After utterly dismantling two zombies trapped in Thornmere Hold, the way to secret lore is open! I have a couple of possible options as to why the zombies existed, which could mean an encounter in this room or not. Instead of rolling on “is this an expected scene?” a la Mythic GM Emulator, I’ll instead Consult the Bones to see whether there’s an encounter in this next room, and the results will help determine which history is true. I grab my handful of special dice and roll: Once again, the Twins of Fate are divided, but the Hammer of Judgment plays tiebreaker and says no encounter here. Meanwhile, the Fortune die shows a skull, which means generally bad stuff. Easy enough. Not only does this roll crystallize the origin of the zombies and what lies in the chamber beyond, it means that (because of that skull) I’ll increase the difficulty of getting the “major item” in the next room.
I’ll also make a couple of Attribute checks before we get started. Does Vessa know the general nature of the things they just fought? I roll a Gather Info(Int) and get a 12, which is a success. Does Alric have a sense of why the zombies may have been created? Here I roll an Arcane Lore(Int) and get a 9, also a success. Okay great… that helps define my initial dialogue.
VII.
Frostmere 16, Hearthday, Year 731.
Maelen stepped into the room beyond, but both Alric and Vessa’s eyes were fixed on the gray-skinned bodies on the stone floor. With Maelen’s torch in the room beyond, only dim light remained, shrouding any details in deep shadows. Most distinct was the woman’s decapitated head, which lay at Vessa’s feet, empty pits where her eyes should be staring sightlessly at her, black tears down her drooping cheeks. Oily, black hair clung to the floor in a wide, wild pattern. She’d slit plenty of throats, seen plenty of corpses, but those black tears would haunt her dreams.
Vessa’s nose wrinkled. She had been around dead bodies before, yet there was no stench here, just the faint scent of mildew and lichen where damp has kissed the corners of this place. There was the coppery tang of the automaton impaled on the wall and lamp oil gone rancid long ago. But no rotting flesh, blood, or offal. Whatever had happened to the bodies of the things they’d just fought, it left them with only the faint scent of something acrid and alien, but so scant it may have been merely her expectations.
“Zombies, yeah?” she asked the scribe in a low whisper. “I heard tales in the guildhall once. The dead brought back to life?”
“Not life,” Alric said carefully, deep in thought. “An un-life, I’ve heard it called. Their bodies were like puppets to some darker force, their minds gone. It’s… troubling. Some arcane force twisted them in this way, left them trapped down here. Is whatever created these undead still here, I wonder?”
“And why were they locked in a vault?” Vessa built on the scribe’s words. “Had they already been transformed? If not, why seal living people down here?”
“Indeed,” he answered, rubbing at his chin. “Something about this is deeply wrong.”
“You want to stand in a dark room yapping or find what we came to find?” came Maelen’s harsh words echoing from the other room. Alric’s head snapped up. “Come here, idiots.”
Vessa followed him, sparing one last glance back at the fallen bodies. A shiver crept from the base of her stubbled head down her spine.
It was a narrow, rectangular room with a high, vaulted ceiling held aloft by stone ribs. Two wall sconces flanking the doorway held broken oil lamps, seemingly battered into shapeless brass by some blunt object, perhaps the zombies’ fists. A central wooden table, low and wide, was the room’s only furniture, its surface pitted by age and scarred with knife marks. Yet there were also broken pieces of wood littering the floor, which Vessa suspected had once been stools. Deep alcoves had been carved into both long walls, fitted with sealed copper scroll tubes and thick leather cases, many intact.
Maelen passed her torch around as she took in the details of the place. “Lad, light your torch off mine and get to searching what’s here.”
“Yes, of course,” he answered. Alric unshouldered his pack and began rummaging through it.
With a second torch lit, details of the room became even clearer. Dust covered everything, disturbed by the dragging footsteps of the zombies. If Vessa were to guess, they had rarely moved in the past many years, and touched nothing upon the shelves. Her eyes roamed over the alcoves, wondering what could be so important to create this place and hide it away from Oakton. Everything here appeared so mundane.
“Vess, come here. Look at this with me,” Maelen said in a low, urgent tone.
She cocked an eyebrow, her tongue working at the gap left by her mysterious missing tooth from two nights before, and left the scribe to begin his exploration of the alcoves. Maelen stood at the far end of the long room, facing another closed door. The broad-shouldered warrior had sheathed her sword and held the torch up close to the door’s surface for Vessa to see.
