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SECRETS AND CLUES

• The caravan that the players found was initially composed of five families, but only two returned to Leda again.

• Cassandra, Lord Fargus’ father witch, has been seen wandering the roads and the old abbey tower.

• Some of the families have turned to the dark practices in a desperate attempt to keep evil away from their doorsteps and prevent their children from disappearing.

• The children were in their very beds when, without a sound or leaving a trace, they disappeared. Some even did it while they slept in the arms of their mothers. No one witnessed how; they were there a moment, disappeared the next.

• Rumors say the priests that erected the abbey gouged their own eyes out. They were worshipers of the night. The long robes they wore never let this gossip to be proven.

• Travelers swear to have heard the cries of children echo in the deep whispers of the cliffs near the abbey at dawn.

• Elders speak poorly of Lord Fargus and his father. They recall the great hunger of ten years ago with knots in their throats. Somehow, they are ashamed and don’t want to talk about what happened that night.

• Some remember that Cassandra used to feed the beholder with fish, but since the fishermen were against sharing their food with the creature, they let its share rot on the beach before giving it to the witch.

• If asked, no villager will deny having seen Lord Fargus’ father hanging from the great oak tree in front of the abbey, but there will not be a single one who admits having taken part in the lynching that night.

• According to the customs of their order, the priests were buried into the seas. Some of the village elders say that when the last priests sunk, that’s when the sea began to give rotten fish.

CUSTOMIZING THE ADVENTURE

You can easily customize The Tower of the Beholder by replacing Lord Fargus of Leda and his father with NPCs from your existing campaign.

The villagers with whom the players initially bump into on the road (Oskar and Westbrook) can also be personalized by relating one of them to some of your players, either by blood or by past encounters. Perhaps the nephew of one of your players is the son of Oskar or the son of Westbrook and has now been lost along with the rest of the children.

Maybe Oskar or Westbrook sent for the characters after the disappearances began. Perhaps one of the younger brothers or sisters of one of your players or even one of their children has disappeared.

The possibilities to relate the events of the story to your players are endless.

Cassandra, Lord Fargus’ sorceress, can also be customized to belong to a sorceress or wizard from your own campaign.

The dark priests of the abbey can also be a starting point for a more custom and familiar adventure. They can belong to an Order that is already well established in your campaign.

BEGINNING THE ADVENTURE

The great red flame of sunset burns slowly over the hills to the South of Whitesparrow. A gloomy mist covers the road ahead, where two wagons visibly damaged by swords and arrows, block the path.

A thin man with worn clothes and the skin hardened by the sun advances towards the players along with a child of no more than fifteen summers with caution and distrust. The curved blade of the man, fully extended. The dagger the boy clings tightly to, shaking.

Behind them, wives hurry their daughters back inside the wagons in whispers, never taking their eyes off the players. The children faces are expressionlessly tired, eyes that have seen too much of men’s hate, staring at nothing and taking in everything at once.

One of the wheels has given up against the stones of the road and a second man busily pushes himself to give it back its shape before night falls.

Family one: Oskar (husband), Thendra (wife), Arthur (eldest son), Soren (son), Michail (son)

Family two: Westbrook (husband), Choli (wife), Joslyn (eldest daughter), Edmund (son), Maribel (daughter)

At the south of Whitesparrow, the party crosses path with a caravan of two families of fishermen fixing the wheel of one of their wagons. By the state of their belongings, and the tired of their horses, it is clear that they have ridden all night long, enduring more than one attack on the road.

As the party gets closer to the wagons, the men reluctantly try to keep them away from their families.

Diplomacy will ensure that a peaceful encounter can be held. A sword-to-sword conversation will be the most that players can get from these people.

In case things get a tad too loud, the women of both families can persuade the men not to risk their lives unnecessarily by escalating things any further.

During the conversation, the party will learn that the families are heading back to the Coast of Leda, a small village of fishermen from where they are originally from after unsuccessfully trying to relocate to the nearby town of Imuria, north of there.

