The Haunted Fort
The heroes are roped into investigating a fort owned by the de Rais family. What will they find?
Plot points/Scenes
The heroes are tasked by or drawn into investigating a recently built fort by the de Rais family in the rugged countryside of Frankia. They find it in a rocky area known to be difficult to traverse at times. Upon finding it, they find blood spatters and blood pools dotted around as well as drag marks as if people have been killed and the bodies moved into the fort.
If they investigate further a thunder storm moves in, and later if they check they find that the gates have mysteriously been closed and will not open. It appears to be stuck in the mud and the heavy wooden bar holding it swollen with the rain.
The stables are open enough that they will find the horses dead and appears as if they died in fear of their lives. Some weapons, shields and whatnots are lying around here and there too as if dropped. When they investigate further they find some of the bodies have been moved into the main court room and placed against the walls. Men, women & children are all here. Many seem to have died of fright or injury as if they had been attacked by blunt force trauma, especially to the head & face.
Parts of the furniture & other objects have been moved, some violently. When the heroes investigate further, they can hear crying coming from behind doors & walls, and louder from below. Banging and knocking noises can be heard too the odd time. They will encounter cold spots & cold drafts too. Most seem to be coming from below.
In one of the family rooms they have a good chance of finding two children about 5 or 6 years old each (after a few hours in the fort). Two cousins, Angelica & Rufus, seems to have survived. They are terrified and says the rest were killed over a few hours a day or two ago, and the two hid shortly after the 'Gray Woman' appeared in the court room for a brief period. When she touched a couple of guards they dropped dead, followed by a local shaman that was in attendance. Then she seemed to vanish in to thin air. She also appeared during a thunder storm.
During the past day or two the storms have come and gone getting worse. At this point the Gray Lady started to appear more, and initially only seen by a few, now being seen by more & more people. She could cause things to move and usually attacked people this way when she couldn't reach a person to touch.
When they find the way down to the underground portion of the fort, they find the jail cells & a torture room to the left. To the right is the treasury. Both have a strange effect on the players with it being colder and screams being heard at times in the torture room / jail. These appear in the room, and just beyond the back wall of it.
If the back wall is examined, they may find a hidden room, one with an altar to Set in it, and any remaining bodies of the recently dead. There is a risk from now on of the dead returning as zombies. Except for one. Skeletal remains hang from chains before an altar & a statue of a humanoid cobra-like being carrying a knife in one hand and the other open. Sitting in the open hand is a desiccated heart, and gold key. The desiccated heart & the skeleton (if examined) has damaged ribs on the left side indicating where the heart was cut out.
If disturbed, the Gray Woman will appear (the poltergeist of the victim) and may attack. The players are able to remove the heart & skeleton & try to bury it. If they do, the ghost will beckon them to follow her to the treasury, and in the back of it show them a keyhole (which can be found if they go there first). It has a DC of 30 minimum to lockpick, and a gas cloud is released on a failure in a cube shape 30 ft by 30ft. All takes a saving throw of 15 against Constitution taking 3d6 poison damage if failed, or half if passed.
If they have the key, the gas is avoided and it opens the hidden door. Inside is a place filled with damaged occult texts, and a strange glass tube about 2.5 ft across and about 6ft high, chased with silver especially at the top & bottom. It contains a Necroichor according to the silver plaque on its front half way up and has the name of Zarovich the Lich written in Infernal. They can leave it and call in the authorities to remove it, or try themselves but run the risk of it affecting them and escaping.
Afterwards the Gray Woman with beckon towards the riches and then leaves. The heroes can leave the fort then, and find the storm has stopped, and make it back to civilisation.
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