The Plague Pit
the starting room — where you wake up dead
"Repugnant smell. Illuminated by moonlight the color of sour milk. Encircled by soupy fog whose tendrils occasionally creep down. Stale, warm air. Dark." Corpses at differing stages of decay. The PCs awaken here — in coffins under suffocating earth, or wherever the GM deems appropriate — and from this pit, every path leads further in.
Exits: any direction opens onto the Graveyard; west, a ruin-tunnel to Erhard's Tomb.
Loot the Bodies (d6, roll twice)
- 3d10 silver.
- d4 seemingly edible rations of dried meat.
- Pendant featuring a portrait of a mouthless man.
- Rusted but functional shortsword (d4 damage).
- 10' rope with noose still firmly tied.
- Pouch of white powder (win the next initiative roll automatically). Contains d6 doses.
Some refused to be buried quietly. Some, The Undertaker silenced herself. Some died. Some didn't. This is the room where that work ended up — the pit she filled. The Plague Pit is the dictionary of Graven-Tosk: every kind of corpse, in every direction. The PCs are one more entry.
Graven-Tosk, Graves Left Wanting, Erhard's Tomb, The Undertaker, The Deadn't, The Graveyard
The mouthless man on the pendant goes unnamed and unexplained. The white powder's origin and chemistry are silent — somewhere between battle-stim and grave-dust. Why the PCs are here in particular, and how they were buried, is the GM's hook. The ruin-tunnel west to Erhard implies the Plague Pit was dug after the tomb, and the dead were piled near the rich.