and descriptions of characters, spells, enchantments, personalities, 
  teams, personas, likenesses and special abilities; places, locations, environments, creatures, equipment, 
  magical or supernatural abilities or effects, logos, symbols, or graphic designs; and any other trademark 
  or registered trademark clearly identified as Product Identity. Previously released Open Game Content is 
  excluded from the above list.
  CEO
  Bill Webb
  Creative Director:  
  Swords & Wizardry
  Matthew J. Finch
  Creative Director:  
  Pathfinder Roleplaying Game
  Greg A. Vaughan
  Art Director
  Charles A. Wright
  Lead Developer
  John Ling
  Marketing Manager
  Chris Haskins
  Customer Service Manager
  Krista Webb
  Zach of All Trades
  Zach Glazar
  Espieglerie
  Skeeter Green
  FROG GOD GAMES IS
  Author
  Richard Pett.
  Developers
  Alistair Rigg and Greg A. Vaughan
  Producer
  Bill Webb
  Editors
  Alistair Rigg and Jeff Harkness
  5E Conversion
  Steve Winter
  Layout and Graphic Design
  Charles A. Wright
  Front Cover Art
  Felipe Gaona
  Interior Art
  Ed Bourelle, Peter Fairfax,  
  Jeremy McHugh, Terry Pavlet,  
  Richard Pett, and James Stowe
  Photography
  Richard Pett
  Cartography
  Robert Altbauer
  Playtesters
  These were the first unfortunates to walk 
  the crooked streets of the Blight, much 
  love and thanks to you for an awesome 
  session at PaizoCon UK— Brett Andrews, 
  Andrew Green, Clare Jones, Mark 
  Laverock, Pete Pollard and Ben Wenham. 
  You were lucky Brett,  
  next time I won’t roll a 1…
  Special Thanks
  Pete Pollard, Fellow Conspiritor
  Special Dedication
  Felipe Gaona’s excellent painting 
  “Umbrella” is dedicated to the creator 
  of the “Burning Woman in the Rain” 
  image that served as the inspiration for 
  this cover. I have seen the original piece 
  as a wallpaper online in many locations 
  and thought it perfectly captured the 
  atmosphere of The Crucible, but I 
  have never been able to track down the 
  identity of the creator. So here’s to you, 
  mystery artist. You managed to capture 
  a tiny piece of Richard Pett’s brain 
  with your art, an extremely dangerous 
  thing to do. May his tentacled cosmic 
  overlords never succeed in finding you.
  Richard Pett’s Crooked City
  Richard Pett’s Crooked City
  5th Edition Rules,  
  1st Edition Feel
  
  2
  The Blight: Richard Pett's Crooked City
  GENERAL RESOURCES 
  Swords & Wizardry Complete S&W 
  The Tome of Horrors Complete PF, S&W 
  Tome of Horrors 4 PF, S&W 
  Tome of Adventure Design
  Monstrosities S&W 
  Bill Webb’s Book of Dirty Tricks 
  Razor Coast: Fire as She Bears PF 
  Book of Lost Spells 5e 
  Fifth Edition Foes 5e 
  The Tome of Blighted Horrors* 5e, PF, S&W
  Book of Alchemy* 5e, PF, S&W 
  THE LOST LANDS 
  Rappan Athuk PF, S&W 
  Rappan Athuk Expansions Vol. I PF, S&W 
  The Slumbering Tsar Saga PF, S&W 
  The Black Monastery PF, S&W 
  Cyclopean Deeps Vol. I PF, S&W 
  Cyclopean Deeps Vol. II PF, S&W 
  Razor Coast PF, S&W 
  Razor Coast: Heart of the Razor PF, S&W 
  Razor Coast: Freebooter’s Guide to the Razor Coast PF, S&W 
  LL0: The Lost Lands Campaign Setting* 5e, PF, S&W
  LL1: Stoneheart Valley PF, S&W 
  LL2: The Lost City of Barakus PF, S&W 
  LL3: Sword of Air PF, S&W 
  LL4: Cults of the Sundered Kingdoms PF, S&W 
  LL5: Borderland Provinces 5e, PF, S&W
  LL6: The Northlands Saga Complete PF, S&W
  LL7: The Blight 5e, PF, S&W
  LL8: Bard’s Gate 5e, PF, S&W 
  LL9: Adventures in the Borderland Provinces 5e, PF, S&W
  QUESTS OF DOOM 
  Quests of Doom (Vol. 1) 5e 
  Quests of Doom (Vol. 2) 5e 
  Quests of Doom (includes the 5e Vol. 1 and 2, but for PF 
  and S&W only) PF, S&W 
  Quests of Doom 2 5e 
  Quests of Doom 3 5e, S&W
  Quests of Doom 4* 5e, PF, S&W
  PERILOUS VISTAS 
  Dead Man’s Chest (pdf only) PF 
  Dunes of Desolation PF 
  Fields of Blood PF 
  Mountains of Madness* PF 
  Marshes of Malice* PF
  Other Products from Frog God Games
  You can find these product lines and more at our website, froggodgames.com, and on the shelves of many retail game stores.  
  Superscripts indicate the available game systems: “PF” means the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, “5e” means Fifth Edition,  
  and “S&W” means Swords & Wizardry. If there is no superscript it means that it is not specific to a single rule system.
  * (forthcoming from Frog God Games)
  
  3
  The Crucible
  Table of Contents
  Introduction ................................................................................................................................................ Pg. 5
   
  Rumours in The Blight .................................................................................................................... Pg. 7
   
  For the GM: Troubleshooting ......................................................................................................... Pg. 7
   
  Sights, Sounds, and Smells in the Blight ........................................................................................ Pg. 8
   
  Running The Crucible in Other Cities ............................................................................................ Pg. 8
   
  Seasons and the Weather ................................................................................................................. Pg. 8
  Chapter 1: The Burning Ghats ................................................................................................................... Pg. 9
   
  Rumours about Singhh .................................................................................................................... Pg. 9
   
  Event 1: Street Justice ..................................................................................................................... Pg. 13
  Chapter 2: The Grime Street Morgue ........................................................................................................ Pg. 14
   
  Non Nominus .................................................................................................................................... Pg. 14
   
  The Chain Ferry ............................................................................................................................... Pg. 15
   
  Rumours about Uriah Mean ........................................................................................................... Pg. 15
  Chapter 3: The Pawnbroker’s Tenement .................................................................................................... Pg. 17
   
  Bath Chairs and Pawnbrokers ....................................................................................................... Pg. 17
   
  Blight Stonemites ............................................................................................................................. Pg. 20
   
  Arcanists and Their Thralls ............................................................................................................ Pg. 23
   
  Event 2: Rooftop Chase ................................................................................................................... Pg. 24
  Chapter 4: The Leviathan Dig .................................................................................................................... Pg. 26
   
  Rumours about the Leviathan Dig ................................................................................................. Pg. 26
   
  Becoming a Savant ........................................................................................................................... Pg. 28
   
  Leviathans, Ancients, and Fossils ................................................................................................... Pg. 29
   
  Rumours about the Organ Grinder ............................................................................................... Pg. 29
  Chapter 5: The Dislocated Pier .................................................................................................................. Pg. 32
   
  Siklight Cockroaches ....................................................................................................................... Pg. 32
   
  Event 3: A Lyme Bath ...................................................................................................................... Pg. 33
   
  Golem-Stitching and the Made ....................................................................................................... Pg. 35
   
  New Tome: The Secret of Creation ................................................................................................. Pg. 36
   
  New Drug: Absinthe ........................................................................................................................ Pg. 36
  Chapter 6: The Great Windmill .................................................................................................................. Pg. 39
   
  Rumours about the Great Windmills ............................................................................................. Pg. 39
   
  Fire and Water ................................................................................................................................. Pg. 42
   
  Event 4: The Ragefire Freed ........................................................................................................... Pg. 44
   
  Event 5: An Unexpected Complication .......................................................................................... Pg. 45
  Appendix A: New Monsters ....................................................................................................................... Pg. 46
   
  Elemental, Ragefire ............................................................................................................................ Pg. 46
   
  Lyme Angler ....................................................................................................................................... Pg. 47 
   
  Sough-Eel ........................................................................................................................................... Pg. 48
   
  Spider, Gable ...................................................................................................................................... Pg. 49
   
  Wallow-Whale ................................................................................................................................... Pg. 51
  Appendix B: New Magic Items ................................................................................................................. Pg. 52
   
  Between Ring ..................................................................................................................................... Pg. 52
   
  Manual of the Crucible ...................................................................................................................... Pg. 52
   
  Searing Crucible ................................................................................................................................. Pg. 52
  
  4
  “…You’ve just entered the wrong side of town…”
  The Crucible is a Fifth Edition adventure designed for a party of four to six  
  7th-level PCs. It serves as a companion adventure to  
  Richard’s Pett’s The Blight and takes place in that twisted city  
  as revealed in the campaign setting published by Frog God Games.
  TB4: The Crucible
  Richard Pett’s Crooked City
  Richard Pett’s Crooked City
  By Richard Pett
  
  5
  The furnace thundered, heat raging like fury from within. A column of 
  black iron rising into the arched roof of the giant windmill, hanging in 
  the cradle of four vast chains, swayed like a goliath metal coffin. Yet as I 
  approached, I suddenly became aware of another noise above the roar of 
  the fire: the howl of hunger. The furnace itself was alive …
   
   
  — The Artificer
  The streets of the Blight abound lately with stories of dreadful 
  immolations: of people rising in the night and suddenly becoming balls 
  of living flame; of searing, screaming souls blazing through the streets 
  being burnt alive. There seems to be no explanation for this spontaneous 
  combustion. Good people shiver in their beds for fear of suddenly catching 
  fire; folk shake on church pews hoping they will not be the next to burst 
  into flames. This nightmare is real, and it’s happening now to the good 
  people of this city, what few there might be …
  The Crucible focuses upon events surrounding a ragefire elemental, 
  a new monster imprisoned within a magical item known as a searing 
  crucible, an item created by the Artificer, the chief villain of the adventure. 
  The PCs experience various locations around Festival and the Great Lyme 
  River: the high-gables of the Festival parish during a rooftop chase; a site 
  where fossilized Leviathans are being exhumed; and a pleasure pier with 
  a rotting caravel in imminent danger of collapse into hungry mouths in 
  the river below. The adventure reaches its climax in one of the abandoned 
  Great Windmills on the Lyme as it becomes a raging inferno.
  In The Blight campaign, The Crucible primarily takes place in Festival 
  — the carnival isle of wererats. Two events also occur nearby on the 
  Great Lyme River, but all the information you need is included here. The 
  adventure can easily be modified for other urban settings, and suggestions 
  are given on how to use The Crucible in other campaign settings. The 
  story of The Crucible has a strongly evil theme and is ideally suited to 
  paladins and good clerics, inquisitors, and oracles.
  Adventure Background
  The Artificer was, originally, only a minor user of magic, of a caste 
  barely above the street illusionists and corner-mages seen across the 
  whole of the Blight. Her only talent lay in her zealous research — an 
  addiction to scouring the ancient shops of BookTown, squinting through 
  mouldering shelves heady with the scent of old tomes and manuscripts for 
  clues and secrets, unknown spells, and hidden orders.
  The years, however, had rolled by and, as her faculties depleted, she 
  grew to loathe her lowly background and station in life, and the city and 
  its people that had caused them. Knowing that she had been destined for 
  great things but now convinced that she would achieve none of them, she 
  sank into deep depression. As her misery grew, she lost her lodgings and 
  began to roam the streets, often breaking into the book-filled corridors and 
  backrooms of the antiquarian booksellers and bibliophiles simply to find 
  shelter and rest. Until the night she found the tome.
  The tome seemed little more than a collection of children’s fairy stories, 
  though richly illustrated with etchings and with faded gilt-edged pages. 
  Unfortunately, it had been left somewhere damp; its binding hemorrhaged, 
  its pages stained. By the feeble light of a tallow candle, she read of princes 
  and dragons in tales of glory and betrayal until eventually, the tome itself 
  died through her use of it — collapsing into ruin in her lap, its pages 
  falling, its spine snapping.
  The Artificer moved the pieces to one side, preparing to make a fire 
  of what was left, when she noticed something within the corpse of the 
  tome. It was a diagram — or rather a series of diagrams, and instructions 
  written in ancient text — depicting a metal object of great size: a crucible. 
  As the tome had collapsed, so had the magic that had obscured its true 
  text with fairy stories! As the Artificer struggled in the gloom to translate 
  the words, fumbling with obscure phrases and technical terms, she grew 
  feverish as their meaning was revealed. In her growing excitement, the 
  years of anguish fell away to be replaced by feelings of hope, of ambition, 
  and a realization dawned upon her that Fortune had, finally, kissed her and 
  given her a gift that could be her salvation.
  This crucible was no mere melting pot for alchemy, no mundane 
  container for molten iron; it was a design for a prison, a prison for ragefire, 
  an intelligent, evil fire both terrible and beautiful, a sentient flame, a 
  whirlwind blaze created, the tome said, by drawing and combining the 
  blood of demons and efreet. The Artificer realized that the crucible could 
  be configured to draw this rarest of hateful elementals into the world 
  and then made to force the creature to multiply. It would make her the 
  master of creatures that feast on the living, that immolate what they touch, 
  and that grow — getting larger and larger as they gorge until they are 
  firestorms that can destroy entire cities, and leave nothing but ash. Drunk 
  on dreams of power and revenge, alive with hope and dizzy with ideas, 
  the Artificer carefully gathered the instructions and, hiding them on her 
  person, sank into an untroubled sleep for the first time in years.
  The cold dawn and an encounter with a caretaker refocused the Artificer 
  on her plight. She was alone, weak, and helpless. Yet she held in her hands 
  a secret of power. With control over ragefire, her fortune could be made. 
  She could use the elementals as weapons, harnessing their lethality, killing 
  at her whim. The Artificer — who had long ago given up her true name 
  as a worthless anchor from her earlier years — convinced herself that 
  she would only have to threaten the use of ragefire, that she would be 
  benevolent, and use the elemental not only for her own good, but for those 
  of others like her. She would use the gift wisely, and not for spite or anger.
  The Artificer had few friends. One, however, had shown kindness, of 
  a sort, in the past — the Organ Grinder, a low-caste street performer who 
  worked in the Lyme River pleasure town of Festival. The Artificer hid 
  aboard the chain ferry out to the island and discussed things with her old 
  acquaintance. The Organ Grinder, seeing a great personal opportunity, 
  invested what funds he had in the enterprise, hoping it would enable him 
  to eventually pay for the advancement of his study of golem-stitching.
  The Organ Grinder suggested the use of a great windmill as a base. The great 
  windmills, which lie in the broad part of the Lyme River, were often used by 
  golem-stitchers and homuncule-wives as places to carry out their more troubling 
  experiments undisturbed. The Organ Grinder arranged for the present inhabitant 
  of one great windmill to be “removed,” ensuring it was vacant.
  For a year, the pair invested stolen wealth into the construction of their 
  crucible and, only last month, installed the final part before drawing a 
  ragefire elemental into the physical world. The creature was furious and 
  railed against its imprisonment, but its hunger was all-consuming. The 
  creature’s hunger amazed the Artificer, who grieved at the choice that 
  circumstance had now given her: Feed the creature she had worked for so 
  long to summon to the Material Plane, or see it die. 
  Introduction
  Influences and inspirations
  Some of the key influences on, and inspirations for, this 
  adventure are listed below for GMs who would like additional 
  source material on how to portray various NPCs and convey the 
  flavor of the adventure:
  • The original 1931 Frankenstein film, starring Boris Karloff.
  • True histories of the Elephant Man and the excellent film by 
  David Lynch.
  • Images of claimed spontaneous human combustion, including 
  from the cases of Mary Reeser, Anna Martin, and Dr. J. Irving 
  Bentley in particular.
  
  6
  The Blight: Richard Pett's Crooked City
  At first she fed the creature’s hungry demands with animal flesh — 
  pigs mostly — but the creature refused to devour ignorant flesh; it 
  hungered for the suffering that went with death by fire, a pain that 
  fed it properly. Soon the Artificer relented and fed the creature a 
  tramp who happened her way. As she saw the ragefire devour him 
  and grow on his suffering, she knew that to gain the power she 
  wanted, she would have to — regrettably, of course — make some 
  sacrifices: the sacrifice of others.
  While the Artificer continued her research and plotting, the 
  Organ Grinder carried out her commands. He organized regular 
  shipments of coal and timber to sate the creature’s most basic 
  needs, and with the help of Mahaas, a grotesquely deformed 
  murderer with a penchant for dissection, kidnapped citizens for her 
  to sacrifice to it to make it grow. After a few months, the creature 
  reached a size where its spawn could be harvested. The Artificer 
  began carefully testing the ragefire spawn upon those she thought 
  would be little missed — orphaned waifs and strays, prostitutes and 
  beggars selected for her by the Organ Grinder. With each attack, she 
  was careful to ensure that the spawn was slain by her magic after its 
  deed was done — and careful to cast it whilst veiled from sight. On 
  two occasions, she was simply able to push her burning victims into 
  the Great Lyme River. On others, her water- and cold-based magic 
  sufficed to quench it. Her careful work ensured that no suspicion 
  fell on her, but rumors of spontaneous combustion spread to 
  every street corner with the blame placed variously on witches 
  of the Great Coven, demons, devils, and acts of the angry gods that 
  walked the streets of the Blight unseen.
  Now, however, the Artificer’s experiments are at an end, and she 
  has chosen her first blackmail victim: Savant Edwina Spitewinter of 
  the Royal Underneath Society, who is presently working on Festival 
  at a great Leviathan dig. Following a demonstration of the power 
  of ragefire, the blackmail is going well, and the Organ Grinder 
  has been able to collect 2,000 gold shekels from the Savant so far 
  — money the accomplices intend to use to land an even wealthier 
  victim. Yesterday, however, an unfortunate accident occurred.
  In a fit of pique, Mahaas used a ragefire spawn to immolate the 
  uncooperative apple of his eye at a mainland ghat, with the burning 
  prostitute running through the corpses of the area like a howling 
  spirit. While mere threats with the ragefire have worked admirably in 
  blackmailing Spitewinter for money, Mahaas was not so circumspect, 
  and word has now spread like proverbial wildfire that the dead are rising 
  to walk and burn as well as the living. This, inevitably, has led to dire 
  consequences for the ghat owner who is looking for help to solve the 
  riddle and restore his trade.
  And thus, as a gruel-dawn rises across the Lyme, word reaches the PCs 
  that the game is afoot …
  Adventure Summary
  The adventure begins with the PCs called in to investigate the case of a 
  corpse that burst into flames and then inexplicably rose and ran — screaming 
  — into the Lyme. Following initial clues, the PCs learn that it was not a 
  corpse, but a prostitute last seen in the company of a deformed local man 
  known as Mahaas. They may also discover further clues by working with 
  the constabulary and by making a visit to a creepy river morgue.
  The PCs find Mahaas’s lodgings on Festival in the tenements of 
  pawnbroker Uriah Mean, a bathchair-bound gnome illusionist with a 
  miserly disposition. Mahaas has already piqued the gnome’s interest; 
  Mean scryed on his tenant and learned that the deformed freak has some 
  “great treasure” in his grasp. Mean tries to befriend the PCs, but with the 
  intention of having them tailed throughout their investigations so that he 
  can attempt to take this alleged treasure when they find it. Learning where 
  Mahaas lives, a fight breaks out in the claustrophobic and trapped attic 
  garret, during which the PCs may first encounter a ragefire elemental, and 
  leads to a chase through the tenement, across rooftops, and into the streets 
  of Festival. Whether Mahaas escapes or not, the PCs discover the source 
  of the fires and a link to the Leviathan Dig, an excavation of a colossal 
  fossilized skeleton from the banks of the Lyme River.
  
  7
  The Crucible
  The Leviathan Dig is being conducted by the Royal Underneath 
  Society, which is led by Savant Edwina Spitewinter, The Organ Grinder, 
  who has already caused a terrible fire in Spitewinter’s private museum, 
  is blackmailing her. Unless the PCs handle the situation cleverly, they 
  trigger a fight with Spitewinter’s overly zealous guards. By questioning 
  Spitewinter and searching her burnt museum, the PCs discover clues 
  leading them to the Organ Grinder.
  The Organ Grinder is well known on Festival for his strange 
  performance that involves his curious musical instrument and a grotesque 
  monkey, and the PCs may even have seen the duo during their chase of 
  Mahaas. The PCs eventually find his strange home: a decaying caravel 
  lashed vertically to the end of the Dislocated Pier. The Organ Grinder is 
  studying to become a golem-stitcher, and his hovel is crammed with jars 
  filled with preserved organs and limbs. Here, the PCs are attacked by the 
  Organ Grinder, his homunculus familiar, and the twisted results of his 
  awful experiments — both failures and successes — including a twisted 
  creature he constructed from the corpses of a minotaur and an ankheg. 
  If desperate, the Organ Grinder also releases a ragefire elemental into 
  the fray, risking burning down his home and the entire pier but perhaps 
  trapping the PCs in the inferno. 
  As the battle progresses, the rotten ship might collapse into the 
  alchemical silt around the river. Here, in the poisonous slime, a wallow-
  whale takes a passing interest in events and could make trouble for the 
  PCs. Victorious, the PCs learn that the Organ Grinder regularly sailed to 
  one of the great windmills and, therefore, head there to locate the source 
  of the ragefire.
  Within the great windmill is the crucible, which hangs on great chains, 6 
  inches thick. The Artificer and a wing of loyal gargoyles fight furiously to 
  defend her creation, but in the heat of the battle (pun thoroughly intended), 
  the ragefire elemental escapes. Free, the hateful creature rampages, setting 
  the mill alight. As their investigation reaches its climax, the PCs must 
  choose between facing the poisonous waters of the Lyme and its foul 
  inhabitants, or trying to quench the raging conflagration and prevent an 
  Abyssal terror from ravaging the city.
  Adventure Hooks
  The adventure begins at the Burning Ghats, which lie on the banks of 
  the River Lyme, approximately half a mile away from Town Bridge on the 
  true right bank of the river. Use one, or a combination, of the following 
  three openings depending upon the goals and alignments of the PCs.
  The Long Arm of the Law
  This opening is suitable for PCs motivated to help the authorities, or at 
  least to gain their favor.
  The PCs are approached by Constable of the Watch Fidelus Crop 
  (NG human male veteran), the local city watch constable acting under 
  the instructions of Streetclerk Felicia Kent (N human female noble), 
  who is in charge of law enforcement and other local matters in this area. 
  Kent is disinterested in what she sees as a trivial issue, but Crop is greatly 
  worried; he does not like the idea of walking corpses or people burning 
  to death on his watch and is looking for help. He is already inundated 
  with work (assaults and murders are common in the Blight), and word 
  has reached him about the PCs’ exploits and prowess. While he cannot 
  offer much in the way of financial reward, the friendship of the Office of 
  the Watch could prove useful in the long run for the PCs. Crop informs 
  the PCs of the location of Singhh’s ghat and also indicates that previous 
  victims are currently held at the Grime Street Morgue. The ghat is detailed 
  in Chapter 1 of this adventure, the morgue in Chapter 2.
  The Holy Inquisition
  This opening is suitable for paladins, clerics, inquisitors, and oracles 
  devoted to a good or lawful deity. 
  The holy order of a PC’s god wishes a full investigation to take place 
  of all the burning victims. A church intermediary approaches the PCs 
  and charges them with finding out if the matter is skullduggery aimed 
  at somehow profiting from the incidents, some act of wickedness which 
  must be punished, or if it could potentially be regarded as a miracle, in 
  which case it must be properly recorded and catalogued to qualify as an 
  official miraculous sign. The PCs are furnished with lodgings, religious 
  authority, or simply money, and provided with the rumors about Singhh, 
  and about the previous victims (see the rumor sideboxes in Chapters 1 
  and 2).
  The Sponsor
  This opening is suitable for all player characters. 
  The Honorable and Most Holy Guild of Crematoria Masters, who 
  are very concerned about corpses returning to life while in the charge 
  of their members — not to mention possible demands for refunds — 
  charge the party with ensuring that the issue goes away. They pay 
  suitable remuneration, provide for reasonable expenses throughout the 
  investigation, and point the party toward their member, Ghatmaster 
  Singhh, as someone with whom to begin their enquiries.
  For the GM: 
  Troubleshooting
  The Crucible is an urban horror mystery adventure. Clues lead the 
  players from one part of the investigation to the next, and even if some 
  are missed, the players should be able to unravel the mystery and reach 
  the climax at the great windmill. However, if the investigation comes to a 
  dead end, you can use one or more of the following options:
  • Someone other than the PCs, such as Constable Crop, finds a clue and, 
  knowing the PCs are investigating the matter, hands the clue over. 
  • A clue or hint to a clue goes over and over at the back of a PC’s mind. 
  The PC might awake with an image of the room that held the clue 
  in his mind, for example. The PC is haunted by this image until the 
  location of the clue is revisited.
  • An important NPC such as Mahaas or the Organ Grinder seeks out and 
  attacks the PCs rather than waiting to be identified. The NPC trusts 
  intermediaries to finish off the PCs, however, and the PCs can capture 
  and compel these hirelings into revealing the location of the NPC. 
  Alternatively, an NPC gets more ambitious and commits a new crime 
  through which the PCs discover a new clue.
  • The PCs fail to resolve the mystery. Occasional failure can be a good 
  thing, particularly in a long-running campaign, as it provides the 
  option to reintroduce the NPC (who may have become more powerful) 
  at a later date so he can haughtily remind the PCs that he beat them 
  before …
  Rumours in the Blight
  Rumor sideboxes appear throughout this adventure. Rumors are 
  essentially idle talk or gossip, which is the staple of daily life in 
  most places, but particularly in a crowded place like a city the size 
  of Castorhage. Rumors are learned through the use of Diplomacy 
  checks to gather information, although in these adventures very 
  high checks don’t always reveal the truth, just wilder or less-
  common gossip. In all cases, higher results also reveal all the 
  information that lower results would reveal. Of course, the 
  same information can be gained through roleplaying and asking 
  questions in the right situations.
  
  8
  The Blight: Richard Pett's Crooked City
  Sights, Sounds, and 
  Smells in the Blight
  This adventure takes place around the vile Great Lyme River, a 
  ubiquitous, filthy backdrop to the events of the investigation. The 
  chemical, excrement stench from its foul flow is a regular reminder of 
  its roiling presence; the distracting splashes and squelches of its lurking 
  denizens are frequent warnings of the horrors that call it home. The 
  corpses that occasionally roll into view from its turbid depths, only to be 
  dragged back under by some wan devourer, are chilling evidence of the 
  brutality of life along its course and the truth of sailors’ tales of its flesh-
  eating monsters. The more familiar the PCs are with the dark occupants of 
  the deep, the more frightening the specific parts of the adventure will be 
  where they face falling in.
  Festival is very noisy and smells of sugar, tar, and sweat. The Blight: 
  Richard Pett’s Crooked City details this area of the Blight and provides 
  GMs with more information to present its many locations and rich flavor.
  Seasons and Weather
  Although the basics of the adventure should remain unchanged, the 
  season when this adventure takes place may affect various encounters. 
  Refer to Fifth Edition’s environment rules for specific effects of weather.
  Winter: Winter is cold, with a 50% chance each day for a cold snap that 
  lowers the temperature by a further 10° F. There is regular precipitation, 
  most commonly as freezing fog or snow, but occasionally as hail, sleet, 
  or heavy snow. The Lyme is nearly frozen, and anyone immersed in the 
  water must deal with the cold as well as its denizens. Snow and ice coat 
  walls and pavement, increasing the DC of Acrobatics and Athletics checks 
  by 5 where appropriate.
  Spring: The spring weather is damp. Rain falls throughout the 
  adventure. Light rain only affects mood, but a downpour can prevent 
  ranged attacks at long range and impose tactical disadvantage on short-
  range attacks. Perception checks based on vision, hearing, or smell can 
  also be affected, at your discretion. Fires spread slowly if at all (divide the 
  chance to spread by 5; see Fire and Water in Chapter 6).
  Summer: The final encounter in the great windmill takes place when 
  it is tinder dry. Fires spread twice as quickly, spreading to one adjacent 
  5-foot square per round for every square that is already burning. Blowing 
  dust can obscure vision at long distances, at your discretion.
  Autumn: Strong winds slash the city, and it rains often. These two 
  factors offset each other in respect to the spreading of fires, so there are 
  no game effects from that standpoint. However, if you determine it to 
  be raining or windy during any outdoor encounters, apply appropriate 
  modifiers to movement, visibility, ranged attacks, etc.
  Running The Crucible  
  in Other Cities
  For a GM who wishes to run The Crucible for his players 
  but does not want to set it specifically in a Blight campaign, the 
  locations within this adventure could easily appear in another 
  town or city.
  The Burning Ghats: A ghat is a religious site consisting of a 
  set of steps leading to water used for various purposes, including 
  cremation. Any crematoria or similar corpse-burning area can be 
  substituted, as can a site connected to a holy building appropriate 
  to your campaign, such as a small riverside temple. The site should 
  have few possible witnesses.
  The Pawnbroker’s Tenement: Any building with a high 
  rooftop is suitable, such as a tall manor divided into poor lodgings, 
  a tower, or townhouse. Some of the details of the chase may also 
  need to be modified.
  The Leviathan Dig: The dig can be moved quite easily or 
  changed without altering the flavor of the adventure. Instead 
  of mysterious ancient beings, the Leviathans could be giants, 
  dragons, dinosaurs or other more commonly known creatures. 
  This area could also be changed into an ancient dungeon setting 
  with the PCs helping to open the chambers below.
  The Dislocated Pier: The Limpet can be put on any pier or 
  docklands.
  The Great Windmill: If colossal feats of engineering are 
  inappropriate for your campaign, substitute a riverside tower or 
  a lighthouse for the windmill. No machinery is inside, but the 
  crucible hangs within the structure. 
  
  9
  The Crucible
  This chapter covers the investigation as the PCs seek out the source 
  of the latest burning rumors and look into the case involving the ghat of 
  M’hajeet Singhh. It is primarily roleplaying and skill-based activities, so 
  XP awards are designated for the PCs uncovering certain clues. 
  The Strange Case of 
  M’hajeet Singhh
  The initial investigation of the PCs should begin at the ghat of the holy 
  man M’hajeet Singhh (area A1). If the PCs wish to gather information on 
  the ghatmaster and the previous day’s events before going to the scene, use 
  the rumor table in the sidebox to determine the information they acquire.
  A1. Singhh’s Ghat
  Singhh’s ghat at Angelsgate on the banks of the Lyme is well known 
  and easy to find. If the PCs aren’t locals and don’t already know the way, 
  anyone they ask can point them in the right direction.
  Here, the poisoned river gurgles at the foot of a line of stone 
  steps, their surfaces smoothed by age and tattooed with colorful 
  tikkas and dyes. Above, the streets frown upon a singular 
  space; within are six great slabs, and one bears a corpse laid 
  atop a huge pyre of sweet-smelling timber, straw and spices. 
  The redolence of sandalwood and exotic oils mingles with the 
  more subtle smell of putrefaction from the body and, stronger, 
  the distant stink of the river. Nearby, a painted and singing 
  holy man is lighting coals.
  Angelsgate is named for the stone angel atop the nearby Angel Church, 
  and also because it connects the streets beyond to the river and was once 
  used as a dock. Originally called “Angel Gate,” it ceased to be a viable 
  dockland area after the Angel Gate Fire in 1596, which consumed a dozen 
  warehouses that lay not far from the dock 
  and which were reached 
  via a broad cobbled street that still 
  remains today. A disused drinking 
  trough in the shape of a whale 
  lies about 50 feet away from the 
  ghat; faded markings state that it 
  was “Donated by the Angel Gate 
  Import and Storage Company” in 
  1582. The ghat has been here 
  since 1597 when the local 
  traders, the ancestors of the 
  current Singhh running the 
  place, became more pious in 
  the hope of work returning. 
  Their 
  prayers 
  were 
  answered in 1599 when 
  renowned miller Halibut 
  Quentin Crane (1534–1601) 
  built a dye works on the 
  land left by the warehouses. 
  Unfortunately for Crane, a 
  succubus enthralled him, stole 
  his soul and took him to the 
  Abyss. His eldest son, Sald 
  Crane (1590–1688), took over. 
  The dye works are still active 
  today but use the canals for 
  transportation.
  Chapter One:
  The Burning Ghats
  Rumours about Singhh
  Result
  Rumor
  10
  “Did you hear about the ghat that Singhh 
  runs? Well, yesterday he was busy burning 
  the dead and preparing them for the river 
  when one of those corpses stood up and 
  ran! Why, Beltane himself never made so 
  bold a robbery!” 
  15
  “I heard Singhh has paid dearly for his walk-
  ing corpse, and now locals won’t go near 
  his ghat at Angelsgate unless they’re go-
  ing to the Angel Church. Who can blame 
  them? Once someone’s dead they should 
  have the decency to remain so.”
  20
  “Some say Singhh has fallen on hard times 
  and pulled the stunt himself using a niece 
  of his. I heard that a member of the Watch 
  suggested that stringing him up and asking 
  questions afterward would likely reveal a 
  more natural than supernatural cause for 
  this walking corpse.” 
  
