New Coventry. A town located somewhere between over there and around about here. A town full of people, places and stories. Depending on who you talk to New Coventry was built on everything from fertile farming land to an ancient burial ground and was founded by pious pilgrims or lizard-headed demons. Whatever the case, New Coventry has had its share of good times and bad and it sure has a lot of stories to go around.

The Living Campaign series aims to bring those stories, good and bad, to the fore. Each article will explore a new place, or a new person, or some new event that’s taken place in New Coventry. It may be something good, something not so good or just something that the good folks of New Coventry just don’t like talking about.

The setting is rules agnostic, so feel free to pick and choose whatever you like, but the general feel is 1920’s small town; don’t expect too many dragons (maybe). If you’re running short on inspiration, every so often the Living Campaign will talk about how to use its various bits and pieces.

So with that, welcome to New Coventry stranger.

Living Campaign: Adventures Part 4

This week, we won’t be delving into the town of New Coventry and looking at a new, exciting place to explore. Rather, we’ll take a step back and look at how you might integrate the living campaign setting into your own game. We’ll give be giving you a handful of adventure hooks for each piece published so far. Some will be relatively low-risk, while others might threaten the whole town!

Sally Mae

Low Risk

Preparations are well under way for the summer holiday water safety festival. A performing troupe was hired to put on a small play about the benefits of water safety. However after a run in with a chicken pastry at the Toot-Toot Café, the troupe are indisposed. Oh! Well thank goodness you’ve arrived, we’re desperate! Quick, you’re about to go on!

Medium Risk

Local children’s author Penn E. Hubbins is starting his newest book, a collection of children’s stories based around New Coventry. His latest story is about the parents of Sally Mae, long since dead of course. Only problem being they were spotted on the edge of town not too long ago.

High Risk

New Coventry Lake, over the last few days, has been draining. As the water level recedes, something at the bottom becomes clearer. Some large, hungry shape. At this current rate the town has around 5 days until there isn’t a single drop of water left and whatever is at the bottom is exposed to the world.

New Coventry Botanical and Rose Gardens

Low Risk

Party time! To celebrate the gardens anniversary this year, a shindig is being held in the hedge maze. A grand prize of $300 is to be found at the center too! But, a few of the Bronson boys have shown up to make a little trouble. Who’s walking away with the $300 prize?

Medium Risk

You have all been hired to assist with the gardens annual rose pruning. It strikes you as somewhat odd though as one of the gardens strongest tenants is to never hire externally. Nevertheless, you’re grateful for the money. After your first day of work however, things take a turn for the worse. You and your friends wake from a fairly terrible night’s sleep in the Warner mansion to find yourselves in one of the glass-houses you were expressly forbidden from entering. The sun doesn’t rise for another couple hours, and it seems like you’re not the only ones who’ve woken.

High Risk

It’s finally happened. The air is warm, the rains are heavy and the roof to Greenhouse #3 has caved in. A great, green behemoth has begun to spread across the grounds of the gardens, consuming everything in its path. Cristoph Matthews is confident that Miss Warner must have left something behind in the Warner mansion all those years ago, but time is running a little short.

The Blackvittle Meatworks

Low Risk

The annual Summer Solstice Festival is coming up, and Ma Johnson wants to do it right this year! She has been raising a pig (lovingly named Milton) and wants to serve him as the main course at the Mayor’s exclusive Solstice Party.

Ma Johnson needs someone to help her by taking Milton to the Blackvittle Meatworks, and coming back with the cuts needed for her famous Ham Hock Stew. It’s a rush order, so whoever takes him may also need to help with the meat processing… But perhaps you will get an invite to the premier social gathering of the year, and some bacon to boot!

Medium Risk

Myron Blackvittle has been spotted at the Meatworks for the first time in years! He is an aggressive recluse, and has run the company completely by proxy for quite a while. Something about him has changed; none of New Coventry’s residents remember him being quite so… rotund. Or hairless for that matter.

Blackvittle’s transformation is rather off-putting, but much about the meatworks is. The really strange thing is that some of the dockworkers are spreading rumors that Myron’s girth is the result of some exotic dining habits. There is no way that the owner of a slaughterhouse and meat processing plant would be a cannibal, right? Right?

High Risk

You have tracked the whereabouts of the Ruby Conclave to a secret room beneath the slaughterhouse floor of the Blackvittle Meatworks. All of the slaughter troughs channel hundreds of gallons of animal blood, and most likely more than a bit of human blood, into a rancid pool in this hidden ritual chamber.

Someone needs to stop the Conclave tonight. They plan on being baptized in a bacchanalian ceremony of blood. They plan on slipping beneath the crimson waves as humans, and emerging as something alien. They plan on resurrecting someone best left on the other side.
This is our only chance, because once the Ruby God springs forth, no amount of bloodshed will be able to seal her again.

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These are just a few ways to weave the world of New Coventry into your game! Why not investigate the rest of New Coventry and check out these other previously discovered places and people!

Introduction and Johnson’s Eatery                                        Anna Ripley
The Coventry Conversation                                                     Coventry Conversation Microfilm Archive
New Hope Housing                                                                   Cornelius Weatherhorn
Salt Lick Farm                                                                            McGregor’s Boat Shed
Mr. Mackerton’s Magical Menagerie                                     Campaign Adventures Part 1
Campaign Adventures Part 2                                                  The Blackvittle Meatworks
The Grindle-Snatcher                                                               New Coventry Station
The Whisper Well                                                                      Pigsy McGinnis
Sally Mae                                                                                     Botanical And Rose Gardens
Campaign Adventures Part 3