EXT. THRONE OF SALT. DAY.
Winds howl and tear across a broken, rusted landscape. Scrap towers twisted in heaps and torn open with bellies to the sky litter the horizon, wounds filled with drifts of salt. Pan to a singular unbroken spire of chalk splitting apart the vacant blue steely blue sky. A great bronze brazier rests atop, its towering flames spite the wind. Fly through the window to the chamber beneath the flame. A cerulean light swirls and twists shadows in the room, we face the back of a jagged throne hewn from a singular chunk of crystalline salt. Circle the room and reveal a robed wizard atop the throne, brow furrowed and gesturing wildly at the formidable orb in front of the throne, manipulating crackling lightning and swirling mist inside its shadowed depths. After great exertion, the lightning ceases and the wizard, revealed now in steady light now as DAN D, settles into the Throne. Slow zoom on DAN D. from across the orb as a brilliant white light pours out, flooding the room.
NOODLE
I'm Noodle! My flesh is worth more than your life!
DAN D. smiles. Camera flies back out the window and races upwards into a darkening, empty sky. We hear cackling mingle with the howling wind as the scene fades.
INT. DUNGEON. KITCHEN.
A cozy furnished kitchen well lit with oil lamps. CRAB is searching through an ice chest. The dumbwaiter suddenly drops into the kitchen with a loud clatter and CRAB jumps, then carefully moves to examine. A brightly wrapped package is on the dumbwaiter, spotted with grease. Through a tear in the packaging a slab of opalescent meat can be seen. CRAB froths at the mouth, lifting the package in claws above his head and scuttles out of the room.
INT. DUNGEON. BANQUET HALL.
CRAB sits at the head of the banquet table, a silver tray covering a dish in front of him. Squat frog-like creatures with bow-ties busy about preparing cutlery for empty seats and stoking the fireplace. They jump and scurry out of the room as CRAB clacks his claws suddenly. As the doors shut and we hear only the crackling of fire, CRAB pulls the conspicuous silver lever next to his chair.
Grating gears and the screech of metal is heard and rapidly overcome with a shrieking wail from thousands of voices as a cage in the ceiling opens and a chained ball of clacking skulls and searching shadowy tendrils is lowered above the table. Clinking his glass with a fork, the screaming quiets to a murmur and CRAB lifts the tray on the dish, revealing the colorfully packaged slab of meat, distinct artwork clearly displayed.
CRAB
Rejoice, ye DAMNED, we're eating Unicorn Meat tonight!
TITLE CARD
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| Rowan A. (Mon) |
CRAB
Fresh from the THRONE OF SALT itself, this is. A machination by the hands of DAN D. with all this packaging and artwork courtesy of Rowan A. You know, just from it being a product of DAN's I was interested to start with, but even if not for him this artwork is dripping with a sauce and flavor that is hard to resist. From the rainbow of blood alone down to the rotting white-eyed unicorn corpse you get an immediate picture of what we are in for in this adventure. And let me tell you, that artwork carries on in quality and in its insidiously unsettling nature. The portraits of these NPCs reveals their nature just as much so if not more than the actual descriptions. Really, the art is such a choice pairing for the mood of the setting. I might even get that cover art as a print if I can find it, I'm so delighted.
The DAMNED clack their jaws and howl as their shadowy tendrils flit about, dimming the lights and shaking dust from the ceiling.
CRAB
Oh right, yeah let's start with what this is all about. Unicorn Meat is a low magic and low level module meant to run for a couple of sessions. Its pretty system neutral and generally can be fit into any old-school-ish ruleset. In a 19th centuryish country backdrop, the Sunny Smiles Unicorn Farm has been running for decades, butchering unicorns and selling their product to the wealthy who can afford (and taste the sweet succor of) the unspoilt meat of these magical beasts.
