Introduction

“Per tutto cenci e, più ributtanti de’ cenci, fasce marciose, strame ammorbato, o lenzoli buttati dalle finestre; talvolta corpi, o di persone morte all’improvviso, nella strada, e lasciati lì fin che passasse un carro da portarli via, o cascati da’ carri medesimi, o buttati anch’essi dalle finestre: tanto l’insistere e l’imperversar del disastro aveva insalvatichiti gli animi, e fatto dimenticare ogni cura di pietà, ogni riguardo sociale! Cessato per tutto ogni rumor di botteghe, ogni strepito di carrozze, ogni grido di venditori, ogni chiacchierìo di passeggieri, era ben raro che quel silenzio di morte fosse rotto da altro che da rumor di carri funebri, da lamenti di poveri, da rammarichìo d’infermi, da urli di frenetici, da grida di monatti.”

— Alessandro Manzoni, I Promessi Sposi

Season of Plague is a homebrew edition of Blood on the Clocktower inspired by Alessandro Manzoni's The Betrothed (I Promessi Sposi).

Set in seventeenth-century Lombardy, it reimagines the characters and conflicts of the novel as a Clocktower script built around suspicion, disease, shifting loyalties and the collapse of ordinary social order.

Separated lovers, frightened priests, corrupt lords, mercenaries, physicians, suspected plague-spreaders, corpse bearers and ordinary townsfolk all find their place within the game. Familiarity with the novel is not required to play, but those who know it will recognise its characters, relationships and events woven throughout the script.

At the heart of Season of Plague is the poison mechanic. The Plague does not simply kill each night: healthy players become poisoned; those already poisoned die instead, and the disease spreads from their corpse to a neighbour. As the plague moves around the town, knowing who is poisoned becomes information in itself. Some characters can diagnose or cure it, others observe its spread, while the evil team exploits the distinction between actual poison and false poison registration.

Information is therefore plentiful, but rarely straightforward.

A statement that was true yesterday may no longer be true tonight: characters may move between players, alignments may change, neighbours may not be who you expect them to be, and false registrations can distort otherwise reliable deductions.

Death, too, is not always final: abilities may pass from one player to another, dead characters may briefly act again, and a single death can sometimes cause another. The town must not only determine who is lying, but also reconstruct what actually happened, in what order, and which character or condition may have caused it.

The Minions each attack the town in a different way: some suppress night abilities, some prey upon the healthy, some turn nominations into weapons, while others ensure that the death of an evil player does not necessarily mean the death of their character.

The Outsiders are equally disruptive: they may break the normal structure of neighbouring players, distort registration, spread their own character to others, carry the disease into town with their own bodies, demand a lie the town must not question, turn careless words into deaths, or make even their execution cost the town dearly.

Season of Plague is an information-heavy and highly interactive script, intended for players already familiar with the fundamental rules of Blood on the Clocktower.

It makes frequent use of poison, registration, Madness, character and alignment changes, unusual neighbour interactions, nomination-based effects and precise night-order timing. Storytellers should pay particular attention to the distinction between a player's actual state and how that player may register to an ability, as well as to the order in which effects resolve.

For the good team, survival depends on comparing information, tracing the movement of the disease and recognising when an apparent contradiction is actually evidence.

For the evil team, the plague is only the beginning.

The living were the exception.