Using the Legend in the Mist Demo Game in the World of Song of the River Prince
I’ve been really enjoying reading up on Legend in the Mist, and it feels like it matches the world of Song of the River Prince SO well.
I have a couple of friends asking if I’d run a one-shot of LitM, so I took a look at the Demo Game, but wanted to set it in the Riverlands, so here are the changes I’d make.
You’ll need to download the Demo Game (link above) to follow along.
The adventure will be taking place in Harveston (SotRP pg. 72) instead of Ravenhome, to begin with. The Red Marshal pregenerated character will instead be known as a River Warden.
The heaviest rewrite will be the Background on page 15. Replace the Background on Page 15 of the Demo Game with this:
Harveston has long enjoyed a gentle sort of peace. Its people know floods, failed harvests, hard winters, and all the ordinary troubles that come with working the land, but true danger seldom finds its way between the wheat fields and orchards.
The people of Harveston know that the Riverlands are strange. Everyone has heard stories of fey gatherings beneath moonlit trees, lights moving across the water, voices carried downstream, and travelers who returned from the woods with stories they could never quite explain. Such things belong to the Riverlands. Most are treated with respect, caution, and a healthy reluctance to ask too many questions.
What has come to Harveston is different.
The River Prince’s song has always been strongest in running water, birdsong, wind through grain, and the thousand small sounds of living things. Lately, something beneath Harveston has begun to answer that song with a note that does not belong.
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The information on the Oldways on this page is replaced with:
A handful of herbalists, wardens, storytellers, and keepers of old river-lore know that the waterways remember things people forget. They know the oldest songs, the proper offerings at forgotten crossings, and the signs that suggest the fey have drawn near. Even they have no name for what is happening now.
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The paragraph talking about the miasma is replaced with:
Somewhere beneath the fields, a foul black seep has entered the streams and groundwater feeding Harveston. It has collected in the drowned remains of an ancient watchtower near Blossom Stream. There it soaked into the corpse of a long-dead guard and filled it with a terrible imitation of life.
The corpse has climbed from the flooded ruin and followed the water toward Harveston.
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Then replace the final paragraph on this page with:
This adventure is about the moment when three ordinary people of Harveston discover that something has gone wrong beneath the familiar beauty of the Riverlands. Fey tricks and river mysteries are one thing. This is something hungry, corrupting, and entirely without song.
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On page 16, replace the text with:
The story begins among the golden wheat fields outside Harveston. It is an overcast autumn morning, and much of the harvest has already been brought in. The companions happen to meet along one of the shaded lanes running between the fields and Amaranth Orchard. What begins as an ordinary roadside meeting takes a horrifying turn when a long-dead guard staggers out of the wheat.
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Replace the text about the Red Marshal with:
a local warden assigned to Harveston. There is rarely much for them to do beyond settling disputes, searching for lost children, dealing with troublesome animals, or helping during floods and fires. They are eager to prove themselves against something more serious.
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Replace the text about the Wise One with:
Their knowledge of herbs is accompanied by an unusual familiarity with old river-lore, fey customs, forgotten songs, and the strange things sometimes found beside running water. Recently, they have sensed something discordant beneath the familiar song of the Riverlands.
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Don’t change anything about the Apple Picker, they work great.
On page 17, describe the Wakened Sentry like this:
Every step leaves black water soaking into the soil. The wheat bends away from it before it comes near, and for the first time that morning the companions notice something even stranger. There are no frogs calling from the ditches. No birds above the fields. Even the wind seems reluctant to move.
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On page 18, replace “What awakened the Dead Sentry” with:
The people of the Riverlands know countless stories of fey enchantments, river spirits, strange lights, and things that wander out of the woods. This is something else.
The Wise One can determine that the pitch-black liquid soaking the Sentry carries an influence of rot and hunger. Water touched by it feels wrong. There is no reflection of the sky upon its surface, and the faint song that seems to linger around every stream in the Riverlands is completely absent.
An exceptional recollection may reveal stories of places where the natural magic of the Riverlands became poisoned or twisted, though none of those stories explain what caused this.
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On this page, also, replace what the Apple Picker knows with: The Apple Picker recalls that water from the irrigation ditches eventually feeds back toward Blossom Stream.
Instead of returning back to Ravenhome, the players will return to Harveston.
