A wide, slow path winds its way up the mountainside. Numerous times, the Old Deer River runs across the path. Stone bridges cross the river at each point. The characters might also reach the castle from north or south of the valley, as the path at the bottom of the cliff becomes part of another path going north and south, much used by farmers and hunters.
It takes half a day to climb up the path, or two days to go the long way north or south.
From a distance, Illustrious Castle is imposing. It stands atop a plateau, with a river flowing out beneath it and against the backdrop of an even larger cliff. As they near the castle, however, the depth of the decay becomes apparent. One corner of the outer wall has completely fallen in. The outer wall is jagged as enter sections of it have fallen to the ground. The outer wall of the castle grounds is ten or so yards from the edge of the 120 yard drop. There is a thin walkway leading up the cliff, which will be muddy and slippery in the springtime.
The river comes out of the cliff face from a five yard wide, four yard tall hole, with a yard of clearance at the exit, another thirty yards down. (There is more clearance when the melting snow dwindles.) See the end of the adventure for what is inside--it is possible to reach the adventure through this as a back entrance, although it will be difficult. The river is rushing out at high speeds. Another six yards inside, the clearance increases to between a yard and two yards. The Tomb of the Hero is 160 yards inside, past many tiny caverns.
A thin path, overgrown with briars and small maples, rises steeply up the side of the cliff face. At the bottom of the cliff, you can barely see a small stone square or foundation covered in tall grass and weeds. Below, you hear water rushing out of the mountainside and gushing over the winding road to Biblyon.
The small stone foundation was once a platform where supplies could be loaded and hauled up to the plateau by means of a pulley system on the plateau. The rest of the pulley system has been taken away by the farmers of the area for its metal and wood. Outside of the outer wall, just south of the front gates, a small stone base is all that remains of the pulley system. (It’s removal inadvertently slowed the looting of the castle.)
Characters that ask the right questions can hear some of the rumors and legends surrounding the castle’s fall.
1. Why is the castle abandoned? The Order of Illustration committed suicide by drinking poison. The Tutors discovered this several weeks later and buried the dead.
2. Why did they commit suicide? Most of the Order died during the war. Those that returned and wrested control of the castle from the goblins were not the best of the Order and could not live up to its ideals. Over the next few years they became more and more isolated and eventually just gave up.
3. Could it have been more than just suicide? Maybe they thought they were taking part in some ritual that would give them more knowledge. But it clearly didn’t work, as they all died.
4. Did they all die? Some of them might have decided against suicide and left the castle. While there was no evidence of it, maybe some of them didn’t take poison, and left afterwards. Several volumes of the Order’s spell books were never found, and there were fewer bodies than people expected.
5. How many fewer? Just fewer. It isn’t like anybody knew how many of the Order were left by the time of the suicide.
6. Why did it take so long to find out that the Order was dead? The Order kept to themselves after the war. They no longer took part in town activities or even library activities.
The castle is built on an old Karuat burial ground. It is a place of power, a named place, level two. This is the power that the Illustrators tapped to summon the demon Eliazu. Eliazu is an emotional demon. It feeds off of fear. It has the demonic powers of surface telepathy, summon unnamed demon, raise skeleton corpse, influence, and burn. Eliazu has twenty demonic power points saved.
Eliazu has a Charisma of 16, an Intelligence of 15, and a Wisdom of 14.
Certain things can alert Eliazu to the characters’ presence. If they pass within sight of his skeletons (see The Basement), he will notice where they are if he is already more or less aware of their presence. Otherwise, Eliazu will happen to be watching, and will notice, on a d20 roll of 8 or less whenever a character passes in sight of one of its skeletons.
Since Eliazu isn’t paying a lot of attention to the upper levels, it will take a few days to notice that a summoned creature is gone. Once Eliazu notices it will pay more attention, as described above. Every time the characters kill a summoned creature or creatures, or if the characters completely chase off the goblins, roll 2d4 for the number of days it takes Eliazu to notice. Only the earliest time is likely to matter, because once Eliazu notices one thing wrong, it will check everything else.
Once Eliazu becomes aware of the characters’ presence, it will try to influence them to do what it wants. Usually, “what it wants” is either for them to get out and never come back (death is the preferred way of doing this), or go down to the bottom and set Eliazu free. But Eliazu will need to be pretty sure of their ability and will before it influences them towards the latter. They must be powerful enough to perform the ritual, and weak-willed enough to be influenced.
Eliazu doesn't know everything that goes on if it can’t be seen through the skeletons, but can get a good idea by skimming the surface of their thoughts. Anything they say out loud, Eliazu can hear bits and pieces of. Eliazu’s “influence” is usually limited to new thoughts popping into their heads. These will be extremely subtle: they'll come from you as things their character would have known. "Oh, I didn't realize that, but of course I knew that." This influence can give the characters a penalty of two on any rolls to do things that they aren’t so sure about, such as looking for secret doors (there might not be any at all). If the character recognizes that such influence is happening, the penalty will not apply.
Remember that if it is willing to spend the necessary demonic power points, Eliazu can try to more actively influence its opponents. They are allowed a willpower roll to resist his influence. This roll will be at a bonus of six on the path below the castle, and at a bonus of two on the castle grounds. The act being influenced must be somewhat reasonable. The influence will manifest itself as a strong desire.
Eliazu can, once aware of a character’s presence, carry on conversations with them via telepathy, but is unlikely to do so. This would arouse unnecessary suspicions. The demon will stick to giving them ideas that result in (a) their death, (b) Eliazu’s freedom, or (c) their leaving and never coming back.
If Eliazu manages to take over a host body, Eliazu will retain the physical abilities of that host. Mental abilities will be Eliazu’s. Eliazu will have the special powers of invisibility and magic resistance 5. Eliazu will start at level 5. Eliazu does not need to sleep. Eliazu may call on the host’s memories on a successful Learning roll. The host is completely suppressed, barring some mistake in the summoning ritual. Eliazu also retains the powers it had while trapped in the statue.
Since the castle is close to a town, the players may well decide to have their characters head back to town and rest of for extended periods before heading deeper into the castle. This is perfectly reasonable. But Eliazu will try to convince them not to, or at least not to tell anyone about the secrets they’ve discovered.
First, Eliazu will not want a big party of investigators running through the castle. Remind the players that if they bring anybody up, they’ll have to share any of the treasure that they find. Also--Eliazu won’t know this, but anyone familiar with the Tutors will--the Tutors will take anything that is remotely of historical value.
If there is anything else that Eliazu knows about the characters’ desires that can be used in a subtle manner, use that also.
Eliazu will also try to summon or create creatures that will assist it against the player characters. If it has any source of fear, it can replace any lost summoned creatures, and re-attract any lost attracted creatures.
Attracting evil creatures takes time. First of all, there have to be some evil creatures in range, such as on the path below the castle. Then, Eliazu can only influence two or three of them, in hopes that all will follow. All it can give them is a little nudge, a little snippet of desire for an abandoned castle or a broken tower. There must be something inside them already that responds to the desire. Once they stay inside the castle for a while, Eliazu will work further on improving its influence over them.
If the goblins are killed, for example, it may be several weeks or even months before a similar band of evil creatures are near enough to be seduced by Eliazu’s siren call of power and security.
If they go back to town, the kind of assistance that they receive will depend on how they go about getting it. Any proof that there is a completely unexplored level beneath the castle will result in numerous groups and individuals heading up to the castle. A few individuals will probably arrive first. The Tutors, who are experienced at taking advantage of new knowledge, will probably arrive second. Eliazu will choose people of power and low will and try to influence them. “This castle could all be yours, with the right laws.” Eliazu might suggest to a weak-willed sorceror, especially one with political power, that this place must be on a place of power. Since getting people to leave is going to be out of the question, Eliazu is going to want to limit things to a small group of people who have or can reasonably be shown the power to set the demon free, and who can be tricked or influenced into doing so.
There will be a lot of political fallout over the discovery of the new level. Eliazu will take advantage of that as well. Remember that Eliazu isn’t yet powerful. The demon can make many suggestions, but actually nudging someone to a course of action affords them a saving roll, and can only be done three times per day.
If the characters bring it only to the attention of the Tutors, the Tutors will keep it a secret, at least until they’ve been able to explore the place. How the Tutors handle it, and how much they keep the player characters in the loop, will depend on the PC’s relationship with the Tutors.
You probably do not want to have the Tutors save the day. That’s a boring story. Let a splinter group move their base of operations to the castle. This splinter group will come further and further under the influence of Eliazu. The characters (perhaps in conjunction with the Biblyon Tutors) will eventually, at a higher level, need to face off with Eliazu and Eliazu’s Tutor spies, sorcerors, and warriors, perhaps to stop them from freeing Eliazu, or to send the freed Eliazu back to the shell.
The stone outer wall of the castle grounds is ragged and overgrown, standing out against the ground like a demented giant’s grimy teeth. The castle grounds are overgrown with weeds and tall grass interspersed among young trees. To the southeast a mild reek wafts on the breeze towards you.
The castle stands stark against the cliff face behind it. The side towers have caved in and taken part of the second floor with them. Empty windows high above the ground stare back at you like vacant eyes, unblinking, unmoving, except for a single shutter that sways open and shut in the wind far above the crenellated battlements.
What may have once been a wooden addendum barely stands against the south wall of the castle. A pair of imposing wooden doors shield the secrets of Illustrious Castle from your prying eyes.
If they look closely they might see arrow slits and spy holes in the entry hall. The roof of the castle is slanted, both for snow and to avoid enemies trying to come down the mountain.
The outer wall of the castle grounds is in decay and can be easily circumvented anywhere. It was not patched reliably after the Great War. The guardhouse at the gates was wood and stone. The wood has fallen entirely, and some of the stone after it. It has no roof. There are tiny rodents living among the ruins of the guardhouse, but that’s about it.
There are two levels of windows on the castle: about twenty feet up are the high windows for the main ballroom (2), the entrance (1), and the servant’s quarters (7) and old meeting room (8) on the south. About thirty-five feet up are windows in the upstairs rooms: the long hallway and the lounge (13). All windows have shutters; most are gone except for the one that keep swinging.
The towers were of the kind that jut out from the upper floor. There were three, one in the southwest, one in the northwest, and one in the northeast corners. The battlements are about fifteen feet up. To get to them, you had to go through the towers, making it difficult to get to them now.
The grounds are overgrown with weeds and tall grass. Careful searching in the area marked as the Old Bazaar will reveal the remains of wooden frames and stone frames, burned and destroyed by the goblins in the war. Anything that remained of the frames that was not burned, was taken by farmers after the Order destroyed itself.
The tunnels marked on the map were dug by the Goblins. They do intend to keep this castle, and can use the tunnels to outflank any attackers--they’re expecting hobgoblins, but will also repulse humans or anyone else if they think they can. The tunnels are approximately two to three yards underground, a foot wide and two to three feet in diameter. The dots show where the tunnels reach the surface.
There is a large pile of dirt near each of the holes. If the characters search them, they are likely to find (a perception roll) an odd, bird-like skull. Characters with some sort of knowledge that applies might recognize it as not bird-like, but more crab-like. These strange bones were found as the goblins dug underground, and are very old Karuat bones.
There are few wandering monsters in this area. The general wildlife has learned to avoid it, and the Goblins will only attack if they need to repulse invaders or if they feel they have something to gain. Every hour, however, there is a 5% chance of an encounter with one of the other denizens of the castle or its grounds:
|
Encounter |
Number |
Maximum |
See Room |
|
|
01-50 |
Large spider |
1 |
5 |
8 |
|
51-65 |
Rats |
1d8 |
200 |
10 |
|
66-75 |
Coppersnakes |
1 |
4 |
14 |
|
76-80 |
Striga |
1d6 |
9 |
16 |
|
81-88 |
Blood hawks |
1d2 |
2 |
20, upstairs |
|
89-90 |
Crown of Eyes |
1 |
2 |
13, upstairs |
|
91-00 |
Killer toads |
1d2 |
11 |
stagnant pool |
See the entry hall description for more details about the Goblins, but remember that they are keeping watch on the grounds.
A stagnant puddle, trying hard to be a swamp, sends a pungent reek into the still air around the castle. Large, slow bugs swarm within the reeds and tall grass, and thick-leafed plants grow about the green-encrusted water. The reek seems to bring its own rich, fetid warmth to the air.
When any creature comes within four yards of the swamp’s edges, the chance of wandering monsters increases to a 20% chance every ten minutes, and the encounter will be with d4 killer toads. There are a maximum of 11 killer toads in the swamp.
The Goblins have learned to stay clear of the swamp.
The stagnant pool is actually an overgrown well. Water flows into the well from an underground source, diverted by the Dwarves, but it has been clogged up with vegetation and dirt. In working condition it would have poured down into the underground and further down into the main river (which the Dwarves never reached). The blockage blocks up both the hole and the well, Water soaks through the vegetation and up through the well and through the ground, as well as down into the Secret Places (area 16). The water is warm, about seventy to seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit, as it comes from a warm spot within the mountains. Thus, this tiny little “swamp” remains warm and lush year-round.
