2024-06-29 Cart of the Necromancer
Player Characters
- Malivette
- Derulo
- Furifuru
- Tarhun
- Magoo
Summary
The party gathered in Gallakor. Officers in the town guard updated them on the ghost situation:
- A group of mercenaries were already hired to investigate the problem. They have not returned. A 1000 gp reward was offered to find them.
- Ghosts have not been seen in Gallakor recently; whatever the cause, the problem appears to have stopped.
- When the mercenaries investigated the situation, they reported that they believed the Brakkenhord Company was involved in some way. The company had an office in Gallakor.
They visited the Brakkenhord Company office and met with a representative, who told them how the company's business was suffering due to the depletion in the Rockhorse Mines as well as the actions of the Rockhorse Union, to the extent of selling furniture. The company was doing better recently, however; the employee was hopeful about keeping their job. The party asked about the mercenaries, and the employee told how they believed the company was selling cursed products at one point. He was certain the office didn't contain any cursed items to show to the party as evidence, however.
They set out toward the Rockhorse Mines. After two days of travel, they found the core atrium of the Rockhorse mining operation.
Malivette approached foreman Flann, tall M dwarf. Realizing how wealthy he looked to the impoverished worker, he asked Magoo to ask the questions.
Flann was hesitant to speak of the situation without a reward. Magoo bribed 1 gp from Mal's pockets.
Flann told about the situation with the union workers, how their commissioned work was drying up due to mine depletion. The Brakkenhord Company had a second smaller operation in the Haunted Mines to the east, but those mines were known to be strange and unsafe, full of rumors of monsters and moving shadows.
Mal paid another 1 gp for more information about the lost mercenaries.
Flann told him that the mercenaries traveled to the Haunted Mines to search for whatever cursed ore/gem/product the Company was mining.
Flann complained how the Company didn't bother to improve wages and conditions for their workers; they were counting on their employees to risk working in the Haunted Mines, which many did out of desperation.
Mal told foreman Flann about possible new job opportunities at the Bastion of Dreams nearby. The foreman agreed to send someone to learn about it.
Sympathizing with the plight of the poor, Magoo secretly donated another 50 gp to the man.
The party traveled toward the Haunted Mines. The path was dotted with lanterns like many major roads in Smokewhistle, but were unlit. Two days in, they saw a faint glowing from a random side branch.
They moved into the side cave, and saw that the glow came from a purple primal crystals stuck in the wall. Just then, a variety of phantasmal undead floated out of the walls and attacked.
Tarhun used his spirit level to deactivate the purple crystal temporarily, which caused two ghosts to vanish. The party fought off the remaining wraiths and flameskulls.
Derulo conjured a huge safety vault and a pile of useful items, including holy water, which he used to destroy the flameskulls' cursed remains.
Tarhun mined out the primal crystal.
They rested in the vault (layered with Furi's tiny hut).
The party continued toward the Haunted Mines, arriving a few hours later at a camp full of dirt-marked dwarven miners. Tents circled around the edges of a wide cave, with lanterns and campfires set up for warmth and light. The workers were preparing to sleep for the night.
Mal approached the foreman with a slight intentional disrespect. Foreman Ungrel Crabslack, as he introduced himself, immediately felt threatened by the attitude, repeatedly mentioning that he was in charge as they conversed.
Mal asked about the mercenary party. Ungrel told how they went into the "Death Mines", a deep section of the mines that reeked of corpserot. Stories told of things that moved in the dark there.
Magoo talked up Ungrel's ego to distract him and get on his good side. The insecure foreman rambled about his leadership strategies.
Tarhun and Derulo talked to some of the miners. The miners talked about how purple primal crystals were found in the mines along with ghosts and zombies. The mercenaries had disappeared into the Death Mines and never returned.
Magoo convinced Ungrel to tell him where the purple crystals ended up after gathering. They were sold in mass to an independent buyer, a man named Intz Sliff. The man was scheduled to visit the next day, so the party could meet him if they so chose.
They spent a night camping near the workers. Mal cooked up sausages for them, which vanished quickly.
The next day, Ungrel told them they had until late afternoon before Intz would arrive, and that they could kill a few hours first.
The party decided to visit the Death Mines with their spare time.
They found another purple crystal, laying out in the open. The Death Mines stank of death and decay as was warned, and the party heard squelching noises from ahead and hailing hollow drops from behind. A bone swarm and corpse mound meandered into view, and the party fought off the undead with area disable spells. Zombies sunk in mud, and Mal's lance and Derulo's spirit guardians tore apart the bones.
