The Catacombs of Saint Martens
The Pitch
The Catacombs of Saint Martens is a dramatic reinterpretation of one of Dungeons & Dragons' most common set pieces: the evil necromancer's ritual. To emotionally engage players and create a player-driven, cinematic adventure, Catacombs takes the following approach:
Character-First Drama. Catacombs of Saint Martens is not a story about stopping an evil necromancer. Instead, Catacombs—which takes the position that war is merely politics by other means, and that combat is merely what happens when negotiations fail—asks three simple questions: what would drive a person to become an evil necromancer, what kinds of motivations would drive the players to stop him on an urgent timeline, and what supporting cast creates the richest potential for emergent narrative and drama?
Self-Balancing Combat. Catacombs creates tension not through a balanced adventuring day, but by juxtaposing swarms of low-threat fodder with intermittent threats and a solitary "near-peer" boss fight. Catacombs also provides DMs tools for easy live re-balancing, such as by empowering weak enemies with military-grade tactics and strategy (which the DM can downgrade at any time) and providing strong enemies with suboptimal theatrical "trap" options (which jack up the feeling of danger while lowering the real risk of a TPK).
Open-Ended Locations. Catacombs of Saint Martens provides players with a "jacquaysed"—nonlinear and looping—dungeon, thereby maximizing player freedom to achieve their goals in any way possible. With that said, players aren't the only ones capable of circumnavigating the dungeon around them; if they're not careful, they might draw the attention of one or more clusters of enemy forces, who stand ready to crash down on them like a wave.
Emergent Storytelling. Catacombs has no "load-bearing pillars": players are free to attempt to persuade, deceive, and intimidate any intelligent character, no matter how villainous or antagonistic. (Indeed, NPCs who haven't already prepared an ambush may be more than willing to talk before hostilities erupt—especially if they think the players might have something they want.) However, attempts are no guarantee of success, and few enemies (especially those with real convictions) can be swayed by something as trite or patronizing as an inspiring speech or unenforceable promise.
The Stage
Saint Martens, Fortified City
Past. Founded at the confluence of the Roudine and Brigaire Rivers, at the western foot of the Berghidiene Mountains, Saint Martens holds one of three passes between the western humanoid empire of Lumont and the eastern draconic empire of Aslakis. When war broke out between Lumont and Aslakis several years ago, Saint Martens became a city under siege, its archpriests, imperial mages, and ballistae corps providing crucial defenses as Aslakian raids scorched the surrounding countryside and tested the city's ancient walls.
Present. Three days ago, a minor acolyte of the Church of Phodias—Lumont's patron deity of kings, justice, and the Sun—found something curious in an old cellar of Our Cathedral of Shining Dawns: evidence of recent human habitation. Further investigation revealed that the city's old catacombs, which sprawled beneath the Old City and Upper City, had become infested with undead—and a small army of necromancers. The Church and city guard rallied an assault force, and a subterranean invasion began.
Future. Reports from imperial haruspices and Church diviners have located a growing emanation of powerful necromantic magic coming from the Tomb of Divine Rays, the resting place of Saint Marten's most ancient and celebrated heroes. Though the cause is impossible to deduce from above, old maps have identified a small leyline flowing directly beneath the Tomb—one whose power, if properly channeled, could fuel a powerful necromantic ritual.
The Cast
The Players, Militia Elite
Past. You're members, allies, or mercenaries of the Saint Martens city guard, the Lumontish military garrison, and/or Our Cathedral of Shining Dawns.
Present. When the call came to drive out a force of necromancers in the catacombs beneath the city, you answered—whether for loyalty, coin, obligation, or a simple desire to protect your home and neighbors. What followed was a three-day campaign down into the catacombs' deepest depths, filled with the screams of the dying, the clattering of old bones, and cries to rally and forge ever deeper.
Ultimately, it was only the capture and interrogation of three apprentice necromancers that revealed the true nature of the plot below the city: a powerful mage named Cyril Lambrecht, using the long-lost spellbook of infamous necromancer and thaumaturge Benoit Dumont, intended to complete and perform Dumont's most ambitious ritual: a rite that would consume the souls of all within its radius to fuel the birth of a new deity.
Future. Your comrades, who bought your path forward in blood, hold the levels above your heads against waves of the walking dead. Now, alone and nearly ten stories underground, you're Saint Marten's one chance to uncover and halt the titanic ritual brewing beneath the city—and save your own souls from the ritual's all-consuming maw.
