Tower 9

Introduction

Front Gate House
Tower 9, the twin of Tower 1, commanded by Capt. Richard Chen.

Tower 9 was the last tower built atop the plateau of Kahar. The wall was nearly complete and the Front Gate House was under construction when the Marquis of the Realm decided to add a second tower to guard the great gate. Tower 9 is the twin of Tower 1, mirroring its design and function.

Both towers stand 45 feet tall, with four levels of living quarters for the grunt soldiers of the garrison. Each tower is commanded by Lieutenant Reese, with 2 Chaplains and 2 Bishops, a piece, to oversee the spiritual needs of the soldiers, but she is usually found at Tower 9, while leaving Tower 1 in the capable and knowledgeable care of Master Sergeant Harper.

It is Lt. Reese, herself, who operates the ballista on the roof of Tower 9. A weapon capable of hurling stones, javelins, and bolts for over half a mile with deadly accuracy.

Nearby quarters house Sergeants and Corporals to lead the squads of soldiers assigned to each tower. Tower 9 is part of the Front Gate, which is commanded by Captain Richard Chen, a stern but fair officer who demands discipline and excellence from his troops but never fails to return compassion and understanding when his soldiers need it most.

The tower's garrison is known for their steadfastness, bravery, honor, and loyalty, earning a reputation as one of the most reliable units in the fortress. Yet even their resolve cannot withstand what comes next. At sunrise on the 18th of Hot, Tower 9 becomes the last tower destroyed in the 7th Dark Crusades, not through failure, but through catastrophic sabotage. The tower melts, erupts, and spews smoke, ash, and fire as molten stone rolls across the land.

Role Playing

If your PCs serve in Tower 9, they will know the people of Tower 1, the Front Gate House, and Tower 9.

Tower 9 suffers a terrible fate. Necromantic magic and a sapper cave reduce it to a volcanic ruin, a ring of stones pouring smoke, fire, and a river of lava flowing north to Surgebuilt Lake.

Introduction

Ahead of you rises the Front Gate House, 45 feet tall. On the left stands Tower 1, in the middle the great Gate House with twin portcullises, and on the right Tower 9. Made of hardened mud bricks and protected by powerful spells, Tower 9 is the twin of Tower 1.

Before the Battle

Some Low Level Adventures

The Hungry Shades

The Memory Stealers

Before the battle, a quiet dread settles over Mtumbshi. Families begin forgetting. Names slip from memory. Faces blur...
Chaplain Isabella Axton and Bishop Giselle Horisor take action, they hire adventurers to trace the affliction...
An abandoned shrine to Zaslo, one of the gods of the earth, harbors hungry shades that feed on memories.
If successful, the shades are calmed. Some may even turn against Khalista, becoming silent guardians of the village...

Before the battle, Khalista sends her undead servants to afflict and harm the soldiers and their families in the fortress. Soon, many of the inhabitants at Mtumbshi village hear whispers of forgotten names as if on the wind and see lost faces appear in random places like rocks, wood grain, or clouds.

Next, family members of the Tower 9 garrison begin reporting that the faces of their loved ones are becoming unfamiliar. Parents will look at their children and not recognize them. Siblings will pass each other in the hallways and not know who each other are. Spouses will look at each other and feel like they are strangers. Fathers and mothers will not know their sons and daughters are on duty at Tower 9. Only the soldiers themselves remain unaffected, but they notice that their families are forgetting their own kin. The solders witness their own family members treating their own flesh and blood like strangers, not being unkind but avoiding intimacy, familiarity, and close contact.

But war is near! For over a year, the goblin armies are massing on the plains both above and below the plateau. Every soldier is needed at the fortress to defend against the coming attack, and none can be spared to care for or investigate this strange affliction. The soldiers must find a way to stop this madness before they march out to meet the enemy!

