The Crypt & Catacombs One-Pager
Crypts, catacombs and sepulchres are common adventuring locales. Therein lurk the undead and glimmering treasures long lost to the world.
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General Features
The crypt’s arched ceiling features many small one-foot-square tiles. Each is brightly coloured and depicts stylised scenes of the world.
Each of this crypt’s sarcophagi stand upon one-foot high stone plinths. The name of the interred is carved onto each plinth’s riser.
The crypt has a wooden floor, and was built over a natural cave. If the crypt is particularly old, the wood could be brittle and rotten. Incautious adventurers could step through the floor and plummet into the pit.
As #3 above but deep heaps of bones fill the pit. These break the adventurers’ fall to some extent, but some could animate to attack those falling into their midst. The shades and haunts of the deceased could also linger in the mass grave.
Deep niches carved into the crypt’s walls hold stacked arrays of bones. The bones are wired and glued together and form a macabre display; some such sculptures are shaped in the sigil of the god of death; disturbing them would be blasphemy.
A small shrine pierces one wall. A low altar, covered in mouldering offerings, burnt-down candles and the like, fills much of the niche. Faded paintings of an idealised afterlife adorn the niche’s walls.
General Dressing
Dust and grime lie thick upon the crypt’s paved floor. Dusty cobwebs hang from the ceiling and gently undulate in some subtle, unseen (and barely felt) breeze.
Some of the crypt’s paves have shifted and moved, creating areas of difficult terrain. The skeletal remains of a dog, cat or other small animal are curled up on a sarcophagus.
Small holes in a wall at floor level show where rats have tunnelled their way into the crypt. Signs of their presence—tiny tracks, droppings and so on—abound.
A perceptive character notices scratches on the floor around several sarcophagi, suggesting they have been moved at some point. Hidden niches could lie below the sarcophagi or the scratches could merely have been caused by other adventurers searching for treasure.
Strange patterns in the dust on the floor could be indicative of an occasional breeze entering the crypt from some slight crevice. Alternatively, they could provide a clue as to the presence of an undead guardian (or resident).
The heavy lids of several of the sarcophagi are not on properly. Was something trying to get out or was someone trying to get in?
Sarcophagi Inscriptions
Aarto Kallas: One with Death.
Ambro Pellervoinen: Stood His Ground. Maintained His Watch.
Brusi Kari: Our Torment is Over.
Eljas Otra: For Want of a Nail.
Ilta Rautia: Here Lies My Love. Disturb Her Not.
Kreeta Koveri: Finally, Peace.
Sarcophagi Graffiti
Finally, I am at Peace.
Here rests a bastard.
Lies. All lies.
Gone. Soon to be forgotten.
The world is better for them leaving it.
May the Father Forgive Me.
Sarcophagi Dressing
The interred is pinned to the bottom of the sarcophagus by a steel spike driven through their chest.
Faint scratch marks on the underside of the sarcophagus’s lid suggest (horrifyingly) its occupant was not dead when they were placed within.
This sarcophagus does not hold a body. Strangely, only a mouldering set of clothes lie in the sarcophagus suggesting a body once lay here.
The deceased had a glass eye. It stares sightlessly from the mouldering corpse and glints obviously in the party’s light.
The skeletal remains of a cat or small dog—a beloved pet—lie curled up at the deceased’s feet. If the deceased animates because of the party’s investigations, the pet also animates.
The deceased wears a boxy platinum signet ring. It bears the distinctive sigil of an intricately graven rearing swan.
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