Vessa sucked in a breath as she approached. The door itself was a slab of black basalt, reinforced with copper bands etched in glyphs similar to what she’d seen on the automaton from the previous room. Built along the center of the door were three separate locks, one at knee height, one at her ribs, and the last at eye level. The lowest two locks were conventional but sturdy turn-wheel designs like one might find in any Coinmarch vault, though of a construction older than she’d seen before and each distinct. The top lock, meanwhile, was clearly an arcane seal, a recessed copper disc engraved with a fading sigil.
“By the Rootmother’s tangled knots, Mae,” Vessa breathed. “I’ve never seen something like that. It’s worse than the Argenoak vault from… from before.” Without thinking, her free hand scratched the lark tattoo on her wrist.
“Can you break in?” Maelen asked, resting a hand on her shoulder.
Vessa swallowed with a dry throat. “I have no idea.”
“Well, we’ve got time. The lad is going to be busy. Study it and see what you think.” The heavy hand landed hard on her shoulder twice, causing her to stumble.
“I’ll need to light my own torch,” she breathed, never taking her eyes from the trio of locks. “What are you going to do?”
Maelen exhaled through her nose. “I’ll wander back the way we came, see if we missed anything.” She paused, then said, “I want to find out what’s on the other side of that door, Vess. The Lodge damned well put something valuable there.” She lowered her voice to a low, hissing whisper. “Might be our ticket out from under the Circle’s thumb.” The woman’s gaze burned into the seal as she spoke.
“Yeah… okay,” Vessa nodded, licking her lips. Where Maelen had punched her the day before was still swollen and sore. She tasted blood with her tongue. “I’ll get to work,” she whispered, as if the door might be listening.
For the next hours, the three PCs will be pursuing separate activities: Maelen searching, Alric reading through scrolls, and Vessa studying the locked door. Let’s make some rolls to see how these things go.
For a couple of hours of Maelen poking through the previous rooms and hallway, how should I handle it mechanically? I could just Consult the Bones, or ask a Fate question, or roll an Attribute check. Let’s start with a straight Perception roll, which for Maelen is 12. I roll 8, so she does a good job searching. Now I’ll Consult the Bones to see if there’s anything worth finding: The Twins say Yes/Nil, but the Judgment die says No, and it’s the tiebreaker. As a result, there’s no real “discovery moment” to speak of. But the Fortune die is a Sun, which means something positive. Seems like Maelen found some loot, so I’ll roll d20 on the Tales of Argosa Valuables table: 3, which leads me to the Carry Loot A table: 37, which is “coppers equal to the sum of the digits from the d100 roll.” 10 copper “oaks” is not a lot of money, but it’s something.
Next up is Alric, and I’ll follow the same basic procedure. First is a Perception roll, which for him is 11. I roll 5, which is a Great Success! He will find all sorts of interesting information in the scrolls, tomes, and miscellany in the alcoves. Now let’s Consult the Bones to get a bit clearer: Double-No on the Twins negates the Yes on the Judgment die, so again there’s no real “discovery moment.” But there is a Skull on the Fortune die. Hmmm. So, in addition to gathering a lot of good info, he’ll find something bad. But what? Now is a great time for one of the Oracle tables in Mythic. I’ll roll on Descriptor Tables 1 & 2: Fortunately Pale. What is this supposed to mean? It’s mine to interpret, wherever my mind takes me based on those descriptive words. For me, I’m going to give Alric a mixed blessing: An access to unlock his magical abilities (since he hasn’t used them yet, might as well say this is the place his magic begins), but which will lead him down a dangerous, dangerous road.
Finally, it’s our POV-of-the-week character Vessa’s turn. First is the Perception check, which is a whopping 17 for her. I roll 16, so thank goodness her Attribute is so high. She will get a sense of what’s needed to open the vault. Now we Consult the Bones: The Twins are Yes/Nil, but Judgment again trumps with a No. There is no “moment” while studying the door. And maybe for the first time ever, our Fortune die is silent, with a Nil result. Basically, Vessa studies the lock carefully, gets a sense of what it’s going to take to open it, and that’s basically it.
