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581 The Forsaken Ruins
🕑 Added 2022-05-19 17:08:00 +0000 UTCTraveler! The world is full of uncharted places and locations. Some of them hide the last remnants of bygone societies or peoples. The Seri dynasty is one of those. They ruled the land thousands of years ago but their rulership ended quickly after horrible wars. An underground mausoleum near Cattailton is possibly the only remnant of their people. The villagers ignore this because they shun the place ever since some explorers got lost. However, the crypt has become a problem and a threat to the good people of Cattailton.
A strange green mist corrupted the dead buried in the crypt. The enraged souls of the Seri come back from the dead in the shape of wraiths and shadows who wish to consume the living. They make the journey to town at sunset and attack the poor villagers at night. A squad of six elite guards did not return from the crypts. The authorities offer a hefty bounty and look for external help. Whoever explores this place will find priceless historic records about the Seri. But it will not be an easy task to deal with the corrupted dead.
This is a level 8 adventure with a bit of role-playing, dungeon-crawling in a dangerous dungeon, and a battle with a group of spirits from a bygone world. Here's a low-def preview of this illustration:
Here's a close-up of the ancient ruins of the Sari dynasty. Treasures from a bygone era are guarded by mindless creatures, corrupted by the Underworld's influence. Other spirits remain sentient but shall not part with their heirlooms, even if they are useless to them now.
In the following chamber, a strange sentient entity asks the characters to leave without the records and scrolls in the chests that are valuable enough to risk one's life for. The spirits would rather have their deplorable exploits unknown and remain in obscurity.
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Comments
Elven Tower
Hi therem Johann. We're glad to hear how you had an awesome time playing through this adventure. I can imagine the desperation for that final escape scene as the whole place collapses and the PCs barely make it out.
Johann Weise
I ran this yesterday for a party of 8 level 5 PC's for 5e and here are some of my thoughts: 1. The wights are relatively boring along side the shadows. I used wraith warriors to spice up the battle. 2. The corruption mist is brutal, that nearly killed everyone. This is to be expected. 3. The invisilbe stalkers are a clever trick and particularly savage in the corruption cloud. 4. There is a complete lack of loot in this dungeon, lots of gold and a +2 silver long sword for a level 8 adventure? I understand there is a "King's Ransom" in knowledge but that will be nearly impossible to get out before the tomb collapses. 5. I altered the explosion of the radiant "battery" in room to start the cave-in. I gave the party 6 rounds to get out of the cave. the adventure says "The adventures have a few minutes to get out" but that did not creep up the tension enough. Every round it was a Dex check to escape escalating from 10 +1/round to a total on the final round doing 1d6, 2d6, and then 3d6 at the end. 6. The Ghost has no stats in room 12. Standard ghost? For a level 8 adventure I was hoping there would be a boss with some legendary mechanics built in which are approriate. I used this guy from here: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/ggtr/npcs-by-guild#ObzedattheGhostCouncil Overall the party had fun, blew up the radiant portal, The ghost thanked them through the falling rocks as a shadow, and the time pressure to get the PC's out in 6 rounds was some of the most brutal gameplay as people were scrambling to survive and barely made it out alive. Map was great, printed out just fine.
