#0008

*** ***

This A secret evil

Adventure lies in the
Seed is for heart of one
all game man.
systems.
An Adventure
Seed for all
levels of play.

Adventure Seed 4b:

One Man’s Burden ™
by Robert J Defendi
Tracy Bloom (Order #10772214)
 Credits
Author: Robert J Defendi
Line Editor: Josh Peltier
Additional Contributions: Scott Llewelyn
Cover Art: B.C. Hailes
Interior Art: B.C. Hailes
Art Direction: Christopher Mitchell
Pagemaking: Wallen Ashcroft
Copy Editing: Christine Fortune
Publisher: Robert J Defendi
Editing, Development, & Production Staff:
Robert J Defendi, Scott Llewelyn, Josh Peltier, Christine Fortune, Christopher Mitchell, Wallen Ashcroft
Web Master: Robert J Defendi
Play Testing: Amanda Peltier, Angela Daley, Bjorn Olsen, Brandon Leavitt, Brenda Llewelyn, Dan
Willis, Gary Llewelyn, Jennie Mollerup, Josh Peltier, Kori Emerson, Mark Giffune, Mason Emerson,
Mat Daley, Matthew Fitt, Robert J Defendi, Scott Llewelyn, Stephen Johnson.
Special Support: Heike A. Kubasch, Bruce Neidlinger; Tim Dugger, and Steve Long.
We’d also like to thank all the fans on the Iron Crown Forums who have shown so much support
and enthusiasm, especially Allenrmaher, Buddha, Cormac Doyle, Grafton, Ictus, Ironmaul, Lichemaster,
Lorenen, Maelstrom, Markc, Norin, Pendragon, Quasar, Smiling DM, Wolfram Riegler (our first cus-
tomer), and Yammahoper.

Rolemaster, HARP and Spacemaster are Copyright © 2006 Aurigas Aldebaron, LLC, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA.

Rolemaster™, HARP™ and Spacemaster™ are trademark properties of Aurigas Aldebaron, LLC; no unauthorized use permitted.

HERO System TM ® is DOJ, Inc.’s trademark for its roleplaying system.

HERO System and Champions Copyright © 1984, 1989, 2002 by DOJ, Inc. d/b/a Hero Games. All rights reserved.

Fantasy Hero Copyright © 2003 by DOJ, Inc. d/b/a Hero Games. All rights reserved.

Dark Champions Copyright © 2004 by DOJ, Inc. d/b/a Hero Games. All rights reserved.

Pulp Hero Copyright © 2005 by DOJ, Inc. d/b/a Hero Games. All rights reserved.

Justice Inc., Danger International, Western Hero, and Star Hero Copyright © 2002 by DOJ, Inc. d/b/a Hero Games. All rights
reserved.

For further information about Hero Games and the HERO System, visit www.herogames.com.

Copyright © 2010 by Final Redoubt Press. All rights reserved. No reproductions without permission.
Produced and distributed by Final Redoubt Press, 2072 Weeping Willow Way, Eagle Mountain, UT, 84005.

Stock #0008

Tracy Bloom (Order #10772214)


