Dreadfog
Adventure: Dreadfog (KEO 1-09)
Table: Weekend in Keoland, Saturday Morning, Nov 2001
APL: 6
Characters:
Diesa Diamondedge Dwarven Cleric of Beory 5 from Geoff
Endur Stonehelm Dwarven Paladin of Moradin 5 from Geoff
Riahlyn Human Cleric of Ehlonna/Ranger/Sorceress 5 from Keoland
Colin of Longspear Human Fighter 5 from Keoland
Adoril Dawnsinger Elven Ranger 4 from Keoland
Kip Senwick Human Rogue/Wizard 3 from Bissel
Two weeks before visiting Curget
A letter is delivered by a merchant caravan, just coming in from
Keoland with food and supplies. Its deliverer, a small but eager boy
who seems to look at the top of the rooftops of Hochoch as if a giant
might loom over them at any moment, manages to track down Mother
Diesa and delivers this note to her.
Diesa gives a silver piece to the boy and breaks the seal on the letter. She hands it to Endur and lets him read it as well.
"What say you, husband? Shall we venture north and help Colin recruit aid for our cause?" Endur's response is just what she expected: enthusiastic agreement followed by his renewed vow to liberate Geoff from the giants.
Diesa dips her quill in ink and begins to scratch upon a piece of parchment:
To Colin of Longspear , Corforral of the Fox Braich, Army of Liberation-
I am in receipt of your gracious little book and shared it with Endur my husband. We find your invitation appealing and are pleased to accept. Although I must say that we dwarves don't quite understand this human concept of "a break"--there's work to be done, especially in Geoff! But all the lessons of the Oerth are not contained within Geoff so it well that from time to time I leave its borders.
I'm troubled to hear that Riahlyn does not receive the respect she is due in her homeland. Perhaps my club, or a well-placed curse will rectify the situation! As for the High Druid of Sheldomar, this is the first I've heard mention of her name. I find the druids of Geoff somewhat unapproachable, but I might have more success learning from druids in a land where the Old Faith holds less sway.
Ere you read this message, we are already packing our bags, scouring our armor, and setting foot upon the road to Keoland.
Yours in battle and in faith,
Diesa Diamondedge Deepholm,
Hearth Mate of Endur Stonehelm
Mother Priestess of Beory
The Day Before Visiting Curget
Colin, Diesa, Endur, and Riahlyn visit the farm that Colin grew up on. Colin’s father doesn’t talk much, but he offers Colin’s friends a warm spot at the hearth and a hearty meal.
After the meal, while his father is enjoying a gift of imported weed, Colin explained his plan. Endur and Diesa were wed at the Hochoch town fair a month ago. As part of their honeymoon, Colin and Riahlyn plan to show them the important sites to see in Keoland. The farm that Colin grew up on, the Dreadwood that Riahlyn spent so much time in, Cryllor, and Niole Dra are all on the agenda.
Colin said, “Tomorrow, we will leave my father’s farm, walk around the edge of the Dreadwood, pass through the Good Hills on the North-South Trade Road, and eventually enter the more settled areas of Keoland.
“If you are interested, we could even spend tomorrow night in a small Dwur town called Curget. It is on the main road going through the Good Hills, so we wouldn’t be going out of our way.”
Diesa and Endur readily agreed to the plan. They had spent ten years cut off from their clan of Deepholm (which was under siege by the Giants) and they were positively thrilled at the idea of visiting a whole town of Dwur. Although they didn’t mention it to Colin and Riahlyn, they thought the idea of visiting Curget was better than even a visit to Niole Dra.
Arrival in Curget
We arrived in Curget the next day around late afternoon. It was slow going because of a very thick fog that had settled in on the Good Hills. We couldn’t see much of the town because of the Fog, but it was walled and appeared to have at least a dozen buildings and one inn, the BlackBeak Inn. Although it was hard to tell because of the fog, the town seemed sparsely populated.
The Inn, on the other hand, was crowded. Dwarves wearing kilts, of Black, Red, and Gray, the traditional colors of Clan Stonecrow, were the primary customers. But also present were many merchants and adventurers driven off the road by the thick fog. While we enjoyed the fine hospitality of the Inn and a multiple course meal, an older dwarf began to tell a tale around the fireplace.
“Uga Dwoumer Grilen! The Day of the Fallen! It is the day that we remember those that fell before us in Battle. All members of Clan Stonecrow must honor the Fallen five days from now.
“Ulla Dwoumer Grilen! The Week of the Fallen! It is the week we celebrate the dead and their deeds.”
The old dwarf launched into a tale of honoring one of the fallen companions of his youth, Gurni Stumblesword Stonecrow.
