Trudging through snow, four adventurers approached a decrepit mansion.
- Cornyx, a Level 1 Warrior-Priest of the Living Flame.
- Dr. Holmen, Level 1 Chirurgeon.
- Malakai, Level 1 Templar of the Crucified God.
- Yvonne, Level 1 Illusionist.
Yvonne was here to reclaim an ancestral birthright. The others were just hoping the tavern hearsay about a stash of alchemical gold was true (and that the rumour of ghostly hauntings wasn't).
Water-clogged stormclouds blotted out the dying sun and a thick sea-mist had rolled in from the jagged coastline of the Empty Sea, so Cornyx lit his torch and Yvonne cast Light. They began a thorough perimeter sweep of the house, prying open boarded-up windows and searching for tracks. Finding nothing out of the ordinary, they carefully breached the main doors.
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The interior of Montecrux’s mansion was littered with bird shit, crumbled plasterboard and patches of mould. Despite the dismal conditions, the party noted the stonework of the building was still of sound construction. The same couldn’t be said of the main staircase snaking up to the second floor, whose steps were rotten and decayed. Seeing no immediate dangers beyond the architectural, the party split up to clear the first floor of threats and search for valuables.
Yvonne and Malakai began sorting through the manor’s library, finding a trio of magical treatises that, if refurbished, could be sold for a healthy sum of silver. Meanwhile, Cornyx sifted through a document-laden drawer in the study - finding a hidden compartment containing a vial of liquid with the appearance of blood-tainted sea water. Dr. Holmen begged him not to engage in the rigorous scientific test of “sipping some” until after they had cleared the dungeon. The fur-clad zealot begrudgingly agreed, stashing the unidentified potion for later.
As Yvonne and Malakai left the library, they heard an ear-splitting screech from the next room. Rallying with the others, they searched the adjoining sitting room but came up empty-handed. Muttering to themselves about ghosts, they searched the rest of the floor carefully, finding a kitchen, wash-room, refectory, sauna and stairway to a basement.
Right before they finished their sweep, a loud crashing noise came from down a hallway - caused by a giant driver ant gnawing its way through a boarded-up window.
The critter gnashed its jaws at them in a territorial display, before retreating into an unexplored side room. The insect was a bizarre sight - someone had obviously dressed it up in heavy furs (even adorning its foremost leg with a shiny silver necklace) and the thing had a cordyceps-like fungus growing out of its head.
Eyeing the ant’s jewellery with avarice, the adventurers chased after it, entering a debris-stridden room whose fireplace was filled with yellow mould. Malakai and Cornyx braved the clacking of the ant’s massive mandibles; hacking it to death with their blades. Its mutilated corpse fell backwards into the thick carpet of mould and kicked up a cloud of spores. Unwilling to risk death from respiratory failure, they threw burning pitch onto the patch of fungus and left to let it burn off.
Soon after, the party began to hear noises from above them as well. Dr. Holmen’s keen ears picked out two sources of sound - muffled cries for help and the skittering of some many-legged thing, too light on its feet to be another driver ant. He presumed it was a giant spider, eliciting nervous muttering from the assembled mercenaries.
Steeling themselves, they readied weapons and carefully advanced to the second floor.
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| More art from the Sinister Secret |
The upper storey windows were unboarded - providing weak lighting from the world’s dying sun. The adventurers crept down a hallway, checking the two rooms on their right and discovering near identical chests in each. Voicing concerns about mimics, Cornyx, Dr. Holmen and Malakai all piled into the first room, spending several minutes interrogating every detail about the chests. Meanwhile Yvonne was left alone to guard the hallway, armed with nothing but a staff with Light cast on it.
As she glanced back to the dithering of her comrades, she heard a scuttling noise down the hall - turning to see the second floor’s eight-legged resident trying to bushwhack her. She grabbed Dr. Holmen to use as an impromptu human-shield, but he pushed the panicked wizard away. Thankfully the spider missed Yvonne - its spray of webs instead ripping out a section of ceiling and showering her with plaster dust. It then retreated, using the plume of debris to cover its escape.
Accepting that the chest probably wasn’t a disguised aberration, the adventurers decided to deal with the immediate threat first. However, before they could pursue Yvonne’s arachnid attacker, they heard gabbering in an unknown dialect approaching their rear. Taking cover, they saw four spear-wielding humanoids stagger up the staircase. The diminutive creatures were fungal in origin - flesh the consistency of mashed potatoes and glue.
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| The Moss Goblins! |
Though Dr. Holmen didn’t understand these Moss-Goblins' language, the cadence of their shouts sounded like someone calling out for a lost dog. The party, realizing that they’d probably beaten these creatures’ insectoid pet to death, decided to double down on violent solutions and launched an ambush. Under a flurry of crossbow bolts, sword blades and throwing axes, three Moss-Goblins perished messily.
The lone survivor barely escaped with its life, fleeing in terror back down the staircase.
Satisfied their flank was secure from wandering monsters, the mercenaries stacked up on the web-covered doorway to the spider’s den. Cornyx, waving a torch and screaming prayers to the Living Flame, breached the door. He saw a human-sized bundle of webs yelling for help in the corner, whilst the spider hid deeper in the room.
The priest ripped the hostage free, but not before the spider leapt out and scored a savage bite into his chest. Yvonne and Dr. Holmen daisy-chained a flask of incendiaries to Malakai, who tossed it past Cornyx into the room - covering the webs in tar pitch.
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| Additional Sinister Secret art |
Kicking the spider away, Cornyx dragged the unknown man through the door - tossing his torch into the sticky morass of flammable pitch as he did so. After Malakai slammed the door shut, the party heard the monster’s last panicked movements before its nest was totally consumed by flame.
