Castle Elkenstone
Castle Elkenstone is the latest adventure from Jacob Fleming, and a bit of a departure from the old-school map-and-dungeoncrawl adventures he tends to publish once a year. Lighterweight than those already lightweight 'zines, Castle Elkenstone is instead a horror-themed adventure in the vein of I6 Ravenloft. The adventurers are summoned by mail to a cursed barony, where they are quickly directed to deal with the mysterious, almost certainly demonic baron who is causing villagers to become possessed by demons.
There's not a lot to the adventure. A good half of the writing is given over to an investigation phase, but the entirety of that is talking with three people who point you toward the titular Castle Elkenstone. Along the way you have some stock-horror encounters - a man beset by wolves, a mob of angry townsfolk, a woman possessed by the supernatural - and then you wrap things up with a short, functional dungeon crawl involving cultists and the demonic Baron. No factions, no red herrings, not even a lot of treasure or fights. Just a straight line from the start to the end.
Which might be fine. It's a 'zine, not a campaign. You can drop the Baron's home onto a hex, seed some rumors in a player's town, and have a ready-to-go site for a group to explore over a session or two. I'd probably lean into the vibe that underlies the entire adventure - that this is a Castlevania game or a Hammer horror film - and make it more campy.
A tidy little read! I've mentally filed it next to The Curse of Mizzling Grove as one to come back to when I next design a fantasy hexcrawl.