Sowing the Seeds of Nemesis

"The Fates are just: they give us but our own," writes the American poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier, adding: "Nemesis ripens what our hands have sown."

The best Nemesis - your adversary, opponent, BBEG - is the one crafted exquisitely for you, the one that matches the contours of your heroism and magnifies your flaws as well as your strengths.

Tolkien gave us memorable heroes, but it's his villains that live in memory: the stooped and snuffling Ringwraith on the East Road out of the Shire, the mockney Orcs intriguing in Cirith Ungol, the schizoid Gollum, and the magnificently grandiose dragon Smaug.

The iconic scene in Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings (1978)

Whittier's point goes even deeper: Nemesis is created by heroism, it emerges in response to it, it is the Jungian Shadow. You sow the seed of adversity, Nemesis makes it grow.

This is the basis for designing the Nemesis in Through The Hedgerow. The game is low-key enough that it doesn't need a moustache-twirling villain. Briar Knights might be searching for a child lost in the woods, aiding a widow facing eviction at Christmas, or rescuing miners trapped by a cave-in. The rules provide tables for generating all sorts of conflicts and crises in the different historical eras in which it takes place.

But then there's the Dark. Behind these workaday perils and dramas, a supernatural menace is at work. At first, its focus is not on you. But then you draw its attention. Perhaps your reveal yourselves to terrified mortals and their panic-stricken Dread sounds a supernatural alarm. Perhaps you take an ill-advised Respite or violate a Ban under which your mission labours. Or perhaps you encounter the Dark's spies. Evil sharpens its focus: the Dark is tracking you now.

In game terms, the Nemesis Die gets bigger, which means threats become more deadly, opponents are from further up the hierarchy of menace. Eventually, the Dark's Emissaries take notice of you. Excrement just got real.

Who are these Emissaries? Through The Hedgerow divides the Lords of the Dark into four factions and for each adventure the Judge chooses one to be active.

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The Raven Margrave

The Raven Margrave is a god-like entity, a spiritual force of death and horror. It is always off-stage, but it sends its Murthering Ministers through the Hedgerow to enact its purposes in different centuries: Feannag the Archer, Brandt the Necromancer, Kraaj Crowface, Dame Ragnall the Hag. These are apex Bad Guys, your classic supervillains. Briar Knights do not want to meet them in person. You certainly don't want to fight them. Best let them capture you (and Through The Hedgerow's combat rules encourage outcomes like this) so they can monologue you instead, as good villains do.

Peter Johnston's art showcases the Raven Margrave's Ministers at work in the Age of Swords.

But if you run into the Ministers, things are already out of hand. Lower down the pecking order, you will probably meet the Raven Margrave's Undead emissaries: vampyres, wraiths, ghouls, and liches. 'Liches' here means walking corpses, like zombies, not the immortal sorcerers from D&D.

This means horror, and the Raven Margrave lets you create horror-themed adventures of corpses stirring in plague pits, wraiths unleashed from barrows, and vampyres predating on Victorian debutantes in stately homes.

It also means violence. Briar Knights aren't allowed to harm mortals, but the walking dead are quite another thing. Out with the flaming swords!

Moreover, the Raven Margrave is the principle antagonist in the Age of Swords (the 9th century). He has spread his cult among the invading Vikings, so in this era he has a human army at his command. This makes for a classic swords-and-sorcery adventure, helping Alfred the Great resist the Great Heathen Army as well as the Raven Margrave's necromancers and undead.

My favourite minions of the Raven Margrave are right at the bottom of the scale. The Margrave manifests through flocks of crows called Malignities. As threats go, a Malignity of crows isn't the most deadly, but the first time someone loses Resolve in a Challenge involving them, the Nemesis Die grows in size. Players learn to fear the sinister rooks swirling over the copse of trees, or the solitary raven perched on the farm gate.

Yes, I stole the vigilant crows from Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising (1973), especially the scene where the rooks assault the hapless Walker.

