DEATH! FROST! DOOM! Zombie Apocalypse in Mystara

You’ve done it this time. You’ve run the infamous "Death, Frost, Doom" module for your Mystaran campaign. And the obvious thing happened, the players got the bad ending. Which means the end of your favorite setting. Or does it really? Or can it be salvaged yet? Let’s take a closer look.

The What Now?

For those unaware, "Death, Frost, Doom" is an adventure module for a low-level party, written for the B/X retroclone "Lamentations of the Flame Princess" by game’s creator, James Raggi IV. As such it is easy to adapt to B/X, BECMI or any other D&D-adjacent game, be it OSR or 5e. It is one of the most famous and infamous modules that in a way defines the controversial nature of its parent game. Depending on whom you ask it is either a genius horror module that is the cornerstone of the entire OSR movement, or a cruel joke made to, pardon my french, fuck over your game, your players, you and your whole setting for no other reason than to prove how “smart” the author is.

This module even led some critics to create a whole new category of dungeon, the nega-dungeon. Nega-dungeons are similar to classic Deathtrap Dungeons, like "The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan" or "Tomb of Horrors". However, a Deathtrap Dungeon is built on the idea of luring the adventurers in to kill them for some nefarious purpose and usually once they enter the party is trapped inside, with only one way out. Nega-dungeon meanwhile is built on an idea some things are better left unexplored. In a proper nega-dungeon the act of going in is supposed to have some negative consequences that will make the players and characters alike question whenever the adventuring life is worth it. Raggi experimented with this format in multiple of his adventures, with a less than stellar record. In "Death, Love, Doom", the dungeon turns out to be a farmhouse where a demon left a horrifying show of, so to speak, “creatively mutilated” bodies of the residents to spite love itself. In "Hammers of the God" every attempt at exploring will trigger more and more loredump of dwarven history. Both are likely to just bore the players who have nothing to do aside roleplaying being disgusted or bored. Less said about “charmingly” named "Fuck For Satan", an adventure that reads like written by someone who holds D&D and idea of adventuring itself in a deep contempt, the better. He had more luck with Deathtrap Dungeons, like "Grinding Gear" or "The God That Crawls", if I can be honest.

But "Death, Frost, Doom" (DFD for short) is different and it emphasizes the best kind of nega-dungeon, in my opinion. The one where by going in, the party dooms not just themselves but often the whole world. The one where you can probably just stop at any point, but if your curiosity gets the better of you, consequences may be dire. A journey like in "Heart of Darkness" or "Spec Ops: The Line", that actively ruins the mental state of the character taking it and makes things so much worse for everyone else in the region. And the best part of it is that if your players are clever they can realize the cost of this expedition and turn back. And then the dungeon may sit in your setting for all eternity, as this terrifying place that the party should never, ever, ever go to. Which in itself can add a lot to the mythology of your campaign.

In DFD the party is presented with rumors of a hidden dungeon of a strange death cult on top of a mountain, which Raggi suggests placing relatively close to a place the party cares about. This makes it so easy to put in Mystara, as the setting is filled to the brim with mountains, so this module can be placed almost anywhere. Seriously, I thought at least places like Atruaghin Clans, Ostland or Minrothad would be omitted due to their isolation, but even on islands or giant plateau the creators managed to squeeze in a few mountains.The only countries that could truly be omitted from this are as follow: Alfheim (or, post "Wrath of the Immortals", Aengmor)—nearest mountains are separated by a fair chunk of Darokinian territory from elven lands; Ethengar Khanates, which have a single mountain that doesn’t fit for this adventure. The countryhas a lot of hills but they don’t really work for this module. whose mountain is tall enough for it to snow on top; and Sind, where the nearest mountains are separated from the country by the Plain of Fire, a huge desert.

The cult of death can easily be turned into ancient Nithians as well. In fact this is why I put a plot hook leading to this module in my own campaign when players expressed interest in secrets of the lost Nithian Empire. My party is going to be overleveled by the time they get there, but most DMs will likely listen to Raggi’s advice and put it in front of PCs of level 6 or lower. Which may present a problem if the players trigger an event named “Hell Vomits Its Filth”.

Long story short, the dungeon turns out to be a hidden necropolis with countless coffins and little to no treasure. All the dead are held by a song of a plant (retconned in later revisions into an undead creation) that locks the way to where real treasures of the dungeon lie. So there is a pretty big possibility players will destroy it and then all the dead will awake as zombies.

