BlackwoodSavage Worlds

The Tale of the Seven Quillcrows

We at the Mythic Gazetteer hope you all had a great time over the holidays, and hope your dice have been generous in the new year. We’ve been busy behind the scenes over the past month, so we’ve got a lot of fun stuff to show off in the next few weeks. First off, we’ve got our first official Blackwood one sheet on our hands!

This past Sunday, I had the pleasure to take five brave and clever souls on an expedition into the Blackwood. There, they suffered grievous attack at the hands of both pagans and monstrous birds, came to the aid of a hopeless village, and squared off against an elf under the endless boughs of the forest. Four of the players were totally new to Savage Worlds, and I think it ended up being a great introduction to the system for them. Check out the Actual Play on my YouTube channel:

If you give it a watch, let us know what you think!

 

The Five Errants

Lady Iron, a harsh woman in the last years of her prime, marched between the two wagons on their way to Talbrand. Her Widelander companion, a holy man named Celebrant Maryan, scouted ahead on the road. In the wagon behind her, Sister Garnidt played her lap fiddle alongside a mysterious city girl calling herself Red Bear. And the pagan brought up the rear. It was a motley band of errants, while Lady Iron preferred order…

 

We only had about 30 minutes before the start of the game to explain the rules of Savage Worlds, but the new players made great use of their characters anyway. Many Quills, a scout and a reformed pagan, leapt and flitted around the forest like the birds he was cursed to resemble. Sister Garnidt was the eye at the center of every musical storm, confounding her enemies with maddening tunes. Sturdy in her Sentinel armor, Lady Iron fended off attacks against herself and her allies. The players brought one of their own back from the brink of death, learned the whole truth hidden in the village, and managed to both kill an elf and hallow a part of the forest for new settlement.

In the end, we had to speed through the ending due to time constraints. We skipped a navigation-based Dramatic Task entirely, but the Quick Combat Rules helped to keep the last battle an awesome sight to behold. Victory tropes were invoked and much celebration was had by all.

Grimm Fantasy

As I’ve mentioned before, I love myth and folklore. The Blackwood has been a place to learn more about them by writing some of my own. Most of them are original tales, but a few are inspired by real-world folktales. In the case of The Seven Quillcrows, I drew from Grimm’s Tales.

In The Seven Ravens, a little girl travels through a magical land and follows bizarre rules to free her lost brothers. She saves her parents from devastating sadness by opening a door in a glass mountain with her own finger bone, because she lost the chicken bone-key she was given by the stars. Underneath the fantasy, it’s a story about discovering a way out of lurking sorrow, and the sacrifices we may be asked to make along the way. Like any good folktale, there’s a magic item or two.

My One Sheet tries to draw from these themes to tell a story unique to the Blackwood. While guarding a caravan on the forest road, you discover a village plagued by pagans from out of the wilderness. They work in tandem with a murder of quillcrows, eagle-sized carrion birds festooned with sharpened feather-darts. Our errant heroes earn no gratitude from the village, whose opinion on errants soured long ago. Why would such a battered place reject good food and aid?

The Seven Quillcrows serves as a first introduction to the world–where danger is all around and help might not always be welcome.  It combines the magic of elves and curses with the grand action of a wuxia epic. Together with the 6 official Blackwood Archetypes (and the Savage Worlds rulebook), you can journey into the Blackwood yourself, to learn the secrets within…

If you’ve already got the Savage Worlds Deluxe Explorer’s Edition, head over to DriveThruRPG to download the rest of what you need to make your first foray in the Blackwood:

The Seven Quillcrows One Sheet

Blackwood Archetypes Folio

The documents feature some awesome character art from Eric Quigley, and killer layout work from Richard Woolcock. As fan supplements, both of these documents are totally FREE! So what are you waiting for? Scoop ’em up and head out into the woods!

When you sit down to run this adventure with your gaming group, take a take a table selfie with the hashtag #BlackwoodGames. And if you enjoy the adventure, please leave us a review on DriveThruRPG!

 

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