The Dark of Day, Part 3

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About the Saga

The foul creatures haunting Brantis Hold have been destroyed, but can the Blackrazors defeat their dark master and his plans for the Fading Land known as Necros?

This is a re-working of one of my original college adventures. This was originally ran as The Dark of Day at RUCON IV at Lock Haven University in 1994.

Timeframe

Cast of Characters

Notable Quotes

  • None.

What Has Come Before

The foul creatures haunting Brantis Hold have been destroyed, but can the Blackrazors defeat their dark master and his plans for the Fading Land known as Necros?

The Saga

Planting 8, CY 587

The morning hours

The fires sputtered lowly as the last of Brantis Hold’s inhabitants burned into ash.

Their limbs continued to twitch as the fire consumed them, purifying their ruined flesh as the warriors and mages of the Blackrazor Guild looked on. All of the original inhabitants of the hold, save a cleric of Heironeous, were dead. They had been dead for weeks, a state that the Blackrazors had nothing to do with. By the time the adventurers from Obsidian Bay arrived at the fortress, each of the villagers had been raised as an undead ghoul. When they’d first arrived here, the Blackrazors had thought the Brantis holders were human – it was only after the night fell that they revealed their true forms. The guild’s best made short work of their putrid opponents, slicing through their ranks with steel and fire and saving the formerly mad cleric of Heironeous in the process.

Now, as the last of the bodies burned down to nothing, and the undead outside of the city began hammering at its walls, the cleric told his tale.

The horrid tale of the Lord Brantis

"Three hundred years ago, the Lord Brantis founded this hold on the profits of a long adventuring career. He was a powerful wizard and was widely respected by his servants. For a number of years, the hold prospered as a fur trading and lumbering outpost, protected from the harsh outside world by its lord’s magic. In time, Brantis began researching the darker areas of magic in search of power to extend his life on this realm. As he did so, he secretly built an underground laboratory where he could continue his studies away from the eyes of his followers.

After years of research and progressive insanity brought on by his search for eternal life, Brantis decided to transform himself into a lich. As part of the ritual he was ordered by a dark deity to sacrifice five children in return for lichdom.

He abducted the children from his hold, secreting them away to his lair. A group of adventurers in the hold, however, were able to track the children to Brantis’ evil laboratory. There they battled the mage’s forces, finally reaching him but only after he had killed three of the children. Two remained, and the adventurers fought the partially transformed lich for their souls. Brantis was defeated and – it was thought – destroyed. His laboratory was sealed off from the rest of the crypt and, as with all things, his legend faded into time.

Many, who knew the good man that Brantis had been, refused to speak poorly of him. Others, abhorred by his transformation, refused to speak because they thought he would return to haunt them.

My counterpart in that time, a fellow priest of Heironeous named Talvon, chronicled these events, and left a scroll behind that has been passed down from cleric to cleric. I had read it once and – gods forgive me – I thought it was a fairy tale told by a deranged, superstitious mind. Surely, I thought, no such evil could ever have originated from such a place as Brantis Hold! I promptly forgot about it."

The man paused. His robes – originally white – were saturated with a disgusting mix of mud, soot, blood and worse.

"A few weeks ago, some of the boys in the village began acting strangely – more strangely that teenager boys usually act. They began acting as though they belonged to a secret club of their own invention, and scowled at anyone who wasn’t in it."

"In truth, they had joined a secret organization, although known of us had realized it. The boys had been sneaking into the crypt and had – somehow – found a way down into Brantis’ once-sealed lair. In the process they unleashed a horrible evil upon the town. Evil clerics of the God of Death – even now I dare not speak his name – rose from the tomb and enslaved the village with their magic. Then they transformed them all into sick monstrosities, sparing only me." "Sparing!" he laughed feebly. "The others were transformed so that by day they were human, unaware that when night fell their bodies would die and their minds would crave human flesh! I was trapped in madness during the day, unable to warn anyone unfortunate enough to enter the village, and released at night so that the creatures could torture me."

"I thank you for freeing me from that hell, and I will now tell you what you must do. You’ve seen the undead brazenly crawling through the fields in the light of day. How is this possible, you may have asked yourselves. After piecing together the various threats and boasts of death-worshippers, I think I know what Brantis intends."

"There is a land" he said, his voice dropping to a whisper, " called Necros. It is a lost land. A Fading Land. A land of darkness and death that is withdrawn from the world that we know."

"Brantis wants to bring this land back into existence," he said, "to earn the favor of the God of Death. You have already experienced the first part of his ritual – the dimming of the sun yesterday. That dimming was caused by the passage of the moon Celene in front of the sun’s glorious disk. Tomorrow morning, the greater moon, Luna, will also pass in front of the disk, creating an even greater darkness. You must stop Brantis before that eclipse, or Necros will be draw back into our world, bringing with it forms of death you can’t even imagine."

