Bar Hak was built to be a West Marches game.
If you’ve been playing OSR-coded DnD in the last decade, you may already be familiar with the concept: a drop-in sandbox campaign big enough to accommodate multiple parties. The ambition and scope of the idea has always inspired me, and I wanted Bar Hak to be my attempt at it.
Parts of it worked out great; other parts, not so much. One thing I always had trouble with was getting the multiple competing parties thing off the ground. With a lovely wife who wanted to play in every game and no rule against repeats, we ended up with a traditional core party and a roster of guest stars who came and went. Ah well!
Despite failing to bust up my player base and race them against each other, the idea that I might do so was baked into Bar Hak’s design. For example, I anticipated that as new groups came in, they’d be moving past dungeons that other groups had already cleared. How could I keep things fresh?
Enter the Fly Guys.
Seven Insect Gods of the Bar Hak
The cursed priests of Ganth eschewed both the true god of the Bar Hak (the Sun) and the cursed false god of magicians and elves (you guessed it, the Moon), preferring instead to worship crawling insectile gods from the chthonic darkness that predates all light. They number seven:
Mosquito, the Red Lady, Queen of Blood, Power, and Twilight
White Scorpion, Rightful God of Death
Moth, Deity of Secrets, Sorcery, and Vanity
Beetle, Warrior God of Orcs
Cockroach, Goddess of Life and Birth
Ant, Goddess of Slaves, Dwarves, and Workers
Fly, God of Lies, Rot, and Dementia
In their long war against the Elves, the goblin priests of Ganth turned to Fly to create a mind weapon — a terrible sorcery that would erase the minds of every elf on the planet. The elves struck with their own super weapon simultaneously; both the high cities of the elves and the goblin city Ganth were destroyed. For their crimes, the wicked priests were twisted into the image of their god.
These wizened, darkly translucent monstrosities have the heads of flies. They can no longer speak; they buzz at each other without meaning. Atrophied wings beat fruitlessly at their back. They create strange screens from their adhesive spit and use them to spy on their ancient enemies. The orcs and elves have forgotten the long war, but the fly-headed goblins of Ganth remember still.
Behind the Curtain
The Bar Hak, like most campaign settings, is littered with dungeons. Each one holds secrets from ages past, as well as monsters and defences. The Fly Priests know where all the great treasures of the Bar Hak are. They are mostly too weak to go get them themselves, and the curse on their language (plus your normal evil arrogance) prevents them from enlisting outside help.
What they do have are flying eyeballs that transmit images to screens they make from their adhesive spit. They are monitoring every dungeon. They are waiting for someone to go in, clear away the traps, and make it possible for them to feast on what remains.
Once the first party was done with a dungeon, I had a faction ready to move into it. Because they were cursed ancients, they knew where the secret doors were. Dungeons could almost always be a little bigger the second time; I only had to reveal, not add. Additionally, their trap-building tactics could change the way different spaces played. Making them fly heads rather than kobolds or goblins helped keep them fresh. Who could guess what these strange creatures might be capable of?
The actual statblock? I’m glad you asked.
Fly Heads, 1/2HD, AC14, Blow Gun 1d4 + save vs poison or paralysis next turn, 1d4 knives, ML6 1 in the group has a bit of magic (MU lvl 1, random spell)
Number Appearing was often in the 2d4 to 4d4 range.
And that was it. Everything else was in flavour and tactics.
In Practice
This restock faction provided some of the most memorable episodes of the Bar Hak campaign. Players realized that the fifth level of the first dungeon they’d found was actually buried at the bottom of a shaft. They returned to dig it out, only to run into fly-headed monsters.
The Fly Guys had picked up on some of the tricks the players had missed the first time through. That obviously evil chair with the straps and needles attached? The Fly Guys knew how to use it. They’d mutated a couple of their number into brain-dead fly-headed ogres. The party cleared out these big guys, but the flies weren’t driven off yet.
Using their eyes in the sky, they waited for the party to assemble diggers at the bottom of the shaft and then started dropping oil and fire down at them.
Many hirelings were lost that day.
The Upshot
They will be missed. Whatever their names were. I think I wrote it down. Still, the party learned some important lessons:
The world is alive.
Other factions have plans. Areas you neglect will develop without you.
If you don’t make the most of a dungeon, someone else will.
Teach your players these things, and you’ve invited them to imagine. Dungeons don’t stop being interesting or mysterious just because they’ve been cleared. As your players realize you’ve been restocking old dungeons, flyover areas will again become exciting and new.
Try it out.
Remember: decay is just feeding time for life’s tiny horrors. Don’t let anything go to waste when you could offer it to the flies.
I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing/playing it. If you like this stuff, check out Bar Hak’s Elves or these Trolls from a few weeks ago. Or skip the articles and go straight to buying our books! We’ve got some great options, but if you’re into campaign-length content, let me recommend Seven Sealed Spirits!
Oh man, this is awesome. I remember being super grossed out by these little fly jerks, but I had no idea they had such a well-thought-out place, not just in the world but also in the campaign’s design as a game. Bar Hak will live in my memory as one of those great campaigns. I hope we dive into it someday and maybe even bring it to the publishing table. Whanston did not die in vein.