The water comes out about thirty feet down. The vegetation can hold about a hundred pounds without partially collapsing so that whatever was on it falls through. Below the vegetation, the hole slides down at a steep angle, several hundred feet to the Secret Places area 16. The clogged area can be burrowed through; the toads occasionally do. Otherwise, however, the water lies stagnant and occasionally overflows down the hill and over the cliff.
Killer Toads (fantastic: 2; Move: 6/12; Attacks: 2 claws; Defense: +2; Damage: 1d2/1d2; Special Attack: bite)
Beneath the dry, crackling shade of the pine trees, brown needles crunch underfoot. The cliff's face is grey stone, rugged and clean, with a jagged gash leading into darkness.
Out behind the trees, and covered in foliage now, is a crack in the cliff face. The crack in the cliff is a foot and a half wide at its widest and four feet tall, though it widens inside. It can be traversed, albeit very carefully. It leads to the back rooms of the castle where the large snakes and strigae are.
Wooden walls partially covered and partially destroyed by old landslides and mudslides rot inwards to what was once a horse stable. Many of the boards of the wall are gone completely. The north wall of the stable is the castle wall, and the wall itself has partially cracked, leaving a sliver of a hole in the side of the castle. To the southeast, beyond a small copse of trees, the side of the mountain runs diagonally south and west.
The stables were never fully repaired after the Great War. Nothing beyond insects or an occasional rodent live in the stables. The large spiders from room 7 might be attracted by an undue amount of noise in this area. The wall has partially caved in to room 7, leaving a thin crack that a shorter character might be able to slip through--and that the spiders definitely can.
There is also a secret (on this side) door into the old meeting room (8). The door is kept closed by the goblins, but is not as secret as it once was due to age and neglect. Rolls to see it are at a bonus of 2.
Most of the destruction on the first and second floors of the castle are the result of decades of looting by local farmers and the townsfolk. The goblins had little to do with it.
The rooms are all quite large. Each has many columns holding up the ceiling. Those that are not ballrooms or kitchens once had moveable walls for partitioning on the fly.
The columns are arranged so that there are arched columns beneath the walls of the upstairs level. All rooms except for the entry hall and the side halls are ten yards high. The entry hall and side halls are four yards high to make room for the battlements above them. (The battlements run along the west (front) and north walls.
The entry hall is guarded night and day by three Goblins. They watch through large arrow slits on either side of the main doors. If they see anyone outside, one of them will retreat to room 3, through the small (1 yard by 1 foot) hole in the corner of the room adjoining room 3. That one will warn the other 39 Goblins.
In the back area of the castle, on the northeast side, piles of rock and dirt from the mountainside allow characters (or creatures) to climb up to the upstairs level, or down from the upstairs level to the main level.
There are few wandering monsters while the Goblins remain in force. Eliazu has decided that the goblins are worth keeping, now that he’s taken away their leader. Eliazu feeds off of their fear. The chance for a wandering encounter with a non-Goblin (the Goblins should be handled by the game master) will be 10% every two hours. If the Goblins are killed or chased away, the chance for random encounters increases to 10% every hour.
|
Encounter |
Number |
Maximum |
See Room |
|
|
01-10 |
Strigae |
1d2 |
9 |
16 |
|
11-35 |
Large Spiders |
1 |
5 |
8 |
|
36-90 |
Rats |
1d8 |
200 |
10 |
|
91-00 |
Coppersnakes |
1 |
4 |
14 |
On nights of the full moon, and on Hallowe’en, there is always the chance that the ghost of Tragos d’Illus will haunt the castle. See the description of the Scepter of Tragos for details.
You will need to adjust this flavor text depending on how recently the goblins have been here. This assumes that they literally just left. (And the doors won’t swing shut unless no one’s holding them.)
The smell of fried foods permeates this room, and discarded bones almost tower in every corner, and lie scattered on the floor. Straight ahead, two large double doors swing nearly imperceptibly, and stop. To their left, strange skittering noises emanate from a dark, jagged hole in the stone wall.
Two smaller wooden doors lead to the north, and one to the south.
The entrance doors swing shut with a prophetic thud. Beneath the flickering light of your torches the bones and the walls seem nearly alive.
In this room, the characters will find discarded fried and heavily salted rat bones and a couple of makeshift four-sided dice with Goblin markings (Rangers, Elves, and others familiar with goblin lore might recognize the markings).
One to three minutes after the guards see someone or something that they consider a threat, there will be eight Goblins stationed in room 3. The other 19 Goblin fighters will be on the move. Ten of them will, one minute afterwards (thus, two to four minutes after the guards see someone), be in the hallway opposite area 6, and the other nine will be with the twelve noncombatants (eight younger Goblins, four Goblin females) in room 4. One minute after that (so, three to five minutes after the Goblin guards see a threat), those nine Goblins will have left the noncombatants and be moving towards area 6. One minute later, they will be in area 6 (the Gaming Room).
All of this travel will be done through the tunnels except for the nine Goblins who will use the doors to go from area 3 to area 4, then from area 4 to area 5, and finally from area 5 to area 6.
|
Minutes |
Goblins In |
|
1d3 |
8 in Small Ballroom, 10 moving from Main Ballroom to hallway opposite Gaming Room, 9 moving with women and children to Old Kitchen. |
|
+1 |
8 in Small Ballroom, 10 in Hallway opposite Gaming Room, 9 in Old Kitchen |
|
+1 |
8 in Small Ballroom, 10 in Hallway, 9 moving from Old Kitchen to Gaming Room. |
|
+1 |
8 in Small Ballroom, 10 in Hallway, 9 in Gaming Room |
If the characters proceed beyond the Entry Hall, the Goblins will attack. If they go down the main hallway, the Goblins in room 3 will rush out the main doors to initiate the attack. If available, the Goblins in area 6 and across the way will join the attack one round later. Similar strategies will be used by the Goblins if the adventurers take a different route from the Entry Hall, except that it will take the Goblins from room 3 three rounds to join combat in one of the side areas.
At night, the Goblins will act similarly, except that 1d20 of the fighters and 1d12 of the non-fighters will be off foraging. They will still divide their forces up relatively evenly, but will not divide into groups smaller than their opponents, nor will they fight if outnumbered. Because they are not tired, they will be able to muster their number in one to six rounds after seeing someone they consider a threat. They will also consider using the goblin holes to attack the characters in the castle grounds if they have the time--but they won’t do this unless they are sure that the characters are going to be attempting an entry of the castle. They’d really rather not fight at all, but they will defend their new home.
If the Goblins lose seven or more of their number with no loss from the party, the Goblins will run in any way possible, including the Goblin holes. They will escape down the cliff, and come back later in the hopes that the characters have left or might be more vulnerable. Two will escort the non-combatants out if possible.
None of the Goblins speak Anglish. All speak at least a few words of Hobgoblin, and some speak it fluently. All, of course, speak Goblin.
Goblins (chaotic evil; faerie: 1; Move: 8; Attacks: 1; Defense: +4 leather/shield; Damage: 1d6 short sword)
Clearly, this room was once the main ballroom of a wealthy order. In the dusty light from high windows the pillars and columns futilely fight decay and ill use, like aging thespians who refuse to admit the death that lies on their faces. Shutters on the windows droop loosely.
Wooden stools and chairs that look almost to have been made both by and for children are scattered about the room. The sour smell of old fruit and the rank smell of old meat permeates the air. Beneath the heavy stink is the faint smell of good wine.
Where once-ornate tables and chairs stood, there are goblin-made stools and tables. The tables are slightly rotten, the chairs mostly busted, and there are Goblin-leavings everywhere. This includes fried rat parts, fruit cores, unleavened bread, and tattered clothing. The Goblins didn’t even clean out the place before moving in, so the corners and floors beneath their junk is still scattered with old, dried rat turds, dirt, rat skeletons, and a couple of giant rat skeletons (the characters may not recognize the latter, perhaps mistaking them for a large rodent they’re more familiar with).
In the corner adjacent to the entry hall is a small hole that the Goblins can use, but that anyone human-sized would have trouble getting through.
Salvageable treasure includes a large barrel of salt stolen only a month ago. It is still good under the crusted top and could be worth as much as fifty shillings in Biblyon or seventy in Black Stag. In Crosspoint it would be worth no more than forty. The barrel weighs sixty pounds.
There is an open barrel of wine here, half empty, and an empty barrel as well.
If there are goblin noncombatants in here when the characters enter, they will rush out of one of the far doors, either the one to room 4 or the one to the main hallway, depending on where the characters enter from.
A large fireplace dominates this large room. Tall pillars rise to the ceiling some ten yards up.
Small creatures, mockeries of human shapes, huddle in the far corner, a slightly larger creature herding them quickly through a door in the far wall.
Like the main ballroom, this room is in disrepair but was clearly once grand. There is a large fireplace in the wall adjacent to the old kitchen. During a battle, the noncombatant Goblins will hide here.
A huge, rusty black kettle sits in a large fireplace. A pile of rocks on the south wall lean heavily against a wooden door. Another door across from you lies slightly ajar.
A hearth on the wall adjacent to the small ballroom (and part of that room’s fireplace) still holds a large, rusty, black kettle which the Goblins use. There are the remains of a rat mushroom stew in the kettle. The utensils in this room have long since been scavenged by the townspeople.
The door to the servant’s quarters, which opens towards the kitchen, have recently been blocked by rocks taken from outside to keep the spiders out.
If they attempt to enter this hallway from the outside, the door is blocked shut by rocks. A strength roll, at a penalty of 3, will be required to open it enough to get through. The characters will receive a slightly different description depending on whether they come in on the north end or the south end.
A long, thin corridor leads down to a door at the far end. The long west wall is heavy stonework, the east wall a lighter stonework. A pile of (what may be) rocks leans against the (walls or door) (far down or to your right/left) in the hallway.
The doors to the servants’ quarters and to the outside have been recently blocked by rocks, placed there by the Goblins to keep the spiders away. The Goblins rarely use this hallway, and are only likely to come here as part of their attack plan.
Brightly-colored circles abound on the walls. On one wall, a circle of triangles, with apparently random numbers and symbols, stands out. On another wall a series of circles of varying sizes each contain triangular sections. The room is almost bare, except for a few barrels and the occasional spider web in the corners. There is another doorway on the opposite side, through which you can see darkness.
Behind the barrels are a pile of dirt (the hole in the ground), the chest, and some piles of money. The door to the main ballroom is gone.
The Knights of the Order were heavily into games of chance and games of angles. There is a pool table here, although all the pool balls are gone and the legs as well. A wheel, sort of like a roulette wheel, is embedded into the wall, although it no longer turns. A tattered chess board has been tossed into one corner, though this was not original. The goblins stole it from elsewhere. You can still occasionally find pool balls, chess pieces, and dice from the castle in the Biblyon bazaar. The wheel has fallen face down to the ground, and the tables are in the same shape as everything else in this castle.
The Goblins are using this room as their treasure room. They recognize treasure in their raids, but they don’t know what to do with it yet--Goblins are not welcome in the towns of Highland. The Hobgoblins used unscrupulous human intermediaries; the Goblins haven’t figured this out yet.
There are piles of money: 159 shillings, 123 pennies, 298 half pennies, and 989 farthings. There is a small, fancy chest. It has no lock. It contains a silver set (i.e., forks, spoons, knives). It weights 30 pounds and is worth 225 shillings in Black Stag or 175 shillings in Crosspoint.
They are also storing their wine barrels here. There are two wine barrels and two ale barrels. The Goblins think that they’re all wine barrels, or they would have the ale out in the main room along with the one opened wine barrel. The barrels state clearly what is in each barrel, but it is written in Anglish, and the Goblins don’t know how to read. One of the barrels of ale has gone bad. The other is worth five shillings. The two wine barrels are worth as much as thirty shillings.
As if from a tailor’s shop gone awry, translucent grey threading covers this room in a web-like pattern. A fat, bulbous spider a foot wide at least stares at you with red, unblinking eyes.
The spider skitters into the mass of webbing, disappearing from sight. The gray filaments ripple outwards, as waves on a lake, with the great spider’s passing.
Dim shadows dance across the walls and ceiling from your light and from an opening in the south wall.
Thick webbing covers the servants’ quarters, which was once a set of bunks and compartments, the walls of which (like bankers’ walls) have been taken away. Unless many of the spiders have already been killed, there will be d3+2 large spiders.
Large Spiders (animal: 1; Survival 6, 5, 4, 6, 6; Move: 10; Attacks: 1; Defense: +2; Damage: 1, Poison)
There are two Goblin skeletons in here, a half-eaten Goblin child, and an adult Human skeleton. Scattered about the human skeleton are 5 shillings, 4 pennies, 12 half-pennies, and 30 farthings.
The spiders, unless they have recently fed (and if possible, they will drag any large kill to this room), will very likely attack any large flesh that moves in here.
A crack in the south wall leads to the old stables.
