The Town Is Already Taken

Against the Cult of the Reptile God is the module for Judges who think domain play starts at the name level.

Orlane looks like a rest stop. Inn, streets, friendly faces, a place to spend the gold from the last hole. It is not. It is a holding being eaten from the inside. The cult does not need a steading or a vault. It needs neighbors, night, and a town that still thinks it is a town.

That is ACKS in miniature. Hideouts. Hijinks. Loyalty tests you did not schedule. A market that still opens while the real government sits under the floor. You can kick in the dungeon door and miss the campaign. The dungeon is only the stomach. The village is the body.

5E runs this as a mystery one-shot with a boss in the basement. ACKS runs it as a warning about every settlement on your map. If Charisma is a payroll stat, the cult has been making payroll. If reaction rolls matter, half the NPCs are not encounters. They are already employed.

You do not get a stronghold here.

You get something cheaper and worse: proof that a domain can fall without a siege, and that the party who treats every village as a vending machine will one night sleep in a room that has already chosen a different lord.