Introduction
What is an Adventure Seed?
An Adventure Seed is a story idea. In The Echoes
of Heaven, an Adventure Seed is a story idea that
we at Final Redoubt Press promise never to con-
tradict in future canon. It’s a chance to allow you
to expand an idea or mystery in the setting without
worrying about whether we’ll contradict you with
future products.
But this Adventure Seed is a full product, and that
means it’s something more. This is a fully written
adventure plot, meant to allow you to get your game
moving almost immediately. This outlines all the ma-
jor steps of a story, carrying you through an entire nar-
rative arc. With this product, the rule books of your
game (including maybe a monster book and whatever
manual holds sample NPCs) you should be able to run
an adventure with almost no preparation at all, and just
a touch of imaginative table improvisation.
What this Product Includes
This product includes a full adventure plot, with
enough notes that you should be able to run with
no preparation at all. This product also includes a
description of the Dramatic Purpose of each stage
of the story. This way, if your story moves off in
a new direction, you know what you need to do
to maintain the dramatic arc. Finally, this product
includes notes for how to fit this adventure in The
Moving Shadow™ campaign, our epic series of
adventures in The Echoes of Heaven that will take
the world to the brink of destruction.
What this Product Does Not
Include
This product includes no creature stats. You have
your monster books.
This adventure contains no NPC stats. Almost
every game has premade NPCs for the GM to use,
and many GMs are used to improvising NPCs on
the fly.
This product contains no rules. You probably
know the rules you use at your table much better
than we do.
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This product contains no firm idea of what system
you are using. The Moving Shadow alone is statted
for four different game systems, and there’s no rea-
son you need to use this with The Moving Shadow
or even The Echoes of Heaven.
This product contains no firm rules on how ex-
perienced the characters are. It’s designed with
mid-range characters in mind, but since there are no
stats, you can use it to challenge characters at any
point in their careers.
What Next?
You can begin play almost immediately. If you
want to get straight to the meat, skip to What Came
Before if you’re playing in The Moving Shadow or
Setup if you’re not. It probably takes an average
reader 10-15 minutes to read this adventure once
through. If you are about to run the game and you
grabbed this as an emergency measure, step out of
the room for a few minutes and you’ll be ready in no
time. If your players seem likely to bug you, start
them arguing about a six-month-old GM call, their
favorite sports teams, or reality shows. You’ll be
ready to start before they are.
If you have a little more time, we welcome you
to read the next sections. They should give you an
idea about what The Echoes of Heaven and The
Moving Shadow is all about.
What Is the Echoes of Heaven
Campaign Setting?
The Echoes of Heaven is a game world of darkness
and danger, where a monolithic church has split into
dozens of quarreling factions and holy war looms
like a shadow. Here, strength and brutality win the
day and only those with the most faith, honor, and
courage can stand against the terrible tyranny of
those who would enslave everyone of a different
belief, a different philosophy, a different race.
Worse, it is a world infected by the very fabric of
Hell itself.
It’s a world that once knew perfection, where
Mortals and Angels labored side by side and all
spent their days basking in the light of God. There
was no Mortal Realm. Hell was nothing more than a
 province of Heaven. All lived in Paradise, and they
knew what it was like to wander in Grace.
Then came the War.
The Fall of the first third of the Host of Angels
nearly destroyed Heaven. The Fall of the second
third came as a death knell. Only the foresight and
planning of the Five Prophets saved everyone from
languishing under the rule of the Fallen . . . but it
came at a terrible price.
Enter Meridrin, the Mortal Realm, a world sundered
from Paradise, a world both familiar and strangely dif-
ferent. A world where you can make a difference.
The Echoes of Heaven is designed for use in four
different game systems. They are games using the
Open Game License (the world’s most popular
game license), as well as Rolemaster (owned by
Iron Crown Enterprises), HARP (owned by Iron
Crown Enterprises), and HERO System (owned by War in Heaven. It is truly a campaign that spans ten
Hero Games). thousand years.
This product can be used with any fantasy game.
Line Elements
What is The Moving Shadow? The Echoes of Heaven contains two main elements.
The Moving Shadow is a ten-part adventure They are sourcebooks and adventures.
campaign that takes the world to the very brink of
destruction. In it, characters must fight against the Sourcebooks
depredations of some of the greatest villains the Some of the existing sourcebooks are as follows:
world has ever known. In the end, only the smart, The Echoes of Heaven Campaign Setting—The
the brave, and the lucky have any hope at all. Echoes of Heaven Campaign Setting details the
These adventures are statted with versions for Mortal Realm and includes a bonus supplement
four different games: games using the Open Game describing the Kingdom of Ludremon at no extra
License, as well as HARP, HERO System, and charge.
Rolemaster. Bestiary—The Mortal Realm is filled with many
The Moving Shadow gives characters the oppor- horrific creatures and some that merely terrify.
tunity to take characters through an entire career Here you will find creatures unique to The Echoes
of adventures. They start inexperienced but will of Heaven from the Nephilim to Angels and
end as some of the most powerful characters in the Demons, to the Cambionic Beastmen and beyond.
world. The range of experience depends on the In His Name–The churches of the Mortal Realm
game system: hold great power over their citizens, but what are
they like? Are they corrupt or noble? What do
Game System Starting Ending the Priests believe, what do they preach, and are
OGL 2nd lvl 20th lvl these the same?
HARP 3rd lvl 30th lvl
HERO System 165 points 300 points Adventures
Rolemaster 3rd lvl 30th lvl Each sourcebook comes packaged with an adventure.
Between these two works, your campaigns can explore
In addition, The Moving Shadow has a series of an ever-widening world of intrigue and danger.
Teasers which take place during the last days of the