  10
  The Blight: Richard Pett's Crooked City
  The holy man is the ghatmaster M’hajeet Singhh (NG human male 
  acolyte), who owns and operates the ghat here on the riverbank at 
  Angelsgate. Singhh, who is usually very cheerful, is a slight but strong 
  man of Jaata descent. However, the events of yesterday have robbed him 
  of his spirits and trade. Anyone taking an interest in the ghatmaster soon 
  finds themselves overwhelmed by his thanks and worries. The ghatmaster 
  had at least five corpses to cremate this morning, but after yesterday’s 
  events, four people have withdrawn their loved ones for fear of them 
  getting up and coming home. Singhh is so anxious to get his story out and 
  so grateful for any potential help and interest that he babbles excitedly. 
  This, combined with his thick Jaatin accent, makes him difficult to 
  understand, but patience and calm persuasion will calm him sufficiently 
  to get the bulk of his story out in an understandable manner.
  The “rising corpse” mentioned in the rumor was on a raised stone slab 
  at point X on the map. Singhh sleeps in a small, improvised flotsam shack 
  (actually nothing more than four posts and a roof of wood and barrel parts) 
  at point S.
  Singhh’s Story
  Singhh’s life fell apart yesterday morning at the 6th hour of the prime 
  (6 AM). He remembers the Angel Church clock (A2) striking the hour. It 
  was very misty — he could barely see farther than his hands before his 
  face — and the morning was still. He could hear that the workers repairing 
  the church (A3) had just started their work.
  If pressed to describe what happened when the corpse rose, he recalls 
  that he heard voices — two voices, in fact: a man and a woman — and that 
  they might have been arguing, though he did not hear any of the details of 
  the exchange. He admits he had only just awoken.
  Lenice Quarn — the corpse in question — was wearing a white pyre 
  gown, a common burial attire, then arose, dashing past him wreathed 
  in fire. She screamed, ran down the steps, and leapt into the water. The 
  constabulary later assumed the corpse was taken by slop-sharks (see 
  sidebox) because they couldn’t find the body when they dragged the water. 
  In fact, Lyme Constable Crop, the local Constable of the Watch, sent a 
  couple of lads out in a boat with a hook and chain. But these searchers 
  spent little more than 5 minutes looking, partly due to fear and partly due 
  to the stench and stinging in their eyes caused by the recent dumping of a 
  load of alchemical rot in the river here. Singhh thought the dragging was 
  somewhat cursory, and assumes they would have looked harder if Crop 
  had stayed to supervise. If questioned about the local gossip that his niece 
  was the walking corpse, Singhh looks confused and explains that he has 
  no niece.
  What Really Happened
  Yesterday, Mahaas, the deformed hireling of the Organ Grinder, 
  waylaid the prostitute Constance Chanterelle near the ghats just before 
  the 6th bell. The air was thick with the Canker; visibility was a handful of 
  feet. Constance wore a plain white dress, which in the light could easily 
  be mistaken for a funeral shroud like Lenice’s. Mahaas was obsessed with 
  Constance — many men were — but she found him repulsive and always 
  refused his advances. After she had done so again yesterday, Mahaas 
  threatened her with a vial of fire he had stolen from the Organ Grinder. 
  Constance started to run, and Mahaas, in a fit of frustration, threw the vial 
  at her, little knowing what would happen. The vial smashed when it struck 
  the girl, releasing a tiny ragefire spawn (see Appendix I) that immediately 
  attached to her flesh and clothing. As the poor girl struggled, consumed 
  in the devilish fire, she staggered into Singhh’s view, her face wreathed 
  in flame and obscured. Screaming, she ran to the water and leapt in. As 
  she plunged under the water, she was carried by a submerged current and 
  became caught in the rusting embrace of an old iron fishing vessel sunken 
  just off shore. While the ragefire spawn was destroyed, extinguished by 
  its immersion in the water, the damage had been done and, too weak to 
  escape the snag, there the poor girl drowned.
  Singhh’s attention was on the dress: a white dress identical — so he 
  thought — to one worn by one of his clients’ corpses. While Singhh’s 
  attention was wholly taken by what the ghatmaster thought was one of 
  his charges — risen, burning, and screaming — Mahaas saw the corpse in 
  the white dress and spontaneously contrived a plan. He quickly snatched 
  
  11
  The Crucible
  Slop-Sharks
  The terror of all who use the river as their main way 
  across the city, slop-sharks are one of the many predators 
  lurking just beneath the rubbish and waste-strewn 
  surface of the Lyme. Also known as Lyme anglers, 
  from the smaller juveniles to the massive specimens 
  that are the stuff of nightmares, all slop-sharks resemble 
  ragged sacks of putrid flesh about to burst open with a 
  glowing lantern-like appendage dangling from between 
  their eyes. They have great wide mouths filled with rows 
  of ragged teeth, and their horrific diseased bite causes awful 
  infections that frequently kill anyone lucky enough to survive 
  the trauma. Lyme anglers (aka slop-sharks) are further detailed in  
  The Tome of Blighted Horrors by Frog God Games. 
  
  12
  The Blight: Richard Pett's Crooked City
  the white-shrouded corpse, stuffing it into a nearby handcart belonging to 
  the pie-seller Master Cookcroft (A4). He then fled with it into the Canker. 
  Having hidden the stolen corpse in the river upstream, Mahaas believed 
  he had committed the perfect murder and returned to his home on Festival.
  Recovering the Body
  Constance’s body has not been eaten by slop-sharks yet because of the 
  foul alchemic effluent dumped here last night (which also quickly drove 
  the searchers off), and it is still lodged in the rusting skeleton of a small 
  fishing vessel 30 feet out from Singhh’s ghat (point C) and under 15 
  feet of water. This is where she died and where the ragefire spawn was 
  likewise snuffed out.
  Local children sagely inform anyone they see examining or entering the 
  river here that it is full of slop-sharks in these parts and warn them against 
  swimming out. If the PCs are nice to the children or reward them for their 
  volunteered information, one of them remembers seeing some men from 
  the local dye works dumping some barrels into the river upstream the day 
  before yesterday. The child overheard them laughing and saying “It’s not 
  like anyone drinks from the river, ’cept the sharks, o’course, and this’ll 
  give ’em what for! They’ll be outta’ here like a flash!”
  The water is inky black, and visibility beneath the surface is only 2 
  feet, beyond which is total darkness without a light source. Anyone in 
  the cold water can feel things moving about around them, and objects 
  suddenly come into their view — an odd boot (perhaps with a foot still in 
  it), a corn doll, a blind white slug. A DC 15 Wis (Perception) check made 
  by an individual in the water is required to locate Constance’s body. If 
  successful, it suddenly appears — wan and terribly burnt — out of the 
  murky water. The corpse can be disentangled easily from the metal and 
  dragged back to shore. An examination of the recovered body reveals that 
  the majority of burns are on her face and neck, and that the shape of these 
  burns resemble claw marks. A DC 15 Int (Medicine) check identifies the 
  cause of death as drowning. When Constance leapt into water, the ragefire 
  was snuffed out, and she was close to death. Too weak to swim or fight 
  the minimal current, she was pulled under, became lodged in the wreck, 
  passed out, and ultimately drowned. What remains of her dress is white 
  and plain, and she wears no shoes. The wreckage of her face is drawn into 
  an eternal, silent scream. On the back of her shoulder is a crudely rendered 
  tattoo with the image of a black rose.
  Development: If the PCs find Constance’s body, they can find a local 
  able to identify her with a successful DC 13 Int (Investigation) check. 
  Identifying a drowned body is an unpleasant business, and the PCs stir up 
  suspicion, anger, and resentment, triggering Event 1 below.
  Ad Hoc XP Award: If the PCs successfully determine the cause of 
  death as drowning, award everyone 500 XP. If they correctly identify the 
  body, award everyone 1,500 XP.
  A2. Church of the Angel
  Currently wreathed in bamboo scaffolding (A3), the church steeple 
  is being repaired from damage caused by a lightning strike. The 
  church is consecrated to Maelstrom, the Archangel of Vengeance. The 
  interior decoration and stained-glass windows speak of revenge and the 
  punishment of sin.
  A3. The Workmen
  Enoch and Dillard Sheldon (N human male commoners), 2 
  steeplejacks from the East Ending, are currently repairing the church 
  steeple. Both are men of few words and do not like to stop working to 
  talk, as they are paid upon completion of the job, not by the hour. They do 
  not respond to shouts from the street below. 
  PCs wishing to question them must scale three thin ladders that ascend 
  60 feet before meeting sparse bamboo scaffolding to traverse, which 
  extends outward from the spire over the street below via an overhang; 
  the whole climb takes a successful DC 12 Str (Athletics) check to avoid 
  a 50-foot fall, unless characters use ropes to secure themselves to the 
  ladders and scaffolding and prevent a fall, as the Sheldon brothers do. 
  Alternatively, PCs can wait until the end of the day when the pair descend. 
  However, at this time, both are anxious to return to their families and 
  move briskly through the city streets, not stopping without good reason. 
  A successful DC 13 Cha (Persuasion) check gets the taciturn brothers 
  speaking. Dillard was working on the upper steeple in the morning when, 
  alerted by screams and Singhh’s yells, he saw the burning figure run and 
  leap into the river. Enoch, however, also recalls seeing a hooded man in 
  a multi-colored patchwork coat hastily pushing a handcart away from the 
  ghat just afterward. He assumes it was a local thief, taking advantage of 
  the diversion. 
  Ad Hoc XP Award: If the PCs acquire this information from the 
  workmen, award everyon 500 XP.
  A4. The Pieman
  Master Cookcroft (NG human male comoner) is a huge, bald man 
  who makes fine pies, including a mint lamb and a very passable minced 
  beef and ale that he sells for 1 sp each in his nearby shop. If the PCs 
  enquire about his handcart, the pieman tells the PCs that his cart vanished 
  yesterday while he was making a delivery near the ghats, but that he found 
  it later near the river upstream where the amiable Cookcroft suspects that 
  children were playing a trick and hid it. A careful inspection of the cart 
  reveals curious oil stains on the top. They smell like the perfumed oils and 
  resins used by Jaata holy men to prepare corpses for cremation. There are 
  more stains within the cart. Cookcroft can show the PCs where he found 
  the cart (A6) if they ask. The route goes right past a fruiterer’s shop (A5).
  Ad Hoc XP Award: Identifying the oil stains earns everyone 200 XP.
  A5. Gorse & Sons Fruit
  Enquiries at the fruiterer’s reveals that Gorse, the owner, saw the 
  hooded man in the patchwork coat pushing the pieman’s cart up the street 
  at about 6th hour but didn’t want to get involved. He, too, assumes it was 
  a rogue who soon slipped over a nearby rickety canal bridge (A6) and into 
  the Canker. He lets the PCs know that he’s seen this hooded man before, 
  hanging around the working girls at Armington’s Tenements (A7).
  A6. Rickety Canal Bridge
  A pair of planks cross an open sewer here. Presently, a dead dog lies 
  beached on an isle of filth 10 feet directly below the bridge, which creaks 
  ominously as it is crossed but remains whole and sound.
  Constance and  
   Speak with Dead
  The PCs can learn what happened to Constance by using 
  speak with dead on her corpse. When the spell is cast, the corpse 
  animates with a scream before it is consumed with sobs and moans. 
  Coughing up foul river water, it answers the PCs’ questions in a 
  gurgling voice that a deformed man called Mahaas abused her with 
  colorful language when she refused his advances, and threatened 
  her with a “burning terror in a crystal flask” before she turned to 
  run. Then the flask hit her, and she was engulfed in flames that tore 
  at her neck like claws. She jumped into the river and the fire went 
  out, but she became caught on something and couldn’t get free. 
  Other than describing Mahaas’ appearance (see B8-13), the corpse 
  knows little else of use to the PCs.
  
  13
  The Crucible
  A7. Corpse of Lenice Quarn
  A search of the river near where the cart was found uncovers the 
  body of Lenice Quarn, the corpse Singhh was supposed to cremate 
  and which he thought had burst into flames and run into the river. 
  Like Constance’s body, it, too, has remained unmolested by aquatic 
  predators due to the dye factory’s chemical dumping upstream. Heavy 
  stones from the docks have been used to keep the corpse, still clad in 
  its white but now stained and dirty funeral dress, from floating to the 
  surface. It has patches of abraded skin and several dislocated joints; a 
  successful Wis (Medicine) check correctly deduces that the corpse was 
  forced into a small space.
  Ad Hoc XP Award: If the PCs figure out that the body was stowed in 
  the pie cart resulting in its damaged state, award everyone 200 XP.
  A8. The Angelsgate Working Girls
  The local doxies lodge in Armington’s Tenements, which lie two streets 
  back from the river, close to the Crane Dye Works. The dye workers are 
  good customers of the girls, and nights can get rowdy in the seemingly 
  endless number of local gin shops, alehouses, and taverns. After dark, 
  rogues, cutpurses, or worse set upon PCs who become embroiled in the 
  violent drunkenness that plagues this district. 
  Questioning the women and men working in the area reveals that 
  Constance was being plagued by a vile character by the name of Mahaas, 
  a two-headed freak who lives somewhere on Festival. However, unless 
  the PCs are careful not to implicate Mahaas in Constance’s murder, the 
  girls may decide to visit vengeance upon Mahaas themselves.
  Event 1: Street Justice
  If the locals learn that the PCs have Constance’s body, the Angelsgate 
  working girls soon arrive with their pimp and his gang. They do not want 
  the body interfered with, especially by vile and unnatural speak with dead 
  spells, and demand that it be cremated properly. They are prepared to 
  fight for it if necessary. The group consists of 12 Angelsgate doxies (12 
  commoners) and a trio of burly Angel Gang enforcers (3 veterans) named 
  Lemon, Kind Karg, and Fetid. Their pimp and gang leader, a strange 
  looking fellow known as the Cherub (gladiator), leads them. Muscled 
  and tattooed, he is an albino, his shock of white hair and unblemished pale 
  skin making him look almost angelic, but his knowing smile is anything 
  but. If the PCs do not accede to the gang’s wishes, they are willing to take 
  the body by force, cheered on by the rowdy girls, who will not baulk at the 
  odd kick, punch and choice language.
  Cherub (Gladiator): AC 16; HP 112 (15d8+45); Spd 30ft; 
  Melee spear (+7, 2d6+4 piercing or 2d8+4 piercing with 2 
  hands), shield bash (+7, 2d4+4 bludgeoning; Medium or 
  smaller target must make DC 15 Str save or knocked prone); 
  Ranged spear (+7, 20ft/60ft, 2d6+4 piercing); SA multiattack 
  (melee x3 or ranged x2); Reaction parry (+3 AC against me-
  lee attack that would hit, if gladiator sees attacker and has 
  melee weapon); Str +4, Dex +2, Con +3, Int +0, Wis +1, Cha 
  +2; Saving Throws Str +7, Dex +5, Con +6; Skills Athletics +10, 
  Intimidation +5; Traits brave (advantage on saves vs. fright); 
  AL any; CR 5; XP 1,800.
  Angel Gang Enforcers (3, Veteran): AC 17; HP 58 (9d8+18); 
  Spd 30ft; Melee longsword x2 (+5, 1d8+3 slashing); shorts-
  word (+5, 1d6+3 piercing); Ranged heavy crossbow (+3, 
  100ft/400ft, 1d10 piercing); SA multiattack (longsword x2, 
  shortsword); Str +3, Dex +1, Con +2, Int +0, Wis +0, Cha +0; 
  Skills Athletics +5, Perception +2; AL LN; CR 3; XP 700.
  Angelsgate Doxies (12, Commoner): AC 10; HP 4 (1d8); Spd 
  30ft; Melee dagger (+2, 1d4 piercing); Str +0, Dex +0, Con 
  +0, Int +0, Wis +0, Cha +0; AL LN; CR 0; XP 10.
  Tactics: The group, like most in the Blight, automatically assume 
  the PCs have some dirty reason for taking the girl’s body, or worse, are 
  responsible for her death and come calling like a baying mob. The PCs can 
  defuse the situation by convincing the Cherub of their authority or good 
  intentions, but, aided by his gang and girls, he is difficult to convince. 
  Their starting attitude is unfriendly, and the characters must present a 
  persuasive explanation (or make a successful DC 20 Cha [Persuasion or 
  Deception] check) to improve it. Showing a symbol of some sort of office 
  in the investigation, such as a written authority by Lyme Constable Crop, 
  gives tactical advantage on the Cha check. Any attempt to Intimidate the 
  gang, however, leads to immediate hostility. If the PCs manage to escape 
  with the body, the gang resorts to finding where the PCs lodge through 
  their extensive list of local contacts if necessary. You can assume in this 
  case that unless the PCs left the area magically, or used some cunning 
  escape that you feel deserves a reward for ingenuity, they find them within 
  1d6 hours.
  Development: Fighting these thugs causes complications both 
  immediately as locals refuse to speak to the PCs for fear of gang reprisals, 
  and at later dates as relatives and friends of the gang and their girls come 
  looking to settle the score. How and when this reprisal occurs is left to 
  you, but it should involve a hard or deadly encounter with rogues from the 
  local arm of the Thieves’ Guild (a.k.a. The Guild).
  The Trail of Mahaas
  Having learnt the identity of the murderer, the PCs likely wish to 
  gather information about Mahaas. If so, characters must talk to NPCs who 
  know him or know something about him. The best place to gather such 
  information is Festival. Diligent PCs can learn any of the following:
  • “One can only pity so poor a soul, stricken as he is with a second head. 
  He hides that terrible second face away under a great hood, which he 
  wears to spare the fear of those he passes. He has many such hoods — 
  some bright and gay, some dark and shadowy.”
  • “That freak has been seen lurking around Festival for years. They say 
  his second head is alive and that it talks to birds and beasts!”  
  • “There’s more to him than meets the eye. He has lodgings with that 
  Uriah Mean, and we all know about that miserly pawnbroker. They say 
  Mahaas keeps the same sort of dark company and has friends willing 
  to die for him.”
  
  14
  The Blight: Richard Pett's Crooked City
  If the PCs make an effort to gather information about any similar 
  burning deaths in recent weeks, they can learn any of the following:
  • “The constabulary have five previous victims of spontaneous 
  combustion interred in the Grime Street Morgue.”
  • “The five victims were all loners.”
  • “Did you hear about the strange rain that fell on the nights they died? 
  Storms whipping out of nowhere and vanishing as soon as they started. 
  Mighty strange coincidence if you ask me.”
  At the Morgue
  The Grime Street Morgue is run by Underclerk Ernest R. Wigmore 
  (N human male noble), the morgue rests at the edge of the Hollow and 
  Broken Hills district of the city, roughly 100 yards from the Chain Ferry, 
  and consists of a small office cluttered with wooden filing drawers and 
  ledgers. A locked door can be opened with thief’s tools and a successful 
  DC 15 Dex check. Inside, a short flight of steps leads down to a large, 
  lime-washed cellar with a dozen wooden biers for incoming bodies. 
  Ernest is a stickler for duty, and for the PCs to gain any kind of access 
  to the cellar, he must be convinced of their good intentions. Mentioning 
  Lyme Constable Crop’s name will do. 
  So far, the first three bodies have been subjected to speak with dead 
  spells by the authorities and all questions and answers studiously recorded 
  in a ledger. PCs can gain access to the ledger only by stealing it or by 
  making a successful DC 15 Cha (Persuasion or Intimidation) check with 
  Wigmore. The ledger reveals that, in each case, a standard set of questions 
  was asked and the answers were similar:
  Q: Were you attacked? A: Yes
  Q: Did you know your attacker? A: No.
  Q: What attacked you? A: Living fire. It burnt so bad!
  Q: Did the living fire say anything? A: No.
  The first three have all been questioned with the spell within the last 
  week, so the PCs will be unable to use new speak with dead spells on 
  them at this time. However, it can be used on the remaining two. Likewise, 
  if the PCs have other divinatory means at their disposal and contrive to 
  learn more from the decedents, the basic story is the same for each victim. 
  They were sleeping alone in the streets and awoke under attack from a 
  fire creature that hung onto their flesh and burnt them to death. In their 
  suffering, none of the victims saw the Artificer nearby, carefully noting 
  the effects of her vile attack.
  If asked, Ernest can confirm that the bodies were all found on the isle 
  of Festival, but talking about that locale makes him noticeably nervous. 
  The Underclerk has heard the rumors about the isle — that it is home to 
  a nest of wererats. If pressed, he reveals that getting the bodies back over 
  to the morgue was an issue. The current Festival Watch Captain, Edrin 
  Grast (see area F5), is luckily dealing with an internal matter, and the main 
  City Watch were able to demand the bodies. In truth, Ernest suspects that 
  knowing the Watch over on the island, this matter would not have come to 
  light but for the hysteria that greeted it.
  The bodies retain their clothes, mostly charred to nothing in places with 
  bits of metal from rings or necklaces actually melted into the scorched 
  flesh, but shreds do remain. Any belongings are kept in a drawer in the 
  corpse’s bier clearly marked as “Victim’s Personal Effects” and are 
  detailed below.
  Each victim marked W shows signs of the water elemental used by the 
  Artificer to quench the fire and kill the ragefire. These effects are detailed 
  on the first victim Rosie for reference.
  Victim #1, Rosie Weft (W): The horribly burnt body of this young 
  woman shows signs of the Artificer’s use of a water elemental to 
  extinguish the ragefire elemental. The body shows clear signs of having 
  been immersed in water although it was found on dry land. Her clothing 
  has been burnt, but close checking reveals curious bruising and tearing 
  of her subcutaneous tissues consistent with being struck by a force from 
  the front, more or less evenly across her whole body. The burns resemble 
  claws digging into flesh in at least two places.
  Victim #2, Edmund Hyde: The Artificer pushed this victim into the 
  Lyme. The corpse again shows signs of fiery claws. Edmund’s burnt 
  clothes are the ragged garb of a low-caste person or beggar. Ernest can 
  confirm that the constabulary knew Edmund, and he was a sad case. His 
  wife ran away with a sailor 12 years ago, and he’d been drowning his 
  sorrows in gin ever since. If asked, Ernest can provide the PCs with the 
  address of the Grinning Lacedon, a public house on Festival where Hyde 
  was known to drink. For more information on that ghastly drinking pit, 
  see Further Leads below.
  When hired by the Organ Grinder, Mahaas told him of a number of 
  people on Festival whom he thought “could easily go missing,” and two 
  were people he’d seen frequenting Mean’s pawnshop. Hyde was one of 
  them, and the other was the navvy (Victim #5 below). 
  Victim #3, Eugene Wolkman (W): Eugene was a loner who slept on 
  the docks where he worked. Three locals saw him running through the 
  streets, his body a blazing pyre of flame. Their statements are included 
  in Ernest’s ledger. All three witnesses claim to have seen a watery figure 
  roughly the shape of a man, but considerably more massive, strike the 
  victim, quenching the flames. They believe it was a sign from the gods 
  to protect them from injury. One witness, Goodwife Blacksyrup, claims 
  to have heard a strange chanting just before the watery figure appeared. 
  A successful DC 15 Int (Arcana) check leads a character to suspect the 
  watery figure was a water elemental.
  Victim #4, N. N. Number One: An apparent tramp, this young man’s 
  corpse shows all the hallmarks of a ragefire attack. The head is terribly 
  burnt, in particular. He was found floating among the docks last week.
  Victim #5, N. N. Number Two (W): Apparently a navvy (dock 
  laborer), this victim was found 3 days ago. He shows the signs of the 
  Chapter Two:
  The Grime Street Morgue
  Non Nominis
  The designation “N.N.” is used in the City-State of Castorhage 
  to indicate an individual whose name is not known, much like 
  the use of John Doe in the United States. It is from the ancient 
  language of High Boros and means “Non Nominus,” or “Name 
  Unknown.”
  
  15
  The Crucible
  ragefire’s attacking claws. A search of the victim’s belongings uncovers 
  a pawnbroker’s ticket along with 3 gp, 7 sp, and an iron key, all of which 
  have also been logged by Ernest. The ticket is for a rapier pawned for 5 gp 
  and is signed “Uriah Mean, Riverside Tenement Pawnbroker, Festival.”
  So Far, So Good?
  By this stage of their investigation, it is hoped the PCs should know two 
  key pieces of information. First that they are searching for a man called 
  Mahaas with two heads and who lives somewhere on Festival. Second, that 
  there is a link from two previous victims to a pawnbroker on the same isle. 
  Luckily for the PCs, visiting the pawnbroker’s tenement on Festival leads 
  them straight to their quarry. The PCs can get to Festival on the Chain Ferry 
  (see sidebox), which costs 1 sp per passenger; they can also arrange a more 
  private and convenient crossing by private charter for 10 gp.
  Festival
  When the PCs finally reach Festival, read or paraphrase the following 
  description:
  Festival up close is even more insane than seems feasible. 
  A vast bloated isle of garish color rises from a wide, crowded 
  shore of bright buildings, seemingly a freak gust of wind 
  away from tumbling into the silty waters about her. Banners 
  and hoardings and signs proclaim the last chance to see the 
  “Dreadful Supper of Four Broken Men as One,” the “Awful 
  Whale-Girl,” and “Foul Mother Broken.” These signs compete 
  for height and color and size, obscuring Festival as it rises 
  through crooked streets to a great fayre at its summit.
  And as the chain ferry clanks to the harbor, there is a 
  rush of entertainers: a dwarf in red cries out an invitation to 
  see the Great Ape of Dark Libynos; an impossibly tall man 
  wearing a hood with a single eyehole holds out a vast hand 
  for alms; and a curious and ugly organ grinder sends his 
  human-faced monkey to collect coppers while he plays his 
  strange-looking organ.
  The organ player is in fact the Organ Grinder, an NPC with a significant 
  role in the adventure, with his pet Blight monkey. Whilst presently he has 
  no interest to the PCs, nor any knowledge of them, them later recalling 
  this meeting may help the PCs to deduce where the villain’s performing 
  patch encompasses. More information is detailed further in this adventure. 
  If the PCs wish to gather information on the pawnbroker, Uriah Mean, 
  use the table in the sidebox to see what types of information they can 
  acquire. This assumes the PCs make inquiries on Festival. All they can 
  learn anywhere else is, “try asking around on Festival.”
  Other Possible leads on Festival
  The locations of the locales used across Festival are detailed on the 
  area map. Two locations have been mentioned in passing: the Grinning 
  Lacedon and the Festival Watch Station, both of which are detailed below 
  and numbered occurred to their tag on the overall map of the city provided 
  in The Blight: Richard Pett’s Crooked City.
  The Grinning Lacedon
  The Lacedon lurks in a mouldy corner of the Footings. Even from the 
  outside, it looks to be on its last legs; within, it is even more decayed.
  Here is a curiosity: This building literally sags. It leans 
  between its neighbors, a dying building of dying timber 
  and dying stone. The stone resembles rotting teeth in a 
  swollen timber mouth. Above hangs a revolting object, a 
  mummified ghoul, its leering face grinning directly down 
  at the doorway.
  Within, the twisted ornamentation grows and festers. Here is an 
  obsessive collector’s lifetime of obsession — about lacedons. There are 
  paintings of their demise at the blades of heroic nobles, several bones 
  in walnut cabinets, an obsessive amount of religious protection from 
  both Brine and Mother Grace, and in one corner is a whole preserved 
  lacedon skeleton labelled as a curiosity from the Physician’s Institute in 
  BookTown (area B18). 
  Wintry Theram (LN human female noble), a sour-faced old witch who 
  last smiled in 1693 accordingly to local legend, owns the Lacedon. PCs 
  seeing Theram and making a DC 25 Sense Motive check can discern her 
  breeding beneath the decay in her bearing and may even spot a ratty old fur 
  coat hanging behind the bar if they bother to look there. Theram hates her 
  station in life, and longs for the Capitol from which — regrettably — she 
  was exiled after offending a member of the Tredici Family. The comings 
  and goings and base humor of commoners revolts her, but if someone 
  notes her breeding and uses the correct etiquette (via roleplaying or a 
  successful DC 15 Charisma check) to know the right way of such things, 
  she warms to the characters immediately and brings out a bottle of fine 
  vintage wine (only offering it to the PCs that impressed her, and drinking 
  most of it herself). She soon gets boring with her one-track talk about the 
  magnificence of the Capitol and her grand stained-glass windows, lofty 
  gardens and good manners.
  Rumours about Uriah Mean
  • “Mean by name, mean by nature. He has no soul, that vile 
  gnome. All he loves is money, and his every waking thought 
  is driven by how to acquire more of it. His tenement lies at the 
  edge of the Isle of Festival, very near the Chain Ferry in a part 
  of the district known as the Footings. You can’t miss it — it’s 
  the place that looks like it’s falling into the river. It’s one of the 
  worst in the area. Leaks and holes, rot and mould — that’s what 
  thrives there. I wouldn’t give you a fourthling to spend a night 
  there although he lives in that barge outside.”
  • “They say Mean was crippled during a hunt and that he can’t 
  stand by himself, but I’ve heard different. I’ve heard he  
  dabbles in magic of a most dark sort, and that his injuries were 
  inflicted by a cat which caught him when he was scuttling 
  about in the form of a rat!”
  • “Some people say Mean is one of the Family — the ruling clan 
  of wererats who have Festival held in their small sharp teeth. 
  The Family take care of their own, they say, and to cross any of 
  them is dangerous.” 
  • “Oh, he’s in the Family alright! He has that thug Mister 
  Mackerel to watch over his affairs and to deal with anyone who 
  annoys him. You need to tread lightly ’round old Mean lest 
  you’re paid a visit in the night.”
  The Chain Ferry
  The Chain Ferry to Festival is a large, flat-bottomed barge pulled 
  by a chain across the river. It is teeming with pleasure seekers, and 
  has a large number of traders, puppeteers, and actors who ply their 
  trades during its 10-minute crossing, which costs 1 sp. The Blight: 
  Richard Pett’s Crooked City gives more details of this ferry and 
  the occupants.
  