Light from a high window illuminates a deserted room, devoid of anything except a large pile of dirt several yards (ahead of you or a few feet to your left). Even the spider webs seem to have left this room alone, although there are rat droppings and a few dead birds in the nooks. There is a (doorway to your left and a door straight ahead or door to your right and a door far to your left or a door on the far wall and a doorway next to it on the right wall).
In the castle’s heyday, this was where mighty warriors and great tacticians met to plan battles. Unfortunately, they didn’t plan well enough to keep the Orcs from the gates. The table is still here, but some farmers have tried to axe it apart. The goblins have dug a hole into the floor for entrance into their tunnels.
This is what the villagers thought was the library. They took not only the books, but the shelves as well.
The goblins originally had their tunnels going to the old stable, but after a scene reminiscent of “Alien” where they had to fight off a large spider in the tunnels, they’ve blocked off the tunnel going east from this hole.
What first appears to be an irregular far wall, you quickly realize is the mountainside. This triangular room is empty except for scraggly, thin weeds growing in clumps at the edges. There is another doorway to your (left or right), through which you can vaguely see the outlines of another room.
The far wall of this room is the mountainside. While it was once used for storage of extra furniture, weapons, and decorations, all of the useful stuff has long since been ransacked by the townspeople, farmers, and now the Goblins. There are only a few broken pieces of furniture that were too large to scavenge.
Tails and grey bodies lay tangled about the floor, chittering at you in a high-pitched, squeaky whine. The floor seems almost carpeted in rats.
One wall comes in at a sharp angle, and the other wall is irregularly shaped, a dingy plaster cracking off of it. Thin fissures crack the floor, far wall, and ceiling of the room, leading down and into unending darkness.
The original builders took advantage of a natural fissure to the Old Deer River and built the bathrooms here, making this one of the few castles, if not the only castle, to have a semblance of indoor plumbing. The same fissure goes up as well as down; at one time, the fissure in the “ceiling” was covered, but the covering has fallen in. Some giant rats are using this little cubbyhole as their home. The Goblins have been planning on ridding the castle of the rats, but haven’t figured out how yet. They don’t know about Tragos’ eternally decaying body. There are hundreds of rats throughout the bathrooms and the fissure.
The rat’s lair is about ten feet into the fissure, where it widens for a bit and then also heads towards the fissures around the “secret entrance” near the old stable.
In the rat’s lair is the dead body of Tragos d’Illus, still in the shiny clothing of the leader of the order. His body is unnaturally preserved in a rotting state, richly arrayed in rotting clothing. He wears an emerald on an iron ring (100 shillings) on his left pinky, a beautiful intricately-patterned gold ring (250 shillings) on his left ring finger, and a pearl rosary (400 shillings) around his belt. Clenched in his right hand is a scepter of gold and silver (500 shillings). The gaping hole in his right side, if examined, reveals that his right rib is missing.
Rats mill, uncaring, around a rotting corpse, richly arrayed in tattered, stinking clothing and jewels. It clenches a scepter in one hand. Tiny maggots burrow and crawl from a gaping hole in its side, as well as from its eyes, mouth, nose, and ears. As the maggots writhe about the face, the head flops to one side and gazes at you with maggoty orbs. A beetle drops out of the mouth. Rats feed on the maggots and the insects.
See the description of “The Scepter of Tragos d’Illus” for more about the scepter.
Rats (animal: 1pt; Move: 8; Attacks: 1 bite or claw; Defense: 0; Damage: 1pt)
The huge double doors swing open to reveal a wide, deep room. A great fireplace in the far wall opens to the outer corridor, and a huge pot-bellied stove nestles in the far right corner, its empty doorway gaping at you. What was once a counter ringing the room has been torn away and is mostly gone. The wind whistles from an empty hole above the stove.
The stove has been stripped bare of anything that can be removed, including the chimney. Once the bustling kitchen of a great Order, even the Goblins have no use for this kitchen today. The great fireplace uses too much wood to keep going. There are recent ashes from when they tried. Most anything of any value has been taken from the room already, although a pot-bellied stove remains, which the ransackers couldn’t figure out how to remove. They tried, though.
There is a recipe plastered (by age) to the counter. It’s called Venison Stew, but it’s the same as the Illustrious Stew which the townsfolk are proud of. It is hand-written, and was in fact what was being made at the time of the summoning.
Stone benches line the wide hallway, flanking an engraved pyramid, open to reveal the books and scribes inside.
The castle has shifted slightly in its foundation over the past few hundred years, and the secret doors to this section of the castle are stuck. A Strength roll at a penalty of 10 is required to open the secret door. The door is hidden in the engraving. One of the books in the engraving must be pulled out to unlock the door. The door then opens inwards if pushed hard enough.
The double doors fall to your assault and burst open. Two sets of plate armor sit, rusted and bent, on a fuzzy bench to your left. Swords dangle by their sides, and skeletal fingers lie broken around short halberds that lean against the armor. Behind them a snake twines itself around a fruit tree, almost like a mosaic in the rocks of the left wall. On the far wall, a short sentence is inscribed above a great pyramid.
To your right are a pair of small double doors.
Here, the rotting and decay has gone on as in the rest of the castle, but less has been ransacked. Two chairs flank what was once a sofa on the north wall, and two armored fighters sit in the chairs. They are skeletons now; they wear ceremonial plate and carry long swords and a ceremonial halberd.
The pictures are painted on the wall’s rocks, which are embedded into the dirt. In fact, they are almost a mosaic, although many of the rocks contain multiple colors.
On the far wall, a picture of a pyramid, with a great army around it and a king, and the inscription:
“Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where the philosophers of this world? The learning of the wise shall perish. I will make drunk the princes, and their wise men, their captains and rulers, and their mighty men. They shall sleep for a thousand years while I lay low their pyramids, and make secrets of their wisdoms in the mountains.”
There are other chairs, sofas, and tables scattered throughout the room.
On this side, the secret door to the main part of the castle is not secret, and opens with an obvious lever on the west wall.
To the right are double doors leading to a hallway. They open normally, though they are slightly stuck (strength roll at a bonus of three to open). On opening the door, cold wet air meets them:
You force the doors open, and find yourself in a cold, wet hallway that reeks of sweat and mulch.
To the left a single hidden door leading to a stairway. The door is hidden by the edges of the mosaic’s tiles. On opening the hidden door, dry air meets the characters. See the basement flavor text in the next section. The hidden door is to the right of the sofa and the guards, and is activated by pushing in on one of the stones. The door will pop open slightly.
You hear the scraping sounds you make against the slanted walls echo lightly back to you, and that is all you hear. The place is deathly silent. (A rank smell grows or The rank smell continues) as you twist your way down the cramped cave. The thin pathway widens into a wider cavernous opening, filled with a mucky pool of brackish brown liquid. Two other thin pathways continue out of this opening. The slimy pool extends, completely still, through (both of or one of) them.
The shallow pool in this cave extends through the East and North Campuses, and is the home of a den of poisonous coppersnakes. If the snakes have not been killed elsewhere, there is a 20% chance per hour that d4 will be encountered here. In the winter, the snakes are almost certainly here, hibernating beneath the pool.
Coppersnakes (animal: 1/4; Survival 1, 1, 2, 2; Move: 12; Attacks: 1; Defense: +2; Damage: 1, poison: 0/1 round/d2)
A brackish brown liquid covers half of this wide room, emanating a stench of almost physical force. The water flows into a thin, tall crack in the left wall. Skeletons in various states of repose lie in tattered ribbons of cloth on rotten wooden benches or bunks along the walls. Rats crawl in and out of skulls and rib-cages.
The door to the hallway that leads to this room opens outwards, into the wider hallway, and towards the main door. The floor of these living quarters are covered in water from the smelly pool. There is a 20% chance every ten minutes that d4 of the snakes (if they still live) will be encountered here, rising to 40% if the muck in the far corner is dug into. Sunk into the far southeast corner, barely visible, is a small chest. It is rotten, and pulling it out of the muck is likely to tear it apart completely. Resting near the chest are a rusted dagger and sword in the muck.
Inside the chest are ten shillings, and fifteen silver coins made specially for the Order. There is also a gold ring, with a Latin engraving inside. The gold ring is worth 25 shillings (it would probably be worth double without the engraving, which is a declaration of love to a woman named “Nancy”).
A crack in the stone wall leads to the South Campus, and another crack along the same “fault” leads to the caves and the smelly pool. The cracks are small, from three to four feet wide, and five to six feet tall.
There are five skeletons of warriors (unarmored) lying among various rotten bunk frames.
Rats (animal: 1pt; Move: 8; Attacks: 1 bite or claw; Defense: 0; Damage: 1pt)
A brackish stench mixed with brimstone almost pushes you back into the hallway. A brownish liquid covers more than half of this wide room, extending out of or into tall, thin cracks in the walls. Piles of bones rest in chairs, their skulls lying on floors or tables beside them. Skeletons lie half in and half out of the muck, and rest on what may have once been straw and cloth but now is covered in mold upon mold. Nestled within the ribcages of the skeletons strange birds turn their long-beaked heads towards you. Their eyes glint a dingy yellow in your torchlight. Two or three of them flap their dirt-red wings and take to the air, followed immediately by the flock of these screeching creatures.
These living quarters are filled with the stench of death, and perhaps a tinge of sulfur, something the characters shouldn’t really expect given the age of the last occupants. There are twenty or so skeletons sitting in eerily natural positions, as if they simply died while doing something perfectly normal (which, in fact, they did).
The birds are strigae, hellspawn and servants of the demon. They will attack any living creatures entering this room. There are up to nine of them (assuming none have been killed elsewhere). Generally, roll d8 and add one for the total strigae encountered at any time in this room.
Strigae (demon: 1; Survival 3, 5, 2, 6, 5, 4, 3, 5, 1; Move: 18/3; Attacks: 1; Defense: +2; Damage: 1d3, paralyzing screech, blood sucking, magic resistance 1)
In the northeast corner, sitting up out of the water, is an elfen skeleton. The elf was about 6 feet, so must have been old. A headband hanging from the skull is gemmed in the middle with a garnet of deep red, worth 120 shillings. Lying next to the skeleton, in the muck, is a potion of fighting prowess at the seventh level of effect. This grants the drinker a bonus of 1 to attack and defense, and a temporary pool of 2d6 survival points, for fourteen rounds. The glass vial has the emblem of a sword on the waxy stopper. A book wrapped in heavy leather is on the other side. The book is damp and many pages are unreadable. See the appendix for the diary of Ensender Eanderon. On the elf’s finger is a silver ring carved finely with images of rabbits jumping. This is the ring of lemordin.
There is a 10% chance of a random encounter every hour. The Blood Hawks and the Crowns of Eyes are nocturnal, and will be quite skittish during the day, but may be encountered. Usually, they’ll be in their “nest”, but if they hear lots of noise they may either investigate or try to hide, depending on the circumstances.
|
Encounter |
Number |
Maximum |
See Room |
|
|
01-10 |
Strigae |
1d2 |
9 |
16 (First Floor) |
|
11-20 |
Large Spiders |
1 |
5 |
8 (First Floor) |
|
21-40 |
Blood Hawks |
1d2 |
2 |
3 |
|
41-65 |
Crown of Eyes |
1d2 |
2 |
13 |
|
66-85 |
Sparrow |
1d3 |
NA |
NA |
|
86-00 |
Rats |
1d8 |
NA |
NA |
At night, there is always the chance that the ghost of Tragos d’Illus will haunt the castle. See the description of the Scepter of Tragos for details.
The upstairs is in worse shape than the downstairs. There are holes; in some cases walls have caved in, and if it has been raining it is always wet. Mold covers everything. The inner walls upstairs are wood, as is the floor. If the characters are not unreasonably loud they will probably hear occasional bangs, or bumps, as the shutters in room 8b slam shut in the wind, open, and slam shut again.
Something important to remember is that most of the structural damage occurred before the castle was looted. The walls and towers caved in, at least partially, when the demon was summoned. Thus, some things could not be looted without moving stones; some stones were never moved, and axes used instead to separate what could be looted from what could not.
Through the holes in the walls in rooms 8a, 10, and 11, jumbles of stones from the walls and rocks and dirt from the mountainside form a ramp that allows travel from upstairs to the main level, and vice versa.
Dust settles on the floorboards of a vacant room. There are hinges in the doorway, but no door. On the inner wall are crudely carved notes and names: “Rick Overton, 1943”. “I have 3 chairs. may sell. Dan Filwood”. “Emma & Peter, 1953” carved into a crude heart.
Just about everything has been scavenged by the locals. Even the door is missing.
Stone from a gaping hole at the end of the hallway partially blocks the entrance to this room.
You step over the stones. Inside, a short wooden bench runs along the east wall, and a waist-high shelf along the west wall.
An “Intimate” is a place for small parties or discussions. These each have a couch at the north end, but no chairs (they used to have them, but they were taken), a bench at the east end, and a waist-height shelf (bar) at the west end.
Beneath a large hole in the ceiling lie a few shingles and rotten timbers mixed with green branches and long grass woven into a vaguely bowl-like structure. Sunlight from the hole in the ceiling glints sharply off of something hidden in the branches and grass.