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 The Throne of God (Episode 1)—A story that spans
10,000 years, here the players learn the lay of
the land in the Mortal Realm and fight to find an
ancient relic—a diamond splinter said to come
from the throne of God Himself.
The Tainted Tears (Episode 4)—With the characters’
success in Uzarâg, they must now make a mad
dash across Belkanâth in an attempt to stop the
end of the world.
The Last Hallowed Place (Episode 5)—Now the
characters have freed themselves from the tragedies
of The Tainted Tears, they must race to the Holy
City in the hope they aren’t already too late.
This Adventure Seed can fit neatly after Adven-
ture Seed 4a: Alone in the Woods and before The
Last Hallowed Place.
Our Philosophy
At Final Redoubt Press, we wish to bring high-
quality products into the hands of the gamers who
need them. Starting with characters ignorant of the
world around them, players can discover the Mortal
Realm even as the story unfolds. With each new
adventure, player and character alike will discover a
world rich in excitement and adventure, a world as
intriguing as their GM can make it.
An Ongoing Campaign
We’re aware that different games progress at many
different rates. Some groups play almost every day
and some fight to meet once a month. Therefore,
we’ve tried to devise this world and this series for
any rate of play.
Each adventure is designed for characters of a cer-
tain level. A GM needs only to adjust the rate of expe-
rience gain to meet the needs of his group. If a group
can play an entire adventure in one weekend and that
leaves three more until the next product releases, then
the GM can match the experience gain to move hand
in hand with this pace. Meanwhile, he’ll find Adven-
ture Seeds in every product that will allow the char-
acters to explore the world around them until they’re
ready for the next episode of the series.
That is one of the possible uses of these Adven-
ture Seeds. They fit neatly between the full adven-
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ture products, allowing you to flesh out your game
while you’re waiting for the next release.
Quad Statting
The Echoes of Heaven contains stats for four
different games. We at Final Redoubt Press purposely
chose these games for their compatibility. Each of
these games has the same general levels of power
and abilities for the major classes or professions.
Mages in all four have similar spells and clerics in
all four have similar divine powers.
This means that we can weave a story without
worrying about whether a mage can cast a fireball
in all three systems. We can provide a GM with ev-
erything he needs to run his game, and he can do
that with his own house rules and his own style of
game play. As much as possible, we intend to stay
out of the way.
This isn’t saying that we don’t add optional abili-
ties or even change the way that some things work.
That’s necessary in all game worlds. It just means
that we won’t stumble all over ourselves because an
OGL Bard can do a bit more with illusions than a
Rolemaster Bard. Each game group should play the
game the way they like to play it.
Dramatic Purpose
Every stage in this adventure has a dramatic purpose.
These are there so the GM can better decide what to
do if the party goes off book. If a group diverges
wildly from the written adventure, let them. Take
the dramatic purposes of the skipped stages and
invent new events that serve the same purpose.
Maybe the party abandons the adventure entirely
and refuses to go back. If so, who are any of us to
say they did wrong? Take the remaining dramatic
events and create new ones for the party, following
their new path. It might not be this adventure, but
it will be an adventure, and it will be a lot more fun
than arguing about whether the party is ruining the
GM’s plans.
As long as all the purposes are served, you will
have a workable story, probably even a good one. It
doesn’t matter if it isn’t the story you set out to tell.
Gaming is a collaborative effort, after all.
 more weeks, they’ll understand they might need to
Running the Campaign advance more slowly.

