Adventure Log: January 26, 2020: Resurrection Island

Diggers of the Earth, Diggers of Graves

Michael and Agatha Margrave, who are brother and sister, have come to the islands to establish an intentional community where civil war and the oppressing light of Darkmanse does not reach, traveling here from distant Cumorah and bringing with them some 150 settlers.

The community calls itself the Diggers, and has been founded on the principles of agrarianism, egalitarianism, communal living, polygamy, and antiauthoritarianism. The Diggers are practitioners of the Ultramontanist Heresy. They don’t hold sky burials as people do beyond the mountains on the western coast of the continent. They bury their dead, which, in part, is where the group's name comes from. They are diggers of graves, but also agrarian reformers who dig, plant, and cultivate the soil. The soil on these islands is especially rich and black, ideal for a variety of crops.

When the adventurers arrive in The Enchantress, the old fortress is in the process of being converted into a communal house by the Diggers. The commune uses the neighboring islands for raising their crops, the grazing of goats and sheep, beekeeping, and burying their dead.

The adventuring party comes ashore with Sweeney and the Ironfists to find the fortress and the agricultural fields on the surrounding islands completely deserted. One hundred and fifty settlers have vanished. Scrawled in blood in the fortress's entry hall is the word "DANE," and there are blood trails and signs of a struggle in the other rooms. While searching the fortress for any signs of life, they find an old journal hidden in a secret compartment in the library. The pages of the journal tell of an unspeakable crime committed here a century ago.

The Margrave

The stronghold on Plum Island once served as a defensive outpost of a sea commune known as Antioch, back in the days when civilization still held some sway there. Some of the old maps from the times before the Greening even include the region within the marchlands of the Darkmanse city-state, a notion that would strike many people today as fanciful at best. A century ago, the margrave of Antioch—a distant ancestor of Michael and Agatha Margrave—received word that a clipper ship flying the black flag of leprosy was approaching the commune. The vessel was called the Elizabeth Dane, and its owner was a wealthy man named Blake, who was afflicted with the disease and wanted to establish a leper colony on one of the neighboring islands.

As a thick fog rolled in and the Elizabeth Dane drew near, the margrave ordered that a beacon be lit in the belfry of the fortress tower, a signal to Blake and his lepers that they would find safe harbor in the cove. The beacon lured the clipper onto the reefs that guard the approaches to the ruins of Antioch to this day. The margrave and his men deliberately sank the Elizabeth Dane and plundered it of Blake’s gold, which the margrave used to enrich his own family and built an opulent family shrine on the main island of Antioch. Blake’s gold was spent on a mausoleum befitting an emperor in the depths of Darkmanse, and when the margrave died of old age, it was spent on a magnificent flotilla to transport him to his final resting place in the unlit subterranean halls of the cultic shrine.

Today, the ruins of Antioch—and the crumbling remains of the margrave's family shrine—can be found on one of the islands that neighbor Plum Island, a lost city in an island jungle.

Last Stand in the Tower Room

As Ven describes the contents of the old journal to his companions, the party hears a cry from Vistra Ironfist outside the fortress. Rushing to her side, they find her point out toward the cove, where The Enchantress is in flames, burning with a green-tinged preternatural fire. Beyond the ship, a massive wall of fog is rolling in from the reefs where the Elizabeth Dane was lured to her destruction a century ago.

The group retreats into the uppermost room of the tower and shelter inside Leomund's tiny hut, which Nik casts as a ritual from an old spell book she found in the hidden compartment in the library. The unnatural fog envelops Plum Island and infiltrates the fortress, bringing with it hoards of ghouls. The tower room is overrun with undead, which are joined by Blake, who is now a powerful ghast. The adventurers decide to fight. Nik dispels the magic hut and the party members rain destruction on their adversaries, killing Blake and slaughtering a dozen of his undead minions with breathtaking speed. Sweeney's last surviving crew member dies in the melee.

Night has now fallen on fog-engulfed Plum Island. The party and their companions, Sweeney and the Ironfists, prepare to descend the steps from the tower room. Below them, the fortress and surrounding island are swarming with undead.