The Barony of Ark is a place with a long but mostly forgotten past, from ancient elven ruins to somewhat less ancient human ruins. This article covers Ark during its darkest days, when a combination of drought and high taxation threatens to wipe out the population unless something drastic is done.

This article also provides an adventure to introduce your party to the region, and offers them the chance to join a rebellion against the local greedy lord. Will they take up the fight for the right to live, or decide it’s somebody else’s problem?

The Barony of Ark

Ark is a seaside barony home to farmers and ranchers. Two years in a row of unusually dry weather have caused farm yields to plummet, but the baron has refused to lower his taxes. Now, taxmen roam the countryside, trying to squeeze blood out of stones.

Arkton

The seat of the barony is Arkton, a small town surrounding a castle built on a hill. Arkton is a place that has seen better days. Paint peels off the wooden buildings, deep ruts mar the road, and the air is thick with dust.

The population is almost entirely human, though a small clan of dwarves also lives here.

The Church of the Firstborn

The Church of the Firstborn, known to most as just “The Church,” sits on the main street of Arkton, between the gate and the castle. It has a large, red bell tower, whose bells ring at 6 AM and 6 PM every day. Even it is starting to show some wear from deferred maintenance, with leaks in the roof going un-repaired and one large hole in the steps leading into the church.

Inside, there are two rows of pews, separated by a blue carpet that runs from the door to the dais. The floor is rough-hewn stone, worn smooth in high-traffic areas by years of use. Behind the dais is a human skeleton, encrusted with gold and gems. Two sapphires set in silver form the eyes. It is held in place by metal rods and posed so that it is holding a metal rendition of a stalk of wheat above its head with one hand.

The Royal Bakery

The Royal Bakery is an imposing stone building with three smoke-belching chimneys. Most of its “employees” are debtors, people who were unable to pay off their taxes to the baron and who have been forced to work off what they owe.

Taxed grain is brought here, milled, and turned into bread to feed the nobility and the guards, and to sell to the townsfolk and the debtors.

The Bald Rat

“The door creaks as you push it open. A rush of warm air thick with the smells of sweat and beer washes over you. The inside of the tavern is dim, and once your eyes adjust to the darkness, you see that the floor is mostly rough stone, with a newer, wooden section to your right. A long, L-shaped bar sits against the back wall, and tables are strewn about the bar room, apparently at random. A thin man behind the bar waves at you. ‘Welcome!’ he says. ‘Take a seat anywhere.’”

The Bald Rat is a sleazy tavern near the center of Ark. Its floor is a mix of rough stone and time-worn wood, and its bar room is dotted with haphazardly placed wooden tables. The food here is meager, consisting of smoked meat, stale but edible cheese, and bread whose flour has been adulterated with a small amount of sawdust. Rooms cost five copper a night, and breakfast and supper are included in that cost.

One of the wooden floor sections can be lifted up to reveal a cache of spears, shields, and crude helmets.

Townsfolk

The Movement

Baron Montveigh’s heavy taxes and their dire results have, of course, created a lot of resentment. Much of this resentment has coalesced into a group that calls itself the Movement. They are a collection of farmers, servants, traders, and townsfolk who have been training and preparing to fight back against Montveigh’s government, in the hopes of replacing it with a more lenient regime.

Castle Ark

Castle Ark is a fortified structure made of white stone, sitting atop a hill that overlooks Arkton. Baron Montveigh and his family live on the highest floor of the keep, and the lower floors are occupied by the offices of the military, the servants, and so on. The office with the fake portrait is on the north side of the keep.

The westernmost outbuilding is filled with cooking supplies, such as bags of flour and salted meat. Against its south wall, there are two stacked crates labelled “Réglisse Noire.” These crates are hollow and conceal an entrance to the ruins below the castle. The front of the pair of crates can be opened by lifting the front panel slightly upwards and then pulling it (or pushing it, if you’re on the inside) outwards. Of course, this won’t work if there’s something in front of the crates, so if you want to make life harder for your players, there’s an idea.

The westmost of the southern outbuildings is the kitchen, where meals for the nobles and servants are made. Young scullions and older women are constantly going in and out of the kitchen, except between the hours of 12 and 6 AM.

The center-south building is the armory, where the guards’ spare weapons and armor are kept. There is nothing particularly fancy in here, just spears, man-catchers, and shields.

The eastern building in the south row holds the offices of the Captain of the Guard and the tax collectors. There is a whole lot of money in here, but it is kept in a heavy metal safe. Taxes paid in grain are weighed here before being transported to the Royal Silo.

The outbuilding in the northeast corner holds the entrance to the dungeon jail cells, and a table where two to four guards can usually be found eating or playing poker.

The gatehouse at the southeast corner of the castle is manned by two guards at all times, and there is a pair of metal gates that can be dropped to trap intruders.

There are ruins below the castle, which are detailed further in the Ruins section of the adventure below.

Adventure: Taxes & Treason

This system-agnostic adventure is designed to be easy to run for any party size, at a relatively low level. Just grab the stat blocks for your system’s generic guards, skeletons, and wizards, and you should be good to go!