The party found remains of humanoids and thri-kreen, including a locket belonging to one of the lost mercenaries, proof of their disappearance here.
The party continued ahead through a bloodcrusted tunnel where the undead had shambled about. They found a room with 10 purple crystals. Tarhun chiseled them out while the others prepared to fight more undead, but none came.. Magoo scoured the chamber and found 700 gp of loot.
Derulo set up smokepowder in the cave. The PCs all fled as he lit it. The ensuing explosion shook the walls, causing a cave-in. The party escaped to the miners' camp, along with many of the miners, when the shaking stopped. Some of the miners were trapped in the mines they had been digging in.
Derulo and Furi polymorphed themselves into huge apes/hares and dug the rocks out, and Tarhun cast move earth from his lyre of building. They freed the trapped workers.
The miners then pushed a minecart filled with around ~30 purple crystals. Ungrel hurried the dwarves to transport it to its customer, who would arrive soon.
They followed the foreman down a side tunnel to an empty room with a hanging lamp. Ungrel lit it, and they waited a short while.
A human man carrying a staff appeared, accompanied by four cloaked masked servants pushing their own minecart along old rails ahead.
The dwarven miners moved the sacks of purple crystals into Intz's minecart, and the cloaked servants handed over a sack of coins.
Mal conversed with Intz. The mage told him that he was using the crystals to perform arcane research in a private study. Intz was pleased to meet Tarhun, having read his published works. The man refused to give more details about his research, however, claiming that he was afraid of plagiarism and wouldn't share his learnings until they were fully published. The PCs felt that he wasn't being truthful about this.
Furi detected necromantic energy from the cloaked servants. He whispered this to the others.
Mal confronted Intz about his zombie servants. The man was taken aback, seeming to take offense at the accusation, and refused to divulge anything else. He activated a command-word contingency to dimension door directly away from the party, toward the cave he came from. The servants rushed away, hopping onto their crystal-filled minecart to escape.
The party pursued the undead and found two old minecarts next to a parallel rail. Mal sat atop Ashkinkle, his ashmare, Derulo rode his summoned pegasus with Furi, and Tarhun and Magoo hopped into one minecart. Ashkinkle pushed it along while hasted by Tarhun, dramatically boosting the cart as it wheeled onto a suspended rail in the middle of a tall and wide cavern with a lake below.
They gained ground on the cloaked undead as they gave chase. Tarhun passwalled them through a curtain of stalactites. When two zombie beholders appeared on either side, Mal used his whip to spun one like a top while Furi trapped the other in a box of illusory mirrors.
Derulo and Furi animated the enemy's minecarts as the party caught up, and one set of undead were dumped while the others lobbed axes and swung swords.
They commandeered the purple crystal cart, and saw Intz ahead in another minecart. The rail exited the open cave and entered one with a floor, a 40 ft ceiling of stalactites, and the width to hold three parallel old rails.
As they drew closer, Intz tried to slow the party with magic, leaving a wall of fire followed by illusory copies of himself on each rail. Furi used reverse gravity to distinguish the real one; as the fake necromancers continued on, the real one crash-landed on the ceiling. The party crashed behind him, catching up.
Mal kept Intz locked from escaping Tarhun's silence spell. The necromancer cast hypnotic pattern to disrupt it, but incapacitated Furi instead, causing gravity to restore and dropping them back to the floor. Finally, Malivette finished off the necromancer as he tried to scurry away.
They looted 25 purple primal crystals from the cart and took Intz's staff of the war mage +2.
They wondered where Intz was going. They rode the carts about 10 minutes further, and ended up at Intz's circular dome-topped laboratory which sat upon a plateau just above the surface of a pool of water. A bridge let to the front, and two pedestals with glowing purple (non-primal) crystals illuminated the path. They dispatched four more cloaked undead guards, picked up stones for teleport later, and Magoo claimed the glowing gems as treasure.
They teleported back to the Bastion of Dreams with Intz's gentle reposed corpse in a bag of holding and rested at the inn.
Tarhun reported to both the town guard and Brakkenhord Company about the purple primal crystals and how they caused the ghosts, as well as how they were sold to a necromancer. When Mal discovered that the company was selling the crystals intentionally to Intz and denying it, he reported it to the town guard.
Over the next few weeks, the Queen heard about the Brakkenhord Company's shady dealings with the necromancer. The company's management stood trial for negligent business practices and complicity with a criminal, the company went bankrupt, and the unhappy workers were left to find new opportunities.
Comments