Special Thanks to the Artists …Black Hand Source for stock images.Jeff Preston for the fantastic character portraits.Grant Train for pages 13, 19 & 46 and the front cover (and also to Vallhalla Airsoft for use of their image).Yousef Tuqan for page 8 (find him on Flickr for more fantastic caverns).Matt Tomlinson for page 50.

And to the Playtesters …Chad Woodward, Jason Harney, Pablo Gambo, Nick Myers, Andreas Fantioch, Ross Oliver, Chris Taylor & Craig McInally.

About the Adventure

You are free and encouraged to redistribute this adventure as much as you like. This adventure can be used as part 1 of a campaign setting or on its own. If you enjoy it, say hello on Facebook – if people like it then I'll release more parts. If anyone wants to write their own adventure sequels, send them along and I'll see about publishing them as free adventures.

For best use, I recommend printing the adventure in booklet format, with two pages per sheet on each side. 'Health Mannequins' have been added to allow you to keep track of enemy health levels by scoring off hit-locations.

This adventure is property of the Andonome Coterie.

Vanaheimr

Plot OverviewTwelve prisoners must journey down the deadly, abandoned dwarvish mines to find the bloodstone. Each player will receive two to four of these ill-equipped prisoners to play, and they will need them. The mines are dangerous and unpredictable. They will be hacked at, maimed, shot at, burned and insulted. On top of this, the prisoners are largely useless in combat, but perhaps some few will survive to retrieve the bloodstone in one piece if they work together intelligently.

At the climax of the adventure, the surviving characters will be confronted with the realisation that each of them has one divine parent from the Norse pantheon - perhaps even the big players: Tyr, Brunhilda or Thór. Once they become fully aware of this, they manifest their own god-like powers and exit the dungeon while blasting through the creatures from whom they previously ran.

This adventure runs off the Polymorph system, which costs exactly what you want to pay. The printed version will be here soon.

The Big BidAt the beginning of the game, take 14 Luck points (perhaps in the form of poker chips or pennies) and divide them as equally as possible between the players. During the introduction (below), describe the setting, the guards who are taking them to the mine in the mountain, the cages in which they are all bound, and some of the characters. When a character is mentioned, pull out the character sheet and tell the players to bid on it with their Luck points. When someone sets a bid, they lose that many Luck points (regardless of whether they win or lose). Once someone has a character, sie is no longer allowed to bid until everyone has the same number of characters.

For instance, in the first description, a druid character is described talking to the guards. Player A bids a single token. Player B bids 3 tokens, just to show that sie is serious. Player B then takes the character, but player A still loses the single token. No player can take more than hir share of characters – if there are four players then they are limited to three characters. Players are free to bid 0 tokens in order to obtain a character.

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Luck PointsAt the beginning of play, each player keeps hir unspent Luck points but must go down to the usual maximum. For the purpose of this game, the maximum should be 3 Luck points each for 3 players or 2 Luck points for 4 players or 1 Luck point for 5 players. This number remains constant - so even if characters die, a player with 2 characters left still has the same number of Luck points.

Alternatively, the narrator may wish to award each player with a number of Luck points equal to the average Luck points of each character. This works best when there are four players, as the average number of Luck points will tend to 2.

Keeping Track of the CharactersYou may well have a group in the habit of saying things like 'I'll try the door' or 'My character readies an arrow'. This won't work so well when the group has three characters in front of each player. Having three characters may seem like a lot of juggle, but narrator's do it all the time, and the players will soon get used to it. The trick is to make each one memorable. Just make a few requests from the player each time they're unclear about who exactly is checking for footprints in the sand or whatever …

• Remember to ask players to state the name of the character, as in 'Blekka is going to cast a spell'.

• Ask the players to give each action with a single piece of information about the character. This could be a description of hir face, hir abilities or could even be an opportunity to fill in some of the characters' backstory.

• If the player wants to give each character a distinctive accent, all the better! This may be a Norse setting, but that's no reason not to use a generic upper-class English accent for noble characters and a doric accent for the druids.

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Pronunciation

Some of these Nordic names may look a little odd, but the pronunciation is quite straight forward. 'Dh' is pronounced like the voiced 'th' in 'the' or 'this'. 'J' is pronounced like 'y', as in 'yellow'. 'Y' is pronounced like the 'i' in 'pip' and 'i' is pronounced like the 'ee' in 'beep'. 'U' is pronounced like the 'oo' in 'loop'.

If anything has a diacritic, such as í or á, just pronounce it a little longer than a normal vowel; or ignore it if languages aren't your thing.

None of the characters have histories written down. There's little point in getting to know the allies and pet hates of someone who's probably going to be dead before long. However, the players are free to stick in any Histories they want. As usual, each character has 3 History points and can take up to 3 points of Troubles to boost their History points. If they ever make it out of the mines alive, it could be quite useful.

Experience

The characters are rather useless and fighting against the odds. Half of them may be dead before actually reaching the dwarven citadel. Consider awarding experience points for each section of the adventure – outside the citadel, the lower citadel and the upper citadel – instead of at the end of the session. These are basic characters, so they should gain 3 experience points at each junction, which is enough to pick up a level in Strike or Dodge.

HistoryKing Svínanda has recently taken the land by coup. The old king was killed at sea, travelling to Grár Audhn. Svínanda entered the castle as an honoured guest and soon began to receive letters from various ambassadors. He pinned them around the castle for all to see - promises of armies and plentiful crops, all at his disposal. Soon, he was in power and decided that he was staying. He had half the barons in the Frábar Ríki to count on as allies - some because they were old friends and some because Svínanda had blackmail material on them.

Of course, politics is never so easy. The druids of the land did not recognise the blessings of the king on the rituals, and warned everyone that a terrible curse may befall the land if a low-blood king were to sit upon the throne. Svínanda attempted to start a rumour that he was descended from Tyr, the noble god of duelling and even commissioned various bards to write songs to that effect. However, the songs did not stick and nobody believed him.

He feared that a druid in his presence could cast a spell to reveal his bloodline, showing his low-born ancestry. This, coupled with the earlier slights the druids had given him, pushed him finally into outlawing all druidry and ordering the troops to hang any druids they come across. Most are unhappy about this order, but Svínanda has still had some limited success in enforcing the law.

Another desperate attempt to have everyone to believe the story of his high birth came when he learned that the great Dwarvish City Banum Sveppum, in Ríki Jotna, was destroyed and the mystical bloodstone lost with

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it. The bloodstone is an object reputed to show the ancestry of anyone who touches it. In the hopes of convincing everyone of his good intentions, he made a great show of sending his finest knights to fetch the stone, and bring them back out

Of course, the king knew that nobody could actually find it, so he sent a suicide squad down the mines in order to find it. He gathered together a full platoon of men armed with the best armour, all of whom were unhappy with his rule or were known for speaking out. He then pushed them up the hill and sent them down the last known entrance to Banum Sveppum. They were never heard of again.

After that, Svínanda decided to cut down on the expenses of prisoners by sending them down the mines. So far he has sent two batches of prisoners down to find the bloodstone and neither have returned. All in all, he’s rather pleased with himself. News of his plans to find the bloodstone have convinced a number of people that he really is descended from the Aesir (otherwise, why would he try so hard to find the bloodstone?). He has also relieved his jails of a number of political prisoners without the burden of guilt that comes with executing strong fighters and innocent librarians and others.

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The Story

DescentThe characters are taken, bound in wooden cages and tied with twine until they can barely feel their own hands. The cages are loaded onto horse-drawn carts and pulled a little way up the great mountain. The horses have to stop at the base of the great mountain, and everyone is taken out and pulled. Each guardsman carries three weapons. They joke about the svart alfar being in the area, and warn the characters about them with a chortle and a prod

'Remember, the svarts know no pity, only fun and games! So you all watch that you don't look like you're the entertaining sort if you know what's good for you '

The march up is tiring, but once they get to the top the characters are given one last meal, and the guards explain that they must get the bloodstone out, and to the base of the mountain, in order to receive a pardon. They will be waiting at the mountain’s base, and have sealed up any entrances they have found on the outskirts.

There have, so far, been three shipments of peoples into the mountain. None of them have returned, and the fear is growing that the king has effectively been feeding fresh meat to whatever is in that cave, allowing it to grow strong, perhaps producing children. Still, traitors to the criminals are no great loss, so nobody has complained about prisoners going inside the mountain and down the deep mines.

While wandering up the mountains on foot, the head of the guards, Arfarvegi, complains aloud to the other guards about the lack of druids. He tells them that the land will be cursed before long. Of course, this belief will not prompt him to release any druids in the party - merely suggest that their kind should exercise a little more political control next time they speak against the king.

Half way up the mountain, everyone finds the spot. They must climb twenty feet up a sheet cliff-face where the cave opens, then down into a wide pit.

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Wooden cages.

Guards chat.

Characters

introduced and bidding.

They’re given a rope for the task, and told that once they’re in the other side, they’ll be given weapons and food.

The first to go up must make a climbing check (Agility and Athletics). After that, climbing with a rope requires Survival or Athletics 1, or a single hit when rolling Agility. Any character who doesn’t make it must either be quickly helped or the guards will take him back, to return to prison to rot forever.

The Outer Mines

The Cave MouthThis cave mouth was never the main entrance, but a side-passage, originally accessed from above.

Once in, the cave is only illuminated by a single shaft of light. In the distance, it descends in two directions and rises in one. Great stones are littered about, and a single goat’s skull can be seen. If the characters have made friends with the guards, they raise the weapons up and allow a character on the cave’s lip to throw them down. If the guards have made no friends among the characters then they wait until all characters are in the cave before chucking the weapons over. They literally throw them, and don’t worry about maces and swords impaling the characters on the other side. They’re dead anyway, so what’s the worry?

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Thrown weapons.

Two spears, a

mace, an ax and a broadsword.

Three passages.

Woman's corpse.

Cramped

passage.

Acid.

