#### **THE BLACKSHORE INTERCEPT** This is written to cover **3–5 sessions** depending on pacing. It establishes: • the death problem • Vecna’s infrastructure • cult operations • and a concrete investigative thread that leads into further pre-Barovia play. --- ## CAMPAIGN SITUATION For the past month, resurrection magic has become inconsistent along the western coast. Some people return wrong. Some cannot be returned at all. Ghost sightings have exploded. Fishing villages report whispers in the surf and shapes moving under the tide. Three temples have sealed their crypts. One bishop has disappeared. This is not rumour. This is already happening. The epicentre is a forgotten battlefield called **Blackshore Field**. --- ## IMPORTANT NPCs ###### Father Halbrecht (Human priest, mid-50s) Keeper of the Blackshore Chapel. Exhausted, terrified, practical. Has watched people die twice. Knows something is wrong with souls. ###### Sir Halveth Marr (Human knight, resurrected) Once brave, now hollow. Speaks slowly. Does not breathe unless reminded. His shadow does not line up. Holy magic causes him pain. ###### Lysa Greywake (Half-elf smuggler) Has seen glowing containers taken out to sea at night. Knows where boats vanish. Wants coin or protection. ###### Archivist Vell Tormek (Cult lieutenant) Cold, articulate, not insane. Oversees “field data.” Believes Vecna is correcting a cosmic design flaw. Will not beg. --- ## SESSION 1 — **THE WRONG DEAD** ###### Opening scene (play this, don’t narrate it) The party is present for, or summoned to, a funeral or body recovery of a known NPC (guild contact, ally, relative of a PC, or important background figure). Let the table sit in the scene. Then let the party choose: Do they attempt resurrection? If yes, it works. But immediately describe: • the body temperature never stabilises • breath is shallow and irregular • eyes track a half-second late • animals in the area panic • radiant magic causes discomfort Sir Halveth (or your chosen NPC) becomes the first proof. He can answer questions. He remembers dying. He remembers pain. He remembers **nothing else.** No light. No judgement. No waiting. Just being pulled sideways. --- ###### Investigation layer (give them multiple solid leads) **Temple records:** Other resurrections have failed or returned altered. Speak with Dead has produced overlapping voices. Divinations about the afterlife return static or screaming. **Examination:** Detect Magic shows unstable necromantic-divine interference. Gentle Repose fails after hours. Remove Curse does nothing. Greater Restoration stabilises symptoms but does not restore what is missing. **Witnesses:** Dockworkers and farmers report lights in the sea at night, figures chanting on the shore, and bodies going missing from old graves. **Concrete direction given:** Father Halbrecht asks them to go to **Blackshore Field** and the sealed coastal chapel there. End session when they commit to going. --- ## SESSION 2 — **BLACKSHORE FIELD** ###### Arrival Blackshore is not spooky flavour. It is **crowded.** • faint whispers constantly • cold pockets of air • footprints where nothing walks • translucent shapes at dusk • fishermen pulling up bones • birds refusing to land The chapel is barricaded. --- ###### The chapel scene (roleplay heavy) Inside are: • refugees from surrounding farms • three resurrected individuals • exhausted clergy • one person mid-possession Run this as crisis management: • calming panicked civilians • containing a violent spirit • learning what has been happening They learn: • bodies vanish from graves • ghosts manifest nightly • people hear chanting under the surf • lights move offshore • robed figures have been seen at low tide --- ###### Exploration options (do not railroad) Let them choose how to approach Blackshore: 1. **Grave investigation** They find empty coffins, disturbed stone from below, and sigils burned into the rock under burial sites. 2. **Night watch** They see robed figures carrying faintly glowing cylinders to the water. Ghosts gather when the cylinders pass. 3. **Talking to locals** They meet Lysa Greywake, who admits she ferried “containers that screamed” to a reef where boats never anchor. 4. **Spiritual approach** Speak with Dead at the mass graves pulls multiple voices at once. Several say: “We were turned aside.” All paths lead to: • proof this is organised • proof something is offshore • a specific reef / whirlpool / collapsed lighthouse foundation. End session when they locate the underwater entry point. --- ## SESSION 3 — **THE SUBMERGED RELIQUARY** This is a full dungeon. Not flavour. A working facility. ###### Tone Cold. Pressurised. Humming. Engine-like. ###### Area 1: Breach Hall Collapsed stone reliquary, water-filled chambers, undead wardens whose bodies are partially hollowed by soul-machinery. Clues: • soul-conduit grooves in the walls • sigils identical to those under the graves • storage racks built recently --- ###### Area 2: Containment Gallery Dozens of crystal cylinders. Some empty. Some violently active. Some cracked and leaking. Labels include: • dates • site names • numbers • sigil clusters They can: • shatter containers (releasing spirits) • stabilise them • take samples • sabotage transport systems They find shipping logs and destination vectors. --- ###### Area 3: Processing Engine A massive structure of: • chained soul-light • runic turbines • planar coils • black mist condensation chambers They physically see the process: Souls pulled in → stripped → condensed → routed. Not consumed. Redirected. This room answers the big question through play. --- ###### Area 4: Command Sanctum Archivist Vell Tormek waits here with elite guards and bound constructs. He is not ranting. He is recording data. He fights to protect the engine. If captured, he explains: • this is one of many sites • they are testing soul flow • they are studying closed systems • there exists a “primary reference” • their results are inadequate without it They recover physical documents: • “Closed-System Stress Logs” • diagrams of mist-saturated valleys • a partially preserved word: “…ROVIA” • maps with several marked regions --- ###### Destruction and escape When the engine is destroyed: • trapped souls surge free • the entire complex destabilises • a black rupture tears open above the central chamber • spirits are violently pulled sideways and vanish • the sea boils above They escape a collapsing facility. For the next several nights, hauntings spike across the coast. --- ## SESSION 4 — **FALLOUT** This is where the substance becomes **campaign-shaping.** ###### The world reacts • temples issue warnings • resurrection is now restricted • hauntings increase elsewhere • cult attacks escalate • refugees arrive from other disturbed sites Give them at least two scenes where they see consequences they did not intend. --- ###### Information consolidation Through captured cultists, notes, and scholars, they piece together: • this was a soul-routing project • it fed into something larger • it was experimental • it referenced an older, perfected example They do not yet know what it is. But they know it exists. --- ###### Next concrete lead From logs or cult interrogation, they get a specific next problem, for example: • a town whose census contradicts reality • a monastery whose records are blank • refugees from a place nobody remembers • a cult site studying “identity decay” This becomes **Adventure II.** Not abstract. A place. A crisis. A job. --- ## WHAT THIS ADVENTURE GIVES YOU After running this, you have: • recurring cult organisation • a mechanical reason death is unstable • physical proof of Vecna infrastructure • NPCs changed permanently • a world problem players understand • and a very clear next direction You now prep sessions by designing: • a site • a cult operation • what it is testing • who is running it • what happens if it succeeds --- If this is closer to what you meant by “substance,” say so, and I will build **Adventure II (the erasure / proto-domain arc)** in the same full, dense, session-prepped way. If it’s still not, tell me what _kind_ of substance is missing (mechanics, encounters, emotional beats, puzzles, political play, etc.), and I will rebuild it in that direction.