Crusaders in the Wasteland

Wow so i first did a ww1 themed campaign years ago using call of cthulhu, and some of my decopunk ruins in Planet Psychon games people liked and wanted to move into, Chagrinspire is an even more outrageous tower design than all may citadels, So I wanted to bring these threads together in a new game early this year. Id seen Turnip28 as I wanted to make an edge lord paradise of grime core fantasy dialed to 11 and an absurdly huge megadungeon with trains. A chunk of these older rules are being added to Chagrinspire vol3. 

I had crusaders in my setting since fairly early and planned a crusader invasion and a barbarian invasion that can be triggered by players. Only this week I heard about Trench Crusade which I like the aesthetics quite a bit. I didn't dig the religious debates of fan lore online and im not into Christian myth in my gaming. I found vampire games too religious for me and the religious apocalypse/zombie genre. I meet too many religious weirdos too often to enjoy it as fiction. But I will play and keep an eye on it for vibes. I wish them well. Turnip 28 has a KS too.

Starting A Crusade Event
The crusade is an event to trigger usually when players move to the eastern map of the region. Other Trigger events are possible or even invasions. Ancient forces will stir to restart the apocalypse war for even more human sacrifice in the shadow of chagrinspire.

The Immortal Emperor of Lamnutainia has declared the 33rd crusade to once and for all cleanse the waste of wickedness. His reign at the end of the 3rd Empire separated the continent's kingdoms. He insists the world belongs to him now and all should worship him in a new 4th Empire. Cleansing the waste will demonstrate his right to rule again. It has not done well yet.

Players will see Crusaders arrive and might meet or fight them.
They will affect what sort of people are looking for homes in the next year in the waste.

Basically, imagine they are paladins played by teen edge lords who act like jerks while claiming to be holy

Auxiliaries are peasants forced into millitary service from militias in light armour with spears, farm tool polearms, flails and small bows

Templars are cleric priests most are Lv1 led by higher-level heroes

Fighting monk orders sometimes are brought in but tend to do admin and supply

Peasant pilgrim volunteers are like auxiliaries but without discipline and fight as irregular mobs, they make up in tactics with fanaticism. Often use burning torches and pitchforks.

Knights are either foot knights Lv1 or 2 for elite, cavalry are Lv3+
Paladins are knights who max out in oaths and more fanatical and use holy powers

In Lamutania the people put up with taxes and suffering because the crusades keep failing. It's not the emperors fault, its the weak and soft people failing to have the will. The poor emperor weeps for his people he wont help with his divine intervention until the people are worthy.

d12 Basic Crusader Encounters
1 Knights on horse Lv3 x4 looking for any visibly evil-looking things to kill
2 Templars a dozen 1st level acolytes and Lv4 priest
3 Dozen spearmen auxiliaries led by a Lv4 knight or templar priest
4 Armoured war priest Lv4 with two Lv3 knights and a servant d4 1=bard 2=scribe 3=acolyte 4=sqhire
5 Lone knight with Lv4 squire on foot
6 Monks dressed for holy war, most 1st level with Lv4 teacher leading them
7 Starving children in rags 4d6 with sticks and rocks to throw here because angels told them to come here (one of those things players might check out why this has happened for centuries)
8 Palenquin with a Lv4 priest seated in comfort carried by 12 orc slaves with a Lv3 Knight, 12 auxiliary spearmen and from church land as farmers d4 1=eating a roast chicken 2=sprinkling holy water to bless the land 3=admiring jewellery 4=writing a serious report on findings
9 Flagelant priesthood of holy berserkers with flails, holy symbol piercings and scars all over 12 initiates led by an even more scarified Lv3 Berserker
10 Auxiliary troop deserters d12, beg to be taken in and saved from pursuing knights , armour and weapons only, they dumped their kits d4 1=farmers 2=convict conscripts 3=urban poor 4=former gang members have stolen a army payroll and VIP supplies
11 Paladin Lv5 on a horse with six acolyte priest servants on foot
12 Wagon train of 12 carts with 100 soldiers, 20 Lv1 templar priests, led by a party of Knight Lv5 Templar Lv5 Rogue quartermaster/negotiator with awful locals. They support other units in the area and are looking for a ruined outpost of the past to occupy

d12 Specialist and Unusual Crusaders 
1 Inquisitors here to kill heretics or those tainted by mutants
2 Exorcists specialists in fighting undead and curses
3 Monk agents of the emperor from a secret monastery. Appear as imperial bureaucrat monks but might be spies or assassins to monitor loyalty
4 Warrior nun orders of paladins (also monastic fighting nuns)
5 Elder wizards of law here at the Emperor's command with their own mercenary bodyguard