Two fat birds sit within the green branches and brown grass. They glare at you with red eyes and raise red-tinged wings as they lift themselves upon taloned feet. Rawk!
The north wall is covered in a weathered etching of a great city with a small, winding river going through it. Women wash clothing within the river while men gather carts together and fill them.
A large hole is in the ceiling, and beneath it lie timbers and rocks. Actually, fewer timbers than there should be, most have since been taken. One was taken before the roof fell in, and may be part of why it fell in. Two blood hawks, drawn to the demon’s power, have nested here. Blood hawks have a reputation for nastiness, probably due to the prized nature of their eggs; they won’t attack unless approached. Within the nest are some items scavenged from other parts of the upstairs. These include a tarnished silver ring worth 75 shillings, a diamond ring worth 275 shillings, and a gold necklace worth 250 shillings. The black-encrusted silver ring is a twisting of silver into the shape of perhaps a hundred tiny ants crawling about each other. It is one symbol of the Insect Queen of the True Family. Inside the ring are engraved the words “none cures just riches”. It was taken from the ruins of the castle, and belonged to Wendell Redstar. Wendell took it from the Stigmas di Cristo. The other two pieces of jewelry were taken from the goblins.
The hawks are here all of the time in the day, and 60% each at night (during the summer) or 35% each at night (during the winter, as they must forage further). In the spring, the female hawk will lay seven eggs, which will hatch in June.
The north wall is covered in a weathered painting/etching of a great city with a small, winding river going past.
2 blood hawks (fantastic: 2; Survival 8, 9; Move: 8/25; Attacks: 3; Defense: +3; Damage: 1d4/1d4/1d6)
You enter through an empty doorway. Inside, a short wooden bench runs along the west wall, and a waist-high shelf along the east wall. On the north wall is a faded etching of a man riding over a desert hill on a donkey. The man’s path crosses between two fig trees, the one on his left is shriveled and barren.
The north wall’s faded painting/etching is of Jesus returning to Jerusalem on an ass, crossing between two fig trees, one of which he has just cursed.
Four vine-encrusted stone pillars, peeling white paint, rise up through the floor and into the ceiling, like Atlas holding up a mountain that crumbles around him. The wind whistles overhead, through the north window, and through the northeast wall, which has completely fallen in. Huge stones lie scattered about the floor, and in piles in the far corner. Behind the broken walls, the side of the mountain looms across an empty gap.
On the south wall, a man in a white robe, with a golden crown suspended over his head, walks regally, almost ethereally, among what looks for all the world like a group of librarians, cataloguing, reading, and shelving tomes and portfolios. Dark clouds recede into the distance, letting a bright shaft of sunlight down to illuminate the library.
Before they used the underground complex for ceremony, this was their throne room. The throne that used to be here is in the library at Biblyon. The south wall has a painting of Jesus, a kingly figure, holding a scepter in a regal manner over the scholars, who work humbly and diligently at copying and studying the written works in their possession.
The pile of dirt and rocks extends just slightly into this doorway. A crack in the corner to your left allows light from outdoors inside, shining in a shaft through dust suspended in the air.
Benches have been removed from the walls; close inspection will reveal this.
The Illustrious Guard used this room to wait for trouble in the ballroom.
The floorboards beneath you creak as you step through this doorway. Your lantern reveals an empty room, dusty and dark. The creaking of the door echoes dully within the small space.
There are holes in the walls where once were hooks for hanging clothing, and larger holes where dowels once went for holding cloth and clothing.
The leader’s dressers waited here, and changed the leader’s garments when the ball moved on to different stages.
Visiting dignitaries’ retinues would stay in these rooms. There would have been small, simple dressers, and cots in each, none of which remain.
A hole in the far right wall shows the rocky mountain side. A jumble of stones beneath the hole weighs down the stalwart beams of the castle’s floor. This wide room is empty but for the stones, and the dust and mud that covers the area.
The wooden door is stuck open, jammed into the floor by an uneven wall. Shutters bang against the outside wall. The shutters are in poor repair, as is the entire room. The right wall has been destroyed by the outer wall falling in upon it. A pile of stones lies upon the wooden floor. Faded pieces of wood stick out from beneath the great stones. The floor itself is bent down by the weight.
A part of one of the wooden dividers remains beneath the caved-in wall. Axe marks show where someone cut what they could from the divider and left the rest to the stones.
The stone wall has fallen into the room itself. A pile of stones, dirt, and bird droppings in the far corner extends into the adjacent room. Closer to you, broken shards of pottery are scattered about the floor. To your right, an ornately-carved oaken tub remains relatively intact.
The broken shards are from water casks that were underneath the wall when it fell. Any casks that survived were taken by the villagers. The tub is carved with vines, thorns, and grapes. It shows its age and its exposure to the weather, but is still in decent shape. It weights 220 pounds, and could go for as much as 200 shillings in Crosspoint or Black Stag.
This room was used for storing water, wine, food, and other items that visitors and VIPs might need.
The partially open door opens only with a strong push. It grates against the floor. Wind whistles between the mountainside and the open back wall. Stones and dirt litters the floor.
Beneath the stones in the far end of the room are some sheets and shattered jugs and bowls. Otherwise, this room is empty. It was used for visitors to store clothing, supplies, etc.
The door is jammed against the frame and the floor, and refuses to budge.
You force the door open. It scrapes loudly against the floor, tearing into itself and the wooden beams of the floor. You see that not only was the door stuck, but it was partially jammed with one of the rocks that lies strewn about the floor. The back wall has completely caved in, covering the back floor with large stones, dirt, and rocks.
The Elf (dead in room 15 on the first floor) was staying here (in 11a). Underneath the rocks is his sword, a +1 Elven Sword, dirty, battered, but still in fine shape. Also here are some letters he was writing, but they will probably not be readable; an icon of devotion to Arador, the Elven goddess of memory and learning.
Wood is visible beneath the rocks, barely. Axe marks show where the wood was taken from the stone. These rooms were once lavishly furnished, but everything has been taken.
The door is stuck partially open, barely enough to see that there are rocks and debris on the floor, and not enough for anyone to fit through unless they are “tiny” sized.
You force the door further open. It scrapes loudly against the floor, tearing into itself and the wooden beams of the floor. The back wall has completely caved in, covering the back floor with large stones, dirt, and rocks.
There is nothing particularly special about 11b.
The door, partially open, creaks loudly as you pull it towards you. It opens further with difficulty, and reveals a thin, wide room. A thin aqua-green shelf runs the length of the south portion of the walls.
The wooden shelf once held small water jugs and some bowls to empty the jugs into. Those have all been taken decades ago. The shelf runs along the south wall, and the south portion of the east and west walls. It is about seven inches wide.
The secret door to the spy room is concealed by way of the cabinet which once held the extra water-cask. If the entire cabinet is pushed after the lock is pulled open on the inside of the closet, it moves into the spy room. It can then be pushed back and locked from inside or outside.
You push in on the cabinet and it slides right into the wall. Your light shines into a small room, musty and dry and dark. Three silver goblets on an oaken table in the center reflect the light from your lanterns. There are several chairs around the table.
The spy room was never found by the villagers, so it still contains its five chairs, the three silver goblets (25 shillings each) as well as ten half-shilling wooden goblets. There is an open cask of long-dried wine in one corner of the room.
On the east wall there is a very small hole for spying into the lounge. A small tube, with glass ends, lies beneath the hole, on the floor. One end has cracked, however. This was a wide-angle lens, made by the dwarves, and would have cost quite a bit of money. Even with only one lens left, it can be sold for 50 to150 shillings today.
The door swings in the breeze as you approach it. You push it aside.
Rocks lie in the southwest corner of this wide, deep room, possibly part of a tower that has caved in.
You may want to have each player make a saving roll for their character to determine who will be affected by the sensory assurance spell. Otherwise, they’ll get suspicious when you ask for saving rolls as they poke through the bars.
Two Crowns of Eyes, more of the demon’s creatures, nest here. If the characters have surprised the Crowns during the daylight hours, the Crowns are likely to crawl quickly out of the room and outside. It will appear that they have gone down, but they will quickly circle around the damage and crawl back up the wall. If a character is reckless enough to stick their head out and look down, the Crowns are likely to take advantage of this and jump the character, in hopes of surprise.
One is above the rocks, the other is burrowed into them. During the day, they will see the visible one rush outside; the hidden one will crawl outside as well and join the other in hopes of jumping on someone looking outside.
A grayish, rotting face on the floor turns its pale eyes towards you. The eyes twist away from the blobby grey thing, which sprouts clawed legs and skitters up the wall. It’s eyes grow out from its head on stalks, encircling the thing like a crown. It jerks quickly across the debris in the corner and disappears down the wall outside.
2 Crowns of Eyes (Demon: 2; Survival: 7, 9; Move: 20; Attacks: 1; Defense: +6; Damage: 1d4; Special Attack: explosion, grip; Special Defense: eyes, blunt weapons, heat; Magic Resistance: 1)
At night the Eyes are likely to be out hunting for food.
The north walls of the room look into smaller rooms that have angular reformation and sensory assurance cast permanently on them to make it appear that they are large enough to fill the space that is actually occupied by the secret rooms. The walls of the inner rooms are painted with biblical scenes. Iron bars separate the main room from the scenes.
You look beyond iron bars into a deep room, all three walls and the floor and ceiling painted. A man and woman, completely naked, stand in a lush garden. Surrounding them are trees bearing every kind of fruit.
The walls, floor, and ceiling of this deep room are painted with a forbidding scene. An angel wreathed in flame wields a fiery sword and stands before the golden gates of a great garden. The tips of flowering trees are barely visible beyond the marble walls of the garden.
The secret door to 14 will require a perception roll as normal, but if Eliazu is aware of the characters presence and is aware that they are in this room, this roll will be at a penalty of two.
This thin hallway, walls stained with soot is dark and cramped. Old, simple torch holders are spaced at five-foot intervals, and the wall is scratched with the story of Babel. At the far end, the tower itself is etched into the wall on the right-hand side, men climbing from base to tip like ants on a syrup stick.
Secret door is controlled by the second-to-last torch sconce on the right-hand wall.
You pull on the torch sconce, and the soot-darkened tower drops slightly inward.
You push the secret door inward. A wide room, dark, ringed by a small shelf, a table and chairs. Wooden goblets lay upon their sides on the table. An empty doorway leads into darkness in the far right corner.
You pass through the empty doorway into a small room. Two cots dominate the room, with a small table against the wall, and two chairs on either side of it.
The cots are atop chests. They lift to reveal empty chests.
There are a couple of books here, “donated” by the captured Night Priest Wendell Redstar: Lord Thew’s Family Tales, The Fit May Rule, and Discussing Lesser Families. They are written in Anglish.
In Discussing Lesser Families there is a piece of paper with notes written on it. See the props section for the notes.
The air is stale and dry as you walk slowly down the four-foot-wide steep stone stairs. The walls are of wide stones tightly placed, and varying shades and colors. Your steps echo quietly around you as you descend perhaps five yards. The stairs continue down, but there are also stairs to your right, just ahead of you, descending down into an inky blackness.
Another five yards further and you arrive at the bottom. A hallway extends to your right and left. You hear no sound other than your own armor and footfalls.
The underground complex is spartan but magnificent. At the height of their power, the Order hired the Dwarves of Feltarn to expand their castle underground.
The Dwarves had to be careful, as they recognized that the underground came close to the Order’s proposed expansion, but the challenge was a worthy one.
Eliazu has used some of his growing power to animate three skeletons from the mess halls. He has placed one in the temple entrance (5), one in the new throne room (13), and he has left one in the center mess hall (1). These are standard skeletons, except that Eliazu can “see” through them. They have standard underground vision, and may move relatively silently, although in the extreme silence of the basement careful adventurers may be able to hear something untoward. Characters are allowed normal perception rolls to realize that they are being followed by something just out of sight. Usually only one skeleton will be used at a time. The others will be kept out of sight.
3 Skeletons (Undead: 1; Move: 10; Survival: 6, 7, 5; Attacks: 1; Defense: +3; Damage: 1d8; Special Defense: thrusting weapons do 1 pt, slashing weapons half damage)
Eliazu is unlikely to use these to attack, unless the adventurers have been weakened enough that he believes such an attack will be successful. They are too useful for reconnaissance, and time consuming to remake.
You might occasionally add the following flavor text while walking into rooms or down corridors, once the skeletons are following:
Your footsteps echo, muffled, in the distance.
The walls are stones, embedded in the dirt. Most of the corridors are fairly cramped. The ceiling is at seven and a half feet throughout the basement area. This is all Dwarven work.
There are no true wandering encounters on this level, as there has been no access from up or down since the summoning. The townsfolk never made it down here. Dust lies on the floors thick as down, undisturbed for decades. The air is stale and dry.
If they leave the door open, you may decide on a low (perhaps 5%) chance per six or eight hours of an encounter with something from the first floor’s table.
Dozens of soldiers sit, sleeping, at long wooden tables, plates and cups before them. They sit motionless, their heads bowed to the tables. Some are reduced to skeletons; some are as they died, their skin dry and faded, their hands still clutching grey legs of meat.
