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Apophis 11-15-04, 06:34 PM

-Dear Readers, I thought i'd use my love for Eberron's world to write up a campaign adventure and post it here on the forums. I'm currently running a campaign here in my hometown of Clarksville and thought i'd actually write it up online so that you (the readers) could review it, enjoy it, and maybe use it in your own campaigns (with whatever creative freedoms you choose to take.). This is also a shameless plug to show off my writing capabilities, or lack there of, to the people at Wizards of the Coast since i'm an aspiring writer hoping to land a job. :D Whether or not I do land anything, my ambition is to post all the adventures I do run here on the forums for DMs to review and get ideas from. If you enjoy this, please post your comments. If you didn't enjoy it, please post your suggestions on how it might be improved. -Adventure: Trouble On the Rails Note: This adventure can take place at any time of the season, in any country or city where there is a lightning rail station. The adventurers should be of level 3 - 4, and preferably should be coming back from some earlier adventure back home or on their way to their next adventure. You should begin the adventure off with a simple paraphrase of the group arriving at the station; an example is given below. "You finally arrive back at the 'City of Towers', Sharn's bustling economy and metropolitan streets stretching out before you like a sea of humanoid races and cultures. In the distance as you make your way through the crowds you can hear the voice of vendors proclaiming fresh fruit. It's not long however before you navigate the bustling metropolis to the Lightning Rail station, the fresh smell of ozone welling upward from the bottom of the rails and stinging your nostrils." -The party can be prompted to secure passage upon the lightning rail in one of several ways. 1. The party could have some benefactor who's picking up the bill, possibly someone in one of the Dragonmarked Houses, and this benefactor is trying to transport them to some distant country to meet with one of his superiors. 2. The party might have been hired to transport a dangerous or valuble artifact to an organization in one of the cities of Karnnath or Thrane. 3. The party needs to get to the Mournlands or some other region quickly and the Lightning Rail prooves to be the most easily accessible means of quick transportation. -However you choose to start off the adventure, this particular trip is best used as something which the party isn't expecting. Ease your players into a sense of security, beleiving that the real adventure will happen once you reach the destination. The actual time that the trip takes will vary, but it should be something that stretches to a length of at least three or so days ride on the Lightning Rail. It's during the next to last day of the trip, when the PCs are going to be arriving soon to their destination that you want to inform them that not all is well. There is an odor which has begun to well up from the air ducts of the trains, something foul and odorous. Use the paraphrase given below. "Landscapes and scenary speed by the windows with ease and grace. The sun is shining pleasantly upon your passage and it would be a pleasant thing if it weren't for the foul smell rising up into your senses. It's a unique odor, like the ozone you smelt earlier at the station but vastly different. While that smell had only stung at your nose, this assaults it with a stench like that of a corpse. The attendants on the train assure you and the other passangers that it's nothing to worry about and that the matter is being looked into. The rumor amongst your fellow travellers is that something, a large rat possibly, got into one of the air ducts and died." -The truth behind the smell coming from the ducts is that there is a Stulking Cyst (pg. 120-121 "Libris Mortis") has found its way into the air ducts. How the Cyst might have gotten in there is anyone's guess, and it might have appeared in a variety of ways. Here are some examples given below. 1. The Stulking Cyst is a negatively charged undead that has stowed away from the region of Karnnath, seeking to escape the Karnnathi officials who were tracking its trail of victims. 2. The Cyst began as a living host who boarded the Lightning Rail either before, after, or exactly when the PCs had. The Cyst's host might have been a cherished NPC affiliated with the PCs or perhaps a member of the Blood of Vol cult, the Dragons Below, or the Order of the Emerald Claw who transported the Cyst and then sacrificed themselves to let it loose upon the PCs. -The trip shouldn't seem to have any other sort of problem. If the PCs inquire about the smell, they'll receive word from the employees on the train that it's being looked into but the source of the stench hasn't been found yet. It's then that you should introduce Wilhelm Grander (NPC Human Commoner lvl 1). He'll introduce himself to the party and invite himself into their company to begin talking. Use the paraphrase below. "The shadow of another passenger falls over you, the sight of a simple looking man dressed in a white tunic, brown trowsers, and leather shoes hints at a commoner's birth. He is tall and