Quill White Box - The Market

Quill White Box gives players the opportunity to us the same characters in different adventures and spend their fat loot. Here's the marketplace for spending said loot.

King's parchment - a smooth premium paper favoured by the aristocracy. +1 to Penmanship rolls. 5gp per sheet (1 sheet equals one adventure).

Rose sealing wax - scented wax for sealing a letter. Ten uses. You may add 1 point at the end of a letter for each use. 20gp

Cinder ink - Cinder is the finest ink maker in the land. A pot of ink has 10 uses. You may reroll any number of penmanship tests up to the number of uses you have left and keep the highest number. 80gp

Velur's Magnificent Thesaurus - Velur is one of the greatest linguistic scholars working today and her Thesaurus is sought after by poets, novelists and playwrights. +1 to all Language rolls. 200gp.

Pelon's perfume - a delicious scent for any occasion. Spraying this perfume on your letter will only enhance the reader's experience. 10 uses. You may reroll any Heart tests up to the number of uses you have left and keep the highest number. 90gp.

Quill White Box adventure: The Demon-Haunted Tower

Characters found here.

Nothing has been the same since the appearance of the obsidian tower near Swanvale village. Crops have spontaneously combusted, animals are running amok and people are growing weak and pale. Landlord Reginald Finnegan says a wizard lives there. Others say it's a demon spirit in the form of an old man. They do agree that he must be stopped.

To gain entry, you must discover what aura of magic surrounds the tower. For this you require a certain book on magical fortifications for the city library.

Profile: you are writing to the librarian Guhlo Chom, and old acquaintance who holds many a rate book. The Spire Libiris is one of his prized books and this is just what you need. You must try and convince him to lend you the book, which is not strictly for lending, explaining the situation and possibly trying to appease his ego.

Rules of correspondence: a fellow magical scholar has an advantage here. +1 to Language rolls for Magic-users and elves.

Ink pot:

Building/ Obsidian tower
Trees/ Haunted Forest
Village/ Swanvale
Magician/ Weaver of magics
Book/ Tome
Scared/ Drenched in fear
Dead crops/ Scorched wheat
Magic defence/ Glyph-based aura
Librarian/ Keeper of Tomes
Kill/ Slay

Outcomes

Fewer than 5 points: Guhlo does not return your letter and certainly doesn't send you a book for your sloppy letter that offended him greatly. You decide against your better judgement and head to the tower. No sooner have you tried to enter the door than your bloody body is propelled away from the door, hitting an oak trunk hard, splitting your skull open. You are dead.

6-8 points: Guhlo wishes you well but cannot send you the book. Instead he has scratched out a relevant page from the book to help you. This should be enough to get you in, but you worry about once you're inside. You gather your equipment and head to the tower. At the great black door you use the page to dispel a Rune of Dread Propulsion and enter. You fight several shadow beasts before falling into the pit of a monstrous dire bear. You manage to just escape with your life and ascend the tower. Because you didn't have the book, you were unable to identify all the magic traps in the tower, so found yourself being burned, stabbed and gassed, but managing to stay alive to meet your enemy. The showdown with the wizard Zenkhit lasts seemingly an age as he floats through the room, eyes sparking, hair aflame, lobbies bolts at you. You learn he is a wizard with aspirations of becoming the first interdimensional being, but must use his tower to feed in the life force of all around him to power its engine. Despite his power you finally best him and he agrees to leave and never return. You gain 5gp.

9+ points: Guhlo is ecstatic with your letter and sends you the book at once. After a night of study you head out to the tower, deftly dealing with the Rune if Dread Propulsion on the black door. You dispatch of several shadow beasts but soon find yourself in a pit with a dire bear. Or is it that it is trapped in there with you? You make short work of the hairy hulk and climb out. You ascend, taking care of a range of magical traps, from flamethrowing statutes to wards that keep away warn blooded creatures. Eventually you reach the wizard's room. The showdown with the wizard Zenkhit is quick. He floats through the room, eyes sparking, hair aflame, lobbies bolts at you. You learn he is a wizard with aspirations of becoming the first interdimensional being, but must use his tower to feed in the life force of all around him to power its engine. Despite his power you make short work of slaying him. You gain 10gp and a Warlock's Quill (3 uses: +2 to Penmanship roll).

Quill: White Box

I wanted to create a short Quill hack for letter-writing adventures in an OD&D world.

Fighter

Battle-hardened, tough and muscular. Fighters bring the pain on the field, but don't shy away from exposing their heart when writing.

Heart: Good
Penmanship: Average
Language: Poor

Magic-user

Weavers of the great magical web. Scholars, geniuses and often loners. Magic users are eloquent, speaking with gravitas and confidence on many subjects.

Heart: Poor
Penmanship: Average
Language: Good

Cleric

It's not what the message looks like, but the words in it. Clerics put others before themselves and help those in need at all times.

Heart: Good
Penmanship: Poor
Language: Average

Dwarf

From the great undermount, dwarves have an intricate way with words, though being used to scratching runes it can be difficult to understand their writing.

