On Having Raided the Merchant’s Crypt

Well done, entourage of ten. You took a beating, and many of you lost a lot of blood, but no lives, largely thanks to the healing powers of two clerics and a paladin present. It was a long battle, but you successfully destroyed all of the skeletons that came into animation and flocked to the sword you were removing from the dead merchant's coffin. 

I want you to remember this adventure well, because any decisions you make in this connexion during the next session are likely to affect you for the duration of your short lives. 

Perhaps it was a bit underhanded of me as a DM to lead you into this adventure by giving information as a 'hook' to the one character whose player wasn't actually present; and to thereby lead you into the skein of circumstances surrounding it, but what the hell—you’re all big boys and girls. You can handle it. Unless, of course, it turns out that you can’t. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. 

The basic premise of the quest was fairly innocuous. I filched it from a set of pre-fab adventures called ‘One-Room Dungeons’ which are available online somewhere. This one was called 'The Merchant's Crypt', and if you happen to look it up and read it, you won't find anything more than you knew already by the end of last session. But, scheming fiend that I am, I chose to connect it to something larger and more diabolical just because that’s the way I roll. 

You removed the sword from the mausoleum and at the end of the last session you had decided to carry it to the churchyard and bury it. It is of such weight that it takes two of your men to carry it, so it would clearly require a STR greater than 18 to actually use it in combat. You decided to bury it on hallowed ground because the sword is clearly evil—the paladin detected a loathsome sentience from it at once—and, this being Trinity Sunday, most of the village are feasting at the lord’s hall, so you’re not likely to be spotted going from the cemetery to the church.

The picture below is a basic rendering of the weapon. 

It is two-handed, more than five feet long, and constructed of an uncannily durable black alloy that resisted all of Ragnar’s attempts to break it. It appears to have been forged from a single piece of metal, with the exception of the pommel, which is a sphere of obsidian or some other coal-dark gemstone grasped firmly into talons at the end of the grip. The grip is wound with black leather from some unknown beast, and the chappe is decorated with a demoniac head with eyes made of the same gemstone as the pommel, and horns that wrap around the reverse side of the guard. The blade is considerably wider than that of most two-handed swords. It’s queer-looking, it’s conscious, and it’s malicious. 

I want you to remember all this, because when the actions you take during the next session come back to bite you in the posterior at some later date, I don’t want to hear anyone say, ‘Wait, did we do something with black sword? When did that happen?’

It happened on Trinity Sunday in the 50th year of the Reign of King Edward III.