Example Assignment

Content Warning: Body Horror

We recommend that GMs read through the entire assignment before running it for players.

Roll20 Note: This assignment is also provided as an addon which can be claimed for free here! It is advised that players avoid reading this page.

Premise

At the Newfaire World Exhibition, a woman models a stunning dress made of a color the world has never seen. During the presentation, she collapses into a pile of glowing bones and viscera. Candela Obscura comes to investigate what happened to her.

What is actually going on here?

The Radiance Corporation is prepared to take the world by storm with its stunning new export: Undark, a pigment they can incorporate into any material. It is a shade of green not yet encountered and has a glow no one can explain. The secret behind the substance: in the corporation’s mines along Bitter River, they’ve captured a primordial creature and are harvesting its venom. Is EONS involved?

Threats

• Enforcers (Body): The patrol of the Radiance Corporation, hired to keep the townsfolk in line.
• Cave Wraiths (Brain): The pitch-black creatures that stalk the mines. They feed on the fear of those who venture underground.
• Contamination (Bleed): Everything Undark touches is toxic. Every item, place, and person can cause harm.

NPCs

• Cecil Wallace (he/him): The managing director of the Radiance Corporation factory in Mordant Springs. Workers fear his attention.
• Olu Adjei (they/them): An employee running an underground hospital for others affected by Undark.
• Kiko Nakamura (she/her): Mordant Springs shopkeeper and wife of Yael (she/her), an Undark mine worker succumbing to the venom’s horrific effects.
• Booker Davis (he/they): Booker is a reporter investigating the Radiance Corporation, and keeps his secrets close to his chest.

Themes: Exploitative capitalism, community versus corruption, destruction of nature, danger beneath the facade, industrialism.

Atmosphere: Massive machinery, electric lights, inventors and capitalists, crowds from around the world, innovation, an eerie green glow, incredible poverty, deformed bodies, otherworldly screams.

Adversary: The Radiance Corporation is an exploitative company. They’re painfully extracting venom from a primordial creature and hiring workers in the Bridleborne Mountains for criminally low wages. They have ties to EONS and prioritize their bottom line over human life.

-Radiance is still in business. They have a factory in the Steel.

History

There is a very real and horrific history behind this assignment. The material known as Undark is based on a real-world paint of the same name, manufactured using radioactive radium. It was produced by the Radium Luminous Material Corporation (later known as the US Radium Corporation) between 1917–1938. Its use resulted in the radiation poisoning of numerous factory workers, some of whom later became known as the “Radium Girls.” These women faced debilitating illness, injuries, and death, all while speaking out and seeking justice for their abuse at the hands of their employers.

The use of Undark within Newfaire also mirrors the real-world history of Scheele’s Green, a bright green pigment that contained large amounts of highly toxic copper arsenite. When Carl Wilhelm Scheele invented it in 1775, he was aware of its dangers. But the pigment was beautiful and, more importantly, it was cheap to manufacture. Both workers and consumers of products dyed with this vibrant green faced the horrors of arsenic poisoning until the 1860s.

Worker exploitation during the turn of the century could be particularly graphic—one famous poisoning via Scheele’s Green resulted in a widely publicized autopsy that described a young woman whose eyes had turned green. The Radium Girls’ bones were known to glow in the dark. These terrible, almost otherworldly tortures are a graphic representation of workplace abuse.

Today, this abuse still occurs in factories, farms, and firms all over the world. Like the books and films of the horror genre, TTRPGs can be a safe place to explore terrifying realities through fiction. When running this assignment, remember that the horror is born of the perpetrator, not the victims.

Hook

Each mystery in Candela Obscura begins with the hook—the starting section of the adventure where the characters are not yet a part of the action. It usually works best to frame this introduction like the start of a television show or movie; we are getting a preview of the events that occur before our protagonists get involved. In-world, this intro represents the briefing the players have received from Candela Obscura before they are called onto the scene.

Read this section to the players as the hook for this adventure:

A riot of sound radiates from the Newfaire World Exhibition. Where once these city streets were filled with the screaming of civilians, there is now the laughter of children. The echoing of gunfire has been replaced with the “pop,” “pop,” “pop” of roasting caramel corn. The explosions of enemy bombs are now the crackling of electrified inventions.