  16
  The Blight: Richard Pett's Crooked City
  The aloof owner recalls that Hyde (she never refers to anyone by their 
  first name) had been flush with coin recently, having sold his wife’s dresses 
  to the pawnbroker Uriah Mean. “What a revolting, degenerate thing to do 
  and to what a revolting and degenerate individual,” she editorializes. She 
  barred Mean from the Lacedon on sight, but she does know where he lives 
  and can provide the PCs with details (see Chapter 3).  
  F5. The Festival Watch
  A squat, rather dirty stone tower rises from the quayside. 
  It has become home to seagulls and crows, and its sides are 
  streaked with years of their droppings.
  Some of these fowl operate as familiars for members of the Family; it 
  pays to know what is occurring in the local watch.
  The Festival Watch consists of 32 constables (NE halfling male guard), 
  recognizable by their emblazoned gray and green uniforms and the short 
  scourges they wield to carry out their duties — which generally revolve 
  around dealing with drunks and minor scuffles. There are also 5 Sergeants 
  of the Watch (NE halfling male bandit captain) led by Watch Captain 
  Edrin Grast (NE halfling male wererat).
  Grast is away — at the behest of one of the ruling families of Festival 
  — and his place is taken by Acting Captain Pleasant Fumitory (NE 
  halfling male wererat). Fumitory is a classic bully, and easily kowtowed 
  by another. A successful DC 15 Cha check is needed to get cooperation 
  or information out of him; the check is made normally if it’s coupled 
  with Intimidation, but with tactical disadvantage if someone resorts to 
  Persuasion or any other form of pleasant exchange. He knows little (and 
  cares less) about the strange deaths; strange deaths happen all the time on 
  Festival, and a talk with him reveals little except his love of licorice — 
  which he stuffs in his fat mouth constantly. The PCs should really come 
  away with how indifferent the Watch are — they may even make jokes 
  about the victims. This should give the PCs a higher personal sense of 
  justice and worth than the local law; if it were left to them, the deaths 
  would remain unsolved.
  
  17
  The Crucible
  Uriah Mean (LE gnome male wererat), the infamous pawnbroker, is 
  an honorary member of the Family — the amalgamation of wererat clans 
  who rule Festival. The infamous pleasure island secretly operates in the 
  name of the Rat Queen — one of the so-called “gods” of the Blight who, 
  like many of its deities, actually physically live in the city. 
  Mean operates from his river barge, which is anchored at a small jetty at 
  the foot of his tenement building that overlooks the Chain Ferry as marked 
  on the map. As is frequently seen across the urban sprawl of the Blight, 
  structures have converged and Mean’s barge has merged with and become 
  a part of his tenement building. It is a mass of alterations and extensions, 
  enhancements, add-ons, and botched improvements. Mahaas lodges in the 
  attic garret of the tenement and is one of Mean’s many tenants.
  Chapter Three:
  The Pawnbroker’s Tenement
  Bath-chairs and Pawnbrokers
  A bath-chair is an early type of wheelchair for invalids. They 
  are usually pulled by an animal that the driver controls with reins, 
  like a light, one-man cart. Fairly rare in other parts of Akados 
  (though not entirely unheard of among the most cosmopolitan 
  population centres), they occasion little comment within the 
  urban sprawl of Castorhage.
  A pawnbroker offers secured loans to people, with items of 
  personal property used as collateral. If an item is pawned for a 
  loan, the pawner may redeem it for the amount of the loan plus 
  some agreed-upon amount for interest within a certain contractual 
  period of time. The amount of time and rate of interest is usually 
  governed by the pawnbroker’s policies. If the loan is not paid (or 
  extended, if applicable) within the time period, the pawned item 
  is offered for sale by the pawnbroker. Pawnbrokers may also sell 
  items that have been sold outright to them by customers. The most 
  famous (or infamous) pawnshop in Castorhage is the Soiled Sow 
  Inn on Festival.
  
  18
  The Blight: Richard Pett's Crooked City
  Uriah Mean, a Villain 
  for All Seasons
  Uriah Mean is an ugly old gnome with withered, useless legs and bushy 
  white eyebrows that prop up a faded old sea captain’s cap. He slumps in 
  a rusted bath-chair resting on squeaking wheels. He uses the stat block of 
  a wererat but with the addition of spellcasting, as noted in his description 
  below. A harnessed boar with tiny, bloodshot eyes, coarse gray fur and 
  yellow tusks pulls the contraption; Mean calls it Mange. The gnome 
  uses reins tied to the boar’s tusks to control the beast. A large black crow 
  (Mean’s familiar, which he calls Lovely) perches on the back of the chair, 
  struggling to keep its balance and cawing loudly as the contraption lurches 
  with every snap of the reins in the gnome’s hands.
  The notorious pawnbroker and slum tyrant Uriah Mean is a bitter and 
  miserly cripple whose apparent obsession with crushing his tenants and 
  debtors’ hopes for better lives is matched only by his acquisitive, endless 
  greed. Whilst in rat form, a huge tomcat (the magically enhanced familiar 
  of a local wizard) mauled the gnome, leaving him unable to use his legs 
  — and with an irrational fear of cats. He spends most of his time confined 
  to a rickety bath-chair that is pulled around by a trained boar (actually his 
  thrall, an imp called Mange) that rarely leaves his presence.
  His crow familiar, Lovely, always perches at his side during business 
  deals and negotiations, is known to sometimes accost visitors to Mean’s 
  barge, demanding to know their business in its screeching voice, and to 
  deliver messages for its master. With its ability to talk to other birds, it 
  has become the matriarch of a large murder of crows that roost on Mean’s 
  tenement building, teaching them to hunt stray cats and cry warnings of 
  intruders.
  As a member of the Family, Mean’s claims of “powerful friends” are no 
  idle boast. If Mean survives the events of this adventure, he may become 
  a recurring villain in the campaign, complicating the PCs’ lives with his 
  manipulations and greed. For more information about the Family, see The 
  Blight: Richard Pett’s Crooked City.
  Mean always casts mage armor before meeting strangers. A competent 
  liar, he tries to talk his way out of threatening situations before resorting 
  to violence. In hybrid or rat form, Mean is able to use his crippled legs 
  slightly but at a greatly reduced speed. He highly values his own life and 
  seeks to escape if defeat seems imminent. If prevented from fleeing, he 
  curls into a cringing ball and begs for mercy, though it will certainly not 
  be long before he is plotting his revenge if permitted to live. 
  Of potential interest to PCs is that Mean is terrified of cats. If he sees 
  one, he shrieks in fear and either demands its removal or attacks it using 
  his wand or his thrall. In either case, he is shaken for as long as the cat is 
  within sight and for 1d4+2 minutes thereafter.
  Development: When the PCs first meet Mean, he acts friendly and 
  obsequious toward them, just the typical oily junk dealer looking to 
  score some coin from potential customers. However, Mean is cunning 
  and wants to know what the PCs know. He asks questions, offers help, 
  and may even sponsor the PCs financially if he feels it would bear fruit, 
  though ultimately he betrays them. If the PCs start asking questions about 
  missing customers, Mean secretly recalls both but claims to know nothing 
  about either of them. If told of their murders, he becomes very interested 
  and asks many questions, trying to glean what the PCs know about them. 
  If asked about Mahaas, Mean says he may be able to help, but wants to 
  know as much as the PCs will reveal about why they want to locate him 
  and what their motives are. When he has gleaned as much information 
  from them as he thinks he can, he’ll reveal that Mahaas is his tenant and 
  that his garret can be reached by climbing the ladder at the front of the 
  tenement (B4). Regardless of the outcome of this initial meeting, if he 
  survives, Mean arranges for the PCs to be followed.
  If the PCs have learnt that Mahaas lodges in Mean’s tenement though 
  gathering information, it is possible that they may not seek out Mean and 
  begin searching through the building instead. If this occurs, Lovely accosts 
  the PCs and demands that they seek permission to enter the building from 
  its owner lest they be treated as thieves. If the PCs do not comply, Lovely 
  informs Mean, who prepares for combat and seeks them out, with Dogg 
  (B2) in tow. If the PCs do not treat the gnome with respect, combat may 
  ensue.
  Assuming that Mean survives his meeting with the PCs, a number of 
  events are likely to follow. Mean sends his crow familiar to tail the PCs 
  and report back on a regular basis what they are doing. Lovely surrounds 
  herself with other ravens and crows as she follows, ensuring that without 
  specific investigation, the PCs will not realize that they are being watched; 
  crows are a common sight in the Blight after all. If discovered, however, 
  Lovely flees back to Mean. If the PCs discover the raven before attacking 
  the Organ Grinder (see Chapter 5), Mean reluctantly gives up. However, 
  he may attempt to resume his surveillance if the PCs involve him again. 
  If Mean is attacked and killed, the Family learns about it unless the PCs 
  have been sufficiently careful in covering their tracks and likely come 
  looking for them. If Lovely is still watching the PCs when they learn 
  about the great windmill, she arranges for Mean’s mob (see Event 5 in 
  Chapter 6) to follow them there.
  Uriah Mean (Wererat Illusionist): AC 12; HP 33 (6d8+6); Spd 
  0ft human, 10ft rat/hybrid form; Melee bite (rat or hybrid 
  form only; +4, 1d4+2 piercing and humanoid must make 
  DC 11 Con save or be cursed with lycanthropy), shortsword 
  (humanoid or hybrid form only; +4, 1d6+2 piercing); Ranged 
  hand crossbow (humanoid or hybrid form only; +4, 30ft/120ft, 
  1d6+2 piercing); Immune nonmagical, nonsilvered blud-
  geoning, piercing, slashing; Str +0, Dex +2, Con +1, Int +2, Wis 
  +0, Cha –1; Skills Perception +2, Stealth +4; Senses darkvision 
  60ft (rat form only); Traits keen smell, shapechanger (can 
  use an action to switch between humanoid, rat, and rat-hu-
  manoid hybrid forms); AL LE; CR 2; XP 450.
  Spells (+4, DC 12): 0 (at will)—dancing lights, mage 
  hand, minor illusion, poison spray; 1 (4)--color spray, 
  disguise self, mage armor, magic missile; 2 (3)--invisibili-
  ty, mirror image, phantasmal force; 3 (3)--lightning bolt, 
  major image; 4 (1)--phantasmal killer.
  Mange (Devil, Imp): AC 13; HP 10 (3d4+3); Spd 20ft, fly 40ft; 
  Melee sting (+5, 1d4+3 piercing plus 3d6 poison; DC 11 Con 
  save halves poison); SA invisibility (becomes invisible until it 
  attacks or loses concentration), shapechanger (transforms 
  from imp to boar or vice versa); Str –2, Dex +3, Con +1, Int +0, 
  Wis +1, Cha +2; Skills Deception +4, Insight +3, Persuasion +4, 
  Stealth +5; Resist cold, nonmagical weapons that aren’t sil-
  ver; Immune fire, poison; Senses darkvision 120ft; Traits devil’s 
  sight (darkvision unhindered by magical darkness), magic 
  resistance (has tactical advantage on saves vs. magic); AL 
  LE; CR 1; XP 200.
  Lovely (Raven Familiar): AC 12; HP 1 (1d4––1); Spd 10ft, fly 
  50ft; Melee beak (+4, 1 piercing); Str –4, Dex +2, Con –1, Int 
  –4, Wis +1, Cha –2; Skills Perception +3; Traits mimicry (can 
  mimic simple sounds it has heard; DC 10 Wis [Insight] check 
  to detect imitation); AL un; CR 0; XP 10.
  
  19
  The Crucible
  B. Barge Pawnshop 
  and Tenement
  Read the following when the PCs first lay eyes on the abode of Uriah Mean.
  A river barge hangs crippled at the foot of an exhausted stone 
  tenement that rises spastically beneath dislocated gables. 
  The whole structure appears diseased — thick lichens hang 
  from walls from which stones protrude like broken limbs. A 
  chain lashes the barge tightly to the slum, so that the vessel is 
  suspended partly above the tainted waters, almost as though it 
  appears reluctant to touch them. The whole place — building 
  and barge — are strangled by straining moss-choked timbers 
  that look as if they could snap at any moment and bring the 
  whole place down.
  Three iron balls — the guild-sign of the pawnbroker — hang 
  over the barge. Pails, cast-iron street lanterns, handcarts, 
  rope, and a confusion of other miscellany are all marked for 
  sale, and the whole structure seems to groan under the sheer 
  mass of the wares. Everything, it seems, has a price, even down 
  to the hastily chalk-scrawled “10 shekels” on the rusting iron 
  anchor of the barge itself.
  An unkindness of mangy ravens lurks on the teetering gable 
  above, cawing as you approach, and picking at the remains of 
  what looks like a dead alley cat.
  Disguised among the ravens is Lovely, Mean’s crow familiar. The 
  familiar lurks, ever watchful for trouble, and if it senses it — someone 
  sneaking about, a group of people acting unusual or suspicious, or 
  weapons being drawn — it shares the information with its master, who 
  readies for combat accordingly.
  Mean’s river-barge (keelboat) is of the type commonly used by river-
  gypsies here in the city. It has an upper deck that is little more than a flat 
  outer level built around the central cabin, its own floor some 3 feet below 
  the surrounding deck. This cabin is divided into two areas, one for living 
  quarters and one for cargo. Mean’s barge is rotten, and if two of the four 
  chains holding it to the dock are broken, the entire vessel begins sinking. 
  It goes under fully after 1 minute. Outside the cabin, the deck is covered 
  in goods, making space so cramped that the whole deck is effectively 
  difficult terrain. Mean himself knows all the best ways through the clutter 
  and ignores this effect.
  Upon the barge, the air smells of damp and rot, the miasma of the 
  vessel’s own decrepitude. Those who search among the goods risk 
  disturbing powdered rat droppings and must make a successful DC 11 
  Con saving throw to avoid contracting sewer plague. The entire boat is 
  so cramped and filthy, inside and out, that attacks with two-handed melee 
  weapons and ranged attacks are made with tactical disadvantage.
  The tenement building fares little better. Built of stone which is rapidly 
  being eaten by the acidic smog of the river and Blight stonemites (see 
  sidebox), the tenement is falling apart. The surface of the walls is so crumbly 
  and unstable that a successful DC 20 Str (Athletics) check is required to 
  climb them. The building has five stories plus an attic space (which has been 
  converted into Mahaas’ garret), is 75 feet high at the peak of its roof, 120 
  feet long, and 40 feet wide. It has four dwellings per floor (not including the 
  attic), each 20 feet wide and 50 feet long. A rotting interior stair, a trio of 
  exposed ladders outside, a knotted rope ladder, and a small timber bridge, 
  can be used to reach the apartments within the tenement. The tenants of this 
  riverside tenement are mostly meek, mild, and afraid of Mean and of the 
  consequences of talking about him or the Family to strangers.
  A framework of rotting timbers — the remains of scaffolding put up 
  years ago — strangle the whole place, barge and tenement. A timber plank 
  of one of these scaffolds breaks as soon as weight of at least 50 pounds is 
  placed upon it. What windows there are, are barred with 1-inch-thick iron 
  bars, and so grimy they cannot be seen through.
  
  20
  The Blight: Richard Pett's Crooked City
  B1. Pawnshop and Living Area
  The deck of the mouldering boat is cluttered with countless 
  mundane or strange objects, but pathways along the sides 
  are clear to allow passage. A small ramp enters the barge’s 
  cabin. Beyond in the murk inside, the place looks even more 
  cluttered.
  This is where Mean spends most of his day. Countless objects from 
  rattraps to wedding dresses, hatpins to grandfather clocks clutter the 
  deck. A simple hatch (usually open during daylight hours) allows access 
  within via a steep ramp. The hatch can be closed and locked with a lock to 
  which Mean carries the only key. It usually is locked at night, but it can be 
  opened with thief’s tools and a successful DC 15 Dexterity check. Below, 
  amongst even more junk. a hefty oak counter stands along one wall, and a 
  small door leads to the kennel (B2).
  Uriah Mean is a local tyrant and may become a recurring villain if he 
  survives and the GM so chooses. Motivated solely by profit, he is a hard 
  bargainer but is always interested in new stock; he generally pawns an 
  item for 25% of his assessment of its value. His tenant Mahaas already 
  intrigues Mean, and the arrival of the PCs with their questions further 
  piques this interest. He has already learnt something of Mahaas’ value 
  through scrying. Over the past couple of days, Mean has heard Mahaas 
  talking to himself (which he frequently does) about some “new weapon” 
  and a fortune that’s to be had. Mean intends to keep an ear and an eye on 
  Mahaas to learn more. With Mean when the PCs first encounter him are 
  his crow familiar Lovely and his “boar” Mange.
  Uriah Mean (Wererat Illusionist): AC 12; HP 33 (6d8+6); Spd 
  0ft human, 10ft rat/hybrid form; Melee bite (rat or hybrid 
  form only; +4, 1d4+2 piercing and humanoid must make 
  DC 11 Con save or be cursed with lycanthropy), shortsword 
  (humanoid or hybrid form only; +4, 1d6+2 piercing); Ranged 
  hand crossbow (humanoid or hybrid form only; +4, 30ft/120ft, 
  1d6+2 piercing); Immune nonmagical, nonsilvered blud-
  geoning, piercing, slashing; Str +0, Dex +2, Con +1, Int +2, Wis 
  +0, Cha –1; Skills Perception +2, Stealth +4; Senses darkvision 
  60ft (rat form only); Traits keen smell, shapechanger (can 
  use an action to switch between humanoid, rat, and rat-hu-
  manoid hybrid forms); AL LE; CR 2; XP 450.
  Spells (+4, DC 12): 0 (at will)—dancing lights, mage 
  hand, minor illusion, poison spray; 1 (4)--color spray, 
  disguise self, mage armor, magic missile; 2 (3)--invisibili-
  ty, mirror image, phantasmal force; 3 (3)--lightning bolt, 
  major image; 4 (1)--phantasmal killer.
  Mange (Devil, Imp): AC 13; HP 10 (3d4+3); Spd 20ft, fly 40ft; 
  Melee sting (+5, 1d4+3 piercing plus 3d6 poison; DC 11 Con 
  save halves poison); SA invisibility (becomes invisible until it 
  attacks or loses concentration), shapechanger (transforms 
  from imp to boar or vice versa); Str –2, Dex +3, Con +1, Int +0, 
  Wis +1, Cha +2; Skills Deception +4, Insight +3, Persuasion +4, 
  Stealth +5; Resist cold, nonmagical weapons that aren’t sil-
  ver; Immune fire, poison; Senses darkvision 120ft; Traits devil’s 
  sight (darkvision unhindered by magical darkness), magic 
  resistance (has tactical advantage on saves vs. magic); AL 
  LE; CR 1; XP 200.
  Lovely (Raven Familiar): AC 12; HP 1 (1d4–1); Spd 10ft, fly 
  50ft; Melee beak (+4, 1 piercing); Str –4, Dex +2, Con –1, Int 
  –4, Wis +1, Cha –2; Skills Perception +3; Traits mimicry (can 
  mimic simple sounds it has heard; DC 10 Wis [Insight] check 
  to detect imitation); AL un; CR 0; XP 10.
  Treasure: Mean keeps a loaded light crossbow behind the counter at 
  all times. The bolt’s tip is wax-sealed with serpent venom (3d6 poison 
  damage, or half damage with a DC 11 Con save). The pawnshop’s stock 
  is worth around 1,000 gp in total but it would take several weeks to sell 
  in its entirety. A small till hidden behind the counter contains 25 gp, 25 
  sp and 25 cp.
  B2. Kennel
  Nothing more than a kennel, this section of the boat’s cabin 
  has been left to fill with excrement and shed dog hair. The 
  stench of an animal pen fills the air.
  The floor is profusely covered in a dog’s mess; treat it as difficult terrain 
  for two-legged creatures who don’t want to step in anything unpleasant. 
  Mean keeps a particularly large and nasty guard dog chained up in this 
  room: a sickly looking, four-eyed dire wolf with oozing sores covering 
  its mangy hide. Mean subdued the beast by long years of cruel training, 
  and now the creature, which he calls Dogg, obeys its master’s instructions 
  out of fear. If Mean is present and being attacked, he instructs Dogg to 
  defend him. Dogg’s chain is long enough to allow him to reach any point 
  in areas B1–B3.
  Dire Wolf: AC 14; HP 37 (5d10+10); Spd 50ft; Melee bite 
  (+5, 2d6+3 piercing; DC 13 Str save or creature is knocked 
  prone); Str +3, Dex +2, Con +2, Int –4, Wis +1, Cha –2; Skills 
  Perception +3, Stealth +4; Traits keen hearing and smell, 
  pack tactics (has tactical advantage on attack roll if target 
  is within 5ft of wolf’s ally); AL un; CR 1; XP 200.
  Blight Stonemites
  In a city as dismal as Castorhage, where it is almost constantly 
  damp, foggy, and chilled — except for when it’s unbearably hot and 
  muggy, thick with the smells of decomposing garbage, unwashed 
  bodies, and worse things — and nicknamed for a particularly 
  hazardous strain of fungus*, it’s really not particularly surprising 
  to anyone that even something as pernicious and annoying as 
  termites have their ugly stepbrother. That stepbrother would be the 
  Blight stonemite.
  Never confirmed to exist anywhere else beyond the bounds of 
  the city, the Blight stonemite is a horrible, blood-red insect about 
  6 inches long that makes an unsettling grinding noise as it gnaws 
  through solid stone masonry and the softer mortar between. These 
  creatures work much slower than a termite in their destruction 
  but are no easier to remove once an infestation occurs. They 
  are thought to be a favored food of the Blight’s other ubiquitous 
  dweller of cellars and crawlspaces, the night-slug**, proving at 
  least some use for those disgusting scavengers. Stonemites are 
  not only damaging to structures in the long term, they have a 
  tendency to swarm when it gets very hot and humid, resulting in 
  the collapse of major civic buildings on several occasions over 
  the centuries during unusually sultry summers. Stonemites are not 
  particularly dangerous to humanoids beyond causing itching and 
  annoying welts from bites for those who sleep too close to a nest 
  of the feeding insects. Nevertheless, apocryphal stories exist of 
  unfortunate stonemasons or exterminators who have fallen victim 
  to voracious swarms of the vermin, being reduced to little more 
  than boneless, bloodless bags of flesh riddled with the tiny burrows 
  of the creatures in their delving to feed on the calcification of the 
  victim’s skeletal structure.
  *See Blight in The Tome of Blighted Horrors.
  **See Night-Slug in The Tome of Blighted Horrors.
  
  21
  The Crucible
  B3. Bedchamber
  A filthy four-poster bed dancing with lice-covered furs fills 
  this chamber. A chamber pot sits by its side along with a large 
  iron trunk. An improvised ramp rises to a small hatch at the 
  rear of the barge.
  The rear ramp leads to an entrance that is always locked with a lock 
  (can be picked with thief’s tools and a successful DC 13 Dex check) and 
  is swollen shut with the dampness (successful DC 10 Str check needed 
  after lock is opened). The room is filthy, with nothing of value or interest 
  beyond the iron trunk and a small dagger coated in wax-sealed blue 
  whinnis lodged between the headboard of the bed and the mattress.
  Trap: The trunk is locked (thief’s tools and a successful DC 18 Dex 
  check to open) and trapped. Unless the key that Mean keeps on his person 
  is turned two complete clockwise revolutions, hidden darts are launched 
  across the room. Everyone in the chamber takes 2d4 piercing damage plus 
  6d6 poison damage; all damage is halved with a successful DC 13 Dex 
  saving throw).
  Treasure: Mean keeps his funds in the locked iron trunk in six neat 
  leather bags, each containing 200 gp. These lie above his spellbook, which 
  contains all his prepared spells plus find familiar.
  B4. Perilous Ascent
  A rusting ladder, clumsily anchored to the powdery and 
  crumbling outer walls of the tenement, climbs 60 feet up the 
  side to a balcony off the attic.
  Any inspection of the ladder reveals that, because of the corroded 
  stone, the ladder is likely not to be secure. It is easy to climb, but if more 
  than 1 Medium or 2 Small creatures climb it at the same time, it breaks 
  away from the wall after the topmost climber has ascended 1d6x10 feet, 
  dropping anyone on it to the jetty below.
  A narrow balcony hangs 60 feet above the jetty. Mahaas has greased 
  the roof above the balcony with pig grease, which can be noticed with a 
  successful DC 15 Wis (Perception) check by anyone within 10 feet. While 
  the climb onto the roof from the balcony is easy, anyone crossing the 
  greased area must make a successful DC 13 Dex saving throw or slip off 
  the roof and fall to the ground 60 feet below.
  An unlocked door with flaking red paint leads into the garret.
  B5. Kitchen
  The room beyond the red door is a vile place. At least 
  forty mangy street cats skulk in a large number of cages behind 
  piles of rubbish, and a pair of wild-looking terriers stare out 
  from the ruptured decay of a horsehair chair. Below a glass 
  window so thick with grime that it resembles a blackboard sits 
  a larder-cupboard and a tiny iron stove. Nearby, a dripping tap 
  fills an iron pot to the brim with rust-colored water.
  Mahaas cooks and eats in here with the help of some of his pets (which 
  occasionally make more of a contribution than just assistance). The larder-
  cupboard is very well stocked at present with a whole ham and three jugs 
  of cider. The 2 Blight terriers bark if they detect intruders on the balcony 
  or entering the room, though they are fairly cowardly and try to escape 
  attackers or cower and whimper if prevented from doing so. They are far 
  more scared of something other than the PCs, though. Mahaas has a pet he 
  stole from a flesh dealer in BookTown — a monstrous abomination that the 
  dealer referred to as the child of spines (a boneneedle; see Fifth Edition 
  Foes for full details). Like many Between creatures, the child possesses 
  a rudimentary intelligence. This one’s Between gate, a fragmentary and 
  fickle gateway near a place children use to play, is perhaps why the thing 
  giggles and mumbles nursery rhymes to itself occasionally. The creature 
  is small and revolting, superficially resembling a boneneedle but with 
  a distended flaccid fleshy sack within which can be seen rudimentary 
  childlike hands — and occasionally a childlike face — trying to push 
  outward. When it was captured, its previous owner trained it like a dog. 
  These beatings left it fearful of whomever wears a Between ring like that 
  which Mahaas also stole. The caged cats are used to feed the thing; the 
  dogs just try to stay out of its way. When the PCs first enter the room, 
  anyone making a successful DC 13 Wis (Animal Handling) check notices 
  the terriers are looking at the oven within which the Child of Spines lurks.
  Blight Terrier (2): AC 12; HP 2 (1d4); Spd 40ft; Melee bite (+2, 
  1 piercing plus 1d6 bludgeoning); Str –3, Dex +2, Con +0, Int 
  –4, Wis +1, Cha –2; Skills Perception +3, Stealth +4; Traits keen 
  sense (tactical advantage on Perception checks depend-
  ing on smell or hearing); AL N; CR 0; XP 10.
  Child of Spines (Boneneedle): AC 16; HP 27 (5d6+10); Spd 
  20ft, climb 20ft; Melee bite (+5, 1d6+3 piercing and DC 12 
  Con save against boneneedle poison); SA innate spellcast-
  ing; Immune charm, fright, psychic; Str –5, Dex +3, Con +2, 
  Int –1, Wis +0, Cha –4; Senses darkvision 60ft; Traits aversion 
  to daylight (tactical disadvantage on attacks, saves, and 
  skill checks while in natural sunlight), boneneedle poison (DC 
  12 Con save or become poisoned; while poisoned, +5 dam-
  age when creature takes bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing 
  damage; repeat save after rest to end effect, or receive 
  lesser restoration or comparable magic), regeneration (re-
  gains 5 hp at start of turn unless exposed to natural sunlight 
  since previous turn); AL un; CR 2; XP 450.
  Innate Spellcasting: 1/day each—blink, mirror image; 
  3/day—invisibility (self only).
  Tactics: The Child lurks in cover behind the oven, waiting for a chance 
  to take lone prey; this includes any of the animals herein, although the 
  frequent beatings it has taken at the hands of its owners has honed its 
  hatred for men and it always attacks humans in preference to others. It 
  
  22
  The Blight: Richard Pett's Crooked City
  prefers to quickly move, attack with poison, and then escape. However, it 
  does not attack anyone wearing the Between ring Mahaas presently wears, 
  and ideally waits undiscovered until the PCs pass and then scuttles out 
  behind them to attack. The Child is quite cowardly, and seeks escape over 
  attack. If the opportunity of a wide-open door presents itself, the thing 
  scuttles away, a flaccid body on too many legs. If this occurs, make sure 
  a PC sees it fleeing.
  B6. Aviary
  The roof is fractured here, and a long rotting purlin is 
  exposed to the elements. Birds fly in and out of the hollow this 
  opening has created.
  Mahaas keeps many animals, and his stirges are his favorites. This room 
  has a ruptured ceiling with a few holes that allow the 12 stirges who roost 
  here to go in and out. The floor is littered with the bloody droppings that 
  remain from their hunts in addition to the bones and carcasses of rodents, 
  gulls, pigeons and small cats that they were able to carry away. Lovely’s 
  murder knows to keep away from this place.
  Stirge (12): AC 14; HP 2 (1d4); Spd 10ft, fly 40ft; Melee blood 
  drain (+5, 1d4+3 piercing and the stirge attaches to the tar-
  get; while attached, stirge does 1d4+3 damage automati-
  cally at the start of its turns; detaches after draining 10 HP or 
  when an action is used to detach it); Str –4, Dex +3, Con +0, 
  Int –4, Wis –1, Cha –2; Senses darkvision 60ft; AL un; CR 1/8; 
  XP 25.
  B7. Trapped Corridor
  This dusty, rubbish-strewn corridor bears a trap left by the paranoid 
  Mahaas. He never comes this way himself.
  Trap: Halfway along the corridor, a small pressure plate beneath a 
  loose floorboard triggers a poison vapor trap. The loose board can be 
  noticed with a successful DC 15 Int (Investigation) check. Once noticed, 
  the trigger is easily avoided. If the trap is triggered, gas sprays up from the 
  floor; everyone within 10 feet of the pressure plate takes 14 (4d6) poison 
  damage, or half damage with a successful DC 15 Con saving throw. A 
  character who fails the saving throw begins suffocating immediately. A 
  suffocating character repeats the saving throw at the end of its turn, ending 
  the effect on itself with a success.
   B8–13. Attic Living Areas
  Mahaas spends most of his time in his private chambers with his 
  accomplices, 2 wererats that are outcasts from the Family and his 
  demonic thrall Lump (dretch). Whilst he can be encountered anywhere in 
  the garret, he spends most of his time in the living area (B12).
  Mahaas’ Story
  Mahaas is friendly with a number of unsavory characters on Festival, 
  including two outcasts of the Family, the group of wererats who rule this 
  island. One other associate prefers to keep his distance and does business 
  in disguise: the Organ Grinder. The Organ Grinder has recently been using 
  Mahaas to assist in extorting money from savant Edwina Spitewinter, a 
  member of the Royal Underneath Society. Spitewinter is conducting a dig 
  to uncover the fossilized remains of a leviathan, one of a huge and twisted 
  ancient species whose bodies occasionally emerge from the silt and stone 
  of Castorhage’s bedrock. Spitewinter has organised a temporary camp on 
  Festival to excavate it.
  The Organ Grinder has been paying Mahaas to help. They visited 
  Spitewinter and, after causing a fire with a ragefire spawn, persuaded the 
  savant to part with cash for protection. On the last three occasions, the 
  Organ Grinder has had a pair of quartz flasks in his possession and has 
  suggested to the savant that, unless she pays, he will smash the flasks 
  for her to see what caused the fire. Afterward, Mahaas stole one of the 
  flasks so that he could carry out the Organ Grinder’s threats if it came to 
  it. Unable to control his anger in an unrelated incident, however, Mahaas 
  smashed one of the flasks at the ghats yesterday, resulting in the death of 
  the prostitute Constance Chanterelle. The Organ Grinder is not aware of 
  this incident.
  If the PCs manage to intimidate and question Mahaas, he knows only 
  that his employer is generous and required a little ugly help to persuade 
  a wealthy toff to part with some money. This toff, savant Edwina 
  Spitewinter, is at a nearby worksite digging into the rock under the city. 
  He can provide directions to it. Mahaas does not know where the Organ 
  Grinder is, but knows he performs across Festival.
  Mahaas is a poor soul unmade by the gods. His voluminous attire is 
  colorful, if faded, with sewn remnants of at least a hundred other items 
  made into one eye-catching patchwork. However, not one but two heads 
  fight for space through his torn collar, and while one is handsome, with 
  an oiled moustache and neatly groomed hair, the second is a sack of 
  cankerous flesh. At least three mouths open up from this monstrosity, 
  and a look of blind idiocy crosses the abstract features of this unwelcome 
  additional visage. Mahaas wears a dull gray metal Between ring on his 
  left index finger. Occasionally, the ring tightens up so much that it hurts.
  Development: If a fight breaks out, Mahaas saves his ragefire spawn 
  until things get desperate, only flinging it at an opponent if cornered 
  or if losing the fight. If the bottle is inadvertently broken, the ragefire 
  spawn emerges and immediately begins taking out its anger on anyone 
  in sight. Whenever a ragefire is released, it has the potential to become 
  vast, growing and swelling in size as it consumes flesh and combustible 
  material. A more serious danger comes from its inherent nature: When a 
  ragefire elemental spends a full round in an area containing combustible 
  material, the whole area it is in catches fire. Such fires spread unless 
  quickly dealt with. For more information, see area E2-4 in Chapter 6.
  
