Mongoose Runequest 1e - Hawkmoon the Roleplaying Game.pdf - Mongoose Runequest 1e - Hawkmoon - Matrinicz

Credits

Contents

Author

Gareth Hanrahan

Interior Illustrations

Leonardo Borazio, Ryan Horvath,

Iordanis Lazaridis, Javier Charro

Martinez, Regis Moulun, Chris

Quilliams & Chad Sergesketter

Credits & Contents

Introduction

Editor

Richard Ford

Character Creation

Gazetteer

Cover Art

Martin Hanford

Playtesters

Sean Brown, Tina Cook, Cindy

Freeman, Craige Freeman, Mark

Gedak, Tammy Gedak, Brian

Gellineault, Kent Little, Paul

Palmer & Robert Poulin

Skills

Equipment

Combat

Cover Design

Iordanis Lazaridis

Adventuring

Science & Sorcery

105

Proofreading

Ron Bedison

Production Director

Alexander Fennell

Tragic Europe

The Deeds of Hawkmoon 150

Index

124

RuneQuest Logo

Anne Stokes

Special Thanks

Michael Moorcock

159

Publications Manager

Ian Belcher

Character Sheet

162

Map

164

means without the written permission of the publisher is expressly forbidden. All art and text herein are copyrighted by

Mongoose Publishing. All signiﬁ cant characters, names, places and items featured in Hawkmoon the Roleplating Game the

distinctive likenesses thereof and related elements are trademarks of Michael Moorcock and Multiverse Inc.

This game product contains no Open Game Content. No portion of this work may be reproduced in any form without written

permission. To learn more about the Open Game License, please go to www.mongoosepublishing.com.

This material is protected under the copyright laws of the United Kingdom. This product is a work of ﬁ ction. Any similarity

to actual people, organisations, places or events is purely coincidental.

Denizens of

Introduction

INTRODUCTION

This book is a portal.

salute their beloved Count as he passes. Off to one side,

a solitary watchtower rises like a spectre from the gloom,

and strange lights blaze in its topmost chambers. The

Count rides on, making for the little hill overlooking the

town, where stands that ancient, ramshackle yet homely

keep that now bears the name of Castle Brass.

Step through it now, and be carried by the howling

winds of the timestream though the inﬁ nite corridors of

the Multiverse, into the far future, perhaps into another

aspect of your being…

…and ﬁ nd yourself in a wild land, an untamed land.

Marshes and forests surround you on every side and you

can smell salt air when the wind blows from the south.

Surprised by your sudden presence, three raucous scarlet

ﬂ amingos take to the air, ﬂ apping in a panic into the

varicoloured sky. Through a gap in the rampant greenery,

you can see a narrow path atop an earthen bank winding

through the marshes.

Bodiless, you rise up; high over the Kamarg so that the

lights of Castle Brass dwindle to mere candles far below

you. All the marshland of the Kamarg is spread out beneath

like the most detailed map imaginable. The borders of the

domain are marked by a ring of watchtowers, built by the

Count to defend his adopted home from all threats. Just to

the south, the marshes of the Kamarg run into the Middle

Sea. To your right, in the distance, the lights of ﬁ shing

boats make for their home ports along the coast near

Marshais. Off to your left lies the Espanyian peninsula,

one of the few united kingdoms in all of Europe. Across

the Middle Sea, the savage continent of Afric holds

secrets immemorial, but your attention is drawn to the

north, to the courts of Europe.

Something unwholesome moves through the marsh,

sending a wash of brackish water surging against your

thighs. From below, a slimy, glutinous voice globbers

and whispers dire threats and promises. You glimpse

strangely human eyes peering at you from the mud.

Terror seizes your heart as you realise that it must be one

of the fabled baragoons, monsters that were once human,

but transformed by blackest sorcery into horrors that now

haunt the marshes of the Kamarg.

