The Undying Maiden Annotations

As of writing this, it's been a few years since my last game jam. The Iron Game Chef competition fizzled out a few years ago and I'd been focused on my novels and a move. I happened to be watching a video where the 2024 ShadowDark Weird Tales Game Jam was mentioned. I was a bit late to the game, but only by a few days and on a whim, I decided to join in. I've always enjoyed how these odd challenges help me to laser focus in on new ideas I never had before. With that thought, I went for it.

I put my name into the cover generator and out popped 3 covers that gave me pause. A woman getting stabbed to death. A naked woman being attacked by snakes. A woman being burned at the stake. WHAT? No monsters? No wild settings? No fantastical images? Just three women dying. I admit, for a few minutes I wondered if I should just give this one a pass.

No. I would make it work. I gave myself two days to let things rattle around and got copies of the 3 magazines the covers had come from. The cover with the woman being burned at the stake especially struck me. Something about her expression seemed so bored with it all. After giving it time, I realized that my game would be about the 3 women not individually, but as a single woman. One woman dying over and over again to the point that it lost all meaning to her. She wasn't afraid. It was just another day. Rather than a damsel in distress needing saved, she just needed a way to make this endless cycle end.

She became the core of the work. I found images that worked for the NPCs, images that brought to mind merchants, a story that referenced werewolves, etc. Each item became a new element of the story. She's cursed. Each lunar cycle (28 days), she is fated to die in some horrible way, only to arise again without end. She lost her love and was cursed never to join him. The location she gained the curse is the dungeon for the adventure and I set everything up with the idea of making this fit into any game.

Rather than being a full setting, I used the limited page count to my advantage. It is a plot hook that can be dropped into any game. You need not even go to the dungeon to resolve the adventure if you want to. It has a dozen ways to resolve things, multiple ways to reach the dungeon, and I even found a way to fit in a new class. On the latter, I tried to create something that was outside of the standard tropes, but still able to contribue to the party. The things it specializes in is procuring useful items, having insights others might not have, and being able to repurpose items from one's inventory into light sources. (Think breaking down a ladder to use as a torch.)

I pulled all of the artwork from the magazines, including the cover, only doing the map by hand myself. I set up the encounter table associated with that map in a way that can adapt to what area of the map they are in. I also made a point to make minor changes to the artwork where needed to create the right feel or otherwise shift elements from a modern to arcane setting. All told, I used almost every hour of the time I had and only got it in a few hours before the deadline.

Sadly, some elements couldn't make the cut. I had to reduce everything by a page, dropping some tables from what I had intended to include.

After the competition I was able to obtain feedback and was inspired to double the size of the original work. I added many elements that I originally could not due to time and space. This expanded edition is available for sale through the link below for those interested.