Travelling to the village of Menadoc you find that you have underestimated the distance, and as dusk descends you find yourselves passing through the depths of the forest skirting the village
As the sunlight ebbs away, and the evening gloom deepens the wind becomes more boisterous, whipping the branches to and fro– then distantly you hear a terrified scream, followed by the crash of someone running through the undergrowth.
The sobbing screams draw closer, and then a white shape bursts around a corner in the track. The apparition wailing and screaming seems to float along track, and then suddenly the illusion is broken and you see it is a young girl, dressed in a white robe.
She will rush to one of the party members and throw herself sobbing into his arms (she will choose an authorative male figure), if questioned she will gasp out something incoherent. Then …
The wind buffets you, rustling the leaves of the forest, and borne on the breeze you smell corruption, the taint of something long dead. The girl screams, and frenziedly fights free. She drops to the ground and then before anyone can stop her, she scrambled to her feet runs down the track, her hair billowing out behind her.
Should the players pursue they will hear something crashing through the foliage alongside, the creature will rapidly draw ahead of the party, outpacing even the fastest comfortably.
You see an inert shape lying in the middle of the track. As you approach you see in the dancing light from your flickering torch that it is the girl, plainly dead, for her head has been wrenched around so forcefully, it faces backwards.
Reaching the Village of Menadoc
If the party presses on they will reach the village about 30-45 minutes after the encounter. It will still be early evening the lights will flicker in a the houses and businesses of Menadoc. If the party goes to either the pub or the chapel of Paladine (the only church in the village) they will meet Father Theran.
Menadoc is a peaceful village (reminiscent of a small rural village in southern England).
The priest introduces himself as Father Theran.
6th Lvl Cleric LG S 9 I 13 W 15 D 8 C 9 Ch 14 AC 10 HP 24
Staff of Curing
Father Theran is a pleasant man of early middle age. He belongs to a non-militant order of Paladine. The party will find him a pleasant and accommodating host. His downfall is his complacency. No matter how seriously the players plead their case initially he will laugh it off, believing that no evil can come to Menadoc. This attitude will last until such time as the desecration chapel is discovered.
Also attached to the church are 6 acolytes. These are housed in either their parents or friends home around the village. These should be treated as 0th level combatants or 1st level Clerics. Either case, they will have an average of 4-5 hp apiece. In any event they should have little influence on the game as they will be all killed in the first attack.
The halls of the dead were constructed centuries before. Long years ago a necromancer of surpassing skill and evilness deceived the people. At the first he treated the people kindly, and governed well, but as the years passed so his rule became increasingly evil and despotic.
Father Theran will say of the ancient necromancer
“They say that in those days the restless dead walked abroad in the land, and that no one durst leave house or cottage, so great was the terror that was on the land.”
Two massive statues rest on plinths outside the entrance (which is portico’ed in the manner of a Greek temple). The entire complex is set into a hillside carpeted with pleasant green-grassed meadows.
These statues are the guardians constructed by the paladins of the Paladine order when they rescued Menadoc from the Necromancer some 1300 years prior.
They are constructed of stone, are AC –2 HD 18 HP 90 and do 3-30 per attack, otherwise they conform to stone golem statistics. They have the special ability of detecting evil (radius 60’), this they do continuously. If they detect any evil creature attempting to enter (or leave) the tomb, they will attempt to destroy it. They will use their slow ability and then attempt to chase any creature down. They will only venture so far, and usually one only – the other will remain guarding the entrance (Note: at least one will always be stationed at the entrance)
Their programming is complex – to the point where they can be regarded as Lawful Good aligned constructs.
Father Theran will speak the guardians in an unknown tongue, although players listening into the conversation may be able to discern the occasional word. If the party is already suspicious of Theran, the DM should use such a conversation to fuel further suspicions. If questioned about an exchange, Theran will claim quite honestly that the guardians only understand the tongue of the far off days in which they were built (and that only he understands this tongue – which is also true).
Father Theran will take the body (the acolytes will carry the bier) of the slain girl to the temple. He will invite the party to accompany him – should they not volunteer.
He will insist on taking a train of acolytes and young folk (mostly teenagers from ages 16 and up) to the tomb. The girls to pick garlands of flowers from the forest, and boys to chop down boughs of fragrant pine. The children will be dispatched on their errands when they reach the main chamber of the halls. The acolytes will be send to collect torches, brooms etc.
The Father will then conduct the party around the tombs. The first stop will be the desecrated chapel. If the party spends some time inside the chapel studying the desecrations, then event 2 (see below) will occur here. At some point he (or the party) should realise that the acolytes have not returned. Their corpses will be found in room 3.
Should the party remain searching or studying, the young girls will return. They have been strangled and their corpses animated. They still wear their pretty white frocks and carry the garlands of woodland flowers they had collected. Tittering and giggling they will throw themselves on the party in a frenzy.
As you study the desecrated chapel: the shattered pews, the fallen altar, and the wild disjointed scribblings that adorn the walls, you note out of the corners of your eyes the white dresses of the flower girls as they quietly glide into the back of the chapel.
As you return to your studies, you hear one of the girls titter, the sound shockingly incongruous in the desecrated chapel
If the party turns to examine the girls
The girls are lined up against the back wall, smiling or grinning widely. Only then it is that you see the marks around their throats, the dribbles of blood from their lips, and with a chill you realise that the happily laughing girls who you saw so recently trooping out to gather flowers in the sunlit woods, are now dead.
If turned they will flee to the lower levels of the catacombs. The party may hear their frail bodies tumbling down the steep stairs (at ).
