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A Failure of Compassion.
Adventure
A Failure of Compassion
An adventure for four to six 2nd level player characters . Meant for 5e and OSR.

Themes: man vs. nature, moral ambiguity, “man creates the monsters”

Sessions: 3-4

Creatures and NPCs: goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears, militiamen, Hundscelt clanfolk, beasts

Region: The Cut (forested, remote, cool and damp)

This adventure explores the plight of a town harassed by the fey. The militia, after being failed
by another group of adventurers, take matters into their hands. One of them, a secret arcanist
named Jelan, begins capturing and torturing goblins for research. An unexpected disaster leads
to a number of deaths, but Jelan and her henchmen see an opportunity to destroy the goblins.

One conceit of the adventure is that goblins are fey creatures. If this is not cohesive with your
campaign setting, consider using goblin stats and renaming them gremlins, älves, or some other
term connoting small, vexing fey. The author uses homebrew stats for goblins, but the adventure
can easily be run with no changes.

Setting the Stage

The players arrive in the remote village of Escfirth in the mid-autumn. The roads are lonely, cold,
and wet with daily rain from overcast, rumbling skies. Ravens caw and the smell of damp loam
is all around.

The players should arrive in Escfirth when they need a long rest. The adventure takes place
over ten days, making it a prime opportunity to explore characters and their personal lives. The
NPCs in town are tangled in a knot of conflicting wants and histories. The ten-day period need
not be dull.

The town has suffered two attacks by fey when the characters arrive. The first was two weeks
ago, and it was repelled without issue. The second occurred three days ago, and the town is
just finishing repairs of their crude palisade wall. The lumber yard is active and more than one
militiaman leers at the party as they enter.

The Story
Goblins are harassing the village. The locals pleaded with a band of adventurers to aid them,
and the adventurers refused. The day after they left town, the goblins mounted their first attack.
Though no one died in that assault, the blacksmith was laid up with a bum arm and two local
kids went missing.

Two weeks later, the goblins attacked again, and three militiamen died defending the wall.
Nearly a season’s worth of lumber was destroyed. The townsfolk rallied and began to demand
the village defend itself. A party of militiamen went into the woods and returned with a dozen
ears strung on leather.

The militiamen go into the woods every three days on patrol, often returning with more trophies.
They are led by Warren Burley, a quiet man who lives at Blackleer Place with his daughter and
the landlords. One militiaman, Jelan, has convinced a handful of her companions to take goblins
prisoner.

On the fourth day that the party is in town, a rampaging monster destroys a homestead and
escapes into the woods. The party might be tasked with hunting it and could discover Jelan’s
secret in the process.

On the ninth day, Jelan will leave town with another of the monsters with the intention of letting it
loose on the goblins unless stopped by the party.

The Antagonist

Jelan Fassinte is Escfirth’s somewhat secret arcanist. She has no spellcasting ability but is a
student of magic. She lives with her partner Heather, the alderwoman of Escfirth, at Alderhame.
Later in the adventure, she will begin hiding goblin prisoners on the property and torturing them
with iron — a process which results in the creation of bugbears. This is the monster which
ravages the town.

When the players arrive, Jelan is preparing to leave with other militiamen on a patrol of the
woods. She has her hand-picked henchmen accompanying her; they are aware of her plans to
capture goblins. These three men are all damaged in some way, and Jelan is exploiting their
personal tragedies. She is a natural manipulator and her relationship with Heather is strained as
a result.

Duluth Somers is a late-50s man who lost his left hand to the same stryge attack which gave
Heather a scar on her chin. He has become frustrated and curses the otherworldly monsters
that bereaved him of his limb.

Jelan makes Duluth feel powerful by giving him the first crack at any fey they capture. He’s no
sadist, but Seamus encourages him to take the goblins’ hands as payment. He will break with
any significant shaming, repenting and weeping.
Seamus of Kirk arrived in Escfirth a month before the fey first attacked, and he relishes the
opportunity to capture and torture them. He doesn’t talk about his previous deeds, but it’s known
that he was discharged from crown service for enjoying the killing too much. He’s in his early
30s.

Seamus is no fool and knows Jelan picked him for his lack of compunction. He is deeply
damaged by events from his childhood, and players will find him tight-lipped and violent when
confronted.

Andes Curölen is young and eager to prove himself to the brave and serious Jelan. He looks up
to both her and Heather and wants to set himself apart from the other boys in the village. Andes
is seventeen, and his mother runs the trading post.

Andes is skittish when the torture starts, and observant players will notice his behavior change.
He regards Seamus with fear and doesn’t know how to feel about Duluth. He remains staunchly
devoted to Jelan and believes that if he does what she wants, he’ll be her favorite.

