In an attempt to get more utility out of the core set, I've been playing around with designing my own campaign. Here's the first quest! Sadly, I have no quest card image template to use, and am worthless with image manipulation anyway, so it’s just an outline. If anyone would like to pretty this up, feel free!

I’m a bit concerned the reward and penalty are too dramatically different…but eh, whatever.

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SETUP

Enemies : Shuffle Rat Swarms, Giant Bats, Clanrats, Gutter Runners, Gigantic Spiders, and Ghouls together. Place the Unkel nemesis card in the nemesis lair; he spawns when the players travel to the final location (Winding Tunnels).

Locations : Shuffle Underground River, Throng of Webs, and Fungal Patch together, then put Winding Tunnels on the bottom.

Gear and Dungeon Decks : Shuffle 12 open gear cards together to form the gear deck. Remove the Cave-In and Elfcap dungeon cards, shuffle 10 open dungeon cards together to form the dungeon deck, then shuffle Cave-In and Elfcap into the dungeon deck.

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Peace had prospered in the hamlet of Spielberg for decades, but that all ended two nights ago when the explosion occurred. A magnificent fireball just outside of town was accompanied by a loud boom and an earth-shaking rumble that roused all from their beds in terror. Bleary-eyed guards threw on their mail and rushed to the scene, finding a 100-yard wide blackened crater. No one was harmed, no one is missing, and no one recalls anything suspicious. This makes the event all the more frightening.

The citizenry in a panic, the council calls for heroes to delve into a nearby cavern rumored to be a Skaven hold, and put an end to whatever wickedness they are up to. There is no evidence of the Skaven’s involvement, and there has not even been a Skaven sighting in these parts for half a dozen years. But with near riot breaking out, the leadership is desperate for action. You snort and shake your head at the absurdity of villagers. Oh well; at least you’ll be paid.

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Use the peril track of the quest card titled "A Foul Stench" from the core set. Only the peril track itself is used.

Arcane Secrets: Quest 1

After travelling to a new location and spawning location card enemies, roll 3 black dice. For each Enemy Attack or Nemesis symbol rolled, place a success token on an enemy in play (max 1 success token per enemy).Whenever an enemy with a success token damages a hero, remove the success token from the enemy and the hero becomes sickened.

After travelling to the final location (Winding Tunnels), spawn Unkel if he is in the nemesis lair.

Peril Track : No changes.

Green : The high-pitched screeching of bats, rats, and other foul things echoes through the caverns. It sounds like the whole cave system has been alerted to your presence.

• If the number of enemies in play is equal or less than the number of undefeated heroes, spawn a number of enemies equal to the number of undefeated heroes.

Blue : Alarm bells sound in the distance, and reinforcements quickly advance from the depths!

• Take the four highest ranked enemies from the discard pile, shuffle them into the enemy deck, then spawn 2 enemies.

Red : The Skaven warrior speaks no words, and fights with grim determination. You feel there will be no surrender today.

• This peril event only occurs once.
• Spawn 2 enemies, spawn Unkel if he is in the nemesis lair, then Unkel activates.

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Victory : If at any time the final location (Winding Tunnels) is fully explored and there are no enemies in play, resolve “Reward”.

Defeat : If all heroes are defeated, resolve “Penalty”.

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Reward : In the back of the stinking tunnels, you discover a hallway made of ancient stone blocks, the floor extremely worn. An unnatural heat wafts from the hall, but within you see only blackness. Something tells you the answers you seek lie deeper yet. But for now, you decide to report back to the village and collect your reward for these Skaven scalps!

• Add 1 Legendary Fortune gear card to the campaign pool. Then each hero draws one gear card and two dungeon cards, and chooses one option: keep the gear card, or keep one or both dungeon cards showing an item, or begin the next quest with 2 success tokens.

Penalty : As the heroes attempt to flee the caverns from the Skaven filth, their retreat is cut off! They are forced to flee deeper into the caverns as the rodents give chase. Discovering an old, worn hallway of worked stone, the heroes decide to take their chances and plunge into the dark.

• If Unkel was not defeated, add Unkel to the campaign pool. If Unkel was defeated, instead add the elite Clanrat and the elite Gutter Runner to the campaign pool. The heroes may not choose the “Visit the Blacksmith” option during the next settlement stage.

Thanks for all the effort. I will try this out this afternoon, but it certainly looks good. In advance of the experience, I do like the differences in Reward/Penalty.

I just finished a fourth successive try to succeed in this quest and I must say: this is by far the hardest quest to complete, much harder than the quests from the official game. The main difficulty is the final location (Winding Tunnels). Once you've reached the red peril track, apart from the monsters already in play, each round two monsters will spawn and probably a third one, since you have to direct all the firepower to killing enemies. There is hardly any chance to explore which means that at the end of the location phase another enemy will spawn, adding three new monsters in the melee each round.

Since at the lowest level the fire power of the heroes is too low to handle killing three new enemies, it is nigh impossible to reach the victory conditions (fully explored Winding Tunnels and defeating all enemies).

Perhaps this might better as a quest a bit further down a campaign (after some ugrades), or otherwise the red peril track point should each time spawn only one (1) enemy (besides Unkel). In both cases the quest will still be very hard but not undoable.

By the way, in your text you call the final location Twisting Passages (twice) in stead of Winding Tunnels.

Let me make it clear that I highly appreciated your self-made quest and my views on it are only meant as positive sidenotes. I sincerely admire and commend your efforts. Apart from its incredible difficulty, I think it is a great quest .

As an alternative to my previous suggestions, perhaps you could add to the text of the red peril space; "and place the Peril token two spaces back".

Thanks for your comments!

Yes, I can see how that final location would be incredibly tough. I've added a rule that the Red peril event only occurs once (which was my original intention). Alternatively, I like your idea of pushing back the peril token. I also corrected the "Winding Tunnels" typos.

Some things I'm still concerned about:

• The mechanic where some enemies at each new location have a special one-shot sickening ability: unnecessary, or an appropriate flavorful addition? Most of the quest is a straightforward "kill the enemies then advance", and even the peril effects are essentially "more enemies show up", so I wanted something extra to spice things up, but I hope it doesn't feel awkward and tacked-on.
• Is the penalty too harsh, not being able to use the Blacksmith settlement action? Especially this being the first quest, I'm worried it's too unfair. Especially compared to the reward, which is a better quest reward than usual.

Thanks again for taking the time to comment!

I think your one-shot sickening mechanic is flavourful. Keep it. It makes the quest just a bit different (and tougher).
The penalty is no problem in my opinion either.

But as commented on BGG, it might be good not adding non-nemeses cards to the pool in case of defeat but Unkel instead.