Mediums and Messages

The Miners of Redhorn

16th century engraving of miners lighting fires underground Artist unknown, plate from De Re Metallica by Georgius Agricola, published 1556.

This is a horror / investigation scenario, originally drafted for GLoG, but really equally playable in any early modern or medieval setting with minimal changes. It's level (and mechanic) agnostic. Players arrive at a copper mine, only to discover that miners have begone uncovering the corpses of those who have not yet died.

My impetus for writing this scenario was a certain sense of ennui about running or playing another dungeon crawl. What does a non-combat oneshot look like for a system like GLoG, where the characters are mostly a ball of combat stats and novelty perks?

I want to cite three key influences for this work, each of which are worth checking out in their own right and for getting the right vibe:

  1. Redhorn is heavily inspired by the Falun Mine, a Swedish copper mine that operated from the 10th to 20th century (!). Folklore around the mine include stories of miners falling into the works only to be miraculously preserved, a mythical origin story featuring a goat with bleeding horns, and other wild occurrences. Studious readers of my blog may recognize it from a story relayed by Walter Benjamin in “The Storyteller”.

  2. I’ve been playing a lot of Against the Storm, a city builder roguelike that depicts frontier settlements thrown up to extract resources before they are annihilated by semi-sentient storms. The game is notable in that it doesn’t directly contain combat mechanics. Challenges are overcome by leveraging workers, scouting, or manipulating envoys from the royal capital.

  1. Georgius Agricola, a 16th century humanist and arguably the father of modern mineralogy, wrote in De Re Metallica that “it is clear to all that there is greater detriment from mining than the value of the metals which the mining produces.” That is to say, mining can only be profitable as long as you aren’t there to suffer the consequences of the extraction, a lesson that I feel keenly in our current world of lithium-powered electronics and approaching ecocide. This adventure imagines a site that takes punitive action on a much tighter timeline.

The post that follows is extremely spoiler dense. I’m not making any effort to conceal information from the potential player, so if you think your GM might run this, don’t read on.

Events

Two month ago, frontier prospector Ned Holly had a dream. A black goat with bleeding horns appeared to him over a hill on the horizon. He gave chase, but couldn’t catch up. The goat eluded him til he awoke, frustrated and embarrassed.

You can imagine his surprise when, the next day, he saw just such a goat. He mounted his horse and chased it into the hills, eventually cornering it on the edge of a crater carved into the earth. The site was a copper pit, exposed veins of ore glimmering redly through earth loose enough to be washed away by rain. The red on the goats horns was the red of the coppery soil.

Six weeks ago, Ned Holly established the mine of Redhorn on the site. He brought on sixty hands and had them hastily construct bunkhouses, a cantina, and a wagon depot. Rather than digging a well, he called in some favors to have water delivered to the site in great wagon loads. To purify the ore, Holly summoned and bound two fire elementals. Day and night, the two creatures consume piles of slag and rock, burning away sulfur impurities and spitting out molten slag to be collected by the workers. Two great pillars of yellow smoke pour from them into the sky, visible from miles away. Money started flowing into Holly’s coffers.

Five weeks ago, the first mining expedition went missing. Rather than digging a shaft, the Redhorn mine sprawls shallowly across the surface of the copper pit. However, rumor began to spread among the miners that if you lost sight of the entrance, then the tunnels would close behind you, sealing you beneath the earth. Miners started working in teams, some digging the ore, some hauling, and some watching the route back to the surface. Holly contracted the clergy to send a priest to investigate the site and help calm the workers’ nerves.

Three weeks ago, the works unearthed the first body. Fully encased in stone, as if they were formed from the pressures of the earth, the body was hard like stone and smelled vaguely of spirits. Most alarmingly of all, the body was identified as one of the miners - still very much alive and shocked to discover their own corpse.

Two weeks ago, Mathilda Snope, the priestess assigned to the site presented Holly with the written testimonies of the miners. The findings were clear, the site was cursed certainly, but also geologically unstable. In addition to the bodies, miners were exposing new tunnels, seemingly hand carved and circling underneath their own. One report described finding a ruined wooden structure buried in the earth. She advised closing the site and threatened to lead the miners in revolt if he did not comply. Holly responded by murdering her, and disposing of her body in the tunnels for the earth to conceal.

