Abject misery and death await 2–6 players ages 16 and up!

Against the Cult of the Blood God

A third-party MÖRK BORG adventure module

Nighttime horrors! They murder, fornicate and spew heresies, but fi-
nally they have been caught. Witness their execution on the town
square come morning! There is no escape for them.
— Town crier informing everyone about your past few days, and im-
mediate future.

FALL MMXI • HEXHOG

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 Typeset in Georgia, Gorilla, and Trattatello.

Cover art: Giovanni Battista Piranesi, The Prisons: An Architectural Medly,

with a Man on the Rock in the Foreground, 1745. Cleveland Museum of Art.

Against the Cult of the Blood God is an independent production by HEX-

HOG and is not affiliated with Ockult Örtmästare Games or Stockholm
Kartell. It is published under the MÖRK BORG Third Party License.

MÖRK BORG is copyright Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell.

Playlist
Atramentus — Stygian
Wallachian Cobwebs — Night Sobbed a Potion Diseased
Aindulmedir — The Winter Scriptures
Paysage d’Hiver — Geister
Trhä — Nvenlanëg

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 How to play
This brief adventure can be enjoyed by anyone, but is
principally designed as an introduction to Mörk Borg,
and tabletop roleplaying in general.

Players can roll up their characters at the start of the ses-

sion, while they relate their stories to each other on their
last morning before they shall hang for their heinous
crimes.

Equipment and weapons are found during the course of

play. In order not to hold up the process for everyone, ask
players to pick a class, if they want one, before you come
together to play.

The adventure ends in a wild underground chase, played

out like a traditional board game, with some role-playing
flavor mixed in. The rules for the chase are simple, and
can be communicated during play.

Before you play

Print the game board found in the materials appendix,
preferably on an A3 sheet.

You can use meeples, miniatures or coins to represent

players and enemies, or duct-tape the printout to a PS
foam or sturdy cardboard layer, and use (preferably
rusty) nails with paper tags.

You can print the table of crimes in the appendix and

show it to the players during character creation, or have
them roll blindly and describe the result. At your discre-
tion, players can also pick a crime they feel suits their
character best.

Content warning
The world of Mörk Borg is bleak and brutal, and physical
violence, including the past occurrence of torture, are
part of this adventure.

As part of a randomly rolled backstory fragment, non-

consensual sex is hinted at — if you are uncomfortable
with this, replace the mechanism for finding the whip in
area 2 with a PRESENCE test. A character imprisoned for
whoring instead finds an extra 2D6X10 silver in the equip-
ment chest.

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4
 Guilty!
They caught you. No judge, no jury, just an execu-
tioner. In a desolate hamlet somewhere between Galgen-
beck and Schleswig, they dragged you into a cellar and
cast you into a pit. A miserable bunch, waiting for the
gallows to be reared.

You shall hang for (D6):

Necrophilia
It was fun while it lasted.
1 Haunted.

A little cash on the side. Mild

2 Whoring venereal disease (-1 PRESENCE
for the adventure).

Endured torture (-1 HP), but

3 Heresy favoured by some caveman
god (+1 omen).

Endured severe torture (half

4 Witchcraft HP), but a random unclean
scroll tattooed on back.

Waylaying
Retains a trinket worth 20SP in
5 their anus.

Ritually ingested village idiot’s

6 Cannibalism testicles. +1 sTRENGTH, -1 PRES-
ENCE for the adventure.

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 5

3
1 The Cell

2 Guard Room

3 Exit

4 Torture Chamber

5 Blood Chapel

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1. The Cell
A clay pit with a puddle of ice cold water in the center.
Huddled against the rough stone walls, the characters
await their fate.

• Nothing to do. No hope.

• Rusty, but sturdy iron bars.

