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Werewolves are a hard monster to run well. Roll initiative against one and it either shrugs off every sword in the party or dies like a big dog, and neither one is scary. Last Call at the Silver Stag is the encounter I wrote to fix that. It is a free, printable 5e encounter for four characters of level 5, built for the week of Halloween or any full moon in your campaign. I run a 3D-printing studio in Utah and I’m a DM and avid gamer, so it is also cast entirely from a box of miniatures I print myself (more on that below).
Every full moon since spring, the village of Thornwick has paid the Tithe. At dusk they tie one person to the stake in the square, bar every door, and wait. By morning the stake is empty and the wolves leave everyone else alone. Seven people have gone to the stake so far. Tonight it is a stranger’s turn: a peddler named Tam Wicke, who the Headman swears is a horse thief.
The party walks into Thornwick an hour before moonrise. The only light in the village comes from the torches by the stake and the windows of the Silver Stag, the inn on the square, where Borys and Helga Vold keep the hearth going for anyone who would rather not be alone tonight. A band of monster hunters called the Ember Hunt already has a table by the window. The Tithe is not going to be enough this time, and at least two people sitting in that common room already know why.
The first act is suspicion and preparation, and it is where the night is won or lost. The werewolves ignore ordinary weapons, so the party has to find silver, and the only silver in Thornwick is the stag hanging in the inn and Helga’s grandmother’s spoons. She will not hand those over to strangers. She will hand them over to people who promise to find her missing son.
The party gets three preparations before the moon comes up. They can shutter the inn, tie wolfsbane over the windows from Helga’s herb beds, set the Ember Hunt’s silver toothed traps, or chain someone in the cellar. That last one matters, because two people in the Stag are going to turn tonight. A woodcutter with a bloody sling won’t touch the silver spoon. The Headman keeps shaking an empty green bottle. Players who pay attention can work out who is cursed and lock them up before it happens. Players who don’t will find out at the worst possible moment.
Then a many armed creature knocks at the kitchen door with a tray of little bottles. Granny Nettle, the hag who lives in the woods, is offering an oil that makes any weapon magical and silvered until dawn. It is exactly what the party needs. The price gets named at dawn.
When the moon rises, a d10 Moon Clock goes beside the board and turns up every round. Each number brings something new: the Antlered Priest and his wolves on the east road, two werewolves out of the herb garden heading for the back door, the Headman turning right there by the fire, and at round 4 the Grey Father, a werewolf too big for any door who simply makes his own way in.
The pack did not come to fight. It came to collect. Wolves and werewolves grab villagers and drag them toward the edge of the map, and every villager dragged into the trees is Taken. That changes how your players fight. Instead of trading blows with the biggest thing on the board, they are knocking grabbers prone, pulling the innkeeper’s kid back through a window, and deciding who to save first. The Ember Hunt fights alongside the party, and each hunter duels one enemy, settled with a single d6 roll at the end of the round so you are not running four extra characters.
One of the werewolves coming out of the herb garden is someone’s son. The party can reach him by calling his name, and it works best when his family does it, which means keeping them close to him. Exactly where the pack wants them.
Kill the Grey Father and the curse breaks for every werewolf he made, including the ones the party chained in the cellar. Drive him off and Thornwick survives, but the curse holds until next month. Lose three villagers and the pack withdraws, satisfied, and the Headman has three more names to remember. Whatever happens, Granny Nettle is waiting at the edge of the trees at dawn to collect on that oil, and she did not come alone. That debt is a hook for your next session.
Every creature and villager in the encounter matches a miniature in The Werewolf Curse, a complete set of 20 miniatures across 18 sculpts. You get werewolves at every stage of the curse, from the Headman hiding his bite to the hunched Ancient Werewolf on a 50mm base, plus the Ember Hunt, a hag with her cauldron and her servant, the innkeeper’s family, and a peddler tied to a stake. Buy the set and you own the entire cast of the encounter. The PDF has a page that maps each sculpt to its role.
You do not need the set to run it. Any werewolves and townsfolk work if you cast by silhouette. If you only want the monsters, the Werewolf Bloodline bundle is the six werewolves on their own, and every figure is also sold individually, from the Elderwood Hag to Live Bait, the poor man on the stake. You can browse the rest of our RPG miniatures if you are filling out the village.
Download the free encounter (PDF)
Download the DM map (17 by 11 PDF)
Download the player map (17 by 11 PDF)
The PDF is 22 pages in our quest book style. It has the full encounter, a table setup guide, four hooks for getting the party to Thornwick, read aloud text for every arrival, the preparation rules, the Moon Clock, stat blocks built from the SRD 5.1, scaling notes, a quick reference page for the siege, and the miniature gallery. The 17 by 11 map of the Silver Stag and the Tithe square comes in two versions: a DM map with every arrival marked and a clean player map to print for the table. Print it, run it, and share it with your table.
No. The encounter is written for any werewolf and villager miniatures, or for tokens on a grid. The Werewolf Curse set just happens to contain every character in it, which makes setup a lot faster.
It is built for four characters of level 5, and the PDF includes adjustments for level 4, level 6, and smaller or larger groups. The pack is far past deadly if you count it up. The grabs, the duels and the silver are what make it winnable, and a party that spends its hour before moonrise well will have a much easier night.
Plan on about two hours: forty minutes of arrival, suspicion and preparation, then a siege of six to eight rounds. The Moon Clock ends the fight at moonset if it is still going.
Yes. Use the four hooks in the PDF to bring a new party to Thornwick, and the encounter stands on its own as a single night. If you want it inside a campaign instead, Granny Nettle’s price at dawn is built to lead into the next session.
If your table likes gothic horror, Shadows Over Silverlake is our vampire one shot for level 10, and the gifts for TTRPG players guide covers everything else. You can find the whole cast of Thornwick in The Werewolf Curse.
Consult the Oracle.
Every Kirtrite miniature, terrain piece, and accessory is 3D printed in-house in Utah — built to be played with, not just displayed.
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