Return to the Sunless Citadel

Return to the Sunless Citadel

The Sunless Citadel was once a secret stronghold of the Nesskian Dragon Cult.  On the edge of the Earthreach Caverns.  It plunged into the earth when Lokra’s Tower (volcano) erupted. 

For character creation check the page below out. 

https://primevalthuleplanb.blogspot.com/2020/05/character-creation-house-rules.html

The Player Characters:

Al, Ash, Barbarian 2

Kermit, Mo, Wizard 2

Introduction.

2215 Spring.  In the past months two adventuring parties have delved into the Sunless Citadel never to be seen again.  Two members of one ill-fated party were brother and sister, Talgen and Sharwyn Huc from Oakhust Village.  Kerowyn Huc, the matriarch of the family, has offered salvage rights to you and your team if you can find and return with the two lost members of her family- or at least return the gold signet rings worn by the missing brother and sister. She also offers a reward of 125 gp per signet ring, per character. If the characters bring back the Huc's in good shape (of good mind and body), she is offering to double the reward.

The Village of Oakenhurst

Oakhurst is a sprawling village and home to a large Ammur (barbarian tribe) clan.  The village called is the closest community to the Sunless Citadel.   Most of its residents (including outlying farms) are human, with a sizeable minority of halflings.  Significant locations in Oakhurst, and the people to be found within them, include the following:

The Long House. The village hall sits on steep hill, protected by a stout wooden palisade dressed in large boulders.  The old hill fort commands a lovely view of the Kydar river to the west and the hills of the Kurmanur to the east.  This is the office of chief Vurnor (male, dhari) and First Spear Felosial (female half elf veteran). Feliosial commands a force of sixteen guards and four scouts who keep the village safe.

The lower village sprawls along the riverbank.  Oakhurst is a hub for traders who use the Kydar river and the Pydriador Trail.  During trading season, dhari canoes shuttle up and down the river ferrying traders from far and wide to barter in the bustling river market.  

Blacksmith. Repairing and forging arms and armour is the job of the village smithy, One Eyed Rurik, the only dwarf in the village. 

River Market.  Commerce in the village is managed by Kerowyn Huc, a female Kalayan, who has built a reputation on trading rare and precious minerals to merchants from Lomar, Marg and Quodeth. 

Kishar’s Shrine (Goddess of Grain & Mother of Rivers). Advice, information, and healing are among the services dispensed at the village's shrine. Situated on the River it is tended by Cackle Nackle, a female priest and proficient healer. 

The Ole Boar Inn. Garon (male human) keeps the village tavern.  The Inn is busy in trading season merchants from far Lomar, Marg, Quodethi and even the odd Goliath  from the Serex glacier can be found in the Inn.  Garon serves food and drink, and has a few rooms that visitors can rent in the loft.  

RUMOURS IN OAKHURST

• No one knows for sure what the Sunless Citadel once was, but legends hint that it served as the retreat of an ancient cult of the Nesskian empire.
• Cattle herders don't graze their stock too far afield these days. They're frightened by stories of new monsters that maraud by night. From time to time, cattle and people who have gone out alone at night have been found dead the next day, bearing dozens of needle-like wounds. No one has seen the creatures that cause this mayhem, nor do they leave a discernible trail.
• Of the missing adventurers Karakas, Ash, Talgen and Sharwyn were locals.  Braford the Atlantean and Mo of Marg came seeking adventure.  Braford had an Atlantean blade called Shatterspike (he made sure everyone knew about it). Recently Ash and Mo returned with news of Karakas death.  They spent a lot of gold in the village (including some nesskian fangs) before setting out for the Citadel once again.  They have not been seen since.
• Every midwinter beastmen sneak into the village at night and leave a white apple.  This apple is corpse-white and poisonous, even to the touch.
• When Garon at the Ole Boar Inn is in his cups, he claims one of the Black Circle came seeking the Citadel.  Garon says his name was Belak, and he had a very large pet frog.
• A few back wicked cultists sacked the neighbouring village of Morlun to ash.  Morlun is now haunted by evil spirits. 
• The martial City State Lomar is expanding east.  Oakhurst will soon come under it's dominion.