Since that’s boring for Vessa, let’s say she spends her time actually working to open the lock. She needs three successful Traps & Locks checks to get it open, one for each lock. With her high Dexterity, that should be relatively easy, so I’ll say that if she fails on either of the first two checks (the mundane locks), she doesn’t have the tools necessary and will need to return after visiting Oakton again. If she fails on the third, she will trigger a trap. I’ll also say the degree of success will determine how much time it takes, and if she doesn’t achieve a Great Success at least once, I’m going to make a Random Encounter roll.
Here we go: First lock I roll 16, success. Second lock I roll 16, success. Third and most dangerous lock I roll 10. She gets the vault door open! But she didn’t achieve a Great Success. So now I’ll ask the simple Fate question: Do the Lanternless catch up to them in this time? I’ll give it a “50/50” chance, but with the Chaos Factor at 6, that means a 65% chance of Yes. I roll… 45.
Vessa lost track of time as she studied the black door and its trio of locks. She was dimly aware of Maelen’s torch leaving the room, and of Alric muttering to himself as he unrolled scrolls and studied them. Mostly, though, her world narrowed to the mighty vault door.
It was the most daunting challenge she’d faced in her several years of thieving. The two lower locks weren’t trapped that she could see, but neither were they the flat-faced padlocks or inset cylinders she knew from modern Oakton. These were older, heavier things, seemingly meant to intimidate her with their sheer bulk, and doing a good job of it.
She laid her kit on a scrap of folded cloth to keep her tools from clinking against the stone, and found a place nearby to wedge her torch. Crouching before the first lock, she pulled a thin hooked pick and tension rod from her roll, hesitated, then swapped the hook for a stubbier probe. Somewhere behind each wheel, she reasoned, lay a stack of interlocked plates, teeth meshing in a pattern the original key would have set in one smooth motion. Without the key, she would have to feel the tumblers through the metal’s bones.
Bracing one knee against the door for leverage, she pressed the tension rod into the wheel’s side channel, twisting slowly, slowly… She felt subtle resistance and shifted her weight. Careful now. Click. The wheel sagged a fraction in its socket, not fully unlocked but on its way.
Sometime after she’d conquered both mundane locks and was sweating, Maelen returned and struck up a conversation with Alric about his findings. She allowed herself the ghost of a grin. Two down. One nightmare to go. Vessa blew out a breath and sat, giving her knees and fingers some relief and listening with a cocked ear, her back to them.
“What are you finding, lad?”
“Hm? Oh! Maelen, hello,” Alric answered with his rich baritone voice. “This is all fascinating! There are battlefield grimoires, civic decrees from hundreds of years ago, genealogical scrolls, arcane treatises, and royal correspondence. It appears as if anything the Castellan wished to hide from the Guild Council or Prince, he placed here.”
Maelen grunted. “Doesn’t sound valuable.”
“Oh, it depends, I suppose. I’m sure there are countless things here someone could use for political leverage for bribes and such, and there is more than one arcane formula. Oh! And I believe I’ve solved the mystery of our two zombies.”
“Yeah?”
“Indeed. They were,” he paused, and Vessa could hear the shuffling of parchment. “Lady Meren of the Locks and Sir Edran the Bright, both knights of Thornmere, and actually volunteered to be sealed in here to protect the vault and documents, if you can believe it. Apparently, they were given magical sustenance and enchantments to preserve both their bodies and minds. It’s truly staggering magic, but localized only to these rooms.”
Vessa turned, still seated, resting her weight on one hip to face the others. “Did the magic go wrong, then? Is that why they became zombies?”
“Not that I can tell,” Alric said carefully, tapping his lip with a finger. “They kept a log, and it appears that something tainted was creeping into the vault. ‘A dark presence,’ Lady Meren called it. She held out longer than Sir Edran, but it drove them both quite mad. Towards the end, the journal talks about,” and he moved some more parchments, laid out over the low table. The scribe held his torch over an unrolled parchment and squinted. “Orthuun, The Blind Sovereign, Orthuun, Shadow-King of the Endless Black, Orthuun, The Sightless God, Orthuun, The Eater of Lanterns, Orthuun, the Father of Forgotten Paths. It gets nonsensical after that,” he swallowed and winced. “And quite disturbing.”
The shiver returned down Vessa’s spine. “The Blind Sovereign?” she whispered. “That… That’s what Old Yara said the Nightwight was waiting for. ‘The Blind Sovereign will send a herald,’ right?”