The destruction occurred during mealtime. Mummified guards and servants still sit at the tables.
The three different sections of the mess hall are separated by archways. Officers sit at the head of the sections. The officer at the center table has a ring of seven keys and (1) map of the secret places (see Mess Hall Map). One of the keys opens the cells in the dungeon, one opens the coin treasure chest in the Order’s secret treasure room, and the rest open doors that no longer exist in the above-ground castle. The other two officers have a ring of six keys, the same except that they lack a treasure key.
Close examination of the benches will uncover two (or three, if the animated skeleton that normal is here has left) spots, one in each room, where there was once a mummified skeleton--bits and pieces of mummified flesh on the bench where the corpses once sat. Unless Eliazu has been alerted to their presence, one of the animated skeletons will be in the center mess hall. He is unlikely to use them to attack, however, preferring to use them for reconnaissance. If Eliazu notices the characters, this skeleton will follow them out of the hall after they leave.
Anyone searching the 53 skeletons will find d8 silver coins of the Order, up to a total of 249 coins.
A quiet whistle greets you as you walk through the hall into this wide room. (A huge pot is inset into the wall to your right as you walk into room.) Knives, pots, and pans are scattered neatly about the counters that ring the walls. There are two dark doorways on the far wall, to your right, and another on the far wall to your left.
The flue exits up in the mountains, where constant winds suck air up, keeping a flow of air from the cliff to the mountainside; however, both openings have been blocked.
The room itself had been cleaned and organized when the summoning went awry, as the summoning was late at night.
Cooking utensils, pots, and pans hang from the walls and ceiling.
The storeroom is well stocked with cooking utensils and supplies. They should be able to find anything reasonably-sized and cooking-related in this room: knives, forks, spoons, pots, pans, cutting boards, whatever.
You catch a faint whiff of aged vegetables as you approach the open hallway. A quick jog around a corner places you in a room filled with the husks of ancient gourds and roots. Everything is covered in a white, mold-like substance, but even the mold appears dry and cracked with age.
The food in the pantry has dried and caked. Even the mold that grew on the fruits and vegetables has died, dried, and caked by now.
Men and women, faces taut, cracked, and pale, lie sleeping in cots that line the walls. Threadbare blankets partially cover the dead.
There is no money to be had in the servants' quarters.
Purple steps, curved in a semicircle dais at the left end of the hall, lead up to a marbled altar. Two lifelike statues flank the dais, Christ on the right holding a shepherd’s staff in his left hand, and Christ on the left reading from a book in his right hand, his left hand upraised. Wooden kneelers fill the rest of the room.
There are two chalices on the altar, a silver water chalice worth 45 shillings, and a gold wine chalice worth 180 shillings. A gold box (worth 250 shillings) on the altar still contains hosts stamped with the staff of Christ.
A square of fine ash surrounds the altar at a few inches distance. The soot dirties the undersides of the chalices and the box. Eliazu, after the summoning, has used part of his power to begin to defile the church.
The kneelers are oaken.
The statues could go for as much as 200 to 400 shillings in Black Stag or Crosspoint, but are quite heavy--on the order of 300 pounds each.
You step through the small hallway and see the stones in the walls become much more regular: squares in even rows. There are (two guards or one guard) in leather armor, slumped and dry, jumbled onto a kneeler in the left alcove. Another alcove to the right is empty but for the kneeler and the painting. Each alcove contains a wood carving in a centuries-old style. On the left, dyed green, a robed man with a large key in one hand and a scroll in the other looks sternly down upon you. Two barefoot men look pleadingly up to him. He presents the key to the one on his right, and the scroll to the one on his left. In the right alcove, dyed blue, a robed man with a walking staff and his wife look upon a young man in a discussion with elders.
The devotional painting on the left is Jesus giving the key to heaven to St. Peter, and the scroll of law to St. Paul. Written on the scroll is “verum”, “truth” in the Ancient tongue. On the right are Mary and Joseph finding Jesus discussing theology with the rabbis.
This temple was not for the servants, but only for the true members of the Order.
If the characters examine the skeletons, they may notice that one of them has had its clothing and skin deteriorate more than the other. This is because it has been walking about and pieces of its dried clothing and flesh have flaked off.
One of the two skeletons is here only if the demon has not yet been alerted to the party’s presence. If so, remember that the demon might now be alerted. Eliazu may or may not use the skeletons on the characters, preferring to use them for reconnaissance. (If so, the one here will immediately leave; the characters should be given the opportunity to recognize that one skeleton is missing.)
This room is depicted on the cover of this book.
Books and folios line the walls. A long table extends through the center of the room. In the far right corner, a glass door gleams in your light. Behind the glass you can see other books.
While some of the books the order collected were placed in the library at Biblyon, the best of their books were stored here, underground, and safe from looters.
The books are dry and brittle, and in the oldest ones, the pages snap if turned with any force. They might be worth money if transported to someone who buys books. The Library, of course, will want them and will lay a claim to already owning them. All told, the library could be worth from 500 to 4,000 shillings.
Within a glass case are those books that were special to the order. There are quite a few biblical remembrances, and copies of remembrances.
The library specializes in natural philosophies: divining locations, bestiaries, botany, biology. Characters studying from this room can gain a bonus of two trying to research divinations or a bonus of one for other magics.
The glass case contains, among others:
The Travel West: A small journal, it is an account in Ancient by Astix Morellus, the advisor of the Abbot who originally brought the Order across the mountains in the 558th year of the cataclysm. A translation, in Anglish, is in the King’s Common Sitting Room (18).
The Hidden Fullness of Fragmentary Evidence: This book discusses the power of divinatory magic to learn about the history, location, and previous incarnations of objects from the objects themselves. Studying from it grants a bonus of one to divination research regarding the divinations of objects.
Other books in this room include:
Brewing Barley and Wheet: Recipes for brewing beer, including dubious theoretical discussions.
Herbal Lore of the Celts: An anthropological study of Celtic herbal knowledge, collected from various authors.
History of the Pre-Christians: A book that attempts to reconstruct the history of Jews from biblical remembrances.
Life-Cycle of the Giant-Kin: A short, somewhat inaccurate, anthropological study of goblins, hobgoblins, ogres, and trolls. It paints a picture of cannibalism, in-fighting, and inbred hatred.
Plant Life of the Chaotic Mist: A collection of drawings and suppositions about the plants that exist in the strange mists that exist in places such as the path to Astronomers castle. Unfinished--there are drawings in the back with space for writing, but no writing.
Reconstructing Eden: A theoretical discussion of what Eden must have been like. Includes many sides on topics such as “Did predators eat meat or were they vegetarian?” Also discusses whether God will allow humans to try to rebuild an Eden, whether that is humanity’s purpose, whether suffering is humanity’s purpose, or whether humanity does not know its purpose. Alvon Peter, who later would found the heretical Community of Calling, argues in favor of rebuilding Eden in small groups.
The walls glow an evil white. A skull lies amidst bones in the center of this small room.
The skull rises quickly upon a tail like a spinal column. The tiny bones click together as they rise and the skull glares upon you with primal hatred.
The demon has used much of his power to conjure a Death’s Head to guard the secret door, as he cannot touch the scrolls in the secret writing room (8), which is blessed. The Death’s Head will attempt to strangle the nearest opponent if it achieves surprise; otherwise, it will most likely attack to bite.
The secret door to the writing room (8) is hidden by a glowing fungus. It was not originally secret. To those with Elfen sight, the glow of this room is similar to the light from a diseased phosphorescent fungus, and a closer examination will reveal that the walls are covered, head to toe and top and bottom with a thin, pasty substance. The substance feels organic, like a cross between moss and butterfat.
Death’s Head (Demon: 2; Survival: 9; Move: 9; Attacks: Bite or Strangle; Defense: +8; Damage: 1d8 or 1d4; Special Attack: paralysis; Special Defense: silent; Magic Resistance: 5)
You push back the fungus-covered door to reveal a small room. A skeletal body, mummified, sits at a wooden table, its hand still holding a long, tapered feather.
A partially burnt paper lies beneath the skeletal hand. Around the skeleton’s neck is a small copper-colored cross on which hangs an ornately carved maple Jesus.
These were the quarters for the Order’s priest, Edgar Lewar. He was one of the few higher-ranking members of the order to be kept outside the loop on Tragos’ plans to summon Eliazu, but he suspected that something was up.
This room is blessed, and it is very difficult for Eliazu to exert influence inside it. While inside this room, characters will be free from Eliazu’s telepathy, influence, and even skeletons.
On the floor beneath the skeleton is the key to the Priest’s worldly treasures. The cross is worth 80 shillings. There is a prop for the partially burnt letter. The letter looks as though it has been heated in numerous places; the burned areas are smoothly edged.
The keyhole to the treasure closet is trapped. Anyone picking it must make an Evasion roll or be pricked with a poison pin. The poison has a saving roll penalty of 2, an action time of 1 round, and does d4 points damage per round. It is a powdered poison, still fully active.
Inside the closet are three small boxes. Two of the boxes are carved oak, a matching pair, with symbols of the Phoenix. They are worth 40 shillings each, or 100 shillings as a pair.
The first box in the matching pair contains 49 of the Order’s electrum coins, 120 of the Order’s silver coins, 186 Crosspoint shillings, 225 pennies, 269 half-pennies, and 352 farthings. There is a huge emerald, worth 500 shillings.
The second box in the matched pair contains two scroll tubes. One tube, bearing the seal of the Bishop of Crosspoint, contains four scrolls, all in the Ancient tongue:
7. a letter from Robert Agwood, then Bishop of Crosspoint. The translation is provided in the props section for any characters who can read the Ancient tongue;
8. a Christian scroll of cure disease at 8th level;
9. a scroll describing the ritual of exorcism (see prop in back for translation);
10. a Christian scroll of shield from sorcery at 8th level that any archetype can use
The other scroll tube has “Beware” and “Cave” written on it. It contains a scroll (in Anglish) cursed with the curse of the unseen. See the magic items section for more information.
The third chest is a small oakwood box, lightly stained, with no markings. Inside, it is padded with linen, and contains a golden staff head in the shape of a dove. (See The Staff of the Dove in the back for details about the staff head.)
In the back of the closet is a simple maple staff. The staff head in the first chest fits onto this staff.
Look in the back for The Unsent Letter, still beneath the priest’s bony hand.
Skeletons lie upon simple cots. There are two small tables and a few chairs.
Four cots, two writing tables, and three chairs. Three skeletons, in the cots. Two wear expensive holy symbols (silver crosses, 25 shillings each), and the other wears a simple wooden cross (hand made, by himself).
Large stone statues stand amidst chests and trunks. A large man with wings and a spear is killing a snake coiled around his legs. A woman in a robe holds a child close to her breast. A man with a knife is carving a large branch.
There are two closed chests and three open chests, large and small in here. Most are empty. Two hold old clothes and vestments. There are also three large stone statues of Mary, of Gabriel and the Snake, and of Joseph the carpenter. These weigh 200 pounds, 300 pounds, and 220 pounds, respectively, and could be worth as much as 400 shillings each in Black Stag, or 250 on the coast.
Thick white strands hang loosely and wave in the wind created by your movement. Several chairs surround a large circular wooden table. A huge bronze candle holder dominates the table. One bookshelf lines the wall to your left, filled haphazardly with folios and papers. Far down to your right, a large blackboard hangs on the wall from floor to ceiling.
This room is filled with dried giant spider webbing, and the husks of two dead giant spiders. They wandered up from the dungeon and died hungry.
The bronze candle holder (holding five candles) is worth 8 shillings. The bookshelf holds their notes and diaries of wars, including their battle plans against the Astronomers over the centuries. You may want to place clues in here for future adventures.
The secret door to the Secret Meeting Room is behind the blackboard. The latch is a stone in the wall beside it. The blackboard seems to be embedded in the wall, but will open out on wide hinges if the latch is opened.
If they study the post-war folios they can find references to a “visit” to the Stigmas di Cristo (this was when they captured Wendell) to find more information about a book titled “More When Doors”. They seem to think that the book holds important magical secrets, but they can’t decipher it. After this, they find references to an expedition deep south, looking for an ancient something at ancient Greek ruins of Ekdulon. (Greek references are not commonly recognized, except for resembling an odd form of Ancient.)
Other references show them looking for the book “More When Doors” as it is apparently an unexpurgated version of a set of papers called “No More Stars”.
One thing to remember is that this is a planning room. All of the folios describe plans, but not results, except insofar as the results of one plan might play into another.
(The blackboard swings open or The bookshelf rotates you to the other side), revealing a medium-sized room with a small table and four chairs. Two warriors in full plate stand silently on the wall (ahead of you or to your right), their long pole arms raised at an angle.
The secret door to the stairs is hidden behind the statues. The right statue’s right arm must be pulled to open the door. The secret door to the New Throne Room is the bookshelf. There are three shelves, holding minor books and bric-a-brac. If the correct stone on the floor is pressed, the entire bookshelf and circular floor rotate around. The books are: three biblical remembrances, one general history of the world, and one general history of philosophical sciences. The bric-a-brac are little statuettes of soldiers, creatures, and houses.
