I was trying to think back and figure out exactly how long it’s been since I’ve run an RPG. I ran one aborted GURPS game, that I don’t really count. That was about 5 or 6 years ago. Prior to that, we’re looking at the mid-1990s.
As several players couldn’t make this, the opening session, I designed a quick dungeon crawl. Several of us wanted to run through a game to see how well we knew the new combat system, but I didn’t want the full-on story arch to start when I was missing so many players.
The party discovers that Xavier Birdstaff, vizer to the Duke, is looking for a group to discover why the Stout Baron Gorim has not delivered his fealty to the Duke in several weeks. He suspects that the necrotic diseased earth from the nearby ruin of Amana may be spreading and may have reached the Stout Baron’s mine.
The characters make their way to Mount Gorim and discover that the mining camp has been abandoned for several weeks, perhaps longer. They find some of the fealty (ingots of silver and gold) locked in a chest in the make-shift refinery.
They then climb to the mine entrance in the mountain to discover the fate of the miners. The first part of the mine is completely empty (being that all of the silver and gold ore veins have been completely mined. They find a vertical shaft with a counter-weighted elevator and make their way down to the newer mine.
Once there, they hear what sounds like miners working (the clanking of pics and hammers on stone). The slowly travel to the first chamber and discover three dwarven miners working. The party announces their presence and discover that the miners are dead, and have been raised as zombies. They dispatch the fallen dwarfs and make their way to the second chamber, where there are more dwarf zombies.
After these are dispatched, they discover a pit where the rest of the dwarf miners’ bodies were burned so they wouldn’t animate.
Finally, they discover the source of the undead curse, a large natural chamber, with a river of black liquid running through it. In the chamber is the dismembered body of the Stout Baron. His ghost is wandering around the chamber, and after a few minutes of exploration, the Stout Baron’s ghost relates the tale of how they discovered this chamber and how the miners met their fates.
Finally, he asked that the party tell Xavier Birdstaff that he would like to see him again, as they were old friends.