The characters make an Agility & Dodge roll to avoid falling weapons. The weapons’ volley is worth 2 scatter damage. Two spears, a mace, an ax and a broadsword all fall down onto the character, followed by two shortswords and a dagger. This will arm some, but not all, of the characters.

Any characters who did not dodge, or thought to grab a weapon as they fell gets first pick, followed by the others in order of how Fast they are.

Once the weapons have settled, a final bag full of food and water canteens, comes hurtling over the cave’s lip. After that, a single torch follows. It hits the ground and the pitch on the end is covered in the dirty leaves and animal shit lying all over the cavern’s floor.

As the characters look down, they notice that the ground is only artificially high due to piles of mud and animal shit, all of which must have fallen from above. Most of the rest of the cave slides quickly down, while a wide and tall passage travels upwards, covered in massive boulders. There is a nasty smell; death sits in the stagnant air in the lower tunnel.

The two passages downwards become gradually smaller until the characters can no longer fit into either. The only interesting thing in them is a young woman’s corpse - the cause of the nasty smell. One person from a previous group refused to go down the mines, so she sat at the top, bawling and pleading with the guards to take her back rather than let her wander into the

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darkness under the mountain. They refused, and after they left she hoped that the other prisoners would come back up with the bloodstone and she would walk away to freedom with them, but they never did return, and the guards had gone, so she starved to death, alone in the cave, unable to climb back out.

In the upwards passage, large boulders are dotted about like a toppled pile of books, one on top of the other. On the other side of one of the boulders is a sheer drop. It’s about fifteen feet down, and at the bottom it is impossible to see anything due to the winding way the wall weaves. Still, that is the only option, and is indeed where the characters must go. At the bottom, is a low tunnel. Characters carrying spears will have a difficult time. The passage changes between two and three feet wide - on occasion more robust characters will have trouble pulling through it.

As the characters go through the tunnel, a slimy undergrowth starts to squelch through their fingers, just as the last hint of daylight is leaving them. An

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acidic, moving jelly - a creature a little like a mobile fungus - has recently moved to the entrance of the cave and is doing what comes naturally: hiding by sticking along the ceiling. It secretes a second, clearer ooze onto the floor, through which it can feel tremours. Any time someone touches that transparent ooze, the great, green acidic creature drops onto hir and begins to dissolve hir.

If the characters have continued through the slimy floor, the middle three are hit by the jelly. If they have pressed on hard and fast, only the last three are hit. If they have pulled back, the first three in are hit. At this point, it is a good idea to remember the rations' bag - whoever carried them has also lost everyone’s food and the only tinder box to the acid!

Acidic Jelly

Once it hits any character, it deals 4 scatter damage. Armour (or any type of good clothing) would defend against the burns as usual. None of the characters are wearing more than bare prisoners’ clothing, offering 1 die of protection. Once on a character, it will cling to them, like a venus fly trap. The character will need 2 hits on an Agility & Dodge roll to get away, and while inside a small tunnel with people on either side will suffer a -2 dice penalty. If they succeed in the dodge check, they can get the acid off them and make sure not to suffer any more burns. Otherwise, they will suffer another 2 scatter damage per turn.

After it has suffered 1 damage from fire or 4 damage from people attacking it and pulling it apart, it will stop holding onto people, and dissolve. It will still be highly acidic, but can be bypassed, so long as nobody touches it. Of course, this will be difficult in a small cave.

Once the acid creature or its prey are dead (or possibly once both are dead), any characters who were behind it will have a hard time pressing on. It and the bodies of its prey block the passage. Still, walking on large rocks or the upturned bodies of their fallen comrades will help to avoid the acid. Any characters making contact with it should suffer an additional 2 dice of scatter damage.

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The MineshaftThe tunnel continues for another twenty feet or so before emerging in a mine-shaft. The walls have obviously been excavated here, but there’s nothing interesting in them, so they were left alone by the dwarves. This shaft is a tunnelled shelf through a wall by a sheer drop.

The characters emerge from the tunnel onto a 1 foot wide passageway leading left and right. Ahead of them, and following the foot wide path, is a sheer drop down to an unknown depth, studded along the way with sharp rocks. The first character out will almost fall to their death, and must make an Agility & Vigilance check not to falter down the pit unless the player has specifically requested that the character go extra slow down the pit.

The far side of the mine shaft leads into a corridor, ten feet wide and six feet high. Crouching in that corridor are three tall and slender zvart alfar. They have learned that the bloodstone is in the mines and are here to scout the area. They gained entrance through a separate underground tunnel.

Zvart Alfar x 3

The zvarts’ tall bodies are wiry and have a perpetual stoop, even when not in dwarvish tunnels. They pad about on slender two-toed feet, their backwards-jointed knees allowing them to tread carefully and run like a horse when they wish. Their faces resemble some cross between a man and a hairless cat or perhaps a fox - longish, with small noses and long, thin ears. Their eyes resemble nothing if not a goat’s - two pupils sit in the centre, staring at everything in a sideways manner.

Principle: JoyfulAttributes: Mind 2 (Insightful), Body 3 (Agile, Fast), Grace 1Skills: Strike 2, Archery 2, Athletics 2, Facade 1, Stealth 2, Vigilance 1Magic Skills: Fire 1, Air 1, Illusion 1Talismans: The zvart alfar have laid an enchantment into their bows, making them light up like a lantern any time they knock an arrow. The light is enough to accurately see prey for up to twenty yards and goes out as soon as the arrow flies.Equipment: Shortbow (+1/ +2), knife (+1)

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Tiny shelf.

Three svarts.

Light-up bows.

- (mark off health levels on these)

The zvart alfar have a real sense of play and a love of watching things die in hilarious and unexpected ways. Picture a group of psychotic children, armed with bows and arrows, and a little magic. They fire a couple of shots at the characters, hoping to back them up so much that they lose their position. The characters cannot dodge, but may be able to swing down and hold onto the ledge.

If the characters think to charge the svarts then they will run away quickly, laughing to themselves. They do not fear the characters, but they do think it funny to run away, snickering.

If the characters do not charge them, they will jeer at them and fire a few arrows, but they will not kill more than three – they have hopes of stealing the bloodstone if the characters reemerge with it.

As the characters enter the corridor, they can smell the stench of death from a corpse, at least three weeks old.

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The CorridorTen condemned prisoners walked these tunnels for some time before finding the correct one. Some passages came into dead ends, others seemed to just go on forever, into increasingly impossible terrain. Whenever they found a passage which went nowhere, they carved an X onto the side of the passageway, so remind themselves and warn anyone else who entered the mine-shafts. Despite the presence of undead dwarves, what finally took them was a hungry cave bear who had wandered too far into the mountain from one of the long tunnels. They fought, and some ran, but few made a proper escape. Those who did were soon attacked by a wandering horde of undead dwarves. The bear died soon after from hunger and bloodloss.

The lich followed soon after, when a spirit servant informed him of the battle. He turned into a fog and came to the site of battle, then with a sewing needle, a lot of twine and some magic, he put everyone back together. He stitches the heads of two corpses onto the bear's shoulders, and then took off the bear's legs. Four human legs replaced its lower section and two human arms were grafted onto its underside. Its teeth were nicely filed down to a point with a dwarvish chisel and finally, a small but courageous soul was placed inside in return for its eternal allegiance to the lich. It stands there still – the Herrafnykur – a monster in the dark which waits for people to approach the front door.

The great corridor opens up to a dozen mine shafts. Most go absolutely nowhere, and one leads to the dwarven citadel.

The corridors which go nowhere have already been marked with an 'X' by previous prisoner groups who have searched them some of the way and returned empty handed. They are mostly safe, except for one group of undead dwarves which inhabits the area. They will be coming for the characters before long.

Another corridor contains a number of dead criminals from a previous incursion, and a final corridor contains a great undead creature, crafted to guard the entrance to Barnum Sveppum – the dwarven citadel.

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Many tunnels.

X marks tested

tunnels.

The Mine Shafts - XThe various doors which are marked with X’s all extend for mile upon mile. They wander into old gold seams, dead ends and occasionally have relay points where dwarves would make semi-comfortable lodgings with straw beds, torch sconces, a table for games and a few cots to rest in. The various shafts are sometimes circular tunnels, three feet wide and four feet tall. Sometimes they enter natural caverns which open into grand ceilings or massive drops. The drops were previously traversed with large rope-bridges with tough fungi for bridge-girders, but most bridges have since rotted to nothing or remain in such a tattered state that the first character to cross it will drop to the uncompromising rocks below, or the cold underground waters. The necromancer entered through one of these bridged tunnels some time ago, and his legacy can be seen by the dead and dismembered dwarves. However, there are no complete dwarf corpses; any corpses which were whole after the battle were risen again, to fight for the necromancer.

No map is supplied for the complete tunnels. If the characters insist on checking them all, they quickly become fatigued from walking. At most, they will encounter the remains of some dismembered dwarves, acidic jelly or the zombified body of an old group of prisoners who still wander the halls, unsure of where to go and how to get out. Any zombified characters encountered will attacked if approached, but otherwise may only look at the characters in a mournful way, remembering a time when they too could talk and eat and enjoy the solid world rather than look at it from inside a rotting, dead shell of a body.

Further, if the characters wander very far into these tunnels they will very quickly become confused about how to get out of the sprawling, root-like tunnels. If the characters become completely lost, consider guiding them back with the death-curdling scream of a svart as it encounters the Herrafnykur.

The svarts have wandered back into the mines to explore. They don’t think much of the X’s (though they have noticed them) and think it wise to head away from the stench of meat that emanates from the Herrafnykur.

Down one of these tunnels is a group of eight undead dwarves. They wander these tunnels for as far as they can, going in and out, looking for intruders to the dead citadel on behalf of the lich, their master. Give the characters a while to look around the corridor and perhaps to explore a little before you send the hordes of dead dwarves after them.