The men will bitterly tell the party that, like many of the fishermen who try to flee from Leda, they too have been met with nothing but hostility in nearby towns. Now, left with no other option to survive through the winter, and against their better judgment, they are heading back to Leda.

As the talk progresses, the fishermen will reveal why many try to escape Leda: for the past two years, the youngest children of each family have begun mysteriously disappearing from their mothers’ beds.

Rumors of the curse travel fast through Whitesparrow.

Fearing the curse, some of the families have been imprisoned after trying to settle outside Imuria. Others have been burned alive along with all their belongings.

For the missing children, they blame Lord Fargus, sovereign of these lands. They consider him as useless as his father was once in life (though they won’t reveal much more about what’s happening than that).

At each opportunity of the conversation, they warn the players to turn around and return where they came while there is still time.

People throughout Whitesparrow do not look too kindly at those who walked through Leda, and if they spend too much time there, they risk the fate of their people becoming theirs.

Once the talk is over, players can approach Leda to learn more about the curse and Lord Fargus, although many will choose not to talk to them out of fear and shame.

The first thing that surprises the players is the incredible rotten stench that floods the narrow streets of the small fishermen village.

Like the families they came across before, those who stayed in Leda will also blame Lord Fargus for the curse. Hunger and death loom over every family, no one is safe. The situation feels as if it was spiraling out of control; is not only that the children are disappearing, but the fishermen can’t feed the rest of their families. Something that happened when Lord Fargus’s father was alive began to happen again: the fishing is going sour.

“The great hunger” the elders call it. Back when his father was alive, it drove the people of Leda to desperation; they ended up burning the abbey down and hanging Lord Fargus over the great tree that grows nearby. Rumors say that, if the situation doesn’t change, the same tree that saw the father hang, might also claim the son’s life.

Eventually, the party gets approached by one of Fargus’ men: a tall, fierce-looking warrior with a troubled frown who invites them to his Lord’s mead hall (after forcing them to leave their weapons at the door).

Inside, Lord Fargus introduces himself and says his men told him about the outlanders who were asking questions about the curse. He is not convinced that what is happening to the village its a curse at all; but in a conspiracy. The children, the fishing souring; it all reeks to dark forces plotting against him.

Fargus strongly suspects Cassandra, the witch who lived in the tower of the old abbey. When the tower was burned, nobody saw her body, they only hear her screams. Now, many travelers have started to rumor having seen her by the cliffs. Not long ago, Fargus sent six of his best men to investigate the tower, but many moons have passed and none of them has returned.

Someone it is trying to take him his lands, the problem is that he doesn’t know who. Not long ago he sent out six of his best men into the Tower of the Beholder. There, Fargus suspects the true secret for the disappearances of the villager’s children hides. Moons have gone by, and none of his men has returned.

The tower, a massive structure twenty times taller than the largest tree of the High Forest, leans crookedly at the top of a cliff next to the ruins of his father’s old abbey.

Cassandra, royal sorceress for Lord Fargus’ father, kept the beholder under her power to guard her master’s lands during the Rhainne campaigns. When the men of the village and Farguns himself answered the horn of war, far beyond the hills of the east, it was the witch’s abomination that kept his father’s enemies at bay.

With most of the food being sent away to the front lines, Fargus’ father didn’t realize of his mistake when he let the witch poison his hear with the idea of using the beholder as guardian of the village; the beast feeds itself with the hunger of ten families.

Soon, the fishermen began protesting having to give most of their food to the Beholder. The bad blood grew to the point where they left the part that belonged to the Beholder to rot under the midday sun of the beach, in an attempt to poison him. To the dismay of the villagers, the rotten fish became a delicacy for the creature.

It was not long before all the fish came out rotten from the fishermen’s nets. The seas were punishing the villagers for feeding the aberration.

With the sea cursing their fishing, there was no more food left to feed the village, and with most of the fishermen gone to the war, the villagers’ hunger grew into anger and desperation. Blood was shed. The crowd was unforgiving.

