The shadowy underground chamber smelled of damp stone and aged wood. But overwhelming that scent, reeked the odor of sweat and filth. Three heavy wooden doors, bound with iron, lined the walls, their surfaces marred by time and neglect. Opposite the three doors is another door made from a slab of metal. The corridor was dimly lit by an eerie, greenish glow emanating from the light of the well behind you. It cast unsettling shadows and lent an otherworldly aura to the scene. Except for that glowing light, the rest of the room basked in darkness lit only by meager candle light. A top the uneven stone floor, you saw six Umbral Bound.
Four warrior Obwez stood alert with weapons drawn. A shorter Obwez wearing a headdress decorated with bird skulls and tattered feather hid behind an overturned table and an Obwezic eating what might have been human remains. But where the other Obwezic you saw displayed four arms, this one only shows two. All that remained from of the other arms are bandaged and bloody stumps. Extinguished and dusty oil lamps hang from chains embedded in the ceiling.
A circle festooned with foul runes marked the floor A bundle of black wax candles lays spilled on the floor next to dried puddles of the same black candles melted to near the end of their life marking the circle at precise intervals.
At the far end of hall, you saw the shadow of a human curled up in a fetal position next to a tunnel blocked by a pile of rubble. The man was flanked by two spectral figures, a man and a woman. They knelt down in a twisted attempt to offer comfort. Each time they caressed him with their gentle yet malignant hands, he winced and jerks away from their touch.
Those in the chamber
Rattling and scratching sounds whispered from behind two of the closed doors.
Here there was a fight.
The characters broke down the door. Akuma transformed into a massive wolf and charged into the room. As his throat was ripped out, the head dressed Obwez managed cause an eruption of thunder into the room where many of the player characters waited to join the fray. The four Obewz warriors closed on Akuma cutting into him with their jagged weapons until his wolf form could no longer stand, and the young man fell to the floor in human form once again.
After recovering form booming attack, the remaining characters joined the battle, and though at first, it seemed quite desperate, the character’s prevailed.
After the battle, the characters looted the dead. Of note, Simon found a skull fetish which he decided to cherish and keep for his very own, much to the chagrin of some of the party members. Additionally they found some small wooden box with some reagents, a few copper coins minted with strange markings and a collection of fine buttons.
Then the characters attempted a conversation with the spirits attempting to comfort the chained man. After a few fits and starts where some of the characters became quite terrified and ran away like screaming children, they managed to convince the ghosts that they were mere haunts of their former selves, doomed to suffer eternity in their ghastly forms.
The characters managed to free the chained man, Dekai Cezuet. They learned that he was the heir of the Cezuet family and heir to the ruined lands surrounding the keep. He thanked them for their help and gifted them the contents of the three rooms as reward. He asked only for his father’s sword, the mark of the family line which he feared was buried under tons of rubble.
He told them of the story of the keep, and how he had returned here after many years of recovering from PTSD in the Vewasoeem Forest.
History of the Keep
The Keep at the northern mouth of the Iulii/Rusuceena Forest pass belonged to a Palidin and Lord who owned much of the land between the forests and Ruaxaom Ferry.
He had some share croppers, but mostly he enjoyed his life as a land owner, managed investments in Iix and Ciud, and sat on the Kings council.
When the Umbral Bound Legion invaded thirty five years ago, he sallied fourth to the north with the King to meet the enemy. he was pushed back with the rest of the Iixian Army as the UBL marched south.
When the enemy crossed the ferry at Ruaxaom Lake, he rode south to prepare his keep, and tend to his family. His teenage son (16) and daughter (14) and wife (32) met him at their manor just northwest of the keep.
He took them into the keep, and set them up in the basement. It was not a minute too late, shortly after he had done this, the retreating human army converged on the keep followed only an hour behind by the pursuing evil army.
The Evil Army broke into two elements, one continued south, and the other lay siege to the keep. The Humans used the exit, to send a pursuing contingent after the evil army and a small force behind to defend the keep.
One night a powerful Grey Obwez Evil Magician was able to overcome the protective magics of the human army and break a corner of the keep, fiece fighting ensued, but by dawn, the keep was overrun.
The Lord, his wife and the remaining humans fled into the trap door, calling to his children to prepare to flee. As the two children watched, their parents were buried under tons of rubble as the hallway from the basement to their panic room living quarters collapsed.