They should be easy to spot, they do not try to quieten their footsteps. If you are using the optional horror rules, their appearance will be new, but

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Dead ends.

Eight shambling

dwarves.

not a surprise, so you should roll 4 dice against the player's Mind Attribute (+2 for being Determined). Any characters who run should lose a single point of Sanity. Any who want to stay should roll to see how Determined they can be, and that roll must equal or best yours. If a character gets fewer hits than yours then for each hit below yours sie should lose 1 point of sanity, though they do not need to run, regardless of the result. Make sure everyone declares who is running and who is staying before you make your roll. You may also ask them to put the character sheets of those who are fleeing the scene away, or underneath other character sheets so that there is no confusion about which characters are still present.

Undead Dwarves x 8

Attributes: Mind 1, Body 2 (Slow: -10 to Initiative)Skills: Grapple 1Equipment: Pick-axes, providing +1 to attack.

The dwarves' tactics are rather straight-forward: attack the characters. Then attack more. They may band together to provide more damage to a single character. If unsure about which character to attack first, choose the player with the most remaining Luck points and lay into hir biggest character.

Remember that when attacking as a group, each dwarf receives -1 and each dwarf beyond the first gives the group -1 to the TN. After that, their dice are pooled together. For instance, if you want a group of 4 dwarves to band together, each of whom have 3 dice to attack with at TN 6, they would be left with 8 dice at TN 3. You could make two groups of 4 dwarves, each with 8 dice, and the dicepool can still be split between multiple characters. This limits the dicepool which keeps the combat easier and smoother to run.

The First Unmarked Corridor – room ADown the corridor where the last group of prisoners died, their bodies still lie, but have been ransacked by the lich in order to make the Herrafnykur. The characters will find five heads, six sets of arms, a great many legs and two

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rusting spears. Those weapons are usable, but will shatter if they achieve 2 hits in a single blow (whether the blow is dodged or not).

The characters may find themselves fleeing to this corridor once they encounter the group of eight dwarves, or may find themselves boxed inside after the group of eight undead dwarves

follow them in.

Entrance to the Dwarven Realm – Room BDown this tunnel, the abomination created by the lich stands ready to defend Barum Sveppum from any intruders. It stands at the main door to the citadel, thirty or so yards down the rough, dark passageway. Along the way, an acid jelly has formed on the corridor’s ceiling, but it does not have any feelers on the ground, so it will not drop unless the characters stand underneath it for a long time, with a flaming torch pointed at it. If they do not attack it or don't notice it, it won't attack them. After they battle with the Herrafnykur by the door, it will slowly drip down and follow them.

As the characters move down the corridor, request whomever is holding the torch and the heads of the party to roll with Insightful & Vigilance.

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Acid jelly on

ceiling (doesn't attack).

Herrafnykur.

Riddle of the

door.

Acid jelly

prompts the characters forwards.

Dismembered

bodies.

Possible ambush

by undead dwarves.

The Herrafnykur

In front of the door to the dwarvish citadel lies the Herrafnykur. This undead creature is an amalgamation of a dead cave-bear and various dead prisoners who died in area A. Heads, limbs and those useful thumbs have been tacked on at uncomfortable angles all around the bear, allowing it to haul people towards itself to be mauled. All the limbs are rotten and dripping ooze as it degrades. The stench is abominable and can be smelt from a mile away in any corridor.

The herrafnykur stands eight feet tall, giving any character who attacks it a -1 penalty to attack dice.

Attributes: Mind 3 (Determined), Body 3 (Strong x 2)Skills: Strike 2, Grapple 2Magical Skills: Vitamancy 1,

The Herrafnykur has an additional health location - any successful roll of 4 hits the set of human arms. The loss of either pair of arms gives the usual -2 penalty to the stench lord. In addition, 3 hits are required to destroy any location – even the head. 2 hits will irritate it but will not damage it nor give it any penalties.

The Exit

Behind the Herrafnykur is the great door of stone. Upon it’s entrance are instructions written in dwarvish runes. If any of the players want to say that they are familiar with the dwarvish culture, let them write that down under their Histories section (it costs 1 of their 3 free History points). If not, any character with Academics can make a roll and understand 3 words for every hit on a Creative & Academics roll. If both of these fail, the characters may have to hunt down a zvart. The svarts will help if they are captured and threatened, or may help just to see the characters advance, though speaking with them without being shot or otherwise killed will be difficult. Even once the deciphering is complete, the message is only poorly understood by the characters:

Open/ to enter/ say back/ move/ good

The phrase is a combination of two statements (which makes perfect sense to a native speaker of dwarvish) - ‘Say “open” backwards and move properly’.

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The password is ‘nepo’, or the dwarvish equivalent. Once spoken, the doors are meant to swing open. In this case, they will merely swing ajar and then

stop - the spell is old and needs maintenance. The doors’ hinges are also damage from repeated beatings from convicts who have tried to pass through here before.

A group of convicts have already learned the answer and passed through these doors before.

The Acid Jelly

After the characters begin to ponder the riddle of the door, the acid jelly drops to the ground and very slowly moves towards them. It spreads out like a great puddle, enveloping the entire corridor then moving into the cavern with the door. Characters will be able to run around it once it enters the room and flee

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to safety, but they will not be able to access the door again, only look at it from a distance.

If the characters start to burn it with fire, they will find it much more difficult while it is on the ground. It will burn for a while, receiving 2 hits as most of its 'body' is burned, but any further use of the lantern will simply put out the flame, as too much contact with the ooze will put out the flame, leaving a torch with sticky residue all over it.

The ooze is not directly susceptible to fire magic (because it is not flammable, like wood or clothing) but can be burned indirectly by putting wood or clothes on top of it.

Most likely, the characters will run away from it by guessing the door's password and running into the Dark Room.

The Dark RoomLong ago, the dwarves held this space as their primary defence against intruders. The lich attacked it, not from in front, but from behind, coming up the secret stairs. The room was littered with traps all over, except in a little alcove where guards could sleep and from where they could shoot intruders with arrows. Just for good measure, a little box was left with a trap; anyone opening would glow after opening it for some time to come. Even if they got passed the guards, all in the citadel would see them coming from across the great bridge.

Through the doors, the next room is dark, and divided into squares. Some of the squares are made of brick and others are traps. Some of the traps are empty chasms, others are lined with spikes and some contain nasty devices similar to a bear trap. Each square (and pit) is around two yards wide - quite wide enough to comfortably stand on, or to fall into. Some of the trapped squares are open pits with the illusion of a tile crafted over the top. Others are holes with weak stone or ceramic over the top.

At the far end is a large alcove over twenty feet wide which once served as a barracks. Dwarves could not be directly attacked because anyone charging forward would fall into the pit. Instead, they would fire arrows at intruders while hiding themselves behind massive self-supported shields which have long since been plundered and rotted to nothing.

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Good squares,

bad squares.

Wooden box in

the centre.

Hidden passage

downwards.

Acid Chase

The BoxIn the centre of the large room is a single wooden box on an ornate pillar. The pillar stands only three feet high and the box is beautifully carved from wood with silver inlaid around the edges, making it gleam. The box is empty, but should give the impression that it contains precious jewels. Anyone opening it will hear a dwarf mutter a curse in the dwarvish tongue, while accusing the character of being a thief (the voice is created by an illusion spell). Next, a floating orb of light appears on top of the box. The second the character moves towards it, the werelight backs off. Once the character moves back, the werelight chases him. The werelight will follow the character wherever sie goes, always staying just out of reach and above the character whenever the size of the room allows. This werelight can be a great blessing to a group which has lost its last torch. However, it will also alert anyone in the area to the character’s presence. Sie will no longer be able to hide from the creatures in the citadel or the mines. If the character dies, the orb vanishes. Until that point, nothing short of a darkness spell can affect it, and even that will only dim the light until the spell wears off.

When describing the room, don't draw too much attention to the tiles. You might say something like this:

The door opens slowly into an immense room, shrouded in darkness. The lantern light plays against the tiled floor – each tile nearly two yards across. One under your feet depicts a dwarvish symbol of unknown meaning, surrounded by various mushrooms. Ahead of it is another tile, depicting a dwarvish queen, giving a speech to her subjects, and to the left of that a tile displaying a dwarf loudly farting at a dinner table,as various other creatures back away from him. As you look ahead, you can see that the entire room is filled with these ornate tile; the wall is covered with them, and as you look up, almost brushing your head are more tiles, all with individual patterns worked carefully into the stone, depicting line drawings, symbols and even writing. In the very centre of the room is a small pillar supporting a small wooden box. Nothing but darkness sits behind it.

There is a pattern to the stones; those which depict honourable and good dwarf behaviour are safe. Those depicting shameful acts are traps. Honourable things might include certain types of hardy mushrooms, deep underground work, giving speeches to one's family, ale-drinking competitions and polishing one's axe. Bad behaviour includes speaking with the svartálfar, drinking wine, looking upwards to a tall person, trading substandard goods (by dwarvish standards), being on one's knees in front of a non-dwarf, collecting certain types of mushrooms or farting in public. It should not

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always be obvious to the players which stones depict good behaviour and which depict bad.

If a players asks if sie can detect any pattern among the stones and sie has the Academics Skill then sie can roll hir Creativity with it.

1 hit The character notices that some of the poetry is rude verse and some is classic dwarven lore.

2 hits It is noticed that some stones depict sacred events, while other only depict fairly mundane and unimportant things, such as fungi or a meeting with a mortal king.

3 hits The character clearly perceives that each important event is surrounded on four sides by unimportant or offensive ones, and that every sacred tile is surrounded by non sacred ones.

If the characters walk onto a bad square, it may be a pit; it may be a weak tile made of poor quality stone - ready to break at any moment.

