Random Encounter: Tower of the Hollow Lord
“ Take heed traveler, ain’t none that take the haunts’ road through the wastes at night but witches and ghouls. If you aim to walk there, do so during the day, and you keep the gods names on your lips ‘ere you be caught out before the sun sets and the stones wake beneath your feet”
Adventure Hooks:
Out in the mire valley there’s a short, winding stretch of road, roughly cobbled in grey-white stone that provides a useful shortcut to the dry overlook, allowing one to skip a plunge through fetid ponds or slipping on muddy game paths. Known as the “haunts’ road” for its curious habit of glowing a sinister green on moonless or cloudy nights, the route features heavily in local superstion, a fact the locals are more than happy to share should they learn the party is traveling that way.
The area is a known to be the burial place for thieves and other undesirables, who’s unquiet spirits are blamed for disappearances of those who travel the region at inauspicious times. When the party is asked to investigate a missing stagecoach after it was forced to detour into the mash, they’ll discover that some of these rumors are impart true, and that a gang of roughians garbing themselves in foxfire and old bones have been using these rumors to extort passers by. Most recently, they’ve turned to kidnapping, as a young woman within the stagecoach bragged about her connection to the local magistrate, an attempted intimidation that only increased the value her captors could wring out of her delay.
A heavy mist will roll through the area during the party’s journey, causing the road to alight as it veils all scrap of sunlight, despite the time of day. From down the road, more lights: fireflies heralding an invisible rider on the corpse of a mare. Both phantoms approach with appalling slowness, something in their movement speaking of failing strength or the very edge of sleep. From beneath a burning mask that covers nothing in particular, the rider will ask the party for directions: he’s become lost in the fog, and seeks the tower for an important rendezvous. There is no tower in the region, and no matter what directions the party might give him, the invisible rider, reeking of bog and blood, will reach into his saddlebags and scatter a handful of corroded coins along the cobbles before riding off. An eerie encounter to be sure, one that leaves the party a slight bit richer, and perhaps a little bit cursed.
Setup: So obviously there’s more to this stretch of swampland than just a bunch of random ghosts and bandits with a gimmick. Two hundred years ago this there was indeed a tower that looked over the valley, and though its name (and even knowledge of its existence) have been lost to time, it was the site of a climatic battle that decided the fate of the surrounding settlement for generations to come. An army was invading, and with no hope of reinforcements coming in time, Lord Montigan and his forces fell back from their harrying raids to the watchtower that guarded the pass into their domain, swearing to keep their beacon burning so long as they held out . From this white walled fort they defended the pass to the very last, consternating the invaders so much that when the siege finally broke and Montigan and his troops were finally put to the sword, the enemy commander demanded their bastion be torn down and scattered throughout the swamp.
Over time, People forgot Montigan, and gathered the rubble of the crumbled fortress into a rough-road to ease their way through the mire and up the overlook, never once suspecting that those stones were infused with the undying determination of their forgotten protector.
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