Though the three doors closed doors on the left, the characters discovered two smaller bedrooms with rotting beds. Each room contained the skeletal remains of Dekai’s younger brother and sister. The skeletons attacked them on sight, but proved no match for the party’s might.
Looting these dead children they discovered two items of note.
A diary and a +1 magic sword (rapier) that glowed dimly in the light.
Through the center door, they discovered a dim, crumbling chamber where four coal black skinned forms sat huddled together on the remains of long ago rotted furniture. Their gaunt forms were draped in tattered, dark robes. Their skin, blackened and withered, clung to their bones. Eyes sunken and hollow, they stared vacantly, embodying a chilling combination of life and decay. They did not register the character’s arrival.
These wretched forms were known to the party as the thralls of the Umbral Bound Legion. Infected by the pervasive death that surrounded them, they exist in a perpetual state of aging without ever reaching the release of death. Despite their living state, they are mindless, their thoughts and wills consumed by the dark magic that binds them. Only the commands spoken in the Umbral Bound language by those given authority to control them will stir them to action. The air around them was thick with the scent of decay.
The characters put these poor souls out of their misery.
Dekai said that he would head south back to Iix and try to get a group of priests to come back to the keep so that he might put his parent’s souls to rest. The party determined that their ghosts were likely bound to some foci (likely buried under the rubble).
The door opposite the bedrooms led to an escape tunnel orginally designed by the keeps lords as a bolt hole in the case of disaster. The characters did not explore this area.
The players waited around after the fight with the hopes of encountering the spy (the button man) the Obwez were waiting for. After a few days a figure approached the hill and offered the password “Braised Babies.”
The characters (after much discussion) had setup a ruse where by Simon pretended to be an agent of the Umbral Bound Legion with Frezuli as his prisoner. The other characters lay nearby waiting in ambush.
They quickly captured the poor man.
Patchwork Pete
Pete’s once-handsome features are now a canvas of hard living. His gaunt face is etched with premature wrinkles, and his sunken eyes dart nervously, bloodshot from lack of sleep. A scraggly, unkempt red beard fails to hide his hollow cheeks.
His thin frame is draped in a mismatched assortment of threadbare clothes, earning him his “Patchwork” moniker. Each garment sports an eclectic array of buttons – brass, wood, shell, and even a few that might be silver – sewn on seemingly at random, yet with surprising care.
Pete’s hands, once dexterous from years of button-craft, now tremble slightly, stained with dirt and bearing ragged nails. He walks with a slight limp, a remnant of his old riding injury.
Despite his disheveled appearance, there’s a spark of intelligence in his eyes and a certain dignity in how he carries himself, hinting at his middle-class origins. When he thinks no one’s looking, he often fiddles with the buttons on his sleeve, a nervous habit that betrays his deep-rooted passion for his family’s craft.
He held a letter.
Continue with your efforts to disrupt trade on the north-south road.
Find out what makes the well-water glow
Keep trying to break down the Steel door.
Dictate your most recent report to Patchwork Pete. He will use paper to record your words.
Report back with everything you find.
After a terrifying interrogation, the characters learned that Pete was an unwilling victim of the UBL. Preying on his opium addiction and his love of his sister, they coerced him into being a courier and deliver foul messages to the UBL stationed at this ruined keep.
He begged them not to kill him or reveal his capture as they would kill his sister. And then he begged for something even more important. A small glob of brown paste from the Grey Obwez’s reagent box. Under the promise of withheld drugs, Pete revealed that he didn’t know who sent the letters giving him orders only that his sister received a box from an unknown source an in it was a letter demanding her compliance under fear of death. She had enlisted her beloved elder brother (Patchwork Pete), and together they discovered that the magic box was a communication device. Once a week, a letter could be placed in the box. This letter would disappear from the box and reappear in it’s twin (in the hands of the UBL). Following this, a letter from the UBL would be returned with instructions for Pete.
The party decided they had a great way to deliver false intelligence to the enemy and headed north to their rendezvous with their commanders in Ruxuom Ferry.
They sent a message via their sending stone, and on the way north they received a message back via bird. Their orders were to let Patchwork Pete enter the city on his own with instructions to reach out to the party a pre-agreed spot. Then the party was to report back to Captain Duul Kovier