Any time the characters walk onto a bad stone, have them roll with Agile + Dodge in order to evade 4 dice of scatter damage, then craft a basic pit-trap around the result. For instance, if the Damage is 2, 8, 5, 5 and the character rolls for 1 the dodge, then tell hir something like this:

'The pit gives was beneath you, and instinctively you reach for the side. You grasp it fast but still manage to bang the underside of your chin on your arms as they hold onto the hard stone floor. Looking down, you can see a deep cut in your leg from a metal spike beneath the tile. If you had not caught on, the spike would have travelled through your kneecap by now.'

Once the characters enter the dark room, the zvarts come, drawn by the previous sounds of battle, and watch the characters. Since the characters have gotten past the Herrafnykur, they are duly impressed by them, and will not confront them directly, though if many characters are left, they may shoot an arrow if all of the characters are at the other end of the room (from where they cannot run back to entrance quickly without the danger of falling into the pit-traps).

Checking the FloorIf characters decide to bang on tiles before walking on them, this will help to uncover illusions of tiles, but it will probably not help to uncover weak tiles. The sound of banging tiles will attract the acid jelly, outside. So unless the

22

characters have completely destroyed it, it will start to slowly move towards them.

The Acid JellyIf the characters have not killed the acid jelly with fire then it will start to move towards them after being awakened by the sound of battle with the Herrafnykur. Banging on tiles to check for traps will speed it up and allow it to more easily locate the characters. The acid jelly will not fall into the traps because when spread out upon the floor, it is four yards wide (so it will not fall into illusory tiles) and very light (so it will not break trap tiles which are designed to shatter).

The characters will almost certainly see the acid jelly coming up behind them if they have any light-source at all. It will be easy to avoid, so long as the characters can move. Up to nine characters can fit onto a single tile, though it will not be a comfortable fit, so the characters may be able to move together.

If they are being chased by the acid, try describing a few random tiles, deciding beforehand if they are trapped or not. If a player guesses correctly, sie can move to safety. If not, sie will fall into a trap.

The Stair DownThe alcove contains no obvious exit. In fact the route down is hidden under one of the tiles at the far end of the room. One of the tiles that would normally be trapped has four handles carved into the outside. Grasping them allows the block to be lifted up, revealing a stone stairway that leads down. On the face of the tile is a ljosálfar banquet where dwarves are merrily drinking wine – not a proper dwarvish drink at all.

The stairway spirals down around a central hole. The entire shaft was a straight drop until the dwarves enlarged it and added a stairway around the outside. There is no handrail, and character will have to be careful not to fall over the edge as the stairs are only wide enough for a single character to walk at a time. The hole in the centre, however, is seven feet wide, and big enough for a number of characters to fall into at once.

Time has taken its toll on the stony stairs, and some parts - wedged in with wood and held together with magic - have degraded and collapsed. As the characters approach, they will have to jump over these broken patches. There are three of them in total, each slightly larger than the last.

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Breaks in the

stairs.

Downward

shooting svarts.

As the characters start to descend, the svarts follow from afar. Their keen eyes can function well enough by the limited light of the characters’ torch. They will follow quietly and then shoot at the characters as soon as they’ve crossed the first chasm.

Crossing a chasm, with some time and a run-up, is a sure thing if the character has Athletics 1. If not, sie can roll to see how Fast sie is - only a single hit is necessary. However, once the characters are being chased by the three svarts, they’ll have to move much quicker. The dim light and the staircase subtracts 4 dice from the svarts’ archery attempt, leaving only 3. The svarts will have to take time to aim, allowing them each to fire one arrow every four turns. Select whichever player has the most Luck points and roll to hit one of hir characters. Continue this until all of the characters are down safely. As long as the characters are running, the svarts will need two hits to the same location to hit them.

After a few rounds of being taunted by the svarts and shot at, the characters will be able to evade them by running, and the svarts will let them go. They do not want to kill all of the characters - merely make sure that by the time they get to the bloodstone, there will be few enough of them that they will not pose a threat. Ideally, they will kill a few characters again and again, until a single maimed, mad, unhappy person returns with the bloodstone, at which point they will step out of the shadows and approach to take it from the character.

The stairway is easy to jump down, but jumping back up one of the gaps is a challenging task, and requires 2 hits instead of 1.

The Misty PathWhen the players come out of the door at the bottom of the staircase the dwarven citadel is only fifty feet from the players. Once they open the door, there is a walkway, three yards wide, leading into the distance. The dwarven citadel was built in an immense natural cavern and the dwarves have expanded natural caverns, creating a drop around it on all sides. The only way to access it is through one of the four bridges that stem from inside. The characters stand on the edge of one of those bridges now. The great stone arches underneath but is solid and flat on the top. Below the bridge and all around the dwarven citadel is a massive drop, about sixty feet below. At the bottom are various moulds, jellies and small creatures who can sustain themselves by eating them. They are not as plentiful as they used to be

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Symbols: Earth,

water and air.

Characters blown

from bridge.

Locked front

door.

- many fed off the remains of the dwarven citadel, taking sustenance from whatever waste the dwarves threw off the side.

The characters cannot see the dwarven citadel from the bridge, because a heavy fog obscures the vision of anyone on the bridge. The fog does not extend far past the bridge, but while standing upon it, all one can see is that mist.

The bridge, like the room before, is covered in great stone tiles. These tiles only contain elemental symbols. At the start, they have nothing but a repeated symbol of earth magic - a series of triangles inside more triangles. Further on, other squares have water symbols, and later, symbols for air.

The earth symbols are there to keep the bridge strong. Destroying those stone tiles will be difficult, but it is possible. Once destroyed, the bridge will break and fall into the darkness below.

The water symbols appear only once the characters are half way along the bridge. They will summon water onto the whole bridge as soon as someone steps onto them, making it a little slippery. Fortunately, the rough carvings in the tiles provide some traction.

The air symbols, once stepped on, summon a mighty wind. The mist will scatter to reveal the grand dwarven citadel with empty but still shining windows. They will suddenly be able to see the drop of fifty feet below. They will feel the harsh wind pushing them off the bridge.

Of course, the dwarven watchmen knew the positions of those tiles and avoided them. Occasionally they would step on the wind tiles on the way out to illuminate the path, while avoiding the water tiles which make the bridge slippery. Most would simply use another bridge.

In order to hold onto the ground while the bridge is wet and the wind is blowing, the characters will need 2 hits in an Agile & Athletics task. If the ground is not wet or the wind is not blowing then only 1 hit is necessary to get to the other side.

Anyone failing this task is shunted into the darkness below. Remember which characters are carrying torches and which are carrying food at this point as the group may lose both.

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Beneath the Stone CitadelIf most of the characters survive the bridge and arrive at the other side safely, then you may wish to assume that any who have fallen off are dead. This is a safe assumption, but it doesn’t have to be the case. If most of the characters fall off the side of the bridge then you need only continue with the survivors (if any) for a single scene before telling the players that those who have landed, survived.

Beneath that bridge is a giant, natural fungal garden grew. Many of the fungi reached up to eight feet high, and have a great many mosses and other fungi growing beneath them. When the characters land on this immense fungal bed they will each receive 2 scatter damage from the impact, which is softer than expected but still a nasty landing.

If they have any light, they will be able to look around and see the great natural fungal garden. If not, they will have to crawl, blind, around the tower.

The following locations might be of interest around the dwarven citadel.

The Citadel

The citadel is everywhere - the entire cavern is just an empty ring which circles the base of the citadel. The ground moves up and down and is usually nothing but a desolate, rocky floor. The walls up to the citadel are steep and almost absent of handholds. However, someone attempting to climb up could succeed with 4 hits on an Agile & Survival task.

There are two entrances to the citadel from the ground - one is a sewage pipe and one is an actual gate.

The Sewage Pipe

The sewage pipe is seven yards up, and is nothing more than a three feet wide hole. Characters can attempt to climb up and will need only 2 hits in Agile and Survival. Once inside, the sewage pipe is fine to wander through - it has not been in use in many years, and al feces have been replaced with underground fungi.

The sewage pipe connects to many small pipes - too small for characters to enter - but also connects with the kitchen as a pit in the ground where kitchen waste could be discarded.

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Madman at the

base.

Stream.

Wandering brood

mother.

Entrances:

sewage pipe and lower gate.

The Lower Gate

The gate was built on the off-chance that the dwarves would ever need to enter the lower regions, but was never used. Through many years of neglect it slowly rusted. Through this gate, the lich that devoured the mines entered. The gate is rusted, and was smashed open by the lich, but he later attempted to fix it with magic. It’s still rather busted, and can be broken by anyone with a Strong score of 3 or more, but not by someone with less. In addition, he carved a spell of decay on the ground - any equipment made of wood or leather that enters through the gate will decay and turn to mulch. The spell is carved into the inside of the gate and will continue to function even if the gate is broken. It will affect all such items in the area (perhaps weapons or talismans) but will only work once.

The stairs upwards lead to a trapdoor in the dwarvish workshop.

The Stream

The greatest source of life in the area is the stream that gathers through various holes and drips from above, and then wanders down the mountain’s intestines, finally emerging outside through holes too small for a person to enter. As it goes through the cave, it feeds many underground plants - mostly fungi, but some mosses and spongy plants that live only in the deep underground. The plants are edible, and the characters will be able to rest and recuperate here. In fact, there is enough for everyone to live off forever. Unfortunately, the characters' light will not last forever, assuming they still have it at all.

Brjáladhur

During the previous mission, just under two weeks ago, one person survived. He fell off the misty bridge above, just as the characters have done, and onto the fungal bed. He then wandered in the dark, fearing for his life, and finally found the stream. He has lived here ever since, living off the fungi. He has even found a little crevice in the wall - difficult to climb to and easy to defend - where he sleeps. He stays there most of the time and goes back to the stream on rare occasions to gather more food. He never spends long away from his crevice, but if the characters spend a day with the stream, they will encounter him. If he hears them speaking, he will listen for a long time, silently. If he thinks that they are friendly, he will approach them. Otherwise, he will leave them alone.