  23
  The Crucible
  Mahaas
  XP 3,900 (CR 8)
  NE Medium humanoid (human)
  Initiative +3
   
  DEFENSE
  AC 17 (studded leather, shield)
  hp: 78 (12d8 + 24)
  Saving Throws: Dex +6, Int +4
   
  OFFENSE
  Speed: 30 ft.
  Multiattack: Mahaas attacks three times with his rapier or 
  once with his hand crossbow.
  Melee Attack—Rapier: +6 to hit (reach 5 ft.; one creature). 
  Hit: 1d8 + 3 piercing damage plus 3d6 poison damage, or 
  half poison damage with a successful DC 11 Con saving 
  throw. Each hit uses up one dose of serpent venom.
  Ranged Attack—Hand Crossbow: +6 to hit (range 30 ft./120 
  ft.; one creature). Hit: 1d6 + 3 piercing damage plus 24 (7d6) 
  poison damage, or half poison damage with a successful 
  DC 15 Con saving throw. Each hit uses up one dose of 
  wyvern poison.
   
  STATISTICS
  Str 10 (+0), Dex 17 (+3), Con 14 (+2),  
  Int 12 (+1), Wis 10 (+0), Cha 4 (–3)
  Languages: Common, Giant, Gnomish
  Skills: Acrobatics +6, Perception +3, Stealth +6
   
  TRAITS
  Cunning Action: Mahaas can Dash, Disengage, or Hide as a 
  bonus action on his turn.
  Evasion: If a successful saving throw would normally result 
  in half damage, Mahaas takes no damage on a successful 
  save and half damage on a failure. 
  Rapid Potions: Mahaas can drink one potion as a bonus ac-
  tion. See “Equipment” for a list of his potions.
  Sneak Attack (1/turn): Mahaas does +4d6 damage with 
  weapons when he attacks with tactical advantage or when 
  one of his allies is within 5 feet of the target and capable of 
  attacking it. 
  Uncanny Dodge: As a reaction, Mahaas can take half 
  damage from an attack that he saw coming.
   
  ECOLOGY
  Environment: Blight
  Organization: Solitary
   
  EQUIPMENT
  Between ring, potion of animal friendship, potion of 
  climbing, potion of fire breath, potion of greater healing 
  ×2, potion of heroism, potion of resistance (fire), potion of 
  speed, bottled ragefire spawn, serpent venom ×6, wyvern 
  poison ×4
  Wererat (2): AC 12; HP 33 (6d8+6); Spd 30ft; Melee bite (rat 
  or hybrid form only; +4, 1d4+2 piercing and humanoid must 
  make DC 11 Con save or be cursed with lycanthropy), shorts-
  word (humanoid or hybrid form only; +4, 1d6+2 piercing); 
  Ranged hand crossbow (humanoid or hybrid form only; +4, 
  30ft/120ft, 1d6+2 piercing); Immune nonmagical, nonsilvered 
  bludgeoning, piercing, slashing; Str +0, Dex +2, Con +1, Int +0, 
  Wis +0, Cha –1; Skills Perception +2, Stealth +4; Senses darkvi-
  sion 60ft (rat form only); Traits keen smell, shapechanger (can 
  use an action to switch between humanoid, rat, and rat-hu-
  manoid hybrid forms); AL LE; CR 2; XP 450.
  Lump (enthralled Dretch): AC 11; HP 18 (4d6+4); Spd 20ft; 
  Melee bite (+2, 1d6 piercing), claws (+2, 2d4 slashing); SA 
  multiattack (1 bite + 1 claw), fetid cloud (1/day; 10ft radius; 
  lightly obscured; lasts 1 minute or until dispersed; creature 
  that starts its turn in cloud must make DC 11 Con save or be 
  poisoned until start of its next turn; while poisoned, can take 
  an action or bonus action but not both, and no reactions); 
  Str +0, Dex +0, Con +1, Int –3, Wis –1, Cha –4; Resist cold, fire, 
  lightning; Immune poison; Senses darkvision 60ft, telepathy 
  60ft (only with creatures that understand Abyssal); AL CE; CR 
  1/4; XP 50.
  B8. Junk Room
  This room and its jumbled contents lie under a thick film of 
  lichen and mould caused by leaks in the roof. It is filled with 
  junk.
  A thorough search finds a saw, a file, and two spades.
  B9. Library Laboratory
  Hundreds of books line shelves in this room. The books 
  glower over a peculiarly fleshy alchemist’s laboratory while 
  grinning masks and hoods hang from hooks nearby.
  Most of the books here are about alchemy, anatomy, surgery, or 
  vivisection. Many are deeply disturbing, showing an absolute lack of 
  empathy for the subjects. Some, however, are valuable. A successful DC 
  10 Int (Investigation) check can locate three books worth 100 gp each to an 
  appropriate buyer: Hugot’s Thrall Pacts, Spade’s Making Animals Useful 
  and Palwin’s Alchymye in Scyence. Mahaas also keeps his alchemist’s 
  supplies and notes here, and he’s obviously conducting some fairly grisly 
  experiments on cats. 
  There are many more hoods than masks, and most of the hoods are 
  double ones. Among the disturbingly fleshy pigskin hoods, hoods made 
  from sacks with eyes cut out, and single huge hoods is a saggy double 
  hood that has had the second hood sewn into it at some time. The first hood 
  is magical; its wearer gets a +2 bonus on Cha checks (requires atunement). 
  Although he rarely uses it, Mahaas is aware of its effect.
  Arcanists and their Thralls
  Any moderately fashionable arcanist in the Blight must 
  have his thrall — and the more powerful the thrall, the more 
  respect the arcanist is afforded by his colleagues. A thrall is 
  not a familiar — indeed, the relationship between the thrall and 
  familiar is often a complex one — but rather a physical guardian 
  of its master; arcanists generally don’t lower themselves to 
  fisticuffs of any sort.
  Thralls are generally bound by a pact to serve the arcanist for 
  an agreed period, often 40 years plus a day. This is a curious 
  length of time when considered but one which, inexplicably, 
  is most common in all pacts between mortals and fiends or 
  other outsiders. Arcanists often have genies or lesser demons 
  or devils as thralls; the most powerful occasionally have more 
  than one. Thralls tend to squabble among themselves, however, 
  over the affection of their master and often end up jealously 
  killing one another.
  A common situation between warring arcanists is to settle 
  their dispute by thrall duel in which their thralls battle it out in a 
  final combat to decide which master was in the right. The losing 
  arcanist is bound by a sacred and ancient pact to acknowledge 
  the victor as being correct in the matter.
  
  24
  The Blight: Richard Pett's Crooked City
  B10. Stores
  This is another junk room cluttered with oddments Mahaas has 
  collected.
  Treasure: 3 gold earrings set with tiny jet stones worth 25 gp each that 
  have fallen down the back of a horsehair seat; a small tapestry worth 50 
  gp that depicts knights on chargers; a rotting teddy bear that has a silvered 
  dagger clumsily hidden inside.
  B11. Bedroom
  A mangy horsehair bed with goose-down pillows dominates this room. 
  A large tarpaulin stretches across several small leaks in the roof to prevent 
  rain dripping onto the bed.
  B12. Living Area and Menagerie
  This is a cluttered living room with comfortable oak chairs, a 
  large table, and a small stove. The walls have several cupboards, 
  while across the chamber are several cages and huge bell jars; 
  the animals within are screaming and yelling and howling.
  The animals, fish and vermin herein reflect the diverse nature of the 
  city and Sister Lyme. Among the various blind fish, mice and enormous 
  vermin are a Small gable spider, thousands of voracious giant fleas (2 
  swarms of insects), and 2 spore rats. The spore rats use the giant rat 
  stat block but are plants instead of beasts and they have the added ability 
  of Spore Cloud—A creature that starts its turn within 5 feet of the spore 
  rat must make a successful DC 10 Con saving throw or take 1d6 poison 
  damage and be poisoned until the start of its next turn.
  Hidden in a bell jar under a faded tapestry depicting the Capitol is an 
  intellect devourer that, if uncovered, immediately uses its Devour Intellect 
  ability against the likeliest-looking target. The intellect devourer has 
  surprise, thanks to its Detect Sentience ability.
  Small Gable Spider: AC 13; HP 18 (4d6+4); Spd 20ft, climb 
  20ft; Melee bite (+5, 1d8+3 piercing plus 2d6 poison; DC 11 
  Con save halves poison); Ranged sticky globule (recharge 
  4-6; +5, 10ft; DC 11 Str save or restrained; repeat save at end 
  of turn to end effect); Immune charm, psychic; Str –3, Dex 
  +3, Con +1, Int –5, Wis –2, Cha –4; Skills Perception +0, Stealth 
  +5; Senses darkvision 30ft, tremorsense in web construct; 
  Traits web construct (creature that falls prone, is restrained, 
  or is pushed into web construct becomes restrained; escape 
  with action and DC 10 Str save; each 5-foot-square has AC 
  8, 5 hp); AL N; CR 1/2; XP 100.
  Swarm of Insects (2): AC 12; HP 22 (5d8); Spd 20ft, fly 20ft; 
  Melee bite (+3, 0 ft, 4d4 piercing or 2d4 piercing if at half 
  HP); Immune charm, fright, paralyze, petrify, prone, restrain, 
  stun; Resist bludgeoning, piercing, slashing; Str –4, Dex +1, 
  Con +0, Int –5, Wis –2, Cha –5; Senses blindsight 10ft; Traits 
  swarm; AL un; CR 1/2; XP 100.
  Spore Rat (2, Giant Rat): AC 12; HP 7 (2d6); Spd 30ft; Melee 
  bite (+4, 1d4+2 piercing); Str +0, Dex +0, Con +0, Int +0, Wis 
  +0, Cha +0; Traits pack tactics, spores (creature that starts its 
  turn within 5ft of spore rat must make successful DC 10 Con 
  save or take 1d6 poison and be poisoned until start of its 
  next turn); Senses darkvision 60ft, keen smell; AL unaligned; 
  CR 1/8; XP 25.
  Intellect Devourer: AC 12; HP 21 (6d4+6); Spd 40ft;  
  Melee claws (+4, 2d4+2 slashing); SA devour intellect (10ft; 
  one creature visible to intellect devourer must make DC 
  12 Int save or take 2d10 psychic and if roll of 3d6 equals 
  or exceed’s target’s Int score, Int reduced to 0 and target 
  stunned), body thief (5ft; Int contest vs. incapacitated crea-
  ture; if intellect devourer wins, it consumes target’s brain, 
  teleports into skull, and takes control of body); Str –2, Dex +2, 
  Con +1, Int +1, Wis +0, Cha +0; Skills Perception +2, Stealth +4; 
  Resist nonmagical weapons; Immune blindness; Senses blind-
  sight 60ft; Traits detect sentience (senses creatures with Int 3+ 
  within 300ft; blocked by mind blank); AL LE; CR 2; XP 450.
  Treasure: Tossed about the room are a sack of 250 sp, a pair of copper 
  candlesticks depicting swans worth 30 gp, and a small tapestry depicting 
  the Ice Fayre of Castorhage worth 75 gp. Alchemist’s supplies and a set of 
  thieves’ tools are on the table. Sitting by the stove is a curious large object: 
  a fossil that looks like a tail covered in barbs, with holes for eyes, or 
  maybe mouths, and ending in a sphincter with teeth. The object has clearly 
  only recently been dug up as it still has mud on it. The excavation of a 
  Leviathan — an ancient species whose fossilized remains are occasionally 
  found in the silt of the city — is currently taking place not far from here. 
  Everyone in the area knows about it. Above the entrance to B9 is a hidden 
  cupboard that can be spotted with a successful DC 15 Wis (Perception) 
  check. The cupboard door is hinged to the ceiling and contains 4 bags of 
  gold shekels (400 gp in each).
  B13. Roof Bridge 
  A clockwork mechanism connects to a secret door on the outside. The 
  door and the tiny metal stud that operates it can be found with a DC 15 Wis 
  (Perception) check. If the stud is pressed, the door opens and a clockwork 
  bridge snaps forward across to the adjacent rooftop, stretching 15 feet 
  from sill to sill, 60 feet above the cobbled street below. A 15-foot-long 
  jump is required to cross. If pressed, Mahaas and his henchmen flee this 
  way to escape across the rooftops (see Rooftop Chase below for more 
  details). As he crosses the bridge, Mahaas hits another hidden trigger 
  that causes the bridge to collapse behind him, leaving the 15-foot gap to 
  somehow be navigated.
  B14. Tenement Roofs
  Beyond the secret entrance, jagged rooftops and gables spill away over 
  the streets far below.
  Event 2: Rooftop Chase
  This encounter is an extended chase. When running a chase encounter, 
  it is important to remember that there are many ways in which PCs might 
  move or overcome obstacles. Detailed descriptions are provided to help 
  the players understand each stage of the chase, including the route it is 
  taking and any obstacles encountered. Allow PCs to use any skills or 
  abilities that make sense in the situation, not only those listed, and balance 
  
  25
  The Crucible
  the DCs for substituted skills or abilities in relation to the situation. Of 
  course, spells such as fly, dimension door, and misty step might alleviate 
  the need for ability checks altogether.
  Structure of the Chase
  The chase occurs in seven stages over the rooftops of Festival. It has a 
  number of different routes that PCs may choose — or be forced — to take 
  as they come to each obstacle. The chase assumes Mahaas opens his secret 
  door and gets across the bridge. For every round of delay before PCs pursue, 
  Mahaas gets a further 60 feet away (assuming he doesn’t fail a necessary 
  check). Each stage is roughly 120 feet in length. Mahaas has a speed of 30 
  feet and he does nothing but move and dash, so he covers each stage in two 
  rounds, provided all his skill checks succeed. Characters who spend actions 
  casting spells or making ranged attacks will lose ground to Mahaas. A PC 
  whose speed is less than 30 feet is likely to fall behind anyway. PCs have 
  line of sight from the stage they’re in into the next stage, but no further.
  If Mahaas reaches stage 7 ahead of the PCs, he descends to the street 
  and tries to slink away through the busy Festival crowd. If he reaches 
  stage 7 while he’s two or more stages ahead of his closest pursuer, PCs 
  lose his trail completely and can’t regain it in this scene. Mahaas wants 
  to know who’s on his tail and why, however, so he’s likely to take up a 
  concealed position where he can observe the PCs as they search for him 
  and possibly even overhear the questions they ask of bystanders. 
  Chase Stages
  Keep track of how far characters move each round so you know when 
  they cross from one stage into the next. Skill checks are made the first 
  time the character starts his or her turn in the stage. Routes marked with 
  an asterisk (*) are the options Mahaas uses unless the PCs somehow force 
  him to do something different (someone might get ahead of him and block 
  his preferred route, for example). He makes Dex (Acrobatics) checks with 
  a +6 modifier. Failing some skill checks only costs the character a move 
  (dashing is still an option); others cost a move and must be repeated until 
  they succeed, with each failure costing another move, while a few involve 
  a damaging fall to the street and several lost moves while the character 
  scrambles back to the rooftops.
  Stage 1. Over the Bridge
  The only difficulty in this stage is crossing the 15-foot gap from 
  B13. Mahaas gets across easily because the bridge is still in place 
  when he crosses. Characters with Strength 15 or higher can leap the 
  gap automatically. Everyone else will fall short if they jump, but with a 
  successful DC 15 Str (Athletics) check, they catch the opposite ledge and 
  pull themselves up. A short jump followed by a failed Athletics check 
  results in a 60-foot fall to the street below. This check can be helped by 
  another character with Str 15+ who is jumping at the same time (no time 
  is lost) or by any character who’s already cleared the gap and stops to help 
  someone behind him or her (the aiding character can’t dash that round, 
  and so loses 1 move). 
  Stage 2. To Higher Ground
  This route involves ascending to the higher roof peaks of the building 
  across from Mahaas’ flat and past its smoking chimneystacks. It has three 
  different route options. 
  1. Around the narrow edges*: DC 10 Dex (Acrobatics) check or DC 
  13 Str (Athletics) check. Failure = lose 1 move.
  2. Up the drainpipe: DC 10 Str (Athletics) check. Failure = lose 1 
  move.
  3. Between the smoky chimneystacks: DC 10 Con check; Failure = 
  disadvantage on next check because of smoke in the character’s eyes. 
  Stage 3. Jump, Man, Jump! 
  This crosses from the roof of one building to the next over a 20-foot 
  gap. The fall to the street is 120 feet. It has three options:
  1. Jump the gap: DC 15 Str (Athletics) to catch the edge. Failure = 
  120-foot fall to the street and lose 2 moves.
  2. Balance over the washing line: DC 15 Dex (Acrobatics). Failure = 
  lose 1 move.
  3. Swing on the hidden rope*: DC 18 Wis (Perception) + DC 10 Dex 
  (Acrobatics). Mahaas knows where the rope is, so his Perception check 
  succeeds automatically. Failure on either check = lose 1 move, try again.
  Stage 4. Alley Bridges
  Rickety bridges cross an alley from one roof to the other across a 60-
  foot gap. It has three different bridge options:
  1. The broad path: The apparently easy bridge is booby-trapped with 
  a weak board. A DC 15 Wis (Perception) check is needed to notice the 
  trap. If it’s spotted, a DC 8 Dex (Acrobatics) check is needed to cross the 
  bridge safely. Failure = lose 1 move, try again. If the trap isn’t spotted, a 
  DC 15 Dex saving throw is needed to avoid falling 90 feet to the street 
  and losing 2 moves. 
  2. The narrow path*: DC 12 Dex (Acrobatics) check. Failure = lose 
  1 move, try again.
  3. The winding path: DC 10 Dex (Acrobatics), no dash possible. 
  Failure = lose 2 moves, try again.
  Stage 5. Over the Pleasure Wheel
  A small Ferris wheel straddles a street, its axle mounted into the 
  buildings on either side. To cross requires climbing down onto the axle 
  and then through its spokes to come out on the other side; timing a jump 
  down to pass between two spokes and land on the axle on the far side; 
  or simply making an all-out jump for the top of the wheel and skipping 
  directly across to the opposite roof. The drop is 40 feet from the axle or 60 
  feet from the top of the wheel.
  1. Cautious climbing: DC 8 Str (Athletics) check, and your caution 
  costs you 2 moves. Failure = lose 1 more move.
  2. Time the jump: DC 12 Dex (Acrobatics), and lose 1 move readying 
  for the jump. Failure = lose 2 moves regaining your feet and senses after 
  a nasty impact with a spoke.
  3. Go for it*: DC 15 Dex (Acrobatics). Failure = lose 1 round and make 
  a DC 12 Str saving throw or fall 60 feet to the street and lose 2 moves.
  Stage 6. Up the High Wall
  A high wall blocks the route and must be surmounted with either a 
  ladder, a stairway, or by climbing. Any fall is.
  1. Up the stair: Automatic success, lose 1 move.
  2. Up the ladder*: DC 10 Dex (Acrobatics) to navigate the wobbly, 
  broken ladder. Failure = lose 1 move.
  3. Straight up the wall: DC 15 Str (Athletics). Failure = fall 1d6 × 10 
  feet to the street, lose 2 moves.
  Stage 7. Down, down, deeper and down
  The path leads down from the high rooftops to the crowded upper 
  streets of Festival. These roofs are 60 feet above ground level. There are 
  three possible methods:
  1. Descend the rickety ladders: Automatic success, lose 2 moves.
  2. Rappel down a rope*: DC 15 Dex (Acrobatics). Failure = fall 60 
  feet, lose 1 move.
  3. Jump*: 6d6 bludgeoning damage, or half damage with a successful 
  DC 15 Dex saving throw. Failure = also lose 1 move.
  After Stage 7: Through the Crowded Streets
  There’s no need to “cross” this stage; once a character reaches this point, 
  they’ve finished the chase. If Mahaas makes it here while the nearest PC is 
  no closer than stage 5, no one can see him and he escapes clean. If Mahaas 
  makes it here with PCs hot on his heels (in stage 6) or possibly even 
  ahead of him, they have a chance to spot him as he slips into the crowd. 
  Mahaas moves to the street, where he makes a Dex (Stealth) check with 
  tactical advantage. To track him, every PC in stage 6 or 7 makes a Wis 
  (Perception) check. If at least one PC equals or beats Mahaas’s Stealth 
  check, they keep sight of him and can corner him in the street. If not, they 
  lose him (but he doesn’t necessarily lose them).
  
  26
  The Blight: Richard Pett's Crooked City
  Savant Edwina Spitewinter, a member of the Royal Underneath Society, 
  is a noted expert on the Ancients — creatures of old also referred to as 
  Leviathans. These huge fossilized horrors are found occasionally beneath 
  the silt and stone of the city, and are sometimes the subject of furious and 
  unsubstantiated rumors. Anyone seeking information about the Leviathan 
  Dig can learn several interesting facts; see the sidebar for details.
  A Royal Underneath 
  Society Dig
  Spitewinter uncovered this particular site by accident while spending 
  time on Festival with her children. As she strolled the Merry-Go-Round, 
  the streets and boardwalks that lie at the foot of the Festival itself, at low 
  tide she spotted what she thought was an Ancient in a nearby sandbar 
  and soon began to dig furiously from a raft at an exposed embankment of 
  river silt. Now, two months into the dig, three strange creatures are being 
  uncovered.
  Recently, however, Spitewinter has been subject to blackmail from 
  the Organ Grinder, who has been threatening to ruin the dig and destroy 
  Spitewinter’s work unless paid handsomely to protect it. Up until recently, 
  Spitewinter has paid the Organ Grinder; however, after having paid 2,000 
  gp and realising that the blackmail was unlikely to stop, Spitewinter has 
  brought in some hired muscle to protect the site. Her nervousness is being 
  transmitted to these hired men, and they have already deposited three 
  sightseers into the river through an “attack first and question later” policy.
  C1. Guarded Dock
  The festering footings overlook a curious site, an excavation 
  of some sort on a sandbar some way from shore. It seems to 
  have excited a lot of local interest based on the many onlookers 
  keeping a careful distance from the bridge that leads out to 
  the dig.
  Anyone observed approaching this area is accosted by guards (4 
  veterans) who lurk on the dock. Unless characters give a good reason 
  for being there (DC 15 Cha [Deception] check), they draw their weapons 
  and threaten to attack. They follow through with this threat unless visitors 
  leave immediately. If they can be made friendly or helpful, they lead 
  visitors to the dig site.
  Dock Guard (4, Veteran): AC 17; HP 58 (9d8+18); Spd 30ft; 
  Melee longsword x2 (+5, 1d8+3 slashing); shortsword (+5, 
  1d6+3 piercing); Ranged heavy crossbow (+3, 100ft/400ft, 
  1d10 piercing); SA multiattack (longsword x2, shortsword); Str 
  +3, Dex +1, Con +2, Int +0, Wis +0, Cha +0; Skills Athletics +5, 
  Perception +2; AL LN; CR 3; XP 700.
  C2. The Flotsam Walkway
  A precarious walkway of timber planks is lashed to a number 
  of inflated pigs’ bladders and sealed barrels. It links the isle 
  that is the focus of activity to the shore.
  An iron dock ladder leads down between 15 and 20 feet (depending 
  on the tide). The planks beyond are not so easy to use, as they move 
  unpredictably. A successful DC 8 Dex (Acrobatics) check is required to 
  use them without falling into the water. Characters falling at high tide 
  get a soaking but can clamber back onto the walkway without help. Low 
  tide is a different matter. Characters quickly sink into the cloying silt of 
  the bay. The silt behaves exactly like quicksand: a character sinks 1d4 
  + 1 feet when they fall in and another 1d4 feet at the start of their turn. 
  They can pull themselves free with a successful Str check at a DC = 10 + 
  feet they’ve sunk. Someone else can pull them free with a successful Str 
  check at a DC = 5 + feet they’ve sunk. A character who sinks completely 
  begins suffocating.
  Characters watching the shore for a while notice that several dirty 
  children throw offal and the odd creatures (but not rats or cats — they 
  have differing fortunes here on Festival; rats abound, cats do not) such 
  as mangy old chickens and the odd stray puppy into the water and watch 
  the fun develop. A pair of sough-eels has taken to catching and eating 
  the prey, and ignoring the odd rock throw by the children. The sough-
  eels are close by, and if anything drops into the water, they appear 1d3 
  rounds later.
  Sough-Eel (2): AC 15; HP 142 (15d12+45); Spd 10ft, swim 
  30ft; Melee bite (+8, 4d12+5 piercing; if attack does 30 or 
  more damage, target is grappled and restrained), gnaw 
  Chapter Four:
  The Leviathan Dig
  Rumours about  
  the Leviathan Dig
  • “Just what are they digging for? These Savants are the cause of 
  all the trouble in this city! They’ll not be happy until they’ve 
  dug their way to Hell.”
  • “They say they’ve found one of the Ancients, like the one they 
  dug up at the Seminary last year. Unholy things of teeth and  
  tusk, with great bloated heads. I’ve heard them Savants say these 
  creatures came from the stars. Came from Hell, more like!”
  • “They’ve found some sort of object with this one — an idol 
  or totem, or some such thing. I say what’s buried should stay 
  buried!”
  • “I’ve heard tell that they’ve been having trouble at the dig, 
  and Savant Spitewinter has had to hire guards — what for I 
  can’t guess!”
  
  27
  The Crucible
  (grappled target takes 4d12+5 piercing automatically, plus 
  secondary attack; +8, 2d12 piercing plus 2d10 poison; DC 14 
  Con save halves poison; DC 16 Str save or swallowed);  
  SA swallow (blinded and restrained; 1d12 bludgeoning plus 
  1d8 acid at start of sough-eel’s turn); Str +5, Dex +0, Con +3, 
  Int –5, Wis +0, Cha –2; Saving Throws Dex +3, Con +6;  
  Immune poison, blinded, prone; Skills Perception +3,  
  Stealth +3; Senses blindsight 30ft; AL N; CR 5; XP 1,800. 
  C3. Dig Site
  Barely visible above low tide water is a mucky islet, little 
  more than a sandbank in Sister Lyme. Yet this sandbank is 
  now a hive of activity: A raised area of timbers has been lashed 
  together and a tent has been erected on it, while nearby is 
  the burnt-out husk of a shed. Not far away, a large hole has 
  been dug below the water level, though a wall of high planks 
  holds the river back. A dark stack of strange, hexagonal stones 
  stands nearby on the edge of the sandbank.
  The islet is reached by a rickety set of boardwalks, planks, and barrel-
  lids supported by bladders and sealed barrels (C2). The dig site is on a 
  sandbar that provides relatively stable footing. All other areas beyond the 
  dig, though, are thick, black Blight mud, which has the same properties as 
  quicksand. All boardwalks, barrel-lids and planks are unfixed and wobbly, 
  requiring a successful DC 5 Dex (Acrobatics) check to cross without 
  falling off.
  
  28
  The Blight: Richard Pett's Crooked City
  Savant Edwina Spitewinter (N human female noble) presently resides 
  in a small tent on the dig site itself. She has two reasons for this: First, 
  she is afraid of being attacked, and second, the dig is reaching an exciting 
  phase, with parts of a third most-unusual creature being revealed. Objects 
  clutter Spitewinter’s tent; she has been labelling and cataloguing the 
  most interesting fragments from the dig. A dozen large trunks containing 
  hundreds of small sample boxes fill the interior.
  Spitewinter is a tall, slender woman who favors dark, foul-smelling 
  Black Radge Shag tobacco in her pipe, and who walks with the aid of a 
  cane. At the dig, she is usually found covered in malodorous mud and 
  wielding a small trowel. She is a Savant of the Royal Underneath Society. 
  An expert in her field, she has overseen a dozen digs in the city. This dig, 
  however, particularly excites her as she has not only uncovered a shard of a 
  honeycomb totem, but also a type of Leviathan she has never seen before.
  If the PCs persuade her that they’re here to help rather than sabotage her 
  dig, she tells them what she knows about her blackmailer (see below). If 
  the PCs return the Leviathan tail sample from Mahaas’s garret to her, she 
  immediately becomes friendly.
  What Spitewinter Knows
  Although she does not know his name, Spitewinter has made several 
  observations. First, she knows what the Organ Grinder looks like (see 
  below) and that he has a curious monkey following him — a monkey with 
  an unsettlingly human appearance. Secondly, she believes her blackmailer 
  must be local, as his drawl is unmistakably a Festival accent. Finally, she 
  knows he has an accomplice, a vile-looking fellow who appears to have 
  two heads — a most regrettable deformity. She is particularly annoyed at 
  this accomplice who took it upon himself to take a beautiful tail sample 
  that she had recovered. She would dearly like it returned if the vile man is 
  ever brought to justice. Spitewinter has considered having the men tailed 
  but is so engrossed in the dig that so far she has only taken the step of 
  hiring guards, incensed after the men almost destroyed her samples. 
  Spitewinter had been using a wooden shed to store samples that she has 
  discovered here and shows its burnt remains to anyone she feels is trying 
  to help her (C5).
  Spitewinter plays no further role in this adventure, but you may wish 
  to use her and her dig as a way of introducing future adventures to your 
  players — perhaps she unearths a glass vessel in the dig, an opaque thing 
  that intrigues her. She accidentally drops the glass one night, breaking it, 
  and something terrible emerges and slithers into the city night. Horrified, 
  she remembers the strangers and their confidence — and she seeks them 
  out to help her find the escaped thing. 
  Becoming a Savant
  Savant is a title seldom given. To earn the title, the claimant 
  must have proficiency in the related skill, a bonus of at least +6 
  when using that skill, and must have performed some valuable or 
  acclaimed service for one of the Universities, most of which are 
  located in BookTown.
  Savants receive a salary of 1d4 + 1 × 100 gp per month to 
  conduct their studies, lodgings at the University that sponsors 
  them, unlimited time to study (occasionally interrupted by a 
  requirement to lecture), and the use of the University’s facilities. 
  University facilities invariably have access to well-stocked 
  workrooms and libraries.
  
