Molemen Attack! But Why?

 

Fighting back against years of Surface Dweller oppression 

The GM’s Five Minutes is a long established tradition for when the players go in an unexpected direction. As in “Give me five minutes to figure out what’s happening and we’ll continue.” A powerful tool in the sandbox style you should probably be using for your games. Of course everyone knows that their GM, no matter how good they are, cannot prepare for every possible avenue of player ingenuity (nor should they try.)  We all buy into the illusion that is not the case though so when the GM uses some weak subterfuge such as a sudden and unscheduled bathroom break we can all pretend we don’t know they’re locked in there, looking at pages of now irrelevant notes, going “What the fuck am I going to do now?” And we all know that’s fine.

And if you can’t think of the answer then there’s always the oldest trick in the book: Orcs attack! That’s how Gary did it, probably Dave too, even Tolkien flagged for ideas at times. That’s fine too. Thinking time is created while the PCs deal with whatever generic omnipresent threat is on the warpath right now. Of course it may be that it’s not orcs and probably better if it isn’t. The more mystery we can engender with our stop gap time filler the more the game will progress. So if we can work out why the attack takes place or what is left behind that gives the players something to investigate then that’s probably better. 

Is there anyone I haven’t told that the Grim North doesn’t have orcs? Ok, good. So in those Grim moments molemen attack. Molemen are burrowers, there is an almost unlimited amount of them lurking under the cities and wildernesses of the North; and they hate you and want to devour your flesh. They can spring up practically anywhere, which is convenient if you  are Grim North GM with time on your hands and no idea what to do with it.

For some reason these are d7 tables, I must have in a deep DCC phase when I wrote them but none the less, sharp eyed readers will recognise the format stolen from the Black Hack

Mole Man Activities

1. Feasting on fresh corpses
2. Performing incomprehensible ritual
3. Carrying out undermining operations 
4. Kidnapping surface dwellers of import
5. Scouting for large scale mole assault
6. Searching for escaped flesh crafting experiment
7. Setting ambush for someone else

With.....

1. Renegade Patrician
2. Pack of mole dogs 
3. Near Seer
4. Ancient buried artefact
5. Crudely made human masks
6. Overwhelming smell of decay
7. Mankiller Molehemoth