TEXT: Poisoned Pages Adventure for Starting Characters
  The vale was meant to be their safe retreat, but they 
  didn’t count on the woods.
   Five years ago, pilgrims established the tiny village 
  of Respite in the idyllic Orborous Vale on the western 
  edge of the Dark Forest, a stretch of evil wood found 
  in the Northern Reach. At ﬁ rst, the land was good to 
  them and fruitful, yielding rich harvests and allowing 
  their livestock to ﬂ ourish. The sun rose every morn 
  with great beauty and life-giving warmth, and all was 
  good and peaceful for the ﬁ fty or so souls that called 
  Respite home—so long as they did not venture into the 
  shadowed wood just beyond their border.
   As the years passed, however, all that began to change, 
  though the village elders could no longer point to a 
  single event to mark the shift. The soil thinned and 
  ceased to yield the abundance it once had. Now, the 
  village’s crops molder on the 
  vine, their root vegetables 
  emerge from the 
  ground spindly and 
  bleeding, and their 
  blighted herb 
  plants taste like ash 
  and vomit. Flowers 
  wither to brown 
  and black within moments of being cut. Goats give 
  bloody milk ﬂ oating with pus, and their weak cows 
  sometimes bear calves with too many limbs or a 
  second head. Now, the village treads perilously close 
  to starvation, and tempers are rising. Some believe the 
  New God has abandoned them, while others blame the 
  misfortunes on a nearer threat.
   Mayor Rickard Bailey and the elders of the Dawn 
  Seekers have long forbidden anyone to venture into the 
  wood. Only the strongest members of the village venture 
  beneath the looming branches among the scintillating 
  shadows, armed with what weapons they can muster to 
  trap and hunt game in the uncertain darkness. Rumors 
  and village tales abound about strange creatures that 
  dwell in the wood, and the children of Respite are 
  warned to mind themselves, or else a terrible witch will 
  come for them.
   The villagers are more right than they know.
   The Witching Wood is an adventure for starting 
  characters. In it, the characters must come together to 
  ﬁ nd the source of the troubles besetting Respite and 
  drive it away. If they succeed, the crucible of shared 
  experience combines them into a group and sets the 
  stage for even greater adventures.
  stage for even greater adventures.
  ~Credits~
  WRITING AND DESIGN: 
  Erik Scott de Bie
  Editing and Development: Robert J. Schwalb
  Proofreading: Kara Hamilton 
  and Dan Heinrich
  ART DIRECTION: rOBERT j. sCHWALB
  Graphic Design and layout: Kara Hamilton
  ILLUSTRATIONs: Ivan Dixon and Britt Martin
  The Witching Wood is ©2016 Schwalb Entertainment, LLC. 
  All rights reserved.
  Shadow of the Demon Lord, Poisoned Pages, The Witching Wood
  Schwalb Entertainment, and their associated logos 
  are trademarks of Schwalb Entertainment, LLC.
  SCHWALB ENTERTAINMENT, LLC
  PO Box #12548, Murfreesboro, TN 37129
  info@schwalbentertainment.com    www.schwalbentertainment.com
  village’s crops molder on the 
  vine, their root vegetables 
   The villagers are more right than they know.
  The Witching Wood 
  characters. In it, the characters must come together to 
  ﬁ nd the source of the troubles besetting Respite and 
  drive it away. If they succeed, the crucible of shared 
  experience combines them into a group and sets the 
  stage for even greater adventures.
  Editing and Development
  Proofreading
  ART DIRECTION
  Graphic Design and layout
  ILLUSTRATIONs
  The Witching Wood 
  Shadow of the Demon Lord
  Schwalb Entertainment, and their associated logos 
  are trademarks of Schwalb Entertainment, LLC.
  info@schwalbentertainment.com    www.schwalbentertainment.com
  vine, their root vegetables 
  emerge from the 
  ground spindly and 
  bleeding, and their 
  blighted herb 
  plants taste like ash 
  and vomit. Flowers 
  wither to brown 
   The villagers are more right than they know.
  The Witching Wood 
  characters. In it, the characters must come together to 
  ﬁ nd the source of the troubles besetting Respite and 
  drive it away. If they succeed, the crucible of shared 
  experience combines them into a group and sets the 
  stage for even greater adventures.
  Editing and Development
  Graphic Design and layout
  ILLUSTRATIONs
  The Witching Wood 
  Shadow of the Demon Lord
  Schwalb Entertainment, and their associated logos 
  info@schwalbentertainment.com    www.schwalbentertainment.com
  1
  
  Getting Started
  The adventure assumes the characters either live in 
  Respite or are passing through when the ﬁ rst attack 
  occurs. Non-human characters are most likely travelers 
  or recent settlers, looked upon with suspicion by the 
  villagers.
   Give the players some detail about the village and 
  let them determine their characters’ places in the 
  community and how they know one another, if they do. 