You step over the thick curtain that now lies crumpled on the floor and enter a huge octagonal room. The four angled walls are covered in bright paintings of mountains and battles. On a dais against the far wall, a tall throne still has an occupant. A skeletal corpse sits slumped in the great chair. There are two doors on the right wall and a small set of bookshelves on the left wall.
The two hundred year-old paintings on the walls describe the creation of this castle--a man leading his army and priests over the mountain (right of the entrance), scenes of battles with the Druids (right of the dais), scribes by a river (left of the dais), and the building of Biblyon (left of the entrance)
The throne is wood, with iron bands. It is on a carefully carved stone dais. The secret door to the Secret Meeting Room is a series of bookshelves so that both sides look the same--including the same books and bric-a-brac. The mechanism is the same as the other side: one of the stones on the floor will, if pressed, cause the whole thing to rotate around. One of Eliazu’s skeletons sits slumped in the throne.
Several dried and flaking corpses lie across cots and chairs in this wide room. Armor and weapons hang from the wall to your (left or right).
These rooms housed the Illustrious Guard, who guarded the leader of the order with zealousness--and played a role in Tragos’ rise to power following the Goblin Wars. In one room, there are eight armed mummified bodies. In the other, there are seven.
There are twenty shillings in the left room (8 skeletons), 17 in the right (7 skeletons). The weapons (25 swords, 30 spears, 22 short swords, 7 daggers, 6 bows, 98 arrows) are reasonable quality and could be resold for a quarter to half price the normal price to a merchant. The armor is leather (20) and a few suits of chain mail (4, two per room). The chain mail is resalable for a quarter to half price. The chain mail is for an average-size male.
You slide open the door to reveal a brightly-painted tower-like room. A (torch, lantern, whatever they’re carrying) shines upon you. Behind the light you see movement, and human-sized creatures.
As your eyes adjust, you see that the creatures are yourselves seen in a full-length mirror. The room also contains a water basin, a large water basin, and various jugs and brushes. Besides the large mirror, your light glints from something on a stand next to the water basin.
These bathrooms are quite lavishly furnished. There is a mirror in each (25 shillings), as well as a hand mirror (12 shillings; this is the source of the glint), brushes, water jugs, and old, brittle and dry, soap. These rooms were redesigned after the Goblin Wars; they originally held the leader (and possibly his wife), and his closest advisor (and possibly his). They were not then so lavish. Most of these things were purchased after the Goblin Wars.
Ornate chairs, a table with the legs of a lion, a padded bench, and a small shelf in one corner with glasses and vases. You half expect the owner to step out of the far hallway, wearing a royal blue evening robe, and ask you what you would like to drink.
These are private sitting and game rooms. Each has a small table and chairs, a sofa, and a small bar.
The leader and his advisor traditionally domiciled in these rooms, but following the Goblin Wars, Tragos d’Illus instituted a more kingly fashion in which he and his consort shared these two rooms. Tragos’ rooms are the southern rooms; his consort’s, the northern rooms.
Gold and silver glitter on the tables and across the chairs. Two dry and wrinkled skeletal shapes lie in a tangled embrace in the ornate, richly arrayed bed. A tapestry of bright colors displays a river passing through forest, on the far wall on the right.
One of the mummies is the missing guard from room 14.
The consort’s bedroom contains quite a few baubles worth approximately 1200 shillings, and encumbering, total, about 100 pounds. These include such items as silver inlaid backscratchers, golden mirrors, rings, and necklaces. Picking through the items for thirty minutes will enable the characters to choose six hundred shillings of items that weigh ten pounds.
The secret door to 17b is at a bonus of 2 to find.
A richly-arrayed and ornamented bed commands your attention on the right side of the room. Fine items of silver and gold glitter through a thin layer of dust on the tables, benches, and shelves. A tapestry of bright colors displays a sunset over a forested plain on the far wall to the left.
The polished stone embedded into the walls shifts from colors to muted grays and browns.
Within Tragos’ bedroom are quite a few baubles worth approximately 1800 shillings, and encumbering, total, about 150 pounds. These include such items as silver inlaid backscratchers, golden mirrors, rings, and necklaces. Careful selection for thirty minutes will allow the characters to choose nine hundred shillings of items that weigh fifteen pounds.
The two secret doors are at a bonus of 2 to find.
The secret door to the Order’s Treasure (19) is made to look like a large rock in the wall. It comes out if pulled from the upper right. However, if a smaller rock to the left is not pushed in first, it triggers a deadfall (the ceiling) which causes 1d8 points damage to whoever is within three feet from the door. On a successful Evasion roll, this damage is halved. It causes 1d4 damage to anyone within five feet of the door; a successful Evasion roll negates that.
The hidden door to the secret level is hidden behind a large, ornate chair and then behind the tapestry.
A comfortable room for sitting in, there is a small table flanked by two cushioned chairs. A few books lie haphazardly on the table. A tapestry hangs from the left wall, depicting something to do with a pyramid and the sun. Another tapestry hangs on the right wall, above the table and chairs. It appears to have a maze on it. In the far corner of the room, a great wheel sticks out of the wall as for a boat’s helm.
A winch in the far corner of the room is for drawing the falling block in the hallway to room 19 back up.
A trap door in the ceiling of the southwest corner leads to the deadfall above the secret entrance to the treasure room in 17b. The tunnel is about three feet wide by three and a half feet tall.
The tapestry is the building of the tower of Babel. Here, the tower is envisioned as a pyramid, somewhat Egyptian in style (memory of the Egyptian style is fading), with a huge sun burning down on a crowd of people milling about the bottom. The inscription is “So the Lord scattered them abroad.”
There is a newer tapestry, created for Tragos, which is of a great maze-like city ending at a large castle. The inscription is “Nothing shall be impossible, which they imagine to do.”
The books on the table are:
More When Doors Mow Spun Gifts: See the treasure list. It appears to be a collection of nonsense.
The Travel West: A small journal, it is a translation of an account by the advisor of the Order’s Abbot who originally brought the Order across the mountains in the 248th year of the cataclysm. The original, in Ancient, is in the temple library (6).
Il Bibliocolectivo (“The Collected Bible”): A collection of biblical remembrances that Vince Kellius, the founder of the Order of Illustration, believed to be exceptionally correct and relevant. He collected them in the 152nd year of the cataclysm.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: This book by the mage Charles Dodgson appears to be heavily read. This is a first edition unexpurgated version, and a serious study of the book will grant a bonus of 1 to any Learning roll to learn or research first level Mental spells. It is in Anglish, the language Dodgson wrote it in.
The large rock-like wall decoration opens towards you, revealing a thin corridor perhaps three yards long and three feet wide. Beyond the corridor, in a small room, a medium-sized wooden chest beckons with mystery.
At the entrance to the hallway to this room is a wire running about three feet above the ground. The wire is a thin, strong steel. It is fairly obvious; perception rolls to see it are at a bonus of four.
A thin silver wire, sagging slightly to the ground, extends across the hallway at about three feet above the floor, coming out of the wall just about a foot beyond the entrance.
The wire turns off the trap later in the hallway. There is a moveable plate in the center of the hallway, about five feet down. The wire must be held back under pressure while anyone is walking across the plate, or a three foot wide by seven feet tall by 2 foot deep stone block will drop at the entrance to the hallway (between the wire and the plate), completely blocking it. The person walking on the plate will be safe; however, anyone standing where the block drops will take 3d6 points of damage. A successful Evasion roll will half this. The stone will block pretty much any conversation from one side of the block to the other.
Pulling on the wire, the wire will feel under pressure until pulled back about six inches, at which point the pressure will be alleviated, much like pulling back on a compound bow. The plate will appear to be under less pressure (though discovering this will involve touching the plate and pressing at least a little bit, and having done the same before the wire was pulled back).
There is a metal curb along the edges of the hallway. On the part of the hallway where the block will fall, the metal curb is actually a cushion for the block. Powerful springs hold the curb up, but an observant person trying the curb will recognize that it is movable (standard Perception roll). The curb will not keep the block above the floor. The block is heavy enough to push the springs all the way down. The springs and curb is there to cushion the block so that it doesn’t break anything the first couple of times it falls.
There is a winch in room 18 to pull the block back up.
There are three chests here, about two feet deep and tall, and four feet wide. All of them are trapped in some way. If the key is not used on the first two, or the pass phrase not spoken on the final one, the trap will go off.
The chest somewhat to the left will, if the key is not used, shoot four darts when the lid is lifted. They were once poisoned, but the poison has degraded. The darts will still do 1d3 points of damage each. Each person in the line of fire must make an Evasion roll or take from d3 damage from 1d3 of these. The chest contains the Order’s supply of their own minted electrum and silver coins (see back). There are 1,075 electrum coins, and 4,512 silver coins.
The middle chest has sleep gas in a sealed glass beaker. If the key is not used to open the chest, the glass beaker will fall when the lid is opened. It smashes unless it makes a saving roll vs. 3. If it smashes, everyone in the room must fight off the effects of the gas. It has an action time of 1 round; there is a bonus of 3 to saving rolls against it (due to its age, it has weakened). The effect is that it causes the victim to sleep for at least 3d6 minutes. The chest contains a bag of 12 Crosspoint and Black Stag pound coins, a bag of 1,152 Crosspoint and Black Stag shillings, and a silk pouch containing a pure matte black powder. This is ten uses of “Powder of Darkness”.
The right chest is magically trapped. While the key is needed to open the chest (without breaking it or picking it, anyway), the trap will still go off even if the key is used. The trap is temporarily disabled through the use of the pass phrase “Babylon”. This disables the trap for either a minute or the next time it is opened, whichever comes first. Otherwise, a cold flame will spurt out when the chest is opened, causing 3d6 points damage to anyone in the cone from the chest through the hallway. The flame will be eighteen feet long, six inches wide at the beginning and three feet wide at the end. It does not damage nonliving objects. Victims are allowed an Evasion roll for half damage. Inside are two spell books, labeled Volumes I, VI, and X.
Within the dungeons, there are creatures that can come in from the caverns if the doors in area 5 are opened. There is a 10% chance every two hours of an encounter, starting two hours after the doors are opened and left opened. This chance for encounters also occurs inside area 5.
Starting at this level, if the characters are extremely quiet and listen to the walls or floor, they can on a Perception roll hear a faint humming or whooshing sound from the water below them.
|
Encounter |
Number |
|
|
01-68 |
Giant Crickets |
1d6 |
|
69-98 |
Rats |
1d12 |
|
99-00 |
Carrion Worm |
1 |
Giant Crickets (animal: 2; Move: 6/12; Attacks: Legs; Defense: +5; Damage: 1d4, Special Attacks: noise)
Rats (animal: 1 pt; Move: 8; Attacks: bite or claw; Defense: 0; Damage: 1 pt)
Carrion Worm (fantastic: 4; Move: 10; Attacks: 8 or claws or bite; Defense: +3; Damage: Paralysis, 1d8, or 1d6; Special Defenses: armored head, +4 defense)
The dungeons are down forty feet. The stairs from the basement are eighty feet long. The walls are simple stone embedded in the dirt.
Rusted iron bars block the entrance to a tiny, dirt-floored cell. (One or Two or Three or Four) skeletons lie against the loose stone walls.
Three out of four of these cells hold skeletons. The bars are rusted iron, and the cells themselves are simply dug out of the dirt, with loose stone walls.
Manacles hold bones to the stone walls. Skeletons lie in a heap beneath them. Gnawed leather whips hang from the left wall amidst knives and other devices. There is a huge stone vat in the center of the room. To the right, a skeleton remains loosely strapped to an old, rusted rack. Despite the obvious purpose of this room and the grisly remains, you feel a sense of purpose and a calming presence.
The standard torture devices are here: an old, rusted rack, gnawed leather whips, manacles in the wall stones, a vat in the center of the room, and a table with old knives and a cat of nine tails or two.
If any character enters the room with no light source, or a dim one such as a torch, it will seem as if someone is watching them from just beyond the range of sight. Ghostly noises can be heard in the room, just faintly, and these will also be heard listening at the door. Drips of liquid; the clank of chain. Just ever so faintly.
Anyone who has chosen a Good moral code will be presented with the Marrow Cross from the spirits of the tortured souls here. See the appendix for information. It will appear on the vat while they aren’t looking.
A simple square room carved out of rock, sparsely furnished with a small round table. The table stands on a single thick leg carved in the shape of a cat’s paw.
Other than the aforementioned furniture, this room is empty, and was used by guardsmen to question prisoners. It, like the rest of the rooms here, isn’t actually carved out of rock: it simply appears as if it were. It is “rock-plated”.
The door was barred, but it is not barred now. The wooden bar lies on the ground next to the door, where one of Eliazu’s skeletons moved it.
You open the door, scraping it against the floor. Inside an irregularly-shaped room, skeletons lie atop each other, bones interspersed among rags.
This cavern was used to keep common prisoners.
This door was barred, but is not barred now. The wooden bar lies on the ground next to the door, where one of Eliazu’s skeletons moved it.
