Adventure Site Contest 2: Sausages of the Devil Swine

Written by John Nash.
B/X, level 5
Ruins just outside of town.
  A curse afflicts the good people of Piggton. Insatiable hunger drives them to eat until they are sick and no one knows where the compulsion comes from, nor why some are affected and others not. At night, snuffling and grunting is heard outside. Those who go out to investigate vanish.
  I believe this entire site is built around a pun. What if orcs, and Orcus, but we added a “p”? Pigs are a natural monster for use in horror and adventures…big, ill-tempered, savage, cannibalistic, intelligent, and prone to go feral in 1-2 generations. Couple that with the fact that humans are biologically compatible in some very disturbing ways (can take organ transplants from pigs, pig parasites love human hosts, human meat is known as “long pork”), you have a very natural enemy to face, and unlike our other three main food animals (chickens, sheep, and cows), pigs are ONLY providers of food via death. Camilla gives us eggs, Clairice gives us wool, and Claribel gives us milk, but Wilbur’s only helping us after butchery. This, along with the fact that Wilbur will happily eat us in turn if we fall into the slop, means there’s a good folk reason to be discomforted by swine.
  This adventure isn’t delving into any Jungian Shadow Analysis though, we have a much simpler premise here involving two rival butchers, an ancient pig-demon cult, and a town stricken by said demon’s curse. Your level five BX-men are induced by mild bounties from the local church, the town council, and/or the not-summoning-pig-demons butcher to go investigate the ancient ruins, possibly also just stumbling onto it after fighting boars with glowing red eyes. As one does. Lipstick thus applied; this pig is then a more or less standard little dungeon. Unless they act out of instinct and instead beat Obviously Evil Butcher Guy to death in a botched interrogation.
  I like Nash’s maps. Clean, simple, but there’s shading and line work that really makes them pop, and the features are very clear. A nice set of loops that really matter, with obstacles that block travel but not view, secret doors that get appropriately lampshaded by symmetry, elevation change that matters, and a bonus discoverable extra dungeon exit. There’s nothing complex here but we don’t need complex in an adventure site of this scale, we need something that rewards exploration with meaningful choices between paths. It’s also not a nightmare to map for a player.

  Our monster roster is admirably restrained, just devil swine (red-eyed evil pigs), porcs (pig-faced orcs), evil sentient strangling sausages, and of course Porcus, Legally Distinct Demon Prince of Sloth and Gluttony. Said Porcus is the only major threat to level fives, with his Wand of Porcus giving a nice death-spiral effect that turns defeated enemies into devil swine (just dead pigs in player hands). The others are in numbers enough to at least drain resources on the way down, but the random encounters (1-in-6 every two turns) aren’t going to be much more than a speed bump. Other hazards/interactables are the expected diseases for getting covered in demon offal, a few curses (including a pig-nose granting one that improves sense of smell but players will hate it), and the odd tasteful spear trap. Our payday might be a little short but nobody’s having to put in overtime.
  Said treasure (helpfully counted up in the header at a hair over 14k gold, a little light for 5) is well-placed for the most part, almost always hidden or put into somewhere tricky (a pig idol that turns out to be a literal piggy bank did make me chuckle), largely coins and the occasional gem. For magic items, we have a +2 mace and a +1/+3 vs pig demon sword, nicely flavored but a little basic. If you’re into tainted meats, there’s a lot of that to go around.
  Insertion into your campaign is largely a question of world-tone rather than world location. It’s a pig-farming town, you have one of these anywhere. The silliness, while not over that over-the-top, might be a showstopper for some people. I’d have to have the right group, but I know if the players were game they would have a good time in here. I'd just send them in a little lower than level 5.