Investigating the Catacombs

Heading into the catacombs beneath the Tristram Cathedral, the heroes were overwhelmed by the encroaching darkness and the stuffy, cold air. Knowing that the Skeleton King spoke to Sir Gorash of his "master" and that the undead monarch was gathering an army of soldiers within these halls of the dead, it seemed like a good place to search for clues, but the party needed leads, and had very few to go on.

• Cain told of a plague that tore through the Western Kingdoms some decades before, and that the diseased dead were buried in the catacombs.
• Coffins filled with bloated and pustulent corpses filled the halls, and some even rose as malevolent undead, attempting to infect the party with their rot.
• The bone-lined hallways contained new horrors, such as blackened skeletons, crafty gargoyles, and invisible enemies that hid in the inky shadows.
• A secret passage led up a spiraling stairwell to a capped exit. Mesedre lifted the massive stone, providing an exit back to Tristram.
• Griswold fashioned a sturdy gate to keep the monsters from flooding into town through the new exit.
• A strange tome titled "The Book of the Blind" detailed a terrible realm known as the Halls of the Blind, which the party became trapped within.
• Once free of the Halls of the Blind, the group discovered the the catacombs had a second level to them.
• The second level contained a door sealed with a powerful magical lock and explosive trap, which the group elected to leave undisturbed.
• A sorcerer known as Zhar was encountered, but the spellcaster paid the party no mind and teleported away, mumbling to himself all the while.
• A pool of dark water caused hallucinations about things that never happened. When the hallucinations passed, the heroes found themselves change by these imagined events, and struggled to tell fact from fiction in their own lives.
• Returning to the door, the way was opened and Zhar was seen in the chamber beyond. Once more, he ignored the group and teleported away.
• The chamber was discovered to be the Hall of Heroes, wherein was said to be hidden a great and powerful relic.
• After acquiring Arkaine's Valor, a passage opened up to a roughly-hewn passage, unlike the rest of the area.
• A portal within the passage led into a place known as the Chamber of Bone, but the group went back to concult Cain before entering the dark vortex.
• Cain told the group what he knew of the Chamber of Bone and Zhar the Mad, who decided that leaving dangerous knowledge and relics in the hands of such men was unacceptable.
• The party escaped the Chamber of Bone, but Jazreth was badly maimed in the process, and the group returned to Tristram to seek the aid of Pepin before exploring the cavern-like tunnel any further.

Having escaped the Halls of the Blind, proved themselves in the Hall of Heroes, and plundered the demonic treasures from the Chamber of Bone, the catacombs were once more cleansed of demonic forces. However, the damning documents implicating Archbishop Lazarus in the dark events that had overtaken Khanduras could not be ignored. With no better leads, the party licked their wounds back in town, even as the citizens heaped ever greater accolades on them for their daring acts of heroism. But what would be found in the twisting depths below even the catacombs?

Subplots

• Halls of the Blind
• Chamber of Bone