Even three years after the war, it feels almost incongruous to hear the wild noise of happiness. You carry with you, as all Halen citizens do, the weight of the Last Great War on this memorial day. In celebration of the military implementation of electricity—the incredible power that forced Otherwhere to withdraw from the region—Newfaire hosts an “Exhibition of Advancement” every year.

Today, the District of Briar Green is a new world. Transformed by colorful flags, each street is lined with the stalls of a pop-up market, and children scurry among the crowds dressed in their finest. On display, there’s row after row of inventions, the likes of which you’ve never seen.

“Come see the Electromagnet Elevator!”

“Use Radar technology to find your missing sheep, madam!”

“Tired of buttoning your shirt for work every day, sir? Try the Amazing Zipper and get your morning back!”

Best of all, the entire district smells of cotton candy and caramel corn.

When we finally make it through the cacophony into Briarbank College and its exhibition hall, the world seems to forget the rules by which it operates. Here the bright sun is dimmed by a dust-filled darkness, and the outside noise is compacted into a weighty hush. The hall is filled with the whispering of industrial giants exchanging vast sums of money. The inventions in these rooms are titanic—the very air smolders with a static buzz.

Electric screams silence the speakers with a regular staccato, sending the bravest eyes looking up to the lightning that dances across the ceiling.

We wander in silence through the gallery, listening to the daring inventors, perched on bespoke stages, evangelizing their work.

“If you’ll stand over here, sir… There now, don’t be afraid! The X-Ray Machine will only show us your bones, nothing more! But you’ll have to hand me the items in your pockets sir… Thank you. I’ve always wanted a gold watch!”

There are flyers throughout the hall of a bright, almost iridescent green. In the dim light, the pages seem to glow, and in the electric flashes they nearly sparkle. We follow them, like a trail of breadcrumbs, to a massive crowd. High on the stage before us stands a beautiful woman, Vera Montgomery, swirling in a glowing green dress. She is a beam of light incarnate as she parades before a massive sign, a word painted in the same eerie, green hue: Undark.

Over the gasps from the crowd, we cannot hear the voice of the man who stands with her, but it’s clear that he’s highlighting the features of the pigment. He gestures around the room as if to say: “You need no light but the one we provide. In our Undark, you are the light.”

The crowd erupts in cheers, pulling the attention of the entire hall. In this cacophony, it takes a moment to hear the model’s screams. But her cries grow louder and more piercing over the enthusiasm of onlookers and the crash of electricity. All at once, a hush blankets the hall. Gaping red sores open across the woman’s skin, crawling from beneath the Undark dress in deep fissures of pain.

The model stops screaming, holding her hand up before the crowd. Within her hand, her bones glow green—the terrible mirroring of the x-rays on display only a few feet away. As we watch, the bones within each finger fall, disconnected, towards her wrist until her flesh hangs like a glove. The cascade of disconnecting bone runs down her arm, then her spine, then her legs, until what once was a beautiful woman is a pooling mass of writhing flesh.

In the end, there is nothing but a pile of red viscera and the most beautiful green dress the world has ever seen. Looming above the body like a promise, a glowing sign reads: Undark.

Arrival

In the Arrival phase, you will introduce your players to the start of the mystery by allowing them to explore the aftermath of the hook. In this phase, the circle’s Lightkeeper comes to give them additional information, NPCs can offer players their knowledge or perspective, and the physical scene itself should present strong clues to point the team in the right direction. One piece of critical information, known as the reveal, is the most important clue to convey to the players—no matter what approach they take. This information will propel them into the next portion of their investigation.

Read this section to the players:

You’re called in by Candela Obscura to investigate the mysterious death of Vera Montgomery, the famous model hired to exhibit clothing dyed with the glowing green pigment known as Undark. This pigment was one of the Newfaire World Exhibition’s most anticipated inventions, and your circle’s Lightkeeper was shocked to learn that both the dress and her remains radiated an incredible amount of bleed.