Now, these Sunny Smiles characters are your run of the mill corpo-fascist bastards out to squeeze every inch of profit from a system they can. With this case, we have the unicorn farming and slaughtering business. What DAN has done here is to take the idea of the magical unicorn and yank it into the post-industrial revolution to examine how it could be domesticated, farmed, and generally exploited. Following that logical line, who exactly is best suited to handle unicorns? Most people know them as gentle beasts, good aligned yada yada, but vicious as hell in the right circumstances. The unicorns we deal with here on Sunny Farms are these classic types that can only approach virgin girls, fleeing or berserking and otherwise spoiling the meat if anyone else touches them.
DAMNED
[INCOHERENT GIBBERING AND THE SHRIEKING OF RATS]
CRAB
Look, I know what you may be thinking, but DAN really did his work here to handle this topic with as much respect and care as he can for the players and game runners who are averse to the conceptual consequences of where this sort of set up can go. The third page of the book- before even the table of contents- contains a Safety warning about the kinds of topics being covered and instructions for how to run things while respecting everyone's boundaries.
DAMNED
[COYOTES YIPPING]
CRAB
Yeah I know some of you are big strong burly nerdskulls who scoff at these sorts of things but chill out and pay attention here. This is an example of a wizard performing a class act. Check out the preview on the drivethrurpg page, you'll get the whole first fourteen pages including the details of the content warnings.
There. If anything listed isn't your cup of tea then feel free to walk away and go on with your day. For the rest of you, let's dig in.
A crackling boom is heard followed by a long high pitched wail somewhere further in the dungeon. From underneath the tail, A soiled plush Unicorn with a limp neck crawls from underneath the table and slides up one of the legs like a slug, planting itself on one of the empty dishes.
NOODLE
Organic is our guarantee!
CRAB
No, it really is not. This here cuddly symbol of corporate oppression is NOODLE. He's the mascot of the farms and should be slathered liberally around all the environments that you can. More on him later.
So, the farms. All this unicorn murder has gone downhill and corrupted the area around the farms, called the Backwoods, and now all the adults on the farms have wandered off into the swamps, leaving the various press ganged and kidnapped young girls who worked the machinery to survive on their own. We pick up about 8 months after the adults left.
None of the kids can escape the farm because of a big magic fence that surrounds the area kills you if you leave because of a chip in your head. Of course, you could play as an adult coming to search for a missing kid, but honestly I think you would be missing out if you don't embrace the setting and run as a band of carvergirls.
Sunny Smiles has devolved into a tribal system of multiple factions of carvergirls at this point who have really gone full cargo cult and developed a culture all around unicorns. The hunting and processing of them, that is. As such there is plenty of cargo cult slang to sprinkle around that gels so perfectly with the setting. Anyways, there's tasty set of tables to roll up your carvergirls and then we're off to the races.
The plush unicorn slumps over. Its skin bulges as something inside it moves around.
NOODLE
If your parents loved you then why haven't they come to save you?
DAMNED
[DOGS, WHINING]
CRAB
Isn't he just a peach? He's one of the many just super flavorful magical items scattered around the book to find. There is plenty of mystery to solve around the farms with about 10 locations and two dungeons. No matter which of the three factions vying for power you end up helping out though (if any), you will eventually need to go out onto a swampcrawl and hunt a unicorn.
Swampcrawling is a great little mechanic to simulate your expedition out into the swamps hunting unicorns. See, everyone needs the bits and pieces of unicorns and its sort of one of the best currencies to be found, and now you have to go find and murder one in the swamps to make any headway. The swampcrawl is done by way of drawing cards out of a deck and dealing with their results in order, sometimes running into the various mutant denizens of the swamp, finding caches of supplies, and hopefully ending in finding a unicorn. There are ten different types of unicorns (they come in horse breeds and I just think that's neat) and once you've managed to murder one you need to butcher it for parts. There's a table for how much you can get from a unicorn and even a little crafting system for building and upgrading unicorn bone weapons and armor a la Kingdom Death or Monster Hunter.