Excerpt from The Dark Is Rising, chapter 1 'Midwinter's Eve'

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The Cailleach

Maybe you like your horror a bit more subtle, more like a dark fairy-tale than Gothic or swords-and-sorcery. Maybe you prefer Roald Dahl to Stephen King.

The Cailleach is a coven of Hags who excel in illusion and shapeshifting, potion-brewing and poisoning, and of course mind control. They're pantomime villains compared to the Margrave Raven, but no less deadly than the Murthering Ministers. If you meet a Hag in person, you're in deep trouble, but typically you will interact with their lesser emissaries.

There are Witches doing their bidding, of course, and a tribe of doting Ogres that can pass for human. More troubling are their Manikins, cobbled together from junk and filth and woven with illusion to pass for human. The Hags control humans directly by making dolls called 'poppets': these mesmerised Changelings act as spies, in the same way as the crows that serve the Raven Margrave, but they're still human deep down inside, so Briar Knights can't just kill them.

The Cailleach's real menace is its agenda. The Hags hate innocence, cleanliness, and childhood - and they want to make everything filthy and corrupt. There's creepy comedy to be found in this: the Telltale Signs that someone is a Changeling or a Manikin by the dirt under their nails or their sudden taste for spoiled milk; the Hags can be repulsed with soap and tuneful singing. The gruesome aspect is what the Hags do to their victims - especially children.

Of course, Roald Dahl's The Witches (1983) is a huge inspiration for the Cailleach.

The Cailleach is the main adversary in the Age of Thunder (1940s, during the War) and their targets are often orphaned or evacuated children. Any adventure against the Cailleach is a journey into paranoia, where no one is who they seem and good people are being replaced by manikins and changelings; this is exaggerated in the febrile atmosphere of the 1940s, where everyone is on the lookout for spies.

Peter Johnston gives these Hags pantomime-themed Regency attire - and there in the background is Bilge with a bag on his head (the first Hedgerow PC)

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The Feral Squires

Sometimes, you don't want horror, you want action-romance, perhaps with a bit of dark humour.

The Feral Squires are Fay Lords who crossed over into the Mortal Ages to serve the Dark. They were godlike beings once, but they've been enslaved by their own appetites and diminished into caricatures of what they once were. Caricatures still bite, so beware!

Their names of familiar from folklore: Isengrim Von Ulf and his wolfish wife Dame Hirsent, Martin Le Ape, Paddock the Baron of Toads, Tybault Prince of Cats, and Reynard the Fox. They're here to lord it over humanity: they want to hunt people, eat people, enslave and abuse people. Diminished they may be, but they've scaled the British class system and preside over walled estates where they conduct slave auctions, cannibal banquets, and debauched parties.

They are off-the-scale formidable as opponents in battle, but PCs will probably be dealing with their minions: Dark Druids curry favour with them, Werkynde are lycanthropes with buyer's remorse, Feraldines are wicked talking animals, but they have many Beast Spies, similar to the crows that work for the Raven Margrave. If Tybault Prince of Cats is your Nemesis, then every household tabby or farmyard mouser is a potential informant against you.

The Feral Squires are the main adversaries in the Victorian Age of Steel, where they enjoy the opportunities for greed and exploitation the British Empire brings with it.

Adventures against the Feral Squires are opportunities for high fantasy derring-do. They and their minions aren't human, so Briar Knights can unleash a bit more violence than they usually like to. The Squires are a fractious bunch, so politicking can play a part in defeating them. They're Fay Lords, so stories often involve other Fays lurking in the corners of British society. Plus: mansions! Think Downtown Abbey​ with werewolves!

Alternatively, the Feral Squires can be used for adventures focusing on tragedy and horror. The Werkynde are cursed were-creatures and the abuse of power by wicked aristocrats over ordinary commoners is more terrifying than any vampyre or hag.

An army of Werkynde in the Age of Thunder, from the talented Peter Johnston

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The Witch-Harrow

The final Nemesis faction is in some ways the weakest, but most likely to cause problems for PCs. The Witch-Harrow is a human organisation, although one infused with the corrupting power of the Dark. It is a secret society, albeit one that operates quite openly in the 17th century Age of Plagues, wherein it is the principle antagonist for the Light.