People & Places

Heather Banleigh is a mid-40s elf with a scarred chin and graying hair. She is Jelan’s partner,
and she has a good idea of what the younger woman is doing in the shed at the back of their
property. She lives at Alderhame, an old colonial-style home built by her great-great-grandfather.
The Banleighs built most of the buildings in the village and feuded with the Hundscelts for a
generation or so.

Heather is a potential ally of players who seek to defend the village. She can give them work if
she finds them trustworthy, which means they don’t go snooping around her girlfriend. She
doesn’t care to hear Jelan’s sins and claims it’s all for the good of the village.

The relationship between Jelan and Heather is one of dependence. Heather is depressed and
shelters in Jelan’s manipulations. Their love is strained, but they do love each other. Players
who meddle in this friction may make enemies of the two women, or they may force issues to
light.

Moris Hundscelt is a paranoid and violent old man in his early 70s. His family — which is large
and inbred — represents the largest, most obvious source of conflict for players. The Hundscelt
clan is a bunch of malicious hillfolk, and they frequently harass businesses and homesteads in
town. The whole clan lives in the outskirts, past the lumber yards, in a dilapidated two-story
home. The Hundscelts were the first to settle Escfirth in generations past, but the Banleighs
forced them out when they built the palisade wall and took control of the only mill for days in any
direction.
The Hundscelts are a quantum source of bandits — if you need more, invent more. Moris has
infinite cousins, in-laws, and nephews to dispense. They rob, vandalize, mock, and loot
travelers and might harass the players early on. They see retaliation as an open invitation for
“war,” and will track and beat the players, looting them of all cash and valuables. If matters
escalate, Heather will quietly approach the characters and inform them that, while she can’t
condone murder, the Hundscelts are not loved and their disappearance would not be
investigated.

Catherine Aunless is the town butcher and healer. The older halfling woman runs a side
business curing pelts and will pay good money for them. She trades them south to other colonial
settlements. She can fix up players with wounds and injuries and maintains a small stockpile of
healer’s supplies. She doesn’t have potions but will buy them for 150% of their usual sell price.

Characters can get hunting contracts from Catherine, and she doesn’t hesitate to shell out good
coin for anything rare or unusual the players bring her. She can order better healing supplies
like potions, but it takes four days for them to arrive, and she can only order them four at a time.

Warren Burley lives on a farm, renting their spare room for himself and his daughter. A widower,
Warren lost his wife two years ago and is still broken from it. The loss left him to raise a
three-year-old, now five, and he has found it easier to leave the girl with the Blackleers and
instead focus on work. Heather appointed him the mill manager, and he charges a small tax for
profit — a fact which salts the Hundscelts and has made him a target in their eyes. When not
overseeing the millworks, Warren commands the militia.

Warren is unaware of Jelan’s activities. He’s just happy to have someone doing the dirty work of
finding and killing goblins. If presented with evidence of her behavior, he won’t care at first.
Once Jelan’s experiments yield results and the bugbear breaks loose, he becomes more
receptive and might demand she stop. This will pit Jelan against Warren, and Heather will
threaten Warren’s livelihood unless the players can sway her to side with him.

Warren isn’t the only tenant at Blackleer Place. An adventurer named Thalia is renting the loft in
their barn, and she sometimes watches Warren’s daughter. Thalia is muscular, witty, and a
consummate storyteller, making her popular in the tavern.

Gillian Copsewright, a halfling woman in her early 30s, is the tavern owner and barkeep at the
Squatting Goat, known colloquially as the Squat. Her family worked for the Hundscelts, but she
tries to stay out of the village politics. Her 11-year-old son Ransom works the stables.

Ransom’s father, Bill Toach, is a slimy layabout who joined the militia to convince Gillian to take
him back. He can be found lounging around town with other militiamen, drinking and dicing. He
might ask a character to deliver love letters to Gillian but takes a belching offense at anyone
who insults his abilities as a father. On the other hand, anyone who gets him drunk enough will
see his remorse bubble to the surface and might have to tend to a sobbing drunkard.
The Home of the Graces is a local shrine built inside an abandoned cabin near the outskirts.
Strings and strips of cloth adorn the porch and rafters, symbolic of prayers and wishes. The
shrine itself is a candle-festooned dresser with small offerings scattered about. The Graces are
a local cult to fertility and nature. They are believed to purify the natural world of otherworldly
influences, and so many militiamen carry a small iron token on their person in reverence.