lanky in appearance, with matted brown hair and the look of someone who's probably working for House Orien as labor here on the train." Wilhelm will then say the following. -'Hello Gents, might I inquire as to your names? Mine's Wilhelm, and i'm hoping to make your esteemed acquaintances seeing as i'm on break. I hope you don't mind a little company.' If the party allows Wilhelm to join their company, he'll attempt to fleece them for a few drinks before starting light hearted conversation. After getting a little inebriated Wilhelm will let slip that there was an incident in one of the storage cars of the train that's shipping a valuable shipment of Nightwheel Ale from Karnnath. Apparently one of the laborers reported that he had seen something moving amongst the crates, leaving a trail of slime and ichor behind it. If questioned further, he'll reveal that when the other laborers got together to investigate the matter they found that the car was clean and there was no sign of any creature or ichor. He'll also go on to mention that the laborer who allegedly saw it is also on break right now. The party now can choose to seek out the other laborer to question him further or let it rest. If they opt to question the laborer, they should find him laying in the hallway of one of the passanger cars. If they don't look for him, they should immediately then hear a scream from a female passanger as she discovers the body. Upon seeing the corpse, use the following paraphrase. "The body of the laborer is laid sprawled out in the hallway, his chest and neck punctured in several places. The skin is drawn tight around the flesh, as if all the fluid within his veins had been sucked dry. The stench of death wafts upward and towards you from the body, a trail of shining ichor leading from the victim towards one of the air ducts." -The PCs should now be feeling nervous. The lights within the train are providing plenty of illumination as night is beginning to fall, but as the darkness encroaches be sure to play up on the feeling of something waiting for them to fall asleep or walk alone. The Cyst will go after anyone who breaks away from the group, and indeed most of the passangers now are locked away in their rooms soon after the announcement of the incident. The trip on the rails is still going to take at least one more day, and they've got to survive the night. However, surviving the night might not be enough for them. This can be seen if you've used some of the earlier examples on how to introduce the Cyst to the train. If the Cyst is actually some undead creature sent to retrieve an artifact or package the PCs are carrying, assasinate them, or perhaps deliver some form of retribution, the PCs may want to take steps to get it before it gets them. You can also force the PCs hand prematurely, especially if during the commotion they forget about whatever it was they may or may not have been guarding, and its stolen from their room while they're away by the Cyst. Alternatively, the PCs may want to find the Cyst in order to make their trip much easier if their next stop might be a military fort or outpost before their destination. If such an obstacle is in their path, the authority figures at that stop will detain the train until the creature can be found and exterminated. -The Cyst's hunger will begin to mount as night comes on, and the time from which it had last fed increases. If the party decides to hunt it down, they should encounter it where it was first rumored to have been encountered...in the cargo car. The Cyst will attempt to hide from the PCs, waiting until they have established amongst themselves a sense of security that the car is clean in their search. It's when they're turning to leave that the Cyst will employ its Darkness spell-like ability in order to throw them into confusion and give itself an edge. During the battle the Cyst's main objective is to drain the weakest looking PC (probably a spell-caster) of blood. If it looks as if the Cyst is loosing and is about to expire, it will attempt to infect one of the PCs with a Necrotic Cyst before retreating into the ducts. If this is accomplished, the PCs will have to worry later about removing the cyst (if they know about it) which is a bloody and potentially fatal surgical procedure which in all likely hood is probably only available in Karnnath. Alternatively, you may have the Cyst attack the party out of extreme hunger while they're resting in the car if they don't seek it out. In which case it follows the same procedure of attack as was previously described. In either case, when the party actually gets a moment to see the description of the cyst, read the following paraphrase. "The thing which lays before you looks like a mass of free-roaming intestinces, flayed organs, and a few odd rib bones. Dragging behind it's pulsating flesh like a peice of dead weight is a stoic, maggot-infested humanoid head. The center 'heart' of the undead creature begins to slow as its 'life' ebbs and the soft pulsing of the flesh soon ceases altogether" -Now that the immediate threat has been dealt with, the PCs can relax and enjoy some downtime until they arrive at their destination, where upon your campaign can pick up and continue from where it left off before the trip.