  29
  The Crucible
  C4. The Leviathans
  Three Ancients are being unearthed here, their fossilized 
  remains exposed and the tidal waters kept back by thick 
  plank dikes. The first was a hulking snake-like brute with an 
  enormous maw. The second was more jaw than body, with 
  three tooth-filled mouths. The final creature is barely visible, 
  but clearly unusual. Its flank and tail were covered in small-
  tusked mouths, and it had a triple tail ending in four bony 
  scythes, and what appears to be a shoulder structure that looks 
  like it connected to a wing.
  The fossilized skeletal remains of three Leviathans are being unearthed 
  here by the Royal Underneath Society. During the day, 2d4 + 2 student 
  volunteers (LN human male or female commoners) are around, assisting in 
  the dig. At the eastern end of the dig is the “honeycomb totem” (see below).
  Honeycomb Totem
  At the edge of the site, a small shard of dark stone rises 
  from a series of hexagonal granite slabs. Weathered hexagons, 
  rather like those found in a beehive, cover the shard itself.
  These structures, known as honeycomb totems, are a common feature 
  of Leviathan sites. Their significance has not yet been determined.
  C5. Burnt Sample Store
  Little is left of this plank building save charred wood, ash, 
  and ruin.
  Spitewinter relates the events that occurred here as she sees them. Ten 
  days ago, she noticed a plume of smoke from the store and quickly ran to 
  it to save her specimens. When she arrived, the blackmailer appeared with 
  his accomplice and monkey, said that fires in the Festival were spreading 
  and that, unless he was paid 2,000 gp, he could not guarantee that the 
  Savant herself would not be caught in some fire and horribly burnt. He 
  added that “some fires burn where they are told to.” Panicked, she agreed 
  and, after saving her most precious specimens, paid the men who then left. 
  This event prompted her to hire guards.
  A search of the charred wreckage finds little, but a successful DC 10 
  Wis (Perception) check reveals a curiosity: the silhouette of something 
  burnt upon the remains of one wall — a thing vaguely humanoid in shape, 
  with long claws.
  Questioning locals in the immediate vicinity brings a pair of local waifs 
  — Jib and Grag (NE human male wererats) — to the PCs’ attention. 
  The youths claim to have seen something. They have no truck with 
  officialdom, but they can be persuaded to tell their tale with a successful 
  DC 12 Cha (Intimidation or Persuasion) check.
  “We was playin’ hoopla when we saw ’em — a man, a 
  monkey wiv an ’orrible human face, an’ a fella wiv two ’eads 
  — enter the building. Finkin’ ’em a bit odd, we spied on 
  ’em frew a gap in’t wall and saw t’ ’ooded man fling a vial 
  against t’wall. The stuff inside looked strange and sticky 
  an’ when it hit t’wall, it gave out a sort of baby-like cry, and 
  then, suddenly, it was a flamin’ gargoyle thing that started 
  burning everythin’. Then t’ ’ooded man got worried and said 
  somefin’ about it growin’ an’ ’think what it could do if left to 
  feed’ ’e said. Then ’e worked some magicky ‘and-wavin’ and 
  suddenly a great big blob o’ water appeared wiv arms and 
  eyes and such, and swallowed the burnin’ thing right up an’ 
  we legged it.”
  The boys describe the Organ Grinder’s use of the ragefire elemental and 
  the subsequent appearance of a water elemental. Embellish these details 
  as much as you wish. 
  Locating the  
  Organ Grinder
  In a parish full of freakshows, street entertainers, and diversions, 
  finding a man with a human-faced monkey is not as easy as it might seem. 
  However, the Organ Grinder has to earn a living — including returning 
  to his blackmail victim for more money. The PCs have options to locate 
  the man that include laying low near the site and awaiting his return or 
  by getting out onto the streets of Festival and trying to see him in action. 
  The Grinder is alert; he’s aware that Spitewinter has hired some thugs and 
  that she might just send them after him. The problem he has is that people 
  watch him — that’s his job after all. He relies upon his Perception to spot 
  suspicious characters, and that could be his downfall.
  Leviathans, Ancients,  
  and Fossils
  The terrible Ancients are buried beneath the city streets; their 
  fossilized bodies have laid, it is speculated, for eons beneath the 
  ground. Practically nothing is known about the creatures save the 
  clues given by their fossilized bones and the strange ruins that 
  occasionally lie nearby. Their forms were an affront to the gods 
  — indeed many cults and religions have ascribed their demise to 
  some offended deity. Their bodies take several forms, yet all are 
  linked by some commonality. They are always large — at least 
  10 feet long — and often much, much larger. They show signs of 
  both reptilian and insectoid ancestry. Their bodies were covered 
  in barbed chitinous plates, and their jaws were able to dislocate to 
  enable them to swallow large prey. Some show snake-like forms, 
  whilst others resemble lizards. Some are so strange to look upon 
  that it has been impossible to categorise them as anything other 
  than aberrations. Various worthies have discussed the creatures, 
  and continue to conjecture, but as more information appears, the 
  mystery deepens and the number of questions increases.
  Rumours about  
  the Organ Grinder
  • “He’s a strange one that Organ Grinder. They say he’s addicted 
  to absinthe and that his monkey talks to him. He looks odd 
  too, got a nose too big for his face; a fat face at that, which 
  looks like it’s about to burst, and those red spectacles. There’s 
  something up with that chap.”
  • “He’s not called the Organ Grinder for nothing. He ’angs 
  around the Seminary hoping to get tips from the Physicians. 
  They say ’e’s a golem-stitcher!”
  • “He lives in an old ship hung on the Dislocated Pier. Have you 
  seen it? ’angs above the water as though waitin’ to drop in. I 
  wouldn’t send my worst enemy into that dangerous place. We 
  all know the things that live in t’river …”
  
  30
  The Blight: Richard Pett's Crooked City
  The organ the Grinder uses is a curious animated object that offers a 
  further option to pursue the Grinder back to his lair — if the PCs wish to 
  do so. The Grinder has his organ with him only when he works.
  Bear in mind finally that the Blight is a violent place, low-life street 
  attacks occur daily — particularly in Festival — and the PCs are almost 
  certainly going to be witnessed if they attack, but no one is likely to lift a 
  finger to help their victim.
  Development: The PCs can scour Festival, but it’s a big place. Most 
  street performers have particular territories — except puppeteers, who are 
  a different bunch entirely — so that similar acts don’t clash. If the PCs 
  have already seen the Organ Grinder as they arrived and remember him 
  (don’t prompt them but reward them if they mention it), then they know 
  he must be local anyway. Otherwise, they may go off around Festival 
  looking and have other encounters as you see fit. In addition, the PCs can 
  attempt to gain the local gossip on the Organ Grinder by asking around 
  (see sidebox).
  An hour or two of walking the neighborhoods leads characters to the 
  Organ Grinder, working on the street. A suggested locale is indicated on 
  the Festival Map for the encounter. If he is located and followed, allow 
  the Grinder to make a Wis (Perception) check to spot anyone following 
  him surreptitiously. If he succeeds, he drinks his potion of invisibility and 
  flees back to his lodgings (see Chapter 5). At that stage, his monkey and 
  organ also flee via the rooftops. If you like, you could run a short chase 
  to resolve this pursuit, or you could simply require the pursuing PC(s) to 
  succeed in a DC 15 Str (Athletics) check to avoid a 40-foot drop and a 
  Perception contest against the monkey’s or organ’s Perception (as they 
  watch for a tail) to follow one or both of them back to the Dislocated Pier 
  in Chapter 5.   
  If the PCs have not yet located him, the Grinder appears four days after 
  the PCs arrive at the dig to strong-arm Spitewinter, but doesn’t go himself 
  — he sends his monkey at night to her tent. It tells Spitewinter to get a gem 
  worth 1,000 gp ready for the night after, or there’ll be big trouble. As his 
  monkey delivers the message, the Organ Grinder watches from the point 
  marked X at the southwest corner of the Leviathan Dig map. He returns the 
  night after, sending the monkey with the ragefire elemental in a flask. If the 
  gem isn’t handed over, the flask is smashed in Spitewinter’s face.
  The Organ Grinder
  This man’s face appears almost like a caricature: His head is too fat for 
  his body, and a pendulous, bulbous nose dangles on it like a swaying sack. 
  His attire is fairly mundane for a performer, but his top hat is held at a 
  rakish angle to his fat face as he plies his instrument.
  If the situation turns against him, he flees to the Hold Menagerie (area 
  D7) for a final stand. The Organ Grinder is not likely to surrender until 
  severely injured (15 or fewer hit points). If attacked outside, he flees 
  immediately and tries to get home using his potion of invisibility or of 
  gaseous form. In addition to his poison, potions, and bottled ragefire 
  elemental, he also carries a key to area D1 that resembles a wallow-whale 
  (with copper and obsidian eyes worth 75gp) devouring the sun.
  The Organ Grinder
  XP 5,000 (CR 9)
  LE Medium humanoid (human)
  Initiative +3
   
  DEFENSE
  AC 17 (studded armor, shield)
  hp: 104 (16d8 + 32)
  Saving Throws: Dex +8, Cha +6
  Immunity: charm
   
  OFFENSE
  Speed: 30 ft.
  Multiattack: The Organ Grinder attacks twice with his rapier.
  Melee Attack—Rapier: +8 to hit (reach 5 ft.; one creature). 
  Hit: 1d8 + 4 piercing damage plus 7d6 poison damage, or 
  half poison damage with a successful DC 15 Con saving 
  throw. Each hit uses up one dose of wyvern poison.
  Ranged Attack—Light Crossbow: +8 to hit (range 80 ft./320 
  ft.; one creature). Hit: 1d8 + 4 piercing damage plus 7d6 
  poison damage, or half poison damage with a successful 
  DC 15 Con saving throw. Each hit uses up one dose of 
  wyvern poison.
   
  STATISTICS
  Str 10 (+0), Dex 19 (+4), Con 15 (+2),  
  Int 14 (+2), Wis 10 (+0), Cha 14 (+2)
  Languages: Common, thieves’ cant
  Skills: Perception +8, Performance +6, Stealth +12, Sleight of 
  Hand +8
  Senses: passive Perception 18
   
  TRAITS
  Cutting Words: As a reaction when an enemy within 60 
  feet that the Organ Grinder can see makes an attack, the 
  Organ Grinder can roll 1d6 and subtract the result from the 
  enemy’s attack roll. 
  Evasion: If a successful saving throw would normally result 
  in half damage, the Organ Grinder takes no damage on a 
  successful save and half damage on a failure. 
  Rapid Potions: The Organ Grinder can drink one potion as a 
  bonus action. See “Equipment” for a list of his potions.
  Spellcasting: The Organ Grinder is an arcane spellcaster 
  who uses Charisma as his spellcasting ability (DC 14, attack 
  +6). He has the following spells prepared. 
  Cantrips (at will): dancing lights, minor illusion, vicious 
  mockery
  1st level (×4): charm person, silent image, hideous laughter, 
  unseen servant
  2nd level (×3): blindness/deafness, phantasmal force, see 
  invisibility
  3rd level (×3): glyph of warding, major image, stinking cloud
  4th level (×1): freedom of movement
   
  ECOLOGY
  Environment: Blight
  Organization: Solitary
   
  EQUIPMENT
  bottled ragefire spawn, wyvern poison ×10; potions of climb-
  ing, gaseous form, invisibility, resistance (fire), speed, superior 
  healing ×2
  The Organ Grinder’s familiar is a vile little creature: a bald, pink-faced 
  monkey, with clever fingers and a long, mangy tail covered in balding 
  patches. The thing has an altogether unsettling human look about it, right 
  down to its fez and clown’s costume. Called Scat by the Organ Grinder, 
  the creature is a homunculus created in the form of a monkey with a 
  human face. This homunculus can talk, albeit in a strangled, somewhat 
  stuttering way. It sounds like a squeaky child’s toy with words thrown in 
  at random. Scat uses the standard homunculus stat block.
  Scat (Homunculus): AC 13; HP 5 (2d4); Spd 20ft, fly 40ft; Me-
  lee bite (+4, 1 piercing and DC 10 Con save or poisoned 1 
  minute; if failed by 5 or more, 1d10 poison damage and un-
  conscious for 1 minute); Str –3, Dex +2, Con +0, Int +0, Wis +0, 
  Cha –2; Immune charm, poison; Senses darkvision 60ft; Traits 
  telepathic bond (communicates telepathically with master 
  while on same plane); AL N; CR 0; XP 10.
   
  There’s something unsettlingly dislocated in the way this object sits. It’s 
  made up of a grinning devil body with many-jointed limbs and a grinning face 
  within the mouth of which is a kitten. The limbs are clearly preserved flesh 
  from some sort of monster. It has wheels, but almost looks like it could get 
  up and walk of its own accord. It has the stats of a Medium animated object.
  The Organ: AC 13; HP 40; Spd 30ft; Melee bite (+5, 2d6+1 
  piercing); Str +0, Dex +1, Con +0, Int –4, Wis –4, Cha –5; Sens-
  es blindsight 30ft; AL LE; CR 1/4; XP 50.
  
  31
  The Crucible
  Ragefire Spawn: AC 13; HP 33 (6d4+18); Spd 50ft; Melee 
  touch (+3, 1d4+3 fire and flammable object ignites; burn-
  ing object takes 1d4 fire at the start of its turns until extin-
  guished); SA multiattack (touch ×2); Str +0, Dex +3, Con +3, 
  Int –2, Wis +0, Cha –2; Resist nonmagical weapons; Immune 
  exhaustion, fire, grapple, paralysis, petrified, poison, prone, 
  restraint, unconsciousness; Senses darkvision 60ft; Traits fire 
  form (adjacent creature that hits ragefire spawn with melee 
  attack takes 1d4 fire; elemental can enter creature’s space 
  and stop, causing 1d4 fire and igniting flammable material; 
  burning creature takes 1d4 fire at start of its turn until extin-
  guished), illumination (sheds bright light to 30ft and dim light 
  to 60ft), intensify (incinerates humanoid corpse in its space 
  as an action to regain 5 hp and become Small ragefire el-
  emental), water susceptibility (takes 1 cold damage per 5ft 
  moved in water or per gallon of water thrown on it); AL N; 
  CR 1; XP 200.
  
  32
  The Blight: Richard Pett's Crooked City
  The Dislocated Pier is one of hundreds of piers that thrust intrusively 
  out into the Lyme. These piers allow further real-estate development out 
  over the waters, but so expensive is their maintenance cost that many are 
  in terrible states of repair and are dangerous to use. Some have officially 
  been closed, although such places, of course, make useful places to hide.
  The Dislocated Pier lies in Liquorice, a part of Festival famous for 
  imported liquorice. As well as several nearby merchants and traders, this 
  pier specialises in gaudy freakshows and minor plays in tiny theaters. The 
  Limpet — the Organ Grinder’s boat home — itself lies at the very end of 
  the pier, and while the journey to it is by no means dangerous, the fragility 
  of these structures is readily apparent.
  This crippled pier leans and sags as it drags itself away from 
  Festival and out over the sick, black waters of the Lyme. Like 
  a dislocated limb, it writhes and bends its way for a hundred 
  feet above the water, its back groaning beneath a confusion of 
  stalls and shops, tiny theaters and freak shows. The pier ends 
  abruptly — like a broken arm with a severed hand — above the 
  river, its final palsied moments spent in obeisance to the sky 
  above, its entrails exposed to the air and rotting.
  Lashed to the end of this ruined appendage is a ship — the 
  carcass of a mildewed keelboat — bow raised as though praying 
  to the gods themselves for release. This prisoner, wreathed in 
  iron and wire, rope and rust, hangs perilously from the broken 
  pier, looking as though at any moment its confinement will 
  end and its stern will drop into the poisonous embrace of the 
  dark waters beneath.
  The Lyme’s current is sluggish around the dislocated pier. The lower 
  piers are slippery with seaweed and rot, however, so a successful DC 12 
  Str (Athletics) check is required to clamber out of the river onto them. 
  A mud bank lies 120 feet from the end of the pier with the shore 60 feet 
  farther on. The mud is difficult terrain. 
  The Limpet
  The Limpet is an old keelboat that has been raised from the water 
  vertically, lashed to the pier, and converted for use as a dwelling. The 
  interior is thus a confusing stack of rooms, and poor alterations to its 
  architecture have made it dangerous. The whole structure is in danger of 
  collapse, with tie lines, chains, and ropes badly corroded or worn. Coal 
  dust and wood chips lie in plentiful amounts throughout the Limpet. This 
  is the result of the Organ Grinder’s frequent visits to the great windmill 
  aboard the Blackleg, a coal and timber merchant’s vessel (see the end of 
  the chapter for further details).
  The stairs are tricky to use; treat them as difficult terrain. The Organ 
  Grinder and his followers have grown used to this inconvenience and 
  aren’t hampered by it. The inner walls of the ship are infested with 
  hundreds of old fittings, planks and remnants of interior walls; those 
  wishing to clamber about along them rather than take the stairs can do so 
  with a successful DC 10 Str (Athletics) check.
  The doors are damp and tend to stick; they can be force open automatically, 
  but doing so makes enough noise to be heard by anyone within 20 feet.
  Chapter Five:
  The Dislocated Pier
  Siklight Cockroaches
  Smaller, more nauseating cousins of the pyrebeetle, these 
  creatures feed on waste and give off an insipid, pallid light when 
  they are awake. Siklight cockroaches are a common sight in poorer 
  parts of the Blight. A siklight cockroach costs 8 cp and, if properly 
  cared for, will live for a year or more. Siklight cockroaches 
  have 1 hit point. If they take damage, the cockroaches explode 
  like alchemist’s fire. The cockroaches are also prone to sudden 
  changes in temperature and certain conditions of the Canker (see 
  The Blight: Richard Pett’s Crooked City), and small explosions 
  and fires are a common sight in areas lit by them. For this reason, 
  the siklight cockroach has many nicknames among the populace, 
  including Devil’s Spark, Trust-Me-Not, Tricklight, Mother’s 
  Misery, Beltane’s Fart and a host of other, less-polite curses and 
  cant-words
  
  33
  The Crucible
  Siklight cockroaches (see sidebox) light all the rooms. The overpowering 
  musk of the Organ Grinder’s various creatures makes use of the scent 
  ability impossible within the Limpet.
  Combat in the Limpet
  So ruptured, rotten, and unstable is the ship that any major damage to 
  the Limpet, such as by an area effect spell, can cause it to collapse. Most 
  area effect spells cause half damage to the Limpet’s structure, but thunder 
  attacks cause full damage. Keep a running tally of the damage from such 
  spells and consult the table below. Remember that not just the PCs’ attacks 
  damage the ship.
  Total 
  Damage
  Effect
  5–24
  The ship shakes and groans; plates fall off ta-
  bles, and mice scuttle for cover.
  25–49
  Ropes securing the ship to the pier snap, and 
  the whole structure becomes unstable. All at-
  tack rolls made while onboard take a –2 pen-
  alty until the damage to the ship is repaired. 
  Spellcasters must make a successful DC 10 
  spellcasting check before casting a spell; fail-
  ure indicates their action is wasted but no spell 
  slot is consumed. 
  50–74
  The whole ship sags forward. Each round any-
  one onboard who moves farther than 5 feet 
  must make a successful DC 8 Dex (Acrobatics) 
  check or fall prone.
  75+
  The whole structure collapses into the River 
  Lyme (see below). Each character onboard 
  must make a DC 15 Dex saving throw. On a 
  success, the character takes 2d6 bludgeoning 
  damage and falls into the river but is swim-
  ming on the surface. On a failure, the char-
  acter takes 4d6 bludgeoning damage from 
  collapsing timbers, falls into the river, and is 
  dragged under by the sinking Limpet. A char-
  acter dragged under the river can’t breathe 
  and must attempt a DC 15 Str (Athletics) 
  check at the start of each of his or her turns; 
  success indicates they break free of the sinking 
  wreckage and swim to the surface. 
  Event 3: A Lyme Bath
  If the Limpet sustains more than 50 points of damage, objects falling 
  from it into the water attract a wallow-whale. The whale arrives 2d6 
  rounds later and attacks anything that drops into the water — objects and 
  creatures alike. If the Limpet itself falls into the river, the wallow-
  whale takes 8d8 bludgeoning damage as the stern rams 
  into it. The wallow-whale is not hungry, just curious, 
  and will not use its swallow whole ability. If it gets into 
  a fight with the PCs, it loses interest after 1d4 rounds 
  or after taking 40 damage and swims away into the 
  black water. 
  Wallow-whale: AC 17; HP 201; Spd swim 
  40ft; Melee bite (+10, 4d10+6 piercing plus 
  3d6 acid, and DC 17 Str save or swallowed; 
  swallowed creature is blinded and restrained 
  and takes 1d10+6 bludgeoning plus 1d8 acid au-
  tomatically at start of wallow-whale’s turns; when a 
  creature gets out of wallow-whale, must make DC 17 
  Con save or contract filth fever), tail slap (+10, 15ft, 4d8+6 
  bludgeoning and target knocked prone); SA multiattack 
  (bite+tail slap), filth fever (gain 1 level of exhaustion imme-
  diately; DC 17 Con save after every long rest; +1 exhaustion 
  on failure, -1 exhaustion on success; ends at 0 exhaustion or 
  magical cure); Str +6, Dex –3, Con +5, Int –3, Wis +0, Cha –3; 
  Immune thunder, prone; Resist nonmagical weapons; Sens-
  es darkvision 60ft; AL N; CR 12; XP 8,400.
  Ad Hoc XP Award: If the PCs fight the wallow-whale until it retreats, 
  award the group 4,200 XP.
  D1. Entry
  The bow rises ten feet above the pier, and a single hefty oak 
  door inset in the vessel’s deck forms a grand entrance. This 
  portal has iron bindings and a six-inch-square, leaded-glass 
  window. A small, carved wooden gargoyle sits on the lintel and 
  smiles wickedly. 
  
  34
  The Blight: Richard Pett's Crooked City
  
  35
  The Crucible
  The door is locked and trapped. If someone tries the handle of the door 
  without first unlocking it, a poison arrow trap is triggered. The lock can 
  be opened with thief’s tools and a successful DC 15 Dex check. The trap 
  can be spotted with a successful DC 12 Int (Investigation) check. It can be 
  bypassed by unlocking the door with the key or by successfully picking 
  the lock. If the trap is triggered, the person turning the door handle takes 
  1d8 piercing damage plus 7d6 poison damage, or half poison damage with 
  a successful DC 15 Con saving throw (wyvern poison).
  D2. Lesser Hold
  Beyond the door is a cluttered chamber. Racks of knives lie 
  under piles of books, and iron-shod boots hang, laces taut, 
  from the arms of an iron octopus. A tight little spiral stair 
  descends through an access point in the floor.
  Hanging directly above the entry door, the Organ Grinder has hung a 
  foul exhibit — the head and forelegs from a lion, neatly sawn in half and 
  mounted on a varnished wooden plaque. This lion trophy is a creation of 
  golem-stitching called a Made (see sidebox), mummified in an alchymic 
  wash. It attacks with its claws and teeth. It continues attacking paralyzed 
  prey to the exclusion of other foes. If the Organ Grinder is expecting a 
  visitor, he stores the lion trophy in a closet to ensure everyone’s safety.
  “Made” Lion Trophy: AC 12; HP 26 (4d10+4); Spd 0ft; Melee 
  bite (+5, 1d8+3 piercing plus paralysis), claws (+5, 1d6+3 
  slashing plus paralysis); SA multiattack (bite+claws), paralysis 
  (DC 11 Con save or paralyzed; repeat save at end of turn to 
  end paralysis); Str +3, Dex +2, Con +1, Int –4, Wis +1, Cha –1; 
  Skills Perception +3; AL un; CR 1; XP 200.
  Treasure: Searching among the confusion of objects cluttering the 
  room reveals a fine gold candlestick worth 200 gp, a stag’s head with an 
  old purse inside its mouth containing 4 amethysts worth 100 gp each, and 
  a flask of alchemist’s fire.
  The spiral stair descends to D3 and is completely exposed, without 
  railing or cover. This room has a guardian instructed to remain here and 
  deter visitors, a four-armed gargoyle the Organ Grinder refers to as 
  the Crooked Doorman, and which he supplies with a potion of speed for 
  emergencies.
  Four-Armed Gargoyle: AC 15; HP 55 (10d8+10); Spd 30ft, fly 
  60ft; Melee bite (+4, 1d8+2 piercing), claws (+4, 2d8+2 slash-
  ing), gore (+4, 1d8+2 piercing); SA multiattack (bite+claws+-
  claws+gore); Str +2, Dex +2, Con +1, Int –2, Wis +0, Cha 
  –2; Resist nonmagical weapons that aren’t adamantine; 
  Immune exhaustion, petrification, poison; Senses darkvision 
  60ft, tremorsense 60ft; Traits stony appearance (indistinguish-
  able from stone while motionless); AL CE; CR 4; XP 1,100.
  D3. Storage
  A narrow spiral stair descends into this room, which is 
  crammed with objects, piled in tea chests, hanging from beams 
  or forced onto crude crooked shelving.
  This room is so cluttered that when the door is opened several objects fall 
  to the ground. Within the clutter are three street signs (Three Needles Street, 
  Folgate Road, and Fanshaw Street), a portable ram with a head like a twisted 
  giant’s, a battered leather backpack containing straw, numerous household 
  items, a large jar of very hefty coach-bolts and long nails, a pair of wall 
  supports, and a large amount of rubbish. An enormous number of spiders are 
  in this room, but whilst they are big, fast, hairy, and demonstrate an uncanny 
  ability to settle on anyone with arachnophobia, they are otherwise harmless.
  D4. Dissectory
  In this polished chamber’s centre is a dissecting table, 
  complete with straps. A bloody white tarpaulin on the table 
  covers something larger and feral smelling. Shelves around 
  the room are crowded with a gruesome display of pickled or 
  mummified body parts in glass jars. Some of the specimens still 
  wriggle and move, even though they are simple biological forms 
  such as tentacles, the forepaws of a cat, a human tongue, or a 
  monkey’s hand. In one corner, an object lies covered by a hefty 
  woolen throw with swirling red and orange woven patterns.
  The Organ Grinder keeps his workshop for creating Made scrupulously 
  clean. The specimens are Made created by the Organ Grinder and are 
  pathetically poor things worth nothing to anyone.
  Currently, the Grinder is amusing himself most of the time with his 
  latest creation — a collage of body parts from a minotaur and an ankheg 
  that he, unimaginatively, calls an ankhetaur. To protect himself, he has 
  fitted the creature with an iron muzzle and straps that hold it in place. 
  While muzzled, the creature cannot attack. Removing the muzzle is a full 
  round action that provokes a reaction. Four straps (AC 15, 5 hp each) bind 
  the creature’s hands and feet. In the unlikely event that characters free this 
  monster and must fight it, it has stats identical to a skeletal minotaur but 
  its attacks do an additional 2d8 acid damage. 
  Development: The object beneath the throw is a wooden pedestal 
  supporting a great jar of vinegar with the head of a medusa trapped 
  within. The jar is secured by an iron screw-top lid sealed with wax; a 
  DC 10 Strength check is required to open it (the occupant cannot open it 
  from the inside). If the Organ Grinder retreats through this room, he may 
  choose to knock the jar from its pedestal and then close the door behind 
  him, trapping Leyak within to attack any pursuers
  Whenever the PCs first see the trapped head, read the following:
  The severed head of an ebony-skinned woman floats in a 
  sealed glass jar filled with an amber fluid. Floating viscera trails 
  from the ragged stump of her neck. Her hair is a multitude of 
  gray serpents that twist and writhe to fix their gaze upon you as 
  the woman’s eyes suddenly flick open, though they close again 
  just as suddenly. She is alive! She begins desperately mouthing 
  pleas for help, her expression one of indescribable anguish and 
  fear with her eyes clenched tightly shut.
  This creature is Leyak, and she has been trapped in this jar for many 
  years. Her body was destroyed long ago. Her petrifying gaze is ineffective 
  Golem-Stitching and the Made
  As well as being his home, the interior of the Limpet is a 
  gallery for the Organ Grinder’s twisted art of golem-stitching, a 
  sadly growing trade in the city and one which demands increasing 
  amounts of flesh to sculpt. The creations of golem-stitchers are 
  called Made and vary greatly depending upon the power of the 
  creator. “Made” is actually a catchall term for a variety of animated 
  dead and constructs. Some made are alchemical zombies, some are 
  necrocraft, some are flesh or carrion golems or even homunculi, 
  others are stranger still. The art of golem-stitching is one that 
  transcends the boundaries of art, guardianship, and trap with 
  such creations often fulfilling all three functions at once. There 
  is a flourishing market in Made, and these monstrosities can be 
  bought and sold at the Flea Markets and Souks in Golem Town. 
  The Organ Grinder learnt his trade through the acquisition of a 
  secret (see D5).
  
  36
  The Blight: Richard Pett's Crooked City
  through the distortion of the glass. She has been traded around the golem-
  stitching community ever since she was first sold by her initial captor 
  but none of her owners has been brave enough to release her. The Organ 
  Grinder won her several months ago and still hasn’t decided what to do 
  with her.
  Leyak’s voice is just audible through the thick glass. She pleads for 
  release, promising anything they require of her, including information on 
  anything or anyone they seek. She explains that she was a human slave 
  brought to Castorhage and that she is not truly a monster but has been 
  experimented upon to look as she does. Unfortunately, her promises are 
  all lies. If she is released, she attacks without mercy.
  Leyak (Medusa’s head): AC 15; HP 127 (17d8+51); Spd 0ft; 
  Melee snake hair (+5, 1d4+2 piercing plus 4d6 poison); SA 
  multiattack (snake hair ×2 + petrifying gaze), petrifying gaze 
  (30ft; 1 creature that can see medusa’s eyes; DC 14 Con 
  save; fail by 5 or more means creature instantly petrified; fail 
  means restrained, repeat save at end of next turn, petrified 
  if fail or effect ends if success; creatures can avert eyes at 
  start of turn); Str +0, Dex +2, Con +3, Int +1, Wis +1, Cha +2; 
  Skills Deception +5, Insight +4, Perception +4, Stealth +5; 
  Senses darkvision 60ft; AL LE; CR 6; XP 2,300.
  D5. Study
  This study is crammed with books and dominated by a fine 
  roll-top desk. The complete skeleton of an ape hangs from a 
  beam, its articulated bones held together by wire, and glass 
  cases display two preserved and stuffed exotic birds. A ladder 
  descends steeply into the gloom via a hole broken in the floor.
  The ladder descends 20 feet to D6. The desk contains several ledgers 
  that show that, over the past several months, the Organ Grinder has been 
  ordering several tons of coal each week from Sallow & Son Coal and 
  Timber Factors to be delivered to a single location. Each order for a barge 
  load of coal and timber lists a charge of 100 gp, and there have been 15 
  total orders. The latest order is due for delivery tomorrow to the usual 
  place: one of the great windmills at the mouth of the Lyme. 
  One of the birds is an albino dodo and the other is a paradise cockatrice. 
  A paradise cockatrice is identical to its more mundane cousin save in 
  one regard: It has the most exquisite plumage — a rainbow display of 
  violet, turquoise, and emerald. Costumers and spellcasters alike prize 
  their feathers. The Organ Grinder keeps the key to the chest hidden in his 
  chamber (see D6) in the dodo’s mouth. The silver key is tiny and can be 
  found only with a successful DC 8 Int (Investigation) check as part of a 
  thorough search of the room; it’s found automatically if players specify 
  that their characters open the case and search the dodo.
  Treasure: The desk has a very fine writing set worth 75 gp and three 
  bottles of Devil’s Wormwood absinthe (see sidebox). Only two of the 
  bottles still contain a worm as the Organ Grinder has already eaten one 
  and gained its benefits. The desk itself has a hidden cache (found with a 
  successful DC 18 Int [Investigation] check) behind a section of removable 
  shelving). Within the space is a small leather-bound book containing The 
  Secret of Creation (see sidebox). The stuffed birds are worth 100 gp and 
  500 gp to the right collector. 
  New Tome
  THE SECRET OF CREATION
  This book, bound in the softest goatskin, contains a 
  curious codex of sigils, runes and oddly disturbing 
  drawings. 
  Deciphering the book requires a month’s study of 
  the text and a successful DC 18 Int (History) check. If 
  the check succeeds, the reader gains a rudimentary 
  understanding of how Made are created, but not the 
  ability to actually make them. The character can cast 
  animate dead and mend once per week without 
  expending (or even having) any spell slots, provided 
  the book is within 50 feet of the caster. A spellcasting 
  character learns these spells and can add them to his 
  or her spellbook after reading The Secret of Creation. 
  The book’s benefits accrue only to its owner. In ad-
  dition, the owner of the book is troubled by dreams in 
  which the animated parts of created creatures stalk 
  him. This has no game effect but is unpleasant and 
  always leaves the character looking as if he isn’t get-
  ting enough sleep.
  The Secret of Creation is worth 1,300gp.  
  New Drug: Absinthe
  This highly intoxicating green beverage is common in the 
  Blight. It is usually taken with water and is commonly called 
  “green fairy” or “Devil’s wormwood.” A shot can cost anywhere 
  from 1 gp to 30 gp but various magically or alchemically enhanced 
  versions exist which cost a lot more. A few of the more specialized 
  versions of absinthe are detailed below. Their effects and damage 
  given are alchemic in nature.
  GREEN FAIRY
  Potion, uncommon
  Green fairy is taken by artists who claim it enhances 
  creativity. Its effect lasts 1 hour. During that time, it 
  grants a +1 bonus on Cha checks and a –2 penalty 
  on saving throws against illusions and other mental 
  effects. For 1d4 hours afterward, the use must make 
  a successful DC 15 spellcasting check before casting 
  any spell; if the check fails, the action is wasted but no 
  spell slot is expended.
  DEVIL’S WORMWOOD
  Potion, uncommon
  Said to have been distilled in Hell, this vile liquid has 
  a fat worm floating in each bottle. Eating the worm 
  exposes the consumer to a poison which may extend 
  the effects of the drug if it doesn’t commit them to a 
  nightmare-filled coma (see Devil’s worm below).
  The potion’s effect lasts 1d3 hours. During that time, 
  the user gains 1d4 Cha points, a +1 on spell attacks, a 
  +1 on his or her spell save DC, and has disadvantage 
  on saving throws against illusions and other mental 
  effects. 
  DEVIL’S WORM
  Potion, uncommon
  Each bottle of Devil’s wormwood contains a poison-
  ous Devil’s worm. A person under the effects of the 
  Devil’s wormwood who consumes a Devil’s worm must 
  make a DC 18 Con saving throw. If it fails, the creature 
  takes 2d12 poison damage and loses 1d4 Wis and 
  1d4 Int until after completing a long rest. If the saving 
  throw succeeds, the duration of the Devil’s worm-
  wood is extended to 1d3 months.
  