The Bishops grant the soldiers resources to hire investigators, trackers, or other experts to find the source of this affliction and stop it before the battle begins. A notice is posted throughout the fortress, in every hamlet and village:

Fee for Services

Attention! The soldiers of Tower 9 need your help. There is an affliction affecting them. All interested parties are hereby notified that the Bishops of the Front Gate will provide 500 gold pieces to hire investigators, trackers, or other experts to find the source of an affliction. Families of the garrison are forgetting their loved ones, and the soldiers need help to stop this madness before the battle begins! All interested parties should report to Chaplain Isabella Axton or Bishop Giselle Horisor at Tower 9 as soon as possible. Hurry, the goblin hordes are sure to attack before the end of the week!

Mtumbshi Village Map
Mtumbshi village sits inside the fortress of Kahar...

If PCs accept this adventure, they will need to investigate the village and surrounding area to find the source of the affliction. If they follow the whispering voices and lost faces, they will be led to a a derelict warehouse. And behind this dilapidated building, there is a nearly forgotten dirt path named "Old Horse Lane" at the back of Mtumbshi village.

This path used to be used to cart food and supplies from the fields to Mtumbshi village but was long ago replaced by the paved road near the fortress wall. Halfway between the fields and the ramshackle warehouse, is an unused shrine to one of the Nchi, beings of the earth, Zaslo, god of the plants. PCs will discover that a group of hungry shades has taken residence in this abandoned shrine. These shades feed on memories and are causing the villagers and families to forget their loved ones. PCs must find a way to appease or banish the shades before they consume all their memories.

Solution

A couple of possible resolutions present themselves. The PCs can try to appease Zaslo, by honoring his shrine (e.g.- cleaning it with holy water, laying relics of earth or stone at its base, lighting candles, and praying). If they are successful (DC 12 INT - Religion), it will be as if they had cast Divination: a disembodied voice will boom out: "Zaslo is pleased.

The shades may be calmed if you offer them memories of happy times." Or, the PCs can return to the village and seek out what each person sees when they look at the lost faces, and find out what they hear when they listen to the whisper voices. Each person will reveal that they recognize the face as that of a grandparent or great grandparent but the whispered words are not true memories associated with the face, but instead are dark, evil, and speak of harm and violence. If PCs search long enough, one of the villagers will share that they retrieved an old family heirloom, and a few long forgotten mementoes and shared them with the family members that did not remember her name, and, suddenly, long thin grey spirits flew out from the tops of their heads, shouting "Thank you! Offer them happy memories!" before disappearing into the air.

The shades are the grandparents and great grandparents of the villagers, especially those that died defending the fortress in previous Dark Crusades. Khalista has sent them to attack the villagers with forgetfulness, but they can be appeased by offering them memories of happy times, cherished moments, and joyful experiences. PCs can share their own memories or help the villagers recall their own. If the PCs can successfully appease the shades, they will stop their attacks and may even become silent guardians of the village, protecting it from future harm.

The Battle

Tower 9

Siege

For over a year and a half, raiding bands made up of two hobgoblins and eight goblins harass the walls with relentless regularity. Typically, eight separate bands strike in six different places, each several thousand feet apart. Two of these bands often combine their strength, advancing beneath a heavy mantlet to launch arrows and darts at the defenders on Tower 9, Tower 1, and the Front Gate House before slipping back into the trenches.

Throughout this long campaign, mangonels and trebuchets hurl massive stones across the battlefield. For months at a time, rocks and flaming arrows rain down on Tower 9. At times, the fortress artillery gains the upper hand, their aim sharp, quick, and precise. In one such exchange, the soldiers topple the goblinoid siege tower known as Edgit, striking it twice and sending it crashing onto its side only three hundred feet south of Tower 9. It remains there still, never cleared away.

The artillery crews have long since learned to cease fire whenever the giants appear. A giant's ability to catch and return even the heaviest boulders is unmatched, and devastating to the catapults and ballistae of the defenders. On the walls, flag teams signal distances and coordinate volleys to maintain precision across the vast field. When the giants do hurl stones at the fortress, the enchanted walls and towers endure the assault. Though the structures shudder under the impact, no stone breaks through but the soldiers still take cover as the walls tremble around them.