Even though it was the only thing that kept them safe, that night, the villagers blaze the tower on fire, killing the monstrosity that soured their food.

In the middle of the night, at the light of torches, death spreads quickly. It wasn’t until Fargus’ son got word of the revolt and hurried back from the battlefront that the madness stopped.

But by then it was already too late; his father hung from the old oak tree. Half of his men lay slaughtered around the burnt ruins of the abbey.

Fargus was now Lord of the coasts of Leda.

With the beholder dead and the witch gone, Fargus saw no other choice to protect his people than surrendering part of his father’s domains to his enemies. The sea gave them abundance again. Peace was no longer a longing in the heart of the fishermen.

Winters went by. Now, a new evil with a stench to the past descends like a thick bank of fog over the coasts of Leda. The children are missing from their beds. Fishing is rotting again.

What’s worse: fearful by the disappearances, some of the villagers have begun to put their faith in charlatans and the dark arts, steering away from the teaching of the stars his father worked so hard to maintain.

For Lord Fargus, everything points to the witch and the tower of the old abbey. He promises what remains of his fortune if the players can help him unravel the mystery.

FIGHTING THE CHILDREN

If it comes to that, this adventure includes a battle against the creatures that were once the villagers’ missing children. We include the names of some of them and to whom they belonged before turning into despicable monsters. Feel free to customize one or more of these children to be a little brother, son or nephew of one of your players.

NOTABLE LOCATIONS

LEDA

Area Aspects: small fishermen village, an old abbey in ruins next to a crooked watchtower at the edge of a cliff. Great black tree near the abbey.

The sea wind blows putrid in Leda. A light rain continually falls over its sharp cliffs of black granite. Its air, eerily warm for a coastal village, hurts the lungs when breathed.

Below the precipice where the abbey and its tower are, as if they were the ribs of long-dead animals, the broken carcasses of forgotten boats lie half-buried in the lugubrious sands of the beach. A testament to the village’s misery.

The small houses, covered in a greenish mold, stretch chaotically through the rocky landscape of southern Whitesparrow as if they had sprouted from the rock itself.

With doors and windows covered up by cheap talismans bought to travelers and bums, Leda’s villagers have put their faith into the dark arts in search of protection for their children.

Besides the occasional laughter that reeks of despair and madness, there are no sounds of life left in the small village, only the constant complaints of seagulls looming over large pools of fetid fish. Fish that no merchant would consider buying, not even to feed the pigs.

Leda its located on the south coast of Whitesparrow, near the frontier between the town of Imuria and the Longhammer Kingdom.

Despite covering a fair amount of terrain on the rocky coast of Whitesparrow, Leda it’s relatively small. There is no fertile ground there, only a few wide trees the fishermen use to build and repair their boats.

The village’s most prominent landmark is its abbey’s watchtower, where a Beholder infamously lived during the Rhainne campaigns. The structure, a huge black stone tower that stood on the highest cliff of Leda, was used by priests to study the movements of the stars.

Despite being relatively hidden, Leda its no stranger to raids by either sea or land. Pirates try to assault the fishermen as often as bandits have attempted to occupy its roads, but the abbey and its watchtower have always been there to protect them.

ABBEY

Area Aspects: cliff, uphill narrow path

The path from the outskirts of the village to the abbey it is dangerous, hard to walk. It leads to a narrow passage that spirals uphill against Whitesparrow’s famous ebony coast, where its ruins are.

The rocks of the cliff where it was built are as sharp and slippery as an elvish blade. The winds blowing on the trail that leads to it are so strong that even the most experienced travelers don’t find the courage of going through it by only using the feet.

To reach the abbey of Leda, like the blind monks who built it, one must crawl there.

The high walls of hand-carved stone blocks that once protected it fell helpless before the whims of the villagers and time. Beside it, a half-burnt candle raises over the mist; the tower of the Beholder. Crooked to one of its sides after part of the abbey’s walls fell over it, the old watchtower shows the countless scars of old sieges.