Heart: Average
Penmanship: Poor
Language: Good

Elf

Elves boast the most beautiful script - flowing and organic. However they tend to be cold and logical, with others often perceiving their communications the wrong way.

Heart: Poor
Penmanship: Good
Language: Average

Halfling

Country bumpkins who enjoy the good life. They have no time for long letters, but they learnt their script from the elves, making their rare missives something to behold.

Heart: Average
Penmanship: Good
Language: Poor

Special abilities (use once per scenario)

Eloquence: +2 to Language roll
Illumination: +2 to Penmanship roll
Scented page: +2 to Heart roll

Estagor - the Midden Barrows

Estagor is a dark fantasy setting for use with In Darkest Warrens, but feel free to crib for your own game.

The Midden Barrows are a place of rotten desolation. A complex of ancient tombs created by the Gobber hordes in the world's infancy, still writhing with life - or un-life - to this day. The sun can never shine on the barrows, not when the yellow fog rolls over the land during the daylight hours and dissipates at night.

The Queen of Never is the monarch of the barrow now, coated in raven feathers and crowned in pig sinew she walks these ways in search of meat. She speaks softly to the crows that form around her, their beaks caked in dry blood. Occasionally she chews the head off one, crunching its skull and lapping it's juices with a long grey tongue.

Queen of Never, 4+, 8 wounds, special action: the Queen of Never is joined by four crows. As an action she can grab a crow and devour it, regaining 1 wound.

The Queen is not the only thing a wander need fear out on the barrows at night. The Bloodghast is a name that lives in folklore throughout Estagor - the rotted creature with the head of a demented stag and the body of a human, its feet cloven hooves and it's hands extended into needle claws. Often the last thing a traveller hears is it's dirge of a call on the decaying breeze. The Bloodghast will tear open your ribs and eat your innards with you still watching.

Bloodghast, 3+, 7 wounds, special action: the Bloodghast has a paralysing tongue. In melee range it can use an action to lick an opponent. The opponent must test Brawn (difficult) or become paralyzed for 2 rounds.

Beneath the surface lies a warren of evil. Gobber ghouls and other undead being shuffle in the dark places of the world, defending their ancient treasures. Elves become particularly uneasy down here, calling for frequent brawn tests or spending minutes in a panic.

Another High - a cyberpunk adventure seed

Pisces A isn't on any official record. Don't think that you won't get dragged into a shuttered room and have your grey matter splattered for just mentioning the name. It's all within the Pineapple CEO's augmented brain.

It's about music. Imagine GlowNet users with Pineapple hardware getting a new kind of euphoria from dance beats. Pisces A is a new kind of tech drug in testing. Activate the neuro-wave enhancer and enter a new world triggered by club music. No more Zim pills. No more Hotshot. Instead, a safe drug alternative that makes you feel ten times better without the morning comedown. 

Now imagine how wrong these tests can go. 

Group Alpha showed initial promise. They experienced the ecstasy predicted in a thirty minute stim. One woman vomited, but that was fine. One guy went blind, but it was good enough as a trial. It's what happened later that was fucked up. 

A young woman, a tube dolly by trade, couldn't sleep. After day 6 of restlessness she grew spindly legs from her abdomen, her neck cracking and contorting, lips drawing back to reveal massive incisors. Pineapple sent five low grade gunners to her shanty apartment on Grover Ave. None reported back. What's more is that other things were reported - more creatures. They called them Skullers, on the count that they ripped out your fucking skull. PR disaster.

Skullers, android spider people who feed on face bone, 3+, 6 wounds, Special action: opponent must check nimble (difficult). On a failure, their head is grabbed, taking 1 wound. They may try to escape as an action with a nimble test (difficult). If a Skullers has already grabbed a victim's head they may use a special action to rip their skull out. 

The adventure? Take down the Skullers and don't let the trail lead to Pineapple. The twist? Pisces B is in full beta test with even more disasterous results. Same Skullers - but now music makes them stronger. Shit. 

Download Wired Neon Cities.

The wretch that came from the sea

Do not stray near the Grey Wash, many a rosy cheeked infant has been told. That's where the people of the deep wander looking for their next meal. Their hair is of weed and their eyes of pearls. Their teeth are fish hooks and their webbed hands suck the cliff face allowing them to ascend the sheer rock. 

Like the barnacle fishers they have their own shanties they drone as they climb - guttural tales of licking the juices from the eyes of children and crack snapping the bones of men. 

The sea wretches are begat of trolls having mated with the blasphemous sea god Llundwall. Sometimes their spawn jelly floats near to the shore where it is harvested for its aphrodisiac qualities. Those who use the jelly (Aphorite) wind up going into the inky blackness for the remainder of their days.

The sea wretches clutch tridents crafted from megalodon bone. They blow horns that produce a thick fog whose fingers creep over the shore. They are attracted to the smell of lavender and can smell it from a hundred leagues.