  It is particularly important to note whether any of them 
  participate in the initial dawn ritual (see Day One).
   If a question of reward arises during the adventure, 
  Mayor Bailey oﬀ ers to 2 ss each to rid Respite of the 
  witch. Any more than that, the community can’t aﬀ ord. 
  Respite
  The tiny village named Respite appears on no map. 
  Travelers only rarely happen across the isolated valley 
  in which it stands. Respite crafts most of its own goods, 
  with its people only rarely making trips to one of the 
  larger settlements more than a week’s travel in any 
  direction. Younger residents have never seen a city like 
  Crossings and can scarce imagine what it might be like.
   Home to about ﬁ fty settlers—a dozen families plus a 
  few outsiders—the tiny village in Orborous Vale sports 
  twenty or so tarred-wood buildings with thatched roofs 
  clustered in the center of corn ﬁ elds and livestock yards. 
  Respite includes a roofed-but-unwalled smithy, a squat 
  carpenter’s shop, and a stable for the seven horses owned 
  amongst the residents. 
   The town is erected in a shallow crescent on a hill, 
  so that each home has a full view of the rising sun over 
  the forest to the east. Most villagers rise before dawn, 
  gathering in a communal ﬁ eld to pray to the rising sun.
   The largest, most impressive building is a temple built 
  to the New God on the northern edge of town, which 
  features a worship hall big enough for the whole village 
  and a cramped but serviceable rectory up a set of rickety 
  stairs. Built on a stout stone foundation and made from 
  thick wood, the church even has a glass window that the 
  head priest, Father Barnabas, brought from far-away 
  Crossings where he trained.
   Toward the southern end of the village stands the 
  two-storied Godswounds, a tavern and general store with 
  an ignoble reputation among the righteous of Respite. 
  Uncommon travelers to the village usually sleep in one 
  of the Godswounds’ two unoccupied rooms or secure a 
  place near the ﬁ re in the common room.
   Except as noted below, humans make up the entire 
  population of Respite. The Dawn Seekers distrust 
  members of other races and generally avoid them 
  whenever possible, they are quick to suspect non-
  humans of involvement in the village’s troubles.
   The entire village squats about a mile west of the Dark 
  Forest—entirely too close, some often say.
  Key Folk of Respite
  The mayor of Respite is Rickard Bailey, a human of 
  about forty, devout and decent. He has a wandering eye 
  (particularly for Rhiannon, see below) and a love of 
  smoking the crimson clove (a narcotic leafy plant that 
  grows in the forest). Bailey is given to self-ﬂ agellation, 
  and so his back has become a mass of scars.
   Phillipe Goodheart runs the Godswounds. An 
  energetic man in his thirties, he is a former prostitute 
  and agitator from Crossings who delights in remarking 
  on religious hypocrisy. He ﬂ irts with everyone who 
  comes into the tavern—male or female, human or 
  otherwise—and tells wild stories about horriﬁ c things 
  he’s seen. He sells common items for coin or barter.
   The head priest Barnabas “the Bald” is about sixty. 
  He used to serve the New God in Crossings but was 
  denounced for heresy. He still has some ﬁ re in him, 
  mostly reserved for berating Phillipe for his “wicked 
  ways” (fornication and running an inn and brothel).
   A botanist and astrologer in her early 20s, Rhiannon 
  Stargazer radiates the sort of beauty that puts others 
  to shame and inspires devotion and obsession in equal 
  measure, to which she is oblivious. Cheerful and 
  compassionate, she adorns her small shop with ﬂ owers 
  that seem immune to the rot that plagues Respite. 
  Jealous rumors abound of fey heritage or witchcraft, and 
  respectable Dawn Seekers warn their children (vainly) to 
  stay away from her.
   Rhiannon’s bosom companion and fraternal twin 
  sister Lanja is a folklorist and occultist. She is witty and 
  sardonic, plain and practical where her sister is beautiful 
  and spacey, and ﬁ ercely loyal. Lanja has some sort of 
  dark secret she keeps hidden.
   The smith of Respite, Chet Smithies is a man in his 
  late twenties who is just handsome and arrogant enough 
  to be insuﬀ erable. He constantly attempts to woo 
  Rhiannon and avoid Lanja, without much success.
  The Dawn Seekers
  A Sect of the Cult of the New God that believes in 
  salvation through privation and asceticism, the Dawn 
  Seekers are deeply religious pilgrims. They settled in 
  Respite, seeking freedom to worship as they choose. 
  They believe the sun is a manifestation of the New God 
  that will purge the world of the growing “shadow” of 
  doom that creeps across it. They eschew the temptation 
  of the ﬂ esh and the body’s hungers, making them ripe 
  targets for the predations of the witch in the woods.