  37
  The Crucible
  D6. Organ Grinder’s Chamber
  This chamber takes up much of the old lower hold of the 
  ship. It comprises three levels connected by rickety ladders, 
  with an open central section such that it is possible to leap 
  between them. Each floor is cluttered with oddments and 
  objects, including a large amount of books and several crude 
  canvases.
  The ladders are not tied to the walls and can easily be knocked down. 
  The floor is the sloped hull of the ship, and its surface is slick, making it 
  difficult terrain. The Organ Grinder, his monkeylike familiar Scat, and 
  his mud mephit thrall Lott, spend most of their time here. In addition, 
  his barrel organ usually shuffles about in this chamber when he is present. 
  When the Organ Grinder is out, Lott generally remains within the Limpet 
  feeding (or more usually, tormenting) the creatures in the menagerie (D7).
  Organ Grinder: AC 17; HP 104 (16d8+32); Spd 30ft; Melee ra-
  pier (+8, 1d8+4 piercing plus 7d6 poison; half poison with DC 
  15 Con save); Ranged light crossbow (+8, 80ft/320ft, 1d8+4 
  piercing plus 7d6 poison; half poison with DC 15 Con save); 
  SA multiattack (rapier ×2), cutting words (reaction; subtracts 
  1d6 from attack roll of enemy within 60ft), evasion (if save al-
  lows half damage, Organ Grinder takes no damage on suc-
  cess and half damage on failure), rapid potions (can drink 
  1 potion as bonus action); Str +0, Dex +4, Con +2, Int +2, Wis 
  +0, Cha +2; Saving Throws Dex +8, Cha +6; Immune charm; 
  Skills Perception +8, Performance +6, Stealth +12, Sleight of 
  Hand +8; AL LE; CR 9; XP 5,000.
  Spellcasting (+6, save DC 14): 0 (at will)--dancing lights, 
  minor illusion, vicious mockery; 1 (4)—charm person, 
  silent image, hideous laughter, unseen servant; 2 (3)— 
  blindness/deafness, phantasmal force, see invisibility; 
  3 (3)—glyph of warding, major image, stinking cloud; 4 
  (1)—freedom of movement.
  Equipment: bottled ragefire spawn, wyvern poison ×10; 
  potions of climbing, gaseous form, invisibility, resistance 
  (fire), speed, superior healing ×2.
  Scat (Homunculus): AC 13; HP 5 (2d4); Spd 20ft, fly 40ft; Me-
  lee bite (+4, 1 piercing and DC 10 Con save or poisoned 1 
  minute; if failed by 5 or more, 1d10 poison damage and un-
  conscious for 1 minute); Str –3, Dex +2, Con +0, Int +0, Wis +0, 
  Cha –2; Immune charm, poison; Senses darkvision 60ft; Traits 
  telepathic bond (communicates telepathically with master 
  while on same plane); AL N; CR 0; XP 10.
  The Organ: AC 13; HP 40; Spd 30ft; Melee bite (+5, 2d6+1 
  piercing); Str +0, Dex +1, Con +0, Int –4, Wis –4, Cha –5; Sens-
  es blindsight 30ft; AL LE; CR 1/4; XP 50.
  Mud Mephit: AC 11; HP 27 (6d6+6); Spd 20ft, fly 20ft, swim 
  20ft; Melee fists (+3, 1d6+1 bludgeoning); SA mud breath 
  (recharge 6; 5ft, one creature; DC 11 Dex save or restrained; 
  repeat save at end of turn to end effect); Str –1, Dex +1, Con 
  +1, Int –1, Wis +0, Cha –2; Skills Stealth +3; Immune poison; 
  Senses darkvision 60ft; Traits death burst (5ft; DC 11 Dex save 
  or restrained until end of creature’s next turn), false appear-
  ance (indistinguishable from mud while motionless); AL NE; 
  CR 1/4; XP 50.
  Ragefire Spawn: AC 13; HP 33 (6d4+18); Spd 50ft; Melee 
  touch (+3, 1d4+3 fire and flammable object ignites; burn-
  ing object takes 1d4 fire at the start of its turns until extin-
  guished); SA multiattack (touch ×2); Str +0, Dex +3, Con +3, 
  Int –2, Wis +0, Cha –2; Resist nonmagical weapons; Immune 
  exhaustion, fire, grapple, paralysis, petrified, poison, prone, 
  restraint, unconsciousness; Senses darkvision 60ft; Traits fire 
  form (adjacent creature that hits ragefire spawn with melee 
  attack takes 1d4 fire; elemental can enter creature’s space 
  and stop, causing 1d4 fire and igniting flammable material; 
  burning creature takes 1d4 fire at start of its turn until extin-
  guished), illumination (sheds bright light to 30ft and dim light 
  to 60ft), intensify (incinerates humanoid corpse in its space 
  as an action to regain 5 hp and become Small ragefire el-
  emental), water susceptibility (takes 1 cold damage per 5ft 
  moved in water or per gallon of water thrown on it); AL N; 
  CR 1; XP 200.
  Treasure: The books are generally about anatomy, healing and 
  alchemy. However, a few are notable. The first — Granthim’s Treatise 
  upon Outsider’s Souls — is richly illustrated in gilt and crimson diagrams 
  and is worth 350 gp. The second, a huge, untitled folio of images of 
  speculative beasts of Between is worth 400 gp. Finally, a copy of Kathrill’s 
  Arcanum contains the spells polymorph, contagion, dimension door, and 
  wall of force. Within the pages of this book, bound into the spine of the 
  book as an end-piece and covered in dust of disappearance, is a scroll of 
  planar binding and stinking cloud.
  The Organ Grinder keeps his treasure in a chest hidden behind a small, 
  secret panel, located with a successful DC 15 Int (Investigation) check. It 
  is locked (picked with thief’s tools and a successful DC 20 Dex check) but 
  opens with the key that’s hidden in his stuffed dodo’s mouth (D5). Within 
  the chest, he keeps his formulae book; 1,250 gp in a large leather sack; a 
  whalebone and walrus tusk jagging wheel set with gold bands worth 600 
  gp; an engraved whale tooth depicting a swarm of ravens with obsidian-
  encrusted wings worth 700 gp; and three smoky colored and decorated 
  behir eggs set with tiny emeralds and gold filigree, each worth 500 gp. 
  D7. Hold Menagerie
  A feral stench prowls this room, and a dozen rickety wooden 
  cages line the trio of clumsily made wooden floors that were 
  clearly once the ship’s bulkheads. Again, planks and ladders 
  connect this crooked space, while buckets of water, coarse 
  tubers and plants, and fly-speckled cuts of meat hang from 
  nails variously spaced along the walls. 
  The Organ Grinder is very proud of his menagerie of animals that he has 
  collected from around the known world. It fills the old upper hold of the ship, 
  which contains 12 wooden cages each held shut by a simple wooden peg that 
  requires a move action to remove. The bars of the cages are close enough 
  to prevent attack by the creatures within, and the cages are as tall as they 
  are wide. If the Organ Grinder retreats here, he releases one caged animal 
  at a time while climbing away if attacked. While not all animals here are 
  aggressive (caged birds make up the rest of the menagerie), those that are 
  offer him a last line of defence and are detailed below. He releases these in 
  preference to any others although, if desperate, he may release other creatures 
  in the hope that their flight distracts enemies. Each released creature emerges 
  from its cage to look for food. It attacks anyone it can reach. The cages with 
  creatures (and their occupants) are marked on the map.
  Like D6, the bottom floor is the sloped stern of the ship, its surface 
  slick with a slurry and animal droppings, and requires a DC 10 Acrobatics 
  check to move upon. 
  Giant Boar: AC 12; HP 42 (5d10+15); Spd 40ft; Melee tusk (+5, 
  2d6+3 slashing); SA charge (if the boar move at least 20ft 
  straight toward a target and hits it with its tusks in the same 
  turn, the target takes 2d6 extra slashing damage; a crea-
  ture must make a successful DC 13 Str saving throw or be 
  knocked prone); Str +3, Dex +0, Con +3, Int –4, Wis –2, Cha 
  –3; Traits relentless (1/between rest; an attack that does 10 
  damage or less reduces the boar to 1 HP instead of 0); AL 
  Un; CR 2; XP 450.
  Giant Scorpion: AC 15; HP 52 (7d10+14); Spd 40ft; Melee 
  claw (+4, 1d8+2 bludgeoning and target is grappled; es-
  
  38
  The Blight: Richard Pett's Crooked City
  cape DC 12), sting (+4, 1d10+2 piercing plus 4d10 poison; 
  DC 12 Con save halves poison damage); SA multiattack 
  (claws x2 and sting); Str +2, Dex +1, Con +2, Int –5, Wis –1, 
  Cha –4; Senses blindsight 60ft; AL un; CR 3; XP 700.
  Giant Weasel: AC 13; HP 9 (2d8); Spd 40ft; Melee bite (+5, 
  1d4+3 piercing); Str +0, Dex +3, Con +0, Int –3, Wis +1, Cha 
  –3; Skills Perception +3, Stealth +5; Senses darkvision 60ft; 
  Traits keen hearing and smell; AL un; CR 1/8; XP 25.
  Hell Hound: AC 15; HP 45 (7d8+14); Spd 50ft; Melee bite (+5, 
  1d8+3 piercing plus 2d6 fire); SA fire breath (recharge 5-6; 
  15ft cone; 6d6 fire; DC 12 Dex save for half damage); Str +3, 
  Dex +1, Con +2, Int –2, Wis +1, Cha –2; Skills Perception +5; 
  Immune fire; Senses darkvision 60ft; Traits keen hearing and 
  smell, pack tactics (tactical advantage if ally within 5ft of 
  target); AL LE; CR 3; XP 700.
  Lion: AC 12; HP 26 (4d10+4); Spd 50ft; Melee bite (+5, 1d8+3 
  piercing), claw (+5, 1d6+3 slashing); SA pounce (if lion 
  moves 20ft straight toward creature and hits with claw at-
  tack; DC 13 Str save or knocked prone, and lion makes bite 
  attack as bonus action); Str +3, Dex +2, Con +1, Int –4, Wis 
  +1, Cha –1; Skills Perception +3, Stealth +6; Traits keen smell, 
  pack tactics (tactical advantage if ally within 5ft of target), 
  running leap (25ft long jump with 10ft running start); AL un; 
  CR 1; XP 200.
  Development: If the PCs defeat the Organ Grinder, they can interrogate 
  him. He is essentially a coward and pleads for his life, providing them 
  with the information he knows in return for their mercy. The information 
  he spills includes the location of the Artificer, the “creator of the living 
  fire,” at the great windmill (Chapter 6). He explains about the “strange 
  metal contraption that she calls the Crucible,” and the constant supply of 
  coal and timber that is required to keep it alight. He admits that he was to 
  sail with a new shipment from Sallow & Son to the mill on the morrow.
  If the PCs kill the Organ Grinder, they might recover some of this 
  information by using speak with dead, but the corpse attempts to deceive 
  them if it makes its Will save, and its answers will be brief and cryptic 
  if not. The link to Sallow & Son Coal and Timber Factors can also be 
  gleaned from the ledgers on his study desk (D5). If the PCs want to head 
  straight to the great windmill, boats and skiffs are easy to hire at only 5 gp 
  per day, or the PCs may make arrangements to buy a boat for themselves. 
  Alternatively, they may decide to first visit Sallow & Son.
  Sallow & 
  Son Coal and 
  Timber Factors
  The ragefire elemental requires a constant supply 
  of combustible material to be forced to spawn, and 
  coal and timber have been used in huge quantities to that 
  effect. The Artificer has used Sallow & Son Coal and 
  Timber Factors, as she knew their business was on its last legs 
  and likely would go under without her patronage. John and 
  Jacob Sallows’ loyalty is therefore assured through their fear of 
  bankruptcy and personal ruin.
  The merchants’ warehouse, a shoddy building with living 
  accommodation upstairs and a 6-foot-high wall surrounding it 
  is indicated on the Festival map. Unpopular, but not an enemy 
  of the wererats, the warehouse is rundown within and clearly 
  understocked for the size of the yard. It contains no timber 
  at all. A low iron gate, which is never locked, opens into the 
  yard. The Blackleg, the pair’s ship, moors just outside the 
  warehouse. The pair have a large but emaciated guard dog loose in the 
  yard; it is very hungry and aggressive, and attacks anyone who tries to 
  enter the yard without one of the pair present. Killing the dog lowers the 
  pair’s attitude toward strangers by one category. 
  Guard Dog: AC 12; HP 5 (1d8+1); Spd 40ft; Melee bite (+3, 
  1d6+1 piercing and DC 11 Str save or knocked prone); Str +1, 
  Dex +2, Con +1, Int –4, Wis +1, Cha –2; Skills Perception +3; 
  Traits keen hearing and smell; AL un; CR 1/8; XP 25.
  Development: The coal merchants are dupes in the plot and desperate 
  enough to appear secretive. John Sallow (N human male commoner) is a 
  tall, sturdy man whose usual attire is coal dust. His son Jacob (N human 
  male commoner) is quick-tempered. Getting any kind of information out 
  of the coal merchants is not easy. They have been sworn to secrecy, and 
  John knows that without his regular order from his “friends at the Great 
  Windmill,” he will go out of business and be at the mercy of his ruthless 
  creditors and the bankruptcy courts — and he is not sure which is worse. 
  While the men are civil, their initial attitude is unfriendly. If the PCs can 
  come up with a clever ruse (such as posing as a friend of the Organ Grinder 
  and insisting on accompanying the latest shipment), force the information 
  out of the pair, or explain what they’re involved in as an appeal to their 
  better natures, they can be made to reluctantly talk. 
  If convinced to talk, John and Jacob reveal that they have been delivering 
  coal and timber for months to one of the great windmills and acquiesce to 
  take the PCs in their coal barge with tomorrow’s delivery. They can give a 
  description of their employer, the Artificer (see E2), and relate that she has 
  told them she is “engaged upon an arcane experimentation” that requires a 
  constant supply of tinder. Jacob has caught a brief glimpse of the crucible 
  and can give them a very basic description of the crucible itself, swearing 
  by the all saints that he thought the device was alive, sure that he heard 
  deep roars from within.
  Thick iron plates on the Blackleg’s hull reinforce the merchant’s 
  vessel to enable the pair to safely draw their barge up to the 
  windmill and make deliveries without their ship being smashed 
  by the rocks. 
  
  39
  The Crucible
  If the PCs gather information about the Great Windmills, use the 
  information in the sidebox. No information is available on the Artificer, 
  however, as she has done well in keeping her identity and activities secret. 
  The Great Windmill is a vast building that stands in the mouth of the 
  Great Lyme River on a squat manmade island located in the estuary of the 
  river, approximately 4 miles from Festival and shown on the location map. 
  The isle is little wider than the windmill itself, with a short timber jetty 
  allowing access by boat. 
  Built of heavy timbers soaked in oil to prevent rot, the mill is 100 feet 
  tall and 30 feet wide with a stout wooden door at its base. A steeply conical 
  roof of slate tiles rise 25 feet farther. The walls are easy to climb with a DC 
  12 Str (Athletics) check. The roof has been coated with grease to keep out 
  rainwater, so a DC 17 Str (Athletics) check is needed to move across it. 
  The central floors of the structure have been removed to accommodate 
  the lesser searing crucible, leaving only stubby balconies connected by 
  ladders tied to them with wire. The entire place is unpleasantly hot.
  Chapter Six:
  The Great Windmill
  Rumours about the  
  Great Windmills
  • “You can see ’em from most eastern parts of the city — vast 
  places built on manmade islands in the river. Many of ’em 
  have burnt down, or been blown over, or fallen, but there 
  must be a good score of ’em left.”
  • “Most were built about seventy years ago. The mills were 
  supposed to replace water power for the millers. Course, 
  most of the bigger millers use accursed fleshgines and foul 
  treadmills now so they became obsolete. They milled their 
  last flour over forty years ago, I’d guess.”
  • “D…d…dangerous places! One exploded. Exploded! They 
  say the hot machinery ignited the flour dust and the place just 
  blew!”
  • “One of the main reasons for their demise was how awkward 
  it was to land at ’em. Now, o’ course, they’re places best 
  avoided: pirates, smugglers, briny-boys, golem-stitchers, 
  and even sea-devils are rumored to populate ’em. Hah, one 
  of the things that made ’em so awkward is now one of their 
  strengths! Handy bases for keeping outta sight if ya wanna do 
  unseen things …”
  
  40
  The Blight: Richard Pett's Crooked City
  Reaching the  
  Great Windmill
  The estuary is a tricky place to navigate at times, as the Canker springs 
  up and curious — but still hazardous — sandbanks form. Some even say 
  sea devils or skum deliberately form the sandbanks to trap vessels when 
  the Canker is at her deepest. If the PCs are travelling by their own means, 
  you could make this part of the adventure as tricky or easy as you wish. 
  As written, the PCs either go with the coal merchants or under the own 
  methods, and since these could vary considerably, the approach is left 
  open for you to consider.
  When the PCs draw within 200 yards of the Great Windmill, read or 
  paraphrase the following description:
  A vast dark shape looms from the water; like some primal 
  dragon or kraken, it is monstrous and brooding. Its great sails 
  hang ossified on her seaward side, barely moving in the wind. 
  Whilst its flanks soar into the sky to nearly 130 feet, its feet 
  grip the stone upon which it is built almost in desperation. 
  This structure has a tiny footprint and virtually suffocates the 
  rock upon which it perches. A low jetty seems to be the only 
  landing point on this strange outpost, yet even this looks a 
  tricky proposition as the tide is rough and the rocks about it 
  are jagged. 
  As the PCs draw even closer to the island, the water around the island 
  seems more populated than expected with dark shapes that swim below. 
  The Artificer and her gargoyle accomplices, eager to ensure that unwanted 
  visitors are kept away, have been chumming the water to draw predators.
  E1. Jetty
  A low timber jetty with a single moored jolly boat extends out 
  from the foot of a vast towering edifice of great timber beams, 
  which squats like a cuckoo in an inadequate nest. The jetty sits 
  atop razorlike rocks. This great windmill almost appears to be 
  dipping its toes into the waters and, by the look of the salt scars 
  around its base, the place is frequently inundated by storms.
  The rocks, like many forming isles hereabouts, are indeed razor sharp 
  and dangerous to vessels. Getting close enough to reach the jetty without 
  bashing the hull against rocks requires a successful DC 12 Int check by 
  the boat’s pilot or tillerman; if the check fails twice before it succeeds, a 
  small boat is knocked to pieces and sinks. Moving from a small boat onto 
  the jetty requires a successful DC 12 Str (Athletics) or Dex (Acrobatics) 
  check. These checks can be aided by others in the boat or on the jetty. 
  Failure means the character falls into the water and immediately learns 
  the true nature of the dark shapes swimming beneath the choppy surface. 
  Even if all the PCs safely disembark, they still are left with the problem 
  of what to do with their vessel. If they allow it to drift, it soon gets dragged 
  away by the strong currents. If they leave it moored, it is soon wrecked 
  by being repeatedly ground against the rocks. If the PCs arrive aboard the 
  Blackleg, they discover that its reinforced, iron-plated hull foregoes the 
  
  41
  The Crucible
  need for any of the normal checks and can remain lashed to the jetty for 
  hours if need be. In addition, its gangplank also allows access from the 
  boat to the jetty without any sort of check.
  If the PCs examine the outer walls of the Great Windmill, they notice 
  a heavy metal flue emerging from the roof and rising 30 feet above the 
  mill. This flue vents off the crucible’s smoke and is easily visible during 
  daylight hours. It is a modification added recently to the windmill. 
  There’s also a balcony high above. This perch (E4) hangs 100 feet above 
  the ground entrance. The wind sails of the mill are 70 feet long and 25 
  feet wide at their distal ends, and they move with almost imperceptible 
  slowness. PCs who are able to reach them can climb along them with a 
  successful DC 12 Str (Athletics) check to reach their hub at the base of E4. 
  A gargoyle sits on watch, hidden amongst the rocks of the shore 
  (Stealth +17) keeping an eye out for unexpected visitors. It fights if it 
  must, but its job is to alert the Artificer anytime more than three people 
  disembark on the jetty. 
  In addition, the waters around the island are infested with aquatic 
  carnivores, the most dangerous of which are 3 slop-sharks (lyme anglers) 
  that keep the other predators at bay and move quickly to attack anyone 
  they perceive in the water. The slop-sharks are bloated and have an 
  unpleasant crimson hue.
  Gargoyle: AC 15; HP 52 (7d8+21); Spd 30ft, fly 60ft; Melee 
  bite (+4, 1d6+2 piercing), claws (+4, 1d6+2 slashing); SA 
  multiattack (bite + claw); Resist nonmagical weapons that 
  aren’t adamantine; Immune poison, exhaustion, petrified; Str 
  +2, Dex +0, Con +3, Int –2, Wis +0, Cha –2; Senses darkvision 
  60ft; Traits false appearance (while motionless, is indistin-
  guishable from a statue); AL CE; CR 2; XP 450.
  Lyme Angler (3): AC 12; HP 51 (6d10+18); Spd 0ft, swim 30ft; 
  Melee bite (+6, 2d4+4 piercing plus DC 13 Con save or con-
  tract brine misery); Str +4, Dex +1, Con +3, Int –5, Wis +0, Cha 
  –5; Immune prone; Senses darkvision 30ft; Traits brine misery 
  (gain 1 level of exhaustion; only curable by magic), lantern 
  lure (15ft; DC 13 Wis save or charmed by lyme angler; re-
  peat save at end of turn to end effect; success gives immu-
  nity to all lantern lures for 24 hours); AL N; CR 3; XP 700.
  E2. Main Chamber
  The interior of the great windmill has been stripped of 
  furnishings and floors to accommodate a singular construction 
  — a cyst of iron, a vast metal cocoon that gives off a nimbus of 
  heat and the smell of hot iron — which dominates the space. 
  This cyclopean object is suspended from great timber beams 
  high above by a single iron chain and has heavy doors sealed 
  at its base, where it hangs just above the floor. Several large 
  scars and dents mar the iron plating of the construction as 
  if something powerful within had tried to escape in the past. 
  Piles of coal and several wheelbarrows lie nearby, ready to 
  feed the inferno within. What were once the upper floors of 
  the mill are now little more than a single balcony connected 
  by a rickety ladder. Most disturbing of all though is the noise 
  — the steady hateful roar of something within the object itself.
  This entire area is sweltering from the proximity of the crucible. Anyone 
  unprotected from severe heat who enters the building immediately begins 
  sweating and must make a Constitution saving throw every 10 minutes. 
  The DC begins at 10 but increases by 1 for every previous check. Each 
  failure results in 1d6 fire damage; failing by 5 or more results in 1d6 fire 
  damage and one level of exhaustion. Characters with resistance to fire 
  damage have tactical advantage on the saving throws. If a character goes 
  unconscious in here, he takes 1d4 fire damage every 10 minutes. The 
  occupants of the room have grown acclimated to these effects.
  The coal piles are used to feed the elemental within the crucible. Lying 
  amongst them is a heavy cloth the gargoyles use to open the door levers to 
  
  42
  The Blight: Richard Pett's Crooked City
  ensure they do not take damage while doing so (see E3 below). The ladder 
  is safe, and the floor above creaks but is solid enough. The mechanism that 
  holds the mill’s great sails is a rusting mass of iron 60 feet above the floor.
  The Artificer spends her every waking hour attending the thing she has 
  created, and is now nurturing it with the intention of drawing off a large 
  number of ragefire spawn. With these, she intends to attack shipping far 
  out to sea where there will be no witnesses and no way for her elementals 
  to escape after the carnage. She is helped in her task by a quasit thrall and 
  a small wing of 3 gargoyles that fear and respect her ever since she killed 
  their four-armed patriarch and fed several more dissenters to the crucible. 
  While most of the remaining gargoyles are now loyal to the Artificer, they 
  are petty, treacherous and vindictive creatures and remain ready to exploit 
  any perceived weakness. One in particular, the old matriarch, is waiting 
  for an opportunity that the PCs are likely to create.
  The Artificer is busy tending her beloved elemental; however, it is 
  getting angrier and angrier. She’s managed to quell it over the last few 
  days with her cone of cold, but knows the thing wants to escape. The outer 
  shell of the crucible is already scored with unnaturally large punch marks 
  from within. Unfortunately, the gargoyles, sick of the beatings they get 
  and extremely amused by what may happen if the thing within is freed, 
  have already plotted to help it (see “Tactics” below for more details). 
  The Artificer is obsessive about her prisoner, and knows it is her way to 
  fortune and power. She’ll never give it up.
  When first seen, the Artificer is almost shocking in her near nakedness. 
  She’s lithe and oily and dirty, and has grown accustomed to working in 
  the intense heat of the windmill. She wears hefty boots and a cloak that 
  barely covers her body. A leather belt from which dangle a few pouches 
  and tools hangs at her waist.
  The Artificer uses the standard stat block of an archmage but with an 
  altered spell list, as indicated below. Suffer is her quasit familiar; Grieve 
  is her quasit thrall. She carries a ragefire spawn in a stoppered glass vial.
  The Artificer (Archmage): AC 12 (15 with mage armor); HP 
  99 (18d8+18); Spd 30ft; Melee dagger (+6, 1d4+2 piercing); 
  Ranged dagger (+6, 20ft/60ft, 1d4+2 piercing); SA spellcast-
  ing; Resist damage from spells, nonmagical weapons (from 
  stoneskin); Str +0, Dex +2, Con +1, Int +5, Wis +2, Cha +3; Sav-
  ing Throws Int +9, Wis +6; Skills Arcana +13, History +13; Traits 
  magic resistance (tactical advantage on saves against 
  magic); AL any; CR 12; XP 8,400.
  Spellcasting (+9, save DC 17): 0 (at will)—fire bolt, light, 
  mage hand, ray of frost, shocking grasp; 1 (4)—color 
  spray, mage armor, magic missile, shield; 2 (3)—mirror 
  image, misty step, see invisibility; 3 (3)—counterspell, 
  fly, slow; 4 (3)—fire shield, greater invisibility, stoneskin; 5 
  (3)—cloudkill, cone of cold, scrying; 6 (1)—disintegrate; 
  7 (1)—teleport; 8 (1)—mind blank; 9 (1)—time stop.
  Suffer and Grieve (Quasits): AC 13; HP 7 (3d4); Spd 40ft; Melee 
  claws or bite (+4, 1d4+3 piercing and DC 10 Con save or 2d4 
  poison damage and poisoned for 1 minute; poisoned crea-
  ture repeats save at end of turn to end effect); SA scare (1/
  Fire and Water
  Fire
  Fires ignited by fire elementals or ragefire elementals can spread. 
  Each round at initiative count 10, fires spread to one adjacent 5-foot 
  square for every two squares that are already burning, rounded down 
  (for example, a fire of four 5-foot squares ignites two more, a fire of 
  seven 5-foot squares ignites three more, and so on). A fire burning in 
  only a single 5-foot square has a 50% chance per round of spreading 
  and becoming a two-square fire. 
  Whenever a PC moves into a square that is on fire or starts her turn 
  in a square that is on fire, she must succeed at a DC 10 Dex saving 
  throw or catch fire, taking 1d6 fire damage every time she starts her 
  turn still aflame. Burning clothing can be extinguished with an action 
  and a successful DC 10 Dex check. 
  If half or more of the squares in an area are on fire, at the GM’s 
  discretion, the smoke may become too thick to breathe without effort; 
  characters must make a DC 15 Con save at the beginning of their 
  turn each round or be incapacitated until the start of their next turn 
  by choking and coughing. A character who chokes for 2 consecutive 
  rounds takes 1d6 poison damage.
  A PC can extinguish a 5-foot square of fire with a successful DC 
  15 Str (Athletics) check, provided they have water, rugs, blankets, or 
  something else available to douse or smother the flames. Area-effect 
  spells that do cold damage can also put out fires if the caster makes a 
  successful DC 15 spellcasting check. Encourage players to come up 
  with creative ways of extinguishing flames.
  If fires grow too large, the burning debris creates thick black 
  smoke that pours into the sky above Castorhage, and a fire brigade 
  eventually arrives, followed by one or more units of the City Watch. 
  PCs emerging from burning areas after the authorities have arrived 
  may be detained and have some explaining to do.
  Water
  As the plot of The Crucible so heavily involves fire and burning, 
  the results of using certain spells are summarized below.
  • Conjure Barrage: Tossing something like a bucket of water or a 
  waterskin into the air and turning it into a barrage of water isn’t 
  strictly within the spell’s guidelines, but it’s creative enough that 
  you should consider allowing it if characters propose it. This could 
  extinguish one 5-foot square of flames for every 5 damage done by 
  the spell.
  • Conjure Elemental: A water elemental is a born firefighter, until 
  fire damage kills it. It can extinguish three 5-foot squares of flame 
  per turn. 
  • Control Water: Flooding a burning area with river water is an 
  excellent way to put out fires, but the water in this area might 
  contain other things that aren’t so pleasant, like Lyme anglers. 
  • Control Weather: Torrential rain will extinguish most fires, but the 
  damage will already be done before the rain arrives. 
  • Create Food and Water: 30 gallons of water in buckets can put out 
  four 5-foot squares of raging fire, if there are people nearby to toss 
  it onto the flames.
  • Create or Destroy Water: Extinguishes a 30-foot-square area (36 
  5-foot squares) of fire. 
  • Gust of Wind: This spell blows out candles and torches, but it’s too 
  weak to have any effect on a raging fire. 
  • Ice Storm: Dumps enough water into a 20-foot radius to extinguish 
  most fires. 
  • Move Earth: This spell isn’t terribly useful for extinguishing fires 
  unless characters get really creative, but it offeres an effective way 
  to prevent fires from spreading. 
  • Ray of Frost: This won’t put out a large fire, but a character can 
  keep a fire from spreading into a specific 5-foot square by using an 
  action to launch this cantrip at every spot where flames appear to 
  be taking hold. 
  • Sleet Storm: Puts out the fire in a 40-foot radius. 
  • Wall of Ice, Wall of Stone, Wind Wall: These aren’t very good at 
  putting out flames but they form excellent fireblocks to keep the 
  damage away from specific structures or areas. 
  
