This Demonic Adventure for the Old School Essentials system takes a party into a small pocket dimension of the hells. (A little Hellraiser and a bit of Silent Hill thrown into the Slaughterhouse sausage!)
Abattoir Hymnal is an adventure for Old School Essentials Month set in the bloody Butchered Realm. Adventurers will plunge into the gory realm, most likely without their skin, in search of answers and to defeat the grotesque Skin Taker, Ahrakmadt.
Ahrakmadt the Skin Collector
Redrun, a once small town, is now an up and coming destination for all things meat and other animal byproducts, offering the finest cuts, smokehouses, leather tanneries, velum, parchment, and fantastic charcuterie. Farmers in the surrounding area are now bringing their herds and flocks here for finishing and slaughtering instead of handling it on their family farms. It’s not the established way, but the artisans of Redrun are astoundingly skilled and produce items greater than usual. It all seems a bit unnatural…
The Skin Taker's Hymnal, made of tattooed human skins, contains the Psalms of Skin & Flesh created by Ahrakmadt over hundreds of years. In the Butchered Realm these hymns have power. The realm echoes with songs of praise emanating from the Offalspire, the twisted bloodied mouths scream, moan, and sing in all directions amplifying the unstaunchable melody.
The Offalspire is a jutting, grotesque, flesh obelisk everting into the Butchered Realm from an offal pit on the mortal plane. There guts, excess blood, bones, marred skins, and rotten meat are tossed in and the pit never fills. Below, in the Land of the Slaughtered, it creates a vile sonic beacon patrolled by Gore Crawler. This beast formed of human head, torso, arms, and lengths of animated intestine aids the "birthing" of the Slaughtered and protects this gateway to the plane of the living.
Abattoir Hymnal is an adventure for 3rd level characters that spans the Material Plane and a small pocket of Hell being carved out by Ahrakmadt, the Skin Collector. He’s gaining power, followers, minions, and a realm while planning his ascension to Demon Lord.
The Butchered Realm is a bloody copy of the mortal lands where Ahrakmadt and his skinned minions operate. The lesser demon has started to attract attention from above and below and must now rush the unholy ritual he needs to complete to unlock unlimited powers.
The Slaughtered, Ahrakmadt’s growing army and choir, roam the perverted version of Redrun and enact Ahrakmadt’s plans. They are skinned humans with various livestock heads and hides.
SAVE BIG with DISCOUNTED GROUP SHIPPING! Thirteen of the seventeen projects in OSE Month are participating in group shipping with Demonic Grimoire. This means all rewards from these projects will be grouped and shipped together so that you can back multiple projects without paying a ton for shipping! For instance, if you're in the US and back the Demonic Grimoire Ritualist Pledge Level + 9 other projects, you are paying up to $29; saving you $124 vs. the approx $153 if you had backed each project individually.
Please note that the values in the table are an estimate to the best of our knowledge at the time the campaign launched given the shipping fees and rates from our fulfillment warehouses. Please see the FAQ section for more information on shipping.
Donn drinking a stout. Photo courtesy of his wife, Rachel.
Donn Stroud writes RPG stuff and publishes some of it. Some books he’s been involved in are Dead Planet, A Pound of Flesh, Isle of the Plangent Mage, and Ruination Pilgrimage. He’s a man of the woods, lover of amphibians, and usually has his nose in a book.
Tiger Wizard in the Cool Cat Crypt
Tiger Wizard. Dark dungeon doodler. Cursed crypt cartographer. He/him works in the Tabletop Roleplaying Game industry as a game designer, illustrator, and mapmaker.
Donn and Tiger Wizard have both successfully delivered multiple crowdfunding campaigns in the past. Writing and artwork are already well underway, and they hold themselves fully accountable for timely completion. Like many of the other OSE MONTH projects, fulfillment will be handled in partnership with OSE Month and Exalted Funeral, ensuring all projects ship together and arrive as summoned.
Old-School Essentials Month
Old-School Essentials Month is a group-collab project led by Exalted Funeral and Necrotic Gnome, featuring a new 176-page OSE book — the Demonic Grimoire — and sister projects from 16 other renowned creators in the OSE community.
The theme of OSE Month 2026 is: DEMONS! Get ready for hordes of new monsters, adventures set in the realms of hell, fiendish new character options, and lashings of blood-dripping art.
Group Achievements
We will be announcing a series of achievements tied to the success of all OSE Month projects jointly! To start with:
All projects funded: When all OSE Month projects fund, we will arrange a community Ask Me Anything session on Discord, featuring creators from across the projects. This will be a chance to chat with the OSE Month creators about their projects.
Old-School Essentials (OSE) is a role-playing game of fantastic adventure inspired by classic games of the 1970s and 1980s. Players delve into forsaken ruins, battle fearsome monsters, explore haunted forests and perilous mountain ranges, sail the high seas in search of lost lands, recover fabulous treasures, and unearth secrets of ancient magic.
