The Mortuary

The Mortuary rises above mechanus, like a dead hand erupting from a grave. Lair of Vanadon-Necroth, god of passage, the Mortuary is a house of death: a morgue, funeral home, and tomb of immense scale linked to burial sites on other planes. In the Mortuary’s eerie yet reverent chambers, the Vanadon Necroth and his acolyte receive, process, and lay the dead to rest on a multiplanar scale, ensuring every creature that dies earns its obsequies.
Managing the dead is grueling and thankless work, but without the Mortuary and its grim workforce—many of whom are Undead—there would be no room left for the living; bodies would pile in the streets, the stench of rotting corpses would fill the air, and restless souls with nowhere to go would plague citizens.

Type

Barrow / Burial ground

Getting there

Approaching the Mortuary

When the characters arrive at the Mortuary for the first time, read or paraphrase the following text:
A sinister jumble of sepulchral towers claws above the cog of mechanus. Low, menacing domes adorn the structure’s heights, and branchlike walkways wind around its towers. Unending trails of foul-smelling smoke waft from the structure.
Fog gathers at the structure’s base, partially obscuring the countless tombs that surround it. Somber and shadowy, the monument evokes a hand clawing up from the grave with fingers splayed.

Entering the Mortuary

Visitors are questioned at the front gate, an impressive double door of copper-sheathed ironwood guarded by four guards and two mages.
Creatures can enter the Mortuary through one of the following three ways, among others:
Death’s Door. Corpse collectors wheel carts of bodies to a sturdy iron door around the back of the structure colloquially referred to as “Death’s Door.” After delivery, corpses pass through a series of metal chutes that sort them by size and deposit them in the corpse-receiving-and-shipping department (detailed later). Creatures that convincingly play dead long enough—such as with a feign death spell—can inconspicuously enter the bowels of the Mortuary through Death’s Door.
Front Gate. The most obvious path into the Mortuary is through the front gate. A crumbling stone wall curtained with razorvine surrounds the structure and a fog-shrouded collection of memorials and tombs at its base. Those who bypass the front gate must contend with hordes of skeletons, zombies, and other unnatural deterrents that roam the Mortuary’s cemeterial grounds. Commanded by wights, these Undead can distinguish the Mortuary’s guests from its trespassers.
An unsettling chill pervades this solemn monument. Its cold stone walls are reminiscent of a crypt. The halls are dimly lit and uncomfortably silent, save for the occasional distant groan of undead or the plaintive call of a wailing spirit. The acrid sting of chemical odors hangs in the air.

Description

The Mortuary is a bleak and interminable building, an upright necropolis. The Mortuary is divided into a series of towers, each shaped loosely like a massive stone tree or open-air monument. Low, gloomy domes spiked with bladed buttresses branch from the towers, belching ash, crematorium smoke, and incense day and night. Cemeteries, crypts, and tombs cluster around the base of the towers, and catacombs sprawl further below.
Inside the Mortuary, the dead toil on behalf of the dead. The Mortuary’s musty halls echo with skeletal figures wheeling squeaking gurneys, shoveling grave dirt, reciting woeful elegies, and weeping with remorse. The stench of embalming fluids and rotting flesh wafts from its numerous morgues to stuffy undercrofts and dusty libraries filled with death certificates, funerary tomes, and grimoires bound in still-living flesh.

General Features

The Mortuary has the following features:
Ambience. The Mortuary is cold and gloomy. The sounds of distant funerary ceremonies, mourners’ laments, and moaning Undead can be heard throughout.
Death Masks. The walls of the Mortuary are adorned with thousands of death masks imprinted with the faces of the dead. Planar magic flows through the masks, allowing spellcasters to commune with the dead through them. A speak with dead spell cast on a death mask causes the face to animate as if it were the corpse of the deceased creature that bore its likeness. Vanadon-Necroth keep records of the faces’ identities, but some have been lost to time and can be gleaned only by asking the dead.
Undead Workforce. Skeletons and zombies roam the halls of the Mortuary, completing menial tasks. These mindless Undead workers are indifferent toward passersby unless treated with hostility. More intelligent Undead have greater autonomy and fill specialized roles in the faction.

Exploring the Mortuary

The Mortuary is boundless and difficult to map. Unlike with dungeons and other finite locations, exploring the Mortuary is akin to roaming a unique magical wilderness like the Underdark or one of the infinite layers of the Abyss. Characters wander the Mortuary’s chambers and halls, see strange sights,, and experience the occasional encounter.
Given the Mortuary’s size and confounding layout, if the characters are searching for a specific place in the Mortuary, the characters might need to make a Wisdom (Survival) check to find it.

