Read to Player (Hook): As you approach the forsaken gates of Marrow’s End, the cold wind whispers through empty buildings like ghostly voices. This mining town, once vibrant, is now eerily silent. You’re here because ghouls, nightmarish creatures of legend, have crawled from the earth, terrorizing and abducting residents. Your goal is clear: track down these elusive predators and destroy them before their numbers grow. Beware, for beneath your feet lie twisted tunnels teeming with cunning, hungry horrors eager to turn your pursuit into their hunt.
Setting:
Marrow’s End is an abandoned mining town, beneath which lies the Whispering Depths, a complex network of tunnels and crypts. The passages are ancient, unstable, and riddled with hidden alcoves, false passages, and deceptive shadows, creating a dynamic environment filled with unexpected hazards.
The surface includes the town square, with crumbling buildings and a collapsed mine entrance leading underground. Nearby, an overgrown graveyard holds hidden entrances to the crypt below.
Beneath the surface, the Whispering Depths consist of a maze of narrow tunnels, crypt chambers, waterlogged passages, and hidden alcoves ideal for ambush. At the deepest level lies Gharruk’s Den, a bone-strewn lair surrounded by a labyrinthine network of escape tunnels and hidden exits.
Player Configuration:
Ideal for 4-6 players, levels 4-6.
Main Challenge:
The central threat is a pack of intelligent, cunning ghouls adept in ambush tactics. Players must navigate their labyrinthine lair, survive their calculated strikes, and confront their leader, Gharruk the Stalker, in a dangerous final encounter.
NPC Characters:
Gharruk the Stalker leads the ghouls. Intelligent and ruthless, he excels in stealth and psychological warfare, orchestrating ambushes and retreats to maximize fear and confusion.
Tactics:
The ghouls operate intelligently, rarely fighting openly. They prefer sudden ambushes from multiple directions, using hidden alcoves, tunnels, and passages. They use psychological tactics—whispers, eerie laughter, and unsettling glimpses—to unnerve players. Ghouls manipulate the environment—triggering collapses or flooding tunnels to isolate and disorient their prey.
Possible Player Actions:
Players might carefully track ghoul movements, strategically use spells to reveal threats, rely on teamwork for defense, or search tunnels for vital clues about the ghouls’ weaknesses or motives.
Potential Outcomes:
Complete success sees Gharruk defeated, destroying or scattering the ghoul pack, and securing Marrow’s End. Partial success drives ghouls deeper underground, granting temporary respite. Failure allows the ghoul threat to grow stronger, threatening nearby settlements.
Further Ideas:
Players could uncover an ancient curse or ritual behind the ghouls’ emergence, encounter recurring adversaries in surviving ghouls, or discover links to forgotten Cresthaven gods or eldritch forces.
Treasure:
Rewards include ancient relics, valuable minerals left in the tunnels, and unique equipment or artifacts belonging to adventurers who previously failed.
Experience Points (XP):
Defeating Gharruk: 500 XP per player. Securing tunnels and town: 200 XP per player. Creative problem-solving and teamwork: 100 XP per player.
How to Play the Ghouls (DM Guidance):
The ghouls are masters of cat-and-mouse tactics, engaging adventurers in a deadly psychological and physical chase. Use subtle sensory details to build dread: the distant sound of claws scraping against stone walls, low murmurs echoing unintelligible threats, or brief glimpses of shadowy figures darting across corridors.
When attacking, have ghouls strike suddenly from concealed alcoves or beneath false floors, quickly slashing at players and retreating through secret passages before retaliation. After each strike, emphasize sounds fading into the distance, reinforcing uncertainty and paranoia.
Examples of specific tactics include splitting the party by triggering collapses behind or ahead of them, forcing difficult choices as water begins flooding a tunnel behind them. Occasionally, simulate multiple threats by describing movement from different directions simultaneously, confusing the party and making coordinated defense challenging.
Ghouls adapt intelligently: if players aggressively pursue, lure them into dangerous terrain—such as unstable passages prone to collapse or chambers quickly filling with water. If the players hesitate, ghouls press their advantage by suddenly appearing to harass and unnerve them, forcing hasty decisions.
Maintain psychological pressure by intermittently allowing the players to overhear Gharruk’s mocking voice, taunting them from the darkness, emphasizing their vulnerability. This psychological manipulation is key—players should always feel uncertain, wary, and hunted throughout their exploration of the Whispering Depths.
Environmental Challenges:
- Cave-ins: Sudden tunnel collapses that separate or trap the party.
- Flooded Passages: Rising water levels forcing rapid decision-making and navigation.
- Unstable Floors: Sections of the ground that crumble away unexpectedly underfoot.
- False Tunnels: Passages deliberately created to mislead and trap explorers.
- Narrow Passageways: Restrictive tunnels limiting movement, hindering combat and escape.
- Darkness: Perpetual, oppressive darkness that complicates exploration and combat.
- Poisonous Gas Pockets: Natural gas leaks that cause disorientation or injury.
- Echoing Chambers: Natural acoustics that amplify sounds, creating confusion and panic.
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