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Attributes: Mind 3 (1 due to madness) (Creative), Body 2 (Fast), Grace 2Skills: Craft 2, Dodge 1, Socialise 2, Survival 1,Magical Skills: Fire 1, Air 2, Illusion 1,Equipment: Flint, three short swords.

Brjaladhur trained as a mage in the royal college, and hoped one day to work for the king. His dream came true a little earlier than expected, and he went to work as a magical jester for the king. Unfortunately, when the new king was appointed, he put on a terrible show, bursting into tears half way through it because he was so loathe to perform for the usurper. He was banished to the prison, and has not performed since.

He has a particularly dishevelled appearance, even for a jester/ mage/ convict His jester's trousers and hat are in tatters, he is covered in dirt and his hair has a number of centipedes and lice in it which he can never quite get rid of, no matter how much hair he tears out.

If the characters seem trustworthy, he will try to join them. He has some basic magic skill (including the ability to make light), which can make him useful, but he is also paranoid and skittish. He will likely flee from the undead, possibly while screaming, at the first sign of trouble. He may be taken on by any player, which allows that player to use hir Luck points for him.

The Exit

There is one crack in the outer wall where the mines enter the base of the citadel. The characters will not have noticed it, as it is a long way up a windy tunnel, but if they follow the crack, through wall climbs and slippery surfaces, they will eventually emerge in the room with twelve tunnels and the main door, detailed above under ‘The Corridor’.

The Brood-Mother

The lich, above, entertained himself for a short time by combining creatures that he found in the dungeon before moving onto more serious matters. With a bear skull, stored as an artifact in a dwarf’s room, he managed to create a cross between a beetle and a bear. The product is a magical creature which will fade and die within a few generations if it is not around magic.

At the moment, there is only a single large mother and her brood of maggots. They are hidden under a rock where she returns to feed them with fungi every day or so. The male is no longer around as he has been eaten by

28

the mother. If the characters find the maggots or wander around the stream for too long, they are bound to encounter the brood mother. She suffers no penalties from being in the dark due to her excellent sense of vibration through the ground. She will attack immediately upon seeing the characters. Once one is dead or seriously wounded, she will stop attacking (but will defend herself) and will attempt to carry the character back to her maggots - perhaps while still alive.

Attributes: Body 3 (Strong)Skills: Grapple 2Enhancements: Armour (3 dice’ worth)

The brood mother will run away if wounded more than once, and will remain with her brood for a month, at which point she will have healed completely. She will never leave her maggoty offspring, even when facing certain death.

If the characters eat the maggots, they find that they are particularly

nutritious and tasty.

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The Outer Citadel

Every room in the citadel was made with runes of light, carved into it. The light is not bright enough to read comfortably, but it will allow everyone inside to see what is happening at all times.

The Gates of the CitadelThe outer gate at the end of the bridge is exactly like all of the others - blocked by a massive iron door which opens only from the inside. The doors are three yards tall and three yards wide. On the front is an engraving of the dwarvish king Longskegg XXVIII, famed for his valour in attacking the Midgard serpent (though many say that he merely kicked it and then ran away).

At each side (and above) the door are murder holes, just under a foot wide and two feet high, designed so that dwarves could shoot arrows out of them and kill any invading armies as they stood at the door.

On the other side of the completely impenetrable door is a massive lever - three feet long - which was used to open the door. It is still in reasonably good condition and will function with a bit of a push downward. Of course, the characters cannot reach the other side of the door, so they cannot push it, or so it would seem.

The characters have two obvious means of accessing the switch. Firstly, if any of them have Body 1 and do not have the Strong Flair, they can claim to be skinny enough to fit through the murder hole. Secondly, anyone with long arms can attempt to push the lever down by reaching through the murder holes. The dwarves had not considered this tactic because they imagined that they would strike any intruding arms with a sword, and also had trouble considering the possibility of an arm so long that it would reach up to the murder hole and over to the lever.

Once the lever is pushed, the great doors swing open, revealing a room, glowing with a soft light inside.

A single group of prisoners has already come through here, but they decided that it would be best to shut the door behind themselves. Their footprints will

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Locked door.

Lever.

still be visible in the dust inside if the characters look for them or have the Vigilance Skill at 2.

The South BarracksInside this main room are the barracks where the dwarvish soldiers stayed. The roof is only five and a half feet tall - fine for a dwarf, but not so good for anyone taller. There are also rooms to the side in which dwarvish soldiers slept.

Anyone over five and a half foot (most characters) will suffer a -1 penalty to all combat tasks while in this corridor and the surrounding rooms. Within these barracks are various weapons - all are a little rusted, but they still function. The rusted edges will break away once they hit something, but the remaining edge of rust can still hurt. If any rusted weapon inflicts 2 or more hits in a single round then they will snap completely.

Among the rusted weapons are swords (short swords to the characters), spearheads (the wood has since rotted away) and flails.

The Great HallIn the great hall, the room raises to the grand heights of six yards high. There is a balcony ring around the outside of the rooms which is accessible only through the stairs. A little stream of water runs down the stairs and across the great hall, then into the workshops and out the East bridge.

The Little Dead Dwarves

Around the outskirts are various corridors. Down each of them are dwarves who have died and were implanted with semi-sentient and malicious spirits so that their corpses could rise and walk again. They all serve the lich for fear of being destroyed. They aren’t entirely sentient, but they do have enough killer instinct to shuffle towards the characters and try to kill them. What with all the dwarves guarding the area and those that lived here, there are around 100 undead dwarves in total. As the characters walk, their movements and noise will be heard by all of the little dwarves. Give them some time to explore the area before launching the encounter upon them. Remind them that it is a quiet place, and that they feel that they are being watched. Tell them about the stench of rotting meat all around but don’t spring death on them too soon,

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Rusted weapons.

Low roof.

Stench of death.

Small stream.

Broken stairway.

Sea of dwarves.

or too rapidly. The dwarves should start to shuffle slowly at first, and then in larger groups.

If the characters try to stay low, they can explore for some time - the shuffling, dead dwarves aren’t very alert. They can alert each other through the spirit world if they see an intruder. Once one of them sees a character, they will all start to wander out and attack.

Combat with the DwarvesCombat with the dwarves is simply a matter of realising that the characters cannot win the battle and then finding a good route to retreat. If they retreat up the stairs, they will enter the upper level, and may be able to destroy part of the stairs, making sure that the dwarves don’t follow. If they enter the kitchen then they can exit through a hole in the side which leads down to the outer ring. If they enter the workshopsthey can escape through a hatch in the ground, leading to an abandoned prison and then out at the base, just like the kitchen's pit. If they enter the living quarters, the halls will quickly fill up with the walking dead. However, the living quarters have various paths in and out, and the characters may be able to give the dwarves the runaround or may be able to crawl out of one of the few windows which look to the outside.

In the living areas, little dead dwarves wander out from almost every room to greet them. However, if they are quick, they will be able to avoid all damage for a time. Characters with Earth magic may also be able to pass between walls, or even to the level above, some of which is the roof, while other sections of the ceiling lead to the upper level.

If the players want to give the dwarves the runaround, ask them whom they’re following. That character’s player can then make a Creative & Academics check, requiring 2 hits (this can be done even without Academics). If sie succeeds then the character has correctly figured out a direction which will allow minimal contact with the dwarves. If sie obtains only 1 hit then the characters will be blocked by six dwarves before exiting. If the roll fails then the characters will be boxed in by twenty dwarves on one side and another one hundred and fifty slowly approaching from the other.

Attributes: Mind 1, Body 2 (Slow: -10 to Initiative)Skills: Grapple 1Equipment: Some of the dwarves still have swords, daggers or axes, but most have to simply grapple their opponents.Talismans: Some few of them have special necklaces around their necks, formed by the bones of little animals. Once they have been stabbed in the chest the character who has stabbed them will transform into a mouse. Each turn a die is rolled, and if 5-8 comes up then it is treated as a hit location, and

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that location transforms to resemble a mouse and becomes unusable until the transformation is complete.

The dwarves have no weapons. They only have 2 attack dice to roll each, and will use it to grapple at the characters. They may also form groups, pooling their dice together and lowering the difficulty, as per the dwarves in the hallway outside the citadel. Generally, they will all go for a single target. For example, if there are four characters and five shambling dwarves, the dwarves will have five dice rolled for them. Each one that comes up as a 2 or more is a hit and will negate the character’s die pool by 1 for all future rolls (because they are grappling, not striking). If two come up as the same number then the dwarves have grabbed that part of the character’s body and taken a healthy bite out of it. Each player who successfully attacks (and therefore stuns a dwarf) will take away a single dwarf’s attack.

With a hundred dwarves on the loose, the only way to destroy them all will be to lure them into one of the traps on the bridges. The South bridge (upon which the characters arrived) has a suitable trap which will throw all of the dwarves off the bridge (though some may survive the fall). As to the other bridges, see their individual descriptions.

Living QuartersThe various staff, tradesmen, travellers, academics and a number of other dwarves and who used to live in the citadel mainly bedded in the halls of living quarters. These halls look

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Dwarven

artifacts.

Endless corridors

and rooms.

Dark.

a little like a stony hotel with room after room. The map is provided for illustration, but when describing the story, it may be easier to forget about it and think in very general terms about long corridors and a many different turn-offs, without trying to stick to the exact image given.

The rooms contain nothing but standard items for these people - pick axes for miners, lists and maps for the cartographers, cooking equipment and miniature kitchens for various families, weapons for the guards and even children’s toys (such as small axes and wooden dolls of dwarvish heroes).

The KitchenThis great kitchen once fed over a thousand dwarves. It contains all the necessary and usual cooking equipment, though almost all of the food is rotten and sour. There are three barrels of ale which are still in good condition, and two barrels of vodka.

The kitchen also contains a large pit which connects later to many small chutes that go up to toilets in the living quarters. It is three feet wide and connects to the lower levels, exiting twenty feet above the ground. Characters trapped in the kitchens by dwarves can attempt to enter this tunnel and exit to the lower regions.

