SaltMines

Background
Master Evelin Battachirus owns a relatively small manor near Boulderdash, a sleepy little farming community of about 3,000 people only five miles west of Kashin. Master Battachirus is one of the richest men in Rakore, but keeps this fact carefully hidden from the public eye. His gift lies in his ability to manipulate information and tables, and he can place items and equipment in exactly the right place, at the exactly the right time. Gideon Enterprises has tried to woo him several times, without success. Master Battachirus is not actually interested in money -- he just enjoys the game, and the challenge.

In his careful manipulations of data and obscure tables, Master Battachirus has uncovered something terrifying. He cannot release the information to anyone, but all he needs is confirmation to make his worst fears more than a possibility. To confirm his fears, he must send the party to Mount Tessel, the second mountain east of the Grand Maul Pass.

Mount Tessel is an oddly-shaped mountain that spirals up over the tree line, and is easily recognizable from just about reasonable distance. Through some strange act of geology, the mountain has a secret that has remained hidden for centuries. During the time of Duke Stomalin, some three centuries in the past, Mount Tessel had been mined for salt, from an enormous deposit whose extent was never truly mapped. The mining town that grew up to support the salt trade was built of crude stone and wood, and was lost when Duke Stomalin's reign ended, and the defensive support of the Duke's army dried up. The mining town has since been lost to decay.

Master Battachirus is a thin slate man with pasty-white skin, a bald head, and thin lips. His squinting eyes miss little, and his intelligence is nearly a palpable thing. His passions are for data manipulation, and for growing spices in his personal garden. Master Battachirus has affected the symbol of the bat as his personal sigil, and it is placed quite visibly on the thick gate to his small manor -- a manor with ten-foot tall walls of mortared stone, complete with thick ivies crawling all over them.

The two-story manor is stocked with books, some rare and some common. The Bat's office has a huge desk, in which he is writing in no less than eight books at a time. He has but one servant, a nubile girl named Audrey that seems both afraid of the Bat, and awed by him. A continuous stream of pages brings sealed documents in and out of the Bat's manor, and his hands are rarely busy.

Master Battachirus details some of the history of Mount Tessel, and the mining town of Grunden that used to be there. The Bat goes on to explain that he has a nagging suspicion that the mines have been reopened, in secret. He will not go into further details, but he wants confirmation that the mine has been reopened, or that the mine has remained lost and hidden for the last three centuries.

The Bat has a detailed map of Mount Tessel's southern side, and gives the exact location of the lost mining town of Grunden, and the mine's entrance. The map is extremely old, and Master Battachirus has already made the party a copy for their own use. Grunden, he explains, is probably not much more than a couple of heaps of stone scattered throughout the forest. If the entrance of the mine was collapsed long ago, then the Bat has no worries; if the mine was collapsed recently, then there could be trouble. Master Battachirus is willing to pay well for information confirming his fears -- 4,000gp. If the mine has been active, the Bat is willing to pay an addition 6,000gp if the party can find out who.

The journey to Mount Tessel is about 50 miles, west-by-northwest from Boulderdash. There is a poorly maintained road that journeys west of Boulderdash, towards Takanal -- but the road is likely to bring the party only as close as 40 miles from Mount Tessel at its closest, and it winds through deep forest. Several mountain trails lead in the general direction of the Grand Maul Pass, both from the road and from Boulderdash.

The party would likely take 3 days on light horses, to make Mount Tessel. On foot, the journey would likely be about 5 days from Boulderdash, due to the rough terrain, poor trails, and thick forests. The Bat can give the party a day to get ready, and then they must leave post-haste for the mountain, and for Grunden.

The weather gets nastier and nastier (-6 penalty to all Spot, Listen, and Search checks), until the party reaches Grunden, and then it begins to clear. (Random forest and mountain encounters, until the party reaches Grunden.) A good Spot check (DC 15) will show crows and carrion birds circling the party's destination, as they get closer and closer.

The forest around the old town of Grunden has been denuded. A small shanty town has been burned to the ground, and crows and animals fight over the burnt remains of the bodies. A successful Search check (DC 19) would reveal that most of the 52 bodies are men, and they were killed before Grunden burned down. Oddly enough, there are no signs that anyone left the area, with salt, lumber, or any other goods of any mass; the mud shows footprints, but they all disappear in the rocks. A good Track check (DC 21) would reveal that the tracks belonged to about twenty strong humans in light armor. Only an expert tracker (DC 28) would reveal an additional set of tracks, belonging to an elven set of feet.

The bodies belong to slaves -- smuggled into Rakore from the Alekdan Principalities. The slaves knew nothing but the whip and hard work for all their lives, and spent the last six months reopening the salt mine of Grunden. They were killed by their overseers -- men that wore studded leather armor, carried longswords, and were professional soldiers known as Marksmen.

The amount of forest cut down does not equal the wood that burned in the shanty town, according to a Knowledge (Nature) check (DC 14); the rest of the lumber must have gone into the gaping wound in the mountain's side. The mine entrance is fifteen feet tall by ten feet wide, and carved out of solid limestone. Timbers brace the insides of the mine entrance, and cheap wooden rails are laid down, going far into the darkness.

The entrance to the mines is shored up with stout timbers, and traces of salt are everywhere. A detect magic will reveal a faint enchantment on key timbers, but only a Knowledge (architecture and engineering) check (DC 22) could reveal that the 'key timbers' are the ones most critical to holding up the loose limestone above the mine. The timbers are actually embedded with glyphs of warding, which hold several stone shapes within them. Essentially, anyone walking past the timbers set 30 feet back into the mine, causes the mine to collapse from the outside, in -- trapping them inside, and burying anyone outside the mine's entrance.

The mines have been worked off and on for centuries, and the miners have had an opportunity to carve out whole temples, barracks, meeting halls, and even statues -- all out of solid salt-rock. The salt-rock chambers absorb all moisture, desiccating the air, drying out skin, and making one's eyes hurt from the intensely dry air.

The salt mines are extensive, going deep into the mountain, both in, and down. Far down in the mines are the cemeteries -- where the bodies of fallen miners were preserved under a thick layer of rock-salt, and placed inside biers.

Whomever placed the glyphs of warding also desecrated the temple that had been carved out of rock-salt -- a temple to Curiss, God of the Lost. The temple has been desecrated, and a number of the salted bodies have been turned into slightly tougher zombies. The desecration of a temple to Curiss has drawn a wight and several shadows to lord it over the salt zombies.

The desiccated and partially eaten remains of several natural animals -- wolves, panthers, and even a bear -- litter the floor of the temple to Curiss. The slaves never had enough time to carve out anything other than pure rock-salt -- and there are indications that statues and beautiful works of art were destroyed for their salt. The temple therefore outdates the recent mining, indicating that the original inhabitants of Grunden worshipped Curiss.

The mines have several natural traps for the unwary. Several ceilings are very unstable from the recent mining, and too loud a noise within them could set off a salt-fall. Only a successful Profession (mining) or Knowledge (dungeoneering) check (DC 17) would indicate that some ceilings and even floors are pitfalls or traps waiting to happen. Damage from falling ceilings is 2d6 debris damage, and many of the pits drop down fifteen feet or more (2d6 debris damage, again).

Far, far down in the mines, the original miners cut through the edge of the salt-rock, and discovered natural caves. They shored up the entrance to the caves, but it is relatively small -- only 4 feet by 4 feet.