One week ago, another body was unearthed, one of many at this point. This was the last straw for Holly though: the body was his own. He sent out an urgent call for adventurers, mediums, and exorcists to come sort out whatever curse had befallen the site.

The players arrive as a new body has been discovered - one of theirs, determined at random. If the players do not resolve the curse or leave the site within three days, all of Redhorn will sink into the earth, engulfing them and any miners still present.

Hooks

Redhorn could just be a settlement in your hexcrawl, but here are some potential hooks for your party:

  1. The party has been contracted by Holly to deal with the incursion.

  2. A priest the party knows has been assigned to fill a vacant post at Redhorn and asks for an escort.

  3. The party meets workers who have deserted Redhorn, complaining that the horrors aren’t worth the riches.

  4. Make Redhorn a prison camp. The party has been sentenced to hard labor at the site for their crimes.

In any case, the key idea here is the players need a reason to get entangled in the mystery, whether it's professional pride, looking out for a friend, greed, or duress.

Regardless, the first body uncovered after the players arrive belongs to one of the party members, selected at random.

People

Ned Holly is affable, roguish, and direct. He speaks with an affected drawl and starts most conversations by yelling from a distance before hurrying over. He wears a fur coat and a ten gallon hat over trousers and a tank top. He wants to extract as much wealth from this site as he can before moving onto his next venture. He loves cards and will brag about winning his fire elementals’ contracts in a card game. He’s a hedge wizard with a few cantrips (mostly illusions, but Burning Hands or the like for self defense), but prefers to avoid direct conflict. Think Brian Denney in Silverado.

Olive Ren is the de facto leader of the miners. She has short cropped blonde hair and is always caked in copper-rich clay. She’s taciturn with strangers, but always wants to look out for her own. She knows everyone in the camp and (for a bribe or a favor) will happily point them to any individual worker who might have seen a particular incident / space. She’ll side with Holly implicitly, unless given concrete proof that Holly will bring harm to her and hers. Think Sigourney Weaver in Aliens.

Mathilda Snope was a priestess and chaplain to Redhorn’s miners. She wore her hair in black braids that framed her face. She was known for her meticulous nature, her intense listening, and her terrible patience. She was beloved by the miners, who are still mourning her disappearance. Think the Vestal from Darkest Dungeon.

The Fire Elementals look like a cross between Calcifer from Howl’s Moving Castle and the robot from Big Hero 6. They can’t speak any mortal tongue, but communicate with fierce crackling to one another and hand gestures to anyone else. They love alcohol, tobacco, and any other luxury that burns. They hate running water and will refuse to go near it, even at risk to their own lives. They resent Holly and would happily set him ablaze, were it not for their contracts. Think big, flaming gorons.

Redhorn

Redhorn can easily be spotted (and smelled) from a distance thanks to the two great plumes of sulfur smoke that pour from its pits. An unpaved wagon trail snakes through the hills to its palisade walls. Only a tower and the roof of a log cabin are visible over the walls - the rest of the site's buildings are below ground level. Traders sometimes make the journey to Redhorn, but most traffic on the road to and from are supply wagons carrying water and food to the site or processed ore away.

Black and white map of Redhorn

The space in between buildings is crammed with charred ore, barrels of tools and discarded rocks. The walls are perforated with mine shafts, some only a few feet deep, others snaking away into the dark.

1) Ned Holly’s Cabin

Holly’s cabin sits above the pit. He can often be found supervising the work below from a rocking chair on a wooden veranda that overlooks the works. The cabin's furnishings are clearly expensive, but spartan - a big four poster bed with plush sheets, a locked writing desk covered with expense reports and dispatches, and a steamer trunk full of Holly’s clothes and possessions.

2) Watch Tower

Miners are stationed here to keep watch for potential threats to the settlement. This is seen as a cushy posting since you get to stay away from the heat for a bit. Actual threats are handled by the fire elementals, but in a pinch, a stash of weapons are stored in the commissary to be distributed to the miners.

