Against the Cult of the Reptile God The World of Greyhawk & The World of Greyhawk Wiki The current year for our World of Greyhawk campaign is set during 579CY. Inspired By Gary Gygax

The mist that clings to Orlane is no mere weather pattern; it is an icy, suffocating shroud exhaled by the Rushmoors. This vast, rotting expanse of stagnant water and choking peat has begun to reclaim the village, its damp breath sinking into the very floorboards and marrow of the community. Every alleyway now carries the cloying, sweet scent of swamp decay—a funeral incense marking the slow death of a town.

The villagers, once a cheerful and hardworking people, now move with a hollow-eyed, unnatural calm or a simmering, volatile rage. Gone are the friendly greetings and open doors, replaced by the rhythmic thud of heavy bolts sliding into place.

The silence of the streets is a heavier burden than any noise could ever be, a mourning shroud for a community that has lost its voice to the weeping mire. Fear of strangers has devolved into a desperate, animalistic instinct. A wrong word in the tavern, or a stray question about the disappearances, is met with a cold, predatory stare or a vicious, unexplained lashing out. Newcomers are viewed not as guests, but as fresh sacrifices for the hunger that waits beyond the tree line, their presence sparking a frantic, hostile panic in the broken hearts of the remaining few.

The disappearances themselves are no longer whispered rumors, but a grim, accepted fact of life. People vanish from their homes in the dead of night, leaving no trace but the lingering stench of something damp and musky, like a rotting log unearthed from the blackest depths of the Rushmoors. It is a slow, steady drain of souls—a farmer never returning from his fields, a child’s laughter replaced by the wet, rhythmic croaking of the marsh.

When some do return, they are subtly but profoundly changed. Their eyes hold a dull, distant glint, and their faces are unnaturally placid, possessing a sallow, waxy sheen that mimics the color of swamp lilies.

They go about their old routines with a strange, chilling precision, speaking only in short, stilted phrases. They are like puppets on strings, their humanity hollowed out and replaced by a cold-blooded purpose. Those who have not yet been taken hide behind barred doors, emerging only when absolutely necessary. Their faces are haggard, and their eyes dart nervously toward the dark corners of the alleys and the encroaching edge of the encircling swamp. They live in a state of perpetual grief, mourning neighbors who still walk the streets but no longer recognize their own kin.

All of this points toward a monstrous evil, a cult that has coiled its tendrils deep into the heart of Orlane and is, with terrifying patience, digesting the village from the inside. The oppressive mist is a visible manifestation of this suffocating dread, a physical extension of the Great Swamp that seeks to pull the very soul of the town into the mud.

What lies in the sunless depths of the Rushmoors remains a jagged puzzle. This is no simple investigation; it is an infiltration into a paranoid and broken society where the living fear the "returned," and anyone could be a puppet of a greater, unseen evil. Orlane is a graveyard that hasn't realized it's dead yet, slowly sinking into the black, hungry heart of the mire.