A wandering pilgrim might meet any character that visits the shrine. They have come from
further west, where the winter comes early. They have brought a woven story-cloth,
embroidered with tales of rusting swamps, war machines, and forever glaciers. The pilgrim can
trade tales, spell components, and books of philosophy and faith.

The Timeline — players can interrupt this outline at any time; they can and should alter the
sequence of events.

Day 1. The characters arrive in Escfirth. They witness the patrol leave town, made up of Jelan
and her three henchmen. The players learn about the goblins and the attacks.

Day 2. Players can explore Escfirth. Jelan secrets a goblin prisoner into town just before dawn
and hides it in a shed at Alderhame.

Day 3. Villagers recognize adventurers and might approach with tasks. If nothing else happens
this day, use it for downtime and further exploration.

Help the blacksmith get back on his feet (any magical healing will put him into commission).

Track down those missing kids (they went to the shrine for a tryst).

Go hunting for pelts (good opportunity for random encounters w/ goblins, beasts, etc.).

Day 4. Before noon, the bugbear escapes from Alderhame. It attacks and mauls villagers. The
militia chases it out of town, and the players can investigate or hunt it down. If they follow it, they
end up chasing it into a cave (small, five-room dungeon).

Day 5. The town is tense in the wake of the disaster. Warren might conscript players to join a
patrol the next day, offering them a chance to see Jelan in action.

Day 6. Jelan brings another goblin into town. She is determined to loose the resulting bugbear
on the goblins, hopefully scattering them.

Day 7. The Hundscelts and Warren come to blows in the village. A fight breaks out and, if
uninterrupted, Warren arrests two of the Hundscelt clan.

Day 8. A town hall is called by Moris Hundscelt to release his clanfolk and remove Warren from
his place as militia leader. Moris accuses him of failing in his post, letting the goblins survive,
and being in Heather’s pocket. Jelan suggest putting Moris in Warren’s place, recognizing an
opportunity to remove Warren (if he is unaware of the torture). If Warren knows about the goblin
prisoners, Jelan instead recommends a duel to settle the issue.

Day 9. Jelan leaves town with the bugbear. If a duel was called, she uses this as cover. She
leaves around dawn with an iron cage containing the creature. If her henchmen are still
following her, Duluth and Seamus go with her, and Andes approaches the characters to tell
them of Jelan’s plan. If her henchmen have been compromised or have been convinced to
abandon her, she convinces Heather to join her.

Day 10. If Duluth and Seamus go with Jelan, they are killed while releasing the bugbear and the
goblins are destroyed by the mutant fey. If Heather goes with her, she lets the bugbear go while
Jelan is distracted and is killed, but the goblins survive. In this case, Jelan returns to town and
assumes the post of alderwoman, removes Warren from his post, and puts Moris in his place.

This adventure is not happy. It’s also not written in stone. The above timeline is a suggestion of
events, but your players may simply choose to hunt the goblins down alone and then return to
Escfirth for payment. They may join the goblins, marking them as traitors to the colonies and
allies of the fey. They may slaughter the Hundscelts, making Jelan’s plans to remove Warren
different.

The above adventure is supposed to highlight a core conceit of my setting, which is “men make
the monsters.” Jelan is the true antagonist, but she’s not a villain with sweeping, evil plans. She
wants what the rest of the villagers want, and to her mind, she’s the only one who can get things
done right. Other people in town are content to let her until her experiments threaten their safety,
which highlights the “perilous magic.” Jelan uses iron shackles, tools, and weaponry to torture
the fey goblins, which mutates them into monstrous beasts. This is magic in the hands of a
mundane person used for personal gain, a great trope of fantasy.

Lastly, the expectation is that the players never have to encounter goblins or a bugbear alone.
The author uses homebrew stats for these monsters, making them much tougher than their
standard iterations. Bugbears, especially, have stats suitable for a solo boss fight against four
5th level characters. Militiamen and Hundscelts use bandit, guard, scout, or other appropriate
humanoid stats.

Random Tables

Exploring Escfirth. Roll a d6.

A couple of Hundscelts are loitering around, heckling passersby and throwing rocks at a mutt.
One of them is showing off a finely crafted hand axe, obviously not from the village smith. It is
masterwork and grants +2 to damage rolls made with it.
Six militiamen are training and invite the characters to spar with them. Award XP for an easy
encounter and give each participant a point of inspiration.

Thalia has challenged a brawny Hundscelt to a wrestling match. She will best him, and
characters can join the betting. Afterwards, she treats the crowd to drinks at the Squat.

A worried woman clutching a wide-eyed boy of six by the hand. She’s wandering around, asking
after her daughter Carmilla (one of the missing teens). If Carmilla has already been found at the
shrine, instead this encounter is Carmilla being chewed out by her mother.