The WorkshopsThe five workshops were kept away from the living quarters of the dwarves in order to make sure that they did not keep everyone in the normal living quarters awake. Their walls are also made of exceptionally strong stone, and cannot be penetrated easily, even by magic.

Inside are tongs, fires, firewood, anvils, swords of all manner of quality, axes of every conceivable shape and size, clay moulds, stone moulds, cooking utensils and so on.

Next come a storage room for finished products on the West side and a storage room for tools on the North. The storage room for tools doubles as an office, and has a desk with a number of shelves behind it for parchments which detail who made what and where things come from.

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Hammers and

flammables.

Trapdoor to

prison below.

Rotting food

stench.

Vodka barrels.

Pit leading to

lower sewage pipe.

The Four BridgesOf the four bridges, three lead into mines. Each one has doors identical to the pair the characters have already gone through. A fourth North bridge used to connect the citadel with the great dwarven city, but since the coming of the lich, the dwarves have retreated and have collapsed most of the city.

The East Bridge

This bridge is broken. The mines that lay on the other side are forever completely unreachable, as the gap between the door and those mines is over sixty feet. The little stream of water that runs through the great hall has built up here and covers most of the ground leading up to this area before falling off the edge of the broken bridge. If the doors are ever closed, it will start to build up (the doors are watertight) and eventually the water will reach the level of the murder holes (5 feet off the ground).

If the dead dwarves follow the characters to this bridge, the characters had better turn back quickly - there is no way forward and the drop will kill anyone. It is possible for the characters to step onto the bridge and have someone close the door behind them (there is a lever on the inside, just as with the first bridge’s door). The person on the inside will have to step out of the murder hole or be killed by the mass of dwarves, but it will keep the characters safe for a while. Of course, the dead do not quit, and the characters will probably starve to death before long or hurl themselves off the edge in despair.

Finally, it is possible to push the dwarves off the edge. If the characters can get the dwarves to this door, a total of 4 hits on a grappling task (from any number of characters combined) will push the dwarves off the edge. If there are many dwarves, most will file into the barracks before being pushed off, but once the barracks are full, the rest will simply tumble to the harsh stone below and break.

The West Bridge

The Western bridge leads into further mines, though a recent cave-in has sealed off the mines to anyone who doesn’t have a small complement of dwarvish miners. Still, the lich fears attack from this side, so it has stationed thirty dwarvish zombies on the bridge and closed the door behind them. The bridge has a very slight slant - barely noticeable at first. Once half way along the bridge, ice will begin to form on it, and anyone standing on it will fall to their death unless they quickly grab onto the upright edge (Agile & Athletics roll required with a -2 dice penalty).

If the characters manage to lure the shambling hordes of dwarves to this bridge then once the spell activates the dwarves will fall to their death.

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They are not so stupid that they will follow their brethren once they see danger, but the spell will not activate until a hundred or so are on the bridge, but which time it will be too late for all of them.

The North Bridge

This bridge is not merely a bridge - it is an artificial tunnel. It is a bridge built with two walls and a roof so that nobody may enter it from above or below, but only from the citadel. It lead, long ago, to the dwarven city in the rocks. The citadel stood at the heart of all the mines, ready to guard against anything that might come from the depths to attack the great dwarven city of Stegon Blegúd. The city has since been purposefully caved in by the dwarves to avoid the lich reaching any further.

The PrisonsA hatch, placed at the end of the great hallway in the workshop, leads down to a few rooms set aside for prisoners. They have reinforced doors and are entirely barren, but are otherwise similar to the living quarters above. One door, which was locked and barred from the inside by a rotten piece of wood leads down a long set of winding stairs to a gate at the citadel’s base and out into the great depression which surrounds the citadel. It was here that the lich first entered the citadel, killed all the prisoners and used their corpses to create an undead platoon. See above for a description of this entrance – it is trapped with a spell which rots all wooden items.

The Inner Citadel

A large flight of stairs leads to the upper balcony, and from there to a number of different locations. During the great battle, when the lich was coming up these stairs with a small army of the dwarven dead to destroy King Longskegg XXVIII, the dwarven guards smashed the stairs and made a hasty retreat. They are still broken, and so no zombies have been able to make it to the upper level. The staircase moves upwards in jutting straight lines and the gap is only six feet wide. The characters will be able to jump to the other side and pull themselves up if they have Athletics 1 or if they achieve a single hit on an Agile roll. Once up, the players will have successfully run away from the dwarves in the area.

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Up on the balcony, the characters will be able to see below to the grand hallway. If the dwarves have been alerted to their presence then they will be congregated below, and will start to swarm around the staircase.

With enough time and enough dwarves, it will be possible for the little rots to climb up. The first twenty or thirty will fall down the hole, but their bodies will soon fill up the gap in the staircase, allowing the others to climb up to the balcony. Of course, this will take them a long time, during which the characters may be able to attack them. If the rotting dwarves are in a bad position, they will back off after ten or so of their number have been taken out of action (they will take a while to figure out that they do not have the upper hand).

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The Servants’ QuartersThe king’s advisors, some of the higher ranking servants and the king’s family lived in these rooms. They are large and expensively furnished and all of them have their own light spells cast which start to come on as soon as anything living enters the room.

The books are mostly on ancient dwarvish poetry and technical works on minerals. One of them deals with the forming of the world and various theories on how dwarves came into being (dwarves universally reject the human tail that they were formed from the maggots which writhed around the feet of a giant).

The jewellery is mainly male - rings to tie into one’s beard, thumb rings, ornate axes studded with gems, coloured crystal collections, medallions featuring various dwarvish heroes and many more trinkets. All in all, there is enough wealth for everyone in the party to accumulate the History: Wealth 2, or for someone in the party to accumulate Wealth 3.

The Ghouls

The lich captured the last group of prisoners, or at least, captured what was left of them. He selected three and force-fed the other prisoners to them bite by bite. Eating human flesh damages the soul, but it strengthens the body. The resulting men were ghouls - they are strong and quick, but also half dead. They do not need to breathe more than once an hour and only require to eat once every few years, though they are constantly hungry for human flesh. They have sat in the throne room, coming to terms with their new condition, for some time. They are truly cursed. They have an abominable stench, and can be smelt from over a hundred yards away by anyone (though once the doors are locked, nothing can be smelled from outside). Their touch is so painful that is will freeze someone where they stand with shock.

They are intelligent, but so far have proven disobedient. Their minds have become warped and they are very arrogant about their newfound abilities.

Attributes: Mind 2, Body 3 (Fast), Grace 0 (Manipulative)Skills: Strike 2, Dodge 1, Grapple 2, Stealth 2Enhancements: Each time a ghoul makes a successful strike against a character, that character will take a -2 penalty to all Body actions for the rest of the scene.

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Expensive items

Ghoulish stench.

Three ghouls in

hiding.

The ghouls, are lightning-quick, and they know it. They will assume that the characters are their food, and then will attempt to kill a single character, and then run away to safety. If the group chases them then they keep running until one of the faster members of the group gains the lead. At that point they will attack hir on hir own. Once someone has been struck, they will leave hir alone and focus on the others. The ghasts will always attack whomever looks strongest when given the option.

If the characters let them run away, they will follow them, remaining just out of reach but never so far that the characters forget that they are there - following them. They will wait until the characters become tired, or until they encounter another monster. At that point they will attack the characters while they are engaged with the other monster.

The ghouls will begin the encounter together, and will all hide behind a curtain in one of the royal suits. If the characters are searching around for jewellery, they will rush them unexpectedly from behind. The smell may be everywhere, but the characters still don’t know what it making it or where to expect attack from. Roll a stealth task for the ghouls and ask the characters to roll with Insightful & Vigilance.

The GardenThis grand garden is where the dwarves grew some meagre plants and fungi for the troops who lived here and the travellers who were passing through. In addition, they grew various hardy, underground vines which could be used to make ropes and various other tools.

Far above the citadel is a cavernous stream which drips onto the citadel's roof and then meanders through a trough in the stone until it reaches a hole in the roof placed above the garden. The streaming water pours into a basin in the guarden and provided water for all of the plantlife and for the dwarves. There

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Rotting plant

smell.

Gong of light.

Swamp up to the

knees.

The swamp giant.

Magic riddle for

the throne-room.

was never any worry about it overflowing because water was in constant demand, and without any day or night in the deep mountain, the dwarves never stopped coming for water. Since the dwarves' death, the bowl has overflown, the entire garden has become a murky swamp and a steady earthy stream flows across the hall, down the stairs, through the grand hall and out over the broken East bridge.

A spell was set upon the walls which lit up everything in the garden as clear as day; this helped the various plants to grow. In order to replicate daylight, the light would only come on when a gong was sounded. That gong is sitting beside the entrance to the garden, and the light spell is currently inactive. However, if anyone were to hit it, the light would come on and the entire room would be illuminated.

As a result of the light spell, the fungi, vines, vegetable shoots and the few trees in the garden all lean towards one of the two walls. All except those in the middle. This has the effect of making the garden look rather like a haircut with a centre-parting and a bad mohawk in the middle, though the dwarves considered it a rather natural state for a garden to be in.

The garden's front doors have been cast open and remain open still - the characters will smell it as soon as they are on the upper level and can walk in whenever they please. On the right hand side they will see a bright, brass gong with the striker at its hand side. Magical symbols representing fire has been carved into the walls all around, and into the gong. Striking it lights up the room.

As they step into the swamp, it will cover them to their knees. The swamp inflicts a -2 dice penalty to anyone attempting to move or dodge. The sludge can never stop someone moving entirely, but it can slow them down a lot.