Your mind ﬂ ies against the course of the mistral, the

life-wind, arcing around the tainted Switzer mountains,

until all of northern Europe is within your sight. Long

divided by war and intrigue, a hundred city-states vie

for dominance, playing their neighbours off against

each other in games of territory and status. The territory

between the baronies and dukedoms has become wild

lands, worse than the Kamarg, ﬁ lled with hideous mutants

and desperate bandits. The common folk eke out a living

from the cursed earth, while armies clash in a thousand

tiny skirmishes. The battles of this era are fought with

sword and bow and cannon, but also with ﬂ ame-lance

and ﬂ esh-warping sorcery. The endless wars and foul

magics of the Tragic Millennium almost destroyed

Europe; indeed, they almost destroyed the whole world.

Technology was forgotten; once-great nations collapsed

into warring states; cities were depopulated, others cursed

by mutation or plague or sorcery.

The monster slithers closer to you, its movements washing

the caked mud from its razor-sharp talons. It coils to

lunge at you – then stops, cocks its head for a moment,

and vanishes back into the darkness. A moment later, you

hear the noise that drove the monster back into its watery

den: the sound of hoofbeats thundering along the path.

You turn, and catch a glimpse of a rider all armoured in

bronze (but why, then, did it look like jet and gold for an

instant), and realise that it must have been Count Brass

himself, the great Lord Guardian of the whole Kamarg.

Follow him now, in your mind’s eye: he rides one of the

horned horses of the Kamarg, but even that mighty steed

labours beneath the weight of the Count’s Herculean

frame and his armour of bronze. Still, they have little

further to ride, for ahead the path rises onto more solid

ground. As twilight encroaches on the Kamarg, the

pair ride through the strangely lush belt of farmland

surrounding the town of Aigues-Mortes, and peasants

Night falls fully across Europe, and in the darkness,

you can clearly see a line of ﬁ res, of cities burning. This

line forms an arc stretching from the Low Countries to

Bordeaux, marking the furthest advance of the armies of

Introduction

the Dark Empire of Granbretan. As you drift north (or do

the ﬁ res move closer to you?), your attention is drawn to

one particular battle. You fall towards Germania, towards

its western borders, to the city of Köln, where cobbled

lanes and quaint buildings are now choked by ash and

rubble. The beast-masked forces of the Dark Empire

swarm through the province; rape, pillage and arson are

the least of their crimes. The yellow fences are torn down

to make gallows, children are cruciﬁ ed along the roads,

men are butchered for their meat, and women are herded

into cattle-cars to be shipped back to Granbretan for the

breeding pits of the Dark Empire’s science-sorcerers.

The armies of Granbretan are unstoppable, their lust for

conquest unquenchable, their madness all-consuming.

The ﬂ ames of a Europe put to the torch are reﬂ ected in

the jewelled eye-sockets of their bestial masks. The son

of the late Duke of Köln leads the last of his guards in

a desperate counter-attack against the beasts, but a few

loyal men with swords, no matter how brave, cannot

prevail against ﬂ ame-lances and ornithopters. Still, you

mark the young noble’s hollow face well, and hear him as

he shouts his family’s name as a battlecry – ‘Hawkmoon!

Hawkmoon!’

Your dreamlike passage over Europe pulls you ever north

and west, back along the path of conquest blazed by the

Dark Empire. The roads are marked by gallows, gibbets

and cruciﬁ xes, the cities by ashen wastes, but once you

pass beyond the current war-zone, the fearsome ingenuity

of Granbretan becomes manifest. The north-west region,

around Normandia and Karlye has become the garden of

the Dark Empire. Slaves and serfs toil by night in ﬁ elds lit

by electric arc-lights and fertilised by strange chemicals

spat by brass machines. The land groans in torment as it

yields a hundred times its normal fare, and even that is

barely enough to supply the vast armies that make war

on the continent. Ahead, the last rays of the setting sun

glitter for an instant off the vast Silver Bridge that links

Europe to the Sceptre’d Isle.

