the al columbia/henry darger campaign I've been working on

so I basically wrote 1/2 of a campaign book last year inspired primarily by two artists: al columbia and henry darger.

al columbia's work

henry darger's

This all came after Scrap Princess recommended Venetian Snare's "Doll Doll Doll" which was sorta a concept album about childkilling like Jon Bennet Ramsey and all that. Listening to the album basically made me feel cool about childkilling... capturing some niche.

Considering how easy it is to look at the work of something like

and write a dungeon based on it that's pretty much what I did.

THE START OF THE CAMPAIGN:

PCs are requested to come and help out a small labor town put down a rebellion. They arrive, by train, and find that the town is populated entirely by soldiering men with beards and coats. The town runs on child slavery agriculture; the soldiers want the PCs to go put down a rebellion by the children. Specifically they want the PCs to go out into Jennae Richie and lure the militarized children into a staged battle.

OUTSIDE THE TOWN WALLS is a land known as "Jennae Richie": a series of plains and forests bordered by mountains and the ocean and populated by wild children. There a couple of factions in play:

• the militiarized children who have rifles and have child-general leaders

•  the "vivian girls" who are an independent child calvary, intelligent with good discipline
• the "childkillers", a variety of monsters and boogeymen who eat the children 

•  troupes of adult clowns who are sortof combination relief organizers and entertainers for the children

•  the fairy queen, a large butterfly-winged person who educates the children and influences the child military's leaders
• "tornado terry" -  a reoccuring tornado which the children have a spiritual connection to  

•  mysteriously modern "grandparents" who live by the coast

THERE'S A COUPLE OF SITES scattered throughout Jennae Richie:

• the forbidden forest where all the cannibals live
• a swamp filled with rotting pianos where some swamp-kids live and a portal to the underworld is there
• the "underworld": a series of bizarre tunnels which link locations
• the mountains bordering jennae richie where "brodbrigian creatures" live
•  the coast- this is where "tornado terry" visits. there's a seaside home here belonging to some old folks who are mysteriously modern who kinda take care of the children. however many of the kids regularly sacrifice themselves to the tornado and the "grandparents" can't stop them and no longer try.
• There a couple of dungeon-like locations which function as links between the three cosmological states of Jennae richie. more on that in a bit

THE PROGRESSION OF EVENTS which will occur:

1. either the PCs lead the child military forces into a staged battle with the adults or some other battle is conducted; if the battle happens on the adult's terms it will be a planned slaughter
2. Tornado Terry intervenes during the battle and wipes out all sides
3. Adult civilization and the children's leaders are dead; in their absence the childkillers and the "half-real world" will fully take over Jennae Richie

The battle can be averted if the PCs take steps to uncover the mystery in Jennae Richie and figure out the politics between the adults and children.

THE MYSTERY OF JENNAE RICHIE:

• The cosmology of this place, which most of the children know some of, is that there are three worlds:
• The "real world": where the PCs are from and where they're running around probably
• The "half-real" world where the childkillers are from and maybe the children are from? This world looks sorta like the "fake world" but has childkillers (=monsters) and stuff (=treasure) in it
• The "fake world": this is a mostly empty tertiary dimension resembling a 1950's small city and suburban outlands. There are buildings but no stuff or people; the wind rises as you spend time here and eventually culminates in a tornado which destroys everything
• Children make expeditions to get guns and other modern stuff from the "half-world". Links between worlds are usually real <-> half <-> fake.
• The cause of all this was some shenanigans with dimensions rubbing together and a tornado and a special person who made a wish as regards saving children from the tornado and from evil men. I haven't really figured it out yet.
• the clown troupes are adults who feel guilty about child slavery

So basically the PCs wander into this situation, have an opportunity to explore some half-real locations full of monsters and treasure, have to deal with a bunch of child soldiers and child politics and maybe witness some terrible battles, maybe deal with the more competent actors like the vivian girls or the clowns, maybe avert the apocalypse maybe not. 

the "half-real" locations I've made up so far:

• a movie theatre with a trapdoor and a ladder which leads to another, more ornate movie theatre with a trapdoor and a ladder which leads to.... 
• accessed via tunnels. leads to the fake world eventually. you can also recover some broken movie theatre equipment which if you repair it the kids will love you because you can show them movies
• an apartment complex in a hellish landscape. inside each door there's another random bizarre thing and there's a persistent monster which if you close your eyes goes away and black balloons everywhere which if you pop you die
• you get there via tunnels
• a department store full of stuff and monsters I haven' fleshed out yet
• an abandoned house in the forbidden forest which if you get close becomes "modern". there's a demon that lives there and some treasure and it works as a gateway between fake and real worlds
• salmon falls, which is a town where they're constantly doing reality-breaking parades, it's also the home of a bunch of double-bodied people with straight razors
• a church-trap full of hanged corpses which awaken if you shine light on them; they strangle, die, fall, and turn into broken-bone ghouls. has a portal to the veins of the earth 
• the city of the dead full of ghouls which is where you get to if you go northeast of the map
• if you take a boat out into the ocean the ocean turns into a mass of rotting fetus-man corpses

all of this is basically curbed from al columbia and henry darger's art.