A Sky Full of Swords

Adventure by Kobayashi.

This adventure is pretty straightforward; it should keep your players busy for one evening. Characters can be of any level. Lower level heroes should be cautious, high level characters shouldn't get too cocky as they could rapidly get drowned by weak but numerous enemies. Shrewd adventurers should get out with gold in their purses and a powerful weapon in their arsenal.

KICKING THINGS OFF

As the characters approach the town of Pardesh, they catch up with a small band of people who look like miners (their group is twice as large as the players', and everyone is well armed). They have everything: picks, shovels, spades, all loaded on a small cart. They've stopped some distance away from the first houses, one of them is looking at a piece of paper. If asked what they're doing here, a big bald guy called Oreg answers: "Waiting for a gift from the Heavens, I wouldn't go to that inn if I were you…". At the same moment a meteorite falls from the sky and strikes the first inn in sight (maybe the characters were meeting someone there?). The area, including the surrounding buildings, is devastated. The band of miners immediately rushes in.

WHAT DO THE CHARACTERS KNOW?

The cold iron found in meteorites is used to fashion powerful weapons. It can be worth up to d6 x 1000 coins. You have to find a blacksmith able to work with this metal, but it's still an inestimable treasure.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

If the characters head to the town, they find a growing mob of survivors, all pretty angry and shouting: "It's Cassalda's fault! Why hasn't she warned us? Let's make her pay!". Here's a bit of backstory: in the town lives an astronomer, Cassalda Omens Somnajians, who is able to predict the fall of meteorites as long as she's paid. Meteor strikes being quite rare, the locals didn't see a point in paying her watcher's fee. Cassalda decided to keep her mouth shut about the ball of fire due to fall on Pardesh soon. Things are bound to get ugly unless the characters intervene, violently or not.

Once the danger is passed, Cassalda may be inclined to share her findings about the next meteor strike with the heroes, especially if they saved her from a lynching. If the characters threaten her, she gives them slightly off coordinates and timing, so the bullies end up flattened by a meteorite (characters succeeding at an INT test may realise the meteorite will fall on them: succeed at a DEX test or live the rest of your life as a pancake). Don't mess with astronomers.

The next meteor will strike an ancient and reputedly cursed mine, Hellgut, two days travel from here. Characters who ask about the mine learn that the miners of Hellgut went crazy with greed, and their gold fever kept them digging long after their deaths. The rumour is that everything coming from Hellgut is cursed.

If the characters want to fight the miners

Let them have their fight but don't pull your punches. The miners won't go as far as killing a downed character but they will strip them of all their possessions. If the characters win and let some of the miners live, their reputation with adventuring miners is severely tarnished. Which might be a minor downside to gaining a small meteorite worth d6 x 500 coins and containing enough metal to forge a dagger or five arrow tips.

THE MINE AND ITS GHOSTS

As foretold, the meteorite crashes into a mine shaft, requiring the characters to delve in to recover it. The bad news is, the shockwave has made the whole mine highly unstable. This is represented by a usage die: Mine stability Ud6. Roll it once the characters arrive at the mine. When they recover the meteorite, roll every Turn. When the die degrades, describe rocks falling off the wall. If the Ud is depleted, everything comes crashing down, requiring a DEX test to make it out unscathed. A failed roll means taking 6 points of damage. As you would expect, dark energies from the meteorite awakened the dead miners: skeletons armed with picks appear in the mine's galleries and go back to work (hastening the mine's collapse).

FIGHT AT THE OBSERVATORY

The angry townspeople head for the observatory to demand an explanation from the astronomer. Cassalda stands defiantly at her door: (GM: improvise the confrontation from here — see the adventure's own advice not to over-prep.)

EXPLORING THE MINE

Characters taking the time to explore the mine will find the following things:

Going into the mine through the shaft is possible (DEX test required or suffer 2 damage), but getting the meteor out will need the use of one of the wagons that leads to the mine's entry.

This is, literally, a gold mine, each character can salvage d6 x 500 coins worth of gold in a handful of hours. Unfortunately, this gold is as cursed as the rest of the mine. Any rations the characters are carrying instantly spoil. Each day after the first, characters failing at a CON test permanently loses 1 HP until they get rid of the gold.

One of the rooms is a forge: there the characters find a hammer possessed by the soul of a blacksmith called Thorogros. It is paired with an anvil that is missing; it will break any other anvil it is used on. But what wonders could be wrought, should one find the lost anvil!

Taking gold or the hammer causes the skeletons' ire. Characters have to fight them all the way up to the exit.

As a rule of thumb, each room explored counts as one Turn as far as the Mine stability Ud is concerned.

FIGHTING IN THE MINE

The size of the galleries prevents the use of any two-handed weapons (apart from crossbows). Galleries are large enough to allow one-human-sized character to fight but two skeletons can fight side by side.

WRAPPING THINGS UP

Having cold iron is all well and good but you need to find a blacksmith who knows how to work with it, which can be the goal of the characters' next adventure. Such a smith doesn't have time for someone coming empty-handed: bring d4 x 1000 coins and the cold iron. A meteorite is enough to make one weapon. Cold iron weapons inflict maximum damage against ghosts, spirits, and the undead. However, they are known to be brittle: a natural roll of 20 on an attack roll shatters the weapon. It might be possible to use some of the shards (d6) as arrowheads but melting them into a new weapon is out of the question.

There seems to be an unlimited supply of skeletons in the mine. As they go down, more take their place. Make the players aware of this by describing hordes of skeletons pouring out of every gallery.