6 Angry mob of peasant fanatics who robbed and killed all the way here in the name of their faith. Led by a dangerous zealot already known to the inquisition

7 Kobold crusaders bred on a farm to be crusader auxilleries and fanatics, good sappers but will question their devotion when they meet local wild kobolds. A desperate experiment

8 Hospitals operate millitary hospitals and act as millitary medics in war
9 Marine order specialising in water transport and marine troops and priests. Aloso trade and banking order

10 Savage Auxiliary Barbarians from the wastes and woods, were permitted to settle on the frontier to convert to the Imperial cult. They even include beast folk and depict crusader symbols with their own stylings. Many hate orcs. They will be commanded by a priest or knight and shun the traditional druids they used to follow. Without leaders or poor treatment they might go feral as being settled farmers sucks

11 Flame order a mix of priests and wizards who use fire in sieges oras artillery. They also boil up enemy corpses to make incendiary fuel and burn convicted heretics. They work with other orders and avoid choosing targets 

12 Heretical fake templars really serve darkness and deceit. Help sabotage and make trouble with other factions worse. Secretly worship the outer darkness and a false entropic dark sun

Signs of crusaders
1 Religious tatoos possibly the immortal sun emperor on earth
2 Holy symbol d4 1=necklace 2= ritual 30cm brass 3=one end of a staff
3 Holy book of the sun emperor on earth, a revised version of the older book of light
4 Tabbard with sword in the circle symbol or other art
5 Banner with sword in the circle symbol or other art
6 Keep singing about how cool the emperor is and how happy they are to die and go to heaven
7 Signs of ritualised self-harm (you gotta use those healing miracles)
8 Carry a holy relic like a saint bone in a silver and gold fancy box
9 Carry holy water bottles d4 (possibly in more in military trunks if a large group)
10 Carry food made by priest spells, a grey nutritious porridge
11 Carry a small or life-size wooden statue of the emperor holding his sword with his sun crown
12 Holy passports stamped with shrines and holy places visited

d12 Crusaders Art & Tattoo Subjects
1 Page from the Emperor's common prayer book
2 Depictions of the Emperor's swords, Executor and Executioner
3 Winged lions roaring
4 Sword over a Circle
5 Blazing sun
6 The Emperor's face with an aureole sun crown
7 The Emperor's cup
8 Scrolls with imperial maxims or epitaphs
9 Angel or a saint battling demons
10 Winged baby cherubim or angel with a burning sword
11 Emperors tears, indicating campaign experience
12 Emperor sealing an old one in the crypt of ages

d12 Stuff Crusaders Yell Lots
1 For the Emperor! (or sun emperor or immortal emperor)
2 Beware the vile unclean mutant unseen among us
3 Purge the wicked slaves of darkness with burning fire
4 Let the light of our lord burn those fallen to darkness
5 All people must swear fealty to the True Emperor of the world
6 Inhumans must be cleansed by the light of our lord
7 Let the fury of the emperor rage like wildfire in this land fallen to darkness
8 Strangers come forth and swear fealty to the Emperor of the World
9 Come let us see you close to be sure you are not mutants or witches
10 Come forth and be blessed so we may speak freely with you
11 Who is your one true lord?
12 Come join us in prayer or prepare to meet your filthy gods

d12 Crusader Corruption and Taint
1 Just arrived ready to fight, green and idealistic
2 Soiled and saw some weird stuff, blooded but bold
3 Some losses from local skirmishers while repulsing humanoids, now confident
4 Survived surprise shelling from ancient war machine mechanised artillery, shellshocked, mud-covered and now demoralised
5 Attacked by undead and managed to kill and burn them, feeling very zealous and clean
6 A flying machine shot at them for an hour then flew away, now wary, shellshocked and muddy. Amazed at their enemy
7 Fleeing losing battle vs undead, pursued by former comrades now undead. Muddy and frightened
8 Slaughtered some mutant warband, now tainted by mutant blood
9 Horrified and doubting the purpose of the crusade and their nation
10 Mutated heretics now serving chaos and the outer gods who embraced their condition and failure
11 Undead heretic anti-crusaders of a previous crusade hate their homeland for sending them here to die
12 DIabolic heretics sold souls to hell to survive and now wage war on the holy crusaders as the Hell's Crusaders

d12 Crusade Wonders
1 See army with all kinds of weird orders with various helmets and hoods marching defiantly
2 See an army clash with undead soldiers of the ancients
3 Marching sickly army carrying plague from fighting rat folk
4 Chaos horde or mutants, beast folk and demon cults assembled on a hilltop awaiting a crusader army
5 A bloody massacred graveyard, mechanical giant pillbugs harvest the dead, metal, cloth, and scuttle away into underground crawlspace to some distant processing centre or train
6 Zombie crusaders mindlessly marching
7 Fighting army of templars singing and blessing the land as they cross it with incense braziers
8 A giant automaton trampling an army and scooping up living and the dead in an iron basket on its back
9 Marching crusaders are suddenly shelled by distant artillery or biplane golems from chagrin spire
10 Arny of orc pikemen and/or goblin wolf-archers slaughter crusaders with numbers
11 See the angel of death, a skeletal reaper and avatar of death flies over soldiers, a terrifying omen of failure
12 See an army brutally obliterated by the death guard flesh golems who then eat the remains