Six hours later, rested and recovered from the battle with the ghouls – but with only an hour and a half to go before the eclipse was set to occur -- the Blackrazors were ready. Fulgar, who decided to stay behind to guard the cleric, cleared the party’s way to the tomb by launching a series of fireballs into the mass of undead around the city’s walls. The Blackrazors launched themselves over the city wall, and made a mad dash for the monolithic stone tomb of the Brantis family.

Into the darkness

The tomb of the Brantis family was as decayed and dark as they’d expected. There were slabs for laying out the newly dead, just as they’d expected. And the central dias was, as they expected, trapped. Luc, searching the dais, managed to find a small rod inset into the stone. He pulled it, and the party heard a sound form above them. Yet nothing happened.

Luc and Ragnar managed to move the dais, swinging it away from a 3-foot hall in the floor along a pivot.

Meanwhile, Aesop, acting under the advisement of the rest of the party, cast a knock spell on it, which unlocked the trap door and triggered the trap that Luc had just unknowingly disarmed. A crystal pudding dropped from the ceiling nearly landing on Ragnar before sliding down the now-open hole.

The party worked their way down the shaft to the level below the tomb, easily side stepping the now-agitated crystal ooze.

Suffocating darkness closed in on them as they moved into the corridor. Their trusted continual light torches wavered in the darkness, collapsed to small circles of light just under 5 feet in diameter. As they continued down the hall they found a series of preparation rooms and alcoves for bodies off of a central corridor. Carved down the center of the corridor was a six inch wide channel with a thick, bloody ichor flowing down it. The channel was fed by slime flowing from the rooms. Intrigued, the Blackrazors moved to investigate. A few feet down the side corridor they found their progress blocked by a rusted wrought iron gate. Ragnar made quick work of it, easily lifting it over his head with little more than a slight barbaric grunt. Bhe blackrazors grabbed a wooden block from the bag of anything, and wedged it into place.

Then three of the Blackrazors – Greggor, Ragnar and Luc – as moved into the room.

Horror screamed at them as they did so.

Chained to an embalming table in the center of the small room was screaming, writhing body with blood as black as fresh mold pumping from its heart. The liquid coursed down the sides of the table, gathering in a drain at the base of the table. From their it flowed out of the room and into the corridor. As the thing’s tortured screams tore at their ears, the three men explored the room, poking at the small alcoves obviously meant to hold human bodies. Their probing was suddenly brought to a halt by a strike from the shadows of the room. A shadow-creature, barely visible in the faltering light of the torches, struck at Ragnar with four deadly arms. Another creature lashed at Luc, but their attacks were ineffective – the three were easily able to defeat the creatures. Our in the hall, a different battle had been joined.

Ghouls from further down the corridor attacked the Blackrazors there moving to strike them even as the party’s mages readied their spells. From somewhere in the darkness, spells lashed out at the party. Aesop responded with a web spell, which gave them enough time to plan a counter attack.

Minutes later, the first of the crypt’s defenders had fallen. Probing around the remains of their opponents, the adventurers found an ominous sign – one of the fallen was a black-robed cleric of Nerull. Worse yet, he was a member of a group the Blackrazors had tangled with too many times before: The Cult of Death Undying.

Where does this hole go?

After the battle, the Blackrazors continued their search of the corridor and adjoining rooms. They found three more rooms, and three more of the foul ghoul-creatures they had encountered in the first. They also found a hole. The hole, apparently part of a shaft, was about four feet wide and covered by an old iron grate. "They must of come from the shaft," someone reasoned. Luc and Ragnar agreed. The grate was barred with an ancient, rusted lock which disintegrated when Ragnar pulled at the grate. The evil blood flowing down the corridor also flowed down the shaft, covering most of its walls with a foul-smelling slime. Only the iron rungs mounted on one side of the shaft were free of the slime, and it was these that Luc and Ragnar worked their way down the shaft. Greggor, with the aid of a fly spell, followed them down, watching the sides of the shaft uneasily as he did so.

The brooding darkness that permeated the first level also filled the shaft, making the descent an uneasy one. Finally, Luc sensed the shaft opening up into a large space, perhaps as much as 50 feet in diameter, with nearly 20 feet between him and the floor of the room. He could also hear the liquid sloshing and gushing around in a sickening pool below him

His attention to detail saved his life.

As he tried to swing to the iron hand holds that worked their way across the ceiling of the chamber, four huge, liquid tentacles struck at him. Sensing the attack, he managed to avoid their thrusts.

Then they attacked again. Revulsion slammed into him as two tentacles hit. His body, suddenly weak, dropped into the pool below.