You ﬂ y over the bridge, an immaterial shadow whose

movement goes unmarked even by the keen eyes of the

ornithopter patrols that ﬂ utter ceaselessly around this

mighty artery of conquest. It is night, but still the armies

march east across the bridge, legion after legion of

masked troops. Hound follows Wolf, then Vulture, then

Rat and Badger and Owl and Hawk and Tiger and Boar

Introduction

and a hundred other beasts, all with the same inhuman

cruelty in their hearts. The folk of Granbretan are mad,

and love nothing. They have become jaded, and now ﬁ nd

amusement only in torture and conquest. Your ﬂ ight takes

you into the very heart of their black dominion, deep into

the city of Londra.

atop an artiﬁ cial island), and the secrets of magic were

discovered (but in this fallen, forgetful age, who can tell

what is lost science, and what is occult sorcery – or is there

a difference between spell and formula, between talisman

and technology?), but the greed and fear of humanity

was unchanged despite our new wondrous powers. War

spread like plague, and then plague became the chosen

weapon of war. Billions died, or were transformed. The

skies rained death, ﬁ re and poison; machines spat sorcery

that ate away at the very foundations of reality. Time and

space were twisted; monsters were bred, and the world-

that-was died in a thousand years of carnage and chaos.

And what a city it is! An ant-hill mated with a tomb mated

with a factory, a warren of streets and towers and keeps

and foundries, layer upon layer of nightmare granite and

gargoyled concrete, home to uncounted millions who

labour ceaselessly in the service of the masked nobles.

The skies over Londra are always thick with smoke and

other, fouler vapours that rise from the laboratories and

chemical factories of the Order of the Snake. The once-

fair River Tayme is now choked with pollution and foul

slicks of unknown poisons, but still it is perforce thronged

with barges and cargo ships and pleasure-craft. Londra

never sleeps, never ceases to beat like some monstrous,

bloated and blackened heart, pumping out war machines

and legions and sorcery and pure hatred for all that

lives. Atop this awful putrescent yet inﬁ nitely imposing

mountain of ﬁ lth and stone is the great palace of the

immortal king-emperor, who has ruled Granbretan from

his throne-globe for dozens of generations. As you ﬂ y

over the palace, you feel Huon’s attention ﬁ x on you for

an instant; he knows you, sees through you, categorises

you and dismisses you as insigniﬁ cant. You are no threat

to his eternal empire.

You catch the sunset on the coast of Amarekh. A city of

golden towers and spires rises from the mists ahead of

you. After the horrors of Londra, this new city seems like

some beautiful dream. The spires pulse gently, and the

wind blowing through the streets makes an eerie music.

Warm light spills out over the storm-tossed ocean as you

approach the city. It is a vision of heaven, an abode ﬁ t for

gods, not men.

Something tells you the city is named Dnark (another

part of you calls it by another name, and whispers that

this is but an aspect of Tanelorn, just as you are an aspect

of another being). A deep desire to live in Dnark wells

up in you, to remain here in this golden sunset city

forever, even if you are but a bodiless phantom, a ﬂ oating

perspective and nothing more. But this succour is denied

you. You rise up, up, climbing towards the clouds that are

pierced by the highest of the towers.

The speed of your ﬂ ight increases. In an instant, you leap

across Granbretan’s factory belt, then over the trackless

hills of Yel, the west country. The Eirish sea and Eire itself

pass by in an eyeblink, and you chase the sunset over the

western ocean. Keep to this course, and perhaps you will

ﬁ nd yourself in fabled Amarekh, which the sages tell us

was untouched by the Tragic Millennium, and shut itself

off from the rest of the world. The men are as gods there,

they say.

Then you are in the presence of the Runestaff, which

hangs in the clouds – or in an airy hall – or in the dreams

of men – over the city. It is a simple thing, a shaft of rune-

graved metal topped with a ruby gemstone, but power

and light and time and destiny orbit around it. Strange

symbols and rays dance around the Runestaff. Its origins

are a mystery. Some claim it was made in the Tragic

Millennium, others whisper that it was the greatest work

of the scientists and sorcerers of Earth’s golden age.

Others claim it was brought back from the stars by the

ships that once travelled the heavens. Some tales suggest

that it was not made, but discovered, that it is as much a

part of the universe as the sun and the moon… or that it is

even more fundamental, as necessary as gravity and time,

as law and chaos.

Perhaps you will even travel further, until east meets

west and your bodiless form hangs in the skies over

Asiacommunista, the ultimate unknown land where the

strangest creatures of all are believed to dwell. The world

has changed utterly from what it was. Science waxed

great and glorious indeed (for an instant, you see below

you a mighty city ﬂ oating in the middle of the ocean

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