Supplementary Letters for Against the Cult of the Reptile God

Against the Cult of the Reptile God (AtCotRG) is a great starting adventure for Dungeons & Dragons. It presents a
mystery and a dungeon, and the opportunity for the players to save a whole town!

The premise of the adventure is that a powerful evil snake demon has used her powers of domination to create a
cult that worships her, and this cult is slowly taking over the town of Orlane. Many townsfolk have left, fearing the
“curse” upon the town, and many who remain are now secretly in the service of the Reptile God. The players don’t
know who to trust!

Since the premise of AtCotRG is that the townsfolk are being converted into cultists, I used this to create a
narrative hook by inventing a sibling for one of the PCs, and turning her into a cultist.These letters are from the
character’s sister. They describe the events in Orlane, and provide a strong and ominous hook for saving the town.

The letters were given to the local carter, who promised to take them to a dwarf mine near the PC’s hermitage, but
somewhere along the way, the letters were never delivered, until they’d all piled up into one package. Finally the
dwarf remembered the letters and took the whole bundle to the PC.

When the players arrived and went to see the character’s sister, they found they were too late. She didn’t
recognize her brother for a long while, and is now a thrall of the Reptile God!

The character’s sister, therefore, becomes an allegory for the entire town. Save the town, save her.

You can buy the adventure as an indexed and searchable PDF for only $5!

If you’re running D&D 5th Edition, there are some great conversion notes for this adventure here.

Follow me on twitter if you have any questions!

Mentioned NPCs
The following characters from Against the Cult of the Reptile God are mentioned in these letters;

Bhaltair – The PC, a monk and a hermit run by my friend Tom. Change this to your PC’s name and background!

Ailla – His sister, the author of these letters and wife to the unnamed blacksmith from entry 15 in AtCotRG.

Aelric – The blacksmith from Entry 15. He is unnamed in the adventure, so I named him and made his wife the PC’s
sister. In the adventure, the blacksmith is listed as having children, but I didn’t want to complicate the plot, so I
axed them.

Zakarias Ormond – The mayor from entry 10.

Simon – The storekeep from entry 12. Another unnamed townsperson I had to give a name to.

Hewitt – The farmer from Entry 1. His daughter was unnamed, so I named her Cirili.

Grover – The constable from entry 2. A cultist!

Ollwin & Belba – Owners from the Slumbering Serpent inn, a safe haven.

Isolde – A local goddess in my setting. ‘Merikka’ in AtCotRG. In my campaign, the Invincible Overlord has outlawed
organized religion, so the temple in AtCotRG is a ruin. This is something you may want to edit out, to match your
campaign setting. Fair warning.

Abramo – The cleric who runs the temple in town. Once a good guy! Now a converted cultist! Boo!

Tristram – The carpenter from entry 14. Another unnamed villager I named.

Garath Primo – An evil cleric the party encounters in the final dungeon. Terrible name, feel free to change it.

I assumed the Reptile God in this adventure found and took over an abandoned ancient temple, there’s
no mention in AtCotRG of how the dungeon at the end came to be. So I made Gareth Primo someone
looking for this temple in the swamp and who ends up an ally of the Reptile God.

In these letters we meet him as he’s searching for that temple. In my campaign, it’s a “Gol” temple, the
Gol being savage barbaric humans. Feel free to change it to any ancient culture in your setting. The Suel
for Greyhawk maybe, or the Netheril in the Forgotten Realms.

Misha – One of the cult’s leaders, and the woman who converted Abramo. The adventure doesn’t mention which
cultists are mind controlled thralls, and which are willing allies, I assumed Misha was a willing ally who turned
Abramo into a mind-controlled thrall.

Feel free to download a good-looking handwriting font so that when you print these letters out and hand them to
the player, they look and feel authentic. You can, of course, just email these to the player, but I think the
physicality of a prop is cool and the player feels they’re being handed something special.
Dearest brother-

I hope your studies are going well. Forgive me for not writing the last year but at first I was so upset that you were
leaving I fear I didn’t write to spite you. That was very churlish of me, wasn’t it? Please don’t hate me.