A grimy dog starts following the characters. If they feed it or show it praise, it excitedly chases
them and becomes a loveable nuisance. A day later, it brings one of the characters a ripped-up
satchel containing a potion of healing and 43 silver pieces.

A village crier announces the onset of winter in the west, and the forward march of the
Altimerian army in the Cut. They will sell a news rag for 5 silver, granting players information and
potential headings after the adventure.

The Outskirts. Roll a d4.

A millworker shouts, pinned beneath a log. A combined Strength score of 50 is required to lift
the log off the man, and a millworker with Str 13 comes to help. If he is freed, he thanks the
characters and offers to buy a round next time they see him at the Squat.

A column of smoke leads to a ransacked campsite. Three Hundscelt boys are picking over the
camp and run at the first sight of onlookers. A dead camper in the tent seems to have perished
from infected arrow wounds. There is mundane gear available to salvage in the camp.

A bear, hungry and perhaps fey-dazed, is sniffing around the path. Its behavior is erratic, and it
charges if any character comes within 40 feet.

A faerie ring. In the center, a mound of stones is piled up with blue runes carved on their flat
sides. This is a goblin grave, and anyone who disturbs it must save vs DC 11 or have ray of
enfeeblement cast on them, lasting 8 hours. If an offering is left, the character instead gains a
point of inspiration and XP worth an easy encounter.

The Woods. Roll a d4.

A goblin scouting party. Three goblins are tracking the most recent patrol, and startle at the sight
of the characters. They attempt to make a tactical retreat, and will hide in trees if cornered,
giving them partial cover.

Trees covered with hanging bones and unusual symbols. Locals fear this place, calling it the
Unwood. A general sense of unease follows characters after this encounter; if they have this
encounter again, a peryton is feasting on the remains of a human in the middle of the copse. It
eyes them with a hungry stare.

Twinkling lights and enchanting music sound in the distance, ghostly in their transparent quality.
A goblin witch is nearby, leading four goblins in worship of the archfey.

Another person. A hunter on his way back to Escfirth, laden with a doe or a rack of hare. He will
trade rations and hides to the characters.

Finally, here is a link to the Monster Maker .json files I made for goblins, hobgoblins, and
bugbears. Credit for Monster Maker goes to u/Giffyglyph. If you upload these into their webapp,
you can view the altered stats I used. Otherwise, I've detailed the changes made below.

Goblins

The primary changes here are the innate spellcasting trait, fear immunity, and iron weaponry
vulnerability. Goblins have been given three non-damaging spells they can cast at-will: crown of
madness, unseen servant, and ray of enfeeblement. This firmly roots them in their fey nature. If
you change nothing else, giving these spells to your goblins can make them seem like
mischievous fey in a pinch. This is balanced by only one attack mode, a sling, which will be at
disadvantage in melee. These goblins don't swarm.

The goblin witch is a variant goblin with more hitpoints and another handful of spells, each of
which is 2/day: fog cloud, mirror image, dispel magic, and web. Again, the intent is to make
them difficult opponents without relying on hitpoint damage to pose a challenge. They have a
"leader" tactic that they can use with their infestation cantrip to allow allies to move and attack.

Hobgoblins

Bigger goblins with a martial emphasis. They retain fear immunity and iron weapon vulnerability,
as well as innate spellcasting. They gain a rage buff at 1/2 health and can take one
pseudo-legendary action, called a "paragon action." This lets them do stuff on your players'
turns.

The hobgoblin warden is a challenging opponent intended to be used if your players end up
fighting the goblins a siege of Escfirth or a similar situation. They have freedom of movement
and generate a radius of difficult terrain. They also feature better spells, these focused on
support and dealing damage: healing word, hold person, moonbeam, and conjure animals.
Their cantrip is a modified thorn whip that lets the warden move targets around.

Bugbears

After mutating from exposure to iron, goblins become bugbears. The process takes about 3
days. These bugbears are quite different to run, primarily due to the increased CR. With 120
hitpoints, they're fragile for a CR5 but have ways to deal with that weakness. They are
grapplers, with expertise in Athletics and way to share incoming damage with grappled foes.
They have advantage on Wisdom saves, and can bonus action Hide in dim and dark lighting
conditions. They have a high-damage attack they can only use against grappled targets that
heals them, an extended crit-range basic attack, and an AoE fear effect that bypasses the fear
immunity of goblins (and goblins actually have disadvantage on this save). They get 3 paragon
actions, meaning they should always be mobile and able to Disengage, Dodge, and be
otherwise annoying to pin down.