This massive chamber is where the bodies of the deceased lie in state. The body of the unfortunate girl, covered by a sheet of white samite will be placed here, in the centre of the room. A shaft of light from the ceiling will illuminate the bier.
Room 2
The chapel. A moderate sized room, it contains pews and a small lecturn and dais.
Event 3
Once the party has discovered this room, Father Theran will become distinctly upset and worried. Finally realising the degree to which the halls have been compromised by the evil influence, he will insist on returning to the village to warn the villagers.
Catacombs
Workroom
This is a combination storage, work and lunch room for Gamley the undertaker. On one wall is a lift and winch for raising and lowering coffins from the main hall.
The Strange Chamber
The hole appears to drop away into a dark cavern. Should the players choose to descend:
You find yourselves sliding down a ramp of tumbled clay and stone, into a dark brown
Triangular tokens of thick reddish gold, inscribed with simple pictograms. Throne surrounded by pentagram. Everything covered by a layer of thick brown dust, which if scraped away will reveal reddish sandstone blocks, which clearly aren’t of local origin.
Gamley’s House
Pleasant cottage set amidst farmers and grazing meadows, lush garden, obviously untended of recent times. House locked, and within in a state of chaos and extreme neglect. Piles of unwashed clothing, food rotting, Gamley will be found lying insensible on his bed.
He may wake and convey a message from Zytharis, otherwise he will remain in a comatose state, unreactive to any physical stimuli.
Day 2
Event: Father Theron will summon the party explaining that a nearby farmer heard rumbling noises overnight that spooked his cattle, causing them to break through three fences.
Investigation: The party should they choose to investigate will find no evidence of the source of the rumblings, nor any evidence of either lightning strikes or and despite the muddiness of the fields, there will be no trace of any tracks. The farmers daughter, an attractive buxom lass will take an instant liking to the male party members, flirting with them outrageously, much to the open disapproval of her father.
There will seem to be no rational explanation for the sounds.
If by this stage of the game the players have made little headway in their investigations they will each receive the same dream, which is divinely inspired.
The characters will endure a restless night, tossing and turning in their beds, and despite the cool night air, sweating profusely.
The dream will come upon them thusly
A brazen sun burns down out of a vault of the deepest blue, the heat is a physical thing which weighs you down, and saps the energy from your every movement. In the harbour, the waves slap against the hulls of reed and wooden planked boats, over which half naked dark skinned men, clad only in brief white kilts, clamber. Gulls wheel above the docks, adding their raucous cries to the chants of the seamen, the babble of the merchants and the fishwives. And everywhere are the priests, striding serenely aloof from the common throng which parts so as to not impede their progress.
The scene shifts, and you realise that you are dreaming as you find yourself in a high stone chamber, the vaulted ceiling held aloft by crude stone columns. The heat here is as stifling as outside, the air dead. Guards armed with simple copper headed spears line the walls and ahead you see a simple stone dais. A golden throne heaped high with silken cushions is located centrally upon the dais, and atop the mound of cushions reclines a young woman of phenomenal beauty. At her feet, sit four identical woman who could twins of the one on the throne, who slowly turns her head to face you.
Returning to Menadoc, the party will find the village in a state of agitation. An angry, frightened crowd has gathered in the village square, armed with an improvised array of weapons.
The ground trembles violently and then with an enormous
shuddering crash one of the houses bordering the square explodes in a shower of
dust and broken mortar. A
massive purple worm rises high above the cloud of debris, writhes and falls
back to earth with a ground shaking thump.
Around you, the houses, one by one, begin to explode in puffs of dust and falling masonry. In the village square the cobblestones begin to subside, beneath the feet of the shrieking townsfolk, sinking slowly at first as the crowd flees in terrified panic, and then faster and faster. Then the ground opens up and where the square once was, yawns a cavernous pit into which the debris slides, plummeting down in an avalanche of dust and falling stone.
Then as the dust clears, you see ant like forms swarming around the floor of pit, climbing up the jagged walls, and as the sun strikes their scurrying forms you realise that you are watching an army of skeletons.
Catastrophe
Epilogue
As a final macabre joke, Zytharis will send a barrow warrior to cut down the party just as they believe that they’ve finally escaped her bony eembrace
All day the road has been clogged by a mass of refugee’s streaming away from Menadoc which now lies many miles behind
Only a pillar of smoke marks its location.
DM’s background
Thousands of years before the restless swells of the endless ocean swallowed up the last remnants of ancient Archeron
A child progeny she had advanced further in the arts of magic and science by the time she was a teenager than many would in a dozen lifetimes.
Eventually her excesses grew so great, that even the iniquitous priesthood of that evil nation finally rebelled. By night a group of conspirators came together and entering the royal palace they slew the unresisting Zytharis and her retinue as they slept.
It was only after the royal funeral had been concluded in spectacular pomp and ceremony by the same “grief stricken” priesthood that the conspirators came to realise their mistake, by then it was far too late. They in truth had not slain Zytharis, for she had allowed them to slay her.
In consternation they stole to her tomb, where the silent bodies of the dead guards told their own story. Trembling with fear, the plotters encircled the tomb with glyphs of warding
For many moons they voyaged till they came at last to a cool northern land. The inhabitants of this green verdant land were a primitive barbarian people. Unresistingly they were enslaved by the Acheron priests, and then driven day and night till they fell and died where they fell, burying the crypt in the side of the hill. Meticulously the priests covered all traces of the excavation, slaying the few survivors amongst their barbarian workforce. This done high priest slew his underlings and mingled their ashes with those of their erstwhile slaves. The job finally complete, the priest sailed home, alone but for a tiny crew, barely large enough to handle the single ship. Barely had he set foot on the shores of Acheron once more, tha