ESCAPE! Clamour from the guard room, then silence. A

guard stumbles against the bars, starts fondling him-
self, and soon collapses. Dead. Guard
Woefully inadequate, also
dead.
• On his belt, the cell

2. Guard Room •
keys.
A rusty knife stuck
A cellar room. Smell of spilled wine and blood. The floor in his liver.
of the above room has mostly collapsed.
• Perfunctory but dirty
clothes and a basic
• A table with a small sack containing 5D6 silver. hardwood club.
• The second guard lies sprawled on the floor, head
smashed in. Wears a boiled leather vest.
• A total of 4 torches line the walls. Rusty knife D4-1

A HOLE IN THE WALL leading to a tunnel lined with Hardwood club D4

crude reliefs of massacres and sacrifices, ending in the “World’s Best Dad”
door to the torture chamber. carved into the
handle, probably by a
A STAIRCASE climbing to a landing and the exit. child.

AT YOUR LEISURE A character imprisoned for whoring Boiled leather vest

happens to know where the World’s Best Dad hides The Tier 1, -D2 damage
Virgin’s Kiss.
The Virgin’s Kiss D4
OUR STUFF A large wooden chest in the corner contains
A bull whip with metal
the characters’ equipment.
thorns.
Pleasure and pain:
+1 damage against
Roll player equipment now. Re-roll the obviously nonsensi‐ flesh, -2 against ar-
cal, like donkey carts. Special equipment and scrolls are mor.
also found here, but no weapons or armor.

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 3. Exit
A precarious landing and a warped wooden door. Sounds
of a party outside.

• A glimpse between the planks reveals the whole vil-

lage is out waiting for the characters’ execution.

Caged monstrosity OPENING THE DOOR ends the adventure, as the char-
acters are overwhelmed and immediately hanged. Was
Alive? Dead? Desperate
it all the wishful dream of a starving prisoner? But no,
and dangerous.
stumbling steps as a guard approaches ...
HP8
Morale - Cage -D4
• Murdering hands D2
• Attacks twice/round un-
til reduced to half HP
• Clumsy movement,
4. Torture Chamber
DR10 to hit
A curiously ornamental stone door leads to a high-domed
octagonal room. The floor spirals towards a fist-sized
hole. Dim light, smell of raw flesh.

Iron tongs D4 • Gurgling water can be faintly heard from the hole
Still hot +D2 damage in the floor.
for another hour. • A brazier with smouldering coals holds iron tongs.
Heavy STRENGTH 0 or
better to wield.
• Torture devices line the walls: a rack, rings and
Bone saw D6 chains, a wicked bone saw, gloves with iron
studs, and the executioner’s garb: robe, mitra,
leather apron and the executioner’s axe.
Studded gloves D2+1
• A cage with three mangled bodies squeezed in,
limbs dangling between the bars. If disturbed by light
Executioner’s axe D6
or sound, the bodies come alive and attack as a six-
Wicked sharp De-
legged caged monstrosity.
capitate medium-sized
humanoids on a crit. • Statue of a monstrous, fanged humanoid, slit-
ting its own throat with one hand and holding a bowl
Leather apron Tier 1, crusted with old blood in the other.
-D2 damage
POURING BLOOD into the bowl causes the statue to
slide back and reveal a spiral staircase leading down into
the blood chapel.

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5. Blood Chapel
The torture chamber is actually the sacrificial room for
priests of a prehuman blood cult. Some villagers still par-
take in its rituals.

• A high ceiling with the hole in the floor of the tor-

ture chamber in its exact center.
• A horrific demon head cast in stone, mouth agape,
directly beneath.
• Vines creep up the walls and small red flowers
break through cracks in the floor.
• The east wall has collapsed into an underground
river, the source of the gurgling sound.

• A solid block of black stone serves as an altar. On

it, a serrated black metal berserker knife.
• Shadowy forms gyrate around the demon head
statue, barely glimpsed, just shifted out of reality. An
unsettling dance.