The Swamp Creature

The lich has spent some time in the garden, and has enjoyed the changes which have come over it since the flooding. It has cast a spell on a set of vines so that they grasp at anything living which wanders too close to them. When a group of prisoners wandered too close to them and were bound, he decided to magically bind them to the plants with a combination of necromancy and earth magic. One was selected as the ‘base’. His limbs were stretched and an additional humerus was added to each arm, giving him two joints in the arm below the shoulder. Extra rib-bones were added and another joint in the legs. Additional joints were added to his hands and the end fingers were filed down to make stabbing claws. He is now nine feet tall. The vines are now a part of

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him - they are rooted into the earth that is stuffed into his enlarged rib-cage. A little flesh still hangs from him, but it is barely noticeable under all the swamp much which slides over his outers.

The vines act independently of the swamp creature, and will grasp and attempt to kill people all on their own.

Attributes: Mind 2, Body 3 (Strong)Skills: Strike 1, Grapple 2, Athletics 2Special: Anyone attempting to strike the swamp creature suffers a -1 penalty due to its immense size. Anyone in close proximity takes an additional -1 penalty to all actions due to the terrible stench. Finally, the vines that surround him have 3 dice with which to grasp at anyone (their TN is 5). They cannot kill anyone, even with 2 hits to the same location, unless they manage to grab the head, but once an arm or leg is completely restrained, the victim will suffer the normal penalty, just as if the limb were crippled.

The characters will first encounter the giant swamp creature via its vines. It spends most of its time lying down in the swamp, leaving the vines to trail off this way and that where they can grab any passers-by. The characters will feel the vines across their legs, but the vines don't feel any different from the other foliage within the great garden, so they will be ignored. At this point the vines will grab one of the characters by the leg and pull them under (roll for the vines, re-rolling for another target if they fail to grapple the first character), then the swamp creature will stand up and grasp at the other characters.

If any of the characters dodge, remember to take 2 dice away from them before they roll, but do not let them change action - the characters’ first instinct will be to dodge just as much as the players', and the characters can be just as surprised about how futile it is.

The Gate

At the far end of the garden is a large magical symbol, drawn in dwarvish blood upon the wall. The lich wrote a riddle to the stone of the mountain to allow him to pass. The riddle is part of the spell’s symbol, and was tied to the mountain with the focus of the king (because the dwarf king, Longskegg XXVIII is a focus for the entire mountain realm which he owns). This spell allows the lich to part the stone anywhere around the citadel - he simply states the name of the mountain in the old tongue and it parts for him. However,

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when first drafted the spell was merely meant to allow him to pass into the throne room of the king, and so that part of the spell will allow anyone to walk through the stone so long as they are standing next to the symbol and speak the old word for ‘mountain’. The language is an old fashioned version of the common tongue of Vanaheimr, and anyone without the Ancient Culture History will have to take a Creative & Academics test in order to read it; each hit provides three lines of the riddle.

Stand at my foot and see my thigh.Stand at my shoulders and you’ll be high.

On my chin rolls a big white beard,My crown by the wise is always revered

The top of my head is completely baldStill I keep a heart of gold

My boots are buried deep, beyond all need.Say my name and I’ll let you proceed.

Answer: A mountain

If any characters guesses the answer, the stone will move away like hot butter from a flame and allow the characters to enter the throne room where the lich sits. It will shift back before long, but the command word will allow exit as well as entry.

The Throne RoomWhen the lich came, King Longskegg XXVIII turned and locked himself in his throne room along with his three best guards. This move was not popular among his subjects or his guards, but it also wasn’t terribly important, as it was not ten minutes before he and his guards were killed by the lich. The great door is well made and the lock is not easy to pick, but the lich found little problem in parting the stone wall from the garden, where the wall is thinner. It walked through the garden and approached a wall which joined up with the throne room, then opened the stone wall with a ritual of stone-shaping.

King Longskegg XXVIII is still in the throne room, covered in official plate armour and the family emblem (an axe and a hammer crossing each other). He sits still on the throne, while the lich is standing upside down on the ceiling.

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The three guards are sat around the lich and the king. In the centre of the room is a large bucket of water which the lich has had fetched from the kitchens. It contains two sentient water golems - pools of water which can take the form of men and move about the room. At the room’s side are two suits of dwarvish plate armour, filled with coals. The lich has animated them so that the coals can move about as they please and strike at people. They each have an axe, but cannot wield it very well. Instead they prefer to grasp at people and then enflame themselves, shooting out fire and coal-sparks in every direction.

Water Golems

Attributes: Mind 2, Body 3 (Agile)Skills: Grapple 2Magical Skills: Water 3Special: The water golems are insubstantial, so they are difficult to damage and cannot damage or grapple others. However, they can also turn into ice – this means that they can be damage and can't move, but all their attacks retroactively inflict damage.

When insubstantial, they do not have any hit locations. Any total of four hits will kill them. However, jabs and slabs will not hurt them – only heavy strikes of 2 or more Damage (i.e. two dice on the same number) affect them – hits of 1 Damage are ignored entirely. They can still grapple areas as usual, but their grapples cannot kill or restrict the target's dice. However, as a free action they can turn to ice and make all grapples or Damage real. For example, a golem rolls 2, 6, 3 – it wraps around a character's waist, but doesn't have much effect. On the next turn, it rolls 8, 8, 1 – two hits on the head. On the same turn it then turns to ice, completely incapacitating the character. Other characters can hit the ice golem while in this state just like any prone target, however, the character who is being grappled will receive half the Damage that the ice golem receives.

The golems know that the lich can resurrect them once their souls are thrown from their watery bodies, so they do not fear death and will not back away from a target just because they are being struck.

Coal Golems

The coal golems appear as full suits of dwarven armour, filled with burning coals. They can move and attack as if the coals were muscles and tendons.

Attributes: Mind 1, Body 2 (Strong)Skills: Grapple 2

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Magical Skills: Fire 3Equipment: Plate armour (3 dice of protection), Warhammer (+2 attack)Special: The golems can explode in a torrent of flame while grappling someone. This only occurs on the turn after they have latched onto them. The burns cause 4 scatter damage to the target and 2 scatter damage to anyone within 5 feet.

Armoured Undead Dwarven Guards

These elite dwarven guards have taken their exceptional strength into death. They haven't lost their superlative armour either. Aside from that they are standard dead dwarves.Attributes: Mind 1, Body 2 (Slow, Strong)Skills: Grapple 1, Strike 1Equipment: Broadsword (+2 to attack while doing nothing but attacking), plate armour (3 dice of protection).Special: Being dead, they can take an additional hit to any location except the head. It will take 3 hits to destroy their arm as usual (inflicting a -2 penalty) but 2 hits will do nothing to them.

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The King

The king still sits on his throne, now dead. The lich has reanimated him, with his original soul. In a manner of speaking, he's still alive; or at least sentient. Of course, being dead he has had nothing to do for some time, and the lich has told him that if he destroys himself then his soul will be bound to the nearest toilet instead of his old body; so the king just sits there, gathering age and decay.

He will defend himself if attacked, but will not move to attack. To the king's right, The Bloodstone stands upon a podium.

Attributes: Body 2, Mind 2Skills: Grapple 1Equipment: Plate armour

The Lich

The lich has a joint of metal around his neck, keeping his head in place. In his left hand is a wooden staff. He uses his knowledge of Forces magic to stand upon the ceiling. He has a serious people phobia, and doesn't wish to go near any of the characters.

As a result of his ill-fitted and rusty neck-brace, a single point of Damage to the head releases the lich from his body. His spirit will almost certainly return, but for the time being he will no longer be a threat to the characters.

Attributes: Mind 4 (Determined, Insightful), Body 2 (Slow, Strong), Grace 1 (Hideous)Skills: Academics 2, Facade 1, Vigilance 2, Stealth 1Magical Skills: Air 1, Water 2, Earth 2, Force 1, Form 3, Necromancy 2Talismans: Staff of Smoke & Levitation (once broken, the wielder transforms into smoke. The wielder can walk up walls and across ceilings), Skull pendants (the necromancer's arms and hair are covered in the skulls and bones of small animals, each of which is enchanted to turn anyone who strikes them into an animal. Roll for the result: 1-3: Rat, 4-5: Dog, 5-7: Hawk, 8:

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Toad). If a character strikes the lich on the head or arms for a single hit (but not a double) then one of the pendants is struck, and the character begins to transform into the chosen animal, as per the Polymorph spell.

The King’s Room

At the side of the throne room sits a series of rooms where the king and his advisors slept and kept their personal possessions. The king's bed is ornate, but small and practical. The walls contain carvings of him attacking the Midgard Serpent with an axe. The store-room contains some expensive food and ornate axes (completely impractical, but worth a lot).

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The Bloodstone

The bloodstone does indeed reveal the ancestry of anyone touching it. Once it is held by someone, a blinding light emanates from it, and visions appear in the light of the ancestors of whomever is touching it. A normal vision may look something like this:

There are some people setting the mud for an old house; they rear cattle and have a child in it then when trouble comes over the hill they flee to the forest and the woman has a child but when the child grows up and the men from across the hill come again the child fights and the parents are killed so he joins the army and fights some more with the men over the hill; stopping

only when an arrow lands in his thigh and though it never properly heals he finds the strength to till the soil and transport the pigs so that he can raise his own family then your father’s face - the younger of the four boys, though his

face never look quite right until the beard forms and he meets your mother in the local tavern while too drunk to stand up yet sober enough to dance so

they move in together and have more children and expand the boundaries of the farm after all the neighbours die from disease or from going to war.

After the blindingly quick family history, the gem goes quiet, and will never activate for that person to see again. It is so bright and strange a vision that anyone in the area will immediately stop what sie is doing and look towards the bloodstone’s show until it finishes.

Of course things are going to be different for most characters. The first character to touch the bloodstone will find that sie is descended from a god. The usual story of traders and farmers will become evident, but sie will also see a strange feast taking place on top of a mountain when it comes to one of hir parents. Nobody seems to feel the cold and strong men throw lightning from the mountain top, back onto the village below. There are beautiful women, making the men laugh, and a man as tall as a young oak kicking stones over to a nearby mountain. Each of the characters has some descendent from this same feast - the feast at which Lóki enticed the gods of vallhalla and other places and a number of mortals all drank from the fermented nectar of the enchanted tree and dance together.

