adventure - sword & sorcery - the bonegarden (lvl 12-14).pdf - Adventures - R5700

H H1

by Lance Hawvermale and Rob Mason

NECROMANCER GAMES

THIRD EDITION RULES, FIRST EDITION FEEL

www.necromancergames.com

THE BONEGARDEN

Credits

Design:

Lance Hawvermale and Rob Mason

Managing Editor:

Andrew Bates

Art Director:

Mike Chaney

Written by:

Lance Hawvermale and Rob Mason, with Travis

Hawvermale, Chad Coulter, and Rachel Mason

Layout and Typesetting:

Mike Chaney

Developer:

Bill Webb

Interior Art:

Brian LeBlanc & Mike Chaney

Producer:

Clark Peterson

Front Cover Art:

Rick Sardinha

Editor:

Kevin Walker

Cartography:

Jason Walton &Ed Bourelle

D20 Content Editor:

Erica Balsley

Front & Back Cover Design:

Mike Chaney

Assistant Editors:

Shannon Bennett and Josh Rensch

Playtesters:

Lee W. Burdett (gamemaster) with John Brown,

Anthony Gilley, Asa McCurry, and Joshua Mires

Product Update Password for The Bonegarden: Hawkmoon

This product requires the use of the Dungeons and Dragons® Player’s Handbook ,

Edition 3.5 published by Wizards of the Coast®

of the publisher is expressly forbidden. Necromancer Games, Necromancer Games, Inc. and the

Necromancer Games logo, The Bonegarden, Tome of Horrors, A Lamentation of Thieves, What Evil

Lurks and other Necromancer Games product names are trademarks of Necromancer Games, Inc. All

characters, names, places, items, art and text herein are copyrighted by Necromancer Games, Inc. Sword

& Sorcery Studio, the Sword & Sorcery Studio logo, Relics & Rituals and all Sword & Sorcery Studio

product names are trademarks of White Wolf Publishing, Inc and are used by permission. “D20 System”

and the D20 System logo are trademarks owned by Wizards of the Coast and are used under the terms

of the D20 Trademark License contained in the Legal Appendix. The mention of or reference to any

company or product in these pages is not a challenge to the trademark or copyright concerned. Dungeons

and Dragons® and Wizards of the Coast® are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, and are used in

accordance with the Open Game and D20 Trademark Licenses contained in the Legal Appendix.

This book uses the supernatural for settings, characters and themes. All mystical and supernatural

elements are fiction and intended for entertainment purposes only. Reader discretion is advised.

Check out Necromancer Games online at

http://www.necromancergames.com

NECROMANCER

GAMES

THIRD EDITION RULES,

FIRST EDITION FEEL

PRINTED IN CANADA.

Introduction

“Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and

as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so

is the other.”

—Francis Bacon

INTRODUCTION

The Containment Field

Getting into the Bonegarden is as simple as

passing through the gate or climbing over the

wall. However, the complex matrix of warding

magic placed upon the site is so powerful that no

person, living or dead, can find egress without

divine assistance. This assistance is relatively

minor; all that is required is for a cleric in good

standing with his deity to place a hand upon the

gate or wall and invoke one of the deity’s many

names. At that point, the cleric may pass without

restriction from the Bonegarden, along with any

other living creatures who are physically touch-

ing him. Any cleric may so affect the containment

field, as long as they are currently in good stand-

ing in the eyes of their god, regardless of that god’s

alignment.

Even spirits find no easy release. Even with the

assistance of a living cleric, no “soul” may pass

beyond the barrier, including souls that once

inhabited living bodies but were killed and “raised”

as undead. Likewise, no incorporeal form may

exit the Bonegarden, such as a ghost or someone

traveling via the spell gaseous form , nor do trans-

portation spells function unless the caster is the

cleric who is touching the wall and calling upon

his deity. In other words, though a wizard couldn’t

escape with teleport, a cleric following the guide-

lines above could make use of any transportation

magic at his disposal. Remember: The contain-

ment field forms a sphere around the Bonegarden,

extending one half mile into the air and one half

mile below ground. Anyone attempting to fly out

of the Bonegarden or dig underneath it encoun-

ters an impenetrable, invisible barrier much like

a wall of force . The field cannot be seen with any

sort of vision.

Adventure Background

The Bonegarden is a vast arena of death. Quite

simply, it is a circular cemetery one mile in diameter,

circumscribed by a 9-foot wall of fire-blackened stone.

