It was the end of the year at the Adventurers Academy. As was tradition, the senior students had just completed a grueling tournament testing all aspects of their adventuring skill. The final prize: recognition as the Best Students of the Year. The students had all gathered in the grand hall, filled with anticipation and excitement. Dean Proudbeard was about to proclaim the winners.
Martin was feeling confident. He and Winnifred had tracked the scoring and progress carefully throughout the entire tournament, strategically choosing exactly which of them to enter in each contest. He was sure they had won.
As the Dean announced their names, they stood to thunderous applause (and a few catcalls) and headed towards the front.
As a reward for winning the tournament their names would be carved into the Stone of Memory. “Trash pandas forever!” called out someone from the crowd. But that didn’t bother Marty any more. He’d grown used to it. As a second prize, they would have the honor to perform the annual Cleansing Ceremony.
Over 200 years ago a student had been expelled for dabbling in black magic. He had cursed the local cemetery – Thalorel’s Rest. But as he had not been much of a student his curse had been rather weak. It appeared to do little more than slowly accumulate tattered, minimally functional skeletons and zombies. The Dean at the time had sent a group of senior students to clear out the nuisance, but had decided against removing the curse. It was considered innocuous enough that instead cleansing the graveyard had been made into a sort of coming of age ritual for seniors.
So their “reward” was to spend an afternoon putting down, blessing, and re-burying a cemetery full of barely functional mindless undead. Marty accepted the honor in the spirit in which it was given, but Hans theatrically rolled his eyes. Then a high voice pitched in. “When do we start?”
Margarete. The Raccoon’s very own groupie. A 12 year old junior apprentice who had named herself an “honorary” Raccoon. She constantly inserted herself in their activities. They didn’t mind *that* much, but they certainly didn’t think she was ready for zombie hunting.
Martin objected, but Margarete held firm. “Its not fair! I’m a Raccoon too!” The Dean settled the matter. Only Seniors were allowed to participate in the Cleansing ceremony. She would just have to wait until she was a senior herself. She stomped off pouting. Marty suspected that this would be trouble. Margarete was *not* one to accept “no” for an answer…
They went back to his room to make plans and get ready. Yana oiled and sharpened her sword. Marty gushed about the opportunity. And Hans and Winny made jokes about skeleton bowling.
On the way out a large wolf called out to them. Winny rolled her eyes. Professor Balyn. He taught the Transformation school in the magic department, and spent more time shape-changed than human.
He congratulated them. Sort of. You could never tell with him if a reference like “you make Raccoons everywhere proud” was sarcastic or genuine… He also asked a favor. The groundskeeper at Thalorel’s Rest was a friend of his – Gnaghi the dwarf. He hadn’t heard from Gnaghi in a while and wanted them to stop in and check on him while they were there. Seemed simple enough.
Despite the joking and joshing, when they actually arrived they quickly sobered up. The remote graveyard just felt… wrong. “Minor” curse or not they would be happy to be done with it and return home.
They hadn’t entered very far when, true to expectations, tattered skeletons and zombies began lurching out of the gloom to attack!
But they soon discovered that there were worse things here than they had been led to expect, and the initial wave included a Ghoul!
Hans was *not* happy. “I *hate* the bleedin’ undead!”, he groused. Marty suspected that there was more than a little fear behind the sentiment. Hans had made reading people a way of life, and with undead there was nothing to read…
As they continued to explore, the undead became more numerous and more dangerous. This was *not* the “barely functional corpses” they had been led to expect. Before long they found themselves being targeted by skeletal archers.
The dead seemed to take a particular dislike to Martin, and the archers in particular seemed to focus fire upon him. That kind of coordination certainly didn’t seem “mindless”. Things got rather dicey after Marty took a few arrows to the gut. Winny had to patch him up with potions while Yana and Hans tried to keep the skeletons at bay.
No sooner had they beaten back the skeletons enough for brief respite.. when they found themselves stalked by large black dire wolves! What was going *on* here??
Things grew quiet… for a moment… after they drove away the wolves. Then Marty felt a twist in his gut as he heard an all-too-familiar high-pitched voice indignantly yelling “Hey! Keep your filthy claws to yourself!” Margarete. He was sure of it. She’d followed them!
They ran as quickly as they could towards the sound of her voice.
The last they heard was the disturbing shriek “You’d better not follow me down there!”. Then they came to an old worn tomb. They had seen it earlier, with the door sealed tightly shut. Thalorel’s Tomb. As far as Martin could remember the Tomb had been magically sealed for centuries… But it was was ominously open now. And he was certain that this was where Margarete had gone…
They carefully descended the dark musty steps to a much larger tomb than expected. They heard un-nerving sounds and saw shadows in the distance… And then the door slammed shut behind them! They were sealed in!
And armed skeletons were approaching…
Winny did her best to entangle the hordes and slow their approach.
As they began to be overwhelmed Marty turned the skeletal attackers back with a burst of holy radiance. He couldn’t do that very often, and had been hoping to save it until they *really* needed it.