Corpse Receiving and Shipping

This underground facility reeks of rotting flesh. Grim-faced workers shuffle between a series of chutes set into south wall, prodding supine bodies with rusty implements. Periodically, corpses tumble out of the chutes and onto stone slabs with a loud thump. An upright coffin on spidery legs ferries corpses deeper into the facility.

corpse receiving and shipping by Marco Bernardini

Bodies delivered to the Mortuary filter through corpse receiving and shipping, an industrial stretch where corpses are collected, sorted, and shipped off to the next stage of the funerary process.
Three zombies process the dead under the supervision of two cultist. An animated coffin loiters nearby. Periodically, the workers load a corpse into the coffin, which ferries it to a chute in the east wall. The workers are hostile toward those who impede their work.
As an action, a character can inspect a corpse within 10 feet of them, identifying the body with a successful DC 13 Wisdom (Medicine) check.
Arrival Chutes. Corpses slide into this chamber via eight 5-foot-diameter pneumatic tubes set into the south walls. Each corpse arrives on an examination slab, where the Cultists conduct a brief inspection before arranging it to be sent to another area of the Mortuary.
Coffin Fitting. Crafters measure corpses for coffins, caskets, and sarcophagi in this fitting area.
Corpse Storage. The Heralds of Dust sequester bodies that require further assessment to a cylindrical storage area in the center of this facility. Corpses stored in this area are magically protected from decay. Undead workers sometimes take breaks in this area. At any given time, 1d4 + 1 zombies relax among the dead.
Sorting Chutes. Animated coffins, gurneys, and other conveyance devices ferry corpses from the examination slabs along a set of tracks in the floor to one of four exit chutes. The three chutes in the east wall wind to an autopsy room, a morgue, and another sorting facility. The chute at the end of the tracks in the south wall descends to a crematorium. Oppressive heat radiates from the south chute’s opening.

Spirit Sump

Metal catwalks spiderweb above this vast chamber. Below the catwalks sloshes a faintly glowing reservoir of wispy liquid, an incorporeal soup of howling souls. A frenetic assembly of complex, sputtering tubes and pumps descends from the ceiling into the liquid.

by Jared Blando

Ghostly Reservoir. A perpetually wailing slurry of ghosts, specters, and other incorporeal Undead churns 20 feet below the catwalks. A non-Undead creature that enters the liquid for the first time on a turn or starts its turn there takes 7 (2d6) necrotic damage and must succeed on a DC 13 Constitution saving throw or have its hit point maximum reduced by an amount equal to the damage taken. This reduction lasts until the creature finishes a long rest. The creature dies if this effect reduces its hit point maximum to 0.
A Humanoid that dies in the reservoir rises from its corpse as a hostile specter 1d4 hours later unless the Humanoid is restored to life or its body is destroyed.

Nevervault

Nevervault by Robson Michel

Otherworldly tubes bathe this lofty crypt in a dim red glow. Skeletal creatures and gangly apparitions bathe in the crimson liquid, occasionally colliding with the glass.

Nevervault by Marco Bernardini

Containment Crypts. Eight cylindrical glass crypts span the height of the vault. A permanent magic circle spell (save DC 15) in each tube prevents the creatures trapped here from escaping, but the vault’s magic sometimes falters enough for a prisoner or two, all of which are hostile, to slip out from its crypts. An identify spell cast on a crypt reveals the creature trapped within.
The contents of the crypts are as follows:
Crypt 1. This cracked crypt previously contained a necrichor.
Crypt 3. A dangerous vampire is trapped in mist form within this crypt. While the crypt’s magic lasts, the vampire has the incapacitated condition and remains in mist form.
Crypt 4. Three wraiths swirl in this crypt, violently slamming against the glass and screeching at creatures that come within 10 feet of it.
Crypt 5. This crypt contains five malign anomalies (use the shadow demon stat block).
Crypts 2, 6, and 7. These crypts are empty.
Crypt 8. A planar incarnate roils in this crypt.
Steles. Eight granite steles line a semicircular chamber within the Nevervault. Each stele is inscribed with arcane sigils that magically bind a restless soul to the stele. The steles each have an Armor Class of 17, 50 hit points, and immunity to poison and psychic damage.
Casting remove curse on the stele or destroying the stele frees the soul trapped inside, which manifests as a specter. For 1 minute, the specter is friendly toward its liberator and obeys their commands. In the absence of any commands, or if given a command that’s likely to result in its destruction, the specter defends itself but otherwise takes no actions. At the end of the duration, the specter attempts to flee the Mortuary.
The Mortuary’s size and the multiversal scope of its operations make it well suited to longer adventures, especially those surrounding life, death, and the planes. Use this section as a springboard for a campaign centered on the Mortuary and its inhabitants. Characters don’t need to join the Heralds of Dust to undertake these adventures.

Path of Graves

The Path of Graves is a hub of portals to and from morbid sites across the planes. Characters who arrive at the Mortuary via a planar portal might be transported here.

Path of Graves by Jared Blando

Vanadon-Necroth cultists leverage the Path of Graves’ portals to reach distant sites relevant to their work, such as burial sites on other planes and magical furnaces on the Plane of Elemental Fire for cremating fire-resistant creatures.

Vanadon-Necroth’s Orrery

Orre by Andrea Piparo

From his orrery of souls, Vanadon scours the planes.
A glowing, ethereal sphere hovers over this chilling sanctum, whose walkways are formed from the vertebrae of some unknown behemoth. The orb resonates with the haunting cries of the dead. A decrepit figure in tattered robes floats above the walkway, examining ghostly threads spun from a skeletal loom.

factol skalls orrery by Jared Blando

Necrotic Flares. The character’s presence causes Vanadon-Necroth’s orrery to behave erratically. Until the spirit is defeated, each round on initiative count 10, the orrery erupts with a 100-foot-long, 5-foot-wide beam of necrotic energy that shoots down one of the orrery’s six central walkways at random. To determine the direction, roll a d6 and assign a direction to each die face. Each creature in the line must make on a DC 18 Dexterity saving throw, taking 35 (10d6) necrotic damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.