Ending The Crusade
The emperor has been in my games here 12 years. As multiple campaigns never stopped him he is now a 20th lv immortal demigod. The player's church regarded these crusaders as heretics but had also sent armies of Templars here in the past in competing crusader nations. Other foreigners and cults keep agents to watch the region.

The empire bans guns and they rare most of the continent but eastern warring kingdoms have mercenaries travelling back and forth and some of those use crude pre-flintlock guns and crude pistols requiring 2 hands. They are interested in the guns of the ancients and copying them back home. The western lands lotus emperor has an interest in guns too, artillery is more common than handheld guns but firelances and rocket arrows are in use. This will cause future problems in the world.

The Crusades usually last less than a year, sometimes they last decades with occupied outposts but undead, barbarians, non-humans, chaos mutant cults and scavengers and the black sphere all oppose them at every step. A few outposts on hex maps might be occupied after the crusade a while.

d12 Late Crusade Events
1 A crusader hero has become a death knight leading angry ancient undead crusaders against their living kin, their banners show ancient failed crusades of last thousand years
2 Crusader-led mercenary army marching from the eastern warring kingdoms. Pike men, arquebus squads  and landknights. These men will take some look and go home with all the ancient guns they can
3 Gibbeing bishop in a tree can't believe his army was eaten by death guard or undead, describes the horrible scene and now wants to die rather than go home
4 Army of spectral soldiers gloomily marching into a cave or tunnel
5 A revenant looting corpses of soldiers, dedicated to killing his commander who fled the battle by sacrificing troops. Will talk or trade with adventurers, it seeks intel and directions but wants magic stuff not aligned to good or light. It knows all kinds of details of the Crusaders and the Emperor. The revenant is bitter and malicious wanting to spread slander and dirty secrets to harm the Crusaders as his revenge
6 Crusaders resting, winded, damaged by choking gas and enfeebles. Trying to flee but need a ten-minute break every 50m. Someone will slaughter them within a day
7 Orc barbarians riding Dire Wolves came here just to kill humanity's best. Have been victorious and displaying loot and severed heads and hands, very jolly mood
8 Lone paladin with relic blade sole survivor defending a choke point from d4 1=orcs 2=undead soldiers 3=angry peasant conscripts with spears 4=mutant cultists
9 Chanting chaos cult mutants calling down powers from beyond for more mutations, a great feast of alchemical waste and a strange fungus is prepared and sometimes a demon or outer god from beyond speaks to them. The mutants that survive are increasingly unrecognisable of what species they were. Some instead of just die become undead or devolve into slimes 
10 Lone death guard flesh golem sitting contently eating corpses, will go berserk at any loud noises or screams, best left alone, out of its group mind link range and now a free-willed amoral killing machine
11 Zombie former Crusaders now with metal skullcaps with antennae marched to attack tired Crusaders defending a ruin
12 See an airship bathe soldiers in eerie ray light, turning them into undead who promptly bury themselves for later use

d12 Signs the Crusade is Over
1 Broken banners on a pile of dead soldiers 
2 Scavenger gang finishing wounded to rob them
3 Hundreds of feasting ravens cawing over a looted battlefield
4 Giant bloated vultures stand around full of food in piles of gory bones
5 Automaon pillbugs harvesting goods and the dead from the battlefield
6 Undead crusader soldiers march to their new home an underground catacomb, led by a more ancient crusader. They may carry banners or living crucified officers, knights and priests to eat later
7 Deserters who have taken scavenger or bandit gang identities and clothes but you can see their army haircuts and tattoos. They killed the original owners
8 Crusader spirits killing fleeing Crusaders
9 Slavers have captured dozens of Crusaders in chains leading them to a slaver guild prison
10 Mutant cannibals finishing off a wounded crusader on a battlefield and preparing a huge BBQ from all the corpses pit

11 Bandits wearing scraps of crusader army for a laugh, drinking and pretending to be haughty jerks for a laugh 
12 Commoner refugees looting crusader bodies even taking their teeth and bones, denture prices will crash the next year. Came here to loot as their ancestors on the borderlands have done for centuries. In a way, they bring their dead home. Ground bones can be used for crops even