The Timeline

This section describes what happens if the party does not interfere with the current state of things in Ark.

Day 1: Tim collects some taxes and returns to Arkton with a severely bruised face after getting beaten by John MacKurray. The MacKurray Farmhouse mysteriously bursts into flame later that night, killing the occupants.

Day 2: Nothing of note.

Day 3: A tax collector fails to return from the farms west of Arkton. Guards set out to find him.

Day 4: The tax collector’s body is found tied to a signpost, with his hand nailed onto the sign pointing to Arkton. The wagon is found soon after, with all its grain and money removed.

Day 5: Tax collection convoys set out under heavy guard in the morning. At noon, a large force of armed Movement members attempts to attack the castle’s front gate, while a smaller group tries to enter the castle via the secret entrances in the ruins. The smaller group is slain by the skeletons haunting the ruin, and the larger group is brutally subdued when the tax collectors and guards return.

Tax Collection

Your travels have brought you to a crossroads at the border of a place known as the Barony of Ark. As you sit around the wooden table with your ale and food, one of you notices a piece of paper nailed to the wall beside the main door. It reads

“Looking for strong adventurers for government guard work. Fight bandits, get paid, inquire at Room 3.”

After a short discussion, you head up to Room 3. You knock on the door, and after a moment, it slowly opens to reveal an unusually tall, thin man. He wears a white shirt and a pair of brown trousers. Dangling from his neck is a brass badge with the royal seal of the Barony of Ark and the words “TAX OFFICE” on it.

“Ah, hello.” he says, slowly. “Here about the ad, I expect?”

[pause for the players to say something in the affirmative]

“It’s a simple enough affair. You come with me, sit on the wagon and look intimidating while I collect taxes from the locals. If somebody gets violent, or if some fool decides to try to attack the wagon, you deal with them. You’ll get 10 gold each and a free trip into beautiful Arkton. If I can get the Baron to spare some gold, maybe we’ll have some more work for you after that. Interested?”

Tim’s previous set of guards only agreed to work as far as this inn, and he’s been hanging around trying to find someone else to escort him.

He waits for their answer and, if they agree, he tells them to meet him outside in the morning.

Bandit Encounter

It’s a beautiful morning. Birds singing, dew on the grass, and just a hint of cold in the breeze, reminding you of the approaching winter. Tim’s tax wagon is a black, wooden coach with the Baron’s heraldry on each side. There are two benches inside, each concealing a locked box. One for grain, and one for gold.

Once you all get in the wagon, you set off on your tax-collection journey. The first few jobs go well: You arrive at a farm, somebody gives Tim a bag of coins or a few sacks of grain, you set off again. And then, as you round a corner, you see a large tree blocking the path. The horses slow, Tim swears, and an arrow embeds itself in the wagon right beside Tim’s head.

[party+2] people run out of the bushes, half in front of the wagon and half behind. Each wears a piece of blue cloth covering most of their face, and most are armed with farming implements: Pitchforks, flails, and axes.

The largest one of them, a man carrying a sledgehammer, calls out ‘Leave our grain and money behind and we’ll let you go.’

If the party hesitates, Tim calls out “Get them, you fools! What am I paying you for?!’”

The bandits won’t fight to the death. Individual bandits will flee if reduced to 1/4 of their health, and the entire group will flee after half their number has retreated. After that, the party continues on to their next tax collection site.

The MacKurray Farm

The caravan rumbles down the dirt road, coming to a stop in front of a small farmhouse. The harvest is over, the fields are barren, but anyone experienced with farming can tell that this harvest wasn’t good. There are no stalks left over in some areas of the field, and the stalks that do exist are thin and spindly.

Tim cracks his neck, then turns to the party and says “Stay here. I’ll be back in just a moment.”

He hops off of the wagon, removes his hat and knocks on the door. A thin woman answers the door and beckons him in.

Less than a minute later, the door bursts open again, and Tim’s body flies through it. He lands on his back with a gasp, and a black-haired man with long black hair jumps out of the door and on top of Tim.

“You devil! You vampire!” the man shouts, as he begins to reach for a knife at his belt.

What do you do?

The man is John MacKurray, an average commoner with a sharp knife. If left to his own devices, he won’t actually kill Tim the Tax Man. He will settle for punching him in the face and telling him to get off his property.

If they intervene to save Tim, there are no further events of note during the tax collection run. They are dropped off at the Royal Grain Storage in Ark, and left to their own devices.

If they do not intervene, Tim manages to shake John off of him and takes the wagon straight back to Ark. He commands the guards at the gates to throw the party in the dungeons for dereliction of duty.

If they intervene on John’s behalf, Tim flees on the wagon and reports the party’s crimes to the local guards. Unless they kill him, of course, in which case Tim does not do that, due to being dead.

The Dungeon

“The dungeon is chilly and humid, an unpleasant combination that makes the air itself feel thick and sticky. The thick wooden door slams shut behind you, and you hear a deadbolt slam home. The guards wander off, and just as one of you is about to speak, you hear a voice from one of the other cells: ‘Whaddaya in for?’ it asks. It sounds like it belongs to an old man.”