His story was interrupted when a young dwur entered the Inn and announced, “Matron Mur says that there is trouble! She wants all fighting men to come to the keep immediately. She says there may be gold for any adventurers and sell swords that come!”
Most of the Dwarven men in the bar and several of the women get up to leave after this announcement and head towards the keep. Colin, Diesa, Endur, and Riahlyn abandon their meal and head towards the keep after leaving a large tip. Kip Senwick and Adoril also leave the inn and walk towards the keep.
A white-haired dwarf woman stood before the crowd that had gathered in front of the keep that was at the center of the town. Everyone shows respect and it is obvious that she is the head of Clan Stonecrow.
Mur said, “I have spoken to the Gods. Moradin and Fortubo told me that this Fog is a thing of evil. And now word comes of a slaughter in the Olive Orchards. The Gods tell me that if the fog is not ended before the Day of the Fallen, our holiday shall turn into a nightmare. For the warriors that stop the Fog, I offer this enchanted battleaxe. I do not know what the fog is or how it can be stopped, but I pray that someone here can stop the fog!”
Mur holds forth a glowing battleaxe. The crowd gasps, and several of the townsmen are heard to mumble quietly, “I want that axe.”
Mur and her retainers head back into the keep.
Most of the crowd heads off towards the Olive Orchards on the outskirts of town.
The fog makes it difficult to see, but Brinstone Orchard has several buildings. The pressing house was where the crowd gathered and it was a scene out of a nightmare.
Blood was splattered everywhere. More blood than one body could contain. But there were no bodies.
Written in blood on the wall in the pressing house were words: “We arise to show that we should not be forgotten. And all should give remembrance. Not just those that are left behind.” The townsfolk whisper amongst themselves.
Adoril followed dwarven footprints caked with drops of blood and found an old dwarven waraxe, caked with mud and rust. From the Smith’s mark and style of the axe, it must have been five hundred years old. The trail away from the Pressing House had been trampled by the crowd and was impossible to follow.
Adoril, Colin, Diesa, Endur, Kip, and Riahlyn agreed to work together to solve this mystery.
Talking to some of the other townsfolk, we found out that this year there were many Stonecrow dwarves who were not in town. Most of the town’s warriors answered King Kimbertos’ call for troops and were now in Westgate, in the Hold of the Sea Princes, fighting the Scarlet Brotherhood. Some of the townsfolk feared that the Dead would Rise if the Stronecrow Dwarves on campaign forgot the Day of the Fallen.
Others were not so sure. One dwarf remarked, “A dwarf that didn’t remember his ancestors wouldn’t be a dwarf at all.”
A family of Stonecrow dwarves lived at the Olive Orchard, but they are all now missing. And from the blood, they are probably all dead.
It was getting towards night and we had no more clues to pursue. We returned to the Inn. After spending an hour or two discussing things with other townsfolk, adventurers, and merchants, we retired for the night.
Endur and Diesa had the honeymoon suite in the Inn.
Colin and Riahyln wanted to share a room, but the Innkeeper responded, “What? Unmarried adults of different sexes can’t share a room! What kind of place do you think this is?!?”
Colin quickly reassured the Innkeeper that he and Riahlyn were properly married.
Adoril and Kip, being of the same gender, had no difficulty getting a room together.
As Endur and Diesa went upstairs, Endur remarked to Diesa, “I’ll never understand these human customs. Colin and Riahlyn have traveled with us on several adventures, but they never saw fit to tell us about their marriage.”
In the middle of the night, Colin woke up when he heard a loud bump. He opened up the door to his and Riahlyn’s room, and saw several dwarves coming down the hallway. The dwarves seemed strange, covered in blood and mud, and he grabbed a mace from his room.
Then the dwarves, still silent, attacked Colin with their bare hands, dragging their fingers through his flesh. Colin quickly realized that they were zombies. Riahlyn woke up from the noise and picked up her holy symbol.
Calling upon the power of Ehlonna, Riahlyn destroyed the zombies. And not a moment too soon, for Colin was almost slain by the dreadful claws of the zombies ripping through his flesh. Diesa and Endur woke up and assisted in healing Colin of his wounds. Adoril and Kip also woke up and scouted around the Inn while the others were focused on checking Colin’s wounds for any signs of poison or disease.
Downstairs, they found a wounded human merchant. He said he had been trying to get a late night drink from the kitchen, when the dwarves burst in and hit him over the head. He heard one zombie scream, “For lack of remembrance and honor!”
Adoril followed the trail of the zombies out the door and it led to a warehouse. Inside the warehouse were seven broken barrels. Olnana, the Maid of Trade in charge of the warehouses, identified the barrels as belonging to a human merchant who was staying at the inn, a merchant that matches the description of the wounded merchant we had just left.
Riahlyn said, “Of course! Zombies don’t talk! The merchant lied to us!”
