[Review] The Unholy Fortress

A Stormbringer 4th Edition Scenario written by Nick Hagger, with art by Gustaf Bjorksten

Lost at the edge of the Eastern Desert, where the remains of a fallen god lie dormant, the champions of Mistress Fate are drawn to the Unholy Fortress. Trapped between the madness of a long dead deity and a ravening horde of crazed nomads, the characters must ally themselves with the fortress’ inhabitants (and a band of untrustworthy Pan-Tangian pirates) to ensure an evil worse than nightmare is stopped before it can be unleashed upon the Young Kingdoms!

The Unholy Fortress is a 22-page scenario written by Nick Hagger, and appears as the third (of four) scenarios in the Sea Kings of the Purple Towns  collection (released by Chaosium Inc in 1992 for Stormbringer 4th Edition).

Please note, as with all such scenario reviews on the Stormbringerrpg.com site, these commentaries are the opinion of their author only, and are rated in three simple categories – Must Run, Should Run, Might Run (see the sidebar below for more information on these ratings).

Scenario Overview

Why or how a god of Chaos came to lie dead on the shoreline of the Eastern Desert is lost to time immemorial, but over the centuries the head of Yeshpotoom-Kahlai has become a focal point of the lost and mad of the Young Kingdoms, each of whom seek answers from a deity that can no longer reply. Here also the characters are drawn, to the community of misfits and rejects that has grown up around the head of the dead god; the walled town known as The Unholy Fortress.

And outside the town’s sturdy battlements a vicious storm brews, as the nomad tribes gather under the banner of the charismatic yet insane sorcerer, Thorn, in their desire to scour the infidels from their desert. Driven by the delusion that Thorn alone possesses the key to reawakening the dormant god, the stage is set for an epic clash between faith, madness, and the relentless pursuit of ancient power. Will the characters be able to stop this madman and his army in time, or will the dreams of Yeshpotoom-Kahlai be too much for the might of even the most dogged of Mistress Fate servants? Let’s find out together in this review of Nick Hagger’s The Unholy Fortress…

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At its core, The Unholy Fortress is a scenario about defending an ancient and unknowable artifact (that being the mind of a long dead god) from the powers of Chaos, but really it is much, much more than that…

On reflection, The Unholy Fortress actually feels somewhat like a scenario from before its time, presented as it is, in a structure that is more focused on plot and story than most adventures of this period ever were (especially those in the Stormbringer line).  As such, in this scenario we are more likely to see the reflections of an adventure that might be released today than the ‘dungeon’ crawling of the early 90s – here we find an ‘open sandbox’ of story beats  and a flow of the in-game events and outcomes left to be developed in the telling. This makes The Unholy Fortress a pretty unique scenario in my opinion, and one ripe for further exploration.

Written as one extended narrative (broken only by the need to provide enough gameplay-elements – such as NPC statistics and location descriptions), The Unholy Fortress is a smooth read that entertains while simultaneously providing enough content to actually be played as an adventure. Structure-wise the story focuses in on four main acts, that together create a pretty compelling narrative.

The first of these covers how the characters are drawn to the remote Eastern Desert (with their assistance having been prophesied by the dead god) and the journey they must take to get there. This leads to the calm before the storm (or in this case the quiet before the arrival of a bloodthirsty nomad horde determined to take control of Yeshpotoom-Kahlai’s corpse), in which the party will get to explore the fortress, meet its bizarre but welcoming residents, and be provided with the opportunity to visit dead god’s psychedelic mind space. After this, the story shifts focus to the siege, which in itself provides a good mix of combat and drama, which is further expanded with plenty of unique events and demon-sent horrors. Penultimately, the group will be drawn into a race against time to save the fortress, before finally needing to draw on the Dead God’s power once more in a final scene twist worthy of any good thriller.

At it’s heart, as I’ve mentioned, The Unholy Fortress is an open, sand box-styled adventure, one that really comes to life in the interactions between the Non-Player Characters (some of whom would be worthy additions to much larger stories or campaigns) and the players. We get a near dozen unique personalities from the core residents of the community and each has their own goals and motivations that really deserve to be explored in more detail in any telling. Likewise, the various scenes that make up the whole are all interesting and easily expanded upon (which is something that I thoroughly suggest any potential Game Master explores), but even when taken as written, the entire scenario stands strong despite having been written more than 30 years ago!

Highlights

There is just something quite different in The Unholy Fortress that makes it stand out from some of its other well known Stormbringer colleagues; perhaps it is shear insanity of a scenario set amidst a siege taking place over the corpse of a long dead god? In any case, the author, Ozzie Nick Hagger, really did do just about everything he could to make this a little gem of an adventure.

