The Faded Apprentice

After his companion’s coup against the leader and teacher of their brotherhood, the last of the necromancer’s apprentices, a man named Bordrik, fled to hole up in a crypt in the far corner of the level, to avoid his master’s fate. There he starved to death while assembling an army of ensorcelled ghosts; he remains as their leader.

His minions fight like one might expect undead to fight, and they neither embrace nor entirely resent what they are compelled to do, instead acting almost as if it were not them doing it and any meetings between their axes and intruders’ flesh is an unfortunate accident with a guest to be apologized over. One of the ghosts who had the misfortune of being so bound had been a butler in life, and even as an undead weapon retains his unflagging politeness and sets an example for the others.

Unlike Coriparios, the newly-minted leader of their brotherhood, Bordrik has gained a great deal of clarity from giving in to hunger; except for the inexhorable call downward toward the Gate (which he might be able to obey, if only by forcing his way past ghosts who are closer) and his inability to memorize new spells (though his spellbook was lost during the fighting, mooting that point), it is as if he has merely transcended his needs. Indeed, he pretends that this is the case; through magic and force of will, he has transcended his body’s needs and can carry on despite his hunger. His cravings for food are matched only by his paranoia that anyone he sees must be an enemy and someone acting peaceable is merely a subtle enemy. He is much like his colleague Alvem that way. Offers of food, provided he can be persuaded it’s not poisoned, cursed, or otherwise baneful to him, are the easiest way to pass his paranoia should his aid be needed.

Blocking off the stairs with light was his idea. Not only does it prevent him from approaching the Gate as it calls him to, and made capturing ghosts for experiment easier, but it also keeps some potential interference out of the deep. This has made him an enemy of the Withering Eye and her coven. He has managed to bluff her into inferring that he knows her True Name, though he does not; thus she both hesitates to attack him directly and has forbidden the others in her coven from speaking to him.

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The Sixth Processional Stair

The Sixth Processional Stair is a simple broad road, with long flagstone steps leading down at a gentle incline under a vaulted masonry ceiling, wrested from the tiny crevices that the natural caverns at this depth were. Hanging from the keystone of the second arched rib supporting the ceiling is a large topaz, perhaps the size of a cherry, suspended from a silver chain, which shines with a bright yellow light that makes the path appear as if under daylight. A green sapling, with long thin leaves like rounded speartips and flowers with white filamentary petals almost like dandelion seeds surrounding a yellow core like a daisy’s, grows in a large red clay pot in an alcove where a statue that has since been removed once stood. The stair can be smelled even before the light can be seen, as this sapling emits a strong smell not unlike those of mint and honey.

The light here repels ghosts, a scheme by the Necromancer who once ruled this level. Like sunlight, like the forces that keep the ghosts in the Tomb once they enter, they dread to or even physically cannot approach this stair. Many ghosts trapped on this level, or above it, resent this fiercely.

The Withering Eye also resents the presence of this ghost trap, as the topaz used to create it was a gift to her from a family member from the Sun Court, originally one of a pair of earrings, stolen from her by one of the Necromancer’s apprentices. She cannot, however, recover it as the tree is a weakness of hers; the scent it emits is an oil to which she is allergic and which weakens her powers. A direct attempt to reclaim it would leave her vulnerable to ambush at the most critical moment.

The statue-niches on this stair are fewer, and the statues older. Though depth has preserved them, before the Gate was sealed they spent longer between times they would be touched or seen by surfacers. They tend to be older too, though; they are much more rarely replaced, as their depth deters the vainglorious and the expense deters all but the most determined of the pious.

The most eye-catching and ostentatious of the statues is King Barvold’s statue, which nearly bankrupted him to have constructed, and which he ordered be placed here upon his death (before he was laid to rest, while he was still nominally king as a ghost who could be consulted and who could enact supernatural punishment on those who defied oaths to him), to protect it from successors who might try to melt it down and recover the bronze from its body and the silver inlayed for the details of his face and the trim of his robe.

A statue of a young boy in a monk’s habit, a princeling sent off to a monastery to avoid a crisis with his brother perhaps, though the statue is old enough that scholars of royal biographers differ on who this might be, and perhaps not royal at all, hides a hole in the floor beneath it containing a large midnight-black fleece which has a magic power: laying it flat on the ground and then lifting it from the center will cause it to attach itself around a newly-formed yet adult ram, which will serve its summoner as loyally and intelligently as any dog, already knowing a great many commands. If shorn, the ram will vanish soon after, though the newly-cut fleece will have the same power. One who attempts to spin it while unaware of its power will find it tangled and resistant to any attempt to draw usable fiber from it, though one aware of its power could perhaps willfully destroy it (or disperse it) by spinning it into yarn or thread.

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The Master’s Refuge

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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The Lower Sigil Hall

In the great hall of what was once a temple where a mystery cult purified their worshippers to prepare for exalted status in death, now the sigils of foul spells cover the walls. As the War drew to a close, a necromancer from the surface came down here to research ways to turn the ghosts barred from passage through the sealed Gate into weapons, conscript them as soldiers, in service to his liege. This is the final, most expansive, and longest-occupied of his three laboratories, and the one where his experiments drew closest to success.