Beyond the gate lies one of the true blights of the

Domain, a scorched and pock-marked graveyard that

serves as the prison for the restive spirits of thousands

of history’s most awful criminals.

According to legend, the Bonegarden was created

centuries ago, back when the region was first being

rid of the marauders and brigands who sought succor

in the Domain. All manner of thieves and killers were

buried here, many the victims of execution—usually

by hanging or protracted torture—others the unfor-

tunate criminals who were killed while trying to

escape incarceration. Sometimes the authorities of

the day would rout an entire bandit gang, round up

the survivors, and kill them on the spot in order to

save the fledgling judicial system an unnecessary

burden. Dozens of bodies were dragged to the

Bonegarden in wagons, at times buried in individual

boxes of thin pine, at other times simply heaped into

mass graves and left to the worms. Many famous

outlaws were interred here. In some cases, friends of

the deceased paid for expensive vaults, the corpses

placed on catafalques inside, the doors sealed for

eternity. The more common criminals, however, rarely

rated more than a shallow ditch and an unadorned

wooden marker. The Bonegarden, then, is a jumbled,

chaotic place, with a few dozen tall marble vaults,

hundreds of tombstones, a few thousand plain wooden

stakes, and countless unmarked graves, all arrayed in

no order whatsoever, making the graveyard into a

horrifying labyrinth, a dark and weather-blasted

monument to the gods of the dead.

The Bonegarden has not been formally used for

nearly a century. No bodies have been sunk into the

sterile soil, no coffins lowered into pits. In fact, no

sane person dares venture within a quarter-mile of

the place, afraid that the tortured souls bound within

the black wall might one day find a way to escape.

Such beliefs are not entirely unfounded. When the

mighty graveyard was first seeing use, those in charge

of its upkeep grew increasingly superstitious. What if

the dead did not rest easy? What if the souls of those

criminals returned from beyond and slipped through

the copper gate like smoke? To safeguard themselves

against such a grim fate, the custodians of the cem-

etery placed upon it a series of highly involved and

potent incantations, ensuring that no spirit—no

matter how powerful—would ever be able to leave

the perimeter described by the wall. Within that one-

mile diameter, the souls could roam freely, but they

would be unable to penetrate the magical barrier

placed upon the wall itself. In essence, they erected a

wall of force that cannot be breached by practically

any means.

However, their warding spells proved more effec-

tive than they anticipated. Not only did their magic

prevent souls from escaping the Bonegarden, it barred

them from leaving the mortal realm altogether. In

other words, the layers of spells were so confining

that they prohibited any spirit from passing on to the

afterlife. By trying to keep the dead villains confined

inside the wall, the spellcasters of that bygone age

THE BONEGARDEN

Breaki ng the Field

The question that every trapped soul in the

Bonegarden wants to answer is this: How

does one escape? If the PCs find themselves

without a cleric—perhaps their party’s cleric

is killed, or they simply entered the cemetery

without one—then they are hard pressed to

get out. They may be trapped for all time,

each day bringing the renewal of life-and-

death combat. However, through years of

research and thought experiments, several

individuals have suggested at least the theo-

retical possibility of breaking the field to

varying extents.

Sages have surmised that a potent dispel magic

spell could release the spirits of the Bonegarden.

The spell has a very difficult Dispel check (DC 60),

with failure likely resulting in a backlash of nega-

tive energy that would utterly destroy all living

things within sight of the cemetery walls. Some

have suggested that an enormous magical disrup-

tion, such as the destruction of an artifact or relic,

would have similar results. See Area 10 for details

of this possibility.

A devilish young woman calling herself

Odelia believes that the field could be col-

lapsed and the undead set free if priests of evil

alignment held hands and formed a ring around

the cemetery wall and simultaneously directed

their will toward such an end. However, tak-

ing into account the size of the average human,

it would take at least 3,000 priests to accom-

plish this task. Though bent on a seemingly

impossible mission, Odelia is currently mak-

ing preparations to attempt it, a most

appropriate path for a priestess of Orcus.

Finally, a more satisfactory method for the

people of the surrounding Domain has been

offered by the wizard Calamus. He has opined

that any force able to destroy all of the undead

denizens in a single night would break the

enchantment. Theory suggests that if all of

the souls were laid to rest at the same time,

they would remain that way forever. This too

is an impossible task, though some have tried

and paid dearly for their failure.

INTRODUCTION

also succeeded in trapping their spirits for all eternity

within the confines of the Bonegarden. Now every-

thing inside belongs to the undead. It has become a

war zone of the damned.

