In fact, the world almost seems to be a patchwork of other worlds. Villages, cities, even entire kingdoms have mysteriously appeared, all from different worlds and all completely oblivious as to what has happened. Forests, mountains and other geographical features have been transplanted wholesale as well.

The range of reactions is quite varied. Some continue living their lives as ever, some try to carve out power in this new dynamic, and some try to figure out what happened and how to undo it and be returned to their home world.

Life, you see, is an interesting thing. Left unchecked, it would thrive and grow and reproduce until it choked itself on its own waste and smothered itself with its own mass. Without a grim reaper, carefully watching and pruning, the world would not be able to support such explosive growth, and like a raging bonfire with too little fuel life would snuff itself out.

Johann’s possesses a divine implement, a scythe, which allows him to perform his duties. It allows him to travel to any corner of the globe, to command vermin to spread a plague, to call hurricanes and blizzards and earthquakes, even to affect the fertility of an entire region. It’s not all bad, though, for the grim reaper’s job is not wanton destruction, but balance. Just as he can decimate a city, he can make it grow and prosper. He can make make the women bear more children more readily or the land bear more fruits.

The grim reaper is a mantle which is passed down through the ages. Each grim reaper is intimately aware of death, and in particular his own death. When the time draws near, they cease their duties in order to find the next reaper. It is almost an instinctual feeling, like a bird returning each year to the same nest in a city a half a continent away. The reaper knows who is destined to follow him and seeks out that person.

It is not an easy sell. The next person is invariably incredulous and hostile to the entire idea. The great power held by the reaper would be a terrible thing in the wrong hands, and so it is only entrusted into the most selfless, empathic person of an entire generation. The idea, to such a person, of wreaking death on such a wide scale for the rest of their lives is utterly anathema… but it is the final task of a reaper to convince his successor that the job must be done, and must be done by them.

Encounters with The Reaper

Johann is dying and decides that it is time to pass the mantle. The new grim reaper is to be the sister of one of the PCs. When she will not hear of it, Johann seeks out the PCs to help them convince her that she must accept her fate.

Someone has stolen Johann’s scythe and is using it to terrible ends. The PCs must recover it.

A dying noble has learned of Johann and the power he wields. He hires the PCs to bring Johann to him, so that he may convince Johann to grant him immortality.

Every spring, Quainsbrook throws a celebration known as The Festival of the Half-Hundred Hounds. It is a three day-long festival filled with song, merriment and feasting, where dogs are the guests of honor. Each night is capped off with a simple competition called The Feat of Strength.

In the Feat of Strength, teams of up to five people take turns playing tug of war with the strongest fifty hounds Quainsbrook has to offer. At first they are pulling against 25 hounds, but every 10 seconds another hound is added until all fifty are pulling, or until the the challengers are defeated.

The only way to actually win the tug of war is to pull a flag, located halfway between the dogs and the challengers, across a line on the ground while all 50 dogs are pulling, and hold it there for one full minute. Nobody’s ever actually won the Feat of Strength, though, for no one has ever lasted long enough to be playing against all fifty dogs.

In the end, the dogs are always crowned the victors of the night, but as a consolation prize the team which pulled against the most dogs before being defeated is given a Quainsbrook hound.

Stranger still, the very next day the same thing happens. An albatross lands on the deck of the ship, walks around a bit, and dies. Any experienced medics can ascertain that the birds seem to have died of natural causes (i.e. old age). A few hours later, yet another albatross makes the boat its final resting place.

They start becoming more and more frequent until there are literally hundreds of dead birds littering the ship and dozens more arriving every hour. It is at its heaviest two days after the first bird appeared… After that it slowly winds down and they see the last albatross about five days into the ordeal.

Interpretations: I rather like the idea that this is a completely random event, with no real tie to anything (except, perhaps, fate; the albatross was chosen quite intentionally in that regard). Of course, there’s nothing stopping there from being some sort of magical effect, or perhaps a magnetic disturbance affecting the birds’ senses.

Adaptations: You could make the encounter quite different by changing the birds and/or what happens when they reach the ship. Maybe doves arrive (perhaps even doves carrying olive branches!) and stay on the ship a few days before leaving; crows or ravens could send a more ominous message to players who wouldn’t understand the significance of the albatross (if you don’t, read The Rime of the Ancient Mariner).