Whisper & Venom (Old-School Essentials)

Whisper & Venom is a setting and adventure located in the Whisper Vale, an isolated community of insular villagers beset by an outside supernatural force and hardships of their own making. Whisper & Venom is an epic adventure designed to be deadly for parties of 4–8 Old-School Essentials characters of levels 3–5 (henchmen available, but not included) and useful to players, gamemasters, and referees.

There are, by design, sparse details of places, pantheons, and faraway specifics, which allow it to exist in your campaign world. The prominence of magic and healing is also ambiguous, making it an addition to and not an anomaly in your campaign.

The Whisper Vale setting contains three settlements that exist despite their very different residents. They are:

• Whisper is a hard-working, low-nonsense village of farmers and tradespeople. It consists of humble farmsteads, a busy inn, an empty temple, and a smattering of small shops. Talk in the Tavern revolves around weather, harvests, and (most importantly) the quality of ale. Arguments in the town had been rare and usually drunken; brawls rarer still and always drunken.
  
• Swindle, a once idyllic town across the bridge from Whisper, was abandoned in a catastrophe and settled, in a second catastrophe, by a band of lazy goblin bandits. Now, it is charitably described as a scruffy, ill-mannered, and comically dishonest place filled with "merchants" and "craftsmen.”
  
• Cleft is a dwarven settlement where the younger generation ceased working thanks to an ingenious machine that simulates the sounds of production.

There are also five areas for adventuring, starting with a peaceful monastery and ending … somewhere nasty.

There is a creepy area FULL of undead, a noisome goblins’ lair, and caverns that, very possibly, are a shortcut to the afterlife.

Whisper & Venom details a far glacial valley at the fringes of society. This remote valley is depicted in a glorious poster-sized map created by Alyssa Faden. The map intentionally shows many unexplored places for further adventure.

All the action takes place across 10 Adventure Maps containing ruins, caverns, and much worse.

The setting includes many new creatures, unusual magic items, and shifty NPCs to bedevil and enchant your players during their time in the Vale.