Plots from Beyond the Grave
Hello, faithful reader, and welcome back to Grave Plots, your online source for a weekly supply of plot ideas and adventure hooks. This week, as you all know, is Undead Week here at NNW, and so I would like to bring you a handful of adventure ideas revolving around the always fascinating, often frightening, and almost dead creatures we’re currently taking the time to celebrate. What follows is one among many ideas for each of the skeletal, corporeal, and spectral subcategories of the fantastic and foul undead.
The Skeleton Champion
Hans Durstrang was the youngest son of High Lord Drummel Durstrang, head of the local church to the undead-hating god of light. Drummel has received the news that Hans recently fell in battle to an unlikely foe: Inquisitor Yvan Nielar, Drummel’s second-in-command. Lately, Yvan had become involved with a cult of wicked necromancers and, unfortunately for Hans, he had begun growing suspicious of her activities. Yvan learned of his investigation, and one night she chose to have him eliminated. Following the battle, Yvan, confident in her abilities and anxious to exercise her new-found power over death, decided to raise Hans as a skeletal champion. Unknown to Yvan, however, her magic was flawed and the process took an unexpected turn, as Hans was raised as a free-willed skeleton champion in full possession of all his faculties. Hans chose to hide this fact from Yvan, however, and has been playing the loyal undead servant, biding his time and laying in wait for his chance to face her in a fair fight…
Lately, the PCs have been noticing strange happenings in areas where the church of Pelor (or something similar) holds sway, specifically a rise in undead activity. (Make sure to distinguish that the church power centers weren’t built in undead-infested regions, or this hypothesis will mean relatively little.) Then, while traveling in one of these regions (the one overseen by High Lord Drummel Durstrang) the PCs hear rumors that a local lord is distraught over the recent unexplained loss of his son, presumably at the hands of foul necromancers. Upon hearing that heroes (your PCs) are in town, Lord Durstrang sends a messenger to arrange a meeting with them in order to hire them to look into the disappearance of his son. Lord Durstrang suggests that the PCs investigate a nearby cave system he knows to be the lair of a group of necromancers, thinking the PCs could find more information there.
The caves, as it turns out, are the secret lair of Yvan, the fallen priestess, who resides there with a few lesser necromancers, and a whole horde of skeletal minions. The cave system is primarily a series of large, dark, rocky tunnels, connecting larger chambers of uneven elevations, and gaping chasms splitting the floors. Near the far end of the system, the necromancers are holed up in a subsection of the caverns, in chambers only marginally more livable than those found elsewhere. Yvan’s own chamber, however, is somewhat more luxurious, being divided into three separate rooms: a living area, a bedroom, and a summoning chamber. Her rooms feature smooth walls magically shaped with a stone shape spell.
When the PCs initially enter the caves, they see no sign of necromancer activity and should encounter only native cave dwellers at first. As the PCs probe deeper into the caves, however, they begin to encounter skeletal archers and monstrous undead beasts placed with strong tactical advantage (i.e., archers across chasms; Huge monsters filling doorways; creatures with reach utilizing higher ground and makeshift walls so that PCs must either fight from a range, or attempt to climb the elevated structures in order to close to melee). Once the PCs fight their way into the necromancers’ chambers, they encounter much harsher resistance, having to go toe-to-toe with the lesser spell slingers and their more advanced undead minions. For the final confrontation with Yvan, she orders her skeletal champion to “Destroy them all! Mwahahaha!” Unfortunately for her, the skeletal champion is Hans, who sees the PCs as his chance to defeat Yvan once and for all. He cries out, “Your evil ends here, Yvan!” before attacking her. With the PCs’ help, Hans kills Yvan, and afterwards begins to explain what’s been going on: how Yvan is part of a wretched new cult comprised primarily of high-ranking members within the church, and that as part of her initiation she murdered him and tried to raise him as her skeletal minion. He asks the PCs to tell his father that he’s gone, and provides them with his seal, still stored in Yvan’s ritual chamber, as proof. If the PCs ask what’s next for Hans, he says he feels he’s been given a second chance, and that it’s his duty to destroy this evil cult and prevent them from achieving their grand and conspiratorial goals (these can be whatever you want, but should probably be both nefarious and general).