3) Bunk Houses

Miners sleep here in bunk beds, twenty to a building. Work continues around the clock, so a few miners can be found here at all hours gambling, sleeping, or just chatting. The bunkhouses are connected by a series of access tunnels dug by the miners and used to stash beer, pornography, and other substances that might be expensive from the commissary. One miner is always stationed here to watch the goods and make sure they don’t get swallowed by the earth.

4) Wagon Depot

Mostly a covered area for loading and unloading incoming shipping. Tools, lumber, and crates full of dry goods are scattered around.

5) Commissary

Miners purchase their food and other luxuries here. They can spend real money, but Holly also accepts liens against their wages. Holly keeps 500 coins of petty cash here, in 3 locked coffers. Weapons and other contraband are locked inside with only Holly and a select few workers given access. This is a major source of dissatisfaction among the miners. Olive can usually be found here with a few lackeys.

6) Water Tank

Water is shipped to the site every three days in great tanks, then rationed out to the workers. Some water is always held in reserve in case of an outbreak of fire. Baths are strictly forbidden (though Holly has been known to indulge now and again.)

7) Fire Elementals

Contracted by Holly, these fire elementals consume slag, burn away impurities, then spit out copper like chew into a spittoon.

8) Shrine

The shrine served double duty as a site for worship and Mathilda’s bunk. Two rows of cots line the walls with a small wooden altar at the head of the room, opposite the door. The exterior of the building is papered with votives and prayers for lost miners and the beloved priestess. Now it’s the morgue, home to each of the stony bodies uncovered from the earth. The only available cots are here, so PCs may end up sleeping with the bodies as bunkmates.

The Mines

Redhorn is a wound in the earth. It seeks to close and seeks vengeance on those who aggravate it. If you lose sight of the entrance, the earth will shift and encapsulate you, separating you from the surface. As a GM, make this clear to the players through as many sources as you can. Holly is candid about it and the miners will warn any players that attempt to go below without preparation. If they persist, they disappear below. Perhaps transition to Veins of the Earth or another subterranean adventure?

If the party does venture below, deploy the following vignettes:

If the party has signaled to Holly that they want him to stop mining operations at Redhorn. Holly will attempt to kill the PCs in the mines, either by sealing the entrance they came through, sending in Olive and a few loyal workers to waylay them, or both.

The Curse

What is really going on at Redhorn? The site is desynced from linear time. It might be cyclical, it might just be pulling forward snippets of what is to come. Regardless, the bodies that are unearthed and the subterranean ruins are all the ruins of Redhorn in three days time when the site collapses under its own weight. Over time the site will fill in, new strata will form and potentially another mine will be located on the spot. Those miners in turn will find their own remains interspersed with those of the miners of Redhorn.

Why? I leave that question for you to resolve based on the broader themes of your setting / campaign. In my case, I was writing for the Shattered Coast discord server where we have an established fictional region, the Broken Hills, where sites move and disappear with the seasons. In that context, this is an instance of the vengeful earth lashing out against those who dare to wound it. The surface of the earth is both a physical surface and a metaphorical underworld, where time and matter operate in psychological units, not physical ones.

The curse could probably be undone by the intervention of a powerful wizard, a ritual to soothe the land, or some sort of treaty with earth elementals. More practically, the whole catastrophe will be averted if mining ceases at Redhorn. If not, show the players the barrel of the gun, then drag the whole site down into the ground.

Running the Adventure

It has become clear to me as I write that this is less an adventure and more a powder keg waiting to blow. It’s a mystery that centers on two crimes: one solvable, one not. It’s a horror story where the horror occurs to someone else or looms in the near future. A full theory of GMcraft is beyond the scope of this post but I’ll offer a few tips:

Thoughts?

In this draft, I've erred on the side of thoroughness over ease of reference at the table. In the future, I plan to cobble together something a little more presentable (maybe in zine format?) In any case, I'd welcome any feedback to fold into a future draft.

#adventures