You begin in the exhibition hall of Briarbank College surrounded by a crime scene and the remnants of demonstrations not yet fully removed.

There is a lot to explore within the exhibition hall. However, before your players go off on their investigation, use the Lightkeeper as a way to introduce them to the case. This NPC can provide an opportunity for exposition and additional information (an excellent way to speed things up during a short session), or to recap anything that may have occurred in the previous session. Also, feel free to utilize the Lightkeeper as a way to tackle character elements the players at your table might wish to explore. A Lightkeeper is an NPC that should stay with your players throughout a campaign (barring a particularly dramatic turn of events), and they can act as a foil to a PC when you need to highlight their history, specific characteristics, a scar, etc.

ON AGENCY IN HORROR

While there are moments where this game may elicit fear and unease, ultimately it is meant to be enjoyed. Remember that the goal is not to traumatize players, but to provide a safe and controlled environment in which to explore darker themes and narratives. Work to create a sense of anticipation and excitement, while also allowing players to feel a sense of agency in the face of danger.

When your players are ready to explore the exhibition hall, their options are varied. Remember: you only have one piece of information you must convey.

Reveal: The dress was shipped and opened today. The shipping crate is still “backstage in the green room” —a repurposed classroom set up for presenters to prepare. It is not far from the exhibition hall.

There are numerous avenues by which you could convey this information. Some examples include:

Your players might take their time exploring the hall before they speak to any NPCs or investigate the crime scene. They could feel cautious going towards the Undark exhibition and first explore the booths of other exhibitors who are packing up their inventions. When looking through the various commercial and technological developments, allow them to discover the crates NPCs are packing with their inventions. You can seed the next reveal by noting that each wooden box has postage, or a label that says where it came from or where it’s going. For this reveal, make it clear to the circle that each package is carried into the green room.

On the other hand, you may have players who are eager to talk to the NPCs that populate the exhibition hall. They could speak to the inventors, citizens who witnessed the woman’s death, a student from Briarbank College who assisted in setting up for Exhibition Day, and more. Any person they speak to can have information about the box for the Undark dress that’s still sitting backstage. Different NPCs will have different thoughts and feelings about what occurred, as well as a reaction to the circle members asking questions. Emotions such as suspicion, fear, eagerness, resentment, and envy all make exposition more engaging for you and the circle.

Lastly, your players may proceed directly to the crime scene. If they do, they should find the corpse and the dress. This is a good opportunity to raise the stakes by doling out Bleed marks, or even Brain marks, to a player who interacts with Vera’s remains. If you want to introduce some elements of outside danger, they could run into the OUP agents who arrived on the scene to destroy the evidence and dispose of the body. Or the corpse, infested with bleed, could reform into a frightening adversary. You should almost certainly put an NPC here who knows enough about the event to point the circle in the direction of “Ms. Montgomery’s dressing room.” You could use the event coordinator, Ms. Montgomery’s personal assistant, or even her lover—whatever feels like the most interesting relationship to explore.

-You might want to remind them to use a bleed containment vial!

Exploration I

In the Exploration phase, you’ll show the players that they’re on the right track with their investigation as they follow the first reveal to somewhere new. Usually, this location will offer more danger and have evidence that points towards the bigger mystery at hand. The Exploration phase opens up the scope of the mystery, but also (like every subsequent phase) provides a strong indication of where the players should go next.

Reveal: On the box that held the dress there is a shipping label for the Radiance Corporation in Mordant Springs, Bridleborne.

Now that you’re in the classroom that Briarbank College was using as Ms. Montgomery’s green room, the reveal for this scene is fairly simple. Allow your investigators to examine the shipping box for the Undark dress. The inside is permeated with bleed, and there are spatters of the luminous green dye on every wall of the crate. Depending on what tactic the players use to look through the box, they may receive Bleed marks from the virulent pigment. The shipping label from Mordant Springs is easy enough to find, and you should reward your players for their investigation. Try to resist complicating the discovery by withholding too much information, and never force players to roll for something their character could easily accomplish.

