PLEASE NOTE: This is a pre-order campaign for an upcoming book which we plan to deliver no earlier than January 2026. Pre-orders are discounted compared to the final release price.

FRIENDS OF MELSONIA: If you are a member of the Friends of Melsonia you will be getting this book as part of your subscription, any purchase of this campaign will get you a second copy with the retail release cover design along with your Friends edition cover.

Witch-War to the Vale of Forbiddiction and Beyond

From Ezra Claverie (Slow Sleigh to Plankton Downs, Crypts of Indormancy, A True Relation of the Great Virginia Disastrum 1633) and Andrew Walter (Fronds of Benevolence, Stay Frosty, Troika), we bring you a new HUGE box-set of tropical island themed old-school D&D adventures and setting material from the same game setting as our first ever publication: Crypts of Indormancy. With years of development behind it, over 80,000 words, and more than 80 paintings, it'd give the old TSR settings a run for their money when it comes to pure HEFT. Prepare to enter the Vale of Forbiddiction AND BEYOND! 

If we meet our target of 1000 pre-orders in 30 days we will not only make a wicked-huge box-set we will ALSO re-print the long-unavailable Crypts of Indormancy and include it for free to all the supporters who help it happen. If we don't meet our target we're still making the book, it'll just not come with a whole new free hardback book!  

Witch-War to the Vale of Forbiddiction and Beyond comprises:

• A bestiary of over sixty new monsters
• A sourcebook for the tropical West Island setting
• Rules for NPC witches, witch-hunts, and criminal trials
• Three adventure scenarios, which you can play in sequence or separately: “Witch-War for Koa’s Promise”, “The Vale of Forbiddiction”, “To the Fastness of the Witch-Cult”

These will be compatible with old-school D&D and presented as a box set or a slipcase of three books, made to our usual high quality, and will be large: with over 80 pieces of art and 80,000 words, this is by far our largest project to date!

Adventure 1: Witch-War for Koa’s Promise

The remote highland village of Koa’s Promise has a witch-problem, possibly connected to a nearby ruin. This scenario offers occasions to use the rules for witch-hunts and criminal trials. Pursued witches may flee to the Vale of Forbiddiciton.  

Adventure 2: The Vale of Forbiddiction

An accursed valley holds the underground ruins of an Elven military base, home to competing factions of intelligent monsters. The village of Koa’s Promise may function as a base for the adventurers.   

Adventure 3: To the Fastness of the Witch-Cult

Clues and artifacts point the way over the mountains to a lost ruin in the jungle, where witches hide above a den of living dead and freaks of Elven warmongery. Because of the distance from Koa’s Promise, this scenario offers a different kind of base for the adventurers: Farmarket, an Elven trading post deep in the jungle.  

On Compatibility   

You can use this set with various editions of traditional sword-and-sorcery role-playing games. For conversion to the rule set of your choice, statistic blocks list armor types (e.g. “leather armor”) or equivalents (e.g. “as chain mail”), and they list both ascending Base Attack Bonus and descending THAC0. Saving Throws appear with three options: the 1970s five-save type, the 2000s three-save type, and a riff on the primordial one-save type. In this last method, the player rolls d20, adding character level and the relevant ability-score modifier, and a result of fifteen or better indicates success. For example, if text calls for a Saving Throw of “(Poison/Fortitude/CON),” then Black Leaf the Third-Level Navigator rolls an eleven, plus her level of three, plus her Constitution modifier of zero, for a total of fourteen, and Black Leaf fails the Save.  

On Difficulty 

Each of the three scenarios assumes a group of four to six low-level adventurers and their hirelings. Overall, the scenarios build in difficulty, but within each, danger does not build steadily. Player skill, guile, caution, and teamwork will therefore decide more outcomes than character power. Neither witches nor wild beasts want a fair fight, so most will attack only when they believe they have the advantage. Because one unlucky encounter might kill multiple adventurers, the Referee should encourage the adventurers to hire guides, guards, and porters. Not only do hirelings help with logistics, but they also serve as potential targets for enemies. And when adventurers in remote locations become crippled or worse, players can promote hirelings into player characters.  If a scenario seems underpowered, adjust upward the Hit Dice of select foes. If it seems over-powered, consider adjusting nothing, and let the players learn from experience: this fictional world does not treat the health of fortune-seekers as its goal. Watch player strategies change.  

Why Not Earth? 

The complexity of real history would get underfoot, and sadly, no real island has both shape-changing witches and anthropophagous land-owls.  

LORE!

The West Island measures more than a thousand kilometers across, and a semicircular cordillera of mountains dominates its landscape. Except in the interior rainforest, one can always see peaks; the highest, draped with glaciers, rise more than eight thousand meters.  The narrowness of the coastal lowlands led the Twelve Clans to master gardening on terraces. The ruggedness of highland terrain means that even the well-traveled have seen only a small fraction of the interior; a trip to a village within drumming distance may require half a day’s climb along switchbacks.  More than two thousand years ago, the ageless Elves came from overseas and incorporated the West Island into their Empire, but fourteen hundred years ago, the Islanders rebelled and forced them out. Now the Elves maintain a limited presence on the island, primarily as traders.  In a bay on the western coast sits Queensport, the island’s largest settlement. Founded by Elves during the colonial era, Queensport still houses offices of the Principal Trading Company, the joint-stock venture authorized by the Crown. Queensport’s walled and gated Metropolitan Quarter preserves much Elven architecture. Here dwell Elven traders, their families, and their Elven and Islander servants, as well as garrison of Elven soldiers, and even stables of horses—a wonder and a terror to most Islanders. Queensport also houses sites important to Islanders: shrines to all twelve of the Totem Spirits, and the headquarters of the Navigators’, Priests’, and Warriors’ Lodges. Up the sluggish River Two-Fish sprawls the stilt-house settlement known even by residents as Mosquitoville.