Join as Evilive liveplay’s @Eden Studios’ Army of Darkness roleplaying game episode Down with the Patriarchy. This is a continuation of the one-off episode Don’t Lose Your Head. You can learn more about the Army of Darkness roleplaying game corebook and buy a copy here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/2486/Army-of-Darkness-Corebook?affiliate_id=50797
Cast:
- Bethany Williams – Police Officer
- Kirk ‘Steel’ Miller – Welder
- Liam Davis – English Professor
- Jenna Brown – Tattoo Artist
Cast Backstory
You are all friends from high school. You used to hang out daily, party and get into mischief together. You stayed in contact and every year you would get together and do some new activity over a weekend (travel, camp, etc.). Last year Jen’s mother passed away, and she skipped the get together. No one could make it to her funeral, and Jen’s been taking it pretty hard. You all planned to go camping this year to get Jen out of her head, dragging her up into the Rocky Mountains.
Game Setup
Hello, I am the director of this episode. Our cast members Steel, Jen, and Liam have found themselves plunged into a pond after falling out of a vortex created by a ritual from the Necronomicon, meant to banish the Watcher. The unintended consequence was that the vortex pulled our heroes and nearly everything else in and around their campsite into the vortex as well. The heroes now find themselves in ancient Sumeria, some three thousand years before the common era. Can the cast please introduce themselves?
It is early in the morning. The sun has not yet breached the horizon line, though it’s casting a red hue over the scattered clouds in the sky. The smell of freshly dampened soil and vegetation permeates your senses as you examine your surroundings. In the distance covered in shade from unnaturally swirling storm clouds overhead, is a massive Ziggurat. You are standing in a thigh high pond with reeds thick around the shoreline. It looks as though this is part of a larger river swamp area that flows toward that structure to the east. On either side of the river are fields of grain as far as the eye can see, but you don’t see any fieldworkers. The silence of the moment is initially broken by the sound of mosquitos beginning to swarm all around you, and something large has moved from the shoreline into the water that you are now standing in. As fear begins to raise the hair on the back of your neck, you hear a piercing scream tear through the air from the southeast, as a young boy sees you all and runs off toward the large structure in the distance…
Supporting Cast
- Enkidu
- Enkidu’s Rebels
- Shamhasa
Story Beats
Act One – The Setup
Circa Mesopotamia. P. 178
Bethany rises up from the water slowly and begin to torment the heroes. The broken ice shed lies to their north and all around them are the camp items they, the fishermen and family brought with them, including their corpses.
Fight for survival
Bethany moves to attack as an undead crocodile takes one down.
VISION: Beth sees Jen’s mom lying in a jail cell with dried blood and wounds over her body. She is dressed in rags and quietly weeping to herself.
Captured
Fourteen men in robes with spears come to take the heroes captive. They are led through the city of Kandar into the jail under the Zigurrat. There they meet Shemhasa, a rebel, who tells them about the evil priest Urigan of Ereshkigal, the goddess of darkness and death.
SIGHTS: painted in blood across the buildings are the words – “ELI BALTUTI IMA’ IDU MITUTI” (The dead will be more numerous than the living!) and “DALKHU” (Demons).
What Shemnasa Knows
- The High Priest of Ereshkigal, Urigan, has been writing the original Necronomicon
- He uses the blood of the people of Kandar under the watchful eye of the demon Beletseri
- If there is a passage that will allow you to travel back in time, the pages will be or have been scribed by Urigan
- If you are to confront Urigan you must gain a spell of protection from an ancient witch who lives in the mountains north of the Tigris river. She is known as Khulanna.
Act Two – Complications
Breakout
Possible options are to overcome the guard as it brings food or the priests as they come to collect blood. Another option is to wait for Enkidu to break Shemnasa out.
- They have to escape the cells of the temple in Kandar
- Dex+Acrobatics three times, or they are seen by either a deadite or skeleton guards
- The witch lives north past the Cedar Forest. You will notice a pair of twisted trees and dead birds who will guide you, if you are worthy.
The Witch
- Then flee to the witch, Khulanna, who tells them about the watcher they call Humbaba the Terrible
- Then she conducts a ritual begging Inanna, goddess of love and war, to protect them
- Goat semen must be ingested while the brains are pure’d and rubbed over the body. Then the brains are lit on fire and they burn green
VISION: Urigan meets the watcher in the woods and makes a deal with him. He then murders his second in command and the demon Beletseri inhabits the body.
Then you get flashes of Kandar being overrun with deadites. Skeletons rise from the graves and battlefields nearby and come to serve Uigan.
Khulanna: Ereshkegal, goddess of darkness has offended her sister Inanan and brother Utu, the sun god. Inanna finds you worthy and gifts you her protection (+5 DR,) and Utu will provide you the cover you need to enter the Temple of Ereskegal.
Act Three – The Climax
The Return
- The heroes return to confront Urigan
- The cedar forest has grown to cover the area on their return.
- The trees attack, and they must flee ot be killed by the watcher
Return of the Chosen One
- They are stopped by Evil Chet
- He never knew being bad, felt sooo good!
About Army of Darkness Roleplaying Game
Alright, you primitive screwheads, listen up!
You’re in a strange land, with strange people, and you’re not thinking too clearly. The natives are suspicious, the leaders hostile, the priests cryptic, and no one’s bathed in months. Advanced tech is a hole in the ground filled with sewage. The basic food groups are roasted haunch, moldy bread, and watered-down wine.
Getting home ain’t going to happen anytime soon. First you need to find some stupid book, then recite some stupid phrase, then bring the stupid book back to the stupid castle. Heck, there’s probably a bunch of other stupid stuff you have to do. Just nobody’s told you about that yet.
Oh, and then there’s the army of undead just over the hill looking to gnaw on your soul!
Ash: That’s it. Go ahead and run. Run home and cry to mama. Me! I’m through runnin’. I say we stay here and fight it out!
Arthur: Are all men from the future loudmouth braggarts?
Ash: Nope. Just me baby . . . just me.
Inside this swank beauty, we’ll show you how to put the dead in deadite. Here, you will find:
- An introduction to roleplaying and the Army of Darkness story.
- A guide to character creation, including ready-to-play champions and companions, as well as specs on the Army of Darkness Cast, for your quick-play pleasure.
- The Army of Darkness Unisystem, streamlined for cinematic action and adventure.
- Guidelines for bringing the little people together, training them, and pitting them against the forces of evil.
- Blow-by-blow instructions for creating Army of Darkness roleplaying game sessions.
- A rundown on the Army of Darkness setting, places, people, events, including details on evil clones, demons, undead, and other critters.
- Fleshed-out new setting suggestions, taking your Army of Darkness game in freshly gruesome directions.
- A complete adventure to get the horror and hilarity under way right away.