Q16: "The Silent Crypts" by Count Mohawk

[Count Mohawk]

This is the second quest in the Cultist / Undead arc. The first one is "Q15: The Ruins of Direburg".

HQ25 Quest 16.png

QUEST 16: The Silent Crypts
The people of Direburg built an underground cavern many years ago to house the bodies of their most accomplished warriors so that their citizens could pay their respects in privacy. Before the town's destruction, they hid their most powerful relic, the [Fourth Artifact] in the tombs to protect it. Now, however, the crypts have been defiled by the Cult of Chaos, with their necromantic leader raising these fallen warriors to further his own dark agenda. Slay this foul sorcerer so that the people of Direburg may finally rest in peace.

NOTES—
A When a Hero passes by a marked square, on your next turn put a Mummy onto any square next to each coffin in this room or corridor. The Mummies may then move and attack as normal. Coffins in the corridors block movement.
B The cultists in these rooms wear gaudy robes signifying their higher-rank in the Cult of Chaos. On their turn, if all three cultists are still alive, they may collectively cast a ritual of empowerment, increasing the Attack and Defend values of all monsters in the room by one until the cultists who cast it are slain. (Only one ritual may be cast per room.)
C A tunnel links these trap doors. Any figure landing on one
trap door immediately moves to the other, ending its turn.
D This coffin contains a pair of gold bracelets worth 180 gold coins.
E The treasure chest contains an Elixir of Life.
F This sorcerer is a necromancer sent from Morcar to claim the artifact hidden in this crypt. He has the following stats:
Movement: 6 | Attack: 3 | Defend: 5 | Body: 3 | Mind: 6
The necromancer can cast the Chaos Spells Fireball, Sleep and Summon Undead.
The cultists here wear gaudy robes signifying their higher-rank in the Cult of Chaos. On their turn, if all three cultists are still alive, they may collectively cast a ritual of empowerment, increasing the Attack and Defend values of all monsters in the room by one until the cultists who cast it are slain. (Only one ritual may be cast per room.)
After the necromancer is slain, the first Hero to Search for Treasure will find the [Fourth Artifact] enshrined in the tomb, as well as a collection of jewels worth 125 gold coins among the necromancer's belongings.

Wandering Monster: Mummy

[Count Mohawk]

I am proud of this Quest. The path from the Stairway to the necromancer's room is actually very short, taking up a mere 8 rooms and a few corridors. The danger to the Heroes comes primarily from the possibility of them taking a wrong turn and getting lost in the catacombs. And like any good Evil Wizard, I made sure to hide some treasures in the side paths.

You may note that I added an Elixir of Life to the chest at point D. I believe that every Quest Pack should have at least one Elixir, and this one in particular is long enough to possibly warrant two. If upper management disagrees, however, I can easily change the contents of that chest to a more mundane potion of healing.

[knightkrawler]

QUEST 16: The Silent Crypts
The people of Direburg built an underground cavern many years ago to house the bodies of their most accomplished warriors so that their citizens could pay their respects in privacy. Before the town's destruction, they hid their most powerful relic, the [Fourth Artifact] in the tombs to protect it. Now, however, the crypts have been defiled by the Cult of Chaos, with their necromantic leader raising these fallen warriors to further his own dark agenda. Slay this foul sorcerer so that the people of Direburg may finally rest in peace.

NOTES—
A The Mummies in these rooms and corridors are resting in their coffins and should not be put onto the board when the Heroes enter the room. When a Hero passes by a marked square, on your next turn put the Mummies onto any square next to their coffin, after which they may move and attack as normal.
B The cultists in these rooms wear gaudy robes signifying their higher-rank in the Cult of Chaos. On their turn, if all three cultists are still alive, they may collectively cast a ritual of empowerment, increasing the Attack and Defend values of all monsters in the room by one until the cultists who cast it are slain. (Only one ritual may be cast per room.)
C This coffin contains a pair of gold bracelets worth 180 gold coins.
D The treasure chest contains an Elixir of Life.
E This sorcerer is a necromancer sent from Morcar to claim the artifact hidden in this crypt. He has the following stats:
Movement: 6 | Attack: 3 | Defend: 5 | Body: 3 | Mind: 6
The necromancer can cast the Chaos Spells Fireball, Sleep and Summon Undead.
The cultists here wear gaudy robes signifying their higher-rank in the Cult of Chaos. On their turn, if all three cultists are still alive, they may collectively cast a ritual of empowerment, increasing the Attack and Defend values of all monsters in the room by one until the cultists who cast it are slain. (Only one ritual may be cast per room.)
After the necromancer is slain, the first Hero to Search for Treasure will find the [Fourth Artifact] enshrined in the tomb, as well as a collection of jewels worth 125 gold coins among the necromancer's belongings.

Wandering Monster: One Mummy

The bold part is redundant.
I like this quest. Period. Nothing to edit or change right now until the rest of the quests stand.
The notes section has the right length, wording will be changed later if need be, everything's in order here from where I stand.

[The Road Warrior]

Nice quest but I'm a little confused by the coffins. Do they block the corridors (I think they do but with the Mummies standing on top of them I'm not entirely sure). Either way I think you could perhaps remove the mummy icons completely and just handle adding them to the board in the notes, something like this:

NOTES—
A When a Hero passes by a marked square, on your next turn put a Mummy onto any square next to their coffin. The Mummy may then move and attack as normal.

[Count Mohawk]

The bold part is redundant.
I like this quest. Period. Nothing to edit or change right now until the rest of the quests stand.
The notes section has the right length, wording will be changed later if need be, everything's in order here from where I stand.

Yeah, adding another 'B' mark to the center room is probably a better idea than repeating the notes twice.