The door swings open. Inside this irregularly-shaped room, you catch the faint whiff of moist, faintly rotten air that disappears as quickly as it came. A dark crack in the wall gazes at you from the far right.
This cavern is similar to Prisoner Area One (4). It is empty, however. A shaft leads down to The Secret Places. The shaft opened during the destruction caused by the botched summoning of the demon. Most of the prisoners died; this room was empty at the time of the summoning. One prisoner barely survived, and tried to escape down the shaft, but was caught. See “The Secret Places” room 18.
Within the dungeons, there are creatures that have come in from the caverns. There is a 10% chance every hour of an encounter.
As in the dungeon level, if the characters are extremely quiet and listen to the walls or floor, they can on a Perception roll hear a faint humming or whooshing sound from the water below them.
The secret places are deep: the two circular stairways that lead down here lead down sixty feet, and are about 200 feet “long”. The shunt from the dungeon is about 150 feet long.
|
Encounter |
Number |
|
|
01-68 |
Giant Crickets |
1d6 |
|
69-98 |
Rats |
1d12 |
|
99-00 |
Carrion Worms |
1 |
Giant Crickets (animal: 2; Move: 6/12; Attacks: Legs; Defense: +5; Damage: 1d4, Special Attacks: noise)
Rats (animal: 1 pt; Move: 8; Attacks: bite or claw; Defense: 0; Damage: 1 pt)
Carrion Worms (fantastic: 4; Move: 10; Attacks: 8 or claws or bite; Defense: +3; Damage: Paralysis, 1d8, or 1d6; Special Defenses: armored head, +4 defense)
Twelve skeletons sit at a long table, (facing you on the left or to your right) as you walk into this long, deep room. Bony fingers loosely grip crystal goblets. Silver gleams amidst grey strands that flutter and then settle again. The walls are covered in dark blue: beams of moonlight and starlight shine down on great lakes, where fishermen
There are also three tables, empty but for white-frayed silver candelabras that glitter in your light.
There are four other exits from this room, two of them on (your right or the wall ahead of you).
Each of the three east/west tables is empty. The head table, at the west, has twelve skeletons, and is set with thirteen silver plates (30 shillings each), thirteen glass goblets (60 shillings each), and a large silver candelabra (90 shillings). The other tables each have a candelabra (45 shillings). The head table has an empty space set at the front.
It is easier for Eliazu to animate skeletons by tying them to some earthly treasure, and limiting them to specific actions. Eliazu can see through these skeletons just like the ones in the Basement. The skeletons will follow and attack the characters immediately if anyone leaves the room with either the candelabra from their table or either their goblet or plate or the empty space’s goblet or plate. The skeleton(s) will follow the thieves to the ends of the earth if need be, and will not stop until the stolen item(s) are returned to the table.
Soft, wet wood creeks against stone. An unfelt wind billows through threadbare evening attire. Bone scrapes bone. The dinner party stands and turns to face you, tattered thread against white rib cages, and walk towards you, beckoning you forward.
The walls of this room are covered in drawings of the night sky and huge lakes. Vaguely non-human beings seem to be walking about the lakes, fishing and fighting with each other.
On closer examination, the fishermen are odd men indeed, wearing bird-like masks giving them long beaks, and with huge, crab-like claws for hands. Within the paintings they spear for fish while a huge eye watches them from the great lake.
12 Skeletons (undead: 1; Survival: 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7; Move: 10; Attacks: short sword; Defense: +3; Damage: 1d6, Special Defense: slashing weapons do half damage, thrusting weapons do one point damage)
A stuffed sofa sits comfortably against the opposite wall, and a soft chair to your right. There is a small wooden door on the right side of the opposite wall. A small, round, single-legged wooden table on your left is in reaching distance of the sofa.
The table is the only thing of worth here, a maple table with two surfaces (one at about two feet and one at three feet), worth 15 shillings. The sofa and chair are damp-damaged, though comfortable enough if you’re in armor.
A small clay basin, earthy-red, and a matching jug sit on the floor near a wide, glazed chamber pot. The glaze glistens with alternating bands of red, orange, and brown.
The chamber pot is actually part of the room, and has a hole in the bottom that empties down to the river system below the castle.
The wooden door creaks open on rusty metal hinges. Two rows of cots, one above the other, stand ragged against the left wall. Small tables and chairs stand haphazard about the right side of the room, and against the far wall are three wooden chests.
In their zeal to learn the darker secrets, the Illustrators were also training specialists in summonings. This was where the apprentice summoners lived and studied. There were four cots: two per row, though only three were occupied at the time of the final summoning. The three locked chests each have a magic book and some old spell components among old clothes.
The locked chests are trapped with a weak poison. Anyone attempting to pick the lock must make an Evasion roll or be affected. The poison is strength 0, an action time of one minute, and does d6 damage per minute.
Chest 1: (3rd level summoner): Farseeing, Ghost Lights, Ghost Walkers, Guardian, Indestructible Object, Delay Passage, Magic Table, Bar Passage
Chest 2: (2nd level summoner): Ghost Lights, Guardian, Indestructible Object, Secret Message, Delay Passage
Chest 3: (1st level summoner): Ghost Lights, Guardian
A light whistle rises softly as you enter this room. There is a small black pot standing on a tripod in an alcove to your left, and a number of knives on the wall above a shelf to your right.
There is an elaborate chimney here, that kept smoke (and heat) rising to the surface. A slight wind blows through the room, through the almost-closed fireplace doors, and up the chimney. Otherwise, this is a well-furnished kitchen; large pot in a fireplace, pans, utensils, plates, pots, etc. There is a notebook that contains a number of recipes in abbreviated form. To the right cook or gourmand, the book could be worth up to ten shillings.
Moldy old sacks lie scattered about this small room. Even the mold is dried and crusted with age.
The sacks contain flour, grains, dried root vegetables, and dried meats.
You step down a short musty hallway. Inside the wide room you see two large boxes, one in each corner, flank a row of natty old bedrolls.
The order had some servants who were trusted only with this downstairs area, and they were rarely trusted to go aboveground. There are two large boxes here, shared by the maidservants. Each contains old and rotted clothing.
A square-shaped cavern opens from the cave-like hallway. It is filled with sacks, dried meats hanging from hooks in the ceiling, and barrels and boxes.
The entrance to this cave was widened, and it is used for the storage of empty wooden boxes, a small box of writing quills, extra wood, a table, some wooden chairs. There are also sacks of grain, dried meats hanging from hooks in the ceiling, and barrels of pickled vegetables.
This entire room is charred black from floor to ceiling. Strange symbols cover the walls. Four large white circles peek through the ashes on the floor, with strange runes written at the edges of the circles. Some of the circles contain straight lines.
A hideous, horned face sticks its tongue out at you from the right (left) wall.
This is the room where the special ceremonies took place, including the one that destroyed the Order. There is a magic circle of protection engraved into the floor: a triangle inscribed inside a circle, and arcane symbols inscribed around the circumference of the circle. (This is a thaumaturgic circle.) There is a smaller circle in the center for the ritual leader to stand in, and three other circles equidistant around the center for three attendants to stand in.
The secret door to the Secret Storage Room (10) operates by poking a finger into the mouth of a particularly hideous demon’s head. The door then slides down. It is secret mostly because of the thick ash on the walls. Water pressure forces the door up, slowly, within ten minutes after opening. A similar mechanism opens it from the inside, although a lever is used there.
The strange symbols are symbols related to Christian demonology and astrology. Eliazu’s symbol is one of them.
There is one key here amidst the ashes: the apprentice summoners (Acastus and Cleophus) were carrying them, and Acastus was burned to ashes here. Each key is the same, and will open any of the summoners’ three chests. (Wendell Redstar was also one of the attendants, but he did not have a key.)
This room is covered in thick ash. Framed against the soot, a blackened, charred, body, its ashen skin crumpled against its bones, lies flat against the ground.
This room is covered in wood ash two inches thick. The skeleton holds in its charred, bony fingers a jet black wand. See the description of the Undeath Wand for more information on this item. There are also two keys here, one for the summoners’ three chests and one for the spellbook chest in the Order’s secret treasure room.
The wielder of the wand (Cleophus) tried to escape the firestorm by crawling in here, but all he did was allow the firestorm entrance.
An irregular room, iron rings are embedded into the walls and leather straps or belts hang from them. On the right, bones hang by straps from two of the rings, and a pile of bones lie beneath on the floor.
This is where the young men and women were kept for sacrifice. One skeleton remains, its forearm bones still tied to the wall with leather straps, but the rest of it in a pile below the arm bones.
Charred shelves, filled with ash and burnt fragments of leather, line the walls. The floor is covered in more ash, and the ceiling is black with soot.
The floor and shelves of this room is covered in the ash of burnt books. One charred fragment remains, visible in the corner. It says “mort”. The shelves themselves are burnt back to ragged black edges.
The hall breaks through to the caves here. The first cave is haunted by a poltergeist, a ghost of the confused and hateful sacrifice. It will throw rocks for 1d3 points damage as soon as it notices them (Perception roll of four or less, with bonuses due to noise, magic, spiritual activity.)
Poltergeist (undead: 1; survival points: 4; Move: 20; Attacks: rocks; Defense: +2; Damage: 1d3, Special Defenses: spaceshifting, immune to non-magical weapons)
This highly irregular cavernous room has two other caverns leading off from it.
This highly irregular cavernous room has three other caverns leading off from it.
There is a 40% chance that d3 killer toads from the stagnant pool at the top will be here. If noise is made, there is a one in ten chance per round that d3 more will show up in 2d6 rounds. A marshy, weed-choked tunnel drains a small trickle of warm, stagnant water from the warm water source above and through the pool in this room and down holes in the far wall.
There is a skeleton in the pool, with chains on its arms.
These caves were originally created by the river that is now far below. There are no true stalactites or stalagmites, although there will occasionally be similar structures. The caves are mostly dry, and vaguely warm (naturally so).
The skeleton of a fighter who tried to investigate the Order is here. The man was Arthur Wells. His brother’s daughter was one of the sacrifices. He wore leather armor and a shield (on his right arm). The shield bears the crest of his family: a well on a hill, and the morning sun. This is a +1 shield, and has been handed down in the family since it was made for them by Robert Annis over four centuries ago. Clutched in his left hand is his sword, rusted and rotted.
In the remains of his purse are 85 Crosspoint shillings, 152 Crosspoint pennies, and 69 Crosspoint half-pennies. There are 53 Black Stag pennies, 25 Black Stag half-pennies, and 32 Black Stag farthings. There is a ruby worth 240 shillings.
Depending on their light source, they may need to make a perception roll to avoid falling over the ten foot drop.
The thin cavern opens onto a wider cavern, and a ten foot drop leads to the floor of that cavern. There is another opening off of the cavern on the far side. A bone dangles from a chain to your left. The chain is trapped by a large rock.
A huge rock fell on an escaping prisoner’s chain, trapping him there to die. His arm bone is hanging, and the rest of him is in a heap on the floor.
There is a 15% chance, every hour, of encountering 1d3 skeletons, up to a maximum of six.
Skeletons (undead: 1; Move: 10; Attacks: short sword; Defense: +3; Damage: 1d6, Special Defense: slashing weapons do half damage, thrusting weapons do one point damage)
If anyone dies in this area, they are likely to be animated as zombies within d8 hours, and then encountered in the Demon’s Court.
There is a foot of misty fog covering all rooms from two to five.
The walls are easily smashed (four survival points total, each attack is reduced by two points, and damage by edged weapons is then halved). The cavern wall to the east is covered in condensation, due to the mist in the Skeleton Room.
These thin limed walls were built up by Eliazu, to hide himself from anyone who takes up residence in the castle. If the party makes it this far and Eliazu decides that they will be easily fooled into helping free him, and if they have all the things they need to free him, he’ll try to find some way to break the wall down. He could cause a crack to form in it over a period of several hours, or he could bring one of his skeletons down, have it “attack”, and have it accidentally hit the wall and crack it.
Eliazu will not do this if the characters have any chance of sending him back to hell: if, for example, if he knows that they have the scroll of exorcism. (He won’t recognize the marrow cross.)
A misty fog swirls about your feet and ankles. Tendrils of mist snake up and dance around your legs as you move across the cavern.
There is a foot of misty fog covering the floors in this room.
Bones lie scattered about the floor, peeking through the swirling mist. A rank smell permeates the air, reminiscent of rotting wood, or old eggs.
You hear a flutter, and two shapes swoop down from above, riding with black wings on the misty air. A painful screech cuts through your soul.
There are two screeching bats here, which will attack anything that enters. Lying about this room are numerous skeletons and skeleton parts. They’re not from the bats--this room held many people when the summoning went awry. A crystal goblet with a demon face, in style like the Demon’s Court demon (450 shillings) lies in the southwest part of this cavern. Along with it are a chisel and hammer and a metal stencil about one foot square, with Eliazu’s sigil in it. This was brought by Corlile, the engraver, whose skeleton is among the bones. Eliazu’s sigil is a closed door with a corona-like light behind it shining through. See the “props” section for the design.