This Adventure Seed fits neatly into the ten-part,

ongoing campaign The Moving Shadow. This
brings up some issues one wouldn’t have in a stand- Character Power Level
If you are plugging this adventure into The Moving
alone adventure.
Shadow, then it likely takes place right after the
events of Adventure Seed 4a: Alone in the Woods.
Down Time It’s likely that characters came out of the last
It’s possible that someone will want to run these adventure at a certain approximate character level
adventures before the entire series has been released. or point value.
It’s likely that a game group may finish an adventure
before the next one is available. Game System Character
We’ve taken this into consideration. You can’t run OGL 9th lvl
a ten-part adventure and not expect to take some side HARP 14th lvl
trips. Don’t worry if this is your intention. We’ve HERO System 220 points
built downtime into the story between each adven- Rolemaster 14th lvl
ture, and these Adventure Seeds are handy ways to
But since you choose the power of the adversaries
fill that down time. Near the end, it might be nice to
in this adventure, they can be just as powerful as
run the adventures concurrently, but there’s no point
you want them to be. This means you can use this
in this series where one adventure must be played
Adventure Seed in any setting or any point in your
directly after the one before.
characters’ careers.
Experience and Table Pacing
If you’re running the adventures in a series, then
the issue of experience will come into play. Some
Stats
No opponents have stats in this adventure, but most
groups might want to do the adventures one after
every game has NPC stats in one of the primary
another. Others might have ten sessions between
books. Use them to flesh out the bad guys in this
each adventure (especially if they meet frequently
Adventure Seed, or, if it’s easier, just improvise
while waiting for the next release).
them as you go. Many GMs can stat an NPC in
The thing to remember about experience is that
their heads without skipping a beat.
it’s all arbitrary. Many GMs ignore official experi-
ence guidelines. Some have home systems. Some
just assign experience by story points, some by
number of sessions, regardless of session content.
The important thing to remember is that no expe-
Descriptions
This Adventure Seed has no “boxed text.” That
rience system is set in stone. If you have multiple means the descriptions of rooms, people, and places
adventures in this series and you wish to run them are up to you. Tailor them to your game and your
back to back, then a party will need to gain three characters. This is most of the improvising you’ll
levels in a single adventure. If you want to run eight need to do to run this Adventure Seed.
adventures in between, then they need to average
a third of a level each time experience is given. It
doesn’t matter how fast a group advances as long
as everyone understands what to expect and why to Mechanics
We’ve left mechanics as simple as possible in this
expect it. If you tell a party you want to game every
single night but the next adventure isn’t out for two work. We’ve listed all bonuses as a percentage. 5%

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 = 5 in a percentile system or 1 in HERO System or Teaser
OGL games.
As the story opens, the characters search for their
lost trail inside some woods west of Invill. It’s still

What Came Before

If you’re running this Adventure Seed as part of
The Moving Shadow, it fits neatly after the events in
Adventure Seed 4a: Alone in the Woods. This gives
the characters some history.
In The Throne of God, the villain created a pow-
erful Unholy Relic. In The Festering Earth they
tracked a murderer and discovered more about the
relic’s nature. In On Corrupted Ground they be-
came involved in a plan of a powerful evil force. In
The Tainted Tears, a great villain led them in a chase
across country, and they only stopped when an Ulcer
sprang up in their path. In the last Adventure Seed,
they rescued a village.
The characters have returned to the village of Invill,
in Gaerydd, and while the people there are grateful,
the characters are probably looking for something to
do as they search for Morthorn’s trail.
The Adventure Plot
What follows is the plot of the Adventure Seed.
This is only one course the adventure could take. If
the party diverges from this plot, let them.
something of a needle in a haystack,
The characters hear a sound up ahead. If they
move to investigate, they can hear shouting. Allow
them to react how they will, but the matters up ahead
will reverse themselves before the characters have
time to intervene.
They will hear someone shouting, “Give me your
money!” As they see through the woods, they can
make out three bandits holding a man hostage, but at
a distance. Arrange this so the characters see this at
the end of a round, before the beginning of the next.
The bandits have yet to act.
As the party likely prepares to roll initiative, the
others take their turns. The victim, a trapper, turns
to run and the bandits take off in pursuit. They run
straight into the covered pit the trapper finished ear-
lier that week. The trapper then returns, smirking,
and prepares to kill the bandits.
The party must decide whether or not to interfere,
and how much. The bandits were obviously unlaw-
ful, but this has become more like cold-blooded mur-
der. Play the scene for drama, but don’t get too car-
ried away.

