Adventure # 2: The Worms of Death

Late one night a rider arrived at the great city of Specularum with grave news from the distant town of Saros. The dead, he reported, walked the land. In response to this disturbing report, the Archduke’s ministers sent Sir Kristoff and Kerwyn the Mysterious to investigate. Suspecting necromancy, Kerwyn also enlisted the help of Father Orekh, a priest to the immortal Ixion with expertise in dealing with the undead.

Still two days from Saros, the threesome heard a woman screaming in the woods to the north of their roadside camp. Rushing to investigate, the heroes plunged into the forest, arriving at a clearing in short order. There they found an old woman wearing tatters and a cloth with arcane symbols wrapped around her eyes tied to a tree. Around the old woman were ten warriors who taunted her while apparently preparing to light her ablaze. Orekh then stepped into the clearing to ask what was going on. Bork, a Northman and the leader of the warriors, addressed the priest, explaining that she was a witch and responsible for various deaths and strange happenings in the nearby village of Kosava. The village, Bork claimed, hired him and his men to put an end to their troubles, and that’s exactly what he intended to do. The old woman would either come clean about her role in the affair, or burn for her failure to answer his questions.

Father Orekh attempted diplomacy, asking the old woman if Bork’s accusations were true. The old woman replied that she hated the villagers and those who helped them, and that she would cause them harm if it were in her power, especially since it was they who perverted the natural order of the forest with their intrusive ways. Alas, she lacked the power to do anything about the situation, so Bork’s accusations, she claimed, were inaccurate. Bork, however, took her virulent statements as proof of the old woman’s guilt, and proceeded with his plans. At this point, Sir Kristoff made his presence known. He attempted to stay Bork’s hand through intimidation, declaring on his knightly honor that a swift execution would be the punishment for any infraction carried out that night. Angered by the threat to his manhood and honor, Bork ordered his men to attack.

The Northman traded powerful blows for deft cuts from the able swordsmanship of Sir Kristoff. Meanwhile, Kerwyn and Orekh entered the fray, trying to subdue the Northmen without killing them. The outcome of the contest was in doubt when a new combatant made itself known – a large black bear, with an aspect of the undead, burst onto the scene, indiscriminately attacking everyone in the clearing. Orekh attempted to turn the beast, but the bear was unresponsive to the searing gaze of Ixion. With that, everybody joined forces to fight the bear. Thinking that he knew who was responsible for summoning the bear, Kerwyn turned his attention to the old woman, but noticed that she was as horrified as everybody else. Asking for her help, Kerwyn released the old woman from her bonds. She then caused the tree roots to come alive and restrain the bear as the warriors hacked it to bits with their weapons.

The aftermath of the battle saw an ending to the hostilities that preceded it. Three Northmen had fallen to the bear. Orekh bound the wounds of party member and Northman alike, the old woman was allowed to remain free, and Kristoff and Bork complemented each other’s combat skills. Meanwhile, Kerwyn turned his attention to the bear’s body. He found small pink worms writhing in the dismembered corpse. Examining the worms, he recognized an acidic, ectoplasmic ooze coating the creatures that betrayed their extra-planar origins. However, although alien the creatures were not fiendish. Discussing his findings with his companions, the party deduced that the worms had entered the bear, possibly after death, and animated it to serve the purposes of some sort of composite intelligence. The old woman confirmed that the bear had been a regular inhabitant of the forest until it was corrupted by outside influences, but she could not specify from whence this influence originated. She then returned to the wood. Deferring to Kerwyn’s arcane knowledge, Bork agreed to return to the village of Kosava with the adventurers and report on what they had experienced.