As if it was clinging to the coast of Leda by a will of its own, the tower of the beholder looks like it is about to collapse off the cliff at the slightest fell of one of its bricks.

SHATTERED DOOR

Area Aspects: gargoyle sticking out its tongue, broad ironbound wooden door (shattered), poisonous vines.

The door is of a strong ironbound oak as dark as the coal of dwarfs. Among the pieces of the door that are still standing, the door knocker sticks its thick gargoyle tongue out in a grotesque grimace of scoff contempt.

In the past, the entrance to the ruins of the abbey was blocked from the outside by two large pieces of red oak. Now, the poisonous vine that creeps all through the door and the stone walls its enough to keep marauders away from its secrets.

Since Leda’s sorceress vanished from her tower, the magic that once protected the abbey’s entrance has slowly faded away over the years, but not entirely.

Some of it still lingers there, like an invisible mist to the eyes and senses, allowing the poisonous weed to grow uncontrolled, wild, and giving life to Jerry, an old door knocker with an extravagant taste for long conversations.

If the party can withstand the brass ornament’s dry sense of humor, they will have a unique opportunity to learn more about the night of the lynching of Fargus’ father through the eyes of a privileged witness.

The poisonous vine covering what’s left of the door is particularly dangerous: it can lash out against creatures passing close by and even trap them.

Any person or creature attempting to go through the shattered door without protection from the poisonous vine must succeed on a DC 13 Constitution, or take 7 (2d6) poison damage.

If someone gets stung by the vine, it will be poisoned so for around twenty-five to thirty-five minutes.

A character with a medical background can spend five minutes to aid the poisoned victim and attempt a DC 12 Wisdom (Medicine) check.

If the attempt succeeds, the afflicted wound will no longer be poisoned: the victim will heal over time.

The poisonous vines cover almost the entire shattered door, allowing the party to partially see what’s inside, but not step inside the abbey without getting rid of it first.

TOWER HALL

Area Aspects: Dim light, signs of a battle on the floor, burnt torches, spiders.

Unlike in the village, where it is breathed warm, the air trapped within the tower of the beholder it is as cold and damp as the one of a crypt. Sun isn’t allowed beyond its thick hand-carved bricks; it has been barred.

The priests that erected the tower were worshipers of the night. They blinded themselves by tearing out their own eyes. Their gods, swollen lumps hiding in the void of the stars, granted them their darkest wishes.

Spurts of blood from severed limbs that are not there. Scratches on the wood flooring from swords that missed their target. Signs of a recent battle.

The staircase, which stone steps are barely wide enough for one person to climb it at a time, disappears between shadows and a thick curtain of cobwebs.

The spiders that lurk free in the dark have the size of a small pig and move in groups of five or less. They can climb difficult surfaces without needing an ability check (spider climb). While in contact with their web, even when it’s a broken one, the spiders can know the exact location of any other creature in contact with their web (web sense). While on their web, spiders are fast and can easily ignore the restrictions caused by webbing (web walker).

LIBRARY FLOOR

Area Aspects: books of all sizes and shapes, some burnt, some untouched and still on their lecterns, spiders, three zombies, a Rust monster and a Mimic, hidden in a large bookcase. Aleph symbol on the floor.

It would be impossible to know for sure how many books in the arcane arts the library of the old tower used to house, only that rage and fire weren’t enough to rid the world from their madness.

Among the burnt papyruses and the piles of greenish ashes from the skin of the strange creatures that the priests’ used to bind some of their books’ with, a small number of their most unholy tomes managed to escape the claws of fire. They rest there still, on their lecterns, undisturbed.

With thick pages made out of the dry skin of the oldest priests of the order, these books carry secrets no sane man should dare to know. Texts that date back to a time where the scribes of the monastery had discovered the true nature of the dark. Thankfully, the priests wrote them in a tongue only a man without eyes can read.

In addition to the spiders mentioned in the tower hall, three zombies are discovered in the library floor (Lord Fargus’ lost men, still wearing their light armor) along with two Monstrosities: a Rust Monster and a Mimic that hides in a large bookcase near the back wall.

