09/22/2026: In the Burgomaster’s Cellar

In the Burgomaster’s cellar, the statue in the fountain has a face, and on closer inspection the face belongs to Vampyr, an ancient and evil minor god. Soulfire, still unconscious, had earlier called the room just the place for a vampire cult. It turns out she was not incorrect.

Crystal responds to the discovery the way she responds to most things. The stone statue won't burn, so she casts Acid Splash on it. The statue's eyes light up, and it answers her with a lightning bolt. The acid sizzles against the stone and accomplishes nothing. Crystal decides to go treasure hunting instead and walks away, smoldering slightly.

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The party scatters to find the treasure the ghost of Burgomaster Ulrich promised them.

Nike wants to be first to find it, and she heads up the north tunnel. It ends in a staircase blocked by a forge. She turns to glare at Crystal, who shrugs and collects her portable forge; she used it earlier to block the passage into the cellar. Nike turns around.

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Zilk chooses the door the hags came from. The crooked hallway slopes upward, and Zilk pops up inside an open, empty coffin. It is one of seven in the crypt, each topped with a carved wooden effigy. The names on the lids are Viktor, Bruno, Heinrich, and several more, all Ulrichs. The bugbear peers inside one and finds a long-dead body, more skeleton than anything, dead for possibly centuries. Zilk apologizes for the intrusion and closes the lid politely.

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Biblo finds a heavily padlocked iron door, shrugs, and tries a flimsy wooden one instead. Behind it is the house's well. He draws up a bucket but fails to notice the oily film floating on top. He sniffs, notices nothing, and pours it back, dejected.

Then he looks up. Something large, hairy, and eight-legged is coming down. A massive spider approaches him stealthily. Biblo responds by tearing off one of the creature's legs and beating her with it.

The spider takes this personally.

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In the main hall, Soulfire wakes up in one of the coffins the ghasts emerged from. The stench is terrible. Pinecone is licking her face. She has a ferocious headache, a roiling stomach, and a bad taste in her mouth. There are also the wisps of a nightmare about a devil baby cursing her by siphoning away some of her luck.

She asks why she is in a coffin. Shifty declines to explain.

Soulfire climbs out and stumbles straight to the padlocked iron door, reasoning that locked doors mean treasure, and she was promised treasure. She summons her Flame Blade and attacks the door. The door wins. She tries the wooden frame, which gives way to stone after about an inch. She curses the builder.

Shifty is slowly perambulating around the room. He studies the new-looking, crude mud devil heads set at regular intervals along the brick walls of the cellar. They seem to breathe fire, sending shadows flickering madly along the walls. Bored, he wanders up to the door Soulfire is fruitlessly beating on. The cleric kicks the iron door hard enough to leave a Shifty-shaped dent. The door stays shut. Soulfire says nothing, but gives Shifty the side-eye.

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Nike, returning to the central room, watches all of this with amusement. She and Soulfire negotiate a trade: the demon's Broom of Flying and twenty-six gold pieces for Nike's services with a lockpick.

The padlock clanks to the floor. The room behind it is empty except for a staircase rising into the dark. Nike tucks away her new broom.

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Crystal lingers at the top of the north stairs, near the library, and is startled to find the ghost of the old burgomaster staring down at her.

The spirit frets about the noise rising from his wine cellar. Crystal informs him that his wine cellar is now a cult meeting place. The dead burgomaster has haunted this ruin for eight hundred years and takes this badly. Then he asks after his dogs. Nobody has the heart to describe the dogs.

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Shifty, and then Nike, go up the new staircase. It leads to one of the rooms where they rested. The stiff, disembodied hand lies lifeless in the corner. Nike loots the other chest in the room and takes everything in it: a masterwork dagger, a masterwork shortsword, a jeweled belt, and a decorative brass breastplate. Then she follows Shifty back down the stairs.

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Zilk takes off his pack and turns sideways to follow the crooked passage to a dead end. He spits on the floor, and the spit passes straight through it. Beneath the illusion sits a locked chest, now wearing two gobs of bugbear phlegm. His mage hand picks the lock on the first try. He mentions this more than once.

Inside are six odd treasures, divided on the spot. Crystal spies a Wand of Identification, which lets the companions learn what the other treasures are.

Zilk takes a vest that seems to be made of troll skin. Soulfire claims a tiny cat statuette that will turn into an actual cat servant. Shifty chooses a bag holding a gruesome piece of magic, a Tongue of Lies, which is exactly as literal as it sounds. From a leather sack, Nike draws a magical scourge that will pull an opponent off their feet: a ‘Trip Whip.’

Biblo, in absentia, gets a potion that will let him jump tremendous distances.

Biblo is not there to collect this. Yards way, in the well room, a massive spider has him trapped in thick, sticky webbing. She has bitten him and filled him with a venom that stiffens every muscle. He can't move or scream. She is limping down on seven legs to have dinner.

In the distance, he can hear the others celebrating their magical finds. And he can do nothing to get their attention.