Unicorn RampantClaw / Claw / Bite magazine & Tabletop Role-Playing Games

Oct 8th Location: Castle Stieglitz – 2nd and 3rd floors and Cellar

2nd floor:

1 Hallway
The light makes a shifting patchwork on the floor as the party passes through the broad halls.

2-7 Quarters
The quarters are full of eight slashed beds. It appears that anything of value has already been removed from these walls.

8 Petry’s Room
A single small window looks out to the grounds at the back of the Steiglitz property. Like all the other areas inside this castle, the room has been completely looted. The mattress of the bed has been slashed open and its innards lie strewn across the floor. A chair lies on its side and the desk has several deep gashes as if struck by a handaxe or other small chopping tool.

9 Yevgeny’s Room
This room contains a large bed which has been turned on its side. Dusty hay and down litter the corners of the room, which without exterior windows is cast in a deep earthen shadow.

10 Karl’s Room
This room contains a thrashed bed and some broken furniture. The small window has been smashed. A breeze blows into the room, bringing with it the smell of grass and cedar.

11 Anna’s Room
This windowless room has a single bed that has been gutted like the rest. A vanity and wardrobe shows signs of vandalism. Their contents have long since been looted. Someone with the initials “K.U.” has carved crude remarks about a woman named Anna and her questionable heritage into the wood grain of the furniture.

12 Baron’s Suite
The room has a distinctly foul odor to it. In the shadowy light that streams through the windows, a humanoid form with withered and whitened hair slithers from a throne, shakes his fists defiantly and charges up the iron spiral staircase at the far end of the room. A sitting table flanked by two chairs fills the north end of the room under the window, atop it an unlit candelabra. Three chests line the south wall, upon the center one rests a notebook and a silver pitcher.

When the party enters the baron’s suite, he will flee up the spiral staircase.

3rd floor:

1 Baron von Stieglitz’ Bedchambers
In this round chamber high above the valley, bright spotlights from the five circular windows illuminate silver cobwebs draped like tule about the five-poster bed in the center of the chamber. A small table leans against the west curved wall, and a dresser against the east curve. A spiral staicase at the south end of the room leads down into the darkness.

Beneath the cobwebs in the bed is a long-dead servant girl, the object of desire that drove the Baron into madness. (more description here, probably a read-aloud, something to the effect of)

Sinewy strands of flesh bind the woman’s mouth, and a festered and rotten slit is visible under her chin.

The windows offer views of the surrounding valley, making the tower a perfect lookout spot and the castle well-defended.

Creatures: Baron von Stieglitz, wight (CR12) who has likely fled to this location from the room below. In addition, many bats (20-40) live in the rafters beneath the tall ceilings of this tower. They will fight on the baron’s side.

If the party survives the fight, the Baron’s parting words:

I have failed you Katherine! I have failed you father, grandfather, uncle Jakob! I now know in death what you thought of me in life.

Soon after, the Stieglitz ghosts arrive and carry his body down to the mausoleum for burial. Then they sink back into their sarcophagi and disappear from sight.

An alternate ending is that the party parlays with the Baron and works with him to restore his name and honor.

Cellar:

Development: If the party heads down into the trapdoor, and they haven’t met the servants, the servants close the trapdoor and drag the table back atop it, trapping the party in the cellar. Cries for help will eventually bring the remaining servants to investigate. They will not open the trapdoor until they verify the party means them no harm, which may require the party disposing of the undead.

The party must succeed at a DC 25 strength check to lift the trap door open (5 round action) if the servants do not help. They can also cajole the servants to open the trap door. This requires a DC 25 Diplomacy check (10 round action) to change their initial attitude from Unfriendly to Friendly.

1 Food Storage
This 5’ x 10’ room is musty and ridden with cobwebs. Shelves that look as if they once held dry goods now only display rat droppings.

2 Equipment Storage
This is another 5’ x 10’ room that contains mops, brooms, balls of rags, buckets, feather dusters, and other custodial equipment. They have not seen use in quite some time.

A DC 5 Search check will allow to party to find 5 large bars of soap.

3 Wine Cellar (EL 8)
This unlit earthen room is filled with narrow rows of shelves, stocked with bottles of wine. Several dead men in mail lie on the ground amongst broken bottles of wine in the tight spaces between the shelves, weapons still in their rotting hands.

The spaces marked on the map as having broken glass should be treated as being laced with caltrops. Characters moving into or fighting in such areas receive and “attack” from the broken glass. This attack is at +0 attack bonus and is against the character’s touch AC (+2 if the character is wearing boots of other footwear). A successful attack deals 1 point of damage and reduces the character’s movement by half.

Most of the areas in this cellar are 2 1/2 feet wide, which means that medium sized creatures will have to squeeze to move through these areas. Squeezing characters move at half speed and receive -4 to their attack rolls and AC.

Violent activity while squeezing adjacent to the wine racks has a 50% chance of sending wine bottles crashing to the ground. This fills the space the character is in with glass-caltrops as above.

Creatures: Mohrg, HP: 85 and Zombies (3) HP: 15, 18, 15 AC: 16

Several months ago the kennel master, a cruel and coarse man, was caught by a servant girl getting drunk on the Baron’s wine here. Enraged, he slit her throat and drunkenly violated her. Shortly afterwards the Baron leapt upon him and slew him. The taint of his evil has lingered and now his body stalks the cellar as a Mohrg.

Afterwards, during the looting of the castle by the Baron’s factious underlings, several men-at-arms came to the basement to steal the wine. The mohrg slew them and they now serve him as zombies. The zombies will lie still on the ground until the mohrg begins it’s attack, at which point they will rise up and join the fray.