The old man is George Millner (see below), who is in the next cell over. He can fill the party in on the state of the region: The droughts, the high taxes, corruption, famine, and so on. Once he’s convinced they’re sympathetic to the cause of the downtrodden townsfolk, he reveals to the party that these jail cells are part of an old ruin, and there’s a secret door in the back of their cell. If they can find the lever, they can easily escape. When they do, George picks the lock of his cell, and then the lock of the party’s cell, and follows them through the hidden door. If asked, he just says that it would be suspicious if he escaped alone.

There are three exits from the ruin, not counting the jail’s false wall. Two lead up into the castle (one leads into a pantry, where a stack of fake crates covers the door down into the ruin. The other leads to an office, where the door is covered by a portrait of Kunbef Mortigan, a lord who died two hundred years ago and is best remembered for his fabulous fashion. The portrait can be unlatched from the wall by pulling the center piece of the lower portion of the frame downwards, or by pressing down a plate on the floor behind the painting.) and the last leads to a tunnel, whose exit is concealed by shrubs.

George Millner, contact. George is a bald man with a purple birthmark on his face. He used to be a guard when he was younger. Now he just hangs out in the tavern, making seditious remarks until the guards throw him in the dungeon for the night.

(The lever is under one of the benches, built into the underside of it.)

The Ruins

The ruins under Castle Ark are occupied by [party-1] reanimated skeletons. They are the skeletons of a noble family who bargained with a demon for an “undying lineage.” Unfortunately for them, when one of them died in a tragic elven chess accident, their corpse immediately reanimated and began attacking the rest of the family. Since then, the castle has fallen into ruin and been buried by the rotting corpses of the trees that were once its major source of pride, leaving the shambling skeletons of the elves to wait for some foolish adventurers to wander in.

In the eons since, the ruins have been discovered, forgotten, built over, rediscovered, used as escape tunnels, blocked off, and forgotten once more.

Meeting McAllister

After escaping, George leads the party to the Movement’s hideout, a fortified cave stocked with reclaimed grain and weapons.

Harvey McAllister is here, and after George gives a brief explanation of who the party is, Harvey speaks to them.

“Welcome to our humble home, adventurers. You’ve seen the dire state of Ark for yourselves, I hear. I hope we can count on your help in overthrowing Montveigh and building a more equitable, more just society.”

Harvey gives the party two tasks: Destroy a bridge, destroy the wall of the grain silo, and draw the guards away from the castle and out into the country. Once all three of these are completed, they can attack the castle and possibly succeed.

The Bridge

This bridge to the east of Arkton is a vital connection between Arkton and the Eastern Frontier Garrison. Destroying it will seriously delay reinforcements arriving to put down a rebellion. This bridge is made out of wood, and while the bridge itself is not guarded, it is right along a major route for the kingdom’s guards. Light it on fire, blow it up, summon a demon to rip the bridge off of its moorings and throw it into the next county, it doesn’t matter, as long as the bridge is unusable.

The Distraction

This one is a lot more free-form. Go with whatever idea the party suggests, but if they can’t come up with anything, attacking a tax wagon out in the country should do the job.

Once these are complete, the stage is set for an all-out attack on Castle Ark.

The Attack

The party’s role in the attack is simple: Enter the ruins and use the secret passage to enter the keep, while the rest of the Movement attacks the front gate as a distraction.

The skeletons are back, of course, but nothing else stands between the party and Baron Montveigh’s very fancy throne room.

Baron Montveigh’s Very Fancy Throne Room

You exit through the fake portrait. The thick walls of the keep muffle the noises of combat from outside. The halls are empty, and you make your way up the main staircase of the keep. There are no guards in the halls, no servants, nobody but you. Finally, you reach the top floor and stand before the large double doors. You push them open, revealing the Baron’s throne room.

Its floors are made of gleaming, polished marble inlaid with shining gold. It seems impossibly huge inside, and it takes you a moment to even notice the Baron at the far end, sitting atop his velvet throne.

“Ah, you must be the adventurers.” says the Baron, swirling a glass of wine in his hand. “Don’t you have tombs to rob or holy temples to desecrate?”

He looks at you with disdain, and speaks again. “Guards. Zotaz. Take care of these dogs.”

There are twice as many guards as there are players. Half of them are on the top level of the throne room, and are armed with bows. The other half are on the middle level and are armed with spears.

The spear guards will hold their position and attempt to keep the party away from the bowyers and Zotaz. The bowyers, and Zotaz, will rain pain down upon the party from a distance. The Baron just sits in his chair and makes mocking remarks. He is completely incapable of fighting, and if the party manages to get to him, they can do with him as they will.

Afterword

Most of the NPCs in this article are described as “short” due to the long-running food insecurity in the area. Except for Tim, who managed to grow abnormally tall but rake-thin, and that’s largely because I was picturing the Undertaker from the short film The Backwater Gospel every time I wrote about him.

Anyway, hunger sucks, famine kills, consider dropping some food, money or menstrual supplies off at your local food bank this holiday season.

-Garm

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