  43
  The Crucible
  day; 20ft; one creature; DC 10 Wis save or frightened of qu-
  asit for 1 minute; frightened creature repeats save at end of 
  turn to end effect), invisibility (turns invisible as an action until 
  attacks or uses scare); Resist cold, fire, lightning, nonmagical 
  weapons; Immune poison; Str –3, Dex +3, Con +0, Int –2, Wis 
  +0, Cha +0; Skills Stealth +5; Senses darkvision 120ft; Traits 
  shapechanger (can use action to polymorph into bat, cen-
  tipede, or toad), magic resistance (tactical advantage on 
  saves against magic); AL CE; CR 1; XP 100.
  Gargoyle (3): AC 15; HP 52 (7d8+21); Spd 30ft, fly 60ft; Melee 
  bite (+4, 1d6+2 piercing), claws (+4, 1d6+2 slashing); SA 
  multiattack (bite + claw); Resist nonmagical weapons that 
  aren’t adamantine; Immune poison, exhaustion, petrified; Str 
  +2, Dex +0, Con +3, Int –2, Wis +0, Cha –2; Senses darkvision 
  60ft; Traits false appearance (while motionless, is indistin-
  guishable from a statue); AL CE; CR 2; XP 450.
  Ragefire Spawn: AC 13; HP 33 (6d4+18); Spd 50ft; Melee 
  touch (+3, 1d4+3 fire and flammable object ignites; burn-
  ing object takes 1d4 fire at the start of its turns until extin-
  guished); SA multiattack (touch ×2); Str +0, Dex +3, Con +3, 
  Int –2, Wis +0, Cha –2; Resist nonmagical weapons; Immune 
  exhaustion, fire, grapple, paralysis, petrified, poison, prone, 
  restraint, unconsciousness; Senses darkvision 60ft; Traits fire 
  form (adjacent creature that hits ragefire spawn with melee 
  attack takes 1d4 fire; elemental can enter creature’s space 
  and stop, causing 1d4 fire and igniting flammable material; 
  burning creature takes 1d4 fire at start of its turn until extin-
  guished), illumination (sheds bright light to 30ft and dim light 
  to 60ft), intensify (incinerates humanoid corpse in its space 
  as an action to regain 5 hp and become Small ragefire el-
  emental), water susceptibility (takes 1 cold damage per 5ft 
  moved in water or per gallon of water thrown on it); AL N; 
  CR 1; XP 200.
  Tactics: Each of the gargoyles (including the one attending the bellows 
  at E3) agrees that it would be highly amusing to see the elemental in 
  action. They know how to fully open the crucible, and the arrival of any 
  sword- and spell-wielding foes grants them cover to see their plan to 
  fruition. One (or all) of them move toward the main opening lever and 
  pull it, releasing the ragefire elemental (see E3 below) and then scatter to 
  watch the ensuing chaos. They regroup at the Perch (E4) to watch. They 
  leave this position only if attacked, in which case they attack as a quartet, 
  fleeing if any one of their group is slain.
  Treasure: The Artificer’s gear is scattered across the chamber. A DC 
  15 Wis (Perception) check spots her formulae book. An unlocked iron 
  chest contains 2,500 gp and copies of various shipping ledgers that 
  detail voyages that the Company of Honorable Seamen are due to make 
  in the next two months. Three of these voyages are circled, with the 
  words “spice,” “silk,” and “brandy” scribbled beside them, and the word 
  “valuable” written and underlined beside them. These are the first ships 
  the Artificer plans to attack and rob as soon as they sail.  
  E3. The Crucible
  A vast construct of riveted iron plates fills the interior of the 
  windmill like a great metal child inside its womb. A great chain 
  holds it to the beams high above, while below it is so close to 
  the ground it can barely be crawled under. At the base, three 
  5-foot-wide doors are shut fast, levers at their sides, while a 
  curious brass tap protrudes just below. To one side, a set of 
  bellows can be pumped to keep the fires within roaring. The 
  entire contraption gives off an intense heat, while something 
  inside growls angrily.
  This vast construction is a lesser searing crucible (see Appendix B). 
  A furnace lies within the base of the crucible; the three iron doors allow 
  access, only one of which can be open at a time. Two doors are used to 
  feed the furnace, and the third is used to open the crucible and feed its 
  prisoner. Iron valves permit fumes to escape but keep the creature trapped 
  within. The tap is used to draw off essences of the ragefire as ragefire 
  spawn according to a procedure known by the Artificer. The iron chain at 
  its top is 6 inches thick: AC 19, HP 100, immune to poison, psychic, and 
  radiant damage; can be broken with a successful DC 30 Str (Athletics) 
  check. The beams from which it hangs are 2 feet thick (AC 15, HP 200, 
  immune to poison, psychic, and radiant damage; can be broken with a 
  successful DC 30 Str (Athletics) check. The hit point tallies for the beam 
  and the chain indicate the point where they’re sufficiently weakened for 
  the weight of the crucible to snap them, not the point where they’re cut 
  through. If the chain or beams are broken, the furnace falls and ruptures, 
  allowing the elemental to escape and filling the ground floor with burning 
  coals to a depth of 5 feet; anyone who ends their turn in the coals takes 
  10d6 fire damage. The coals burn for another hour unless extinguished, 
  and also set the building on fire (see the Fire and Water sidebox above). 
  The gargoyle matriarch attends the bellows that power the furnace 
  and feeds it fuel. This gargoyle, Shlarch, is drenched in sweat and filth. 
  She is the old matriarch of the wing who still burns with anger at the 
  Artificer for slaying her mate. Shlarch has been working the crucible for 
  the Artificer, observing, biding her time and plotting with her gargoyle 
  followers. Not only has she overheard and memorized the command 
  word to make the tap work, but she has also overheard the Artificer 
  describing some of the functions of the crucible to the Organ Grinder, 
  including how the bound creature can be released. When the PCs enter 
  the mill and confront the Artificer, Shlarch realizes that her opportunity 
  has come. Anyone touching the metal shell of the crucible or one of the 
  levers takes 2d6 fire damage unless they are protected (for example, by 
  using the cloth lying in the coal heap in E2). Anyone in the crucible at 
  the end of their turn takes 10d6 fire damage.
  Schlarch (Four-Armed Gargoyle): AC 15; HP 55 (10d8+10); 
  Spd 30ft, fly 60ft; Melee bite (+4, 1d8+2 piercing), claws (+4, 
  2d8+2 slashing), gore (+4, 1d8+2 piercing); SA multiattack 
  (bite+claws+claws+gore); Str +2, Dex +2, Con +1, Int –2, Wis 
  +0, Cha –2; Resist nonmagical weapons that aren’t ada-
  mantine; Immune exhaustion, petrification, poison; Senses 
  darkvision 60ft, tremorsense 60ft; Traits stony appearance 
  (indistinguishable from stone while motionless); AL CE; CR 4; 
  XP 1,100.
  Development: When combat starts in the room, a gargoyle opens the tap 
  to release the elemental. The ragefire elemental starts pouring out through 
  the doors at the base of the crucible like liquid flame and pools beneath. 
  At this stage, a character can try to close the tap. This takes an action and 
  a successful DC 12 Str check, and the character takes 6d6 fire damage 
  and provokes opportunity attacks from nearby gargoyles. If the elemental 
  keeps flowing out for 3 rounds, the Huge ragefire elemental emerges from 
  the pool and joins the fray (see Event 4 below). When this occurs, the 
  gargoyles retreat from the fight to watch with glee what happens.
  E4. The Perch
  A larger fragment of the windmill’s flooring stands virtually 
  intact near the roof. Through a hole in the floor can be seen 
  the beams supporting the great behemoth in the room below. 
  The shimmer of super-heated air rises up through this hole 
  and makes this room uncomfortably warm.
  This room is severely hot, as described above. A narrow balcony has 
  been made by the gargoyles to allow their frequent raids into the city 
  to collect carrion, steal trophies to line their lair, abduct beggars and 
  vagabonds to feed on, or to find insects and small birds and mammals to 
  slowly pull apart.
  Treasure: The gargoyles have kept various objects from victims fed 
  into the furnace, including a scorched wooden clog; a silver monocle set 
  with carved swans and angels that functions as a gem of seeing; a glove-
  
  44
  The Blight: Richard Pett's Crooked City
  puppet two-headed crow bearing a minor illusion that occasionally shouts 
  out cuss-words for no discernible reason; a silver stirrup cup shaped like a 
  fox eating a dove worth 500 gp; a large bloody and soot-damaged smock; 
  a desiccated human hand; and a fine pinafore dress set with obsidians 
  worth 200 gp but stained with blood (the value increases to 400 gp if 
  properly cleaned and restored). 
  Event 4: The Ragefire Freed
  As the ragefire elemental has fed, it has grown and with this increase 
  in size has come an increase in its cunning. It wants nothing less than to 
  destroy its prison, kill the Artificer, and wreak havoc. It is about to get its 
  chance …
  Huge Ragefire Elemental: AC 13; HP 123 (13d12+39); Spd 
  50ft; Melee touch (+7, 3d10+3 fire and flammable object 
  ignites; burning object takes 1d12 fire damage at the start 
  of its turns until extinguished); SA multiattack (touch ×2), 
  spawn ragefire (incinerates humanoid corpse in its space 
  and creates a ragefire spawn within 5ft); Str +0, Dex +3, Con 
  +3, Int –2, Wis +0, Cha –2; Immune exhaustion, fire, grapple, 
  paralysis, petrified, poison, prone, restraint, unconscious; Re-
  sist nonmagical weapons; Senses darkvision 60ft; Traits fire 
  form (adjacent creature that hits elemental with melee at-
  tack takes 1d12 fire; elemental can enter creature’s space 
  and stop, causing 1d12 fire and igniting flammable material; 
  burning creature takes 1d12 fire at start of its turn until extin-
  guished), illumination (sheds bright light to 30ft and dim light 
  to 60ft), water susceptibility (takes 1 cold damage per 5ft 
  moved in water or per gallon of water thrown on it); AL N; 
  CR 8; XP 3,900.
  At least at first, the ragefire elemental is only interested in revenge. 
  First it focuses on killing the Artificer, then on destroying the crucible by 
  breaking its chain and causing it to fall and rupture (see E2 above). Only 
  then does it bother killing anything else and setting the windmill aflame. 
  If it has the time and opportunity, it creates spawn from any humanoid it 
  kills. But mostly it wants to get revenge and escape. If it starts its turn with 
  fewer than 40 hit points, it flees.
  The walls, ladders, upper floors, and structural beams of the structure 
  are all made of wood that is baked dry and very ready to burn. Any interior 
  surface that is adjacent to an elemental catches fire. Refer to the Fire and 
  Water sidebox for rules on determining the speed with which the fire 
  spreads, and the table below for the cumulative effect of the expanding 
  fire in the windmill.
  Squares 
  Affected
  Effect
  1–10
  No additional effects beyond intense heat, 
  but interior spaces are becoming noticeably 
  smoke-filled.
  11–20
  Smoke limits visibility to no more than 20 feet. 
  All ranged attacks are made with tactical dis-
  advantage.
  21–30
  Over half the building is now on fire, and the 
  smoke has become too thick to breathe with-
  out effort. A character that starts his or her turn 
  inside the windmill must make a successful DC 
  10 Con saving throw or be incapacitated by 
  choking and coughing until the start of their 
  next turn; the DC increases by 1 with each 
  successive saving throw. A character who 
  chokes for 2 consecutive rounds takes 1d6 poi-
  son damage.
  31–40 
  Most of the building is now aflame; everyone 
  takes 1d6 fire damage plus 1d6 poison dam-
  age per round from breathing the searing, 
  choking, ember-filled air (no saving throw), 
  and must continue making Con saving throws 
  to avoid incapacitation.
  41+
  The building is completely engulfed in fire, and 
  everyone who’s anywhere inside must make 
  a successful DC 15 Dex saving throw at the 
  start of their turn to avoid gouting flames and 
  falling debris. If the saving throw fails, the char-
  acter takes 1d10 bludgeoning damage and 
  catches fire (1d10 fire damage at the start of 
  their turn until extinguished). This is in addition 
  to the ongoing Con saving throws to avoid 
  incapacitation. After 15 minutes of burning 
  at this intensity, the roof of the great windmill 
  collapses, bringing down the entire structure. 
  Characters who are anywhere on the island 
  when this occurs are in the bury zone and 
  take 4d6 bludgeoning damage plus 8d6 fire 
  damage; a successful DC 15 Dex saving throw 
  halves both damages. The Artificer dies in the 
  collapse, if not before.
  Development: Once the windmill collapses, and the Artificer is dead, 
  the ragefire elemental seeks to escape the island. If Mean’s Mob are 
  waiting (see Event 5 below), they flee from the elemental rather than 
  engage it. If the elemental is not fleeing, it attempts to kill them. Ten 
  minutes into combat, a caravel (the Filthy Drake) approaches the isle’s 
  jetty, eager to help save anyone from the fire. The ship comes to within 25 
  feet of the isle in this case. The elemental leaps onto the ship, killing any 
  
  45
  The Crucible
  crew who don’t immediately leap overboard (the slop-sharks rapidly take 
  care of them), and the burning ship drifts toward the city. If the elemental 
  is not destroyed, in 20 minutes the burning caravel draws close enough 
  to shore for the elemental to leap onto the city docks. A large fire then 
  breaks out in the city as the elemental kills everyone in sight. If it is not 
  destroyed swiftly, the number of lives it may claim could transform it into 
  a gargantuan ragefire elemental. These developments are dealt with in the 
  Conclusion below.
  Event 5: An Unexpected Complication
  If Uriah Mean was able to have the party followed (see Chapter 3), 
  5 minutes after the PCs reach the island, Mean’s Mob arrives on the 
  jetty behind them. They scuttle any other boats at the jetty with heavy 
  spikes driven through the hull and, if a fight has already started within the 
  windmill, wait outside to deal with the victor and take the spoils. If a fight 
  has not yet broken out, they enter the windmill and start one. They flee to 
  the jetty if the windmill catches fire and depart entirely on their boat if it 
  becomes fully engulfed in flame and in danger of collapse.
  Mean’s Mob
  Uriah Mean keeps strange company, and has particular associates 
  within the lower echelons of the Family. He is particularly close to the 
  Krabs, a quartet of wererats of the little-known Pensil Fair. The Krabs 
  are, in turn, close friends with Mister Mackerel, an oni who wanders the 
  town polymorphed as a tall fisherman who wears a long waxed coat.
  Mister Mackerel (Oni): AC 16; HP 110 (13d10+39); Spd 30ft, fly 
  30ft; Melee claw (oni form only; +7, 1d8+4 slashing), glaive 
  (+7, 10ft, 2d10+4 slashing if Large, or 1d10+4 slashing if Small 
  or Medium); SA multiattack (melee ×2), change shape 
  (polymorphs into S or M humanoid, L giant, or true form), 
  innate spellcasting; Str +4, Dex +0, Con +3, Int +2, Wis +1, 
  Cha +2; Saving Throws Dex +3, Con +6, Wis +4, Cha +5; Skills 
  Arcana +5, Deception +8, Perception +4; Senses darkvision 
  60ft; Traits magic weapons (attacks are magical), regenera-
  tion (regains 10 HP at start of turn if has at least 1 HP); AL LE; 
  CR 7; XP 2,900.
  Innate Spellcasting (save DC 13): at will—darkness, 
  invisibility; 1/day each—charm person, cone of cold, 
  gaseous form, sleep.
  Krabs (4, Wererats): AC 12; HP 33 (6d8+6); Spd 30ft; Melee 
  bite (rat or hybrid form only; +4, 1d4+2 piercing and human-
  oid must make DC 11 Con save or be cursed with lycanthro-
  py), shortsword (humanoid or hybrid form only; +4, 1d6+2 
  piercing); Ranged hand crossbow (humanoid or hybrid form 
  only; +4, 30ft/120ft, 1d6+2 piercing); Immune nonmagical, 
  nonsilvered weapons; Str +0, Dex +2, Con +1, Int +0, Wis +0, 
  Cha –1; Skills Perception +2, Stealth +4; Senses darkvision 
  60ft (rat form only); Traits keen smell, shapechanger (can 
  use an action to switch between humanoid, rat, and rat-hu-
  manoid hybrid forms); AL LE; CR 2; XP 450.
  Tactics: Mackerel leads the group with invisibility, attempting to assess 
  the situation, and flies back to report and plan the best ambush. He tries 
  to charm any particularly tough fighters to step out of the way before 
  melee. The Krabs attack as a group, attempting to shift combat quickly 
  by overpowering single opponents and tumbling into position to try to 
  gain advantage from the flanks. If reduced below 25 hp, Mister Mackerel 
  attempts to flee via darkness, invisibility, or gasous form. No heroes, a 
  Krab flees if reduced to 10 hp; if two flee, so do the rest.
  Development: If Mister Mackerel escapes, he may ask his oldest 
  friend, the Bilge Prince (see Conclusion), to help him exact his revenge.
  Conclusion
  Destroying the ragefire elemental and the Artificer ends this adventure. 
  However, the PCs may still need to make a quick escape from the burning 
  isle, and may be glad of help from the Filthy Drake, which approaches the 
  isle if it sees flames. PCs offering up the notes from among the Artificer’s 
  possession to the Company of Honorable Seamen receive a 500 gp reward 
  and may open up future opportunities for adventure with the Company. 
  If anyone from Mean’s Mob escapes, consider that they return to their 
  master and, if Mean is still around, he becomes an enemy for the PCs. 
  Mean is a nasty person to cross, but never likes to openly fight if he can 
  avoid it. He’ll send the occasional trouble the PCs’ way by means of his 
  shady connections.
  If the ragefire elemental escapes into the city, a great fire sweeps 
  through the East Ending, a poor district of the city. Many people are killed 
  in the 2 days of fire that grips the district. If the PCs do not seek it out and 
  slay it, the elemental escapes into the Underneath where, having advanced 
  to be a greater ragefire elemental, it hunts the denizens therein to try to 
  raise a brood of ragefire spawn with which to launch another attack. The 
  PCs should hear about this and must decide if they are willing to brave 
  the depths of the terrible Underneath to track it and kill it lest it unleash 
  another terrifying inferno on the citizens of the Blight. If they do not, 
  sooner or later a family of dwarves from Choketown (area U9), who suffer 
  greatly before finally vanquishing the creature, trace back what happened. 
  Elder Bartholomew Rothgrorr Haggrudd Formel Choke instructs 
  a party of dwarves to track down those responsible. The PCs soon find 
  themselves hunted by dwarves eager to place blame for their woes. How 
  this develops is left to the GM.
  Word of the PCs’ exploits eventually reaches the ears of the affable 
  Quentin Ruben Sollerman Hubbard, KC* (N human male warlord) 
  who has need of associates to gather obscure items from across the known 
  world (see area F21). He offers the PCs a chance to join him on a voyage 
  of discovery into the Unsea, an aspect of Between he is desperate to fish 
  and explore. The pay should be high enough to tempt the PCs. How that 
  adventure develops is left to the GM.
  * Knight of the City, a minor and obscure noble title of Castorhage
  Finally, if Mister Mackeral survives, he may have informed his friend 
  the Bilge Prince of their actions, at the GM’s discretion. If so, the Bilge 
  Prince takes umbrage at the assault upon his boon companion and seeks 
  vengeance upon the PCs at some inopportune time when they are on or 
  near the water. The Bilge Prince is a four-armed sahuagin baron and can 
  be used as a long-term adversary of the PCs if you choose.
  
  46
  The Blight: Richard Pett's Crooked City
  Elemental, Ragefire
  The rage and hatred that emanate with the white-hot heat 
  from this demonic fire are palpable.
  The ragefire elemental is a type of fire elemental 
  that grows as it consumes fuel. All ragefire elementals 
  start out as Tiny sparks, called ragefire spawn. As they 
  burn their way through their surroundings, they steadily 
  increase in size until they become gargantuan infernos. 
  Every size of ragefire elemental has stats identical to a 
  standard fire elemental, except as noted on the table below. 
  The table lists the hit points, melee attack bonus, melee damage, 
  ongoing damage to flammable objects (“Burn”), and challenge 
  rating of every size of ragefire elemental. Burn damage also 
  applies as the damage done by the elemental’s Fire Form ability. 
  Ragefire Elementals
  Size
  HP
  Attack
  Damage
  Burn
  CR
  Tiny
  33
  +3
  1d4+3
  1d4
  1
  Small
  52
  +4
  1d6+3
  1d6
  2
  Medium
  75
  +5
  1d10+3
  1d8
  3
  Large
  102
  +6
  2d6+3
  1d10
  5
  Huge
  123
  +7
  3d10+3
  1d12
  8
  Gargantuan
  189
  +8
  4d10+3
  1d20
  11
  Besides the differences noted above, Tiny through Large ragefire 
  elementals also have the following traits.
  Intensify: As an action, a Tiny, Small, Medium, or Large ragefire 
  elemental incinerates the corpse of a humanoid it killed within the last 
  minute and whose space the elemental occupies. The elemental heals 5 hit 
  points and, if it is Tiny, it becomes a Small ragefire elemental with full hit 
  points minus its current amount of damage. Likewise, a Small, Medium, 
  or Large ragefire elemental grows to the next size after incinerating a 
  number of humanoid corpses equal to its current challenge rating.
  Huge and Gargantuan ragefire elementals don’t have the Intensify trait. 
  Instead, they have the Spawn Ragefire trait.
  Spawn Ragefire: As an action, a Huge or Gargantuan ragefire elemental 
  incinerates the corpse of a humanoid that it killed within the last minute 
  and whose space the elemental occupies. A newly-created ragefire spawn 
  (a Tiny ragefire elemental) appears in an empty space within 5 feet 
  of the spawning elemental.
  Ragefire elementals embody the chaos and evil of their 
  Abyssal heritage, manifesting in demonic forms of living 
  flame, smoke, ash, and cinders. They exist to incinerate life 
  and, in so doing, grow stronger and more destructive.
  A ragefire elemental cannot enter water or any other 
  nonflammable liquid. A body of water is an impassible barrier unless the 
  ragefire elemental can step or jump over it or the water is covered with a 
  layer of something flammable, such as oil.
  Appendix A:
  New Monsters
  
  47
  The Crucible
  Lyme Angler  
  (Slop-Shark)
  This bloated fish has a glowing, fleshy protrusion that extends from the 
  top of its skull and dangles in front of its wide mouth filled with needlelike 
  fangs.
  Lyme Angler
  XP 700 (CR 3)
  N Large beast (aquatic)
  Initiative +1
   
  DEFENSE
  AC 12 (natural armor)
  hp: 51 (6d10 + 18)
  Immunities: prone
   
  OFFENSE
  Speed: 0 ft., swim 30 ft.
  Melee Attack—Bite: +6 to hit (reach 5 
  ft.; one creature). Hit: 2d4 + 4 piercing 
  damage and the creature must 
  make a successful DC 13 Con 
  saving throw or contract brine 
  misery (see below).
   
  STATISTICS
  Str 18 (+4), Dex 13 (+1), 
  Con 16 (+3), Int 1 (–5),  
  Wis 10 (+0), Cha 2 (–5)
  Languages: None
  Senses: Darkvision 30 ft.
   
  TRAITS
  Brine Misery: This infection is 
  an extremely sore, itchy, red 
  inflammation around the site 
  of the lyme angler bite. An infect-
  ed creature gains 1 level of exhaustion 
  immediately. There is no other effect, but 
  the disease can be cured only with a lesser 
  restoration spell or comparable magic.
  Lantern Lure: A bioluminescent lure 
  dangles from the lyme angler’s 
  forehead, giving off dim light within 15 
  feet. Creatures within that distance 
  and able to see the light must make a 
  successful DC 13 Wis saving throw or 
  be charmed by the lyme angler. While 
  charmed this way, an air-breathing 
  creature won’t surface to take a fresh 
  breath of air. A charmed creature 
  repeats the saving throw at the end 
  of its turn, ending the effect on itself 
  with a success. A creature that makes 
  a successful save is immune to all lyme 
  angler lantern lures for 24 hours. 
   
  ECOLOGY
  Environment: Temperate seas
  Organization: School (1-100)
  tAlso known as a slop-shark to those along the River Lyme, the Lyme 
  angler is among the most ferocious of predatory fish in and around that 
  waterway. Lyme anglers have a luminescent organ called a lantern lure 
  at the tip of a modified dorsal ray (or fishing rod). The organ serves not 
  only the purpose of luring prey in the warm, shallow, polluted water of the 
  Lyme, but also serves to call males’ attention to the females to facilitate 
  mating. The source of luminescence in this organ is a symbiotic species 
  of brine shrimp that lives in and along the Lyme and has an affinity for 
  the lantern lure organ of the Lyme angler. Through a complex chemical 
  reaction, the Lyme angler is able to agitate these brine shrimp and cause 
  them to illuminate its lure at will.
  These diseased things of corruption and toxin are common in the Lyme. 
  They have fanged-filled mouths, and their bodies are riddled with sores, 
  infestations, and chemical burns — proof that there are places even they 
  cannot swim safely. One of the most notorious man-eaters of the river, the 
  biggest Lyme anglers can reach lengths of more than 20 feet and weigh 
  up to 5,000 pounds.
  
  48
  The Blight: Richard Pett's Crooked City
  Sough-Eel
  This massive eel, nearly 20 feet long, has pale hide almost translucent 
  like a fish’s belly that is marred by great areas of sloughing flesh that 
  hang loose in rotten folds. It is eyeless, with a row of small black nodules 
  extending back from its snout, and has several small vestigial fins growing 
  sporadically along the length of its body. Its mouth however, is the most 
  noticeable feature, occupying nearly a quarter of its length and splayed 
  wide with a crowd of jagged fangs.
  Sough-Eel
  XP 1,800 (CR 5)
  N Huge beast (aquatic)
  Initiative +0
   
  DEFENSE
  AC 15 (natural armor)
  hp: 142 (15d12 + 45)
  Saving Throws: Dex +3, Con +6
  Immunity: poison damage; blinded, 
  poisoned, prone
   
  OFFENSE
  Speed: 10 ft., swim 30 ft.
  Melee Attack—Bite: +8 to hit (reach 5 ft.; 
  one creature). Hit: 4d12 + 5 piercing dam-
  age. If the attack does 30 or more piercing 
  damage, the creature is also grappled (escape 
  DC 15) and restrained.
  Melee Attack—Gnaw: One 
  creature already grappled by the 
  sough-eel is hit automatically by 
  its bite attack (4d12 + 5 piercing 
  damage) and is attacked by a 
  second set of jaws inside the sough-
  eel’s throat: +8 to hit (one creature 
  already grappled). Hit: 2d12 piercing 
  damage plus 2d10 poison damage, 
  or half poison damage with a successful DC 
  14 Con saving throw, and the creature must make a 
  successful DC 16 Str saving throw or be swallowed (see 
  below).
   
  STATISTICS
  Str 20 (+5), Dex 10 (+0), Con 17 (+3),  
  Int 1 (–5), Wis 10 (+0), Cha 6 (–2)
  Languages: None
  Skills: Perception +3, Stealth +3
  Senses: Blindsight 30 ft.
   
  TRAITS
  Swallow: A swallowed creature 
  is blinded and restrained. It takes 
  1d12 bludgeoning damage plus 
  1d8 acid damage automatically at the 
  start of each of the sough-eel’s turns. Up 
  to two Medium or smaller creatures can be 
  inside the sough-eel at one time. A swallowed 
  creature is unaffected by anything happening 
  outside the sough-eel or by attacks from outside 
  it. A swallowed creature can get out of the 
  sough-eel by using 5 feet of movement, but only 
  after the sough-eel is dead.
   
  ECOLOGY
  Environment: Temperate ocean
  Organization: Solitary or school (4-8)
  These vile predators are found exclusively in the dark, filthy waters of 
  the Great Lyme River and Fetid Sea in the vicinity of the City-State of 
  Castorhage. Some have speculated that they were once a temperate water 
  variety of moray eel that was indigenous to the area until the Lyme was 
  tainted by the noxious effluvia from the metropolis known colloquially 
  as the Blight. Unlike most aquatic species that were unable to survive the 
  poisoning of the waters, the sough-eel population managed to endure the 
  deadly influx but was changed in the process. Immune to most disease and 
  poison, the sough-eels — carriers of their own endemic pathogen — are 
  now affected by it chronically so that their hide is in a constant state of 
  dying and sloughing off in large swaths and layers. This has not seemed to 
  affect their ability to survive in their harsh environment, and every native 
  of the Blight knows better to enter the water of the Lyme for fear of the 
  voracious attacks of the ever-present sough-eels.
  
  49
  The Crucible
  Spider, Gable
  A spider the size of an alley cat scampers up the side of a tenement 
  building. In its mandibles, it drags what appears to be a clothesline, with 
  many of the garments still dangling limply behind.
  Tiny Gable Spider
  XP 50 (CR 1/4)
  N Tiny beast
  Initiative +3
   
  DEFENSE
  AC 13
  hp: 2 (1d4)
  Immunity: psychic damage; charm
   
  OFFENSE
  Speed: 15 ft., climb 15 ft.
  Melee Attack—Bite: +5 to hit (reach 0 ft.; one creature). Hit: 
  2d4 poison damage, or half damage with a successful DC 
  10 Con saving throw.
  Ranged Attack—Sticky Globule (recharge 4-6): +5 to hit 
  (range 10 ft.; one creature). Hit: the creature must make 
  a successful DC 10 Str saving throw or be restrained. A 
  restrained creature repeats the saving throw at the end of 
  its turn, ending the effect on itself with a success.
   
  STATISTICS
  Str 1 (–5), Dex 16 (+3), Con 10 (+0),  
  Int 1 (–5), Wis 6 (–2), Cha 2 (–4)
  Languages: None
  Skills: Perception +0, Stealth +5
  Senses: Darkvision 30 ft., tremorsense in web
   
  TRAITS
  Web Construct: A creature that falls prone, is restrained, 
  or is pushed into a gable spider web construct becomes 
  restrained by the sticky material and can escape by using 
  an action to make a successful DC 10 Str saving throw. 
  A web construct is no more flammable than the material 
  it’s made from, but each 5-foot-square section has AC 8 
  and 5 hit points. A gable spider can move across any web 
  construct without hindrance.
   
  ECOLOGY
  Environment: Urban (the Blight)
  Organization: Solitary, pair, or colony (3-10)
  Small Gable Spider
  XP 100 (CR 1/2)
  N Small beast
  Initiative +3
   
  DEFENSE
  AC 13
  hp: 18 (4d6 + 4)
  Immunity: psychic damage; charm
   
  OFFENSE
  Speed: 20 ft., climb 20 ft.
  Melee Attack—Bite: +5 to hit (reach 0 ft.; one creature). Hit: 
  1d8 + 3 piercing damage plus 2d6 poison damage, or half 
  
  50
  The Blight: Richard Pett's Crooked City
  damage with a successful DC 11 Con saving throw.
  Ranged Attack—Sticky Globule (recharge 4-6): +5 to hit 
  (range 10 ft.; one creature). Hit: the creature must make 
  a successful DC 11 Str saving throw or be restrained. A 
  restrained creature repeats the saving throw at the end of 
  its turn, ending the effect on itself with a success.
   
