Is there anything like a forgotten or dead immortal in this setting? If I want to have, say, a giant skeleton of a dead or incompletely-immortalized god sitting on a throne somewhere, what does that look like in the implied cosmology of Middamark?
Go for it!
âThe Dread Crypt of Skogenbyâ (p 226+ of the TB2âs Scholarâs Guide) gives you an adventure in a very similar context (see p251 - I think that the only word missing here is âgiantâ).
Outside of that, there are other adventures with such aspects.
Iâm thinking of Mordite Pressâ Roost of the Condor Queen, or BWHQâs Bridge of the Damned.
I think that youâre in âsafeâ company.
For my part, Iâve been quick to adapt Middarmark to fit adventures and ideas that intrigued me.
In our previous campaign, I took one of the lighter possibilities with âDread Cryptâ (for a given value of that word), and then played through a whole host of Michael Prescottâs Trilemma adventures, which definitely included a number of these sort of âforgotten / dead immortalsâ in setting (such as Chains of Heaven and Tannòch Rest-of-Kings).
Thereâs plenty of previous invasions / arrival waves in Middarmark to bring in a lot of fun stuff!
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Possible minor spoiler for Dread Crypt of Skogenby
Summary
I woke up out of a dead sleep last night thinking about Haathor-Vash bringing a lawsuit against Skogenby at the local Thing for grave robbing and insisting that the PCs speak as her advocates.
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This was a real dream you just had last night?
Amazing!
Dream interpretation: Ace Attorney Objection Maker
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As another idea to stir into the mix, this forgotten immortal could have been from the time of the Ylfarings, or the catch-all term for the First People. Little is known about this era in the present day Middarmark but it was long, long ago after the Asar met for the First Council. It could be something strange like from an Atlantean civilization or even weirder or more foreign with objects and treasures that have never been seen since.
This could open up opportunities to revitalize this ancestor and restore the Cult of this Immortal with a code of conduct that imbues mechanical benefits of some sort in exchange for annual offerings and remembrances. So the characters would have a choice to restore the Hero Cult of this forgotten Immortal.
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It was! I donât think itâs too off-the-wall for Middarmark though. It might not be the usual thing, but I donât think itâs beyond the pale for spirits to bring suits against communities or vice versa. The Aettir is a spirit and she is the clan, after all.
It might be just the thing to end an otherwise irreconcilable feud. It could be one solution for one or more parties in Bridge of the Damned too.
Yeah, the adventure I am working on I designed for first ed, but since our first ed world was the world that became Trilemma adventures (a different one I made for 1e became In the Care of Bones, also with a forgotten immortal), they are themed towards what was going to be After the Lords of Memory. Since that is mostly on hold, I am trying to update them for 2e, but finding the strong setting assumptions stuff hard. I mean, I know some norse stuff and have been to Iceland, but that is not the world I was imagining when I made all this.
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Also, I am not sure what my group did back then, but I am pretty sure they were 1st/2nd level, and cleaned up against four ghouls, whereas the discord is telling me that one ghoul can tpk four level 1 adventurers?
Huh. That seems pretty unlikely unless the adventurersâ team got pretty unlucky in their action selection. I recommend GMs not use the Feint action in kill conflicts until the players have found their footing choosing actions in conflicts. That should make such an outcome exceedingly rare.
So, would you say 4 ghouls (one of whom will have +1 might and nature) should be possible for a 4x1-3 party that tries a kill conflict to take, if they put any sense into it?
Obviously, much better if they trick, but that is not going to be obvious to a lot of players. Currently, the only other monsters are some rats and the skeleton thing which I am working on being a bad idea for them to actually kill unless they have a really clever plan.
When my group fought the ghouls, they actually used the ruins of the chapel to set up a barricade and some fighting ground, reconsecrated it, and so had some extra dice for good planning. I will try to communicate the possibility in the writing.
Just for context, I designed this adventure to have on hand for when the town event about ghouls digging in the cemetery comes up.
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Oh, I was referring to the four on one.
Four ghouls are going to be pretty dangerous to a low-level group that goes for the kill due to their Paralyzing Touch. Theyâll muster roughly the same number of dice as the group and the adventurers wonât be able to recover lost disposition without access to the right invocations.
Itâs not insurmountable, but I would definitely encourage newbies to find a way other than deadly violence.
If they do go for the kill, theyâll have to bring the right weapons, make smart action choices, and spend their Fate and Persona wisely.
They had a cleric. Since Fury of the Lords of Life and Death is so much harder to cast now, I suppose that is a big power differential between editions.