The Witch-Harrow organises humans to identify and target 'witches' in their midst. It is driven by paranoia, intolerance, and authoritarianism. What constitutes a 'witch' might vary. In the 9th century, they are pagans and fays; in the 19th and 20th century, the Witch-Harrow targets reformers and non-conformists. Women are always a particular target.

In the Age of Plagues the Witch-Harrow reaches a pinnacle of power, seeking out witches to put on trial, torture, and execute. Some of these witches are actual sorcerers, some are luckless Fays, a few might even be servitors of other factions of the Dark, but the overwhelming majority are innocent humans, whose crime is defiance of convention, or simply being a woman.

The Witch-Harrow employs Snoops and Scolds, who act as spies and troublemakers, rather like the beasts serving the Feral Squires. As the Nemesis Die swells, the PCs can expect to meet Hexenhammers and Hexenhounds, armed with cold iron talismans and heavy weapons. The big hitters are the Inquisitors, who are formidable magic-wielders (though they don't think of themselves as such).

The problem with the Witch-Harrow is that their membership is entirely human. The Light bans Briar Knights from harming humans. In addition to this, the Witch-Harrow is influential and can bring to bear the power of the local authorities: unwitting magistrates, hapless constables, judgemental clergy.

An adventure against the Witch-Harrow is less likely to involve violence or supernatural horror; more likely, there will be moral dilemmas, intrigue, and stealth.

The Witch-Harrow in the Age of Plagues: a Hexenhound gathers accusations of witchcraft while his armoured Hexenhammers look on

The touchstone for any adventure against the Witch-Harrow is Arthur Miller's The Crucible (1953), in which the witch hysteria in Salem in 1692 introduces the self-righteous witch hunters like Rev. Hale. 

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Sowing the Seeds

For your first game of Through The Hedgerow, you have a choice to make: who is the Nemesis? 

A Through The Hedgerow campaign might involve just one Nemesis, being confronted in different ways in different centuries. A bit like the way the Master turns up all the way through the 1971 season of Doctor Who.

The great Robert Delgado. Don't you just love a recurring villain?

Alternatively, different adventures can pit the Briar Knights against different Nemeses, allowing you to vary the tone of the game between violence and politics, comedy and horror.

I tend to start games with the Raven Margrave. He's menacing, but never physically present. He's clearly BAD - no one is going to be playing the Relativism Card and saying "Well, he kinda has a point!" He's trying to spread death and destruction in a general sort of way, but he's not usually tormenting one person in particular. The Malignities of crows are very atmospheric and play well with the rural setting. Most players of RPGs know what the Undead are and how to deal with them. Also, the Raven Margrave tends to act in the same way in every century, so you can deploy him in any Age without complications.

The Feral Squires are also straightforward. The Squires themselves are too dangerous to be fought directly, but they can be negotiated with, or tricked, or played off against each other. They're not omniscient gods (though they think they still are). As the centuries roll by, they diminish, becoming more comedic. In the Age of Swords, Isengrim is a wolf-god made flesh, ruling over a forest or an army of berserkers. By the Age of Thunder, he might be a tyrannical headmaster in a creepy boarding school.

The Cailleach are more challenging - and the themes of child abduction they raise are problematic, so check with your players. Their malice is often very focused on one particular child or family, but they work by corrupting whole communities. Their illusions make it difficult for players to know who to trust. Some players love the sort of supernatural thriller the Cailleach generate, others find it all a bit stressful.

The Witch-Harrow make the biggest demands on player ingenuity. A direct assault rarely works against them and they know how to incapacitate Fays and ward themselves against spells. These adventures are most likely to be rooted in historical situations and mortal politics. If your players love historical roleplaying and espionage, then the Witch-Harrow make compelling opponents, particularly because, like the best villains, they are heroes in their own eyes.