5. The Cult of the Skull

The Adventures of Godrik the Magician*

Radovan is waving his mace in the air. “Where did that heathen witchdoctor go!” he shouts. The excitement of combat is still in his voice. The party has followed the retreating goblin into this room, but the creature is nowhere to be seen, and there are no apparent exits. The walls of the 30’ by 40’ hall before them are covered in detailed frescos, the colors of which have been subdued by the soot of uncounted years. There are torches burning in sconces, and there’s a single table in the hall’s center with a large, closed book lying upon it.

In the chamber behind them, the party as just killed several goblins. Not to mention two hobgoblins. The goblin ‘witchdoctor’ was the only survivor from among those monsters. It escaped into this room after demonstrating considerable skill with magic, injuring Godrik sorely. So that’s how it feels to be on the receiving end of Magic Missile, Godrik thought at the time. Seems to injure the etheric double more than the physical body. Fascinating!

Godrik answers Radovan: “Very likely there’s a secret door in the midst of one of these paintings. That must be how that nasty little bugger escaped from this place. I’m not just examining these mosaics for their aesthetics, you know….” His voice trails off as his attention gets absorbed into the giant painting before him.

As Godrik moves from image to image around the room, Feiler pulls the double-door closed behind them all. He’s looking wildly about the room, from shadowy corner to shadowy corner, shortsword still drawn. “That goblin might have turned invisible!” he whispers hoarsely.

Godrik addresses the party: “This is a timeline, a history of the Immaculate Realm,” he says, gesturing all around in a counterclockwise circle. “Or rather, it’s the Realm’s pre-history, plus its history…plus — as you can see in this section — a prophecy. The end of the timeline shows the Immaculate Realm overwhelmed in a final battle, destroyed utterly by fire. And there are four symbols here: a bull, a skull, a wolf, and…a face, which appears to be that of a goblin. Nomacron was right. The fourth cult of the Old Ways is ruled by a goblin deity of some kind. However, I would propose that the people who created these murals are not true initiates of the Old Ways. More than likely, they’re just a group of rebels, I think — rebels who do not understand the true nature of chaos. It’s doubtful as to whether they even understand the cyclical nature of time, which should be second nature to a true devotee of the Old Religion.”

“Sounds like gibberish to me,” says Sennez. He is standing over the table now, examining the large tome there. “Interesting…” he mutters, turning the pages, revealing endless columns of spidery calligraphy. He seems mystified, drawn into the stream of incomprehensible symbols that flash before his eyes.

“You should take up my offer, Mr. Biely,” Radovan comments over the thief’s shoulder, using his last name. He has broken Sennez’s trance. “I can teach you letters. If you could read, you’d note that this book seems to be a history. It might tell the story behind these murals. Godrik, what do you make of this?”

Godrik steps up to the tome and examines it closely, checking the title page and looking to see whether there’s a ribbon marking any particular page. “Eh, yes Radovan, you’re right. A history. No doubt, it’s a blasphemous alternative history to the Realm Immaculate. Another version of that rather creative storyline you priests foist upon your followers.”

“What? You think that our version of history is fake?” Radovan muses, apparently not in the least bit offended. He has been getting used to Godrik’s arrogant and sometimes blasphemous critiques of religious orthodoxy.

“Not at all, my dear holy brother. I needn’t remind you that all histories are full of embellishments spun to flatter the powers who currently rule the land. The story here is likely no different. It probably flatters other powers who vie for control of the Realm. It would appear that Nomacron was right to be worried about the Old Ways coming back. Yes indeed…I should like to read this, but only with your permission, of course.” He bows his head slightly.

Radovan picks up on the playful, condescending tone. “You’ll enjoy reading it all the more if I object,” he says. Both of them laugh. Godrik has grown to admire Radovan. Whether a man is lawful or chaotic means very little to either of them, it seems. ‘Lawful’ and ‘chaotic’ are words that kings have invented to control their subjects. Beneath Radovan’s veneer of lawfulness, he’s genuinely good, and Godrik senses that the cleric has drawn the same conclusion about him.

Godrik shuts the book and heaves the dreadfully heavy thing into a large sack.

“Be careful, schoolboy,” Alexander teases. “You’re going to fall over, carrying a whole library on your back.”

Godrik chuckles but then grimaces as he picks up the sack. I’m tempted to conjure a floating disc right here and now, he thinks. That magic missile strike hurts more than I’m going to admit. He then gestures toward a painting of a king being slain in battle. “Oh, and yes, the secret door is right over there.”

“What? Why didn’t you say so?” barks Sennez. “We’re wasting time with all this talk of history.” Radovan and Godrik exchange a sympathetic look.

The Giant Rats

The party proceeds to that mural and finds that the door within its frame is easy to open. It hasn’t closed all the way since the goblin sorcerer passed through it. If this is indeed the way that creature came, Godrik thinks to himself. The party is greeted by a terrible stench as Sennez heaves the door open.

Alexander brings his gauntleted hand to his face. “Ugh! Worse than a charnel house!”

“Indeed!” says Godrik, reluctantly sniffing the air. “It’s not one creature that has died somewhere down there in the dark, but many. And not all of them recently.” He turns to Radovan and gives him a grim look. “You’d do well to keep your holy symbol handy.”

Godrik grabs a torch from a sconce and hurls it into the darkness of the corridor. To everyone’s surprise, the torch plunges into a pit 10 feet beyond the open door. The pit is 10 feet wide, 10 feet deep, and 20 feet across, proceeding to the west. Godrik steps up to the edge. The torch has landed upon a pile of dead bodies, setting alight some clothing.