Setup
By default, this Adventure Seed begins after the end
of Adventure Seed 4a: Alone in the Woods. This
Adventure Seed could exist anywhere or at any
time, however. All you need is a world where there
are people, evil magic, and woods.
This product assumes the characters play in The
Echoes of Heaven Campaign Setting. Still, with
slight adjustments, it could take place anywhere.
When the Adventure Seed begins, the characters
are still searching for Morthorn’s trail from the end
of the last adventure. They are likely still in the
woods where they played out the last Adventure
Seed, though this Adventure Seed could take place
in any woods.

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Dramatic Purpose
The Dramatic Purpose of the Teaser is to hook
the players in, hopefully before even a single die
is thrown. In a television show, the Teaser is the
part of the episode that comes before the credits,
lasting anywhere from thirty seconds (for shows
like the defunct Enterprise) to more than ten
minutes (for shows like the also defunct Alias).
The Teaser is (relatively) short, to the point, and
usually set up to end in a cliff hanger to keep the
viewer from changing channels.
Act One
Allow time to pass. Toward the end of that day, the
characters finish scouting the edge of this section of
the former Ulcer’s radius, and they are about to turn
in for the night.
As the characters are about to call it a day they
hear this panicked screaming arise in the woods. It’s
strange in that it doesn’t sound quite like panic or
pain, and there’s a strange note to it, like calm and
panic all at the same time.
The characters find a man laying in a bed of mush-
rooms. He’s frothing at the mouth and clawing at his
skin. Proper herb skill checks reveal that the mush-
rooms can cause people to have just these kinds of
fits. The man looks like a woodsman and while it’s
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strange he’d make this mistake, people make mis-
takes all the time.
The man is disturbed enough to hurt himself and
the characters will need to restrain him and get him
under control. Eventually, they will probably calm
things down enough to try to help him.
Dramatic Purpose
The dramatic purpose of the first act is to
introduce all the major characters, the plot, and
the setting elements. Act One can be difficult to
handle because it often gets a bit ho hum if the
GM isn’t careful. The act should end with the
character’s entering a “new world,” meaning that
they are going out to take care of some problem
or to fulfill some new role.
This is an adventure, though, not a movie. A
GM should make sure that they don’t use this no-
tion of movie structure to railroad characters.
Act Two Complication
The man is unresponsive. Healing magic doesn’t help
him, which should tip the party off that something
strange is going on here. If they try to help him, they
can track his path back through the woods.
This will be something of an ordeal, though. It’s
difficult to quiet him down and he attracts every pred-
ator for miles.
Run this sequence as a series of encounters. Even
if the party quiets the man, everything in the region
has stirred and is hunting.
The party will need to essentially carry and protect
him on their path through the woods. Allow them to
be as heroic as they want here. It’s not often they get
to do something like this. Usually they can heal the
damage long before it gets this far.
Note: Characters in The Echoes of Heaven
might fish their knowledge skills looking for
things that resist healing. Curses are obvious,
but spells that would affect curses don’t work
either. There is at least one disease that resists
all attempts at healing, the Gray Death. If char-
acters look for symptoms, none of the symptoms
 match, but discussing it might be enough to add
a new dimension to this scene.
Dramatic Purpose
Act Two is the confrontation of the story. It’s also
been called the “blue collar work” of storytelling.
In Act Two we cover all the meat of the adventure,
everything that happens from the actual adventure
beginning until the climax. Act Two should start
with a complication, early on, to make matters
worse than the characters initially thought.
Act Two Twist
When the characters reach the man’s cabin, they find a
neat place, if rustic. Upon entering, everything changes.
The characters step into an Ulcer of Hell. Here
they will find themselves lost in a series of their own
past adventures. These will flash by in a series of
adaptive memories that the characters must defeat in
order to survive.
To those that played The Tainted Tears, this might
well seem familiar. That’s because it’s a clue.
These scenes should connect to events in the char-
acter’s past, often with disturbing twists. Characters