Alric blinked, looking stunned. “By the Rootmother, you’re right! I didn’t even think of the connection there, and The Eater of Lanterns might have been why Sarin called the group the Lanternless. They talk about this Orthuun like some sort of god, but the gods only exist in the city, of course. It must be a demon of some kind. Vessa, I must say, your memory is incredible.”
She felt her cheeks flush at the words, but shook her head. “Not really, but I have eye for connections. Makes me a good thief.”
“Speaking of which,” Maelen placed a fist on one hip. “How goes the door?”
“Not bad,” she grinned. “Lower locks are done, and I have a bead on how to get the last one, but it’s arcane, and nasty.”
“You got the tools you need?” she arched an eyebrow.
Vessa rubbed her crooked nose with one finger and passed her other palm over her stubbled head. “Should do. Just need time.”
“Get to it, then, lass,” she smiled, scar on her cheek creasing. “The torches won’t last forever.”
As she finished the sentence, Maelen’s head snapped around. “Shh!” she whispered. “Did you hear that?”
Vessa listened.
The Lanternless have entered the building! But that’s all I’ve decided, and I need to know more about the cult of Sarin the Night Captain more. So, let’s roll some dice.
First, how many Lanternless are left after the three deaths? I’ll roll 3d6: 9 total outcasts left in Sarin’s cult. That begs the second question: How many of those nine have pursued the party? I’ll roll 2d4+1: 4 of them, or roughly half the group.
Now, the third and most important question: Is Sarin with them? Did he simply send out search parties, and this is the one who found the PCs, or did he lead a group to hunt them? I’ll give it a 50/50 chance, but since the Chaos Factor is 6 that will push the likelihood of Sarin’s presence to 65%. Here we go: I roll 31. Sarin has led his four best warriors right to Thornmere’s Vault!
Finally, the question I’ve resisted answering until it mattered: what is a Nightwight? I think the easiest answer is that it’s simply a flavorful Wight, so I’ll look that up in the Tales rulebook: “Wights are semi decayed humanoid Undead, often bound to graveyards or other resting places of the departed. All Wights develop cursed insights into the Veil, gaining the ability to cast spells whilst falling deeper into madness.” Yep. That fits the concept of the Night Captain. The only tweaks I’ll make are 1) Sarin is bound to a broad area, becoming weaker the further he is from his buried… whatever-it-is. This means he won’t have the full statblock of a Wight when facing the party. I’ll move him down a Hit Die as a result from being so far from his sacred spot, from 5 HD to 4 (might as well roll the 4d8 now: 14 hit points). 2) He is not immune to non-magical weapons—which would make him impossible to damage by the party—but instead will take half damage. We’ll say that’s another effect of being far from his home ground. 3) Creatures killed by Sarin won’t become Zombies as per regular Wights. Instead, they will be handed over to the dark god Orthuun and return as… something cool that I’ll decide later if it happens. Finally, a Wight has 4 spells, and I’m going to switch half of them to fit Sarin’s patron god. He will be able to cast Glimpse the True Gods, Hand of the Void, Place of Perfect Night, and Thrice Bound Curse. What do these spells do? Maybe we’ll find out!
Wights have a fun Reaction table, so let’s roll a d12 and see how Sarin is approaching this encounter: I roll an 11, so he is Inquiring. Excellent!
There was a faint creak. Then another. And then: footsteps. Many of them. Vessa froze. She knew that sound. Hushed voices. Someone had entered descended the stairs and were making their way through the darkness towards them. Vessa couldn’t tell exactly, but it sounded like many people. Her blood ran cold.
“Pig shit!” Maelen muttered angrily, pulling the enormous sword from her back.
“What is it?” Alric whispered, his voice small. “Who could be in here?”
Vessa was already on her feet, shortsword drawn. Her eyes darted in the torchlight to the rotting fragments of wood at the far end of the room, laying scattered across the floor. There was no chance to barricade themselves in here. Whoever was down here would walk in a straight line directly to them.
“Torches!” someone yelled triumphantly, the sound echoing and distant. “We found ‘em, Night Captain!”
Then a familiar, dry voice carried to them. “Din’t I tell you, Maelen the Skinless?” Old Yara cackled. “The Night Captain is here! And he’s gon’ pay you back for whatcha done to his people!”
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