#118: The Harvest Tithe | The harvest is due. The King is waking. A Folk-Horror Funnel One-Shot for Fifth Edition
The tithe-pit opened early. No heroes are coming. Bring spare villagers.
The Harvest Tithe is a folk-horror funnel one-shot for fifth edition: a complete, zero-prep level 0 adventure in which each player runs a little crowd of ordinary villagers through one terrible harvest night, and whoever survives until dawn reaches level 1. It plays in a single evening for two to three players, and it is the gentlest way there is to bring a brand-new player to the table.
Every thirtieth autumn, the village of Brackenfield ends its Harvest Fair with the Tithe. At the midnight bell the reeve opens the iron grate over the pit on the village green, and the village pours grain, coin, and song into the dark. Something vast sleeps down there. The village calls it the Harvest King, and most people think the name is a figure of speech. This year the pit cracks open at sunset. The great straw effigy sheds living straw. Villagers who ate the blue-ribbon pies stand up from their benches and sleepwalk toward the pit. The hired protectors are three days away on the high road. Nobody else is coming.
Your players are the smith's apprentice, the beekeeper's niece, the festival piper, the gravedigger's boy, and the goosegirl and her goose. No class, no spells, a handful of hit points each. Clue by clue they learn the truth: someone has been cutting the gold thread from the Tithe Crown and selling it, a cult of tithe-reapers has slipped in among the harvest hands, and the King is waking. The night runs on the King's Hunger, a hidden dial the table feels as tremors, warm air from the pit, and birds that will not land.
Four acts carry the villagers from the bright chaos of the fair, through a night of accusation or a climb down the old well, into the root-choked Tithe-Warrens where the founders lie in their crypt, and finally into the Binding Hollow itself. There, with the King's head breaking the earth like a hill waking up, the survivors choose: bury him and let the fields die, rebind him and keep paying, or break the Crown and bond him to a willing keeper. Three endings, and none of them is the right one.
Villagers will die tonight, and that is the game working. Every fallen villager speaks last words, leaves a keepsake in the Harvest Pile that helps the survivors in the final fight, and is named at the dawn wake. Your players will remember the smith who held the door long after they forget most heroes.
What's Inside:
- A complete 95-page funnel adventure: four acts and eighteen scenes, ready to run tonight with zero prep.
- How to Play a Level 0 Adventure, a ten-minute primer with five rules any new player can learn at the table.
- Twelve ready-made villager cards, each with a Knack, a keepsake, a secret, and a suggested class for level 1.
- The King's Hunger, a hidden dial that decides how awake the King is when the villagers finally meet him.
- Eight original creatures with full stat blocks, from straw wisps to the Harvest King himself, with scaling notes for a classed level 1 party.
- Four maps, an area reference map plus three battle maps, and original pen-and-ink interior art throughout.
- Six opening hooks, a What If contingency guide, survivor epilogues, five campaign seeds, and Gentle Harvest settings for softer tables.
- Free full-color VTT and battle map versions for owners, with details inside the book.
Perfect For:
Game Masters introducing friends or family to their very first game
Groups of 2-3 players, each running a crowd of level 0 villagers, in one 2-3 hour session
A spooky autumn or Halloween night, a convention slot, or a session zero that builds a campaign party
Any table that loves folk horror, village festivals, and characters who earn their names
Everything you need to run the night is in these pages.
Ring the bell, open the grate, and see who walks out at dawn.