That’s it? All this drama about a bunch of zombies? This is nothing that a 6th level party couldn’t take. I mean how many corpses could this place sto…

There are 2,127 bodies buried on the surface in the clearing in front of the cabin. There are 1,762 bodies in the priest crypts, 1,814 bodies in the warrior crypts, 2,533 bodies in the commoner crypts, and 3,925 bodies in the child crypts. Every single one will animate if the plant creature stops making its noise.—Actual quote from the module.

That is a total of slightly over 12 thousand undead. The bodies on the surface are also said to reanimate not as zombies, but as ghouls, meaning there are now slightly over 2 thousand ghouls and 10 thousand zombies that will manage to descend from the mountain in 48 hours. Way above what a low-level party in any D&D-adjacent game can handle. A lot of high-level ones may struggle with this.

If this happens in Mystara, what does it mean? Would it spell doom for the Known World, as it is ravaged by a horde this enormous? Not exactly.

Empire of Ghouls…Not

First of all we should consider the numerical advantage this horde of zombies has. Their numbers are roughly the size of the entire population of Black Eagle Barony, humanoids included. There are very few countries with a standing army large enough to match it. Let us crack "Poor Wizard’s Almanacs I and II" and see who can match these numbers. Both books list the percentage of population serving in the country’s standing army and what force it can call upon in time of war. This is important as if the country will need to bring their wartime forces, it means severely weakening their defenses. If the entire army is fighting zombies in the north, southern neighbors are likely to see your kingdom as a free meal. Gathering wartime army also takes time, meaning the zombies will be rampaging across the land for that much longer, doing worse damage.

Thyatis’s total military force in peacetime is listed as over 223 thousand before "Wrath of the Immortals" by "Trail Maps", and 122 thousand after. Glen Welch’s analysis gives them a force of thirty active legions, each one 5 thousand soldiers in size^¹. They can easily dispatch three, a mere one tenth of their military power, to crush the zombies. As such, we can ignore the empire in this analysis as they can easily handle this, especially when taken into consideration that a trained military unit operating with strategy and coordination is going to be much more dangerous than a mindless horde of the dead. For Thyatis this fact is an additional advantage, for other countries it’s going to be often very crucial.

Alphatia is in a similar position. The empire as a whole has a standing army of nearly 51 thousands post "Wrath of the Immortals". With calculations done by James Ruhland^² giving the country before WotI an army of 66 thousand, with the possibility of raising a military force of 165 and half thousand. But here we need to consider another factor. Alphatia has a ton of magic-users, of all kinds, at its disposal. As such it is easily capable of sending a smaller force just a few casters’ strong, enough to wipe a huge chunk of undead with turning and Area of Effect spells. Fireball may wipe just a miniscule number of zombies when compared to the size of this horde. Multiple fireballs cast one after another by wizards protected by a wall of shields and swords is an entirely different thing. If Alphatia could not afford sending enough troops or raising a wartime army, they have another option: sending the slaves as an opposite horde, trying to beat the undead at their own game, so to speak. Slaves may not be willing to fight for their oppressors, but it is clear they are going to fight for their lives against the undead. Just put them in a position where they cannot escape.
This of course changes if we try to calculate the size of military forces in individual kingdoms constituting Alphatia, but that is a material worth of its own article by the sheer number of those.

Dead Cold

Let us move away from the large empires then to the place where I put the module—the Northern Reaches. Ostland keeps a standing army of almost two thousand, that in wartime can be increased tenfold. For Vestland and Soderfjord Jarldoms the respective numbers are near two and half thousand standing and twenty four thousand wartime. As such each one of those would have to enter war mode and throw a large chunk of their entire military force at the horde. Vestland and Soderfjord would need to devote half of it to match the dead, while Ostland would need to devote around 60% of their whole force to do so. I’m sure their enemies would be delighted to see them needing to deplete that large number of warriors against an internal threat. They would prepare for an invasion before the nation in question can recover. Looking at you, Heldannic Knights. Not that they wouldn’t be in a similar situation, with a standing army near half the size of the undead horde. And while their total military is an impressive sixty two thousand, and thus would need only around 20% of their total army to offset zombies’ numerical advantage, the Knights are widely spread and may simply not be able to do that.