Returning to the Inn, the merchant was long gone, but he had left a note behind in his room.
The Note
“The Fallen shall rise and slaughter the craven.
All Dwarves of Clan Stonecrow shall soon feed the ravens.
Erythnul God of Slaughter brings about the fog of dread.
Soon none shall be left to celebrate the dead.
“Their warriors all gone in a place known as Westgate.
What shall the warriors of the clan do, when they find out they came home too late?
“Do you like my poem? No, neither did Master Brinstone when I wrote it with his own blood. Sorry for my chicken scratch but writing with a human thumb bone while its owner screams for mercy makes good penmanship hard.”
Yours truly,
Hexzor of Erythnul
It was very late and we went back to sleep. Our sleep was restless and fitful, for we knew we had a lot of work to do the next day.
Some of the dwarf bodies were the missing farmers from the Olive Orchard. Other bodies were from other farms.
The next day we talked to some of the older dwarves in Curget and tried to track down the history of the holiday. Talking to the village historian, she explained:
“Who can say how it became a holiday. A Prophesy starts a tradition. The reasons for the tradition become lost over time, and become a myth.
“There must be a reason why that day was chosen all those centuries ago, but no one alive now can say.”
The Council of Elders in Curget met and came to a decision. All of the clan members that lived on outlying farms would be gathered into the town. Hopefully, Hexzor would be prevented from killing any more townspeople.
We, along with other warriors, were asked to visit several outlying towns to warn those who lived outside of town.
After visiting several small farms, we came to a copper mine. The Fog was lifted from in front of the copper mine’s entrance, we could see several dwarves and a few humans gathered in a crowd around a fallen dwarf.
After a moment, we realized that we were looking at the evil priest Hexzor, a huge evil looking human with a large curved sword (falchion), and a crowd of zombie dwarves.
Hexzor sees the party in the distance and casts an evil spell at the dwarf lying on the ground. Waves of blackness curl down from his hands onto the dwarf lying before him. He shouted, “Erythnul! I call upon you to raise this carcass into a warrior of slaughter.”
Suddenly, one of the dwarf’s arms lifts up a dagger and stabs Hexzor between the legs. The dwarf stands up and taunts Hexzor, “What’s the matter? Can’t tell when a dwarf is dead?” Endur and Diesa recognize the voice of Conar Stonecrow, who they met at the Battle of the Bloody Ridge.
Hexzor points at the party and yells, “Kill them!” The human warrior and the zombies move towards the party to attack, and the fog settles in. Hexzor and the dwarf disappear from sight.
The Fog Zombies lumber forward, but the power of Ehlonna and Beory as channeled through Rhialyn and Diesa quickly scattered the Zombies. The large human warrior who had been christened “Violence” by the Church of Erthynul was quite another matter, however. Violence was stronger and a more skilled fighter than any of the heroes, and his Falchion was deadly.
Violence used his supernatural strength to great advantage against the party of heroes. After realizing that he would be unable to injure Endur due to Endur’s full plate armor and the protective magics that Diesa had channeled onto Endur, Violence focused his attacks on the other members of the party.
Adoril had to move to within ten feet of Violence in order to shoot him with his bow because of the constant fog. Violence stepped forward and dealt a savage cut with his falchion, dropping Adoril on the ground and cleaving into Colin.
Diesa and Riahlyn called upon the divine power of Beory and Ehlonna to save Adoril’s life. His wounds still in the process of closing, Adoril jumped back into the fray. Violence grinned and struck Adoril again, with such a vicious blow that we were all sure that Adoril was slain. The follow-up from that blow nearly dropped Colin as well.
Adoril was down, probably dead. Everyone else except Endur were suffering from grievous wounds and about to fall down. Violence’s supernatural strength was just too much. Violence taunted Endur as he prepared to slaughter the adventurers, “You are weak!”
Then Conar Stonecrow emerged from the fog behind Violence. Hexzor had fled from him in the fog, so Conar went towards the sounds of combat. Conar’s rage made him a match for Violence’s supernatural strength. The fight ended quickly once Conar joined in.
After the combat was over, Diesa and Riahlyn again called upon the Divine Power of Beory and Ehlonna to bring Adoril back from the brink of death.
Conar told us that he thought the rumors about the Day of the Fallen were “superstitious hooey”, so he planned a trap for whoever was attacking the outlying areas. After warning the miners away, he fought a zombie for a little bit, then fell down deliberately and pretended to be dead. He was glad to see the adventurers again, especially Endur and Diesa who he had seen from a distance at the Battle of the Bloody Ridge.
Returning to town, we continued to search for clues and talk to many of the townspeople. An old dwarf by the name of Timrock Railspitter remembered a ruined temple in the Dreadwood that the Clan Stonecrow had destroyed several centuries ago. Fearing that this might be Hexzor’s base, we set off to visit the ruined temple.
