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.

The proprietor and brewmaster, Bartleby Groondson, does all his brewing in the basement and allows no one down there. His recipes are well-kept secrets, and the only information he’ll volunteer is that he uses a variety of flavors and spices from around the world.

There is a reason beyond mere “trade secrets” that Bartleby is so tight-lipped; the brews of The Salient Green harbor dark (and, some might say, disgusting) secrets. For example, the Greenskin is made from weeds and lichens taken from the goblin caves of the west… and some well-fermented goblin as well. Likewise, the Poinyear uses elf, the Halfbread halfling, etc. All of Bartleby’s brews have some sort of creature in them.

Encounters at The Salient Green

The PCs could be hired to track down a missing person, or to investigate a recent rash of kidnappings. Of course, their investigations would lead them eventually to The Salient Green.

Alternately, the PCs might stumble on the secret on accident. Perhaps an overly-rowdy barroom brawl sends one of them hurtling through the door down into the basement, which looks more like a butcher’s shop than a brewery. Human, elf and dwarf parts hang from hooks along the walls, and a head bobbles up and down in a bubbling pot.

Twenty three years later, an enterprising dwarf by the name of Harvuun Gordbeck heard about the station and arranged to buy it for a fraction of what was spent in its construction. Not a scholar of any variety, Gordbeck had a new purpose in mind for the research station: a luxury resort. He rechristened it The Blue. Amusingly, the dwarf has never set foot in The Blue due to his fear of water.

It was open for roughly eight months when something happened. Gordbeck shut the place down and never told anyone why. Only recently was The Blue re-opened.

It consists of seven domes connected by tunnels. The top of most of the domes is made of crysteel, a magically-treated metal which is as transparent as glass. Each dome also has a “lifeboat,” really just a mini bathysphere. In case of an emergency, several people could crawl into them, seal them, release the locks, and they would float up to the surface. Each lifeboat fits five people comfortably, though perhaps as many as ten or twelve could cram in there.

Dome 1, the foyer, is the least changed since the station became the Blue. It consists primarily of a large airlock near the top and a powerful winch. A bathysphere, usually allowed to float freely on the surface, is attached to the foyer by the winch.

Dome 2, the lounge, has been converted into a reception area where new guests can be orientated and also a place to hang out and watch the ocean life. The magical lights around dome 2 are especially bright, and the water around it is regularly chummed to encourage lots of ocean life to congregate around it, especially sharks.

Domes 3 and 4 have been converted into guest quarters. Dome 3, the larger of the two, has twelve suites while dome 4 has eight. Each of the suites is lavishly decorated. The lights above domes 3 and 4 are designed to dim at night so that the guests can sleep more easily and keep an idea of the passage of time. During the night, each of the rooms is flooded with just the barest hints of a blue glow.

Dome 5, the smallest dome after the foyer, has been repurposed into the dining room. Like the lounge, the waters above dome 5 are chummed to encourage wildlife.

Dome 6 serves as a combination of servants’ quarters and kitchen. The employees sleep in cramped quarters; ten small rooms with triple bunk beds, allowing for up to 30 people to be stationed there. There are rarely more than twenty to twenty-five, though.

Finally, there is dome 7, called the “black” dome because it is not lit up like the others. The employees of the blue are under strict orders by Gordbeck never to enter dome 7, nor to allow the guests to. It is the most isolated of all the domes, and the only entrance is door in the back of the employee quarters which has been welded shut.

Rumors abound of what is in dome 7. Some say it’s a drilling platform which Gordbeck wasn’t able to turn into a tourist trap, some say it was sealed when he bought it and even he doesn’t know what’s in there. Some even believe that dome 7 is directly responsible for the station originally being decommissioned as well as for Gordbeck shutting The Blue down before.

Travel to and from The Blue is achieved by boat. Gordbeck has a deal with a shipping company which passes near it once a week; they’ll stop at the bathysphere, load it with supplies and passengers, and signal for it to be pulled down. An iron ring around the tether is clipped to the bottom of the bathysphere. By unclipping it, the rink sinks down and when it hits dome 1 an operator down there starts the winch to pull it down. They then wait until the bathysphere resurfaces and take back anyone or anything which is sent back up. The trip down takes about forty five minutes, while the trip back up only about fifteen.

Encounters at The Blue

The Blue just begs to be used as an excuse to isolate the players with something nasty. You can only leave once a week, after all, and no one knows what’s in dome 7. It may be something mundane… but it’s probably anything but. After construction, the place really doesn’t cost that much to maintain… so why did the researchers really abandon it?