Unrest among his subordinates as his research continued well past the end of the war led to the ghosts bound to his service being unbound. Though at first glance this place seems abandoned, it is ruled over by a Wraith Knight, an agglomeration of spirits forced to take form as a knight and his arms and armor. The Wraith Knight is naturally invisible, although contact with live bodies (even fresh-shed blood) can remind it of what it once was and force it to take on an appearance, at least where it was touched. Thus as a battle goes on and blood has been shed and spouted over it it will be visible as a blood-drenched silhouette, showing far more blood than was actually shed.

The Knight is compelled toward combat, though it will not attack entirely surprisingly. Interlopers who enter the Hall will hear a challenge shouted that seems to issue from everywhere and nowhere at once, to the effect of “Trespassers! As you have entered my hall, you must do battle with me! Choose a champion and step forward!” For dramatic effect, other bound ghosts may manifest as torchflames around the walls of the room, to illuminate the arena

If a champion does step forward, the Knight will circle them briefly, invisibly, a clanking as if of metal armor close enough that it must be invisible, but no sooner are they sure it must be coming from one side than it clearly comes from the other. Then the Knight attacks, lunging with a sword from behind. The Knight is a capable fighter, as befits a knight, though preternatural strength, speed, and prescient insight a split-second ahead than through skill at swordplay as a proper knight would. It does, however, have a potent enough sense of anatomy to allow it to backstab as a thief, but with the arming sword that it wields

If bested, the Knight is not destroyed, or even disbursed, though some of its constituents may cease to manifest. Only one will be dominant and capable of speaking, which may or may not be the one that was dominant during the fight; the dominant spirit may even be amenable to negotiation, the curse urging it on to battle satisfied with its defeat.

The Knight has no means to enforce any terms encouraging a one-on-one duel, nor ability to punish groups who try to team up against it. It can pursue those who attempt to flee, but it won’t go far as it fears some of the other entities in the Tomb.

After the Knight is bested, the lead ghost might ask something of the people who defeated it.

1. To carry a message back to a living loved one. The ghost knows where they were (6 months ago, a year ago, five years ago, twenty years ago), but they may have moved or since died (and may be found elsewhere in the Tomb).
   
2. To bring a token (a flower or similar) from the ghost’s home to its grave or vice versa
3. To exact revenge (for a slight the ghost incurred in life that died unreturned, for a lifelong vendetta, for the ghost’s murder (or killing in war), for conscription, dispossession, or similar exercise of power), against someone (unrepentant, moving on, repentant, who acted under duress, who was wrongly identified)
4. To ensure proper care is given to something (that a plant, animal, or garden is not overgrown and has a proper caretaker, that a person is raised without undue struggle for the ghost’s absence, that an inheritance is divided or maintained correctly), which may or may not still need that care or even still exist/live
5. That a thing the ghost had in life be recovered and brought (to the ghost’s grave, to the Hall, to someone yet alive)
6. That something be made known (how the ghost died, an episode from its life, a work (a poem, perhaps) the ghost left unfinished)
   

Returning with word of a completed task protects you and your companions from the Knight’s wrath. While the ghost remains a part of the Knight, you may be safe from it forever, so long as you have completed your duties (returning with an incomplete task angers the Knight and makes you its first target); however, it is possible that completing these tasks instead allows the ghost so served to break free of the Knight. This angers the others, but later manifestations of the Knight will have an incomplete set of gear. Free enough, and the bindings will loosen enough that the Knight can disperse; with the Gate closed, this does not mean that they can pass on.

A statue in a hidden niche allows viewing through the eyes of the Star-Mad Duke, though the Knight cannot be seen waiting in ambush

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The Middle Sigil Chamber

Above the Floodwater Atrium is a chapel where a chimney once allowed it to be used as a camp for pilgrims. The last “pilgrimage” to rest here was the Necromancer, who used it as a base from whence to hunt ghosts.

He refined his art in binding ghosts into rage-filled conglomerates, slightly, during his stay here. The conglomerate ghosts who linger here are not chained to their binding circles, but are instead re-formed there when put down forcibly; he has also bound them to obey simple commands, such as “guard this place and kill or drive off anyone who enters, except present company”. The variety of standing orders, skills, and discipline necessary for an army on the march still escaped him, however, especially under sunlight, if the scrawled notebooks he left here are to be believed; these conglomerates are only marginally more useful as soldiers than the ones above. Still, he finds them promising.

The camp site itself reeks of fish, and the scent of long-extinguished magical flames. An enchanted fish trap remains, made from what was once an altarbox, along with notebooks and spent magical apparatus, some parts of which could be re-used were it cleansed under sunlight.

Most of the old chapel and camp has been destroyed or repurposed by the necromancer’s band. The old altar was thoroughly desecrated, used as a workbench by the necromancer, wooden pews broken apart and burned for firewood and stone benches carved with arcane sigils to be used as spell components. Rather than bring supplies and furniture from above as needed, the group scavenged, made, or conjured what they needed from the Tomb, or stole or in rare cases bought what they wanted from ghosts; their surface supplies were only the things they had left in caches in preparation for the trip downwards or brought with them to establish the camp.

They missed, however, a cache of wine hidden under a loose flagstone; it is something of a tradition among those who use this chapel on their pilgrimages into the deep to replace what wine is taken, when they can, or even to give more if there is room. Thus there are a variety of vintages, from across the land, some decades old, waiting for pilgrims to take them.

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