The Final Day

Approaching the night of the 17th, during the 7th Dark Crusades, Tower 9's garrison performs magnificently. After lumbering through the battlefield, running over dead bodies and debris with its huge stone tires, pushed by a hexad of gigantic ogres, the siege tower the goblins named Tork arrives adjacent to Tower 9 and attaches its armed swinging ramp to the roof.

Corporal West, at great risk to himself, rushes forward and casts burning hands onto the siege tower ramp even as the goblins charge. Three goblins die instantly, but the remaining seven goblins, and the two hobgoblins, are only heavily wounded. West ducks under cover as the next wave climbs the tower and pours onto the roof. He makes a desperate escape from the open and manages to rejoin his squad.

Meanwhile, across the Front Gate House at Tower 1, Ooka, another goblin siege tower, latches on to the battlements even as that garrison faces its own betrayal. Yet Tower 9's defenders remain unaware, focused solely on the enemy swarming their own rooftop.

For over six minutes, the fighting is brutal and intimate, most of it spent maneuvering for position. When blades finally clash, each exchange lasts less than a minute before one side falters or exhaustion forces both to break and regroup.

At Tower 9, the defenders gain the upper hand. Using fire, much of it magical, they board the siege tower Tork and set its interior ablaze. Still under threat, they manage to dislodge the ramp from Tower 9 and cheer as the burning tower tips and collapses onto its side in a great smoldering ruin. Corporal Weaver keeps every defender alive, but his healing reserves are nearly spent, and he is in dire need of rest.

For over a year and a half, Khalista has refrained from raising the dead. She has allowed the armies of the 7th Dark Crusade to batter their way toward the fortress while she observes and studies which defenders require her attention. On the final assault, at sunset on the 17th of Hot, she finally unleashes the power granted to her and begins raising undead servants.

Casualties mount, mostly from darts, bolts, slings, and arrows. On the battlefield, the bodies of the recently slain goblins, ogres, and hobgoblins, rise as zombies and skeletons and begin searching for a way into the fortress. Forty feet above, on the roof of Tower 9 where four dead goblins still lie, the defenders are caught unaware as those corpses rise and attack.

With Corporal Weaver exhausted, one seriously wounded soldier dies, the first casualty of Tower 9. Horror grips the defenders as they watch him rise again as a zombie and turn on them. Soon, other soldiers will fall, friends and family they had fought beside moments before, and then rise and attack. The shock wil nearly break them.

As the goblinoids attack and fall, their dead rise and join the assault on the soldiers of Goldenshield. Though the goblinoids are terrified of the undead, the zombies and skeletons largely ignore them, causing chaos and confusion in their ranks. It takes time before the fire giant can regain control of his forces. Goblin zombies, hobgoblin zombies, ogre zombies, all rise from the dead and begin clawing for a way into the fortress. And now, fallen comrades rise and strike at the living. The dead are coming alive and attacking the soldiers of Goldenshield.

The Captain calls for retreat. Tower 1 has been compromised, and traitor magicians have struck. Worse still, they have opened an Arcane Gate on the enclosing wall 120 feet northwest of Tower 1. The enemy is pouring into the fortress. Inquisitor Su and Master Sergeant Harper hold them at bay, but the rest of the soldiers fall back to the courtyard below. The enemy is inside the fortress.

The Sappers

The Sapper Hole

Nine trenches and nine mounds lie scattered just south of Rear Gate Cutoff Road, each one a long, rectangular scar carved into the ash-choked earth. In each trench, the central earthwork terrace, a 20-foot-long firing platform built into the trench wall, rises at the eight-foot mark, with a second, narrower ledge above it. Beneath these terraces, shallow alcoves provide shelter for the goblin guards who rotate through the line.

Trench 3 is unique, it's the only trench to have a tunnel opening. Twelve feet east of the rough-cut stairs that climb out of the trench, the earth breaks again. Here, cut directly into the north trench wall, is a dark opening. It is tall, nearly ten feet tall, and wide enough for two miners to pass through. The edges are clean, deliberate, reinforced with timber braces and packed soil.

