In the last blog post, I talked about how I recently built a temple board for use at the Alberta Mordheim Open event coming up this weekend. It is a 'fixed' build, by which I mean that you can't move around the terrain on the table. I have always had mixed feeling about this kind of terrain. It allows you to create more intricate and interesting builds, but it limits the flexibility and use of the table. If you are a narrative gamer like I am, you better have a lot of reasons to return to that location.
So, today I want to talk a little bit about my narrative justifications for this build (outside of creating it for people to use at a cool event). Honestly, it is really easy to work the same terrain into multiple worlds or campaigns, but I wanted to have my own fluff to justify it. I'll start with Mordheim, as that's what it is initially going to be used for.
Mordheim: The Temple of Morr
In the Old World, Morr is the human god of death. Seen as someone who protects souls from necromancy, and guides the dead to their final resting place. He is a protector. My lore, is that the Temple of Morr in Mordheim is one of the casualties of the wyrpstone comet. The temple is shattered by fragments of the comet, which embed deeply in the soil around the ruins - and the graveyard. The wyrdstone corrupts the temple, perverting it, and desecrating Morr's temple grounds. This leads to undead rising from their graves, making a mockery and a blasphemy of the once holy temple. Warbands come to the temple to loot the gold and religious artifacts that were held by the church, but when they arrive, they are confronted with prowling zombies and skeletons that complicate the job.
I've actually written up a set of simple rules for the table to be used at the upcoming event:
Forbidden Psalm: The Fallen Church
I want to play some Forbidden Psalm with my friends and get a true campaign going, but I also got inspired by an area in the new Elden Ring DLC where churches are collapsed into a pit in the earth. I wasn't able to find an image of exactly the scene that captured my imagination, but the location is quite close to Moorth Ruins (you can see the pit here where the church appears to be sliding downward):
The lore is similar to that of Fallen London, for any OG's out there who know what that is. In that example, bats carried London under the earth, into a giant cavern next to a subterranean ocean. In my case, an entire town which houses a massive church, is pulled into the earth for some great unknown heresy. The townsfolk, who are all congregants of the church, are pulled down with it. Surface dwellers have no idea what happened, save that there is a giant crater where the town used to be, and a hole so big that you cannot see the bottom. Eventually, some intrepid explorers gather up their bravery (and a lot of ropes), and begin descending into the pit to see what they can find. Simultaneously, many inhabitants of the underworld begin poking around and seeing what all the commotion is about. The townsfolk, it turns out, have been worshiping a dark god who has pulled them into the earth. Their horrible rituals begin turning the villagers into mutants and monsters who lurk in the ruins, and their dark priest lurks in the ruins of the great temple.
I'm creating the warbands and rosters for this campaign, so that it is easy for my friends to just jump in and play without doing any prep work. While they are not (fully) painted, I have pictures of two of the warbands I've create, which have a little bit of kitbashing work done on them. Both of them are using models from the recent Reaper Bones 6 Kickstarter.
The Gnarled Men of Feotid Bog
The Magmakrak Lizardfolk
I also plan to create two surface dweller warbands for this campaign as well - but this once again gives me the opportunity to use the temple board for a few narrative games.
Skirmish Game: Mad Gods
I've already used this board for another of my 'live' battle reports on Instagram, where I uploaded a video reel after each turn. I created a little supplement for Skirmish Game called Mad Gods, which adds in a bit of spellcasting, and an action called 'prayer'. I thought a ruined temple would be the perfect place to try out this system. So my undead warband who prayed to the dead god The Silent, fought against some mystic elves who worshipped the Dreamer. The elves were trying to stop a ritual of the dead in the temple to The Silent, but they failed and paid dearly for the attempt (and left a few good corpses behind for the lich to reanimate).
I think this will be a great little board for a variety of these easy games. I think there will be a larger battle over this holy site from the three main religious factions, to see who can plant their temple on the location of power.
That's 3 narrative ways that I hope to make the most out of this board, but I'm sure I will come up with many more. I also plan to follow this up with a part 3, where I show off some pictures and stories from the warbands and players who actually get to play on this board at AMO/Into the Dungeon Fest. I'll be working the event, so I may be a bit busy - but I'm really hoping we can get some photos of this board in action, and some battle reports and stories from the players themselves.
See you next week after the event!
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