They explored cautiously – looking for signs of Margarete and an alternate way out. The tomb was quite a bit larger than they had expected. Many doors and passages were sealed and wouldn’t budge. They found mechanisms to open some of in hidden places… guarded by fearsome foes. Martin was particularly put off by a huge zombie ogre. That combination just wasn’t right!
In one dead end they found two throne rooms side-by-side. One with a Death motif and the other Life. Identical plaques said something about “bowing before the ancients”, and there were signs of pressure plates in front of the thrones… A clear setup. They’d studied enough in their Dungeoneering classes to have a pretty good idea what this meant… Force them to split up and activate both pressure plates at once to progress…
And then immediately ambush while they were separated! Winny and Hans had to deal with a vicious spectre. It took little notice of Hans’ axes, but fortunately Winny found it still susceptible to psychic energy.
Meanwhile Marty and Yana were attacked by a huge icy spectral wolf! It tore at Yana, unphased by her sword. Marty had to bless his mace to have any effect upon it.
Afterwards Yana found a runic axe on a pedestal. She wasn’t as partial to axes as she was to swords. But she suspected this wouldn’t be the last spectral opponent they would have to deal with. She hoped the axe’s magic would be more effective against those than her sword had been.
After regrouping they continued through the now open passageway, to find a room full of odd statues with a cryptic riddle. It was clear they were supposed to pick the “right” statue and do.. something. And not at all clear what would happen if the picked the wrong one… Yana and Hans sat back while Marty and Winny puzzled it out.
Finally they came to the doors to Thalorel’s sanctum. While they appeared to have been sealed for some time, marks in the dust hinted that someone had recently passed through… And they had still seen no sign of Margarete.
Inside they were accosted by a terrifying Wraith which drained the life from them to restore itself almost as quickly as they could damage it with their limited options. Fortunately Yana’s runic axe was the difference-maker, and they eventually banished it.
Only to find Margarete sitting unresponsively in an ominous arcane sigil – with her eyes glowing and her face twisted into a most un-Margarete-like expression.
They tried to talk to her, but a voice that was decidedly *not* Margarete told them “Don’t touch the girl. There is now only Thalorel. Go away! The purple wolf must not leave this tomb!”
“In a pig’s eye!” protested Marty. “We’re not leaving without her!”
“Margarete” opened her mouth to speak, looking imperious… and then her expression faltered. She struggled for a few moments, and then a familiar voice called out plaintively “…please!” Hans cursed. “Bugger the bleedin’ wolf! She *is* still in there!” And that was that. Come hell or high water they were getting her out!
Marty reached out to her, and this time she quietly stood and took his hand. She had something clutched tightly in her fist, but he couldn’t pry her fingers away from it. She otherwise looked dazed and blank, and allowed them to lead her away.
That seemed entirely too easy… Marty had a very bad feeling about the whole setup.
Hans noticed a secret door in the chamber in front of Thalorel’s resting place. It led to a winding chamber that eventually took them to a hidden back entrance. Marty wondered what the purpose of that would have been…
The graveyard was strangely quiet now. No hint of the hordes of undead that had accosted them earlier. They made their way to the rear of the grounds, where a ramshackle old hut stood in a clearing.
As they approached they were accosted by an old dwarf, who angrily pointed and asked if they were zombies… Apparently he was a bit near-sighted. Once they had convinced him that they were not, in fact, shambling corpses he became friendlier – if still a bit oddly spoken. Marty suspected that all the time living alone among the dead hadn’t been kind to his sanity. They told him Professor Balyn had asked them to check on him, and asked if he was alright.
“Let’s see… I’m living alone, in a fecking barn, surrounded by undead fleshbags… and you ask me if I’m all right?”
“Of course I am! I am Gnaghi, I love this shit! Ahahah!”
He told them he was kept *quite* busy burying and re-burying the ever restless dead – seeing as how no-one could be bothered to end the curse – and so didn’t have time to keep the place looking nice and neat. And he wanted them to tell the school to start treating it like a place of rest and not a playground. It was clear they weren’t going to get any useful answers out of him.
They asked if there was anything they could do to help before they left, and he gave them a cagey look. He said his duties kept him from leaving, but he would appreciate it if they could bring him some “abyssal sulphur” for a “project” he was working on, if they ever happened to find any…
They exchanged glances as they walked away. Something did *not* seem right about Gnaghi. But they didn’t really know enough about him to say if that wasn’t just his usual nature. At any rate they had hung around long enough. They needed to get Margarete back to the Academy, to see if any of the teachers could help her.
Author’s Notes:
A very different feel to this run than Ye’s Shadowrun. Purple Wolf seems to have a delightful playfulness running alongside the curses and adventure. As if Terry Pratchett were whispering in the DM’s ear. I like it.
Renderwise, I started out with a long, complicated style description trying to evoke 80s Larry Elmore fantasy… and then ended up settling on “colorful fantasy airbrush”. Combined with the Elmore tags I used in Bing Copilot’s new “MAI-Image-2.5-Flash” to generate the character images that appears to have given me a nice “80s dragonlance inspired” look.
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