EATING SOME FLOWERS restores D2 HP and cures dis- Serrated Black Metal
ease and infection. Up to 4 bundles of flowers can be Berserker Knife D4+1
harvested. Blood rage Drawing
blood sends the
wielder into a rage: at-
IF BLOOD DROPS INTO THE DEMON HEAD by
tack twice per round,
some mishap (for example, leaving a bunch of slashed but defend at DR14 un-
bodies in the torture chamber), the air shudders as til both attacks do no
the shadow forms birth 6 Berserker Inquisitors. damage.
1 in 6 chance to attack
If a character attempts to climb back to the torture an ally if no enemies
chamber, they hear the voices of the mob that has en- are left.
tered the prison - escape through the underground
river canal is the only option for survival. The
Berserker Death Race is on!

If the characters plugged the hole, cleaned the torture

chamber or didn’t kill the monstrosity at all, the berserker
horde emerges when the ritual knife is taken, or at some
other, unknowable heresy against the blood god.

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Berserker Inquisitors
In an absolute rush to
purge all heretics.
Morale 11 (fanatics)
Hardened skin -D2
Attack twice/round,
DR10 to attack them.
Urkahn (leader)
HP 15
• Huge warhammer
D10
• Blood aura Gains D4
HP if both attacks hit
in one round.
Zu’rul
HP 13
• Chaos flail D8
• Roll D6 on each attack:
1 hurts himself
2-5 normal attack
6 double damage
Chhgh
HP 10
• Razor chain D6
• 2 in 6 chance to en-
tangle: victim has -2
defense this round.
J’d’b’th
HP 13
• Unholy sword D6
• Test TOUGHNESS or die!
No-rrl
HP 12
• Barbed axe D8
Ha A Cwn
HP 16
• Spiked club D8
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Berserker Death Race
Knee-deep water, black and cold. The howls of the blood
horde echo through the damp tunnel walls.
• The race is played in rounds, just like combat, on the
special 30-field game board.
• The characters always go first and the berserkers
second.
• Each round, a character can either move D6 +
AGILITYfields; or use an action on a special field.
They can immediately engage in the action if they
have movement left when they arrive.
• If the character has no lit torch, or there is no one
with a torch within 1 field when movement starts,
positive AGILITY values are not applied.
• The characters have a head-start of one round,
meaning they move twice before the berserkers move.
• The berserkers move 3 fields each round. If
they catch and kill a character, their movement per-
manently increases by 1 as they enter a blood rush
(stacks with kills).
• If a character is caught, they must fight for at least
one round. In the tunnel, two berserkers can attack
in parallel (except at the choke field). After the
second round, the character may attempt to escape:
test STRENGTH or AGILITY to take D2 damage and move
normally. If the roll fails, the berserkers attack with a
+2 bonus this round.
• An omen can be spent to have the escape attempt
succeed automatically, with no damage taken.
If you do not want to use the board, you can instead de‐
scribe the chase to the players, ramping up tension as the
horde closes in on missteps. They catch up at your discre‐
tion, but the choke (29) is a good location for a last stand.
1 Start
They are right. behind. you.
• Characters start their escape on this field. The ber-
serkers are placed here on the second round of play.
 Shroom visions (D6)
8 Teeth of the earth 1 Tiny gods of lust,
Treacherous rapids, rocks like knives. sucking with soft
mouths. Spend the
next round blissfully
• Passing over this field, or starting the movement
enraptured. A charac-
there, reduces this round’s movement by 2 (ap-
ter with venereal
ply this penalty only once). If the character is bare-
disease is immune to
foot, movement is instead reduced by 3.
this vision.
• Action: stay and help struggling latecomers along,
2 They look so tasty.
reducing the straggler’s movement penalty to 0.
Eat some mushrooms
and puke your guts
out next round: D2
12 Living wall damage, movement
-2.
Rotting corpses, half sunken into the rock, groping for
3 Reborn as a golden
warm flesh.
god of war! Scream-
ing murder, you move
• Action: Attack to hack at the limbs and defend to towards the ber-
dodge. If both rolls fail, the character is held and en- serkers next round.
dures the corpses cackling laughter.
4 As if you were air.
• Action: If held, test STRENGTH to break free of the grip You float for the next
and move to the next field. D4 rounds. Someone
• Action: Help someone break free, adding +4 to their has to push you along
strength roll. or you are stuck. If the
• Action: Attack and defend on behalf of another char- berserkers catch up to
acter, who passes unhindered. you, they push you
• A haunted character is ushered forward by the along with their roars.
corpses and moves 1 extra field as their ghostly be- 5 You forget what
loved commands passage. legs are and walk on
your hands for the
next 2 rounds, -2
16 MushRoom movement. Your
torch, if you have one,
Giant fungal growth on the walls, and a faintly glowing is extinguished.
spore miasma. Earthy, actually pleasant smell. 6 One with the black-
ness. You compre-
• Pass a PRESENCE DR18 test or suffer a vision. hend the entirety of
the tunnel down to the
• Action: A sane character can have the idea of setting
last pebble. Hitting a
fire to the mushrooms. They burn like hell. Everyone
precise spot on the
passing through or currently in the room take D4 fire
wall, you trigger a
damage, including the berserkers.
rockfall, killing one
berserker instantly
and slowing their
movement by 2.