Cyril Lambrecht, Resolute Ritualist
Past. Cyril Lambrech was once a mild-mannered hedge wizard, performing odd jobs for the farms, businesses, and lord of his countryside town of Roudlaux. When reports emerged that an Aslakian dragon had been seen stealing livestock in the countryside nearby, Lord Hubert de Roudlaux sent to the nearby city of Saint Martens for aid—but aid never arrived.
Cyril never learned why the dragon attacked—whether Roudlaux had offended it, or whether it was merely the first volley in the war that followed—but when Roudlaux was reduced to ash and embers, Cyril was one of the few survivors.
When his efforts to seek his family and neighbors' resurrection from the Church led only to his imprisonment for unlicensed magecraft, Cyril became determined to bring them back himself. After a chance visit allowed him to obtain the long-lost spellbook of infamous ritualist Benoit Dumont from a bookshop owner (who almost certainly didn't know what he had), Cyril spent six months decoding the runes within, then used Dumont's notes and spells to become a powerful necromancer himself.
After Roudlaux's destruction and the perpetrator's capture and execution became the casus belli of a Lumontish-Aslakian war, Cyril spent the following years recruiting and training a small army of apprentices from victims, deserters, and refugees. Satisfied and emboldened by the zeal of his followers, Cyril set off to complete and carry out Dumont's final, unfinished ritual: one that would allow the caster to consume the souls of thousands in order to become a new god.
Present. Now in middle-age, with greying salt-and-pepper hair, pale skin from days spent indoors and underground, and sunken eyes from too many sleepless, nightmare-filled nights, Cyril was, and remains, a mild-mannered, well-dressed man who knows he has come too far to turn back now. He is unfailingly polite, though at times fails to prevent his countryside roots from showing. He bears little anger toward Saint Martens or the ruling class of Lumont now—only a quiet, unbreakable, grim conviction that justice has come for them at last.
At the time the players arrive in the Tomb of Divine Rays, Cyril is in the Tomb's Gathering Hall with his undead guard and zombie dragon "pet," monitoring and controlling the flows of energy from the leyline beneath the catacombs as he prepares to unleash the ritual's final phase.
Future. Cyril has long believed that he has no future. He intends to use his power, once ascended, to restore the lives lost in the border towns through necromancy, starting with Roudlaux. Once his task is complete, he fully intends to abdicate his power and relinquish his spirit to the void.
Evelin Olivier, Necromantic Nihilist
Past. A refugee of an Aslakian raid on the Lumontish border village of Ghellaine, Eveline joined her family and neighbors on the long march to the nearby city of Colirdis in the hopes of finding refuge. When they arrived, however, they and thousands of others were left to camp outside the city's over-swollen walls while hunger and disease ate through the encampments.
In the end, when a draconic raid damaged the city's defenses and killed most of the refugees outside the walls, Eveline realized that all of their efforts had been for naught—that her family would have been better off dying in the initial attack, rather than suffering for months in the hopes of something better. When Cyril found her and offered her an opportunity to make their deaths mean something through service to her will, Eveline took it with grim determination.
Present. With long bangs and short-cut black hair that hovers above her shoulders, Eveline might have been beautiful once—save for the forest of pockmarks that covers the left side of her face from the bout of smallpox she survived in the refugee camps. She is soft-spoken, but has a will of iron, and carefully considers each and every word that she says.
At the time the players arrive in the Tomb of Divine Rays, Evelin is guarding the Hall of Heroes with the vanguard of Cyril's undead guards, prepared to stop any intruders who might threaten Cyril's plans.
Future. Eveline isn't sure if Cyril's path is the right way forward. She's skeptical that his plan, even if it succeeds, will do anything but extend its targets' suffering until they inevitably die again in pain and despair. However, she sees the ritual itself as a fitting opportunity to end the pain of Saint Marten's starving, poor, and diseased. More importantly, she is deeply grateful to Cyril for the magic and purpose he gave her; to abandon him in his hour of need is something she could never condone.