This is the sapper hole: the beginning of the long, sloping descent toward the chamber beneath Tower 9. The air around the opening is unnaturally still. No wind reaches this far down. The darkness inside seems to swallow sound, as if the earth itself is holding its breath.

Two hobgoblins stand guard near the lip of the hole. Their armor is covered in deep scratches and shallow gouges, their weapons pitted and scored, their posture rigid. Both are bound by Khalista's will, charmed, geased, and held in a state of perfect obedience.

Behind them, faint scuff marks on the trench floor reveal the passage of small feet. Goblins moving in and out, carrying shovels, tools, and whispered orders. The marks lead into the darkness of the sapper hole, where the tunnel slopes downward at a slight angle, disappearing into the earth.

A cold draft rises from below. It smells of damp earth, stale air, and something older, the scent of a place that has never seen sunlight. This is no ordinary hole. This is the beginning of the long, secret descent to the chamber beneath Tower 9.

The Sapper Tunnel

The tunnel begins its descent immediately, angling down at a steady, deliberate pitch. The first twenty feet are rough, tool marks still visible, the walls uneven where the goblins worked in haste. Beyond that point, the passage becomes disturbingly uniform. Every stroke is the same depth. Every brace is the same distance apart. Every shovel mark is identical, as if the diggers were following a pattern whispered directly into their minds.

The corridor runs one hundred sixty-five feet almost straight north, a narrow artery carved through packed ash and ancient soil. It is five feet wide, ten feet high, and reinforced at irregular intervals with timber frames scavenged from palisades and siege ladders. The wood is dry and splintered, creaking softly in the stillness.

No lanterns burn here. No torches. No lamps. The sappers brought no flame into the tunnel—not out of fear of smoke or discovery, but because they simply did not need it. Goblins and hobgoblins see well enough in darkness, their gray-washed vision cutting through the gloom for sixty feet at a time. They dug by shadow and instinct, guided by whispered orders and the steady presence of the geased hobgoblins behind them.

The air grows colder with each step downward. Moisture beads on the walls in thin, trembling lines, gathering into droplets that fall with slow, rhythmic plinks. The sound echoes strangely, as if the tunnel is swallowing the noise rather than carrying it forward.

Scattered along the floor are the signs of frantic labor: broken shovel heads, snapped pick handles, discarded baskets woven from desert reeds. In places, the walls bulge inward where the earth tried to reclaim the space, only to be beaten back by desperate hands.

Halfway down, the tunnel bends ever so slightly, no more than a hand's width of correction. A course adjustment. A whispered command. A reminder that the diggers were not choosing their path. They were following orders.

The deeper one goes, the more oppressive the silence becomes. Even the faint sounds of the trench above fade away. The air grows stale, heavy with the scent of damp earth and something older, something that has not been disturbed in centuries. The tunnel feels less like a passage and more like a throat, swallowing those who enter.

At the far end, the darkness thickens. The slope steepens. And the earth begins to change, less soil, more stone. The goblins' tools left different marks here, hesitant and uneven, as if they sensed they were approaching something they were never meant to find.

This is the final stretch before the Sapper Cave. The place where the whispers grew louder. The place where the goblins began to fear the sound of their own breathing.

The Sapper Cave

The last thirty feet of the tunnel are the worst. Here the soil gives way to stone, not natural bedrock, but the buried foundation of Tower 9 itself. The goblins' tools left different marks on this section: hesitant, uneven, as if each strike carried a tremor of dread. The stone is old, older than the siege, older than the goblins' memories. It feels wrong beneath the hand, too smooth in places, too sharply cut in others, as though the tower's roots were grown rather than built.

Breaking through it took days. The sappers chipped and clawed at the buried masonry, widening cracks, prying loose stones, dragging the rubble back up the tunnel in woven reed baskets. The hobgoblins drove them on without rest, their geased minds blind to exhaustion. By the time the final block fell inward, the goblins were working in silence, afraid to hear the sound of their own tools.

Beyond that breach lies the Sapper Cave.