Nice quest but I'm a little confused by the coffins. Do they block the corridors (I think they do but with the Mummies standing on top of them I'm not entirely sure). Either way I think you could perhaps remove the mummy icons completely and just handle adding them to the board in the notes, something like this:

NOTES—
A When a Hero passes by a marked square, on your next turn put a Mummy onto any square next to their coffin. The Mummy may then move and attack as normal.

I'm pretty sure they do block the hallways, as they count as furniture and the Heroes can't step over even low furniture such as tables. I put the Mummy icons on top of the coffins to indicate which coffins have Mummies inside, but your wording works better. I'll just have to add a subnote that two Mummies appear instead of one in the last room before the necromancer's.

By the way, there's no problem with the fact that I put 15 coffins in one Quest, is there? Most players will need to print at least a few to get that many.

[The Road Warrior]

By the way, there's no problem with the fact that I put 15 coffins in one Quest, is there? Most players will need to print at least a few to get that many.

No problem. Just provide a sheet of 15 coffins to print out. I'm pretty sure that other quests writers will use coffins.
drathe has uploaded a sheet of 24 tombs already to the Inn and I created 12 3d papercraft tombs for my quest pack The King Under the Forest.

[TMU]

Either way I think you could perhaps remove the mummy icons completely and just handle adding them to the board in the notes, something like this:

NOTES—
A When a Hero passes by a marked square, on your next turn put a Mummy onto any square next to their coffin. The Mummy may then move and attack as normal.

Other than this I think this quest is spot on!
What comes to the coffins I agree with Road Warrior, these will probably be used in other quests too so I don't see that as a problem

[Gold Bearer]

Nice quest.

You're going to have to explain the trap doors either in the quest notes or at the start of the book, in case they haven't got or played Kellers Keep.

[Daedalus]

I also think this exploration Quest featuring undead is done well and deserves inclusion. Gold Bearer makes a good point about including trap door info in the Quest Notes/tiles sections. A seperate entry for the tiles is needed at the beginning of the expansion. I'd say we should simply use the trap-door text from the intro of KK:

Trap Doors
The 2 trap doors are used to link 2
visually unconnected rooms via
an unseen "tunnel." When landing
on 1 trap door, a Hero moves
instantly to the other trap door.

For clarity, I'd suggest following the notes section of KK, Quest 8 rather than rely entirely on cross-referencing the tile information section:

Both of the trap doors are linked by a tunnel. Any Hero or
monster landing on one of these squares immediately moves
to the other trap door square. The connecting tunnel is
dangerous and any Hero moving through it must roll 1
combat die. If he rolls a skull, he loses 1 Body Point. After
moving from one trap door square to the other, the Hero's or
monster's turn is over.

As this is a bit wordy and will probably be more than you want to fit in the notes of the Quest, you could shorten it:

B. A tunnel links these trap doors. Any figure landing on one
trap door immediately moves to the other, ending its turn.

You wouldn't want to repeat the trap door explanations twice for each trap door or muddle it with notes A and B, so as a possible fix move the upper trap door left one room with the Zombie. Then label that room C, where the trap door info could be inserted independent of the original note B. Subsequent notes C through E will also need to be bumped one letter to accomodate this change. Finally, remove the Mummy and A note from the bottom trap-door room and label that room with a C.

One last comment. I paused for a moment to consider whether the corridor coffins could be passed through by figures--Heroes will want to do this. RotWL instances of coffins could be moved around through adjacent squares, so the issue hadn't come up for me before. The NA rules don't address this and the EU rules are vague about what a movement-prohibiting "occupied square" contains. To avoid possible confusion, I'd say add this to note A:

Coffins in the corridors block movement.

I recognize my trap door suggestion requires 3 more lines for an entry in the notes. I hope you can find a way to fit it in. The crypts suggestion can simply be added into note A. While it is helpful, it is also less necessary.

[Count Mohawk]

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone! I have updated the first post to take them into account.

I credit Road Warrior for taking the Mummy icons off the board and letting the Quest Note do the mechanical lifting, which not only removes some ambiguity but also reduces the text needed by a line or two. I did reword it slightly, though, as I needed to cue Zargon to put two Mummies into the last room before the center one with the necromancer and the original wording would have seen him put down just one.

Knightkrawler, you are right about notes B and E (now B and F) being redundant, but because room F also has the necromancer and some treasure, I am letting the word-wastage slide on this one. If general best practices allow putting two letter icons into the same room, I can tidy it up a bit more, but otherwise this is necessary.

Gold Bearer and Daedalus, nice catch with the trapdoors. I'm used to working with Slev's Hero Quest Revised, which cuts out a lot of Quest Note clutter by keywording pretty much every relevant ability and putting the rules for every special tile into the rulebook. (I also remember fondly the summers my brother and I spent unofficially beta-testing Quest Packs 7 through 12. Ah, memories...) I did move the trapdoor over by one room; hopefully at least a few Heroes will actually take it instead of immediately finding the secret door and skipping the dead-end parts of the Quest.

And finally, a little trivia:

• After the revisions, the Notes section of this Quest is 17 lines tall, which does leave a little more space if I need to further clarify anything. I use the North American layout, which stacks the notes into two separate columns.
• I wanted to have the coffin containing the Broadsword be a sort of trap where the Heroes would have to fight the corpse inside to get his weapon, but I couldn't find a good place to put him and there's not enough room left in the Notes anyway, so I had to leave it out of this one.
• My favorite complaint to make about the Undead is that their strongest normal monster is the Mummy, which only has two Body Points. In my custom Quests, I typically resolve this by including possessed suits of armor known as 'Death Knights', which are dangerous due to having 5 Attack and three Body Points. Fortunately, like the other Undead, they are slow, and on a good day even the Dwarf can outrun them.