If your party doesn’t head to the green room, there are other ways to reveal that the Undark dress was delivered from Mordant Springs. The event coordinator has a shipping manifest, players could question the man who hosted the Undark presentation until he reveals that he works for the Radiance Corporation in Mordant Springs, or another inventor knows about the company and its location in the Bridleborne Mountains.

Once the circle discovers the location, you should expedite travel. To accomplish this, you can pick up at the next scene just before the train pulls into the last stop. Your players can walk out of the train car onto a street where a sign reads “Welcome to Mordant Springs.” Unless an extended period of travel or preparation helps you and your party explore a personal storyline, you should consider using flashbacks into a character’s history to accomplish, more dramatically, what appeals to players about roleplaying during travel.

-I know you referred Mordant Springs to the council for lighthouse consideration, did they ever get back to you? 

Exploration II

Now that your players are in the second Exploration phase, they should know enough about the actual mystery to pursue it directly. The reveal from the last Exploration phase will have set them off towards an answer, but also towards greater danger. Here, the tension starts to ramp up as they begin to explore the larger mystery at hand—and are reminded of the stakes if they don’t succeed.

Read this section to the players:

Deep in the Bridleborne Mountains, as far as the rail will take you, lies the town of Mordant Springs. A massive factory looms along the Bitter River, and the sounds of explosives shake nearby cliffs. This is a company town: a place where the Radiance Corporation pays the workers in a currency that they can only spend at the company store. The settlers who lived on this land sold mineral rights to the corporation and are now working to afford the opportunity to continue living on their own small farms, in their family homes. The people here are hard of head and hand, but soft of heart for members of their community.

Reveal: Undark transforms people who encounter it, most commonly by making all their bones brittle and breakable, and then reshaping them back into uncanny forms within their flesh. The victims of this contamination are known to behave violently and attack anyone who comes near.

When your players land in Mordant Springs, you have the chance to introduce a number of places for them to explore. Some parties will want to investigate every nook and cranny, while others may head directly for the places that seem to house major plot points. In the latter case, the most likely place to plant your reveal would be in the Radiance Corporation’s factory, but that isn’t your only option.

If your players are taking their time exploring Mordant Springs and you feel the need to drop the reveal before they reach the factory, you may choose one of these options, or make up your own:

Within the General Store, players will meet shopkeeper Kiko Nakamura. She may open up to discuss her wife, Yael, who works in the Undark mine. At first, her spouse suffered only a mild illness. But as time passed, her body transformed. Kiko is desperate for a cure to stop the Undark from affecting her partner’s mind.

Your party can go speak to Yael Nakamura, who is sequestered in the upstairs bedroom. Delirious and transformed by the “Green Fever,” she might attack the circle.

Another option could take your PCs to the hot springs where they meet a local herbalist, “You don’t need my name.” She’s making an effort to heal the sickness of the Radiance Corporation employees. She’s seen, first-hand, the way the Green Fever progresses from illness, to green eyes, to glowing bones, to a full-body transformation. The woman explains that the mining and refining occurring at the factory is leaching Undark into the Bitter River and the surrounding land of Mordant Springs. She, and many other townsfolk, can reveal their own bones beginning to glow from Undark poisoning. You can use this NPC to give the circle a ward that can protect characters from taking a Bleed mark, or provide an item that could aid their investigation.

If your players enter the factory grounds, you have the opportunity to introduce them to the foreman, managers, or executives from the Radiance Corporation who are participating in the coverup of Undark’s poisonous nature. Cecil Wallace is the "smooth-talking" Managing Director that will go head to head with a Face character, for example, if the party has one. The stakes in this location are particularly high, and the circle will need the expertise of a variety of player roles to navigate the space without receiving harm.

No matter the location, allowing the investigators to speak to the workers themselves is a particularly good way to express the horror caused by the Radiance Corporation. Though the people of Mordant Springs are transforming into violent monsters, they are victims who deserve the player’s compassion. While the horror genre puts protagonists in tough positions—having to harm an attacking townsperson, for example—these are the elements of your story that can lead to the largest impact, both in the game and around the table.