However, this is a good moment to bring up that the numbers alone are not a deciding factor. Humans have training and equipment on their side. They can coordinate their actions in a way undead can not. And in the majority of editions of D&D a zombie is gonna have a hard time hitting a Heldannic Knight or a Northern Reaches’ warrior. Or speaking realistically, teeth and fingernails aren’t gonna do much against a guy in full plate or a viking with shield and chainmail. Realistically one warrior should be able to handle multiple undead, so the whole thing doesn’t need mobilizing as a large force. Not to mention that both Heldannic Knights and Northern Reaches are bound to mobilize their clerics. Or, if you are far enough into Bruce Heard’s Heldannic Timeline^³, they may even have their own paladins.

Charge of the Calvary

Similarly I do not think Atruaghin Clans have anything to worry about. Sure their standing army comes at not even half the size of the undead horde. But the only mountains they have are north of Horse Clan territories. Now here’s the thing: Horse Clan are one of best calvaries in the Known World. An accomplishment for a civilization whose technology is listed as “stone age,” while everyone else seems to be roughly at the level of the Renaissance. Calvary is very good at taking down the infantry, especially if you use hit-and-run tactics to lure large chunks into a trap and massacre them. And what is a horde of zombies if not an extremely slow, disorganized and stupid infantry? One that has no weapons or armor, one that cannot adapt or learn from past mistakes. And their advantages are only sheer numbers and inability to flee in terror… which isn’t so helpful when they cannot break the line of defense, since they never could form one in the first place. Moreover, archers can have a field day with zombies, as long as you aim at the legs. The dead do not feel pain and an arrow won’t kill them. But a leg needs to function properly if they’re supposed to walk. A hit in the wrong place is bound to send a person down simply because the leg can no longer hold the weight of the body. A very good strategy could be to lure chunks of the horde into traps with hit-and-run tactics, make them unable to walk with arrows to the knees, then have the cavalry just stampede over prone zombies, crushing skulls. It will be a long and methodical effort, but I believe it will all end as a glorious victory for the Horse Clan, that hopefully will satisfy their thrill for battle and make them a bit less of jerks to their neighbors for a little while.

Situation with Ethengar is similar, but with even larger cavalry, possessing better equipment. The thing is, I do not think the uncoordinated horde of undead would even reach the Khanates. There is enough area of hills between the country and nearest mountains that it is far more likely the zombies will just wander off in all directions. The part that will reach Ethengar is going to be much smaller, maybe even just a few small groups that can be easily dealt with. The area between the mountain and the Khanates will likely be infested with zombies for years to come, but there is no immediate danger.

Have You Seen My Zombies?

Let us now move to Darokin. This is a peculiar case because Darokin does possess a standing army (and post-WotI their full force was reduced to the size of said standing army) that from the start is nearly twice the size of the undead horde. Meaning they can easily overcome the threat by numbers alone. And again, they are likely to be strategically organized and possess technology advanced enough to not need equal numbers. However, Darokin is pretty vast and the army is spread all across the borders, meaning they may not be able to quickly mobilize enough force to deal with zombies. But it also works in their favor as the undead are bound to eventually just, again, wander off in all directions. The horde is going to spread itself if unopposed and this paradoxically makes them easier to defeat for the individual military units, picking small groups one by one. However, if not properly equipped to track the undead down and hunt them, it is likely that the local area for miles will just have zombies wandering in and out of sight constantly. If you want to have an event like this have an impact on the setting, but not wreck it entirely, you could mark several hexes as “zombie hills” or “plains of death” and have random encounters on the road through it be more likely to give you zombies than anything else.

Similarly the Emirates of Ylaruam have a standing army of less than three and half a thousand, but an additional issue is that the zombies will have to walk through the desert. So not only chances are they just, say it with me, wander off in all directions, but that they get buried under the sand or stumble upon desert ruins. Again, it is possible that several hexes near the mountain the zombies came down from will become known as “desert of dead,” and random encounters with undead there will be more common. Something similar would happen in Sind and in the unlikely case the zombies would make the trek through the Plain of Fire, whatever remains from the horde should not be a match for the standing army of 27 and half thousand members of a warrior caste.

Five Shires’ Standing Army counts at nearly nine thousand. I think this may be a big enough number for a trained army to deal with the zombies. Of course this being Five Shires they have Fangs at their disposal. Cavalry riding on small ponies, each Fang composed of experienced adventurers from 2nd to 4th level, plus a pair of commanding officers, one of 6th and 8th level each. Which combines how easily the cavalry will deal with the zombies with how an adventurer is likely to last much longer and kill many more undead before they themselves expire. Of course this is assuming the bulk of this army isn’t busy invading Black Eagle Barony.