Alternatively, the PCs could be asked to go down to The Blue when something goes wrong. Maybe the bathysphere never resurfaced last time, and it’s been three days since anyone’s heard anything from it. The PCs would need to find a way down there, find a way in, and find out what happened and how to fix it… or how to rescue everyone.

How the Lazarus Plague works is a mystery. It somehow puts a cease to all the biological activities in your body, but doesn’t really kill you in the sense we’re accustomed of thinking. In every clinical sense you’re dead; no heart beat, no need to breathe (though those afflicted by it still tend to out of habit), not even any signs of electrical activity in your brain.

In essence, you’re coasting, like a car on a hill with a broken engine. But just like that hill flattens out and you lose your inertia and stop moving, the Lazarus Plague doesn’t keep you going forever. You can still move your muscles, but just like when you’re alive they’ll tear when you stress them. Now, though, there’s no process to rebuild them. Your eyes dry out, wounds never heal, it’s a pretty terrible way to go, actually.

And here’s the worst part… Once all your muscles are atrophied and you can’t even move your tongue or your eyes… It’s still very much possible that you might be conscious in there. Among some of the first cases, scientists studying them said that the people remained cognizant and responded to stimuli up to the point where they literally couldn’t move anymore.

It’s a pretty scary thought, your body would essentially become your tomb. Most who contract the disease set their affairs in order and then elect to be cremated… Of course, there’s no evidence that that would work either. Victims have been beheaded and both their bodies and heads were kept under their control. Brains have been destroyed as have hearts, but it doesn’t seem that either of those are necessary for this “unlife.”

That raises the question, then; if burning you may not kill you, what happens to your consciousness when there’s no body left?

The little girl’s name is Leigh, and shortly after meeting her a crack of thunder announces that the rains have begun. A torrential downpour soaks everyone almost instantly, and Leigh offers to lead the characters back to her house.

As they follow the girl through the forest, they can hear a female voice shouting, “Leigh! Leigh!” It is not long at all before they come to a clearing with a small manor, and standing in the doorway is a teenage half-elven woman, delighted to see her sister appear but concerned when she sees the PCs.

The characters are quickly introduced to the rest of the family. The sister who was shouting for Leigh is named Kacey. Their older brother Barend has just come in from chopping firewood and is placing the axe in a closet when the characters arrive. The father, Crisdean, is a decidedly refined human of about 40 years of age. After some questioning, Crisdean thanks the characters for helping Leigh find her way back and invites them to stay for dinner and wait for the rains to die down.

Kacey prepares a savory dinner for everyone, and they engage in a lively conversation. If asked about his wife, Crisdean explains that she died in a fire several years ago, and Leigh holds up her doll, saying that the ring on the doll was her mother’s. Crisdean and his wife met as hired help to Ancel d’Chevalier, the former owner of the house, and they were left the house when the old man died.

After dinner, everyone retires to the sitting room, where a portrait of an elven woman dominates the wall above the fireplace. Shockingly, the woman in the portrait could be the twin of one of the NPCs! Crisdean explains that the portrait is of his deceased wife.

The hours pass quickly and the rains show no sign of letting up. Finally, Crisdean sends the little ones off to bed and offers to let the characters spend the night, offering them 4 rooms.

The same character which looks like Crisdean’s wife awakens to a thunder clap with the distinct feeling that there’s someone in the room with her. Another bolt of lightning reveals the suspicious to be true, Leigh is standing at the bedside, holding her dolly as always, and apparently watching the character sleep. When Leigh sees the character wake up, she asks, “Will you be my mommy?” If the character tries to leave, she finds the door locked.

Another crack of thunder awakens the other characters, and they each see a different member of the family in their room. Barend holds an axe high above his head, ready to strike, Crisdean wields a fireplace poker, and Kacey is about to try and smother one of the characters with a pillow. Observant characters will notice that the three of them appear as if in a trance.

The family fights tenaciously, but not particularly well. However, in the mean time, Leigh’s doll has become animated and attempts to cast a spell of some sort on the trapped character. Leigh, for her part, simply stands there and does nothing but watch. If the doll is destroyed, the family drops out of the trance and ceases attacking. They have no idea what they were doing and, depending on their situation when they drop out of the trance, may react with anger, curiosity or disbelief.

When the characters leave, after traveling a bit they encounter a merchant wandering down a road. Seeing their distressed state, he asks what happened. If they describe the story, the merchant recalls hearing about a fire at the old Chevalier manor, but that was forty years ago. The elven matron of the family that was living there, a terrible sorcerer, destroyed the house when her dealings with fiends went sour, killing her and her entire family. Sure enough, if the characters return to the site, they find only a long-abandoned, burned-down husk of a manor house.