PULP FANTASY CORE
(c) Jerry Harris, 2012
Published here as Open Game Content.
Pulp Fantasy Core Index
Adventure: Best Left Buried
Here's a short, but expandable adventure for four investigators. It's presented in five parts with the villain stats at the end.
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Villains
Synopsis
The characters are hired to investigate the fate of a prospector named, Digger, who was lost in the West Virginia hills after reporting the discovery of tomb of ancient Egyptian artifacts. What warrants the characters’ involvement isn’t just the oddness of the claim, but the further reports of kidnappings, ritualized murder, and the undead. More disturbing than that, is the rumored interest of the so-called “Magic Mob.” Their presence almost guarantees a supernatural caper is afoot. This adventure is for four characters, with at least one wizard in the group.
Background
“Digger” is a well-known local character in the West Virginia countryside. Forever looking for a big valuable claim, as well as being an amateur archeologist, he has traveled up and down the backwoods hills and mountains of the state. His glory would come very unexpectedly in the form of a pit, hidden by a pivoting stone lid, which deposited him in a narrow cave tunnel. Inside, he found untouched burial crypts, wall paintings, papyrus scrolls, and statues of unmistakable Egyptian origin.
Digger had no way of knowing from his awe-struck, cursory exploration that he had found the remains of a long-lost colony of Egyptians that had fled to the ends of the earth to preserve their culture in North America, the founders of the mound-building Adena culture.
Unfortunately, he would find out that he wasn’t the first explorer to find the cave. Several centuries ago, a native shaman named Manitou had found the cave and managed to decipher some of the Hermetic magic scrolls, thus greatly increasing his power. Manitou’s ego, greed, and delusions of grandeur also increased until his own tribe confronted him in his cave and burned him alive. His spirit has haunted the caves ever since. The tribe had buried the stone lid, hoping to seal him forever, but eventually it was washed away, which lead to it’s rediscovery. His spirit, however, still haunts the caves.
Digger’s first instincts were to publicize his findings, but his frail mind was already falling under Manitou’s malevolent control. Digger only cautiously sent out a couple of artifacts to a couple of Egyptologists he knew by reputation and included no directions to the location of his find. Drawn irresistibly back to the caves, he became a complete recluse from the townsfolk of the nearby village of Carston. The whispers in the dark drove him slowly mad, until he was finally compelled to conduct an amateur seance. Digger channeled in Manitou’s evil spirit and is now only his human puppet. Now having a physical host, Manitou has enchanted Digger’s trademark shovel into a magic weapon and made himself invulnerable to normal physical attack with a magic cloak.
The tribe that killed Manitou is no longer around, so “Evil Digger” has had to content himself with terrorizing the current locals to stroke his need for vengeance. Out at night, he has caught and carved up unwary townspeople and used their blood to animate several skeletons of the crypts for defense. He’s also taken captives, ritually murdered them, buried them with his shovel, and they’ve risen the next night as zombies (much to the horror of people of who knew them and have seen these horrors). Some of these newly risen have been given orders to take captives and bring them to the cave. Digger’s plan is a mass sacrifice to bring in a demon to do his bidding and destroy the town outright.
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