We’re delighted to give you an update and a sneak peak at some of the content for Come Hell or Highwater- from the book’s designer Shanna Germain!
Old Timey Semi Truck for Doctor Nathaniel’s Traveling Marvelment
The design for Come Hell or Highwater is nearly complete! This is a really cool supplement that includes a handful of dark new adventures, in-depth settings that you can plug-and-play into any campaign, and some deep dives into various important locations in the podcast, written by none other than Cam and Steve themselves!
Here’s a small sample of what you’ll find inside:
Adventures
Perhaps characters would like to accept an invitation to attend the spectacular, the marvellous, the incredibly creepy! Doctor Nathaniel’s Traveling Marvelment, where nothing is as it seems, not even Doctor Nathaniel. Or maybe they’d like to make some money delivering a crate of very special moonshine directly to the one person who really, really deserves such a “gift.” Horse tracks, blood bonds, monsters from the lake—these adventures are full of opportunities to scare and delight players (and, of course, to hopefully make them cry).
Full portrait of Doctor Nathaniel, suited and in a top hat, cape, and swagger stick
“You know you’ve found your forever family when your world around you is about to end and you’re determined to stay alive together, promising to have each other’s back through thick and thin. Through the darkness and the danger. Through better and worse. Through so, so much worse". ~from “Monsters Among Us,” an adventure in Come Hell or Highwater.
Plug-and-Play
What’s going on at the factory down the road? And how does that tie into the nearby town? Why is everyone fleeing the old farm and whispering about the woods around it? These sections feature details settings, including descriptions, NPCs, adventure hooks, and more, making them easy to use in a campaign and in any part of Appalachia.
“The factory looms with ochre-lit windows near the river soured with its run-off, smokestacks billowing steam or roiling black smoke, the drone and clatter of machinery drowning out cricket-song and howls of coyotes in the nearby hills. Inside the roar is overwhelming. Human-made devices whir and thrum with infernal intensity. Workers orchestrate these beasts with a mix of dazzling aplomb and resignation, pride in the warp and weft of their work, but muscle-tired and weary. The factory gives and the factory takes away.
You get your very own house, a community well to fill your washtub, scrip to spend at the company store, banjo picking on every other porch of a Friday night— no need to scratch the hard ground like a starved pullet looking for whatever the earth decides to give. The folks that work the same line are like family. They make each other laugh. They drive each other crazy. They’d do anything they could to help each other through a hard time. And when disaster strikes, as it seems determined to do, they might save their fellow worker before they save themselves.
But, lord, does the factory take. Twelve-hour shifts with hardly a break. The same repetitive tasks corrupting the joints and emptying the mind. Stifling heat in summer, biting cold in winter, the air thick with cotton fibers or toxic dust. The machines punish every slip— bloodying knuckles, severing a finger, removing a scalp. Something in the soulless gears and labyrinth of levers bespeaks darker intention, a malign energy looking for release through the nearest living conduit. Always the clatter. Always the drone. Always the unmerciful stench and the heartworn labor of another minute, hour, day. All the while, the floor boss stalks the rows with a hawked and witching eye, or looks down from a rickety parapet, just another man, or perhaps a minor god perched there by the hand of a grim avatar, to dispense its judgments, to gather its children”.
Medical Abnormality Sideshow collection exhibits
Important Locations
Always wondered what was behind (and inside) the Devil’s Divide? Wished for a detailed description of the Walker House? Ached for a map of The Home? These sections (written by Cam and Steve) are full of behind-the-podcast details of the places, people, and things that you know and love (or love to hate).
“The Clutch is a place of hidden lives and secrets not always dark, but often more complicated than folks care to take the time to understand. It’s not a big place, nor is it hard to find. Just go about five miles down Bear Wallow Road and look for a wide spot where, for as long as anyone can remember, folks have dumped old farm equipment. Carts with no wheels, busted plows and other agricultural cast-offs are discarded here in the middle of nowhere, abandoned to become someone else’s problem. This graveyard of busted axles and warped moldboards obscures a turn onto a narrow footpath that is all but invisible to the uninitiated. Push through the weeds just a bit and players will find the quarter mile dirt road leading from the town of Baker’s Gap into a shadowy holler where folks who have been discarded by society make their home, at least for a little while. Welcome to the Clutch”.
Cordelia Winslow OGoA Deeper Still Character
Last Few Hours to Escape Shadow and Enter the Real World
Fancy delving into more surreal magic and character driven goodness? There’s less than a day left to pledge for Invisible Sun Indigo and Electric. Discover magic that’s truly magical and experience the rich and surreal world of Invisible Sun. Enter the Actuality here.
Invisible Sun Supplement: The Electric Sun book cover