The chamber sits twenty feet below the lowest floor of Tower 9. Its roof rises fifteen feet overhead, supported by rough pillars of untouched earth. More than ten thousand square feet have been carved away, forming a vast, hollowed space that feels less like a room and more like a wound beneath the tower. The air is cold and utterly still. Dust hangs in the darkness like a waiting breath.

Nothing moves here. Nothing stirs. The cave will remain silent until the morning of Hot 18, when the traitor magicians descend with their apprentices, their porters, and the stone table that will change the course of the siege.

The Traitor Magicians

A mercenary team enters carrying a small stone table, magicians follow and assemble facing the far wall. Azabine the Conjurer reads his spell scroll, gesturing intentionally with his hands, chanting specific esoteric words, and raising a startlingly magnificent diamond.

Concurently, Nuro the Transmuter reads his spell scroll, chants and gestures, and holds aloft a chunk of magnetite ore. At the same time, Oztirix the Abjurer reads his spell scroll, chants and gestures, and holds a diamond up that is even larger that Azabine's.

Azabine's diamond is consumed in a blinding flash of light, but the spell is far beyond his ability and he fails to let go of the diamond on time and he loses his left hand. Nuro's magnetite ore flys up to the roof, but he is aged rapidly and changes from a young man to a middle aged man instantly. Oztirix's diamond glows with a dark, difused yellow light. The three magicians complete their spells.

A circular portal, 10 feet in diameter, opens at the back of the cave. It is Azabine's Gate spell, he has opened a portal to the Elemental Plane of Fire, and through it, a river of molten lava pours forth.

Simultaneously, all things in the cavern, except the magicians and their servants, for they have the Path Stone, fall upward toward the roof of the cave. It is Nuro's Reverse Gravity spell. The river of lava flows out of the Gate and falls "up" toward the foundation of Tower 9, melting the tower's foundation, so that, within forty minutes the tower will collapse.

Azabine and Nuro suddenly disappear, and then reappear trapped inside the diamond that Oztirix is holding. Oztirix has betrayed them both, he has cast Imprisonment, trapping them inside the diamond he holds.

Oztirix gives all his remaining servants a potion to protect them from heat and lava, and he leads them inside the Gate, braving the Sea of Fire in the Elemental Plane of Fire, and the fierce denizens that fight there. They set the stone table on the Basalt and Granite island they have reached, and Oztirix places the diamond containing Azabine and Nuro on the table. Oztirix has his servants gather as many obsidian stones as they can carry and then they retreat back through the Gate to the sapper cave.

Just before their potion wears off, they scramble up and out of the sapper cave. Suddenly, with a deafening roar, Tower 9 wobbles and crumbles, then topples as the foundation melts, and a massive eruption of smoke, ash, fire, and lava gushes out. The tower melts and crumbles, spewing smoke, ash, and fire . A river of molten lava pours forth from what was once the base of Tower 9, flowing northward towards Surgebuilt Lake, consuming everything in its path.

The defenders of Tower 9, having been evacuated by Captain Chen hours earlier, escape to the open court below, so that only a few perish in the eruption or are caught up by the slow moving lava flow. The once proud tower is reduced to a ring of stones, a smoldering ruin marking the site of its destruction, blasting out gas, dust, smoke, fire, and pyroclastic flow, just like a real volcano.

Descending into Trench 3 and entering the Sapper Hole, and braving the Sapper Tunnel to return to the Sapper Cave, one will find a "wall of force" holding back the lave in the form of a perfect tunnel, ten feet high and four feet wide. This tunnel is made by the Path Stone, an relic and artifact that is imbued with a wall of force spell. As long as this stone is left on the cave floor, it will be possible to enter the Gate that leads to the Sea of Fire in the Elemental Plane of Fire, and retrieve the diamond containing Azabine and Nuro. Freeing them from their prison, will cause both the Gate and Reverse Gravity spells to end, stopping the lava flow and ending the constant eruption of smoke, ash, and fire.

Some Schematics of the Sapper Cave

Tower 1 Officer Quarters Tower 1 Tower 1
Schematics on the sapper cave interior, the Gate inside the sapper cave, and the sapper cave from above.