The Ammurath

Start

The overgrown trail runs from Oakhurst winds through rocky downs, near stands of old-growth oak, and past abandoned farms. It is 7miles from Oakhurst to the Sunless Citadel. The trail passes to the east of a narrow ravine. At the closest approach to the cleft, several broken pillars jut from the earth where the chasm widens. Two of the pillars stand straight, but most lean atop the sloped ground, two corpses have been nailed to the pillars.  Other pillars are broken, and several have fallen into the dark depths. A few similar pillars are visible on the opposite side of the ravine. A sturdy, knotted rope tied to one of the leaning posts on this side of the canyon descends into the abyss.

 

Banner and the Sersid elves climb down the rope, to find

a ledge with a set of switchback stairs leading to the bottom of the rift into a small courtyard, actually the top of a crenellated battlement. The buried citadel has sunk so far into the earth that the parapet is now level with the surrounding floor. That floor stretches away to the north and south, composed of a layer of treacherous, crumbled masonry, which reaches to an unknown depth.  To the west looms the surviving structure of what must be the Sunless Citadel.  A tower stands on the west side of the courtyard.

A hollow wind moans through the ruins, dust motes swirl across the cobbled cracked granite, and torches either side of the tower door flicker in the breeze. The citadel is in ruins, but it is not unoccupied. The ruins are home to a small tribe of beastmen, perhaps renegades from the Earthreach caverns.  Peren and the Snout discover Banner is a shapeshifter much to their delight and the beastman tribes dismay. Scores of tribesmen die in battles throughout the upper level. The adventurers' numbers swell when they free Turbol and Albondigus captives bound for the tribes' cook pot.  

 

Despite decay and collapse, the flowing architecture of the serpent folk is astonishing. Sweeping pillars of dragons entwined march through hallways and more dragons carved into stone doors guard secrets of the builders. Beastmen are not the only inhabitants, rats scurry everywhere, some the size of dogs. There are strange tracks too, tracks Peren thinks to belong to the undead. 

A circular shaft pierces the floor of the chiefs hall linking the level below. Dim violet light shines up from below, revealing sickly white and gray vines coating the smooth walls of the long vertical tunnel—the scent of freshly turned earth, loam, and rot waft up the shaft.  

 

In the catacombs below, beastmen and skeletons dressed in strange grubby robes toil side by side in rotting gardens. They all die (some again) when the ruthless adventurers arrive. The lower levels, lit by a strange iridescent fungus, seem more orderly than the beastman squat above.  A variety of plants grow in a walled clearing, including the vicious saplings from the vine choked shaft. But their importance pales before that which stands at the courtyard's center.  Beneath, the fungal light grows an evil tree. Its blackened, twisted limbs reach upward, like a skeletal hand clawing its way out of the earth. Before it stands, Belak the Outcast, armed with staff and sickle. Belak bids you "Submit to the Gulthas Tree or die!"

 

Belak's forces attack! Amongst them two familiar-looking adventurers whose eyes are now black and skin gray with the texture of bark.

Sunless Citadel, The End...

Featuring: Albondigus, Banner, Peren, Snout, & Turbol

Belak the Outcast died in the shadow of the Gulthais Tree, the possessed adventurers Mehmen Pashar and Ash put up stern resistance, but eventually die by Turbol's blade.  The wizard's magic identified dark sentience in the Gulthias tree.  It controlled and powered the spiteful twig monsters, the undead adventurer's, and possibly Belak too.  You burnt them all in a huge bonfire. 

Following the battle and mindful of Peren's wounds, you cautiously explored the lower level's northeastern quarter.   Stairs descended into a  large room containing a strange marble pool.  Blood smeared runes circled the rim of the basin, Alibongus identified them as Draconic.  The language of the Snake people, the builders of the Citadel.  Beyond the strange pool, more stairs led up to an old library by the looks of the tattered scrolls and a dark shrine.  Weary, you retraced your steps, climbing up the vine-covered shaft pulsing with purple light and crossing the now eerily quiet hallways of the upper complex.  Finding the way out was easy; you followed the trail of ripped corpses to the switchback stairs. 

Back in the village, the Chief summoned you.  A seven-headed monster, the Lomari merchants, call a Thessalyhydra, attacked the river market, killing several of them.  Feiosial tracked the creature to the Sunless Citadel.  Merchant deaths are bad for business, and as you are the only folks to have ventured into the Sunless Citadel and survived.  The Chief wants you to go back and slay this Thessalyhyrda.