All of the undead, being dead and suffering no pain, are unaffected by the wine-caltrop effect.

Tactics: The Mohrg will attempt to hide until it can attack one of the party from such a position that they must face it one-on-one. The zombies will rise up to sew confusion once the attack has begun, grappling and slamming. The mohrg will tenaciously attack one foe until it is dead or paralyzed, then move on to the next, until it is slain or has slain everyone. If defeated it expels vile curses with it’s grotesque tongue as it falls, calling it’s defeaters mongrels and dogs in Wyndm.

Treasure: The three zombies are wearing serviceable suits of chain mail and their heavy maces lie on the ground. In addition, there is a large sack of loot they had taken before meeting their fate here. It contains 500 gold worth of accouterments including a candelabrum worth 100 gp, most of a 8 seating set of silverware worth 80gp and various other valuables. Finally, the wine on the racks amounts to 80 bottles of various quality and vintage. Their values range from 2 sp to 10 gp each, and average at 4 gp each. A DC 20 search check along with a DC 15 appraise check will allow characters to discover a 50 year old bottle of fine brandy worth 100 gold.

Development: If anyone moves the obstacles and enters the cellars without speaking with the remaining servants first, they will come and replace the obstacles at the first sound of battle, or before if they happen upon the open hatch. As noted above, opening the hatch with the table and rubble piled on it requires a DC 25 strength check, or convincing of the former servants that the trapped people mean them no harm via diplomacy or bluff.

Ad Hoc XP Adjustment: +10% XP for difficult terrain and zombies.

Sep 16th Location: Onuago Old Town Hall

1 Front Facade

The Old Town Hall was once an architectural marvel, standing five stories high with a dome providing the top two stories. Now the dome has caved into the center, and the structure is nothing more than a husk with a few carved figures adorning facades. Seven marble columns rise before the entrance, five of which are structurally intact. Splinters of broken timbers block the entrance to the building, labeled overhead with the text “Onuago Town Hall” in carved lettering.

The boards are easily removed fro the doorway, revealing a door less passage into the interior, location 2.

2 Antechamber

From here, the main dome of the town hall rises into the next room. The floor slopes sharply down, forming a basin, which is full of murky water, the ripples illuminated in the crisp moonlight. A small boat is tied to the shore close to this chamber.

The party will find that the boat is seaworthy, and that the water is at least 6′ deep. Ideally, they will take it to the center of the chamber, where gargoyles lay in wait at location 3.

3 Center of the Dome

The water here is suddenly not so calm! Swooping down from above are two gargoyles, while another two burst from the water, rocking the boat!

Once the party reaches this spot (hopefully in the boat), the gargoyles will attack. f the party members in the boat when the attack begins must make a reflex save DC 15 or fall in the water. Characters who fall in the water are descended upon by any gargoyles not already engaged in melee.
Creatures: Gargoyles (4) as per DMG. HP: 37, 41, 33, 45
Tactics: The gargoyles will wait until the party has passed them before attacking by swooping down upon them. Though vicious, they are not bloodthirsty, and if strongly opposed will likely flee through the cracked dome and scatter.
Treasure: The individual gargoyle’s hordes are located under the lecturn in location 4 and include material looted from the Town Hall’s coffers. The individual caches of treasure are: 1) 23,190 silver coins (2,319 gp), 374 gold coins (374 gp) and 64 platinum coins (640 gp), 26,043 silver coins (2,604.3 gp) and a scroll- divine (150 gp) Stonetell (l2, cl3), 4) 466 gold coins (466 gp) and a potion of Reduce (at 5th level) (250 gp), which is fallow-colored, has a peppery odor and taste, and a vaporous, layered appearance.
Development: Any gargoyles that escape the party’s defenses will fly off to harpy point where they came from and may be encountered there later.

The side chambers are all empty, with the exception of a few nests made from shredded parchment and scrolls. This suggests other living creatures which make their homes here, as gargoyles require no such nests. Indeed, harpies from the island in the bay sometimes take up residence in the town hall, and toy with and feast on Onuago’s less-aware citizens.

4 Lecturn

The gargoyles’ horde is stuffed inside an old lecturn (see location 3).

A worn and warped lecturn is the lone island in the far end of the chamber. The moonlight casts unsual shadows against the back of the room, framing the brightly lit lecturn.

5 Councilman Rifa’s Chambers

Two feet of standing water fill the room. A bookshelf on the far wall appears half full.

Most of the documents are simple, though the party finds old documents describing the rising waters and the lack of useful legislation and organization to stop it. I addition, the party finds a scroll of Comprehend Languages and another of Zone of Truth.

6 Councilwoman Gulley’s Chambers

A film of sticky mud coats the bottom foot of the room, unmarked by footprints or other visible signs of disturbance.

The party finds documents describing the lack of focus on public health and other domestic shortfalls of the Port of Onuago. Gulley’s personal writings lambast the inability of the town council to get the job done.

7 Back Chambers

Shallow ridges in the mud-filled hallway give way to a 20×20′ chamber.

This meeting room/hallway is the home of a mud naga (stats to appear as a new creature). The naga has very little treasure.

8 Steps

A set of stairs leads up, though the passage is filled with rubble.

The party is unable to move this rubble, and if they do, the steps lead to an empty, roofless chamber that overlooks the dome. There is nothing of interest here.

9 Rally Pedestal

This was once the rally point for political organizations that approached the town council. It was also once a shrine to Hemera and Nyx, the Gods of Time.

If the characters examine it closely enough, they find “Time is on our side” etched into the wooden pedestal.