• The Non-Player Characters – You just have to love all the characters that have been created for this scenario. So many of them have their own unique goals and motivations – reasons for them being ‘exiled’ to the edge of civilization – that your players’ discussions with them will likely extend over multiple sessions! Not only that, but many have a specific (and often violent) fate determined for them, which while does go a little against my own preferred way of gaming, definitely increases the ‘hit’ on the players when these deaths do occur. I’ve personally got a few real favourites among this varied mob (such as Alack, the mad chaser of doom, and Lazarus, the enigmatic blacksmith), all of whom add a lot of randomness and feeling to the game when played.
• The Setting – As I keep saying, the sand-box approach to storytelling really stands out in this scenario, and the mixture of madness (the characters get to go inside the mine of a dead god for crying out loud, and then during the siege get to face down a rampaging demon-beetle-beast called an Urgle) and the reality (I mean all the NPCs think they are going to die in the upcoming battle and if that’s not a sobering thought then I don’t know what is), adds so much to engage the characters. Even if taken out of context, the core elements of the story just scream STORMBRINGER!! (yes, and that is with an intentional extra exclamation mark).
• The Twist Ending – I won’t go too much into this event, but boy does it really put a ‘bang’ into the climax of the adventure. While intuitive players are likely to be expecting this twist to happen, it is when in the story it is unleashed that really hits the hardest. (I’d also say that it might be extremely dangerous to the characters, especially if they’ve taken damage and injuries in the defense of the fortress!) But there’s nothing like a bit of last minute betrayal to round out your epic as they say!

Issues or Constraints

Reading again through The Unholy Fortress, the only real issues I can see in this scenario comes from what I suspect were the physical constraints around page and word count (a challenge for most authors and something the plagues many a good story). These limits also probable explain my other concerns:

• The Compressed Timeline – As written the characters arrive at the Unholy Fortress just a day prior to Thorn’s nomad horde. This really constrains the world building elements of the adventure and limits the players ability to learn much about this part of the Eastern Desert. Of course, it is easily enough to extend this timeline, but in the read through these early sections  do all feel a bit rushed.
• Walking through the Head of Yeshpotoom-Kahlai – A good part of the text is dedicated to the characters’ likely exploration of the dead god’s head (allowing them to experience first hand the madness that resides within). However, while this location is traversed three or four times in the narrative, there is little motivation or reason for the party to explore the wilder, more ‘out there’ encounters that exist in Yeshpotoom-Kahlai dead mind. It would probably have felt a bit more interesting if there was more of a reason to explore the god’s mind further, giving the Game Master an real opportunity to throw all the wackiness of the place at the characters.
• Deus ex machina – Despite the wonderful plot building in the adventure, there are story points where certain things need to happen to certain characters at certain times. Sure, the Game Master can always alter these events or change who they happen too, but this does all feel a little clunky – especially as the ultimate fate of these characters really doesn’t matter outside the drama of the story. It’s a shame that these happen in such a way – as they sort of force a narrative pause while they play out.

Suggestions in Play

Having both played in and run this scenario, there are a couple of things I like to suggestion to any Game Master thinking about offering this adventure up for their players…

• Explore and Describe – There is just so much potential to extend the ‘sand box’ of this scenario that a GM would be foolish to simply just use the plot as written. If I was to run this again, I would add some further intrigue and exploration to the story – events occurring inside the fortress (perhaps a traitor, maybe an influx of refugees, and I’d even take the opportunity to introduce one or two new NPCs from among the fortress’ 200-odd defenders) as well as a reason to get out and explore the wider desert prior to the Nomad horde’s arrival (maybe to do some scouting, or set up traps, and even as a way of allowing the party to learn more about Thorn’s motivations for attacking the fortress). Further, I’d build on the description of the community itself, detailing more of the buildings (and their owners of course), etc. All these suggestions aren’t criticisms of the scenario, rather they are likely things the author would have thought of, but I’m sure couldn’t really achieve in the word count.
• Empower the Characters – As noted earlier, there are a couple of events that are predestined to occur in the story and a few others that are fully outside of the control of the characters ability to influence them. While I’m generally okay with the introduction of these sorts of components to ensure the narrative develops, I don’t see in this scenario any reason why it can’t be the characters who take on these critical roles (or have the events truncated so the heroes can do a little ‘heroing’ instead... yes I’m looking at you, Trokar and the killing of the Urgle!).
• Better introduction to the Scenario – This is a minor quibble really, and you can see why so few words within the text was spent on it, but the ‘prophecy’ approach to getting the characters to come to the fortress is a bit weak. I personally believe it would be better to ‘force the characters to be the heroes’ in this situation, and leave them no choice but to assist the misfits of the Unholy Fortress by stranding them there (as my first GM did to his party just before I joined). By doing this and providing the group with more information on the sorcerer Thorn, they would likely come to he realisation that stopping the nomad horde at the fortress is likely their last best hope of saving the Young Kingdoms from a future doom etc.

Final Notes

There are many good sessions of play in The Unholy Fortress, and given that this scenario isn’t driven by any specific timeline, it’s likely you could expand and grow the scenario in plenty of  different ways with little effort. I’d note also, that – already as written – it does nicely form part of a longer campaign, fitting in well with the other three scenarios that appear in the Sea Kings of the Purple Towns supplement. This is a real bonus.

So what’s my final thoughts? Well in these 22 pages you get a real highlight of creative game writing for Stormbringer, providing us with some of the quirky elements the game is known for without going full ‘gonzo’! This combined with a simply yet solid core adventure really makes The Unholy Fortress a winner in my book!