Upon arriving at Kosava, Kerwyn decided to burn the worm he had collected from the wood in the village blacksmith’s forge, lest it serve as a spy for a greater intelligence. The heroes then gave a full report to the village elders and began asking questions of their own. From Lazlo, one of the town elders, they learned that two weeks previous an old woman had died of natural causes and was buried according to custom. Two days later, her husband lay dead – strangled in his bed by an unknown assailant. He too was buried, but two nights after his burial the villagers were roused by the couple’s grandson, screaming like mad and swearing that he had seen his grandparents shambling outside his home. Nobody believed him, but days later they found the grandson’s body mutilated and half eaten by a beast – probably a bear. Two parties were sent to scour the woods for the beast, but only one returned. The others were later found scattered throughout the wood. Three were mauled, while two were beaten to death. Bork and his men arrived in Kosava the day after the villagers had buried the most recent dead, and were hired to put an end to the killings. The adventurers then asked if they had heard similar tales from the village of Saros, which was a day’s ride to the West. The villagers said that a month previous a rider had blown through the village, offering warnings that the dead walked the land. Since then, however, monks from the abbey at Saros had visited Kosava and everything seemed fine.

The only other person of note to come from the west was a mysterious traveler by the name of Avernus. For one night he regaled the villagers with tales of forbidden knowledge and fantastic places before riding off the next morning. Sir Kristoff discovered that Avernus had spent the night with Belka, one of the bar maids at the local tavern. Gently asking for her help, he convinced Belka to subject herself to Kerwyn’s interrogations. Using spellcraft, Kerwyn was able to see Avernus as he appeared in Belka’s memories – a tall, thin man, with a wirey muscles and shoulder length, luxuriant, black hair. He sported a gotee and mustache, had a wolfish grin about him, and moved with a sinewy grace. On his body were tattooed various spells, which Kerwyn was able to decipher. On his back, Protection from Arrows; on his left arm, Nondetection, and on his right, See Invisibility. With this knowledge, the adventurers decided to bed down for the night and continue their investigations the following day. Although exhausted, Kerwyn spent all night trying to replicate the spells he saw on Avernus’ body, but without success.

The next day the adventurers regrouped with Bork for breakfast where they also met Brother Zygby, one of the monks from the abbey at Saros. Zygby confirmed that there were no strange goings-on at Saros. He also confirmed that Avernus spent several months at the town before his departure several weeks previous. Disturbed by the adventurers’ tale, Zygby resolved to return to Saros with the news. He agreed, however, to accompany the heroes that day to exhume the bodies of the recently dead villagers in the hopes of finding more answers. Afterwards, the adventurers could travel with Zygby to Saros, meet with the abbot, Brother Justin, and hunt for more clues in the town. Digging up the graves revealed that empty coffins. The wooden tops to the coffins had been eaten through by acid, the bodies removed, and the empty caskets unceremoniously reburied. With that, the heroes decided to leave Bork and his men guarding the citizens of Kosava as they travelled with Brother Zygby to Saros.

Arriving at Saros sometime after midnight, the adventurers decided to accept Zygby’s invitation to sleep at the abbey that night and investigate the town in the morning. Before retiring, the adventurers met with the abbot, Brother Justin – an older man with an imposing frame and a forceful personality. Brother Justin listened with interest, voiced his suspicions about Avernus, and offered the use of the abbey’s library on the morrow. In the meantime, he arranged for sleeping quarters and allowed the heroes to turn in for the night. Sir Kristoff and Kerwyn went to sleep right away. Father Orekh, however, stayed up to say his evening prayers. It was while doing so that he noticed that the holy symbol of Ixion in his quarters had been defiled – coated in a vile, acidic slime. Alarmed, he stepped into the hall intent on waking his friends only to see the door to Kerwyn’s quarters open. Running down the corridor he entered Kerwyn’s chambers and found his friend entranced by one of the monks, who was about to vomit pink worms down the wizard’s throat. Drawing his flaming sword, Orekh struck down the monk. Kerwyn snapped out of his trance as Sir Kristoff, who had been roused by Orekh’s actions, stepped in to join them. Just then the doors at either end of the corridor burst open and crazed monks poured in to attack. Thinking quickly, Kerwyn grabbed hold of his friends and used his spellcraft to amplify the effects of his Boots of Teleportation, whisking them all back to the inn at Kosava in an instant.