Then after a few months I was so ashamed at not writing that I found I couldn’t write, and the longer I went the
more my shame grew until I didn’t know what to do!

Aelric finally saw my anguish and pressed me to write. He said he would not talk to me until I put quill to
parchment! I’m so lucky to have him. I think he misses you as much as I do

I hope your studies lead to something remarkable! I wish you had told us where you were going so I could come
and visit. It’s not so far that you can’t come to us, is it? Come visit, please.

Orlane grows and prospers. The mayor, Zakarias Ormond, is wise and strong and we trade regularly with Hommlet
and the seat of the barony at Tor. Aelric works as a cobbler and a whitesmith, buying supplies from Simon the
owner of the local store, and fixing little things around town. I help where possible. I’ve made thimbles for all the
ladies! That was fun. And now we know everyone! It was a simple thing, but helped make us feel like part of the
town.

Farmer Hewitt invites us to dinner at least once a week and we always accept. He has such a lovely family. I envy
him. His eldest girl, Cirili, looks up to me, I think. She’s always finding excuses to come over and help me around
the house. She has no taste for farming so I teach her sewing and whitesmithing. She is a fast learner.

Aelric and I think about children all the time, but he wants to be more certain of our future first. He’s right, of
course.

The constable is a man named Grover. He’s a hard and suspicious man who originally tried to talk Aelric and I into
returning to father’s farm, but once we made it clear we were staying, he came around. He is not welcoming, but
he treats everyone the same, which is a kind of fairness I suppose.

There is a temple to Isolde here. It makes me sad to see that beautiful place standing ruined. Many of the people
remember when it was the source of the town’s fortune and health. But we are spared the Overlord’s attention, a
building is a small price to pay for this I think.

The town has two inns! Not even Hommlet, which everyone says is the better of the two towns, has two inns! The
Golden Grain is the larger and more popular, but Aelric and I do not go there because the men who frequent the
place are base and crude.

Instead we frequent the Slumbering Serpent which is smaller, but very nice. Ollwin the innkeep and his wife Belba
were the first to welcome Aelric and I and make us feel at home. They are good people, I hope their inn prospers.

The people here are welcoming and hardworking. We are lucky to live here. But Aelric wants more, he is not
satisfied mending shoes and pots and pans.

-Ailla
Dearest brother-

Good news! Kennoc, the town’s blacksmith left Orlane to work as a smith at Tor Keep, which means Aelric is now
our town’s blacksmith! I’m so proud of him!

It’s so much work. I’m up every hour the gods send helping him with the smithy. He’s such a proud man, he refuses
to hire an apprentice and so pressed me into service. I don’t mind, I find the work very rewarding, and being with
him in his work, sharing in it, brings me great happiness. I see him now, as the work piles up, thinking about
bringing someone else on, and I confess I redouble my efforts. I’m jealous of an apprentice he hasn’t even hired
yet! I’m such a fool.

I fair think I could do the work myself, were I so inclined. Blacksmithing isn’t that hard. After all, men do it and
most of them don’t have the sense the gods gave a goose.

Cirili helps me greatly and spends almost as much time as the smithy as she does on the farm. She loves her family,
I can tell, but dreads the life of a farmer. We’re lucky to have her as a friend.

Husband was eager for me to tell you the news. He admires you terribly. It would mean the world to him if you
would write.

-Ailla
Dearest Bhaltair-

The temple of Isolde is open! A nice young man, Rector Abramo, moved in. He showed me around and encouraged
me to return. I asked him if he feared the stricture against following the Gods of Men imposed by the Overlord and
he smiled. “Yes, I fear it,” he said. “But Isolde teaches fear is a poison of the mind, and can be purged just like
snake’s venom from a wound.”

I thought that very wise. Our rector is a brave man. The temple is still a ruin, it would take years of work to restore
it, it is made of stone after all, but there is always a light in there now and it makes my heart glad to know
someone is there, performing the rituals.

All blessings to Saint Isolde, the Purifier. May her fire burn fear from our hearts.

-Ailla
My Brother-

I had the strangest thing happen to me today, and my first thoughts were of you.