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Page 19, replace the opening with:
Harveston rests among rolling wheat fields and orchards, its shaded lanes leading toward a modest village center. Usually the smell of bread from Sprouthaven Market and the noise of carts coming in from the fields make the place feel almost impossibly safe.
Today, that familiarity feels fragile.
As the companions return, they pass the Communal Grain Silo and make their way toward Hearthside Hall, where word of Willow’s story quickly draws a crowd.
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The villagers will gather in Hearthside Hall instead of the tavern for the village meeting.
Replace Alderman Beaks with Orla Wheatglade.
ORLA WHEATGLADE wants to keep Harveston calm. She believes the creature may have been an isolated incident and argues that everyone should remain close to home while the wardens investigate.
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Keep Aleonora, but have her a retired River Warden who once watched the fields and roads around Harveston. Keep Mackross as a local alarmist. He should recommend the villagers flee to Ironwind Bluff or Thistleport.
Instead of the villagers referring to the Creature of Twilight, they will call it “that dead thing,” or “whatever came from the water.”
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For page 21, place the Sunken Watchtower on an old branch of Blossom Stream, a few hours outside Harveston. Replace the approach with:
The path follows Blossom Stream away from the cultivated fields. The neat irrigation channels gradually disappear, the banks become tangled with willow and alder, and the ground turns soft beneath the companions’ feet.
The River Prince’s song is easy to imagine here. Water against stone. Insects among the reeds. Wind moving through leaves.
Then, slowly, those sounds begin to disappear.
Keep the tower description largely intact, changing only the sentence about who the tower belonged to to:
The tower belonged to a forgotten river kingdom whose name survives only in fragments of old songs. Its people understood forms of magic that the Riverlands have long since forgotten.
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Page 22: Keep Sorrowbalm, but change the Who, or What, Is Sorrowbalm? with:
Sorrowbalm is fey.
More precisely, she is an emissary of one of the old courts whose influence reaches into drowned places and forgotten waters. She has walked the Riverlands far longer than her youthful appearance suggests, and she remembers agreements made with mortals whose names have vanished from every history.
Sorrowbalm is neither servant nor enemy of the River Prince. Like many fey, her loyalties follow older rules of promise, memory, and obligation.
She has come to recover something that once belonged to her kind.
If you want to tie it closer to Courts of Rememory, make her an emmisary of the Court of Velvet Drowning.
Change the reference to Aldenwood to “The hidden reaches of her court,” and change “ancient stones” to “rememory stones.”
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Change the bewitched opal on page 23 to a Rememory Opal: A smooth opal as large as your palm. Colors move deep inside it like sunlight beneath flowing water. Holding it brings memories that do not belong to you.
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Change: “What Was This Tower Before It Sank?”
No one in Harveston remembers who built the tower. Even the oldest songs disagree.
Sorrowbalm knows more.
Long ago, mortals living beside these waters entered into agreements with the fey. Certain wardens were given stones that allowed them to hear and shape the deeper currents of magic running through the Riverlands. The opal in the chest is one such stone.
The sword belonged to one of those wardens and was fashioned to resist corruption. The blue liquid was an old preparation used to open the senses to things normally hidden from mortal sight.
The Waken Sentry appears to have been one of those ancient wardens.
Whatever killed them was old.
Whatever woke them is new.
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Change the Aftermath on Page 25 to:
The truth beneath the drowned tower is simple. Something foul has entered the waters of the Riverlands.
The black seep beneath the tower does not begin there. It is being carried through deeper channels, moving beneath streams, ponds, and marshland before finding its way toward Harveston.
Following the flow of the water points toward the Evershadow Marshes.
The distant wetlands rest to the north, beneath a bank of grey cloud. Questions crowd the adventurers’ thoughts. What is poisoning the water? Why has it begun now? What did Sorrowbalm really come to recover? How many other forgotten things lie beneath the rivers, waiting for that black current to reach them?
Somewhere below, Blossom Stream continues on toward Harveston.
The companions listen.
Beneath the familiar murmur of running water, they can hear it now.
A second song.
Faint.
Wrong.
And flowing downstream.
Someone must follow it.
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And that’s what I’d do to adapt the adventure over into the setting of Song of the River Prince. I think it would work very well, and require minimal changes. Let me know what you think!