Rescued from the proverbial frying pan, the heroes now faced a considerable fire when they found Bork and his men fighting off a group of ten infected monks from Saros. The fighting was brutal, with Bork losing all of his remaining men, but the heroes were ultimately victorious. Using a Speak with Dead spell, Orekh questioned one of the fallen monks. The results were literally mixed, with the collective mind calling itself the Wyrn responding to some questions, and the actual monk responding to others. From the questioning the heroes learned that something or someone had summoned the Wyrn to the material plane, that the Wyrn followed the dictates of the Great Wyrn, that the collective hoped to summon the Great Wyrn to Saros and use the town as a point of attack on the material plane, and that the infected Brother Justin was the center of the collective on the material plane. Killing him would effectively shut down the Wyrn invasion, provided that the Great Wyrn did not come through first.

Given the gravity of the situation, Kristoff and Orekh encouraged Kerwyn to use his Boots of Teleportation to return to Specularum, report to the Archduke, get some sleep, prepare some spells, and return to Kosava with armor and other needed supplies. Although Kerwyn had successfully whisked all of them out of Saros a few hours previous, his companions knew that transporting more than himself was a risky maneuver that put considerable strain on the wizard’s well-being. They therefore resolved to stay in Kosava until Kerwyn’s return. Based on Kerwyn’s report, the Archduke began amassing an army to descend on Kosava and Saros should the invasion prove successful. The fate of those villages, he explained, depended entirely on the success of their mission. After an uneasy night, Kerwyn returned to his friends, along with two suits of armor, a container of lye, greek fire, and some healing salves.

The trio, accompanied by Bork, then made their way back to Saros.
Arriving at the abbey, Kerwyn cast a spell of invisibility and scouted the area. The doors to the abbey were shut, but he could hear chanting coming from the cloister. The party then gathered as close to the cloister as possible. At the party’s request, Bork agreed to hurl greek fire into the cloister. Moments later, the doors to the abbey burst open, and monks poured out to attack, pink worm covered tentacles grotesquely lashing out of their mouths. Leaving Sir Kristoff, Orekh and Bork to confront the monks, Kerwyn, still invisible, slipped into the abbey and made his way to the cloister. There he found the abbot, sitting before a stone circle with fragments of a strange meteoric rock arranged at the center. Making his way behind the abbot, Kerwyn dumped the container of lye on the villain’s head. The abbot screamed in pain, but maintained his composure enough to attack Kerwyn. Kerwyn cast Endure Elements (Fire) on himself, and moved to hide in the flames that had been ignited the greek fire, but the abbot called him back out with a Command spell. He then cast a spell that almost tore Kerwyn’s heart from his chest. Kerwyn, however, had managed to light the fuse to his last greek fire bomb, and it went off, catching both the priest and himself in the explosion. Kerwyn, however, was still protected by the Endure Elements Fire spell. Nearly dead, the abbot began to strangle Kerwyn, and the wizard blacked out.

Outside, Sir Kristoff, Orekh and Bork had successfully defeated four times their number in infected monks, but not without taking a heavy toll. Just as the battle was turning for the worst, the monks all crumpled to the ground simultaneously. Rushing to the courtyard, they found Kerwyn’s body lying next to that of Brother Justin, the lye and fire damage apparently getting the best of the abbot after Kerwyn passed out. Fortunately, there was still life in Kerwyn’s body, and he was easily resuscitated by Brother Orekh’s healing magic.

The hours and days after the fight at the abbey revealed a grim reality. Having been entirely infected by the Wyrn, the entire town of Saros lay dead. All of Kosava’s missing dead were also found at Saros. The heroes took some consolation in the fact that their actions saved the smaller settlement of Kosava from a similar fate due to their actions. Leaving Bork to his future travels, the heroes returned to Specularum with many questions. Who exactly was Avernus? What, if anything, did he have to do with the Wyrn invasion? Where was he, and was he a threat to the realm? If they are lucky (or is it unlucky?) these questions may be answered at a later date.