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Dungeon: How Grief Blooms
After the tragic death of his wife, the halfling Earl of Eastbrook has become a recluse, abstaining from social functions, seldom seen in public, and conducting much of his concerns through various agents. Agents like you, paid well so that you conduct the Earl’s business promptly and without asking too many questions. However, after some weeks of gruntwork and strange favours, you can’t help the feeling that something rotten is going on at the Eastbrook estate.
Adventure Hooks:
Most of the party’s assignments are doled out by a Mr. Moiler, a functionary of the Earl’s who always seems to be under the weather and insists that they have their meetings while he takes lunch at a local tavern. Presumptuous and frequently unpleasant, Moiler is quick with the money when he has proof the work’s been done not wanting to waste any more of his finite time with the party than he has to. It’s during one of these meetings that the functionary begins choking and coughing like he’s going to hack up a lung, and right there on the dinner table spits up a mass of rotten plant matter that bears an uncomfortable resemblance to a human hand. While the party is paralyzed with shock, the limb begins to skitter away, barely recovered Moiler demanding that they catch it before it escapes or the other inn patrons see it.
Eastbrook has many concerns that need tending to: Mines that must be checked on, merchants that must be negotiated with, monsters that must be driven off from tenant lands. Then there the more unusual jobs: travelling to nearby towns and escorting a member of the royal horticultural society to the Eastbrook estate without ever being invited in themselves, having a stern chat with a local priest who’s rabblerousing about all the body-snatchers that’ve been plaguing local cemeteries lately. These odd jobs pay the best, but there’s only so much weirdness the party can take right? … Right?
Dressed fancy and forced to leave their weapons at home, the party are finally given a chance of meeting their employer when tasked with escorting him to a social function at which he needs to show some muscle. They’re given a very brief impression of the earl: tired eyes, fingers are stained with green and soil as if his servants plucked him out of the garden and threw a bit of finery over his thinning frame. Leaving them to attend whatever business he left his secluded estate for, the party are approached by a young woman with a knowing smile and a lot of interesting questions about Eastbrook. If the party are willing to do a little snooping on her behalf, she’d be ever so grateful, and is sure she can arrange some work for them in the future should their current arrangement fall through.
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Mystery: Oh, How the Iron Coffin Hungers!
There’s been a rash of graverobberies across the kingdom that have the authorities suspecting necromancy. For their part, the necromancer’s guild has nothing to do with these crimes and is willing to hire your party to help clear their name. The investigation will lead you to through tombs, black markets, and haunted crossroads of the realm, as it becomes clear the culprits are seeking far more than coin or corpses at the bottom of those defiled graves.
Clues & Complications:
A missing body is usually a dead giveaway that a necromancer has been involved in a grave robbery, as most criminals only care about grabbing what valuables they can and wouldn’t result to bodysnatching unless someone was going to pay them for it. How unusual then when a few of the bodies begin turning up days after they were exhumed, one in an abandoned cellar, one on the side of the road, and one in a completely different town, which may give a hint as to the culprit’s movements.
Working for necromancers has its benefits, the guild is aware of the habits of the corpse trade (only in a theoretical sense, you understand, yes?) and can use their magic to extract information from the cadavers. Strangely enough it appears all the corpses bear the marks of previous magical questioning, hinting that it might be information the robbers were after, not flesh or treasure.
The bodies all belong to minor gentry or well-to-do merchants, the ideal targets for graverobbers who don’t mind breaking into a tomb or fussing with a trap (both of which the party might have to do during their investigation) if it means access to better plunder. If the party press deeper however they’ll notice a recurring symbol, on a ring or a tattoo or etched into the gravemarker, resembling the crudest sketch of a jawbone.
Just like it seems the party is getting answers, the corpses they’ve been trailing sit up and lunge for the nearest individual’s throat, transformed by dark power into a rampaging ghoul. Chaos ensues as this awakening occurs not just with those corpses that have already been found, but also with those that were previously undiscovered as well as a half dozen or more random bodies scattered across the countryside. Though they seem too possessed with hunger to be capable of speech, if the party manage to restrain one of the ghouls and sate its unholy hunger, they may just get the last few clues they’re looking for.
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