The moment a single character touches the bloodstone, the scene stops and the character’s history flashes briefly before hir eyes. The entire room stops fighting and stares in awe at the lightshow (assuming that they were fighting). Ask the player what kind of god hir character would be

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descended from. It could be one of the classics - Thór, Tyr or Brunhila - or one of the less popular gods - Hel, Hermodhr or Vali - or a god that the character wishes to make up. It could be a great being from Vanaheimr or a powerful being from Niflheim (anyone is appropriate, except for Odhin (who was not present) or Lóki). Take a brief note of the character’s proposed ancestry and tell the player to name a few powers that hir character should have. Wrap these suggestions around the enhancements in the Polymorph core book and give the player four points of enhancements. For example, the player may say that sie wants a character descended from a giant who was a master of illusion. The narrator suggests being super-tall (for 2EP) and having an Affinity for Illusion magic (3EP). The illusion skill is required for the Affinity to work, so the player will have to take it later in order to use the Affinity. Meanwhile, the player has overspent by 1 point, so the Flaw ‘I can’t turn it off!’ is taken, and signifies that the character will forever be tall, with no ability to shrink down to normal size, and as soon as the illusion spells are created, they will dance around the character, changing hir appearance randomly.

When assigning powers to players, remember the following points:

● Each player can only have one character who turns out to be the child of a god - the rest are normal mortals. It should be the player’s favourite character.

● The first character to touch the orb must be the child of a god. If this is not a favoured character, then the player’s favourite character will still be the child of a god. However, the additional enhanced character will become an NPC at the end of the scene, or perhaps at the end of the adventure.

● Ask the players to describe what powers they should have then translate their suggestions into powers described in the rulebook. If a player wants to think about it then leave the points unspent. Don't allow the story and combat to grow stale while a single player makes decisions or hums through the core book as if leafing through a Winter catalogue while the other players wait. Consider putting a minute's timer on selecting powers and then move onto the next turn of combat.

Once the first player has the blood orb and hir powers, it’s time to resume combat. The lich may have been stunned by the light but it recovers quickly and continues to cast offensive spells at the characters.

The encounter may go something like this:

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Round 1

The characters confront the lich and start to shift their positions. One of them throws a spear at a fire golem to no effect.

Round 2

The water spirits reach the characters. The characters try to hurt them but cannot. Both grapple characters, covering their head. The lich opens the ground around the characters’ feet with an Earth spell, and all have to roll Athletics to attempt to flee. One falls in attached to a grappling water golem.

Round 3

A party mage with access to Water magic enacts a quick spell to throw one of the water golems off a character and onto one of the fast-approaching coal golems. The other water golem freezes itself, incapacitating the victim’s arm. The remaining fire golem explodes over a number of characters causing minor burns.

Round 4

The characters band together to attack the remaining fire golem and the three dead dwarves in plate armour start swinging their broadswords into the characters. One of the characters breaks off from the rest and attempts to grab the bloodstone and the combat ends for a moment for the vision to take place. The lich attempts to turn one of the characters into a rodent using Form magic, but the spell fails.

Round 5

One character, with the newfound powers of a god, throws off the dead dwarven king and casts a long-range, divine blast of lightning at the lich. The other characters continue to set into the dead dwarves in plate armour.

… and so on, with further character death, and perhaps some more enhanced characters, all culminating in the lich turning into mist and fleeing the scene.

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The Return Journey

On the return journey, the characters will leave the way they came. They will probably face all the creatures they have previously run. This will might include the hordes of dead dwarves and the svarts, possibly even the Herrafnykur.

The characters will probably not be able to get through the hundred dwarves without thinking their way around the problem – even with their newfound powers a hundred undead dwarves cannot be taken on with brute force along. By the time the main battle in the throne-room is over, the dwarves will probably have made it up the stairs by standing on those who fall down the gap. The characters might be able to run away if they can lure enough dwarves into the upper area and then drop the to the bottom floor, fifteen feet below.

Whether the first group of svarts were killed or not, there should now be five more who have met up with the scouting group and who wish to take the bloodstone from the characters. They will remain in hiding and fire upon them of a sudden from a dark mine passage.

The LichKlaus was a small child who never played with the other children. Even if they hadn’t teased him so much, the way they would run around and didn’t do what they were told (by him or their parents) always unnerved him. He was a terrible farm-hand, so he was taken in by a local magician at a young age and taught magic. He learned quickly, but never got over his overpowering fear of people. In fact, the more he interacted with magic, the worse it became. One night, he got into a row about a particular way to freeze water and the symbols that his master insisted on using. Klaus boasted that he could do it without the need for clumsy symbols, but his master simply hit him across the head and told him to get back to study, then took a great deep gulp from his mug of ale. Klaus’ cold rage was quick, and he was sore after the strike to his ear, so he commanded the water to freeze while it was headed down his master’s throat. His master choked to death, and Klaus wasted no time in freezing the body completely after dragging it into the snow outside.

He would later travel the land, asking for simple services in return for his spells. When people took him up on his offer he demanded high payment. When they refused, he would blight all the land for miles around. He would always appear all of a sudden and quite unexpectedly so that the villagers

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would have no time to think about his offer and less time to gather arms against him.

He took up servants to make the travelling easier, but he was never happy with them. They never did exactly what he told them and would always want to stop working for food or sleep or other things that he never cared for - even in himself. Soon, he mastered the magic of forms, and would change his shape into all manner of strange things - bats, wolves and mist. He particularly liked wandering wherever the wind would take him, high above the houses and completely immune to the cold.

It was not long before he ran into a town which was prepared for him. A village seer had seen his coming and rallied the townsfolk. They did not approach, as the spirits would be watching, but they did ready their weapons and wait for the cry. Once he had started talking to an old lady on the outermost section of the house, the villagers came at him with sniffer dogs, forks and flails. They shoved him and his manservant to the ground and buried their farming tools in his neck, then threw his body into a shallow grave in the ground.

Klaus had already cast a spell on himself which would guarantee that he would stay in his own body despite death or dismemberment. The head was just well enough attached that the body could respond, and to he gathered himself together, bound his head to his body with loose rags of clothing and stole away from town in the middle of the night.

Since then he has preferred the underground where it is always night. He has searched and searched for a place to make his own, but has found no cave to his liking, and nowhere that he feels is safe. Over the years of isolation, Klaus’ fear of the living has only grown. He sometimes deals with his phobia by fleeing from people (or indeed anything larger than a small rat) and sometimes deals with it by killing people. He reacts to most mammals in the same way that an arachnophobe reacts to spiders - fight or flight.

Finally, after years of experimenting with magic alone in the dark and getting nowhere, he decided to take an underground place. The dwarvish citadel looked like the perfect place. The lich prepared a staff that would turn the wielder into smoke as soon as it was broken, and planned to use this as an escape route. Soon after, it turned its body to smoke using long and laborious magic to examine the defences of the dwarven citadel. Then one night, it entered.

It began by casting a spell for a watery trap to kill a number of miners in a deep pit. He raised all twenty of them from the dead to serve him, and gave the call out to a hundred nearby spirits to come to devour the souls of those dwarves who would be destroyed in the coming hours. It wandered with the undead army through the pit at the base of the dwarven citadel. They

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came in through a neglected bottom gate. Klaus stopped briefly to cast a spell that would ward against anyone entering after him. They then entered and killed all the prisoners. Luckily for the lich, there was nobody else around to see, and the dwarven halls are so thick that the dying screams of the prisoners were not heard above. With the swelling army, it entered the upper halls and began to freeze up the armour of the dwarven troops and then let the dead army devour them. Sigils had already been cast upon the dead troops such that anyone who plunged their swords into them would change into a little mouse. The dwarves were no match for such magic.

Finally, the lich changed its form into smoke while protected by the shambling hordes and went up to the citadel’s top level. It could not access the king’s room because the great door had been locked, and could not penetrate the wall at the side of the door because it was too thick, so he entered the garden, where there was a wall to the king’s chamber which was thinner than the rest. From there it entered and froze the armour of the guards who protected the king. It summoned the fire out of its holder to attack the king and his guards, and once the guards were dead, it summoned spirits into their body to make them rise again to fight.

When the lich had finally killed the king it strolled out and met the guards who had broken the stairs in an effort to protect the king and seal off the upper level of the citadel. When they were greeted by the dead king and broken guards, animated like puppets, they gave up their heavy axes to run down the stairs. However, the dead were too many for them, and they were torn apart.

Since then, the lich has entertained itself by exploring the citadel, getting to know its rooms, planning battles by ordering the troops around in mock battle plans and by getting to know the various dwarven texts that still hold some interest for the dead necromancer. The various prisoners that the king has sent down also hold some interest for him. It knows that they were sent after the bloodstone. It has no care for the object, but likes to play with the prisoners, and has started to pretend, on occasion, that the prisoners have been sent to it as a form of tribute from the king. It has even composed a number of letters to the king, thanking him for the prisoners, and describing how they have been improved and modified in the care of the citadel (though he has no way of sending these letters). In its head, the lich is an orderly king whose small kingdom is without crime and knows nothing but peace. All subjects are loyal and there is no unhappiness nor unpleasant daylight or unnecessary noise. He is the perfect ruler in the perfect kingdom.

Throughout the story, the lich will appear in two forms. Firstly, it will appear as the death fog - a fog which wanders through an area and raises the dead to

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fight with the characters. The lich takes a long time to reach this form through spells, concentration and the burning of the right kind of oak (something which is in limited supply but still present in the dwarven citadel). Its presence is not much mentioned in the adventure because it is quite unknown when characters will die. However, when they do the narrator should remember that they will rise again, and it will not be long before they catch up to the other characters. Of course, they will probably be no match for the characters, but they can still scare them, and the loss of one’s peace of mind is a terrible thing.

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