An aleph is a cardinal point from where one can see all the points of infinity from the same angle, simultaneously, without distortion or confusion. Those who dare to see through an Aleph invoking one, often end up losing their minds or hurting themselves due to the overwhelming nature of the experience.

SORCERESS STUDY

Area Aspects: burnt books on magic, mess, one deep gnome, one Shrieker, a Skeleton, and a Giant Centipede lurk in the shadows after having escaped their glass prisons.

A hurricane couldn’t have made a better job ravaging the witch’s study than the mess the hungry fishermen did. And they were remarkably hungry.

Under the wreckage of a large turned over bookshelf, countless glass cases of all sizes and shapes hold creatures that ought to be under someone’s boot or burning on a stake. The glass cases stack high under broken wooden shelves in a grotesque display of the arcane, worthy of the Herald Holdfast’s museum of wonders.

Some of the witch’s aberrations are long dead. Others, clumsily try to free themselves from the spell that binds them to an existence of misery, even after all these years. But it is the ones that are not are there that stand out the most. Large, thick glass cases, lie broken on the floor. Their exploded glasses speak of things that should only have crawled, but for some reason, have broken free and learned how to walk.

One deep gnome, one Shrieker, a Skeleton, and a Giant Centipede lurk in the sorceress’ study.

BEHOLDER’S LAIR

Area Aspects: open vertical space, greenish magical bonfire, a blind beholder.

The last six floors of the tower have been purposely collapsed to leave enough space for the Beholder creature to float free.

Although it has been blinded on all its eyes by the flames of the villagers almost ten years ago, in the enormous eye of the aberration, hell can be seen. His mouth and nose breathe fire in constant anguish. His disfigurement only makes his features more hard, more terrible.

There is no longer any trace of sanity in the monstrosity, only rage and a feeling of deep sorrow for the loss of their children. It bounces stupidly against the black stone walls, breathing so heavily that the very tower seems to be breathing with it.

Beneath the creature, the sons and daughters of the villagers gather around a sickly bonfire. Its faint greenish light spills over the little ones as they move awkwardly in circles worshiping the Beholder. A kind of dance so horrible that it could well have been taken from the darker passages of the second forbidden volume of Wolfhar the Damned.

CONCLUDING THE ADVENTURE

Besides defeating a blinded by hatred beholder with a ten-year bloodthirst, the party must decide what to do with the children.

Will they murder them for what they have become? Will they return them to their parents? Will they try to break them free of their curse? Perhaps by killing the villagers, so that the curse can end and they can save the children and the future of Leda?

Will they try to summon Cassandra with one of the books from her Library? Or will Fargus allow the children to live in the tower, in secrecy?

EXPANDING THE ADVENTURE

The tower can have as many floors as you want.

Each floor can be filled not just with traps and foes your players can overcome, but with secret passages or magic stairs that lead from one floor to another in the tower.

That alone will create a vertical maze your characters can explore for as long as you want while having an “escape clause” at hand you can exploit any second by having them travel instantaneously to the witch’s study after walking up a flight of stairs.

That alone would create a vertical labyrinth that your players can explore for as long as you want, while at the same time, give you an “escape clause” at hand that you can conveniently exploit at any time by making them travel instantly to the witch’s studio (in case they get impatient).

There can even be a dungeon underneath the tower that extends to the abbey itself, where the beholder is hiding. Or, you can have it hidden on the tower’s roof, or in one of the previous floors to Cassandra’s study, or anywhere you want!

You can also have a maze of poisonous vines outside the tower and you can even have Lord Fargus’ father’s spirit appear at the oak tree where he was hanged, maybe even giving some clues or valuable instructions in getting through the tower’s maze.

It is also possible that the story of Lord Fargus doesn’t end with this adventure. Depending on how your players end this story, you can have his father’s spirit haunting the people of Leda for having lynched him. You can even have your players fight Lord Fargus’ disembodied spirit with the help of Cassandra!