Thankfully the house was ice-ridden enough to not combust, so the adventurers had a spare moment to patch up Cornyx’s injuries and interrogate their rescuee. The man said his name was “Ned” and that he was a mushroom forager from Restenburn who had foolishly taken shelter in the manor. When asked where his supplies, mushrooms and other equipment was, he claimed that Cornyx must’ve burned it all along with the spider. Unable to confirm or deny Ned's story, the party ignored his pleas for everyone to flee the haunted manor and press-ganged him into being their torchbearer.
Searching the now cleared floor, the adventurers found no mimics. But they did find a scroll of Hold Person and a stash of recently-hidden diamonds which Ned desperately claimed no knowledge of (no-one believed him). Yvonne also recovered four paintings from an old art gallery, all created by James Montecrux himself. The first three were beautiful depictions of the mansion before the coming of the Eternal Winter - definitely valuable, but she staunchly refused to sell any of her ancestor’s creations. The last was half-finished, but appeared to depict a sea cave looking out onto the Empty Sea.
Making their way back downstairs, the adventurers stopped briefly to recover loot from the smouldering corpse of the dead ant, before approaching the basement stairs. As Malakai took the first step, a bone-chilling scream that morphed into a deranged giggle was heard from the dark basement - rapidly approaching the foot of the stairs.
Ned begged everyone to retreat, but Yvonne pulled out the scroll of Detect Magic (that she’d liberated from Sir Hancock’s corpse) and smugly identified the noise as a Magic Mouth spell. Casting Light on a brick, she tossed it down the stairs - illuminating a section of a dusty wine cellar.
However, as the adventurers descended into the decrepit basement, they noticed a plate-mail clad corpse collapsed among the remains of a wine rack. The man was dressed similarly to Malakai, in the vestments of the Crucified God’s followers. He was also several days dead - his neck horribly broken from where something had violently thrown him into the wine rack. With Detect Magic still active, Yvonne announced that the armour was in fact enchanted - although she couldn’t yet tell with what.
As the wizard knelt down to perform a thorough arcane appraisal, the other adventurers busied themselves searching for loot stashes and secret doors. After all, a horde of alchemical gold might actually be hidden here if someone had cast a 2nd Level spell to ward the basement against intrusion. Their diligence was rewarded, as Malakai announced he’d found a camouflaged door on the far wall.
This caused Ned to groan audibly, before throwing his torch at Yvonne and trying to flee back up the stairs. He only made it two steps before Cornyx body-slammed him into unconsciousness. The adventurers breathed a sigh of relief upon realising their traitorous conscript had missed Yvonne with his improvised missile, instead striking the dead crusader. Then the wizard screamed a warning that she’d identified the “enchantment” - an Animate Objects curse.
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| Y-17 Trauma Harness |
The torch’s impact awoke the bewitched armour; it surged to its feet and threw a punch that would’ve caved Yvonne’s chest in if she hadn't scrambled out of the way. Thanks to her advice, Cornyx and Malakai knew armour was the threat (not the dead templar imprisoned in it) so they showered attacks onto its joints - severing an arm.
The armour gave as good as it got, delivering a gut-punch that would’ve ruptured Cornyx’s internal organs if he hadn’t no-sold it by channeling the Living Flame. Before the construct could wind up another haymaker, Dr. Holmen scooped up the Light-enchanted brick from the floor and pitched it straight into its dented chestplate.
The “magical” brick impacted with a burst of crackling energy, causing the armour to collapse into a smouldering pile of wreckage. Yvonne, having recovered from her near death experience, began hypothesising how the Light spell might’ve somehow reacted with the armour’s curse. Meanwhile, Malakai gave the mutilated body its last rites, Cornyx ate half a ration (burning the rest as a sacrifice to the Living Flame) and Dr. Holmen listened at the secret door, confirming that no one had audibly reacted to the commotion of battle.
Rallying themselves for a confrontation, and leaving the concussed Ned tied up on the floor, the party threw open the secret door and surged inside the hidden room. Within was a sight completely different from the rest of Montecrux’s Manor, a large, well-lit and relatively clean basement. It had a table, foodstocks, fireplace and a row of beds that were obviously being used as living quarters for a dozen people. Indeed, one of them was staring straight at the party, mouth agape.
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| Even more art from the Sinister Secret! |
The heavily tattooed stranger lurched up from his chair and ran towards a door on the opposite side of the room - likely to fetch reinforcements. Malakai produced a pistol (also liberated from Sir Hancock’s corpse) and demanded he surrender.
The man told Malakai to go fuck himself, so Cornyx threw a nearby bar stool at him, cracking the man painfully in the back. Malakai followed suit, throwing a chair at the man’s legs, causing him to fall and smash his head on the stone floor. They ran up to disarm him, but he was already twitching fitfully in a rapidly-expanding pool of blood.
With the threat eliminated, the party swept the room - finding a small stash of smuggled goods from the Central Territories, silks and alcohol mostly. Yvonne swore under her breath; a gang of criminals must be using her dead ancestor’s manor to run a smuggling ring. They also found a secret passage to the sitting room where they'd heard the shriek from (in retrospect, definitely another Magic Mouth ward).
Aside from the double-doors the smuggler had run towards, the basement also contained an entrance to a small bedroom and a boarded-up doorway which had “DANGER. DON’T FUCKING OPEN IT.” scrawled on it in the common-tongue.
The sea.
(I used a modified version of TSR's "The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh" for this starting dungeon. I think it's OK, but can be quite linear and lacks any meaningful opportunity to engage in negotiation or similar non-combat gameplay. Still, as something to launch into for the first session, you could definitely do a lot worse. Once I've finished running my players through this dungeon, I'll attach the hand-drawn maps - of varying quality - that I used in this session.)