Sebastien Janvier, Cruel Stitcher
Past. Sebastien's siblings were always slightly scared of him: his tantrums, his rages, and the way he broke their toys and parents' belongings. When Sebastien's mother found him torturing a squirrel in the garden, however, she wasn't scared, but incandescent—not out of love for the animal, but for disgust at Sebastien emulating the "uncivilized" behavior that farmhands and stableboys would practice in the town outskirts. When Sebastien's father, a successful textiles merchant, returned home that night, he beat Sebastien bloody—a lesson in power and pain that Sebastien never forgot.
While Sebastien, a relatively small boy, could never quite threaten the bigger and older youths of his generation, a necromancy scroll he found in his father's library taught him to animate small piles of animal bones. When, at fifteen years old, he resurrected his childhood hound from a hole in the garden and commanded her to savage the other teens who had bullied him, however, his father killed the dog a second time, broke Sebastien's leg in the subsequent beating, and disowned him entirely for practicing the taboo of necromancy.
Determined to find success his own way, and to reclaim the wealth and comfort he had lost, Sebastien departed his hometown of Brives-le-Creuillon and sought to become an archmage of necromancy. When Sebastien tracked down Cyril and demanded to become his apprentice, Cyril—though reluctant to teach such a brute—found Sebastien's potential undeniable, and decided to channel the young man's skill to his cause.
Present. Sebastien is a stocky man of short-to-middling height with brown, bowl-cut hair and intense, flashing eyes. When he succumbs to one of his rages—which are frequent—he's prone to growling or snarling like a beast, flaring his eyes, and slamming his fists into walls or other objects while shouting or bellowing at anyone unlucky to be caught in his path.
At the time the players arrive in the Tomb of Divine Rays, Sebastien is (ostensibly) monitoring the seal in the Vault of Dusk, accompanied by several of Eveline's undead reserve, while repeatedly assembling, animating, deanimating, and disassembling a skeleton cat inside.
Future. As one of Cyril's inner circle, Sebastien is one of Cyril's few followers who knows that Cyril intends to abdicate his power once the ritual ends. While Cyril has repeatedly refused to promised it to him, Sebastien knows that Dumont's book will be unclaimed once Cyril departs this world—allowing Sebastien to take its power and carve a legacy all his own. Nonetheless, Sebastien is loyal to only one man—himself—and has no intention of dying for Cyril's cause.
Guillaume Beaufort, Carnivorous Composition
Past. The thirteenth child of an illiterate human farmer, Guillaume wandered the Lumontish countryside as a vagrant, targeting isolated young shepherds and farmworkers in a series of grisly rural murders. After Guillaume's execution by hanging, Sebastien Janvier dug up Guillaume's heart, liver, hands, and brain from his cooling grave, which Sebastien sewed into a necromantic masterwork that Sebastien proudly calls the Wolf—and which his peers and Cyril Lambrecht call only the Abomination.
Present. Made of a wolf's head sewed atop a bear's body with a lion's haunches and a snake's neck, Guillaume's heart, liver, hands, and brain are the Abomination's only humanoid parts, and his spirit the intelligent engine animating it.
At the time the players arrive in the Tomb of Divine Rays, Guillaume is (ostensibly) monitoring the arcane seal in the Vault of Day, accompanied by two-thirds of Eveline's undead reserves, while systematically cracking, sucking, and savoring the marrow from each set of bones in the crypts within.
Future. Guillaume is both grateful for and mildly impressed by Sebastien's necromantic skill (if occasionally bored by what Guillaume considers "pedestrian" work and an obsession with work over play). Guillaume also has two stomachs—a wolf's and a bear's—which, together with the caloric demands of his grotesque, oversized body, leave him starving for meat on a constant basis. While (to his irritation) Guillaume isn't free to leave or disobey so long as Sebastien holds the magical leash around his neck, he hopes to one day soon win his freedom and return to the Lumontish countryside to continue his life's work—and, perhaps, finally quell the raging hunger that haunts his unlife.
Roan Reynders, Cursed Vizier
Past. The firstborn son of a princess-turned-duchess of a minor halfling kingdom that Lumont annexed over three hundred years ago, Roan Reynders soon climbed the ladders of politics and magic to become an imperial mage and haruspex in the court of His Imperial Majesty Aurele II Paraflamel, an ancient predecessor of Lumont's present-day emperor, Aurele IV.