  2
  
  Season of 
  the Witch
  The witch Vizreen haunts the woods on Respite’s border, 
  seething with fury at the villagers and their loathsome 
  devotions. Her coven has been the source of Respite’s 
  problems. Left unchecked, she causes the calamities 
  described below.
   Between the events, the characters can see to other 
  tasks, investigate other threats, real or imagined, or 
  simply go about their normal business. When the 
  characters decide to move into the Dark Forest and 
  investigate, go to “Into the Woods.”
  Day One: The Worms Inside
  The village gathers to welcome the sun in its normal 
  dawn ritual, with the breeze whispering through the 
  grass. All seems well, until halfway through, when two 
  naked ﬁ gures smeared with mud, blood, and human 
  waste come stumbling out of the woods and run across 
  the stark cornﬁ eld as though pursued by wolves no one 
  can see. The villagers are slow to react to this scene, 
  giving the characters a chance to act ﬁ rst.
   The unfortunates are a young woman, Caran, and her 
  adolescent brother, Luca. Seemingly unharmed, Caran 
  is half-leading, half-carrying the boy, who gags and 
  mutters in nonsensical words that resemble no living 
  language. Both are shivering from exposure. Caran has 
  three bruises from abnormally large ﬁ ngers on her left 
  arm above the elbow, while Luca has a number of deep 
  scratches all over his body.
   Assuming the boy is possessed, the villagers take him 
  immediately to the rectory above the church, where 
  they start praying over him. The boy’s moans become 
  screams and he grasps at his head and guts, ripping at 
  his skin unless restrained, which requires a success on a 
  Strength challenge roll made with 1 boon. A success on 
  a Perception challenge roll reveals two moving lumps 
  in his ﬂ esh, as though something is crawling just under 
  his skin. These are 2 burrowing centipedes. Unless 
  they are carefully treated (see the rules in Shadow), they 
  eventually rupture Luca’s ﬂ esh, killing him, and attack 
  anyone else nearby.
   Caran can be questioned normally, but she remembers 
  little beyond the previous midday, when she went into 
  the forest to look for her brother during a game of ﬁ nd 
  the faerie. She has a vague sense of wandering dazed 
  among the trees and then seeing a door lined in blood 
  leading into a tree. She can say no more. If cleansed of 
  the muck caked onto her body, a blood-red handprint 
  is discovered tattooed on the small of her back. The 
  hand is the same size as the mark on her arm and has 
  six ﬁ ngers.
   Unless restrained, Caran slips away at the ﬁ rst 
  opportunity, moving as if in a trance, and disappears into 
  the woods. Unless rescued by midnight, she is never seen 
  alive again.
  Day Two: The Missing Child
  The horror of the previous day raises tensions in the 
  village and arguments break out more easily among the 
  Dawn Seekers. The faithful pray more fervently at dawn, 
  while others debate sending a search party into the 
  woods (probably to ﬁ nd Caran). 
   At about midday, a young girl named Magta rushes up 
  to one of the main residents in tears, saying her infant 
  brother has vanished after she was set to watch him. All 
  she remembers is the grass rustling faintly around them, 
  she looked away for half a breath, and then he was gone.
   That night, the village can hear the baby crying 
  piteously from the forest, preventing sleep. The sounds 
  suddenly grow loud and frantic around midnight, and 
  then stop in a single agonized screech.
  Day Three: Find the Witch!
  Fear has turned to anger and despair by now. Villagers 
  start turning on one another. Women accuse Rhiannon 
  of being in league with the witch of the wood, and she 
  and Lanja shut themselves up in their shack to elude 
  capture. The cowardly Mayor Bailey does nothing to 
  prevent it, and Chet Smithies (angry at Rhiannon’s 
  constant rejection) actually encourages it. If the 
  characters do not help the women escape, the villagers 
  break in and either burn Rhiannon at the stake or 
  imprison her (if so convinced).
   In the confusion, a young man named Edmure 
  disappears from the village. He was seen entering the 
  woods, armed with a boar-hunting spear. That night 
  is ﬁ lled with his faint moans of growing ecstasy that 
  suddenly become shrieks of horror and pain.
  Day Four: The Cursed Army
  Vizreen has oﬀ ered enough sacriﬁ ces to gather the 
  power to assemble an army to do her bidding. 
   She descends upon Respite alongside a single warg 
  who acts as her lieutenant at the head of a small army of 
  20 fomors she enslaved, which she believes is suﬃ  cient 
  to wipe out Respite. She is most likely correct.
  Into the Woods
  At some point, the characters might enter the woods in 
  an attempt to confront the source of Respite’s troubles. 
  The villagers might send a search party or two into 
  the woods, but such parties never locate the witch and 
  always emerge short one or two members, with the rest 
  terriﬁ ed out of their wits, if they return at all.
