Keep The Home Fires Burning: Mortuary Troubles

This week we dip back into Keep The Home Fires Burning, a setting that we've only infrequently looked at. Trying my hand at an adventure in the KTHFB setting, something thats been kicking around in my head for a while. The basis overview is that the characters have been sent to a hospital where corpses have been stolen from the hospital's morgue, though the truth behind the thief is more horrible than the characters realise.

A Grave Matter

The characters are tasked by their superiors at the Home Office to investigate a spite of thievery of bodies from the Albion Hospital on Burke Street in London's East End. The Metropolitan Police has had little luck in solving the case and the authorities, fearing dark means being involved, dispatch the characters to try and get to the bottom of things.

At the hospital the morgue attendant, a teenage lad by the name of Robert O'Hare who'd lucked on being conscripted by turning 18 as the war ended. O'Hare appears to be nervous round the characters, he'll claim his anxiety is due to fear of losing his job and that his family had originally come from Dublin. His uncle is a respected surgeon at the hospital and had gotten Robert the position of morgue attendant in hopes of giving the lad some practical experience and encouragement to enter medical school. Robert is also the one who raised the alarm about the missing bodies, something which is confirmed by the police report.

The hospital is short staffed due to a mixture of wartime conscription and the flu epidemic causing the hospital to loose staff. What staff remain are overworked dealing with flu victims, whilst O'Hare is the sole morgue attendant but has to help out the other staff. The police suspected that the bodies may have illegally be taken for use as cadavers, but thus far enquiries at medical schools in the London area failed to support this claim. Though the police remain suspicious of O'Hare.

When the characters investigate the morgue, they won't find much unless they look real closely. Either by spotting wheel marks on the floor (possibly via a raise on a Notice roll) or exploring the rest of the basement area in which the morgue is located, the characters will find morgue trolleys being left in another part of the basement. O'Hare, if questioned, will state that these trolleys are broken and he'd put them there until they could be fixed or replaced. Investigating further will reveal no report has been made about these trolleys being broken and there doesn't seem to be an actual fault with any of them.

Searching the room with the trolleys will reveal some curious marks on the floor leading to a false floor covering a hole leading down to an unlit tunnel. The tunnel appears to be very old, perhaps medieval or even Roman in origin. The tunnel is also partially collapsed and cramped, barely big enough for a single person to crawl along. After a few hundred feet the tunnel opens up into a large cavern, here an overpowering rotten smell greets the characters. As they quickly discover, the cavern is home to a warren of ghouls along with what remains of the bodies they took from the morgue.

The ghouls had been stealing from the morgue for some time, though they were caught in the act by O'Hare one night. The lad, scared out of his wits by the encounter, pleaded for his life and managed to strike a deal where he would leave bodies by the false floor where the ghouls could get to them without fear of getting caught. Somebody higher up got suspicious when bodies started going unaccounted for, something O'Hare pass off as a simple matter of thievery but he is now scared of being found out.

Adventure Rules

Refer to the Setting Rules for KTHFB, count the morgue and basement area of the hospital as being Infection Rating 4. The characters' Immunity bonus (+1 per Rank) and a Germ Mask (+2) will help off-set the worse of the penalty on the Contraction Roll.

Weapons wise, it is suggested that the characters have access to pistols, revolvers and small melee weapons suitable for the period. Weird War One is highly recommended for weapon stats.

No full stats for O'Hare, though he's considered to have d6 for Attributes and Core Skills.

A Fear Check at -1 will be needed when the characters encounter the ghouls, likewise there will be 1d4+1 ghouls per character.

Ghoul

Ghouls are vile scavengers, feasting off carrion and unfortunate victims who cross their path.
Attributes: Agility d10, Smarts d6, Spirit d6, Strength d8, Vigor d8
Skills: Athletics d8, Fighting d6, Intimidation d8, Notice d8, Survival d8, Stealth d10
Pace: 6; Parry: 5; Toughness: 8
Special Abilities
• Claws: Str+d4.
• Infravision: Ghouls halve penalties (round down) for bad lighting when attacking living targets.
• Keen Senses (Smell): Ghouls get +2 to Notice and Tracking rolls against living targets.
• Paralysis: Victims of a ghoul's claw attacks must make a Vigor roll at -2 or be paralyzed for 1d6 rounds.
• Undead: +2 Toughness; +2 to recover from being Shaken; No additional damage from called shots; Immune to disease and poison.

Thanks to Richard Woolcock for the Ghoul stats.

Keep The Home Fires Burning: Setting Rules

Its been a while since I've posted anything for Keep The Home Fires Burning, though I've had a few ideas on how I want various Setting Rules to work. The Adventure Edition of Savage Worlds also provides a good excuse to look again at this setting idea. Once Frozen Skies has been updated for SWADE and an updated book released, I hope to come back to this setting in hopes of producing either a Jumpstart or Mini-Setting for it.

The Flu

The Spanish Flu forms a huge backdrop to the setting; in addition to being the catalyst for all the critters crawling out of the woodwork it is also going to have an affect on the player characters. So this calls for a couple of special rules; Contraction Rolls and Infection Rating.