  STATISTICS
  Str 4 (–3), Dex 16 (+3), Con 12 (+1),  
  Int 1 (–5), Wis 6 (–2), Cha 2 (–4)
  Languages: None
  Skills: Perception +0, Stealth +5
  Senses: Darkvision 30 ft., tremorsense in web
   
  TRAITS
  Web Construct: A creature that falls prone, is restrained, 
  or is pushed into a gable spider web construct becomes 
  restrained by the sticky material and can escape by using 
  an action to make a successful DC 10 Str saving throw. 
  A web construct is no more flammable than the material 
  it’s made from, but each 5-foot-square section has AC 8 
  and 5 hit points. A gable spider can move across any web 
  construct without hindrance.
   
  ECOLOGY
  Environment: Urban (the Blight)
  Organization: Solitary, pair, or colony (3-10)
  Medium Gable Spider
  XP 450 (CR 2)
  N Medium beast
  Initiative +3
   
  DEFENSE
  AC 13
  hp: 52 (8d8 + 16)
  Immunity: psychic damage; charm
   
  OFFENSE
  Speed: 30 ft., climb 30 ft.
  Melee Attack—Bite: +5 to hit (reach 0 ft.; one creature). Hit: 
  1d10 + 3 piercing damage plus 4d8 poison damage, or half 
  damage with a successful DC 12 Con saving throw.
  Ranged Attack—Sticky Globule (recharge 4-6): +5 to hit 
  (range 10 ft.; one creature). Hit: the creature must make 
  a successful DC 12 Str saving throw or be restrained. A 
  restrained creature repeats the saving throw at the end of 
  its turn, ending the effect on itself with a success.
   
  STATISTICS
  Str 8 (–1), Dex 16 (+3), Con 14 (+2),  
  Int 2 (–4), Wis 10 (+0), Cha 2 (–4)
  Languages: None
  Skills: Perception +2, Stealth +5
  Senses: Darkvision 30 ft., tremorsense in web
   
  TRAITS
  Web Construct: A creature that falls prone, is restrained, 
  or is pushed into a gable spider web construct becomes 
  restrained by the sticky material and can escape by using 
  an action to make a successful DC 10 Str saving throw. 
  A web construct is no more flammable than the material 
  it’s made from, but each 5-foot-square section has AC 8 
  and 5 hit points. A gable spider can move across any web 
  construct without hindrance.
   
  ECOLOGY
  Environment: Urban (the Blight)
  Organization: Solitary, pair, or colony (3-10)
  Large Gable Spider
  XP 1,100 (CR 4)
  N Large beast
  Initiative +4
   
  DEFENSE
  AC 14
  hp: 102 (12d10 + 36)
  Immunity: psychic damage; charm
   
  OFFENSE
  Speed: 40 ft., climb 40 ft.
  Melee Attack—Bite: +6 to hit (reach 0 ft.; one creature). Hit: 
  1d10 + 4 piercing damage plus 4d12 poison damage, or half 
  damage with a successful DC 13 Con saving throw.
  Ranged Attack—Sticky Globule (recharge 4-6): +5 to hit 
  (range 10 ft.; one creature). Hit: the creature must make 
  a successful DC 13 Str saving throw or be restrained. A 
  restrained creature repeats the saving throw at the end of 
  its turn, ending the effect on itself with a success.
   
  STATISTICS
  Str 14(+2), Dex 18 (+4), Con 16 (+3),  
  Int 3 (–3), Wis 10 (+0), Cha 2 (–4)
  Languages: None
  Skills: Perception +2, Stealth +6
  Senses: Darkvision 30 ft., tremorsense in web
   
  TRAITS
  Web Construct: A creature that falls prone, is restrained, 
  or is pushed into a gable spider web construct becomes 
  restrained by the sticky material and can escape by using 
  an action to make a successful DC 10 Str saving throw. 
  A web construct is no more flammable than the material 
  it’s made from, but each 5-foot-square section has AC 8 
  and 5 hit points. A gable spider can move across any web 
  construct without hindrance.
   
  ECOLOGY
  Environment: Urban (the Blight)
  Organization: Solitary, pair, or colony (3-10)
  Gable spiders are different from other varieties of giant spiders, and 
  it is for this reason that the whole of the city isn’t shrouded in endless 
  sheets of webbing. Gable spiders are not web spinners. Although they 
  don’t spin webs, gable spiders do have glands that produce a sticky 
  fluid. This natural glue is used to string together the detritus they find 
  in the city’s dumps and alleys—frayed ropes, sail cordage, clothesline, 
  twisted rags, curtains, discarded cloth, and more—into weblike structures. 
  Even lengths of chain and broken lumber can be found in the weblike 
  contrivances the gable spiders build. They combine this myriad material 
  in twisting, knotted mazes of suspended lines that rival the largest spider 
  webs for complexity. They knot and anchor these mismatched lines 
  among the rooftops, between sagging buildings, and with each other to 
  create swaying but stable webs of junk. Anything foolish enough to enter 
  one of their gluey web constructions is unlikely ever to leave. 
  The spiders also coat lengths of rope, cloth, sawdust, straw, or any other 
  soft material with their fluid, wad it into a ball, and fling it at prey or at 
  creautures they’re fighting. The sticky mass can glue a creature in place, 
  making it easy prey for the gable spider’s poison.
  
  51
  The Crucible
  Wallow-Whale
  Something stirs in the sludge beneath; something swims through the 
  arsenic poison that passes for water. It is vast; a seething globe of flesh, 
  a mountain of rotting skin that hangs like a bridal train behind its back. 
  It has at least a dozen eyes oddly spaced on its foul body, and a vast maw 
  capable of swallowing a ship.
  Wallow-whale
  XP 8,400 (CR 12)
  N Gargantuan monstrosity
  Initiative –3
   
  DEFENSE
  AC 17 (natural armor)
  hp: 201 (13d20 + 65)
  Resistance: bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from non-
  magical weapons
  Immunity: thunder damage; prone
   
  OFFENSE
  Speed: swim 40 ft.
  Multiattack: The wallow-whale bites once and makes one 
  tail slap attack.
  Melee Attack—Bite: +10 to hit (reach 5 ft.; one creature). Hit: 
  4d10 + 6 piercing damage plus 3d6 acid damage, and the 
  creature must make a successful DC 17 Str saving throw or 
  be swallowed (see below).
  Melee Attack—Tail Slap: +10 to hit (reach 15 ft.; one crea-
  ture). Hit: 4d8 + 6 bludgeoning damage and the target is 
  knocked prone.
  Melee Atttack—Ram (recharge 6): automatic hit (one ship). 
  Hit: the vessel makes a hull saving throw using the most 
  appropriate DC from the table below, based on the ship’s 
  type. The vessel sinks when it has failed the indicated num-
  ber of saving throws. The proficiency bonus of the ship’s 
  captain can be added to the saving throw.
  Ship Type
  Hull DC
  Sinks after
  Rowboat
  20
  1 failed save
  Barge
  19
  1 failed save
  Oared Galley, small
  18
  2 failed saves
  Oared Galley, large
  16
  2 failed saves
  Sailing Merchant, small
  17
  2 failed saves
  Sailing Merchant, large
  15
  3 failed saves
  Sailing Warship
  13
  3 failed saves
   
   
  STATISTICS
  Str 22 (+6), Dex 4 (–3), Con 21 (+5),
  Int 4 (–3), Wis 10 (+0), Cha 5 (–3)
  Languages: None
  Skills: Perception +4
  Senses: Darkvision 60 ft.
   
  TRAITS
  Swallow: A swallowed creature is blinded and restrained. 
  It takes 1d10 + 6 bludgeoning damage plus 1d8 acid 
  damage automatically at the start of each of the wal-
  low-whale’s turns. Any number of creatures can be inside 
  the wallow-whale at one time. A swallowed creature is un-
  affected by anything happening outside the wallow-whale 
  or by attacks from outside it. A swallowed creature can get 
  out of the wallow-whale by using 5 feet of movement, but 
  only after the wallow-whale is dead. When a creature gets 
  out of the wallow-whale, it must make a successful DC 17 
  Con saving throw or contract filth fever.
  Filth Fever: A creature gains one level of exhaustion 
  immediately when it contracts filth fever. While it has this 
  disease, it can’t recover from exhaustion naturally and it 
  must repeat the saving throw every time it completes a 
  long rest. On a failure, it gains one level of exhaustion; on 
  a success, it sheds one level of exhaustion. The disease 
  ends when the creature has 0 exhaustion levels or when it 
  receives a lesser restoration spell or comparable magic.
   
  ECOLOGY
  Environment: Ocean (Between)
  Organization: Solitary or mated pair
  Originally found only in the Unsea of Between before some of these 
  great cetaceans somehow escaped and began reproducing in the mundane 
  world’s oceans, wallow-whales are now the terror of the Fetid Sea and one 
  of the primary threats for which the Castorhage Navy diligently patrols 
  those waters. Wallow-whales are offal, carrion, husks, leavings, and scum 
  given life. Stirges are frequently seen circling them when they surface 
  to launch a spume of oily brine, purulence, and clotted fluids from their 
  blowholes, and oozes capable of surviving in the acidic environment can 
  sometimes be found infesting their cathedral-like stomachs. Wallow-
  whales aren’t afraid to venture close to the city to feed upon the excrement, 
  rot, and flotsam that seethes like a gyre around its foundations. Yet despite 
  their foul body habitus, the ambergris of a wallow-whale is a thing both 
  rare and highly valuable selling for as much as 100 gp/pound. Daring or 
  foolhardy whalers armed with cold iron harpoons hunt these beasts upon 
  the oceans, and in some cases upon the Unsea, with typical Gargantuan 
  specimens typically yielding 1d6 x 10 pounds of the substance and a 
  Colossal beast yielding 3d6 x 10 pounds.
  
  52
  The Blight: Richard Pett's Crooked City
  BETWEEN RING
  Wondrous item, very rare (requires attunement)
  This plain, unadorned ring is typically made of iron or 
  some other common metal and bears signs of tarnish, rust, 
  or some flaw that cannot be polished away or repaired. It 
  also includes something of the tainted essence of Between 
  in its composition, giving it a slightly greasy feel to the touch. 
  When a creature becomes attuned to the Between ring,  
  the wearer must make a DC 16 Wis saving throw or be un-
  able to voluntarily remove it. It never fits well: sometimes it 
  feels too loose (though it never falls off), and sometimes it 
  squeezes much too tightly, causing pain and a discoloration 
  in the finger. Each day there is a 1-in-20 chance that it tight-
  ens, causing 1 bludgeoning damage from the constriction. 
  If a Between ring ever constricts for 5 days in a row without 
  the wearer receiving any magical healing, the finger it is 
  worn on dies, falling off in 1d4+4 days. The loss of this finger 
  does 2d4 necrotic damage but it does allow the wearer to 
  remove and get rid of the ring.
  A wearer of a Between ring gains a +2 bonus to AC 
  against creatures with the Between subtype. In addition, 
  the wearer can make an unarmed attack against such a 
  creature with the hand that is wearing the ring three times 
  per day. This attack does (1d6 + your Str modifier) bludgeon-
  ing damage. If the character already does a d4 or more 
  damage with unarmed attacks, the ring gives a +1 bonus on 
  unarmed damage rolls.
  MANUAL OF THE CRUCIBLE
  Wondrous item, very rare
  A manual of the crucible contains information, 
  incantations, and magical instructions for creating a 
  searing crucible. The tome also holds the prerequisite spells 
  needed to summon and bind a ragefire elemental within 
  the crucible (although these spells can be used only for 
  this purpose and cannot be copied). The spells included 
  in the manual of the crucible can be used only to assist 
  in the construction of the Searing Crucible; they have no 
  other purpose. Once the crucible is finished, the writing in 
  the tome fades. When the tome is fed to the crucible, the 
  searing crucible is finally complete.
  SEARING CRUCIBLE
  Wondrous item, unique
  This vast iron object allows the user to conjure a ragefire 
  elemental from the Abyss that may subsequently grow if fed 
  non-evil sentient humanoids. The structure of the crucible 
  includes a chamber into which creatures can be placed 
  that a bound elemental will be able to feed upon and thus 
  grow in size. If the bound ragefire elemental reaches huge 
  size, it can then be forced to create spawn if fed 10 tons 
  of combustible material (coal, wood, etc.) and a sentient 
  humanoid creature within the space of 1 week. The crucible 
  holds the ragefire spawn in a separate internal chamber, 
  and only one ragefire spawn can be held in the crucible 
  at any one time, but it can be drawn out by opening a tap 
  and speaking a command word. The ragefire spawn pours 
  out like liquid flame in a single round, but it can be captured 
  in a sealed container capable of holding at least a liter and 
  withstanding the elemental’s heat. 
  The ragefire elemental can be released by opening the 
  tap when no ragefire spawn are held in the crucible and 
  speaking the command word. It takes 1 round for a small or 
  Medium elemental to pour out, 2 for a Large elemental, and 
  3 for a Huge elemental. Alternatively, by speaking a differ-
  ent command word while touching the crucible, the user of 
  the crucible can dismiss the bound ragefire elemental back 
  to the Abyss. The elemental receives a Wis saving throw 
  against the spell save DC of the person releasing it (DC 10 if 
  the person isn’t a spellcaster). If the saving throw is success-
  ful, the elemental immediately begins to pour from the tap. 
  An elemental freed from the crucible may then escape or 
  attack, but may also listen to bargaining, depending on its 
  relationship with the creator.
  A lesser searing crucible can summon a Medium ragefire 
  elemental. A greater searing crucible can summon a Large 
  ragefire elemental.
  Appendix B: New Magic Items
  
  53
  The Crucible
  Legal Appendix
  Designation of Product Identity: The following items are hereby designated as Product Identity as provided 
  in section 1(e) of the Open Game License: Any and all material or content that could be claimed as Product 
  Identity pursuant to section 1(e), below, is hereby claimed as product identity, including but not limited to: 1. 
  The name “Frog God Games” as well as all logos and identifying marks of Frog God Games, LLC, including 
  but not limited to the Frog God logo and the phrase “Adventures worth winning,” as well as the trade dress 
  of Frog God Games products; 2. The product name “The Lost Lands,” “The Blight: Richard Pett’s Crooked 
  City,” “The Blight,” “Between,” “The Crucible,” as well as any and all Frog God Games product names 
  referenced in the work; 3. All artwork, illustration, graphic design, maps, and cartography, including any text 
  contained within such artwork, illustration, maps or cartography; 4. The proper names, personality, descrip-
  tions and/or motivations of all artifacts, characters, races, countries, geographic locations, plane or planes of 
  existence, gods, deities, events, magic items, organizations and/or groups unique to this book, but not their 
  stat blocks or other game mechanic descriptions (if any), and also excluding any such names when they are 
  included in monster, spell or feat names. 5. Any other content previously designated as Product Identity is 
  hereby designated as Product Identity and is used with permission and/or pursuant to license.
  This printing is done under version 1.0a of the Open Game License, below. 
  Notice of Open Game Content: This product contains Open Game Content, as defined in the Open Game 
  License, below. Open Game Content may only be Used under and in terms of the Open Game License.
  Designation of Open Game Content: Subject to the Product Identity Designation herein, the following 
  material is designated as Open Game Content. (1) all monster statistics, descriptions of special abilities, and 
  sentences including game mechanics such as die rolls, probabilities, and/or other material required to be open 
  game content as part of the game rules, or previously released as Open Game Content, (2) all portions of 
  spell descriptions that include rules-specific definitions of the effect of the spells, and all material previously 
  released as Open Game Content, (3) all other descriptions of game-rule effects specifying die rolls or other 
  mechanic features of the game, whether in traps, magic items, hazards, or anywhere else in the text, (4) all 
  previously released Open Game Content, material required to be Open Game Content under the terms of the 
  Open Game License, and public domain material anywhere in the text. 
  Use of Content from The Tome of Horrors Complete: This product contains or references content from The 
  Tome of Horrors Complete and/or other monster Tomes by Frog God Games. Such content is used by permis-
  sion and an abbreviated Section 15 entry has been approved. Citation to monsters from The Tome of Horrors 
  Complete or other monster Tomes must be done by citation to that original work.
  OPEN GAME LICENSE Version 1.0a The following text is the property of Wizards of the Coast, Inc. and is 
  Copyright 2000 Wizards of the Coast, Inc. (“Wizards”). All Rights Reserved. 
  1. Definitions: (a) “Contributors” means the copyright and/or trademark owners who have contributed 
  Open Game Content; (b) “Derivative Material” means copyrighted material including derivative works 
  and translations (including into other computer languages), potation, modification, correction, addition, 
  extension, upgrade, improvement, compilation, abridgment or other form in which an existing work may 
  be recast, transformed or adapted; (c) “Distribute” means to reproduce, license, rent, lease, sell, broadcast, 
  publicly display, transmit or otherwise distribute; (d) “Open Game Content” means the game mechanic and 
  includes the methods, procedures, processes and routines to the extent such content does not embody the 
  Product Identity and is an enhancement over the prior art and any additional content clearly identified as 
  Open Game Content by the Contributor, and means any work covered by this License, including translations 
  and derivative works under copyright law, but specifically excludes Product Identity; (e) “Product Identity” 
  means product and product line names, logos and identifying marks including trade dress; artifacts; creatures; 
  characters; stories, storylines, plots, thematic elements, dialogue, incidents, language, artwork, symbols, 
  designs, depictions, likenesses, formats, poses, concepts, themes and graphic, photographic and other visual 
  or audio representations; names and descriptions of characters, spells, enchantments, personalities, teams, 
  personas, likenesses and special abilities; places, locations, environments, creatures, equipment, magical or 
  supernatural abilities or effects, logos, symbols, or graphic designs; and any other trademark or registered 
  trademark clearly identified as Product identity by the owner of the Product Identity, and which specifically 
  excludes the Open Game Content; (f) “Trademark” means the logos, names, mark, sign, motto, designs that 
  are used by a Contributor to identify itself or its products or the associated products contributed to the Open 
  Game License by the Contributor; (g) “Use”, “Used” or “Using” means to use, Distribute, copy, edit, format, 
  modify, translate and otherwise create Derivative Material of Open Game Content; (h) “You” or “Your” 
  means the licensee in terms of this agreement.
  2. The License: This License applies to any Open Game Content that contains a notice indicating that the 
  Open Game Content may only be Used under and in terms of this License. You must affix such a notice to 
  any Open Game Content that you Use. No terms may be added to or subtracted from this License except 
  as described by the License itself. No other terms or conditions may be applied to any Open Game Content 
  distributed using this License.
  3. Offer and Acceptance: By Using the Open Game Content You indicate Your acceptance of the terms of 
  this License.
  4. Grant and Consideration: In consideration for agreeing to use this License, the Contributors grant You 
  a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license with the exact terms of this License to Use, the 
  Open Game Content.
  5. Representation of Authority to Contribute: If You are contributing original material as Open Game 
  Content, You represent that Your Contributions are Your original creation and/or You have sufficient rights to 
  grant the rights conveyed by this License.
  6. Notice of License Copyright: You must update the COPYRIGHT NOTICE portion of this License to 
  include the exact text of the COPYRIGHT NOTICE of any Open Game Content You are copying, modifying 
  or distributing, and You must add the title, the copyright date, and the copyright holder’s name to the COPY-
  RIGHT NOTICE of any original Open Game Content you Distribute.
  7. Use of Product Identity: You agree not to Use any Product Identity, including as an indication as to 
  compatibility, except as expressly licensed in another, independent Agreement with the owner of each ele-
  ment of that Product Identity. You agree not to indicate compatibility or co-adaptability with any Trademark 
  or Registered Trademark in conjunction with a work containing Open Game Content except as expressly 
  licensed in another, independent Agreement with the owner of such Trademark or Registered Trademark. The 
  use of any Product Identity in Open Game Content does not constitute a challenge to the ownership of that 
  Product Identity. The owner of any Product Identity used in Open Game Content shall retain all rights, title 
  and interest in and to that Product Identity.
  8. Identification: If you distribute Open Game Content You must clearly indicate which portions of the work 
  that you are distributing are Open Game Content.
  9. Updating the License: Wizards or its designated Agents may publish updated versions of this License. 
  You may use any authorized version of this License to copy, modify and distribute any Open Game Content 
  originally distributed under any version of this License.
  10. Copy of this License: You MUST include a copy of this License with every copy of the Open Game 
  Content You Distribute.
  11. Use of Contributor Credits: You may not market or advertise the Open Game Content using the name of 
  any Contributor unless You have written permission from the Contributor to do so.
  12. Inability to Comply: If it is impossible for You to comply with any of the terms of this License with 
  respect to some or all of the Open Game Content due to statute, judicial order, or governmental regulation 
  then You may not Use any Open Game Material so affected.
  13. Termination: This License will terminate automatically if You fail to comply with all terms herein and 
  fail to cure such breach within 30 days of becoming aware of the breach. All sublicenses shall survive the 
  termination of this License.
  14. Reformation: If any provision of this License is held to be unenforceable, such provision shall be 
  reformed only to the extent necessary to make it enforceable.
  15. COPYRIGHT NOTICE
  Open Game License v 1.0a © 2000, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
  System Reference Document 5.1 Copyright 2016. Wizards of the Coast, Inc; Authors Mike Mearls, Jeremy 
  Crawford, Chris Perkins, Rodney Thompson, Peter Lee, James Wyatt, Robert J. Schwalb, Bruce R. Cordell, 
  Chris Sims, and Steve Townshend, based on material by E. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson.
  Tome of Horrors, Copyright 2002, Necromancer Games, Inc. 
  Tome of Horrors, Copyright 2005, Necromancer Games, Inc.;
  Swords & Wizardry Core Rules, Copyright 2008, Matthew J. Finch 
  Swords & Wizardry Complete Rules, Copyright 2010, Matthew J. Finch
  Monster Compendium: 0e, Copyright 2008, Matthew J. Finch
  Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook © 2009, Paizo Publishing, LLC; Author: Jason Bulmahn, based on material 
  by Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, and Skip Williams.
  The Book of Experimental Might © 2008, Monte J. Cook. All rights reserved.
  Pathfinder RPG Bestiary, © 2009, Paizo Publishing, LLC; Author: Jason Bulmahn, based on material by 
  Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, and Skip Williams.
  Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary 2, © 2010, Paizo Publishing, LLC; Authors Wolfgang Baur, Jason 
  Bulmahn, Adam Daigle, Graeme Davis, Crystal Frasier, Joshua J. Frost, Tim Hitchcock, Brandon Hodge, 
  James Jacobs, Steve Kenson, Hal MacLean, Martin Mason, Rob McCreary, Erik Mona, Jason Nelson, Patrick 
  Renie, Sean K Reynolds, F. Wesley Schneider, Owen K.C. Stephens, James L. Sutter, Russ Taylor, and Greg A. 
  Vaughan, based on material by Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, and Skip Williams.
  Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary 3, © 2011, Paizo Publishing, LLC; Authors Jesse Benner, Jason 
  Bulmahn, Adam Daigle, James Jacobs, Michael Kenway, Rob McCreary, Patrick Renie, Chris Sims, F. 
  Wesley Schneider, James L. Sutter, and Russ Taylor, based on material by Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, and 
  Skip Williams.
  Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary 4, © 2013, Paizo Publishing, LLC; Authors Dennis Baker, Jesse 
  Benner, Savannah Broadway, Ross Byers, Adam Daigle, Tim Hitchcock, Tracy Hurley, James Jacobs, Matt 
  James, Rob McCreary, Jason Nelson, Tom Phillips, Stephen Radney-MacFarland, Sean K Reynolds, F. 
  Wesley Schneider, Tork Shaw, and Russ Taylor.
  Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Ultimate Magic. © 2011, Paizo Publishing, LLC; Authors: Jason Bulmahn, 
  Tim Hitchcock, Colin McComb, Rob McCreary, Jason Nelson, Stephen Radney-MacFarland, Sean K Reyn-
  olds, Owen K.C. Stephens, and Russ Taylor.
  Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Ultimate Combat. © 2011, Paizo Publishing, LLC; Authors: Jason Bulmahn, 
  Tim Hitchcock, Colin McComb, Rob McCreary, Jason Nelson, Stephen Radney-MacFarland, Sean K Reyn-
  olds, Owen K.C. Stephens, and Russ Taylor.
  Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Ultimate Equipment © 2012, Paizo Publishing, LLC; Authors: Dennis Baker, 
  Jesse Benner, Benjamin Bruck, Ross Byers, Brian J. Cortijo, Ryan Costello, Mike Ferguson, Matt Goetz, Jim 
  Groves, Tracy Hurley, Matt James, Jonathan H. Keith, Michael Kenway, Hal MacLean, Jason Nelson, Tork 
  Shaw, Owen KC Stephens, and Russ Taylor.
  Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Advanced Player’s Guide. Copyright 2010, Paizo Publishing, LLC; Author: 
  Jason Bulmahn.
  Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Advanced Race Guide. Copyright 2012, Paizo Publishing, LLC; Authors: 
  Dennis Baker, Jesse Benner, Benjamin Bruck, Jason Bulmahn, Adam Daigle, Jim Groves, Tim Hitchcock, 
  Hal MacLean, Jason Nelson, Stephen Radney-MacFarland, Owen K.C. Stephens, Todd Stewart, and Russ 
  Taylor.
  Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Advanced Class Guide. Copyright 2014, Paizo Inc.; Authors: Dennis Baker, 
  Ross Byers, Jesse Benner, Savannah Broadway, Jason Bulmahn, Jim Groves, Tim Hitchcock, Tracy Hurley, 
  Jonathan H. Keith, Will McCardell, Dale C. McCoy, Jr., Tom Phillips, Stephen Radney-MacFarland, Thomas 
  M. Reid, Sean K Reynolds, Tork Shaw, Owen K.C. Stephens, and Russ Taylor.
  Pathfinder Roleplaying Game GameMastery Guide, © 2010 Paizo Publishing, LLC; Authors Cam Banks, 
  Wolfgang Baur, Jason Buhlman, Jim Butler, Eric Cagle, Graeme Davis, Adam Daigle, Jashua J. Frost, James 
  Jacobs, Kenneth Hite, Steven Kenson, Robin Laws, Tito Leati, Rob McCreart, Hal Maclean, Colin McComb, 
  Jason Nelson, David Noonan, Richard Pett, Rich Redman, Sean K Reynolds, F. Wesley Schneider, Amber 
  Scott, Doug Seacat, Mike Selinker, Lisa Stevens, James L Sutter, Russ Taylor, Penny Williams, Teeuwynn 
  Woodruff.
  Pathfinder Campaign Setting: The Inner Sea World Guide. © 2011, Paizo Publishing, LLC; Authors: Keith 
  Baker, Wolfgang Baur, Clinton J. Boomer, Jason Bulmahn, Joshua J. Frost, Ed Greenwood, Stephen S. Greer, 
  Jeff Grubb, James Jacobs, Michael Kortes, Tito Leati, Mike McArtor, Rob McCreary, Erik Mona, Jason Eric 
  Nelson, Jeff Quick, Sean K Reynolds, F. Wesley Schneider, Leandra Christine Schneider, David Schwartz, 
  Amber E. Scott, Stan!, Owen K.C. Stephens, Todd Stewart, James L. Sutter, Greg A. Vaughan, Jeremy 
  Walker, and JD Wiker.
  Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Magnimar, City of Monuments. © 2012, Paizo Publishing, LLC; Authors: 
  Adam Daigle and James Jacobs.
  Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Rival Guide. © 2011, Paizo Publishing, LLC; Authors: Brian Cortijo, Adam 
  Daigle, Tim Hitchcock, Brandon Hodge, Colin McComb, Jason Nelson, Amber Scott, Neil Spicer, and Todd 
  Stewart.
  Pathfinder Player Companion: Animal Archive © 2013, Paizo Publishing, LLC; Authors: Amanda Hamon, 
  Philip Minchin, Jason Nelson, Patrick Renie, Owen K.C. Stephens, and Christine Stiles.
  Pathfinder Companion: Cheliax, Empire of Devils © 20009, Paizo Publishing, LLC; Authors: Jonathan H. 
  Keith, Colin McComb, Steven E. Schend, Leandra Christine Schneider, and Amber E. Scott.
  Pathfinder Companion: Gnomes of Golarion. © 2010, Paizo Publishing, LLC; Authors: Hal Maclean, Colin 
  McComb, Mark Moreland, Jeff Quick, Sean K Reynolds, Steven Schend, and Owen K.C. Stephens.  
  Pathfinder Adventure Path #48: Shadows of Gallowspire. © 2011, Paizo Publishing, LLC; Author: Brandon 
  Hodge.
  The Blight: Richard Pett’s Crooked City, © 2016, Frog God Games, LLC; Authors Richard Pett, Pete Pollard, 
  Alistair Rigg, and Greg A. Vaughan.
  The Book of Lost Spells, © 2015, Frog God Games, LLC
  The Tome of Horrors Complete, © 2011, Necromancer Games, Inc., published and distributed by Frog God 
  Games; Author Scott Green.
  The Tome of Blighted Horrors, © 2016, Frog God Games, LLC; Authors John Ling, Authors Richard Pett, 
  Pete Pollard, Alistair Rigg, Jeffrey Swank, and Greg A. Vaughan.
  TB4: The Crucible, © 2016, Frog God Games, LLC; Author: Richard Pett.
  
  54
  GM Map
  
  55
  Player Map
  
  56
  GM Map
  
  57
  Player Map
  
  58
  GM Map
  
  59
  Player Map
  
  60
  GM Map
  
  61
  Player Map
  
  62
  GM Map
  
  63
  Player Map
  
  64
  GM Map
  Don’t go to sleep. Some say dreams of fire  
  are haunting the night, and that if you dream  
  of burning, you awaken on fire.
  People in the Blight begin to awaken at night burning with an all-too-real fire.  
  Most of them die horribly, spouses or lovers staring in shocked horror at their sudden  
  death throes in the grip of consuming flames. A few of the truly unlucky actually manage 
  to survive — if living in such a state can be called survival. There seems to be no rhyme 
  or reason in the victims of these incinerating dreams, as those among the high and low fall 
  victim to its touch, and the locals each pray that he or she will not be next.
  Now no one dares to sleep.
  The Crucible is a stand-alone adventure set in The Blight for 4–6 7th-level characters.
  TB4: The Crucible
  TB4: The Crucible
  Richard Pett’s Crooked City
  Richard Pett’s Crooked City
  Frog God 
  Games
  ISBN 978-1-62283-337-5
  Don’t go to sleep. Some say dreams of fire  
  are haunting the night, and that if you dream  
  of burning, you awaken on fire.
  People in the Blight begin to awaken at night burning with an all-too-real fire.  
  Most of them die horribly, spouses or lovers staring in shocked horror at their sudden  
  death throes in the grip of consuming flames. A few of the truly unlucky actually manage 
  to survive — if living in such a state can be called survival. There seems to be no rhyme 
  or reason in the victims of these incinerating dreams, as those among the high and low fall 
  victim to its touch, and the locals each pray that he or she will not be next.
  Now no one dares to sleep.
  The Crucible is a stand-alone adventure set in The Blight for 4–6 7th-level characters.
  TB4: The Crucible
  TB4: The Crucible
  Richard Pett’s Crooked City
  Richard Pett’s Crooked City
  rog God 
  Games
  The Lost Lands — Adventures in the Borderland Provinces
  ISBN 978-1-62283-337-5
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Dungeons & Dragons [multi]/5th Edition (5e)/3rd Party/Necromancer Games/The Blight/5E - Lost Lands - The Blight - TB4 The Crucible (Lvl 7).pdf