An ancient crypt, predating the modern kingdom that now sits around the Tomb, is now refuge to two necromancers who fled the place where they did their work after a coup in their number went awry.
Of the two, one is alive, Coriparios, and one, Galemor, is dead, restored to animacy with some of his spellcasting facility but little of his genius or talent as a researcher. In life, Galemor had been master of the expedition, which the apprentice Alvem also came down with initially, while Coriparios was one of the trio of students. As their situation in the depth of the dungeon worsened, Coriparios saw an opportunity to poison his master, kill him, reanimate him, and take his place. It almost worked, except for all of the wild creations that he was unable to bring back under control now that they are free.
Food became even scarcer, and Coriparios resorted to amputating his own limbs, eating them, and then reanimating the bones, lashing them firmly to his body. This has staved off hunger for a while, but food still remains scarce. His desperation has led him to eat poisonous plants from the level above to try to sustain himself, when he can’t get anything more nourishing. On seeing adventurers, his first priority will be food: taking theirs, or cannibalizing them. Even in his weakened state he retains his rein over the spells within his mind, and his whether his hunger allows him to memorize spells anew is irrelevant as his spellbooks are scattered and not with him.
Galemor, for his part, is much stronger, and fleshier (if rotten and bloated). While Coriparios is maddened, Galemor is taciturn, speaking rarely except to cast spells or occasionally say a few words to taunt a foe, in an eerie hollow voice, morose at his betrayal and being left as an ensorcelled undead creature. As he is dead, he cannot learn any further spells nor improve his abilities, and his creative spark that made him such a keen researcher is gone. He resents Coriparios but has no outlet to express this, a weapon that serves his former student’s will. He will be the one to strike first if adventurers show any reluctance to feed his master. If Coriparios were killed, he would have his freedom back, but none of the things he lost on death. He knows this, and resents it.
One of their missing spellbooks is in their former lair, a closet where statues are hidden when visitors to the temples no longer wish to see them, near the Lower Sigil Hall. They would like to have it back, but the Wraith Knight makes an attempt impossible in Coriparios’s weakened state.
The two have substantial treasure between them, and the crypt they rest in is oracular. The soothsayer interred there lived seven lives in a bygone age, and all seven incarnations are interred here. A visitor can ask each body one question on a matter of prophecy and a portent will come to them over the next few days, but once one body has been asked no others will answer until after the next midwinter, and each body will only answer once. The portent will be truthful, but may be cryptic; it could be a dream, or an ominous occurrence; something clearly out of the ordinary that will, in retrospect, be a clear sign. Typically the seven lives of the soothsayer are held to correspond to different fields of one’s life, and each body is asked about its own field; some claim this makes the portents clearer, or makes it more likely that you will be told good news. These seven domains are money, love, status/rank/interpersonal power, conflict/war/fighting, action/work/virtue, family & health, and becoming/personal change/what influence one has on others beyond direct contact (including how one will be known after death).
In addition to the soothsayer’s bones, who the necromancers have exhausted for themselves, they do have a fair sum of magical gear that could be taken as treasure. Some of it is useless to them now; printed books of no magical power, some of which have had their leather bindings eaten, or reagent bottles that are only useful combined with things that they no longer have with them, but they do have some that is immediately useful and that they will use for banditry if that will help them eat.
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Ten Leagues Beneath the Earth 