d20 Necromancer Games Fane of the Witch King.pdf

Fane of the Witch King

Credits

Author: Steven Montano

Cartography: Ed Bourelle

Front & Back Cover Design: Stephen Chenault

Playtesters: Mike Crowl, Rob Mill, Damien

Prescott, Wes Robinson, Andy Van Hoesen

Special Thanks: Thanks to Liberty for listening

to all of my ridiculous ideas (and offering quite a

few good ones of her own), and to Takenya and

Samuel, the two greatest kids in the world.

Thanks to the Riders Seven, the BloodDawn

crew and the Kaldrak Iyres adventurers for the

best role-playing a guy could ever wish for. And,

last but certainly not least, thanks to the Necro-

mancer crew for believing in this insane little

project…

Developer: Bill Webb

Producer: Clark Peterson

Editor: Lance Halvermale

Managing Editor: Kevin Walker

D20 Editor: Skeeter Green

Assistant Editors: Erica Balsley, Scott

Green

Art Director: Bill Webb

Layout and Typesetting: Troll Lord Games

Interior Art: Marcin Rudnicki

Front Cover Art: Rick Sardinha

Product Update Password for Fane of the Witch King: Jar’rod

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Reader discretion is advised.

Necromancer

Games

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http://www.necromancergames.com

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Introduction

An ancient temple in a long-destroyed evil city has

been discovered. While many adventurers see the dis-

covery of this city as an opportunity for exploration

and adventure, they are not the only ones who want in:

a small but powerful army of evil creatures also de-

sires to plunder the remnants of the dreaded City of

Skull & Shadow, and through their actions they might

unleash evil forces that even they cannot imagine. Ul-

timately, it is up to the PCs to stop them.

In the Fane of the Witch King, Player Characters

(PCs) have the chance to explore ancient and lost un-

derground depths, battle an evil crime lord bent on ex-

ploiting a source of evil magic, and prevent corrupted

creatures from opening a gate to the Abyss.

This module is an epic D20 fantasy adventure de-

signed for a party of 4-6 PCs of 4th to 6th level. If

played in its entirety, Fane of the Witch King should

take PCs from 4th to 10th level.

ties of dark knowledge and terrible power. From the

dreaded City of Skull & Shadow, as Krezzel Dul would

later come to be known, the followers of the Witch King

waged terrible wars on the surrounding lands. In the

center of the evil city stood a powerful temple devoted

to their deity: the Ebon Fane. In this dark citadel was

spilled the blood and cries of hundreds of innocents

subjected to horrifying rites and dark rituals that en-

sured they not pass into the afterlife without knowing

the full extents of pain, suffering and humiliation. The

foul priests of this temple found no deed too horrify-

ing and no taboo so inviolate that it could not be bro-

ken: such was the black love they showed for their King.

Eventually, with the aid of the Gods of Good, the evil

centers of power on the world began to fall. Powerful

armies led by celestials and gold dragons slowly re-

claimed the world, inch by inch – though many died in

this series of terrible conflicts, the forces of darkness

were eventually routed. The Doomspires were toppled,

and the various necromantic armies and chaotic cult-

ists were forced into hiding once more. Though it would

take centuries before the land and its people were re-

stored to a normal state, the renaissance had begun.

Meanwhile, the city of Krezzel Dul was torn from

within by internal strife. While the city was gripped in

the tight control of the Brotherhood of the Black Sun –

a powerful cult wholly devoted to the Witch King –

many of its citizens detested their dark lord, and se-

cretly desired that he be destroyed. A small, militant

group of monks called the Veiled Ones thus began act-

ing in secret against the Brotherhood’s seat of power:

the Veiled Ones sabotaged the Brotherhood’s necro-

mantic experiments and quietly freed many of the

order’s condemned prisoners. As the move against evil

began in other parts of the world, the Veiled Ones took

this as a sign, and launched a full revolt upon the lead-

ership of Krezzel Dul.

Whether or not their coup would have been success-

ful will never be known. The Witch King, outraged that

any of his followers could turn against his “benevo-

lent” rule, released a horde of fiends upon the city. In

less than a day, Krezzel Dul was reduced to a lifeless

shell, its inhabitants slaughtered by the demonic armies

of the Witch King. Still not content with his revenge,

Osenkej released a wave of necromantic gas crafted

by the Brotherhood’s twisted imaginations – soon, the

City of Skull & Shadow truly earned its name, for its

inhabitants were twisted undead monstrosities.

When the armies of good & light arrived to sack

Krezzel Dul, they found it a much more formidable

target than they ever would have imagined. Soldiers

captured by the dark city’s inhabitants were subjected

to horrifying experiments, only to return to haunt their

former comrades as undead horrors. Aided by the fiends

PREPARATION

The Dungeon Master (DM) needs copies of all three

Core Rulebooks, published by Wizards of the Coast,

in order to run this adventure.

Bolded text is to be read aloud or paraphrased to the

players. Monster and Non-Player Character (NPC) sta-

tistics are provided in the body of the adventure, while

the full statistics for new magic items are detailed in

the Appendix.