Although ostensibly executed for embezzlement and fraud (two crimes he was also guilty of), Roan was primarily executed for his involvement in an aristocratic conspiracy aiming to place Aurele II's cousin on the throne instead. To ensure his punishment for treason against the Crown, Roan's spirit was bound to his bones for a millennium—a sentence that has now barely one-third passed.
When Eveline reanimated his bones to assist in guarding the catacombs during Cyril's ritual, Roan's spirit possessed the resulting undead, granting it arcane powers and intelligence far beyond the ordinary. While the enchantment bends him to Eveline's will and prevents him from leaving, Roan senses something he has not seen in centuries: an opportunity for freedom.
At the time the players arrive in the Tomb of Divine Rays, Roan, accompanied by two-fifths of Eveline's undead reserves, is pretending to monitor the seal in the Vault of Dawn while secretly studying the arcane runes on his skull binding him to Eveline's control.
Present. Roan is a well-spoken halfling skeleton with noble sensibilities, who (upon his reanimation) painstakingly pieced together an outfit of imperial mage's robes, gold spectacles, and a trio of jeweled rings that continually threaten to slide off his fingers. While he's lost none of his predilection for shady dealings and well-timed betrayals, his long imprisonment has taught him patience and instilled a sense of grinding desperation. Even so, the weight of ages has worn away at his sanity, letting his emotions flash from sorrow to joy to rage and back again in a heartbeat.
Future. Roan doesn't know what the descendants of his "foolish heirs" (the cousins of his mother's second husband) have done with his estate in his absence, but he's determined to get it back. He just needs two things first: his freedom, and a new body.
Themiel, Celestial Justiciar
Past. A minor angel of Phodias, the Lumontish major deity of the sun, justice, and kings—of whom Lumontish emperor Aurele IV Paraflamel is said to be directly descended—Themiel was summoned by the clergy of the Phoedesian Church nearly five hundred years ago and asked to guard the Tomb of Divine Rays, which held the crypts of Saint Marten's most holy and just in the deepest catacombs beneath the city. Though this required her to be bound into stone in order to bless the tomb's wards and control the catacombs' magical defenses, Themiel accepted her task gladly, for no angel of Phodias turns their face from the light of duty.
Present. Bound as she is within her stone prison, Themiel cannot call upon her angelic powers—nor would she wish to break free to do so, honour-bound as she is to guard her charge for eternity. Her statue is carved in the visage of a handsome woman clad in flowing robes, with long tresses that fall past her back and a spear held point-down in one elegant hand. She can communicate only telepathically, her voice booming through the minds of chosen intelligent creatures nearby, and can understand all mortal languages and perceive all within her sight, with eyes that can pierce through veils and illusions alike.
Although Themiel doesn't know the tomb's full layout, she knows that the most sacred burial chambers lie to the north, and that Cyril and his two apprentices—accompanied by legions of undead and a pair of enormous undead (one a bestial abomination, one of draconic nature)—lie beyond.
Future. Themiel wishes to do only her duty, as charged by the clergy of Phodias. To this end, she seeks the removal of the seals that prevent her celestial strength from empowering and controlling the catacombs' deepest defenses, and the summary execution of the wicked necromancers who have desecrated this place—most especially their leader and his two lieutenants.
The Sets
Chapel of Phodias
History. This chapel is one of the oldest sites of Phoedesian worship in Lumont, and the place where the dead, their mourners, and the clergy prayed and were sanctified before proceeding deeper into the Tomb of Divine Rays.
Features. The air here is frigid and dust-choked. Bas-reliefs of the shining sun, proud angels, fierce warriors, and mighty kings line the walls, framing a mighty statue of Phodias: the King of Kings, clad in sweeping flame-kissed robes, bearing a crown of radiating sunrays, and wielding a sword of fire.
In the northwestern corner, atop a small, dry, empty offering fountain, stands a statue of a handsome female angel clad in flowing robes, with long tresses and a spear held point-down in one elegant hand.
Thick, rotted oaken doors reinforced with bands of rusted iron lead east (to the Peasants' Ossuary) and west (to the Embalming Chamber), and tall golden doors carved with the image of a rising sun lead north (to the Hall of Heroes).
Secrets.