Okay, I was going to save this for them doing proper research in town, and I didnât want to be too hand-holdy, but I think the guards are going to mention that âthe old ghoul catcher has retiredâ and it will be a good idea to give 1D to be led to them, or they can make a circles roll, and that guy will explain luring them into a baited trap or something else that triggers a trick conflict.
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What you really want is Breath of the Burning Lord.
I actually think the Ob to turn Ghouls with Fury would be easier in 2e. In 1e, it would be Ob 7 to turn four ghouls if one is Might 4. Ob 6 if all of them are Might 3. In 2e, each ghoul would roll 4D against the theurge for 2.5 expected succeses.
I had written it in 1e as a forgotten Immortal of Death, but there seem to be a fixed number of Jotuun, as opposed to Immortals?
Not really. Nature spirits are innumerable and there are always those who will give them devotion and sacrifice, in propitiation if nothing else. Jotnar are born within time just as new immortals are, though perhaps less frequently. On the flip side, they tend to last in the memories of people much longer. Few people forget that mountain or volcano or sea over there. Svikr will not fade as long as hunger and starvation loom large. Vali will remain strong as long as people embrace fury and the need to destroy.
The Jotnar are the primordial forces of creation. Theyâre not evil, per se. They are the things not shaped by civilization and society. Thatâs why the first Immortals, the Old Ones, shaped the world from the body of their progenitor.
Is the Lord of Beasts a jotunn or an immortal? Hard to say. Both, probably. When they embody the beasts themselves, theyâre a jotunn. As the tamer of beasts, theyâre an immortal. Savvy?
Maybe the forgotten Immortal has something to do with the Lords of Life and Death (Middarmark, p 35). When the names of the Young Lords get forgotten, they kinda get rolled up into the generic grouping. So, perhaps this person has been lost in memory but still has some unsettled business that is awoken when the adventurers disturb the dungeon.
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I suppose the part I really donât get is that all of the Jotnar seem to embody eternal concepts that will never die in the memories of people, so the rules of the Young Lords donât really seem to apply to them, as you imply they do. I suppose, in a kind of Unknown Armies kind of way, a new concept could arise within one, embodied by a person, but the idea of âwantâ âdeprivationâ âstarvationâ âcoldâ âwindâ is never going to go away, especially in a setting like Middamark. If they were individual manifestations of evil, such as a terrible necromancer lord that might be defeated and his cult cut out, that would make a lot more sense to me. But the Lord of Plagues ⌠how would disrupting the propitiation of such a Jotnar even work?
When these things were looser in the previous edition and easier to make generic, it felt a lot easier to make things generic and portable. But everywhere Middamark brushes up against the rules, I feel like my very incomplete understanding of the setting is making it hard to understand the rules (like the value of skalds in the other post) and also hard to make something that is easily generic to other settings. With only a few notable exceptions, I love what you have done with 2e, but I do feel like I donât really get this setting which is so intertwined with rules assumptions (e.g.: what are all these unspecified Shaman relics? are they all amulets?).
Yes, hunger is a constant. So is war and harvest and sailing. Youâre creating an artificial difference where there isnât one. The Lords of Hunger have many faces just as the Lords of Battle do.
Thatâs why you can have many different Young Lord cults of battle, each following an immortal with their own personality and outlook, and you can have many different cults of hunger, each following a Young Lord with their own personality.
The Lords, whether Asar or Jotnar, are eternal and unchanging. The Young Lords, whether Asar or Jotnar, are embodiments of those concepts that have their own personalities and drives. That gives you the ability to add any sort of cult or immortal you want.
I think youâve built it up in your head to be something that itâs not. To take a real-world example, Mars, Ares, Tyr, Guan Yu and Hachiman are all war gods. In game terms, they are Young Lords of the Lords of Battle. You can add as many immortals as you like and it fits the setting. One village could have a cult dedicated to a harvest immortal and a village on the far side of the hill could have a cult dedicated to a completely different harvest immortal.
The same is true of Jotnar. One place might worship/propitiate the winter god Boreas, another Skadi, and a third Marzanna. One concept, many expressions.
Apollo would be a Lord of Plagues (among other things), as would Xipe-Totec. Xipe-Totec had a temple called Yopico that was part of the Great Temple of Tenochitlan. If you had smallpox, or blisters, etc., you would go there and make offerings to him in hopes of recovery.
Sorry itâs not your bag. 
As for relics, whatâs unspecified? Each Shaman invocation in the LMM and Theurge invocation in the Dungeoneerâs Handbook has an example relic listed with it. The rules for relics are on page 103 of the Dungeoneerâs Handbook.