Speaking of which, the Grand Duchy of Karameikos gets a similar number for standing army to the Shires, but without that factor. Fort Doom is an impenetrable fortress and if Baron Von Hendricks and Bargle are still around in your campaign, they likely have a large contingent of humanoids at their disposal. Still, the total population of the barony is listed as 10 thousand, majority of which are fishermen. Zombies themselves may be very good at a siege since they can just go on forever. I wouldn’t be surprised if Van Hendricks and Bargle tried to take control over the undead and use them for their own needs, which sounds like a very interesting adventure hook. So does a possibility of an undead horde either breaking the Hin siege of Fort Doom or forcing the two sides to work together. Castellan Keep may have a similar issue. And I wouldn’t be surprised, if the adventure was put together with "B1 Keep on the Borderlands", if zombie invasion forced the keep’s defenders to work together with residents of Caves of Chaos against a common foe. Or that the zombie apocalypse itself was something the party was tricked into unleashing by the evil cult in the Caves. Threshold, due to being home to many adventurers, can be relatively safer than others.

Depending on when you place this adventure in time Darokin, Ylaruam, Karameikos and Five Shires have one more factor to consider. They are part of Western Defense League. Meaning they could potentially pull their forces together if one gets attacked by the horde. This may have interesting consequences on the international scene. The world will be watching. Thyatis, Heldann, Hule, Ethengar and, if it’s still up, Alphatia are all likely to have sent their people to gauge the performance of WDL against the horde and form opinions about it. How well will the alliance handle this threat will determine how keen any of these would-be hegemonies are to challenge them.

Clouse Encounters of the Zombie Kind

Principalities of Glantri have a standing army of nearly the size of the horde. And post-Wrath their wartime army shrinks nearly to the size of standing army. They do have a lot of magic-users so they could theoretically mobilize enough of them to just put the undead down with continuous bombardment of spells. It should at least weaken them enough for the regular army to finish them off. If not, then I could see three other possibilities. First one is similar to Bruce Heard’s Fall of Glantri^⁴, where the princes are forced to abandon their country, fleeing from a goblin horde that won by overwhelming numbers. This is the least likely of the scenarios. Second option, the Principalities lift their clerics’ ban and invite a huge number of clerics to help with this threat. Something similar has happened at the end of Glen Welch’s "War On All Sides"^⁵ alternate timeline: Glantri was forced to accept clerics to deal with rampaging undead left from hordes Brennard McGregor and Morphail Gorevitch-Woszlany unleashed against Alphatian attack. Third possibility is that the two above-mentioned princes and their principalities come with means to take control over the zombie horde. This would be a huge asset to the Glantrian army, but it may also breed fear among other princes, unwilling to just let a rival have a private army the size of a Thyatian legion or two on their command.

Neither the first nor second volume of "Poor Wizard’s Almanac" list the percentage of population to calculate the army of Minrothad Guilds. If we assume it is comparable to other known world nations, it would be between two and three and half thousand standing, ten times that in wartime. For Ierendi these numbers are slightly over a thousand standing and ten thousand wartime. Both however benefit from the fact their mountains are all placed on islands. Worst case scenario, a single island may be overrun by the undead for the time being, but the nation itself will remain relatively unharmed. I suspect Ierendi will send a large number of Adventurer’s Club members, which include a red dragon, to deal with the issue. Minrothad will probably outsource this, maybe even to the same Adventurer’s Club.

In Savage Coast the only place for this module are the Black Mountains. This means only some of the city-states—Zvornik, Zagora and Nova Svoga—are threatened by the potential zombie attack. However, I could not find information on their military size. Using calculations similar to those described in PWA, I do not believe they could be very large, due to the small size of each nation. If we generously assume that in wartime they could muster enough force to push against the undead, they come at risk of being then attacked by their rivals or by Hule, whose threat looms always above them.

I think this analysis shows that, despite its world-shattering reputation, "Death, Frost, Doom" is not going to deal as horrifying damage to Mystara as to other settings. In fact it may be used to spice a bit more flavor or generate many interesting plot hooks. All it needs is a bit of strategic placement.

1 Glen Welch, "Tactical Analysis of the Structure of the Armed Forces of the Alphatian and Thyatis Militaries", http://www.pandius.com/Imperial_Military_Guide.pdf

2 "Thyatian Armed Forces AC 1018" by James Ruhland http://pandius.com/thaf1018.html

3 "Heldannic Knights -- Historical Timeline" by Bruce Heard http://www.pandius.com/hk2000.html

4 "World in Flames: The Fall of Glantri" by Bruce Heard http://pandius.com/fallglan.html