Family Secrets – Crypts of Zerburre/The Ruins of Barclayne

Part of the Ancient Blood Campaign Author: Kelly Berger / System: Incarna ver. 2.0/3.0

The Crypts of Burren Family

Continued Earthquakes

In Town…

The din of civilized life is a comforting backdrop for the fact that there are beds and fresh cooked meals available. Suddenly, as it struck before, another earthquake strikes again! Beasts and humanoids alike bolt for stable, safe ground. The crash of broken items can be heard in all directions. Timber is pulled apart, nails spring, and screams fill the air.

DC 15 Wisdom (Animal Handling); a 1 = mount runs/skittish for a day, lost forever generally; fail = take d3 hours to recover AND damage from fall, knocked loose.
The PCs may take 1-3 days trying to assist. They must either make checks to avoid the worst, or commit to full days to gain the benefits. As long as they do not do anything else, the goodness of their actions offsets the strain and they will gain a short rest portion of a long rest each night.
1 Inspecting/Assessing (PER checks)
2 Rescuing
3 Aid and healing

The Burren Family Chapel

If the Cunaigh Family Returns to their ancestral home of Arebor Tower: The family has discovered an ancient stone tablet that said to seek the secrets of their origins at “Barclayne” – the original home of the both families.

Getting to Barclayne

The party will want to call in their favor to get to the old ruins at Barclayne in order to get to the Burren family ruins.
The family of Burren married into the family of ______

Nelaigh

Hamai the matron of Saivelaugh – the smell of the feywild is upon you. It can be tracked! It is a corruption though…

Barclayne! Yes, the stink of deceit and treachery lives there – it is a human place. The forest overtook it, and with that we became its guardians. The humans tell you there are records there? That is an odd place for them. First you brought the stench of the homunculus, and corrupt Feywild. And now you want to open a festering wound in our lands? What will you do for us? If we let you into this place, will you cleanse the wound that it is? It can be smelled in all directions by the faerie folk. Every spirit that wanders there must be put to rest, and it must be burned so that nothing remains and the forest may re-cover it.

If asked how they know all are put to rest: The Aria of Flowers will no longer wither. “We will give you this as a torch to light the way.” It is a small wreath, intended to be sung through. The scent of the breeze will be fresh when no corruption is nearby. The evil will be drawn to it, will try and destroy it, wither it with each touch and the aura of their presence for the more powerful. “What awaits!? The corrupted spirits of our ancestors that tried to rid us of it. The walking dead of the humans that built it, and the root of whatever corruption originally tainted that place.”

The party should be attacked by a skeleton horde.
Skeleton of Uela – the elf mother, and her children from the aelfpaths.

Mists of Memory Dream Sylly

Barclayne/Saivelaugh Elves

Spirits
Skeletons
Swarms
Dungeon
The air is foul and rank, smelling of mold and mildew, dank and dry at the same time.
—–
DC 10 Con disease or -1 attack, saves

2: Chapel (debris covered because its a holy place
3: Reliquary: All spoiled! Mummy

Undead Rat swarm (disease)
Green slime
Purple Ooze (permanently stains skin purple);
Mummy holding an orb filled with blood. No records or anything, just the blood itself.

This is the mummy of Daevaesh Burren. She was the younger sister of Haelcli. She killed her brother and sister. Her brother’s body was never found – he was killed on a hunt by a spirit that Daevash summoned – eaten by animals after his horse threw him into a gully – spooked by the evil spirit. Her sister was poisoned she and bound her spirit in the container of blood so it could not speak if her bodied was questioned after death. All thought Haelcli died of natural causes, but she was murdered. Daevaesh wanted to sit upon the “throne” of Bondeu. There was a taint in the blood – a taint from the Lords of Darkness. She had her Cunaigh rivals killed as well. She claimed her rulership and ruled decently thereafter till her death at the age of 100. Her covetousness nature caused her to persist beyond death. When the sounds were heard coming from the tomb under the family lodge, and the deaths and disappearances began to happen, the place was abandoned, considered cursed and tainted. They told the elves they were moving the capital, and that the ruins could be overtaken by the forest if they would guard over it. Then the elves found something was buried there, of great evil. They were betrayed, and have never forgiven the humans since – the letter of the law is all they adhere to. They have contained it all these years, while it grows weaker and weaker.

Cunaigh and Burren were once the same, both descendant from the Narvaez family. Haduswinth Narvaez was leading his people from Leslean Plains (what would become the County Leslea) of Dunstrand. The family was the rearguard of the long train of eastern nobility that the Forthright family had promised fertile river lands to. They were attacked by the Orrish they had driven into the ground in the northern T’Yendi hills. They Orrish extracted a bloody revenge along the road as the sun set. “The Dusk of the Narvaez” is a song that commemorates their stand. All the family and baggage train was slaughtered, and the 2 vassal cavalier bloodline families of Burren and Cunaigh, already thinned through marriage of the locals after their trip from the Fallen East, inherited the clan’s leadership. No clear leader would be chosen until the Riverclaim was complete. As the River Lands were neared and the families of the east were chartered as lords for their territories, there was strife and struggle between the families. Technically, Gailavira Cunaigh, the niece of the dead Lord Narvaez, being female, was the choice by blood. However, they were bullied into submission by the Burren family, the eldest there was Roderic Burren. The Cunaigh family settled in the Athla Hills area while the rest of the clan continued south. Gailavria planted the claim stone in the well in the well of Tolosae (named after Aelex Tolosae – a ranger of the Cunaigh family) – what would become the Hamlet of Gromesby. She told her little brother Andagis, who would record it in secret. He eventually buried it with his sister’s body on a stone tablet. The following day, Gailavria was felled by fever and died two days later. Her 2 year old daughter, Hilduarda, became the matriarch of the Cunaigh Clan eventually. Roderic himself would be killed in a duel at the age of 14, before he could pass on the information to others. The tablet was eventually found when all the eldest burials were moved to the Condar Valley in the Athla Hills family cemetery. Its secret would be held for ages, passed on verbally from one ruler to another until only the clue of “Barclayne” was known along with a vague notion of the family’s claim being older and more valid.

https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Mummy

NEXT: Nanberry Crypt
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