From here you could develop further adventures involving a conspiracy within the church, or you could have the PCs later encounter Hans, perhaps on his anti-necromancy crusade, or perhaps in a more traditional vigilante role. Or instead, the insidious cult might approach the PCs, possibly under the guise of some more innocent organization, and hire them to find and destroy an evil skeleton knight who has murdered several prominent figures; the PCs, of course, find the guilty party to be Hans and must choose to either face him down in combat or work with him against their former employer.
Ghoul’s Night Out
The city of Oakenrun has been experiencing some gruesome killings in which only the skeletons of the victims were found, making it difficult to identify the victims. The PCs become involved because they were either hired by the victims’ families, or approached by the tortured soul of a little girl, who was among the first victims of this string of killings. Once the PCs begin investigating, they find themselves short of good leads, unless of course they can speak with dead, in which case the PCs can learn from any victim’s spirit (save for the little girl, who was attacked from behind) that the killers were a group of vicious, hunched-over, craven undead, who attacked with claws and fangs and began to devour their flesh before even they were dead.
Next the PCs must track down the ghouls. Where exactly the ghouls have holed up is up to you, but if the ghouls are hiding in the city then it stands to reason they should be hard to find, their hideout somewhere fairly secluded like the city’s sewers. Once the PCs track them to their lair, they must fight the ghouls. A ghoul cries for someone to get the master while they hold off the PCs, and one of them hurries away from the fight. The master, it turns out, is a powerful nosferatu. He patiently and disinterestedly watches the PCs slaughter his ghoul servants, deciding the PCs themselves would make excellent replacement minions. He offers them the chance to serve him willingly, but if they refuse he attacks, attempting to infect them with his ghoul disease. If the PCs successfully flee, he chooses not to pursue them at the time, but they have earned a powerful new enemy (who can easily become a recurring villain). If the PCs are captured and turned into ghouls, the game isn’t necessarily over: they have just got themselves a powerful new evil patron, who sends them out on quests designed to sow the seeds of chaos and elevate their new master to godhood. Perhaps on the way they will grow strong enough to take him down, seizing that power for themselves.
Specter’s Sport
The PCs are invited to compete in a tournament for heroes. Taking after the medieval tournaments, there are competitions in archery, jousting, song, tumbling, and wrestling, as well as some new events, like magecraft and monster-fighting. During the tournament, teams of X (where X = number of PCs) compete against one another, performing in any event they can and scoring points based on performance. At the end of the day, the top 5-20 teams (whatever works best for your purposes) are separated to face one another in traditional tourney-style combat. Looking around at the other teams who have made the cut, the PCs should feel pretty confident in their chances – until the last team shows up.
Appearing out of thin air with a haunting cry, a team of translucent, pearly white figures equipped with obviously magical gear glances around at the competition curiously. So who are these ghostly figures? Well, that depends on your preferences. If you’re looking for a chance to cameo some favorite PCs or NPCs from a previous campaign, this a great time to do it, especially if you feel the need to slap the PCs down a little bit – they will most likely respond better to a crushing defeat at the hands of heroes they know and love than at the hands of some unknown strangers. Or, if you want to give the PCs a fun and challenging tourney, the ghostly team could contain a group of arrogant ghosts from tourneys past, sure of their victory before the battle even begins; after all, they do win every year. If you go this route, include a tournament organizer who desperately wants to see these ghosts go down, and perhaps have the condition for their eternal rest be meeting heroes greater then themselves. And of course, if you have some idea you like better use that. Personally, I like the cameo – ghosts are great for reliving fond memories.
As for development, this one is pretty much a stand-alone adventure, so you should have a prize (or prizes) for success that allows you to get a little more mileage. Some suggestions might be the hand of a princess (perhaps she was originally betrothed to one of the ghostly heroes), a piece of property in an ogre-infested swamp, a mysterious artifact mistaken by all involved to be a mere trinket, or an intelligent magic item who’s sick and tired of rotting in a lord’s chest and happy to be about seeing the world (personally, I like this last option).