   Finding the witch’s lair requires a series of Intellect 
  challenge rolls. The character making the check does so 
  with 1 bane during day and 2 banes at night. Weirdness 
  in the woods prevents other characters from helping 
  on the roll so only the character leading the expedition 
  makes the roll. After the third success, the characters 
  ﬁ nd the Witch’s Lair.
  3
  
   Failures, however, cause trouble. Each failure results 
  in an encounter, which you can determine by rolling a 
  d6 and ﬁ nding the number rolled on the following table. 
  If the characters would have the same encounter twice, 
  treat the duplicate result as if you had rolled a 1. After 
  the third failure, the characters have no luck ﬁ nding the 
  witch that day or night but can try again the next day. 
   In addition, each time a character gets a failure, roll 
  a d6. On a 1–3, Vizreen (as an apprentice witch with 
  4 Corruption) ﬁ nds the characters and uses her magic 
  to frustrate and impede them. If they ﬁ nd her lair, she 
  retreats into the wood to ﬁ ght another day.
  Into The Woods Encounters
  d6
  Encounter
  1 
  The characters wander lost for an hour before ﬁ nding 
  themselves back where they came from.
  2
  The characters ﬁ nd themselves in a cobweb strewn dark 
  part of the woods. One large spider descends on them 
  and attacks.
  3
  The characters stumble upon a hunting party of 3 fomors.
  4
  The characters blunder into a spiked pit trap made to catch 
  animals. Two randomly determined characters must make 
  Agility challenge rolls. A character springs aside safely on a 
  success or takes 1d6 damage from falling to the bottom of 
  the pit on a failure.
  5
  The characters ﬁ nd a patch of spongy leaves that barely 
  covers a pit of squirming 4 void larva chewing on a still-
  living animal. The lead character must get a success on an 
  Agility challenge roll or fall into the pit. Anyone seeing this 
  scene must get a success on a Will challenge roll or gain 
  1 Insanity. Characters who fall into the pit make the roll 
  with 2 banes.
  6)
  The characters discover a circle with 6 cultists dancing 
  around the grisly remains of a humanoid corpse. 
  The Witch’s Lair
  The characters know the area of the lair instantly by the 
  cold, dark aura that permeates it. The blackened trees 
  and crackling brush seem stunted and mutated. 
   Except for the clear walkway to the hovel, the whole 
  area is choked with brambles. Any character attempting 
  to move through them must get a success on an Agility 
  challenge roll or take 1d3 damage from the dagger-like 
  thorns.
   Vizreen dwells in a cave beneath a fallen tree, into 
  whose stump she has built a small, poorly ﬁ tted door. 
  Blood-red light leaks around this door from inside 
  (hence Caran’s memory) and a smell of roasting pork 
  wafts from it. Moans emerge from the door, growing 
  louder as the characters approach.
   Inside, rusty cooking implements hang beside 
  ﬁ ngerbones and still moldering ﬁ ngers. The walls are 
  painted in obscene sigils with blood and feces and other 
  ﬂ uids. There is a bubbling cooking pot with at least one 
  small skeletal arm poking out. Seeing the interior of the 
  hovel requires characters to make Will challenge rolls 
  with a number of banes equal to the number of villagers 
  Vizreen has killed (Caran, Magta’s baby brother, and 
  Edmure). Their remains are visible and in various states 
  of horriﬁ c disrepair. A failure results in the character 
  gaining 1 Insanity. 
   Several of their organs sit, moldering and hard to 
  distinguish, on a crude mantelpiece like grisly trophies. 
  Beside them is a bloody, ancient sacriﬁ cial knife of elven 
  make (worth 7 ss), an old book containing incantations of 
  two rank 0 spells you choose, and scattered amongst the 
  refuse are 14 cp and 2 ss.
   In addition to any of the lost youths the characters 
  might think they are rescuing, one of Vizreen’s captives is 
  still alive: Norn, a middle-aged man from the village who 
  disappeared weeks ago. He is the source of the moans. 
  The witch cut oﬀ  several of his appendages and stitched 
  his eyes and mouth shut, a process during which he went 
  hopelessly insane.
  Conclusion
  The best outcome is for the player characters to 
  successfully drive oﬀ  the witch and discover her lair. If 
  they do so, Vizreen most likely returns to torment the 
  town later and with help. The threat of her return could 
  become the plot of the next adventure.
   The characters, along with a few villagers, might 
  simply ﬂ ee. If so, the witch arrives and commands her 
  henchmen to raze the community. If the characters 
  return, they ﬁ nd any villagers who remained behind torn 
  apart and partly eaten.
   Ultimately, the events in this short adventure should 
  unite the characters and give them a common bond 
  that helps them stay together in the trials ahead. Thus, 
  having survived the experience, the characters have 
  impetus for undergoing the training necessary to take 
  the ﬁ rst step onto their novice paths.
  4
  
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