I went to Tristram the carpenter’s shop and he did not recognize me! I’ve seen the man every day for the past year
and it took him fully three bells to remember me and even then his speech was slow.

I have heard rumors of strange goings on in the town, but dismissed them as a fancy. I see houses and farms I
knew, now standing empty. The constable says people are leaving for Hommlet, and at first I accepted this.
Hommlet is larger and more prosperous.

But why should anyone leave Orlane? It is a paradise. I wish I knew our Lord Mayor better and could ask him. But
his constable seems sure of what’s going on, so probably my concerns are misplaced.

Still, very strange looking into Tristram’s eyes and not seeing any sign of recognition there.

Please write back!

-Ailla
Brother-

More strange tidings, though I suspect it’s my imagination at work more than anything else.

I see strange men coming and going from the Golden Grain. This alone was not worth bothering about, I have
never liked that place. But now Simon the owner of the town’s general store is acting strange. I went to buy some
wool from him and he behaved exactly like Tristram! He didn’t recognize me for some long moments.

Well I didn’t want to stand there like an idiot while he looked at me waiting to remember who I am, so I introduced
myself to the other man in the shop. A stranger, but a friendly one, if a bit. . .well, creepy.

He introduced himself as Garath Primo. I could tell by his raiment he was a priest, but I did not recognize the
symbol on his chasuble, and he was pale and unkempt. His hair long and greasy. I introduced myself and asked him
his business and very matter-of-factly he told me he was looking for an ancient Gol temple. Well, I said, I was very
sure there was no such thing around here! A demon-temple of those barbaric savages! Imagine it!

Then he said the most extraordinary thing. “On the contrary!” he said, and proceeded to tell me that Simon
informed him of the location of such a temple out in the swamp!

Simon certainly looked cross at that, and I got the distinct impression that whatever Simon had told this man, it
was supposed to be secret. But Primo seemed nice enough, even if unclean.

I went to the temple to ask rector Abramo about this, and met a young lady instead. Misha, she gave her name.
She was cold and distant to me and said rector Abramo was lost in meditation. I saw Abramo pacing through the
temple in the shadows behind her and called out to him, but he didn’t respond and Misha asked me to leave.

I do not like her. Where did she come from?

-Ailla
Bhaltair-

No letter from you this past year. Are you angry with me? I would not blame you if you were, but please tell me
how if I have offended you, if I have.

Are my letters not reaching you? I give them to a passing carter and he assures me he delivers them to a stout
dwarf who mines the hills near your shrine or ruin or whatever you call that place. But I wonder if this is perhaps
not the most reliable chain of messengers. Oh how I wish I could see you! I’m sure if you saw what was happening
in this town, you would know what to do.

Cirili is gone. More and more people leave as the days pass, but I’m surprised she left with no warning, not even a
goodbye. Rumors that there’s a curse on this town now seem entirely reasonable. I don’t remember the moment
when I stopped thinking the curse was an absurd fancy and started believing it was true, but it may have been
when I learned Cirili was gone.

I wonder if she’s ok. Would she have left her family? Her father and mother and sisters? Why? I wonder if she
really left of her own will.

I suppose I know the answer.

-Ailla
Brother-

Something’s wrong with Aelric. He was gone for a night and I panicked, but Constable Grover assured me he went
with some of the menfolk to Farmer Giles’ steading a few hours outside town. But I know this is not true, Farmer
Giles left for Hommlet a fortnight ago. His steading sits empty now.

I never for a moment believed Grover. But somehow I knew I had to pretend I believed, or the Constable would do
to me whatever he did to Aelric.

Aelric smiles and makes smalltalk, but there is nothing behind his eyes. He does not know me, unless he looks at
me for a long while. He spends all his time at the Golden Grain, conspiring with the men there. He sleeps there and
in truth I do not complain. I could not share my bed with him now. His skin is cold to the touch. He is not Aelric.

Am I going mad? Is my husband possessed, and the rest of the town against me? Or is it I who am possessed?

I am not safe here. I do not know what to do. Please, Bhaltair please come. I beg you.

I am afraid.