#98: The Harvest Home | Witness the Harvest — A 5e Folk-Horror One-Shot for Small Groups
Thornwick will feed you, welcome you by name, and crown a king at midnight — then burn him alive at dawn. You were invited to watch. You have twelve hours to decide what that makes you.
Every seven years the village of Thornwick crowns a Corn King and gives him to the earth, and every seven years the fields grow fat on the bargain. This year your table arrives as honored guests — drawn by a sister's desperate letter, or a job posting, or a dream of cornfields — on the second day of the harvest festival. The cider is sweet. The neighbors are kind. And the gentle brewer they mean to sacrifice at dawn is not afraid. He is grateful.
Read the Review: https://anvilnink.com/harvest-home-corn-king-one-shot/
Get the Paperback: https://amzn.to/4ghclNB
This is folk horror for the fifth edition: no dungeon full of cultists in robes, just farmers and grandmothers who believe, with their whole hearts, that one death in autumn is a fair price for a village that never starves. The horror is how ordinary it feels — and the worst part is that the victim does not want to be saved.
A complete fifth-edition adventure you can run tonight, cold, with no preparation.
What's Inside
- A full 2–3 hour one-shot for 2–3 players at levels 2–3 — genuinely zero prep
- 16 named scenes across four acts, with a branching Act Two: expose the truth and turn the village against itself, or play along and infiltrate the rite from within
- 16 read-aloud blocks, written to be read cold at the table without rehearsal
- A willing victim at the heart of it — the sacrifice wants to die, and one of your players is the only one who can reach him
- A three-phase boss built so it never one-shots a hero, with a mercy written in: a consecrated blade that saves the man instead of killing the monster
- 8 stat blocks — four original creatures and four villagers — all SRD 5.1-compliant
- 4 ready-made characters, each tied to the missing man; any two of them form a viable party, with no filler seats
- 6 battle maps, 6 opening hooks, 5 off-script contingencies, and 5 campaign seeds for whatever you run next
Three endings. No right one.
The night ends with a living seed in your players' hands and one choice to make. Give it back, and the village survives — but another gentle soul burns in seven years. Destroy it, and the evil ends — but the land starves for a generation. Carry it away, and it will whisper to them for the rest of their lives. Each ending is fully written, with consequences and an epilogue. Tables argue about this one on the drive home.
Built for the table you actually have
Most published adventures assume five players and a Game Master with a free weekend. This one is built for two or three friends and a single evening. Every fight is tuned for a small party, every revelation has three separate ways in so one bad roll never stalls the night, and every scene has a written fallback for the moment your players do something nobody planned for.
The maps are a suggestion, not a requirement — the book says so out loud. Run it on a grid, on a whiteboard, or entirely in the theatre of the mind.
What you need
The core fifth edition rules and two to three friends. Everything else — characters, creatures, maps, and the whole night — is in this book.
Perfect For
• Game Masters who want a complete, unsettling session without a week of prep
• Small tables — two or three players, no need to fill empty chairs
• Anyone who loves folk horror, harvest festivals, and a monster that used to be a friend
• A one-night break from a long campaign, or a first taste of horror for a new table
The cider is sweet. The welcome is warm. The harvest is always hungry.
Open the book, read the first block out loud, and let them pour you a cup.
Part of the Ready Adventure Series — adventures designed for zero prep, maximum fun.