Hidden somewhere in town is a secret hospital where Radiance Corporation workers are trying to care for one another using limited resources, all without losing the jobs they desperately need to survive. Olu Adjei, one such employee, will guide the circle to this location if he believes they can help his community.

Remember: no matter the route your players chose to take, you’ll want the stakes to feel one notch higher than the previous Exploration phase. This is a horror game—it should feel deadly. Do not underestimate the unsettling power of little details and small conflicts as your players progress through the story.

Escalation I

In the first Escalation phase, the story should introduce a twist of some kind—something here isn’t what it seems. This twist will push the players into further danger and get them headed towards the climax of the adventure. If things are not already scary, now is the time to start ramping up the tension. Put the players in real peril, show them the power of bleed, and remind them of the magickal forces they’re up against.

Reveal: The Undark mine isn’t a traditional mine. Rather than excavating the mountain for a mineral, the workers are extracting a glowing green liquid that the factory processes to make dye. (You must make sure your players make it to the Undark mine to set up the reveal in Escalation II.)

Wherever your players discover the reveal in Exploration II, they should know by now that they must interface with the Radiance Corporation. They can meet their capitalist foes in a variety of locations, but it’s time to face danger.

If you introduce the party to the community’s underground hospital for Radiance Corporation employees, Olu Adjei or another factory worker can provide information and point the players to an employee who works in the mines. If the circle travels to the miner’s house, they discover that he succumbed to Green Fever, and was recently killed in his home. The group comes upon a shadowy figure from the Radiance Corporation attempting to ransack the house. After escaping danger, or sneaking past, the circle finds a letter the miner was writing to his family back in Tottergrass. It reveals that they are “collecting a toxic green liquid from the mine.”

Another route might take your circle to the main street of Mordant Springs. The company town is crawling with Radiance Corporation staff—especially guards. As night begins to fall, your investigators find themselves out past curfew and facing the ire of local law enforcement. Though your players can escape this peril alone, offering them an NPC ally or locking them up in the local jail with someone who knows about the mine is a perfect way to drop the next reveal.

You could also provide the reveal using an NPC from out of town. They might encounter Booker Davis, a journalist from Newfaire who plans to blackmail the heads of the Radiance Corporation if he can uncover what they are hiding here. Davis has been in town for a long time, so the circle could join him for a pint at the local bar. Here, the group has the opportunity to peek into his journal and see notes about the mining operation. How does Davis react if he catches them?

If the players are reluctant to head into the dangers of the mine, you have options. You could have an NPC ask the circle for help by telling a personal story about how they’ve been harmed by the corporation. Alternatively, offer them backup—either in the form of a person or an item—that bolsters their odds. Telling players, outright, exactly where to go allows them to face evil and experience the horror, and catharsis, that comes from major conflict.

Escalation II

In the second Escalation phase, the players can use all of their new knowledge and tools to push directly towards the climax of the mystery. They might not know the truth yet, but this phase should take them exactly where they need to be for the final showdown of the adventure. Throughout the second Escalation phase, continue to raise the tension so that danger always feels imminent.

Read this section to the players:

You make your way towards the mineshaft, a large hole bored crudely into the side of the mountain. The passage within is held up by large wooden beams and illuminated by the flickering of oil lamps. The shadows of miners are projected around the jagged rock, their forms twisted and grotesque in the bending light.

Suddenly, a man in a full-body protective suit breaches the threshold of light within the cave, walking towards all of you. He has a rifle thrown over his shoulder and a breathing apparatus strapped around his head. In a moment, he will spot you, unless you act. What do you want to do?

Reveal: Distressed and otherworldly cries echo through the mine. They are unlike any sound previously known to human ears.

The circle might choose to attack the man and take his suit for protection, hide and wait for him to pass so they can enter the cave unnoticed, or do something completely unexpected—whatever their group decides, they should proceed straight into the heart of the mine. Remember that you can always introduce dangers from behind, should your circle attempt to turn around. Keep them moving through the cave, describing the way in which bleed has corrupted this place. Make it visceral, strange, and gruesome.

