by alphyere
“The Fogs of Elos” campaign frame is still under development, and these are the campaign mechanics I’m currently testing. I’ve also included some background elements to provide context for the mechanics. The mechanics work independently and can be incorporated into any campaign where the setting imposes a toll of fatigue on its inhabitants—whether it’s a year of plague, a long march, a siege, or a particularly harsh winter. Any feedback is welcome.
A special thank you to the Daggerheart Italia community for supporting me every day as I explore this fantastic game, and to Mike Underwood for encouraging me to bring this project to life.
Elos is a small world, shrouded in a magical fog that its inhabitants call Caligo. On land, at sea, and in the air, the fog descends without warning and engulfs settlements, roads, and ports like a silent tide that suffocates everything in its path. Caligo penetrates to the very bones, permeates the limbs, and, if breathed in long enough, never leaves but remains there—a cold weight behind the ribs. Emotions, solidarity, the sense of belonging to a community: all fall silent, and with them, the hope that tomorrow might be better.
The Caligo consumes what drives people to show solidarity with one another, so that the line between man and beast grows thin; and the more one breathes it in, the thinner that line becomes. Those who have been touched by it are not cruel: they want only food, warmth, and another day to live, and they have stopped wondering what all this costs those around them. Since the mist, once inhaled, is slow to dissipate, the inhabitants of Elos have learned to keep it out of their homes: in every settlement there is a bell, which is rung as soon as a bank of mist is spotted on the horizon, so that anyone who hears its tolls has time to shut themselves indoors and wait for it to pass.
In Elos, there is no ordinary fog. Every bank that advances is the Caligo.
You can bring the fog in as your GM move. Spend an amount of Fear equal to the number of PCs in the scene, and the fog fills the area until the scene ends. Describe how it arrives, how it deadens sound, how it takes the distance out of everything, how it settles wet into cloth and rope and lungs.
While in the Caligo, as a consequence of failure with Fear, their Hope Die drops one size and they become Fogbound. The die goes from a d12 to a d10, then a d8, then a d6. Ask them what goes quiet: the voice calling their name, the reason they came here at all, whatever they would have gone back for an hour ago. A PC stays Fogbound after the fog lifts, and their Hope Die stays where it is.
Most of Elos never comes back from this. The PCs are the ones who do. When a PC already on a d6 rolls a failure with Fear in the fog, the die doesn't drop again. The roll fails as normal, but instead of sinking further they rewrite one of their Experiences. The modifier stays the same; the words change to describe who the Caligo has made them. Ask them what they call it now. Their Hope Die returns to a d12 and they're no longer Fogbound. On their next action roll, they roll two Hope Dice and choose which result to use.
The Caligo can be worked out of a person, given enough time. Parties have access to an additional downtime move:
Clear the Fog: Describe how you work the fog out of you—where you go, what you breathe, who sits with you. Increase your Hope Die by one size. When it returns to a d12, you're no longer Fogbound. You can only take this move during a long rest taken in clear air. You can't take it twice in the same rest.
In Antonio Scurati's novel M. Il figlio del secolo (Bompiani, 2018), there is a scene set in the Polesine in which a cow dies of anthrax and the district veterinarian orders it to be buried. A few minutes after the official leaves, the farmhands—starving and dazed by the foul air—dig it up and fight one another over the animal's poisoned meat. None of them does it out of cruelty; they are simply starving and no longer care about anyone or anything around them. That scene sets the tone for the Campiagn Frame and, by extension, for the mechanic you are reading.
The Polesine is the flat province between the Adige and the Po, shrouded for several months a year in a very thick fog known in Venetian dialect as caligo. For much of the modern era it was one of the poorest places in Western Europe, where farm laborers owned nothing and moved from farm to farm in search of seasonal work. Two diseases in particular marked the lives of those who lived there between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first was malaria, endemic in the marshes of the plain: its name comes from the Italian mala aria, "bad air," because for centuries the air itself was believed to be the cause. The second was pellagra, a niacin deficiency caused by a diet consisting almost exclusively of corn. Pellagra kills slowly and, before death, robs its victims of their sanity: apathy, confusion, loss of will.
In Latin, caligo means "fog." It also means twilight or darkness, and the condition of being unable to see clearly—even in one's own mind. The word entered the dialects of northern Italy and has remained there. In the Veneto, around Venice, people still say caligo, or caìgo with the "l" dropped, and it does not refer to just any fog: it refers to the winter fog of the Po Valley that settles over the fields at twilight and lingers until noon the following day, or that envelops the Venice Lagoon for hours on end. There is also an expression, "èsser perso par el caligo," which translates as "to be lost in the fog." It describes someone who has lost their way and can no longer be reached.