For this and the past three years at Con of the North, I've been running scenarios that involve neo-Nazi antagonists. It started with an idea for one scenario that split into two. While I was writing “Infernal Devices” (for 2023), I realized that what the thieves were trying to steal would lead into a whole other scenario, which became “The Dead Man's Tale” (2024). “Crowning Achievement” (2025) stood on its own, and ended in a place that set up a potential showdown. Wanting to venture into new territory in the future, I wrote “The Thule Ultimatum” to resolve that arc. It sees the heroes being brought into the enemy stronghold—but first I needed to capture them.
That didn't go as I'd hoped.
I started with the heroes aboard a boat in the North Sea. Aboard the boat I put goons armed with stun guns, and thought I might be able to zap the heroes into submission. That's not how it worked. In the first session, I rolled Stealth for the villains as they surreptitiously tried to surround the heroes for an ambush. My roll was a Botch! Not surprised in the slightest, the heroes made pretty quick work of the villains. They then drove the boat into the enemy stronghold anyway and bluffed their way into having the evil Dr. Ingo Hartmann come aboard it, where they subdued him and his berserker bodyguard.
In the second session, the heroes still recognized the ambush; I rolled an 11 for Stealth, but so did one of the heroes for Notice. The fight proved to be a good deal tougher, however, and the bad guys had a couple of the heroes down on the ground with their stun guns. The heroes still won out, however. They drove the boat close to the stronghold, donned SCUBA gear, and went into the water. Thus they snuck into the stronghold, managed to steal some uniforms, and then claimed to be guards (Vaughn, Gavin, Jerry and Linh) who'd captured interlopers (Thaddeus and Magdalena).
Both sides found Professor Hall, strapped into a chair and hooked up to an IV, on top of the howe (burial mound) that the neo-Nazis had built as a nexus of evil arcane energy. My idea with that was that the players needed to solve riddles, to help Hall mentally and spiritually overcome three challenges from Norse mythology. The first group did so. In the second session, however, Jerry pulled his pistol and shot one of the guards, opening combat.
I tried to make the fight more challenging this year, since it seemed a little underwhelming in the second session last year. In addition to Dr. Hartmann, an occultist, I included a Wild Card berserker bodyguard name Hans and plenty of goons. I was pleased with how the big fight went in both sessions. The first table played with more of a run-and-gun style after helping Professor Hall solve the riddles. The heroes at the second table locked themselves in the chamber with the howe and fought the main bad guys, and then, as the remaining goons were cutting down the door with fire axes, burst out and made a run for it. Gavin had Dr. Hartmann in a chokehold with a combat baton, forcing the goons to hold their fire. That scene ended with Linh firing a flare into some fuel barrels, triggering a string of explosions, while Gavin broke the evil occultist's neck and dumped him into the water. It was fun!