As they proceed, you’ll want to introduce a few dangers on this path as well. They could encounter regular humans—more suited figures with firearms. They could find Undark miners who have disintegrated beyond recognition and now lay melded into the walls and floors of the cave, hungry to devour anything that passes. Or they could stumble into cave wraiths that are hunting people underground. Decide what type of peril you want your group to face and develop threats that match the story you want to tell. When in doubt, don’t be afraid to use emotional flashbacks into characters’ backstories. This is a playable way to represent the mental strain and internal turmoil that occurs while moving through an investigation.

At some point in their journey, you’ll want to drop the reveal for this section: the inhuman cries of a large creature reverberating throughout the caves. Let them follow those cries to the center of the mining operation, transitioning into the climax of the story.

Climax

In the Climax phase, the drama of the story should reach a crescendo. This is the period of highest tension, where players can experience the most visceral moments of horror. Sometimes, there is a final reveal or twist—something that answers the dramatic question of the mystery in an unexpected or exciting way. Usually, this is the place with the most opportunity for action. During the climax players sprint for cover, fight the monster, take the artifact, etc. Think of this as the big ending sequence of an action movie. Don’t be afraid to introduce the dramatic consequences of failure.

Reveal: Within the mines, EONS has imprisoned the “Undark Beast,” but there appears to be a way to release it.

The circle finally finds the truth behind Undark: the pigment is actually venom extracted from the body of a massive creature that is chained up within the mine. If they look closely at the equipment used to extract the poisonous fluid, they will recognize the symbol for EONS. The workers are attaching tubing to the creature and monitoring its vitals, as well as running the manual pumps that are pulling the Undark from the beast’s body.

It is up to you to decide what this monster looks like in your adventure: what kinds of sounds, smells, or strange effects it creates, and how it is confined and controlled by the Radiance Corporation. The answers to these questions will shape the climax of your mystery and also help the players decide how they approach the situation. They may try to break the creature out or kill it, fight the corporation’s enforcers or bargain with them, blow up the mine, or something else entirely. Whatever they choose, support their narrative goals by responding appropriately within the fiction. Put your players in immediate danger, force them to make hard decisions, and continue to escalate the stakes of the scene right up until the end.

Remember: as the GM, you are not your party’s enemy hoping for their failure. You should present opposition so that players can successfully navigate the story they wish to tell. You should always tailor your adventure to the interests of the table. A player who wants to explore the theme of grief may enjoy engaging with tragedy, whereas a group of players that need an escape from stress might simply hope to eviscerate the bad guy. Very often a single dice roll can determine a player’s fate, but it’s your job as the GM to remember that the luck of the dice can’t force an outcome you never offer.

Great work Ezra. Keep your chin up.
xx, A. O'Neill

Epilogue

The purpose of the epilogue is to wrap up any loose ends, but also to set you up for success in future sessions of Candela Obscura. Like the hook, this is a peek into the world of the investigation when the player characters are no longer around. This is your opportunity to seed the details of your next adventure, or something that may appear again many sessions from now. Both the hook and the epilogue provide you with the opportunity to reveal a story element that you cannot depict if you only follow the actions of the players.

When crafting your epilogue, keep this in mind: the way that your players choose to interact with the Undark creature and other NPCs will tell you a lot about what they’re looking for in the resolution of this story.

Epilogue Questions

• Did they release the beast with the hope that it would escape, or with the goal of destroying the people who caged and harmed it?
• Did they keep the beast in chains and attempt to destroy, manipulate, or negotiate with the Radiance Corporation on their own?
• Did they bond with any NPCs, and if so, where are those characters now?
• Is the Radiance Corporation and capitalist exploitation a theme that resonates with the group? If so, how can you twist the ending into a cliffhanger that allows this organization to appear again?
• If your circle didn’t defeat the Radiance Corporation, how does this affect the group, and what becomes of the people of Mordant Springs?

Beyond This Guide

This text represents a small taste of the investigations yet to come for Candela Obscura. We encourage you to take anything you read here and make it your own. Adjust and expand on areas of this game in any way that fulfills the needs of your table. This world is now yours as much as it is ours, and we look forward to sharing more of it with you very soon.