Tusk Riders.pdf

Last week I gave you a pretty much complete cult for Runequest, in the style of the old school RQ books, Cults of Prax or Cults of Terror, detailing the bloodthirsty, more than a little anti-social tendencies of the Tusk Riders, as I have re-envisioned them for my Brightwater Saga game set in the River of Cradles. This time, I want to give you a set of stats for an entire horde of Tusk Riders and their mounts, complete with a loot list, and even a brief location write-up for these bad boys and girls.

But before I get into that, I want to talk a bit about how to use Tusk Riders in your Runequest game.

OK, unless you PCs want to play a band of exceptionally awful, sociopathic monsters, who make the worst band of d&d murder hobos look like crusading paladins, Tusk Riders are going to be antagonists for a group or region. As such, Tusk Riders work very well as an ongoing problem that must be dealt with to establish security and safety in an area. They are going to be out marauding, looting and collecting sacrifices much of the time, then taking them back to the base for the inevitable party/wholesale slaughter in Dagor's name. I like to think of them as Runequest's version of Fallout 3 style raider gangs, but with a slightly less post-apocalyptic fashion sense. So maybe no mohawks and bustiers, but probably the same behaviors, including murder, torture, cannibalism, etc.

As such, they can be ongoing enemies of a group of RQ adventurers at several stages of experience. At the early stage, a set of scouts provides a good encounter. Later on, a raiding band, led by a Deathbringer, collecting and/or hauling potential sacrifices back to the hideout. Truly experienced groups could tangle with the Chieftain and Deathbringer retinue, or the whole horde. And if that is not enough, the Tusk Riders are always on the lookout for a paying gig with someone who doesn't mind their proclivity toward mayhem. Someone of that ilk, with deep enough pockets to satisfy a horde of maniacs, probably has other issues that the Heroes will not appreciate.

So without further ado, here is the horde of Anorra Bloodspitter. You can find the link to the pdf just below the picture.