Empty House
The four companions—Fingalad the elf, Fortiscule
the ogrun bodger, the paladin Arthur and Rohan the gun mage,
all newly recruited to join the war against Khador—hiked
for a couple of days along a mountain road toward the distant
train depot.
Then as evening approached Fingalad heard a horse whinny somewhere off the road. They found five horses, some with Khadorian cavalry saddles, tethered alongside a long, ancient stone wall. After watching for a few minutes they saw no riders, but saw a pair of high arches in the wall leading into darkness. Arthur, the best with horses, led their new mounts away while the others investigated the ruins.
The ruins—each archway was a long tunnel that led into a single vast open chamber—proved long deserted, except for a couple of relatively fresh bodies that had apparently been stabbed to death. One was a Khadorian rifleman, the other a prospector according to his journal. The ruins were part of an ancient Orgoth house that they hoped held treasure or magic they could seize for the war. Some of the team believed it was cursed. The prospector also carried a pouch with several strange small statues that Rohan said buzzed with magic.
In
the first chamber they found an ancient but still functioning
labor jack, a mechanical man used for heavy lifting, and a
low tunnel into rock that it had apparently dug sometime past.
In the tunnel they were attacked by a scimitar-wielding skeleton come back to a semblance of life, and further on they found a great cave that glowed red—with the gleaming eye sockets of a hundred more shuffling, clattering skeletons, all standing around a great magical statue that matched one of the carvings in Rohan's pouch.
The explorers retreated and Fortiscule had the labor jack cover up the tunnel again with the chunks of rock that it had dug out of it. As they left, they saw that the bodies had disappeared.
In the second chamber they found a Khadorian guardwalking on patrol. Fingalad snuck up on him aiming to take him captive, but it was no good—the guard had been dead for quite a while. The elf knocked its rifle aside as it fired and he and Fortiscule destroyed the zombie. This chamber had no tunnel, but strange indistinct markings on the wall where the tunnel had been carved in the other.
Bring the labor jack to excavate, or leave the cursed ruins and ride on to their real destination? The adventurers paused to decide.
Game date: 2 April 2006. Fingalad: Bryan Crowson; Fortiscule: Matthew Crowson; Rohan: Shane Ivey; DM: Kevin Pezzano.