Themiel. The statue houses Themiel's spirit, who telepathically addresses any she feels can aid her. If the players destroy the arcane seals in the Vaults of Day, Dusk, and Dawn, she can turn the entirety of the Tomb into consecrated ground (forcing undead to make all saving throws with disadvantage and preventing additional undead from entering or being created within the Tomb) and unlock the hidden door to the Hidden Reliquary—but only if the players first bring her the severed heads of "the necromancer's apprentices" (Sebastien and Eveline) and swear a sacred vow to do the same to "the necromancer" himself (Cyril).
Cistern Entrance. A three-foot-wide iron grate in a low channel encircling Themiel's fountain plunges ten feet through mortared stone before emerging twenty feet above the floor of the Buried Cistern below.
The Rat. An undead rat (one of Sebastien's creations) watches from a small crack in the eastern wall. Upon sighting intruders, it scurries into the Peasants' Ossuary, squeezes through a crack in the northern wall to enter the Vault of Dawn, and enters the Hall of Heroes, where its presence alerts Sebastien and Eveline to intruders. (Once alerted, the two necromancers take cover behind the doors leading to the Vault of Day and the Vault of Dusk, but hold their forces and fire until the players open the doors leading from the Chapel to the Hall of Heroes.)
Peasants' Ossuary
History. This chamber, once an ordinary burial chamber, was retrofitted as an ossuary—a resting place for hundreds of separate remains—when increasingly limited space in the Vaults of Day, Dusk, and Dawn required that the bones of commonfolk be exhumed and relocated to make room for those of nobles, warriors, and clergy.
Features. The air here is cold and dank, with a faint scent of mold and mildew. Three piles of bones fill the space here: a tall pile of large bones (such as femurs, ribs, hip bones) in the northwest; a smaller pile of small bones (such as finger bones, vertebrae, and foot bones) in the southwest; and a long pile of skulls along the eastern wall.
A six-foot-tall, three-foot-wide, one-foot-deep, one-and-a-half-ton stone slab fills the northern doorway that once led to the Vault of Dawn, carved with the insignia of a rising sun and sealed with mortar and plaster.
A two-foot-wide circular hole in the center of the floor holds the rotted stubs of a wooden grate.
Secrets.
The Crack. A crack in the slab's bottom left corner leads to the Vault of Dawn to the north.
Cistern Entrance. The hole plunges ten feet through mortared stone—five feet vertically, then seven feet diagonally—before emerging through the southeastern wall of the Buried Cistern below, twenty feet above the cistern's floor.
Hall of Heroes
History. This chamber was built as a connector to the tomb's deeper rooms, and as a memorial to the inhabitants' legacies.
Features. This long hall contains bas-reliefs of great warriors, kings, and prophets beneath a vaulted ceiling carved with cracked, aged frescoes of angels.
Pairs of tall golden doors stand at the south and north ends beneath engravings of sunrises (leading to the Chapel of Phodias and Gathering Hall, respectively). Two smaller golden doors carved with a sunrise and sunset stand along the south and north ends of the eastern wall (leading to the Vault of Dawn and Vault of Dusk, respectively), while a third smaller golden door carved with a full sun stands at the center of the west wall (leading to the Vault of Day).
A three-foot-wide iron grate stands at the hall's center and lowest point.
Secrets. The iron grate plunges ten feet through mortared stone before emerging twenty feet above the floor of the Buried Cistern below.
Hidden Reliquary
Buried Cistern
Gathering Hall
Vault of Dawn
Vault of Day
Vault of Dusk
Embalming Chamber
The Scenes
Prologue
When the adventure begins:
The players are in a small hall immediately south of the Chapel of Phodias, at the base of a dusty stone staircase (ascending back to the upper floors).
Cyril is in the Gathering Hall with his young zombie dragon, twelve skeleton soldiers, twelve skeleton archers, and two zombie brutes.
Eveline is guarding the Hall of Heroes with twelve skeleton soldiers, and twelve skeleton archers.
Sebastien is (ostensibly) monitoring the seal in the Vault of Dusk, accompanied by six reserve skeleton archers, while repeatedly assembling, animating, deanimating, and dissassembling a skeleton cat inside.
Guillaume is (ostensibly) monitoring the seal in the Vault of Day, accompanied by twelve reserve skeleton soldiers, while systematically cracking, sucking, and savoring the marrow from each set of bones in the crypts within.
Roan is pretending to monitor the seal in the Vault of Dawn, accompanied by twelve reserve skeleton soldiers, while secretly studying the arcane runes on his skull binding him to Eveline's control.