This NOODLE plush here is one of the many things you can find while swampcrawling and he whispers secrets and little corporate nonsense at you when held, serving as a way to deliver some information to players when stuck. Like I said before, used correctly this adorable little shitstain can be a great tool to add that banal factory cruelty vibe to any location.
NOODLE
Your tarnished hands could never hope to touch a god.
A side door at the back of the hall is thrown open and a fat bloody crow crashes through, squawking profanities at the froglike creature chasing it with a net. The pair eventually clamor through the opposite door, slamming it shut behind them, leaving the room silent but for the moaning DAMNED.
CRAB
Moving on then. There's a spooky factory dungeon where the unicorns used to be process and is now the home of a crazed Beast that stalks you like the Alien Isolation Aliens and it's a really nice chef's kiss of a touch when you pair it with the environments and the various "signs of the Beast" you can use to flag the creature's presence.The second dungeon is the cave systems and I'm not spoiling any of that. The descriptions of the rooms are all quick and detail oriented, letting the game runner get the important bits zapped into memory quickly and without extraneous fluffery- granting you the tools to make those quick details into wretched painting.
There are 10 NPC carvergirls detailed who all have their own agendas and quirks and highly flavored portraits. Each one has their own relations to other carvers and factions as well and are all succinctly described. Overall the feeling much of this gives is a Bloodborne-y swamp with farm itself being a Southern Lord of the Flies summer camp gone horribly, horribly wrong. Nothing in here is explicitly Southern per se, but a factory in the swamps that industrially farms and processes unicorns feels like something you would see in a low-magic 19th century Florida or Georgia.
DAMNED
[CONGRESS OF BOREDOM AND DISCONTENT]
CRAB
Fine yeah let's wrap it up. This module is good. It tastes like a soft-shelled crab roasted over a campfire and then fried in butter that you bite into and savor as gushing blood runs down your face. Everything from the setting to the artwork I've already praised to even the simple, readable layout (also by DAN) flows together and presents a clean product with just the right amount of seasonings. There's intrigue and mystery and plot stuff that is also well paced and revealed for those who want to go hunting for it, but you can read that yourself. Go buy Unicorn Meat there or here. It's $12 and is driving me slowly insane.
Come on, this is DAN's first work and it's so good! How did he cook this delicious dish up? What other secrets is he hiding in his orb? Go play it! And then after that let's all start porting some basic D&D monsters into this scrumptious 19th century hellscape and see what other mundane cruelties twisted into eldritch horrors the players must overcome.
And get me more NOODLE! he should be all over the place! Give that plush to a character as a starting item and make it FOLLOW the party! It's free license for snark and puns and grim commentary from you as a game runner and he needs to be omnipresent! My sole gripe is that I can ctrl+f and only find six instances of NOODLE and maybe two drawings of him. Criminal.
CRAB continues frothing at the mouth for several minutes before settling and tying on an ornate bib and sharpening a knife. He then pulls the lever again and the DAMNED shriek and strain against their chained enclosure as they are lifted into an unseen chamber once more and sealed away. CRAB looks into the camera and cuts a chunk of the slab of meat off and then stabs it with a fork. Vibrant red juices run down the fork.
CRAB
So why farm unicorns anyways?
It's the taste.
Unspeakably disgusting to the innocent and yet addictive and decadent to the cruel.
What's it taste like to you?
The camera pans back slowly to a corner in the banquet hall and out down a corridor through the open door. Dozens of frog-like creatures pile into the hall from the corridor and the sounds of cutlery against porcelain can be heard.
END TITLES
"Moon Hooch - Number 9" begins to play.
Shot continues to pull down a straight dimly lit corridor. The NOODLE plush walks down the center of the corridor, following the camera as it continues retreating down the the hallway, flashes of light from off camera sources reveal a twisting slumped unicorn in NOODLE's shadow.
When Number 9 ends the corridor goes dark. A distant whinnying can be heard.
 |
| Rowan A. (Mon) |
FADE OUT
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