Contraction Roll 

A Contraction Roll is a Vigor roll made every four hours of game time or when the character moves into an area with a higher Infection Rating. Each character has a stat called Immunity, this is grants a +1 bonus per Rank to the Contraction roll. Though, the character suffers a penalty equal to the Infection Rating of the area that they are in. Germ masks provide a +2 bonus and the roll can be modified by Edges and Hindrances.

Optional Rule: -1 penalty for every infected character in the group.

Refer to the Disease rules in SWADE and consult the table below when making the roll.

Critical Failure - Lethal, make Vigor roll every four hours.

Failure - Chronic, no additional effects.

Success - Deilitating

Raise - Perfectly healthy, no ill effects.

Infection Ratings

Infection Rating 0 - Negligible chances of contracting the flu, though only tends to be sparsely inhabited countryside or isolated islands.

Infection Rating 1 - Villages and other small settlements that have semi-regular contact with nearby towns or other settlements. Also large parks within towns and cities.

Infection Rating 2 - Large villages with regular contact with other settlements or small towns, plus the wealthier neighbourhoods of large cities.

Infection Rating 3 - Most towns or where there is a regular gathering of people.

Infection Rating 4 - Cities and other areas with large gathering of people such as public transport or military bases.

Infection Rating 5 - Hospitals and the slum areas of cities; fair number of people packed into a small area means infections tend to spread like wildfire.

Update Feb 2019

Well, its been a while since an update was posted.

Now we've settled into a new year its probably an idea to make a post about whats planned for Utherwald in 2019. The big news is probably going to be Frozen Skies and SWADE related, but some other stuff will be covered.

Frozen Skies

Its already been mentioned that Frozen Skies will be updated to the Adventure Edition of Savage Worlds.

Have been working on an update document, which covers the changes needed for Frozen Skies to conform with SWADE. The last real job left to do is update the Bestiary and NPCs found in the book as well as going over the air combat rules to see whether any improvements can be made.

A Jumpstart for SWADE is ready to go, just waiting for it to go out to the SWADE Kickstarter backers before it gets put on general release. It features some new content and an adventure that I hope captures the feel of Frozen Skies.

Then it'll be a case of updating the book and releasing a SWADE version, though the Savage Worlds Deluxe version will remain on sale. It is my intention to have separate listings for the different versions.

After all that, the next release planned for Frozen Skies is called Skies of Crimson. This book will focus on the sky pirates of the setting; showcasing a few gangs, feature a more detailed look at Broken Spires and more air combat related content.

Other Projects

Some of you may recall a series of posts about various Setting Ideas, basically ideas for settings other than Frozen Skies. The various ideas are as follows;

Cold War Skirmishes - Covering lesser well-known conflicts of the Cold War period.

Darkwatch - Heroes fight to restore order in a city recently liberated from dark forces.

Forsaken Space - Scavenging for relics in the alien ruins of a dead galaxy.

Gwentshire Chronicles - Confronting the supernatural horrors of an English county throughout the ages.

Keep The Home Fires Burning - Supernatural horror amidst a plague ravaged post-WW1 London.

It is hoped that each of these will see the light of day as Jumpstarts, then followed by full books for each setting.

Also looking to update a previously made fan adventure to SWADE and release it through the Savage Worlds Adventurer's Guild, stay tuned for further updates on this.

Misc

One of the other things I'm hoping to do this year is update the blog/site and reorganise stuff.

Keep The Home Fires Burning

This week we're looking at another of the planned settings for Utherwald Press and, fittingly enough as I have a cold, its Keep The Home Fires Burning.

It'll pretty much be a few ideas I have in mind for the setting, concepts and possible rules. There will also be an insight in how character players interact with the setting along with a couple of adventure hooks.

The Flu

Central to the setting is going to be the Spanish Flu; at least a quarter of the British population was affected and over 50 million people died because of it worldwide (228,000 in Britain alone). Even Prime Minister David Lloyd George contracted it but survived.

The visual signs of the flu is going to be people coughing and sneezing in addition to overcrowded hospitals. Though there is other things such as theaters, dance halls, churches and other public-gathering places being closed in addition to people wearing anti-germ masks. Carts piled with the flu's victims would also be common.

In game terms the flu would be Long-Term Chronic, Majorly Debilitating. Edges and Hindrances could be used to represent immunity (or lack of) to the flu, also considering something like the Fear Levels from Deadlands but adapted for areas of greater or lesser risk of infection. These 'Infection Levels' would determine the penalty on a Vigor roll to contract the flu, the higher the Level the greater the penalty. Hospitals would have the highest, but something like a large park would have a pretty low Infection Level due to lack of people. Anti-germ masks could provide a bonus here.

The Characters

Decided not to go with any references to MI13, instead the characters will be part of a group known as 'Home Office Auxiliaries'. The characters will have been sworn-in as special constables (unless they're already members of the police) to work for the Home Office by investigating and containing the weirdness that is afflicting London in hopes of keeping it under wraps. Though whilst they are likely to face the weird and supernatural, they are just as likely to deal with more mundane affairs.

One task the characters could expect to do is being called to a hospital to investigate why the bodies in its morgue are being disturbed, only to discover a warren of ghouls under the building. On the other end of scale, the characters could have to deal with a criminal gang who have been peddling a false 'vaccine' for the flu.