The Road to Monsterberg: The Secret of the Golden Hills

Welcome to the 15th Century! The year is 1456 and you are now in the middle of the Duchy of Silesia: Three hundred miles of castles, fortified towns, and deep, spooky forests, drained by the waters of the mighty Oder river, and flanked by forboding mountains. This land of mystery and intrigue is a melting pot of three great cultures: German, Polish, and Czech, and the region is known both for the strife between its many feuding lords, and the great wealth of its many mines. It could be a land of riches, but this "rich land" is notorious for the robber knights, feuding city-states, desperate bandits, and bloodthirsty foreign raiders who threaten commerce, prosperity, and life itself.

The Duke of Opole is one of the few princes in the region with a genuine interest in restoring order and harmony. He needs to get to the bottom of many threatening mysteries, but doesn't know who is friend and who is foe. You and your compatriots arrived from another land, and have won the trust of the Duke. Now he wants you to investigate a perilous mystery in the southern reaches of his realm.

In the heavily forested foothills of the Sudetes mountains, along the troubled border with the Duke's most powerful neighbor, the heretic kingdom of Bohemia, a string of robberies, kidnappings and disappearances, threaten the land with war. There are  rumors of fantastic riches, as well as legends of eldritch mountain spirits... The whole region is a powder keg, and the Duke needs investigators to get to the bottom of the trouble before it gets out of hand. Are you intrepid enough, brave enough, and tough enough to learn the secrets of the Golden Hills?

The road to Monsterberg, Chapter 2 is a historically based adventure module,  designed for use with the Codex Martialis historical combat system. It is the second  of a three chapter series, but can be played as a stand-alone adventure. It comes with historical maps of the region, towns and castles, as well as detailed descriptions of towns, markets with equipment and prices, standardized and specific NPCs and both random and planned encounters. It is intended for 4-7 characters of levels 4-6, made for a low-magic, historical setting, with elements of occult horror thrown into the mix.

This is an immersive, fast paced, dynamic adventure, which your characters can really sink their teeth into. As tension and fear build, the Codex rules allow them to apply their most devious fighting tricks and strategies to defeat perilous enemies from the history books, and from the legends right out of the fairy tales of centuries past. If you are looking for a world that feels real enough to be dangerous, but is still remote enough for great adventures, The Road to Monsterberg is your gateway to a historical reality which is stranger than fiction.

This module is made for OGL, and is essentially version agnostic but is easily adaptable to Pathfinder, to 5e or to various OSR systems. It is designed to be Low Magic and mid-to low-level play, but is highly customizable, so that GMs and players can make it their own. Take a step to a realm just adjacent to the fantasy genres you know so well, but is full of surprising twists and turns that are fresh and interesting fodder for gripping gameplay.

This module works as both a sandbox, with resources sufficient for multiple adventures, and also as a structured wilderness campaign and short 'dungeon crawl'.