As the heroes come to a struggling town, they meet a strange homeless man outside the tavern. He directs them to the townhall / questgiver / mayor whatever.

The heroes get a quest in which they are supposed to find the son of the mayor. He is rebellious, yet paradoxically wants to impress his father. The mayor hasn’t seen him in a couple of months, but heard rumours/whispers around town that his son intended to raid a tomb outside of town. The tomb is known to be very dangerous, and the mayor expects that something bad may have befallen his son.

He wants the adventurers to go to the ancient, abandoned tomb / temple. It is 20 miles from town, surrounded by dense forest. It is a big flat (well, flat-ish, it’s a bit rough) stone embedded in the ground, 70 meters in diameter. In the exact centre, there is a tight staircase leading downward (into the tomb / temple). There are several perfectly straight lines carved into the rock, each leading from the circular entrance of the staircase, pointing in seemingly random directions to the end of the rock. There are 8 (maybe 7?) in total.

The heroes find the strange man leaning against a tree near the rock when they arrive. He tells them:

“Be careful. This tomb isn’t what it seems. There is great power here, if you know where to find it.”

He gives them a riddle-clue about a secret in the tomb, and then walks off.

In the tomb, the heroes encounter skeletons. Not much in the way of conventional treasure, but there are certain antiques from a different time, some potentially providing world building. Maybe there is one goblet made of gold that they can sell.

They see a corpse slumped over inside of the final room before they enter. Once they do enter, if they try to leave, they find that they cannot. If the heroes investigate the corpse, they find it to be that of the mayor’s son. They may notice some scratching that he made on the ground as he died. It reads:

“can’t leave can’t leave can’t leave (goes on for awhile)

Unworthy”

It is clear he starved to death.

Eventually, the corpse will reanimate and attack the heroes, revealing that all of the skeletons are former would-be grave robbers.

When the heroes find the secret of the room (puzzle is as of yet undecided), they find a magic dagger that is glowing dark green, with ancient markings, behind a secret panel. They should figure out that the dagger can cut through the barrier that keeps them trapped in the room. The dagger’s markings stop glowing after this.


The heroes return to the town and tell the mayor what happened. He grieves, pays the heroes, and is sobbing while they leave.

They find the mysterious man outside, watching them. He is leaning on another building. The heroes might wonder if he has trouble standing, but then, how did he get to the tomb and back faster than they did?

He says:

“Well look now, you’re all still breathing. Did you find what you were looking for?”

Whether or not the heroes tell him about the dagger, he chuckles and congratulates them, then walks off (unless the heroes do so first).

The next time the heroes are sleeping, a human looking rogue sneaks into their rooms and searches around. [Maybe create an unimportant NPC that has been in the party so far, which would wake up right now and see the rogue. (It is near impossible for the rogue to be spotted by player characters due to this rogue being max level). The rogue instantly kills this NPC.]