Encounter-a-Day

Newly-crowned King Thornwald III spent the first month or so of his reign abroad, making allies and learning the political landscape. He’s come to the conclusion that many feel his kingdom is weak, and so Thornwald decides to do something about it.

He’s begun bolstering his army, and on top of that has decided to complete and re-man the fort at Weston Hill. It’s been standing derelict for the better part of a century, though, and the first thing the king decided should be done is to assess the current situation. At the moment, his army is occupied with recruitment and restructuring efforts, so the king must hire adventurers to go and explore the fort. Of course, he ends up hiring the PCs.

The situation at the fort is relatively benign. It is somewhat difficult to enter; the portcullises are long-since rusted shut and the stone walls are as impassable as they were designed to be. However, it should be fairly simple for a well-prepared group to gain entrance.

Most of the buildings have been destroyed by time and the elements. The barracks and tower still stand, though. Exploring the barracks, the PCs will eventually come to a wall in the basement which appears hastily-erected. If they examine it, they find it to be hollow and, behind it, is a door.

The door has been barred and locked, the lock melted with acid, spikes of metal have been used to jam the door shut, and mortar was used to seal it. Clearly, some effort was made to ensure that this door should never be opened, from one side or the other.

Inside are several dozen dessicated corpses, the remains of the supposed mutineers. Several of them are missing chunks of flesh, and teeth marks can be seen on the bones. One corpse remains notably intact, and is wearing finer garments than the rest. It was the commander, and in his hands he holds a journal detailing what really happened.

A few weeks after they’d first settled into the fort, one of the soldiers fell ill, complaining that he was seeing and hearing things. Hours later, he turned hostile, savagely attacking the doctor. He was locked in the brig. A few days later, the same fate befell another soldier and another, and within a week all but a few of them were locked away in this room. Finally, when the commander himself started seeing things, he ordered his second-in-command to lock him in with the rest and leave the fort, and to convince the king to abandon it.

If the PCs tell Thornwald what happened, he dismisses it and orders the fort re-staffed. He also hires the PCs on as scouts, to explore the land around the fort. He charges an experienced man by the name of Sir Andromus Galwain to command the fort.

A few weeks after the fort is re-opened, Sir Galwain sends for an audience with the PCs. He explains to them that the same events which happened when the fort was first opened are happening again; he’s sent word to Thornwald, but suspects the king will not allow the fort to be abandoned. Galwain doesn’t want to put his own men into investigating what’s happening, for fear of what the truth of what happened so many years ago might do to morale, and so he asks the PCs to figure out what’s causing this sickness and fix it.