Screeching Bats (demon: 3; survival: 10, 15; Move: 3/15; Attacks: bite; Defense: +3; Damage: 2d4, Special Attack: painful screech; Magic Resistance: 1)
Spirits dance and make merry, as if alive. Every so often, out of the corner of your eye, you see grinning, rotting skulls, with worms crawling about their faces.
These phantoms have no power, at least not yet. Eliazu may increase their power level if given time.
The caverns have shifted downwards somewhat, and here they come up against the edge of the lake cavern. A hole has been broken through, about a yard tall and a little less wide. The hole was broken through as part of the earthquake when Eliazu was summoned.
Fog rolls out of the entrance and into the hallway. Inside, fog roils about the room, twisting around statues of princes, knights, and squires, all kneeling to a gleaming stone demon.
Stone statues of princes and knights kneel before a stone demon, tail, horns, and all, sitting on a throne in regal stone clothes. The figure gleams with intelligence. It is the vessel in which Eliazu the demon was summoned. Eliazu will generally stay quiet. It is patient; it needs to wait until it is powerful enough to escape, which means getting dupes to complete some rituals for it. If the player characters give any indication of either (a) trying to dispel it, or (b) being easily deceived, Eliazu will speak to them, softly, as if in a distant wind. It will try to convince them that it can give them power (which in fact it can, although it isn’t likely to follow through except in the most literal and deadly manner possible) if it thinks that bribes are the best choice; or it will try to convince them that after a hundred years stuck in this damn statue all it really wants is to go home.
A circle is engraved around the stone “king”. Among all of the court, a smaller, throne-like chair, also stone, faces the king’s throne. The smaller throne is empty. The smaller throne is about seven feet away from the circle.
If they have the ritual of exorcism, it will try to convince them not to use it; it isn’t really an exorcism, Eliazu will tell them, it’s a part of the ritual for calling more demons into statues. Or that it will place Eliazu into a human host--the reader of the scroll, “and why would I want to be trapped in such a puny frame? I’d rather be stuck in this stone.”
In arguing and pleading for its way, it will be as truthful as it can to avoid detection, but will try not to give the characters any information that could assist them in exorcising or otherwise neutralizing it. It wants to be free on Earth. Eliazu will be in turn funny, disgusting, snide, friendly, tired, and desperate, whatever it needs to do to convince them to do what it wants. The last thing it wants is to go back to hell. Who wants that? It would rather stay in the stone than do that.
If the characters continue performing the exorcism ritual or doing anything else that would send the demon back to the shadows, a loud howling, as of heavy storm winds, will fill the room. The statues (except the demon king) start to shake, and parts of the statues will break off and fly towards the characters. One piece will fly per round, aimed at a random character (or, if a prophet is calling any spirits, towards the prophet). The demon attacks as a ninth level demon, and the rocks do d4 points of damage on a successful hit.
If Eliazu has any skeletons or demons nearby it can control, it will bring them in to stop the exorcism as well.
The pieces can be blocked from hitting a specific target (by someone other than the target) with a shield as if trying to hit a target with a defense of +2, but as a called shot. There is a penalty of 2 if using a mace or similar club-like item, and a penalty of 3 if using a sword or similar item. The ritual will take six rounds to complete.
If Eliazu is exorcised, the ground will fall away. The room will fill with rubble from above, starting in the ballroom, blocking their way out. Any character that does not immediately run towards the far end of the Court takes 2d6 points of damage, or half on a successful Evasion roll. The ground will crack open, and the rubble, characters, and all will be sucked down the hole (taking another d4 damage, or nothing on a successful Evasion roll). They come to a stop in the Lake Cavern. Lying next to them, grinning evilly at the sky, is the head of the demon. See The Demon’s Head in the appendix for more information.
Note that it is possible to perform the exorcism in the same room where the summoning was performed. The ground will shake. Pieces of rock will fall. But the characters will then be able to return to the surface in relative safety.
“They fucked up is what happened. Those idiots couldn’t summon a maggot to a corpse.”
“What the hell is that?... Oh jesus, I mean, excuse me, but please don’t use another ritual from these jackasses. What does that one do, summon the rest of my family into gargoyles?”
“They thought they could siphon me into a human host, which I’m sure they could, but they thought the human would remain in control.”
“Please don’t read that. Look, you’re not a bad looking guy, but I’ve been trapped in this damn stone long enough, why the hell, which incidentally is where I’d rather be, why would I want to be trapped in a fleshy little thing like you? No offense, but it won’t do either one of us any good.”
“Who? No, it doesn’t surprise me that fool’s a ghost. He couldn’t find his way home if you dragged a trail out of his own intestines.”
Eliazu is not patient. Evil and patience don’t mix. But Eliazu has been alive since the beginning of time, so the demon’s impatience is not the impatience of mortals. Eliazu is willing to let these people go. There will be more later. In fact, Eliazu would prefer it, as the demon’s power is growing and with more power it will be easier to trick people into bringing about Eliazu’s release.
If the characters actually free Eliazu, the demon will leave invisible in a puff of acrid smoke, not yet powerful enough for anything more impressive. Eliazu will take the minions that are still alive (the strigae, the crowns of eyes, and the death’s head). If the characters haven’t taken them, Eliazu will also pick up the Scepter of Tragos and the Undeath Wand. Eliazu will then hike to a large city, most likely Crosspoint, and further scheme and build a power base.
Corporeal Eliazu (demon: 5; Move: 10; Attacks: claws; Defense: +4; Damage: 1d6, Special Defense: invisibility, telepathy, Special Attacks: mental influence, summon, Magic Resistance: 5)
Demonic Powers: surface telepathy, influence, raise skeleton/corpse, summon unnamed demon, invisibility, burn
If they dispel Eliazu, the death’s head will remain bound to its task, but the strigae and the crowns will be freed, and while they may stay in the castle in the short term, in the long term they’ll probably head into the forests nearer Biblyon and begin to prey on travelers, farmers, and townsfolk.
Remember that Eliazu is a demon of fear. Besides the demon’s growing power over time, fear in its presence will allow Eliazu to call more undead or demons forth.
The ritual of exorcism is described in the priest’s letter and in the Night priest’s book. There are some bonuses if the characters manage it: performing the ritual at dawn, performing it in the Misty Court instead of in the Ceremonial Area.
|
Performing the ritual at dawn |
+2 |
|
Standing before the demon |
+2 |
|
Reciting in Latin |
+1 |
|
Reciting in Anagrams |
+1 |
|
Reciting in Arcane Clothing |
+1 |
|
Use Eliazu’s Name |
+2 |
On the other hand, performing the ritual in the Ceremonial Area will protect them from any physical harm, as well as grant them a bonus of two against any mental attacks by Eliazu.
This is on a 2nd level place of power.
What your players will do is generally a fifty-fifty proposition: half the time, they’ll go where you’re not ready, and half the time they’ll do what you didn’t expect. If your players have not yet been sufficiently inoculated against delving unprepared into unknown caverns when they’ve already been weakened, they might decide to cross the lake and head into the mountain instead of take the river and leave the underground.
This sort of reckless disregard for safety should be encouraged as much as possible. It gives the players time to practice their character creation skills.
Since this is a sacred area for the Karuat, the crab-men make an obvious encounter and adventure basis for anyone heading further into the mountains. You might also have some prepared adventure that takes place in deep caverns ready for use just in case. If the characters spend too much time here, they may meet some Karuat heroes who have come to investigate the noise. I’ll leave that up to you.
There is a 1 in 20 chance each day of encountering something from the deeper caverns.
|
Encounter |
Number |
|
|
01-58 |
Giant Crickets |
1d6 |
|
59-87 |
Carrion Worms |
1 |
|
88 |
Karuat |
2d6 |
|
89-00 |
Tentamort |
1 |
Giant Crickets (animal: 2; Move: 6/12; Attacks: Legs; Defense: +5; Damage: 1d4, Special Attacks: noise)
Carrion Worms (fantastic: 4; Move: 10; Attacks: 8 or claws or bite; Defense: +3; Damage: Paralysis, 1d8, or 1d6; Special Defenses: armored head, +4 defense)
Karuat (fantastic: 3; Move: 9/6; Attacks: 2 claws; Defense: +6; Damage: 1d4/1d4)
Tentamort (fantastic: 4; Move: 6; Attacks: 2 tentacles; Defense: +7/+9; Damage: 1d6/1d6)
The tentamort’s body is two feet in diameter, wide and bloated, yellowish-purple. It’s tentacles are purplish, and twelve feet long.
There are no wandering monsters past the Grinning Skulls unless you specifically decide that some Karuat are making a pilgrimage. The river moves the raft at 30 yards per minute, and the bottom of the river is covered with muck and clay. The river is three yards deep in the autumn, four yards deep in the spring. At shaded parts on the map, the ceiling of the cavern drops to within about three feet from the ceiling in the autumn, one to three inches from the ceiling in the spring.
One hundred and forty yards off of the map, the river exits the cliff below the now-destroyed castle.
You hear the thundering echoes of falling rock die away before you see the dust settle enough to look around. You hear the lap of waves against rock as you rekindle your lantern and find yourself on a dark beach.
A small lake extends beyond the range of your torch. Gray, sightless fish run from the lantern’s light. The lake pours water into a small river that cuts into cavern walls. The lake extends nearly to the edges of the cavern, and the slimy cavern walls reflect the light of your lantern.
You are in a massive underground cavern. There is a raft, made from some woody root, drifting against the shoreline. Something, some plant or strange rock, hangs from the cavern wall to your left.
If they walk towards the something, it becomes apparent that it is a man stuck in the wall.
No, a man hangs in the air against the wall, staring out at you, eyes empty, bones sticking out of its torn and old leathery jacket and gear.
He came out of the water after fighting the wyvern in the Black Lake (or out of the cavern if you aren’t using the Vale of the Azure Sun), and has a map of the valley on him. The Karuat killed him in the tomb of the hero, and then dragged him back here and staked him to the cavern wall. Parts of him have dropped to the ground. The Karuat took his sword, the magic item that helped him find exits from other worlds, and the money he had left. He was from the world of Barcelas, a different world vaguely Romanesque.
The lake itself is well over 300 yards in diameter, and the cavern extends fifteen to sixty yards beyond it. Gray, sightless fish run from the lantern light. The ceiling is twenty to thirty yards up. The rock-fall tunnel, if they are here because they were dumped after an exorcism, comes out about ten yards above ground, just to the west of the river’s tunnel. The lake extends nearly to the edges of the cavern on its east and west sides, and to within five yards of the cavern on the north side. The edges are rock hard and slimy.
The hole from area five of the Misty Court is in the northwest, fifteen yards up.
There is a raft, made from some unknown woody root, drifting against the shoreline. If they look very closely or have some means of seeing distant things, they will see similar rafts against the opposite shore. Those rafts are tied to stakes in the ground. This one was, once, but it came loose when a carrion crawler chewed through the rope.
For every ten pounds over 500 pounds that is placed on the raft, there is a 1% chance every ten minutes that it will break up. It will take 1d6 rounds to break up.
Yes, you’ve heard of the valley. It’s a fairy tale. The kind of literate children’s adventure made famous by Charles Dodgson. Like Alice in Wonderland, the Magic Garden, or the Butterfly Halls. Magical places, but dark, with beautiful mushrooms and things sure to eat you on the other side.
The river rushes you towards bony hands, reaching for you from the walls. Skills grin out at you with strange, contorted visage from the sides, from the water, from the stone rushing towards you.
This is the entrance to an ancient tomb complex of the Karuat.
A skeleton sits on a dirt throne. It holds a rod of silver in its left hand, but your attention is drawn inexorably towards the odd, inhuman skull. The mouth extends crab-like, or beak-like, or something in between. The eye sockets are at angles you’ve never seen in a human or animal skull but are closest, perhaps to the eyes of a--well, nothing at all, really. You’ve never seen anything like this.
Two skeletons, embedded into the walls, flank the throne, and two braziers emerge from the walls at the skeletons’ sides.
This is an ancient Karuat king, from when the Karuat ruled this part of the world. The skeleton holds a rod of silver (350 shillings in Crosspoint, 400 in Black Stag) engraved with interlacing designs reminiscent of Celtic knotwork but nothing at all like it. Flanking the king are two guard skeletons, set in the walls. The two braziers on each wall are filled with a hallucinatory drug. If the braziers are lit, any characters in the room must make standard ailment rolls to avoid the effects, per brazier. The gas causes religious hallucinations. It has an action time of two rounds, and saves vs. its effects are at a penalty of 1.
On a dirt dais in the center of this damp, musty room is a skeleton laid out in chain mail, a sword gleaming at its side and an intricately carved metal shield lying against the mound of stone and dirt it lies upon.
On a dirt dais in the center is a skeleton Karuat hero, laid out in full splendor. It wears chain mail, though the leather is long gone, wears a sword at its side, and an intricately designed iron shield (also missing its leather). The designs on the shield are of snakes intertwining with snakes. The metal is clean, as the Karuat keep it well-cared for. It is worth 100 shillings.