ADVENTURE BACK-

GROUND

THE CITY OF SKULL &

SHADOW

Ages ago, in a time so lost that even the eldest elves

have no recollection of it, the world was a much darker

place. Armies of fiends and hordes of undead swept

across the landscape in unending waves. Dark gener-

als, many of whom claimed to be direct descendants of

terrible Gods, ruled from the Doomspires — towering

fortresses of burning skulls and calcified human re-

mains. The good people of the world held up inside of

fortified fortress-towns, ever ready to repel the next

wave of dark attackers.

In a time when little of the world was good, the dark

city of Krezzel Dul was the worst. A metropolis of fear

and pain, Krezzel Dul was erected to honor Osenkej, a

powerful and twisted fiend prince who was the result

of crossbreeding – his father was a balor, his mother a

terrifyingly powerful red wyrm. Osenkej, also known

as the Witch King, granted his followers vast quanti-

Fane of the Witch King

that faithfully served the Witch King, the undead le-

gions of Krezzel Dul seemed unstoppable. At the last,

the forces of good called upon the power of their dei-

ties, and wiped the black city from the face of the earth

in an enormous maelstrom of holy power. Not even

dust remained.

attempted to stop them; many dwarves were trapped

inside of the collapsed and cursed place, among them

the bearer of a magic key that could open the inner

vault doors themselves. The Kothian dwarves placed

powerful enchantments and runes about the entire area,

hoping to keep out foolish intruders. But the dwarves

of Koth thought the best defense for this foul place

was secrecy: if no one knew of the Ebon Fane, none

would come to disturb it.

And, for several hundred years, they were right.

THE DWARVES OF KOTH

Centuries later, when the dark war had faded into

legend and myth, the enterprising dwarves of the Koth

clan were expanding their already formidable under-

ground city of Tarec Non. The dwarves of Koth, whom

had been entrusted by their God, Crugas, to protect a

number of holy relics, scouted out isolated areas, far

away from their grand city, in which to bury both these

relics and other items of great import to their clan

(mainly their finely crafted weapons). These weapons

storage facilities and reliquaries were to be placed in

scatted, sealed vaults, each with a full dwarf garrison

stationed nearby to defend it.

Little did the Kothian dwarves realize that one such

vault was built directly over the last remains of Krezzel

Dul, an area protected from destruction and detection

by powerful magic. It was only too late that the Kothian

dwarves discovered they had built a vault directly over

the Ebon Fane – the only vestige of the City of Skull &

Shadow to have survived the wrath of the holy armies.

Soon, after the dwarves breached the Fane during

the vault’s construction, malign spirits and entrapped

demons began to pour out and prey upon the dwarf

workers and soldiers. Kothians disappeared in the dark

caverns, only to return as undead hunters and fiendish

monstrosities.

But worse was what the dwarves discovered even

deeper, beneath the Ebon Fane: the Black Vault. Be-

fore they were destroyed by the Witch King’s wrath,

the elder members of the Brotherhood of the Black Sun

crafted a vault that contained their most powerful rel-

ics, weapons and items of foul presence, including such

horrifying items as the Hungerstone, the Blood Grail,

the Bone Cross and the Soulflame. Also located in this

Vault were the key and the door to a place called the

Kiss of Doom, a magical gate that led directly to a re-

gion of the Abyss controlled by the Witch King. The

Brotherhood had never opened this gate: even they

feared what might come out. Though the gate had been

opened when the Witch King punished the city of

Krezzel Dul, it had been sealed upon the city’s destruc-

tion.

Desperate to seal the place up again, the Kothian

dwarves used magic and engineering to collapse the

mine shafts about the weapons vault, and therefore the

entrance into the last temple of the City of Skull &

Shadow. The undead and trapped fiends that guarded

the temple sensed what the Kothians were up to, and

THE GHUL LEGION

A powerful, secret army known as the Ghul Legion

recently discovered the Kothian weapons vault. The

Ghul Legion is a formidable group of dark elves, gnolls,

and powerful monsters that have all bound together

beneath the common banner of a cadre of evil stone

giants called the Ravagers and their black dragon leader,

Ghul Lacronus. This group ultimately seeks to launch

a full invasion of the surface world for plunder and

conquest; since that goal is a long-time off, the Legion

currently occupies itself with searching for ways to

increase its influence and power, all in secret.

Recently, the Legion has made a number of surface-

world contacts willing to aid them, among them a pow-

erful wizard crime lord named Crithian Raine. Raine,

who has been forced away from his native city of Tanith

due to one too many indiscretions in regards to other

organized crime figures, has found that the deal suits

him nicely: in exchange for providing information and

magic to the Legion, he has been rewarded with a great

deal of money and authority within their ranks. It was

the Ghul soldiers under his command that uncovered

the Kothian vault, and it was under his authority that

the exploration of the full area has begun. Raine is well

aware of the history of Krezzel Dul, just as he knows

of the Brotherhood of the Black Sun and the great ad-

vances they made in the fields of magic and magic item

creation. Raine specifically would like to recover the

Blood Grail (an item that bequeaths the powers of

undeath without an actual undead state) or the Bone

Cross (which is rumored to be useful is slaying beings

of celestial blood).