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 20 Mining tunnel
Caved-in. A rockfall precariously held back by rotting
beams.

• Action: Hack or tear at the beam, collapsing the ceil-

ing. Everyone currently on this tile rolls a D6:
1 Buried. Suffer D6 damage and succeed on a
STRENGTH DR14 check to wrestle free next round.

2 Hit by some rocks. D4 damage.

3 Escaped, but to the wrong side of the rockfall.
4-6 Dodged a rock there. Continue movement
next round.

• If the berserkers are here during the collapse, they all

take D6 damage and move only 2 fields next round.
• The rockfall reduces movement by 3 (minimum
0: stuck until next round. Incur this penalty only
once).

25 Jaws
Heavy Bronze
Warhammer D6
Shatter On a crit, the The yellowing bones of a prehuman worm-beast block the
opponent’s armor is tunnel, the maw slammed shut.
completely destroyed
instead of just reduced • Unless someone currently props the jaws open, move-
by one tier.
ment ends here.
Knock This weapon • Action: Check STRENGTH to prop the jaws open and
destroys non-magical
doors in one hit. The move forward the next round — the jaws slam shut
wielder must test PRES- again.
ENCE (DR 16 if the • Action: Hold the maw open for latecomers, allowing
weapon is drawn) them to pass at full speed.
whenever they see a
closed door to refrain
from compulsively
smashing it.
26 Ribcage

• Action: Search a jumble of human bones and rusted

armor to unearth an ancient heavy bronze war-
hammer.

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 29 Choke

• The tunnel narrows before opening into the cavern.

If a fight breaks out here, only a single berserker can
attack at a time.

30 The cavern
A domed ceiling dripping black water. Dead end.

• Unless they get the idea to look for themselves, char-

acters have to test PRESENCE DR14 to notice an under-
water current, leading to an outlet below the water
level. The difficulty of this check is reduced by 1 for
each round spent here.
• Dive! Characters wearing the executioner’s apron or
carrying one of the heavy weapons (warhammer,
bone saw, axe, tongs) must succeed on a STRENGTH
DR10 check or choose between losing the equipment
or drowning.

Free!
Swimming or pulling themselves frantically up a narrow
chute through increasingly stained and muddy water, the
characters emerge in what turns out to be the village
inn’s latrine.

Luckily, the latrine is so full that the crossbar is within

arm’s reach! As if born anew, the characters stumble into
the safety of a nearby forest.

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 Guilty!
They caught you. No judge, no jury, just an execu-
tioner. In a desolate hamlet somewhere between Galgen-
beck and Schleswig, they dragged you into a cellar and
cast you into a pit. A miserable bunch, waiting for the
gallows to be reared.

You shall hang for (D6):

1 Necrophilia

2 Whoring

3 Heresy

4 Witchcraft

5 Waylaying

6 Cannibalism
✂

Materials 1: Crime table

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 30

29

26

25

20

16

12

1
✂

Materials 2: Berserker Death Race game board

15