Lords of the Cruth Lowlands - Vaults of Pandius

The Ruins of Achelos
perusing the books and searching
for the Thanatopsis. He will try to
scare away the PCs using his
powers and ordering the Zombies in
area 3 to attack them if the PCs
have already attacked Brandin or
the harpies. Otherwise, he will
disguise himself as a old human
using his phantasmal force ability,
and will negotiate with the PCs. He
is not interested in any of the
books, except the Thanatopsis, and
will gladly leave everything to the
PCs in return for that single book.
He will flee if the PCs overpower his
allies, but will return at a later time
with reinforcements to steal the
book.
The Artho Mansion
This part of the adventure employs “The
Mansion: Mansion 1” map from Map-a-
Week 20 . The quest begins when the PCs
are hired to recover any surviving
documents and treasure from the mansion
by the Merchants’ Guild, which represents
the interests of the few surviving members
of the Artho family. The PCs have to escort
a representative of the Guild, that is Emil
Radu’s clerk, Igor Dumitrescu (NM, L).
Igor is rather inept, but very meticulous in
checking that the PCs do not fail to report
any valuable item from the mansion, and
insists on making a thorough tour of the
building, which is miraculously intact.
At least two random encounters happen
before Igor and the PCs actually manage
to reach the house (roll on the Noble
Estates random encounter table below).
While in the house, two events happen:
1. Igor, rummaging through the
rubble, causes heavy broken
furniture to finally collapse. Unless
the PCs have been paying special
attention to him, he gets caught
under the furniture, breaking one of
his legs in the process. The PCs will
20 http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/ma
pofweek/01_Mansion_300ppi_vg21i.jpg
have to heal him (a cure light
wounds spell will suffice), or carry
him back to Nova Achelos on a
stretcher.
2. A pack of 7 giant rats, disturbed by
Igor’s activities, attack. The poor
clerk, frightened, flees to the PCs’
protection. It is up to the party to
ensure that Igor survives this
encounter as well.
Finally, if the Veiled Society emissary,
Bogdan Ilic, has already a reason to have
the party disposed off, he will take
advantage of the favorable occasion to hire
a party of “assassins” to ambush the PCs
in the mansion. The “assassins” are
actually four unscrupulous adventurers
rather than professional hitmen. If the PCs
have made some enemies in the past, this
could be a good time to have them show
up as members of this group. Otherwise,
use the following four NPCs: Black Ivan
(F5, C), a rogue member of the Achelos
Outlaws as well as an expert woodsman
and archer (Skilled in the use of the long
bow); Dusan Dusanovich (T6, C), a
fugitive from the Black Eagle Barony;
Annie Longbottle (H5, C), a blood-hungry
halfling, wanted in all the Five Shires, who
wields twin axes (Skilled in the hand axe);
and Tor Bonesmasher (D6, C), a violent
dwarven drunkard (Skilled in the battle
axe). The four assassins have been given
some intelligence on the characters: if the
party is mostly comprised of spellcasters,
three of them hide in one of the rooms on
the first floor, while Black Ivan remains on
the second floor to use his bow on any
enemy spellcaster that is able to
disengage. Otherwise, they all hide on the
balconies, using ranged weapons as much
as possible (Tor has a light crossbow,
Annie a sling, and Dusan a short bow).
They have also studied at least two escape
routes. The four have been paid an
advance of 400 royals for their services,
which they still have with them (100 royals
each). Finally, the assassins do not take
any special precaution to prevent Igor
from dying -- actually, Bogdan does not
care one way or another, and none of the
assassins wants to leave any witnesses.
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