Demidirge - Fanged Funnel

Demidirge is a level 0 funnel adventure for Shadowdark RPG.

You are a tunneler.
Trapped in a buried cathedral below a sentient sea of acid, your life is ruled by wraith-priests and an unseen Queen who spies through stolen eyes.
Armed with rotten tools and contraband fossils, you must obey, toil, and conspire to escape - before you're recycled in boiling fungal baths.

The project is already 75% complete. 
This is my 6th Kickstarter. Delays are unlikely. You should get your prints by April. I have deliberately chosen not to include stretch goals to avoid complications.

Collect earlier works as a bundle or as individual add-ons:

In this scenario, your players control several level 0 tunnelers attempting to escape The Malic Mindshaft, a subterranean gulag. Survivors awaken in coffins on the overworld as level 1 adventurers. This makes the module an ideal gauntlet for opening your campaign: it is largely setting-neutral, as the entire experience unfolds within an enclosed shared nightmare ecosystem.

If you wish to continue the themes of the adventure into a longer campaign, then this nightmare can leak out across your world map - terraforming reality: 

Hidden coffin farms begin to bud across the overworld. Wherever they root, the land turns toxic. Rivers blacken, beasts lose their eyes, the soil seeps acid and breathes. The Queen's influence spreads through these pod networks like veins through flesh, draining life to sculpt a body for herself in the waking world. 
Her intent is to drive her nightmare citizens to puncture deep enough, until they reach the sunless horizon's edge. When the tunneler’s breach the buried border between mindscape and matter, the real world will begin to rot into hers.

Demidirge will include: 

• A subterranean tunnel system ruled by an unseen Queen and her candle cult
• Tunnel map and keyed locations
• GM toolkit for encounters, tunnel weather, discoveries, and anomaly tracking 
• Rival crews, covert orders, quota races, and ghost elections 
• Acid-drenched formic foes that evolve over time
• Hand-drawn dark fantasy ink art 
• Character creation tables & NPC generators 
• Tools for expanding the adventure into a longer campaign 

• 100 gsm satin coated paper, staple-bound with matte laminated cardstock cover
• Trim size: 5.5” x 8.5”
• Black and white 
• 32 + pages
• The PDF will have hyperlinks, bookmarks, and at least one print-off page featuring consolidated GM tools to help make the game easier to run
• Graphic and art-heavy, two-column text, packed with ideas 

Preview

Here are links to a preview document of Demidirge: 

• Drivethrurpg preview
• Itch.io preview

Five modules that can form an adventure path for your players, or be chopped up and mined for content

• Demidirge (Level 0): An intro funnel.
• Willow (Level 1): A great starting location, players investigate a mystery in a grim backwater village.
• The Haunted Hamlet & Other Hexes: Four self-contained side quests. 
• The Toxic Wood (mid-level): A deadly wilderness adventure in a corrupted wood.
• Mana Meltdown (high-level): A high-stakes battle royal dungeon crawl finale.

Get everything - two books and five zines. Drop them into your world or run an entire campaign. Scroll down to the add-on section for more information on each of these modules. 

1. Wind Wraith (146-page hardcover): A nautical toolkit that generates islands, monsters, NPCs, factions, and more. Infinite exploration on the high seas.
2. Woodfall (92-page softcover): A thriving outlaw town, perfect for the player's base of operations, with an adjacent monster-infested swamp to hexcrawl.
3. Five Zines – A funnel, starting village, corrupted woods, deadly dungeons, and modular locations to fuel a string of adventures.

Mana Meltdown is a 40 page high-stakes psionic battle royale adventure. Outwit elite telekinetic treasure hunters in a lethal dungeon crawl. Race through a shrinking tomb of shifting geometry. Uncover secrets that death has sent a blood agent to erase. 

Wind Wraith is a 146-page hardcover book. This setting toolkit helps you generate your own fantasy post-apocalypse ocean world, complete with scattered islands, factions, ships, and ancient arcane machines. Play as the descendants of the survivors of a great flood, explorers in a fallen world, as they build and upgrade their ship and crew. Attempt to unravel the mysteries of the past and survive with limited resources. Wind Wraith was made for the old school essentials rule system but can easily be converted to many other rule systems. 

The Haunted Hamlet is a 32-page black and white zine that details four locations. These modular hex locations focus on gameable content and easy use at the table. The locations are not connected to one another and can be sprinkled onto your campaign map however you like, or run as one shots. The four locations are:

• The Gold Mine
• The Haunted Hamlet
• The Ladder Inn
• The Hat Cult's Hideout

The Toxic Wood is a 32-page black and white zine. A deadly wilderness adventure for Old School Essentials. This hexcrawl adventure focuses on gameable content and is easy to use at the table. It is graphic and art heavy and utilizes a lot of random tables to make it easier for GMs to run with minimal prep.

Willow is a 36-page single color zine containing a village that can be dropped into your campaign setting. Structured as a mini hexcrawl, players will have to work together to investigate a mystery to move on from a damp backwater village. Willow works particularly well as a starting location, but can be plugged into your world anywhere you could use a provincial settlement.

Woodfall is a 92-page black and white softcover book that contains a system-neutral dark fantasy mini-setting. Wade through a misty swamp, get caught up in the fighting between warring monster clans and revolutionary necromancers, discover a strange town of witches and thieves, and search for forgotten treasure.

If you pledge at this level, in addition to a print & PDF of Demidirge, you also get an original hand-drawn piece of artwork mailed to you. First come, first served. 

Large Original Art Gallery: https://www.artstation.com/lazy__lich/albums/14242543

Small Original Art Gallery: https://www.artstation.com/lazy__lich/albums/14242544

Shipping is included in your pledge, and all art will be shipped rolled up in tubes. It can take a day or two to be flattened out again, but this helps avoid damage in transport.
Please note that not all of these pieces are from Demidirge - some are from previous projects. If someone ahead of you in the queue snatched the art you wanted, you can always downgrade your pledge. If you change from Large to Small art (or vice versa) you will be put to the bottom of the queue. 

I'm Lazy Litch - a reclusive undead artist from Ireland, currently haunting Sweden. I write, illustrate, and layout all the adventures you see on this page. 

What other nerds are saying:

Reviews: 
 

Preview review of Demidirge: https://www.gamersdungeon.net/?p=5411

PDFs will be fulfilled via Backerkit, DriveThruRPG & Itch.io 

Shipping funds will be collected in backerkit after the campaign ends.