who have adventured through The Moving Shadow
might have an experience like this.
The characters find themselves on the walls of
Heaven, but the enemy infantry aren’t the threat.
Instead, the characters are surrounded by Fallen An-
gels, and only by killing them all can they end the
memory and continue to the next.
Next they find themselves fighting the Fallen An-
gel inside the Holy See. This battle is likely much
easier at their new level of power, but just when
they think they’ve won, they are attacked from be-
hind. They turn to see the Five Prophets, who scream
“Blasphemers” and attack. Gear the power level of
the Prophets to the party.
When the Prophets are dead, the characters find
themselves fighting a Demon of Deceit, more power-
ful this time, standing over the corpse of a little girl,
their weapons red with blood.
After the Demon is dead, the characters find them-
selves fighting the Fat Man on the streets of Felric’s
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Redoubt, only this time one of them is the Fat Man.
Select the player most likely to play along, and let
them know they are supposed to kill the party at
all costs. When the party drops him from wounds
(hopefully they don’t kill him) or subdue him, they
move on.
They find themselves inside a Dwarven fortress.
There they must kill a Water Wraith and his minions
before the Warlord arrives to kill them all.
Finally, they find themselves in the village of In-
vill. The Chorus stands next to them, screaming “It
can’t end the same way as before! It can’t end the
same way as before!” The characters escape by re-
versing the fate of the Chorus in the adventure. If
he survived, they must kill him. If he died, they
must save him (a suicide attempt can force their
hands in this case).
When they exit this memory, move on to the End
of Act Reveal.
Note: Those who don’t play in The Echoes of
Heaven Campaign Setting are probably wonder-
ing what an Ulcer is. In The Echoes of Heaven,
an Ulcer is a place where Hell infects reality.
It’s a foul and disturbing locale, and often the
laws of nature break down inside. The only way
to certainly destroy an Ulcer is to kill every bit
of evil inside. It must be done quickly, though,
because Ulcers can become permanent. Go to
www.finalredoubt.com/store and order the free
preview download to learn more about Ulcers.
Dramatic Purpose
This is the Act Two Twist. Here the story takes
its first move in a new direction and the characters
realize that all is not as it seems.
End of Act Reveal
At this point, the characters will start seeing
glimpses of the cabin itself. Allow each of the
characters a perception test based on sight. Make
it difficult, applying a –50 to –100% penalty or so.
If they succeed, they see a bow leaning up against
the corner and recognize it as the one carried by the
head rustler in The Tainted Tears.
 It shouldn’t take them too much to figure out that
this is an item soaked with great evil and the blood of
many innocents. If the characters can break it imme-
diately, move on to Act Three. If not, send them into
another memory, and another, bringing them back to
the sight of the bow. Make them work for it a little.
Note: The dramatic impact of the bow is based
in the events of The Tainted Tears. The logic
of an item like this causing an Ulcer is based
in The Echoes of Heaven. If either or both of
these are foreign to your players, substitute
something from their history. For instance, if
they have recently taken out a powerful mage,
they might see something that was sitting in his
lab, an item soaked in magic and distinctive,
but something this woodsman could have come
across (maybe on the body of a dead traveler)
and kept as his own.
Dramatic Purpose
This is the end of Act reveal. Here, we learn
something of the real truth behind this entire
adventure. The end of act reveal should change
the nature of the story and rocket the characters
into the final dramatic climax.
Act Three
When the characters break the bow, they are drawn
into the final nightmare. In this, they become the
rustlers led by the man carrying that bow (who is
now the woodsman). They will stand against a
wave of peasants, many of them familiar from The
Tainted Tears, all of them long dead.
If the item wasn’t a bow, find a similar painful im-
age for the characters, forcing them to commit the
atrocities of a villain of their past. It should be easy
to convert something from your game to this ending.
The characters can’t stop themselves from killing
their foes or committing these acts. They can at-
tempt a feat of will (such as a saving throw, resis-
tance check, or to personality test) to break out. This
should be very difficult, geared to succeed perhaps
10% of the time.