Is this the true nature of evil? Godrik thinks, suppressing a gasp as he surveys the terrible scene before him. It’s almost comic in its exaggeration. The influence of the Nine Hells is evident here, and perhaps that of the Negative Material Plane. On the floor of the pit lie four heaps of bodies, probably human, each heap at a different stage of decomposition. The sound of scuttling rats echoes off of the ceiling. “Poor souls…” Godrik mutters.

Radovan sheaths his mace and touches his holy symbol to his forehead, and then his chest. “There’s necromancy afoot here, or some powerful undead monster. It must be so.”

“You’re not going down there, are you?” says Zeb through his hand. Everyone’s eyes are beginning to water from the stench. There’s a stone ladder cut into this side of the pit, and there’s another similar ladder cut into the wall at the far end.

“Why not?” says Godrik in his typical matter-of-fact tone. “The passage continues on the other side. That is our way.”

Radovan steps up to the edge. “I had better go first.” As he turns round to descend the ladder, his shadow passes over the freshest pile of bodies. More sounds of scampering erupt from below.

The rest of the party descends after the cleric, and now, as they stand upon the floor of the charnel pit, their torches clearly illuminate all the details of horror before them.

Before they can investigate the human remains closely, several large furry creatures crawl out from behind the piles at the western end of the pit. Their snouts are raised in the air, sniffing. Each one is as large as a halfling. “Ugh, giant rats!” exclaims Zeb.

Godrik draws a dagger and kneels down to the freshest body pile, nearest the party. Without hesitation, he neatly severs three fingers from one of the hands protruding there.

“Have you no respect for the dead?” groans Radovan.

“I do, Radovan, I do. But only at funerals…” The clinical detachment in his voice surprises even him. He steps forward and hurls one of the fingers into the northwest corner. But the rats do not take the bait. Instead, they seem to fix their sights on Godrik and begin charging at him!

Godrik hurls his dagger skillfully at the lead rat. The blade crunches deep into its skull, killing it instantly. Radovan and Alexander step in front of the unarmored magician and attack the rest of the marauding rodents. Godrik pulls back, sidestepping the arc of Alexander’s monstrous two-handed sword. The blade slices a charging rat clean in two, and Radovan’s mace crushes and splatters another one. One rat slips past all three of them to attack Feiler, who slashes at it with his shortsword, missing. The rat also misses.

The spattered guts of the Radovan’s kill are enough to frighten the rest of the rats off. As suddenly as they attacked, they all flee back into the shadows of the northwest and southwest corners.

At this point, the party is eager to leave the pit, and they climb up the other side without hesitation, leaving the stench and the sounds of scurrying rats behind. Beyond the pit, they find a door that proceeds to the north. There’s also crack in the wall that leads south. “That’s the fissure that proceeds back toward the entry chamber,” says Zeb. “Which means — ”

“Yes, the door to the right goes deeper into the tomb.” Godrik completes his thought.

“I don’t get it,” says Zeb. “I’m all for living underground, but who’s headquartering themselves down here? This place is as dismal as can be.”

“Good point,” replies Godrik. “We are not dealing with a creature that has human or halfling sensibilities. “So the question is…. What kind of creature would make its lair here?”

“Something dead,” says Radavan with his holy symbol gleaming, held up before his chin.

Soon thereafter, the party descends through two corridors to the east and the north, down two flights of stairs. They comes across a room with a crack in the midst of the floor. At the bottom of this fissure, there appears to be a tiny cave, possibly a rat tunnel. It is too small for anything but a normal sized rodent.

The Host

Beyond that chamber, the party encounters a study, in the midst of which sits a man. The man immediately rises to greet them, as though they are expected. This is Brythan, and he is ever so polite — in a rather bureaucratic way. Evidently, he is expecting a group of well-trusted, well-armed mercenaries hired in Thothia, and he thinks that the party is this group. The party plays along. Most of the group senses that there is something “off” about Brythan. His face has a leathery, almost corpse-like appearance, and he is quite pale.

Pretending to be his mercenaries, the party secures lodging in what appears to be some barracks. Beyond the barracks they find a locked door, which Sennez manages to pick. Beyond the locked door lies a cavern and then an exit through a cave mouth into the wilderness outside, to a path that leads to a stream.

Godrik has read the instructions left for them in the barracks. The task of the mercenaries, apperently, is to guard the participants of some kind of initiation ceremony. In addition, two of them are to escort the cermony’s candidates to “the master” — a character by the name of Akthyn. A few of these candidates might pass some kind of test and be “selected” — but selected for what? Others will not pass, and they will be slain — presumably to end up as the next pile of bodies in the charnel pit.

Godrik suspects that Brythan and Akthyn are vampires, and that they are members of the Skull cult. The ritual apparently involves a sexual orgy and the drinking of blood. During the ceremony, Akthyn will select candidates he deems worthy of being converted into his undead followers, welcoming them into a coven of vampires. Possibly a growing army of vampires.

The party decides to go back to the pit of dead bodies, to see whether the freshest victims bear any evidence of fang marks on their necks or wrists. When the party attempts to head back to the pit, they come across the room with the crack in the floor. They enter the room just in time to see a cloud of mist descending into the crack — with the kind of vaporous motion that only a vampire in gaseous form could accomplish. Fortunately, the vampire — probably Brytham — doesn’t notice them observing his descent. The sight of him in gaseous form confirms their suspicions. The apparent rat tunnel that he descends toward, at the bottom of the fissure, is really an access tube to his resting place. Probably where his coffin lies.

The party now has a choice. Stay here and find a way to slay the vampire…or decide that such a creature outmatches them and escape to Thothia. In any case, the vampire will eventually realize that his cult headquarters have been discovered. He may decide to pursue the party and eliminate them before they can report what they have seen.

(*The settings presented in these stories are the original creations of dungeon master Bryan Larch, who has graciously given permission to present maps from his Dungeons & Dragons campaign world.)