The party of heroes followed the old stream bed through the fog. They were now in the Dreadwood, a dense forest of trees that appeared dead and covered in moss. They found what appeared to be an entrance into a cave shaped like a skull. The fog seemed to flow out of the eyes of the skull.
Colin spoke, “This has to be the place.”
The party entered through the gloomy mouth of the skull.
The cave was large and the stone had obviously been carved many centuries before. The heroes passed through a couple of rooms. They were walking in a marching order where Endur went first, followed by Colin and Diesa, Riahlyn and Adoril, with Kip in the back.
As the group stepped into the fourth room, they could see some sort of altar ahead and fog streaming out of it. An old dwarf was gagged and bound above the altar (and blood was dripping from his wounds onto the altar), but nobody else was in the room. All of a sudden, a lightning bolt struck most of the party. That was followed by a huge thunder clap that stunned Colin, Endur, and Adoril, causing Endur to drop his battleaxe, Colin to drop his Ranseur, and Adoril to drop his bow. (The magically aware in our party recognized the lightning bolt as a glyph of warding and the thunder clap as a sonic burst).
An illusion was lifted from our eyes and all of a sudden, we realized that we were surrounded by the Evil Priest Hexzor and his zombie minions. The evil eyes of Hexzor focused on Diesa, and she was frozen in place. The zombies moved against Diesa and attempted to cut her to pieces while she was frozen.
Riahlyn called upon Ehlonna and attempted to turn or destroy the zombies, but the power of evil was too strong and she could not affect them.
Almost the entirety of the party was helpless to stop the zombies from tearing Diesa to pieces.
Then Kip Senwick, the apprentice wizard, stepped into the fray. He moved in front of Diesa and attempted to distract the zombies and prevent them from killing her.
Hexzor laughed and urged his zombies to destroy Kip first. The zombies would finish Kip first and have plenty of time to kill Diesa before the spell wore off.
The zombies tried to kill Kip, but they failed. Kip had cast a powerful shielding spell and an invisible force kept the claws of the zombies from injuring Kip.
After Kip bought them some time, Adoril, Colin, and Endur recovered from being stunned. They picked up their weapons and started attacking the zombies, focusing on the ones in front of Kip and Diesa. Riahlyn tried again to turn the zombies, but failed again; evil was simply too strong in this place.
Hexzor called upon his evil powers and sent waves of terror through Adoril and Colin. They turned and fled from the cave, as fast as they could run.
Riahlyn began to engage the evil priest in a spell duel, while Endur and Kip defeated the last zombies. Diesa then recovered from being frozen and joined Riahlyn in the spell duel against the evil priest.
Realizing his moments were numbered, Hexzor ran as fast as he could from the room with the altar. He almost escaped. On his way out the entrance of the cave, he ran right into Adoril and Colin. They killed him quickly.
Once the old dwarf was rescued from the fiendish hooks above the altar, fog stopped flowing out of the cavern. The Dreadfog dissipated quickly. The town of Curget was saved!
In gratitude for saving her life from the zombies, Diesa gave Kip a magical potion of healing.
The old dwarf had listened to Hexzor gloat for the past several days. He filled in the heroes on Hexzor’s plan.
After the heroes returned to Curget, they were thanked by the members of Clan Stonecrow in a public ceremony.
The matriarch gave Endur the glowing battleaxe and a pouch of gold to the other members of the party. An etching of Clan Stonecrow’s symbol, a crow perched atop a double headed battleaxe, is engraved into the blue metal of the axe’s head.
As Endur held the battleaxe over his head, lightning crackled from the sky and from within the axe itself. Surrounded in an aura of dazzling light, Endur cried out (in a voice deeper and stronger than his normal voice), “And by the Soulforger’s law, I triumph!”
In the dazzling light, the axe transformed. The shaft of the axe morphed into the likeness of Moradin’s hand gripping the axe’s head. Dwarven Runes (matching the words Endur spoke aloud) appeared along the haft of the Battleaxe.
An old priest of Moradin spoke, “This battleaxe is a Dwarven Soul-Link weapon! It’s name is ‘Moradin’s Grip’ and it shall be a part of you for the rest of your life. This is the only weapon you will ever wield (not that I have ever seen you use a weapon other than the battleaxe).”
Conar Stonecrow invited Endur and Diesa to join Clan Stonecrow because their own clan (Clan Deepholm in the Crystalmists) was cut off by the Giants in Geoff.
The friends enjoyed the splendid hospitality of Curget for another couple of days. When they finally left town, their travels on the winding road would bring them to the town of Oak Root and an encounter with destiny, but that is a story for another day.