Even to this day the dead rail against the walls of

their prison, opening wide holes or flattening entire

sections; yet still they cannot escape. Graffiti tells

the story of years of tortured existence and the future

of the citizens of the Domain should the magic wards

ever fail. Though the wall is chipped and crumbling

in places, its magic remains strong, preventing all

attempts at escape by anyone not accompanied by a

priest of a living god (see The Containment Field

sidebar for details). Even the living are affected by

the wards, so that any creature venturing inside can

only pass back through the gate or over the wall if in

the presence of a cleric.

ruin, driven by madness, bloodlust, or an unquench-

able thirst for revenge. Many of these creatures roam

about mindlessly, shuffling through the maze of bro-

ken granite like rats looking for carrion, while others

have formed semi-organized factions with the sole

intention of wiping out their enemies and taking

control of the cemetery. Though quite a few of the

undead are active regardless of the hour, nightfall

always brings the periods of heaviest fighting. Literal

swarms of undead move through the Bonegarden

with the setting of the sun.

To make matters worse, these armies have a never-

ending supply of soldiers, thanks to a special side

effect of the warding magic. When one of the undead

is “killed,” its body falls quiescent until the next

night, at which point its spirit is forced back into the

corpse, whereupon it reanimates, fully invigorated. If

the body proves too mutilated for further use, the

spirit prowls the graveyard until a suitable replace-

ment is found. Remember: Slain undead always

return fully invigorated the next night. This holds

true for PCs who perish within the wall. The soul of

any mortal who dies in the Bonegarden is not permit-

ted access to the afterlife. Certain undead, such as

shadows, transform their victims into shadows by

reducing them to 0 hit points. But even if a PC is slain

by a creature without this spawn-creation special

ability, he or she nonetheless becomes an undead the

following night when their tortured spirit is forced

back into their body. This usually results in the hero

becoming a wight, as per the Dead Heroes sidebar.

Always keep this effect in mind during the PCs’ stay in the

Bonegarden .

Furthermore, the concentration of negative energy

is so pervasive that all undead benefit from a +2 turn

resistance, in addition to any turn resistance they

already possess. A cleric’s ability to turn undead

works normally in that undead successfully turned

flee the scene for 10 rounds (1 minute) , but only for 1

minute , after which time they immediately turn around

and hunt down the person responsible for their turn-

ing. Even if the cleric’s turning attempt is sufficient

to destroy a certain number of undead, they only rise

again upon the next nightfall, completely restored.

Finally, the Bonegarden is very resistant to all

attempts to use consecrate and similar magic. Con-

sider the cemetery to have spell resistance (27) that

a PC must overcome in order to cast consecrate inside

the wall.

The war of the dead is thus a perpetual one. The

soldiers are destroyed only to return the following

evening, and the fight goes on. The two largest and

most capable factions are under the tenuous com-

mand of a pair of old enemies named Ristiko and

Karthe. Years ago, Ristiko and Karthe were allies, co-

leaders of a successful robber band. However, the love

of a woman drove an eternal wedge between the two

Adventure Summary

This adventure defies a cohesive summary. The

heroes have come to the Bonegarden in search of

something—a certain wondrous item, the lure of

treasure, a missing friend, the answer to a lost riddle,

a rare spell component, or anything else you can

devise. The Bonegarden is a completely free-form

adventure, unique in the fact that it has no over-

arching storyline. The framework of the plot is yours

to construct. You should view the various sites de-

scribed in this book as “mini plots,” a network of

NPCs and perilous locations around which you can

formulate a larger tale. The section entitled Adven-

ture Hooks suggests several possibilities for this larger

storyline, though you are encouraged to invent one of

your own.

Whatever their ultimate reason for coming here,

the PCs soon find themselves in a continuous battle

for survival. As the undead inhabitants can never be

truly destroyed, each night sees renewed fighting,

forcing the PCs to combat the very undead they

defeated the night before. The PCs soon learn that

the cemetery is a place of attrition, where they are

persistently rampaged by legions of undead. The na-

ture of the Bonegarden is such that it transforms any

master plotline into a punishing battle for survival. If

refereed correctly, the relentlessness of the

Bonegarden should quickly be apparent to the play-

ers; the party’s goal is likely to be supplanted by the

simple need to stay alive.

The Status Quo

Inside the Wall

The tortured earth inside the wall is a battle-

ground. At least half of the bodies interred here have

transformed into one kind of undead or another.

Almost every type of undead imaginable roams this

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