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In the meantime, they can sense the pain and the
agony of the people they kill. They know that some-
how, these are the souls of the real people, and that
they’ve held on all this time. Perhaps there was an
Ulcer forming in this area all the time.
This isn’t a climax of fast action, it’s a climax of
emotion. Play up the screams of the men, the wom-
en, the children. They beg for mercy, they crawl
pleadingly across the floor. It’s a scene of horror,
not action.
When a character escapes, they can try to aid their
companions with spells such as blessings. If the
spells have small bonuses, allow them to apply di-
rectly to the character’s attempts to escape. If they
have large bonuses, apply a sliding scale to bonuses
over 10%. Try to not let the bonus get over 25%.
Meanwhile, the woodsman is in the nightmare as
well, insane now with exhaustion. If the charac-
ters inside try to talk to him, he just gibbers “it’s too
much” over and again.
In addition, each person who escapes grants a 5%
bonus to those remaining, as the fabric of the night-
mare weakens. It should probably not escape the
characters that they need to get everyone out, includ-
ing the woodsman.
If they don’t encourage the woodsman, he won’t
try. This is their only chance to make him realize try-
ing isn’t hopeless.
If they all get out and try to rally the woodsman to
resist one more time, he will make a final attempt,
and with the broken bow and the damage caused by
all the escaped player characters, he will succeed.
If they don’t try to rally him one last time, the
only way to end the Ulcer is to kill him. Either way,
when the woodsman and the characters are no lon-
ger committing their acts of evil in the nightmare,
the Ulcer ends.
Dramatic Purpose
Act Three starts the minute the characters’ plan
collapses, and they begin the final battle, in
whatever form it might take. Act Three contains
the climax and any falling action necessary to
resolve the story.
 Denouement
This Adventure Seed has played against the
expectations set up by the last adventure to some
extent. We’ve done that here and in the last
Adventure Seed on purpose. These Adventure
Seeds could be played as a stall while you are
waiting to get The Last Hallowed Place. By tying
them into the last full adventure, hopefully they will
seem more like an extension of those events, and
not like filler.
This ending will be sad or sweet, depending on
whether they were forced to murder the woodsman
to end a greater evil. Play these events up for the
emotional impact.
There isn’t a lot of wealth built into this adventure.
If the players can deal with this, it would be more
realistic. If they are the type that need a monetary
reward, the woodsman could have found something
of value that the characters could carry away from
these events.
But in The Moving Shadow the party is still looking
for the trail of Morthorn. They likely have wounds
to lick at this point, but as soon as they are ready, be
it the next day or the next week, they will want to get
back on the road.
You will need to be ready.
Place. Characters who performed well and role-
played should get more experience. Characters who
performed poorly should get less.
For the target power level of characters in The Last
Hallowed Place, use the following chart:
Game System Character
OGL 10h lvl
HARP 15th lvl
HERO System 225 points
Rolemaster 15th lvl
What Comes Next
For the most part, this Adventure Seed shouldn’t
have huge implications. For the characters at least.
If you’ve done your job, you’ve shown that the
world rushes along regardless of the problems of
the characters, but that some problems aren’t neatly
solved in one adventure.
If you’re playing in The Moving Shadow, then you
can move straight on to The Last Hallowed Place.
Here, the characters will continue to push after Mor-
thorn, but will find that they may have already failed.

Dramatic Purpose
The dramatic purpose of the entire denouement
is to give the character’s a feeling of completion,
to let the story wind down and wrap up naturally.

Experience
If you’re playing this Adventure Seed on its own,
and not a part of any campaign, assign experience
normally. Your game comes with rules on Experi-
ence Awards.
If you’re playing this Adventure Seed as part of
The Moving Shadow, then you probably have placed
this after Adventure Seed 4a: Alone in the Woods. In
that case, we recommend assigning subjective expe-
rience based on the accomplishments of the party.
As a general rule, you’re aiming for the remaining
experience they’ll need to play The Last Hallowed

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Tracy Bloom (Order #10772214)
Tracy Bloom (Order #10772214)
Tracy Bloom (Order #10772214)