The two remaining tentacles turned their attention on Ragnar, attempting to dislodge him from his hold on the iron rung. He deftly avoided them, and then swirled his blade in a deadly curve, driving the strange tentacles back. Greggor, flying above him, but unable to act, noticed that the tentacles were not flesh and bone, but rather liquid, as though they were animated solely by the death-force flowing into the chamber from the rooms above.

In the liquid, Luc was trying not to die. The powerful corrosive agents in the liquid were burning at his skin and hair. Unable to swim, but able to hold his breath for minutes, he allowed himself to fall to the bottom of the pool. The tentacles which had drawn him here had turned their attention on Ragnar and Greggor, and for the moment he was able to search for his beloved throwing axe, which had been dislodged from his hand by the impact with the liquid.

He found the axe, and began marching for the wall, where he hoped he would find the hand holds that would let him climb out of the slop. He found them, and began pulling himself up the later just in time to see that Ragnar had been pulled – or possibly jumped, one never knew with that one – into the pool. Both warriors were able, after much fighting, to pull themselves up the side of the domed-ceiling of the room. Fending off the determined attacks of the tentacles, they withdrew to the relative safety of the level above them. There they found that Aesop had used his time wisely, discovering a secret door leading to the second level

The Dying Place

The secret door led to an ancient spiral staircase, which in turn emptied out into an empty, sterile, stone chamber. As the adventurers cautiously advanced into the room, death struck at them. More of the strange, shadowed creatures from the upper level struck at them, only this time their attack was far more affective. With limbs slicing with cold efficiency, the creatures attacked Ragnar and Luc slicing through their limbs as readily as they had cut through their defenses. Once of the creatures cleaved Ragnar’s arm, leaving it lying on the floor next to him. Stunned and enraged, he staggered only slightly before screaming a battle cry and continuing his fight

Luc wasn’t as lucky.

The creatures tore at him before his friends could arrive, slicing off one of his legs. The gruff warrior growled a surprise, and then passed out from the shock.

The Blackrazors struck back and soon were able to defeat the dark creatures. The corporal forms of the creatures dissolved into a nightmare black puddle at their feet and slowly evaporated into nothingness.

After binding their wounds, they decided to explore the chamber.

The false crypts

After Ragnar’s soon-to-be-patented method for find traps – namely stepping on them – revealed a pit trap outside of the chamber’s northern door, the party was able to make their way into the adjoining corridor. Paranoid and pressed for time, they began searching through the corridor and soon found doors leading to a room to the north. A powerful gust of magical wind extinguished their continual light torches as they entered the room. Forced to rely on infravision, they found a huge burial chamber that could once have been home to generations of the Brantis line.

The air was unbearable cold, and quick search of the room revealed why – brown mold growing on the walls. Fifteen more minutes of searching revealed that the corridor wrapped around to form a "U" shape with two more rooms of from it. After discovering that both rooms were dead-ends, they returned to the original chamber where they had battled the shadow creatures. There they found a secret door which leading to what they hoped was the lich’s true lair.


The final battle

The library that the secret door revealed was stacked high with strange tomes, archaic spellbooks, and components of the foulest magical components known to humanity. But beyond the library came a sound that struck and even more horrific chord – the chanting of the cultists themselves.

The Blackrazors left the library and entered the lich’s main chamber cautiously. The site that greeted them tore at their vision. Cultists -- some warriors, some mages, some undead – had formed a wide circle around the room’s center point, a mechanical contraption The device was comprised of a central blue-green orb and two silver rings. Sliding along the inner most ring was a large white orb; sliding along the other was a small blue one. A sterile clicking provided a tempo for the cults chants as the orbs rotated into position.

As the Blackrazors steadied themselves, the cultists turned their attentions from the device to the intruders.

A magical barrage flew between the two parties as the warriors closed to melee range. The undead creatures turned out to be ghasts, who tore at the party in futile attacks that they easily repealed. The human warrior cultists provided some, but not much, more resistance and the Blackrazors were soon winning the fight.

And then the lich attacked.

It’s legs lost to history, the creature moved through a corrupted form of levitation. It’s black, decayed entrails hung from its torso like tentacles as it drifted into view and unleashed a barrage of electrical energy that rippled from person to person regardless of alignment or side. Ragnar, weakened from his battle with the human cultists and the loss of his army, closed on the lich. It spoke a single, soft word – "die" – and the life was instantly snuffed out of the brave barbarian.

Kannett, who had been trying to bring down the orbs with well placed arrows, turned his attention on the lich. As the creature was preparing to destroy this latest infidel, Kannett brought his swords down on the thing, slicing what little life remained form it.

It collapsed to the ground, leaving nothing but ashes as proof that it had existed.

Behind them, the device ground to a halt ... the unleashing of Necros had been prevented.

Experience & Loot

  • No experience and/or loot is avalable for this saga.
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