To facilitate exploration, the Legion has helped Raine

convert an old Kothian watchtower located near the

vault into a fortified stronghold. From here, Raine and

his forces continue to explore the area. As of yet, the

Legion has not managed to penetrate very far into the

vault, due to the formidable traps and an unbreakable

door that seals the way forward. Raine correctly sus-

pects that the key to unlock the door is located some-

where in the area surrounding the vault, but he has thus

far not been able to retrieve it.

The Ghul Legion shall remain a constant thorn over

the course of this adventure. Their symbol is a flam-

Introduction

ing, horned skull, which all members wear upon their

person, usually as a brand, scar or tattoo in a promi-

nent area (such as the forehead).

Of course, the PCs in your game may choose a com-

pletely different path – despite its site-based orienta-

tion, there are any number of outcomes to Fane of the

Witch King.

ADVENTURE SYNOPSIS

This is a site-based adventure. At their own whim,

or at the behest of outside authorities, the PCs investi-

gate the remote Kothian excavation site, only to dis-

cover that some sort of organized force of creatures

has taken control of the area. This force is obviously

intent on penetrating the Kothian vault. It won’t take

much investigation for the PCs to discover that these

creatures are members of the Ghul Legion, and that the

item they need to accomplish this task – a key – has

been taken by a powerful red dragon that lairs in an

area near the vault.

Eventually, either the PCs or the Legion get their

hands on the key, and the full weapons vault can be

explored. The vault is protected by powerful dwarven

traps, and is populated by a few of minions of Krezzel

Dul.

Either the PCs or the Ghul Legion are likely to move

past the vault and into the Ebon Fane itself. The Ebon

Fane proves to be a most dangerous place, filled with

undead, dangerous traps, and a few of the Witch King’s

more diabolic servants. By this point, the PCs are bat-

tling not only with Raine’s soldiers of the Ghul Le-

gion, but they must also contend with more powerful

agents sent by the Ravagers, who through their actions

may inadvertently open the way to the Kiss of Doom.

With careful investigation, the PCs might learn of ex-

actly where they are, and of why it is so important that

the Fane be sealed once more.

At some point, the PCs likely take the fight to

Crithian Raine and assault the Ghul Keep. A danger-

ous proposition, at best, this course of events not only

remove the major enemy from the scope of the adven-

ture, but also places in the PCs hands a number of use-

ful items that could potentially help them survive their

time in the Black Vault.

Once the PCs are able to reach the Black Vault, they

must face the terrifying traps and guardians placed there

by the Witch King and his bride, Kytarra Bane. The

last confrontation with the Ravagers should occur here,

and, with any luck, the PCs can even learn how to seal

the Ebon Fane forever, using the defensive magic left

behind by the Brotherhood of the Black Sun.

Things could go wrong, however. If they’re not care-

ful, the PCs may find that the Kiss of Doom has been

opened (either by themselves or the Ravagers), and the

only way to stop a horde of fiendish enemies from

swarming the world is to pass through to a place called

the Stone of Fears and seal the gate. To do this, they

must face Kytarra Bane, the Witch Queen.

HO OKS

The easiest way to involve the PCs in Fane of the

Witch King is to place the excavation site directly in

the PCs path. If your PCs are already partaking in an

adventure in underground ruins or the like, the excava-

tion area could literally be uncovered over the course

of another adventure. Once the PCs investigate the area

and learn of the Ghul Legions involvement, they likely

are sufficiently motivated to undertake the events de-

tailed in the adventure.

Alternatively, the DM could present an item of some

value or important to the PCs, and then reveal it to be

either in the hands of Crithian Raine or else buried

somewhere deep inside of the Ebon Fane.

The PCs might already be enemies of the Ghul Le-

gion or Crithian Raine, and, through investigation or a

short introductory adventure, they learn of their en-

emies’ interest in the remains of Krezzel Dul.

Finally, the PCs might know the story of Krezzel

Dul. A powerful Good-aligned Church or a similar or-

ganization may have seen telling signs that a great evil

is going to be released if events in and around the Ebon

Fane are allowed to unfold at their present course. The

PCs, as recognized agents of good, could be hired to

investigate and to ensure that no such evil is released.

(It would be particularly ironic if, through such a mis-

sion, the PCs are the ones who actually open the Kiss

of Doom – a self-fulfilling prophecy, of sorts, could

come to pass.)

Naturally, an evil party may be drawn into Krezzel

Dul’s remains by the promise of wealth, power and

magical secrets, just as Crithian Raine has been. Evil

PCs may also be enemies of Crithian Raine – he is not

known for his ability to win friends, but for his ability

to kill them off…

RUNNING THE ADVEN-

TURE

This adventure is a mixture of site-based, “dungeon

crawl” elements mixed with floating encounters. While

site-based areas wait for the PCs (or NPCs) to happen

along, the floating encounters can occur whenever the

DM wishes within the framework of the adventure.

Each chapter details an event or area that the PCs could

potentially explore or undertake; specific events to

occur within the framework of an area are detailed near

the beginning of each chapter.

This adventure should not be run in a linear manner.

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