Ride of the headless horseman

## Strange campfellows

This adventure begins at a small guardpost, about 20 minutes away from the remote village of Tobon.

A knight sits at the central campfire and meets a few interesting figures that have chosen the camp for a brief respite until they continue their journey.

The knight first sees an exotically dressed Wood Elf with a Chef's attire, after a brief conversation the Elf opens his mouth and starts speaking in a Galverian accent.

The knight is a bit bewildered yet intrigued nonetheless since the Elf mentioned Spicy Potato Salad.

The Elf recognises that the knight is interested in his cooking and is thus honoured.

Ultimately the Elf introduces himself as Xaviér, a Wood Elf that aspires to master the culinary arts of spiciness.

The knight introduces himself as Erikny Sonisson, head knight of north-eastern Releivos.

The second figure sitting right in the opposite of Erikny is a towering Goliath (around 2.25 meters) with red tattoos covering his arms and part of his chest. He carries a large axe on his back and has a unibrow covering his forehead.

Erikny is a bit surprised by the intimidating stature of the Goliath and formally asks him for his name.

The Goliath introduces himself as "Thalaï" but mentions that "friend may call him "Dum Dum" " since he believes that to be his actual name nowadays.

The Goliath talks about where he came from and that he wishes to meet new friends wherever he goes. Erikny's nerves calm down as the Goliath appears to be very friendly and less intimidating than initially anticipated.

An armor-clad figure sitting on the opposite side of Dum Dum's bench states his name is Braxton Dawnbringer as soon as Erikny locks eyes with him, in front of Erikny sits a Half-Orc fully covered in chainmail and a large shield next to him leaning against the bench.

He mentions a bit about that he came from a monastery where he was raised by Elven Paladins to also become a Paladin despite his heritage.

Afterwards the knight asks if everyone here is on their way to the village of Tobon since there have been numerous reports and posters asking for help.

He also mentions that it is unusually cold for this time of year, even small piles of snow and frosted windows.

All 3 figures nod in confirmation and Erikny elaborates that the village was always bustling with people up until a week ago, the village is dead as can be from 17:00 and onwards until dawn breaks again.

As the brief conversation ends a dog that was behind the main tent transforms into a green-robed figure and states that she overheard the conversation they were having, she mentions that she was underway to Tobon as well and offers to join the others since combining efforts is more fruitful. She takes off her hood and introduces herself as Aredhel, people initially think her to be human but notice that she has somewhat unusual auburn- coloured hair and pointed ears.

She reveals to be a Half-Elf that travels the world in search of the most exotic plants, she saw the notice for assistance at Tobon and happened to be on her way there as well.

Last but not least a Halfling with rounded glasses and frizzy hair trips and fall out of some nearby bushes, the creature meekly comes closer to the rest yet is on edge for any movements made by the others. Erikny kindly asks for his name and the Halfling introduces himself as Hulston Rootveldt, a flower enthusiast.

Xaviér chimes in and asks if anyone wants some Spicy Potato Salad, after a brief moment of eating the party decides to take a final breather and head to the village of Tobon together.

## An encounter with the headless horseman

The adventurers take a short hike towards Tobon and soon hear a large bell toll and see large groups of villagers scurrying inside the town's church.

As soon as they enter a villagers runs up to Hulston and takes him by the hand, warning that "it" is coming soon. Hulston, both bewildered and confused asks what "it" is and in response the villager mentions "the headless rider"

A spectral fiend that rides through town when dusk falls over the village and leaves when dawn breaks.

The adventurers run after Hulston and the villager into the church, as soon everyone entered the villagers barricade the front doors with a heavy wooden plank.

Xaviér on the other hand isn't fazed by the warnings of the villager and decides to stay outside, a remaining villager quickly runs up to the church and cries out to be let in without success.

Xaviér and the villager hear an ominous galloping that progessively becomes louder and louder.

People in the church notice that the windows are slowly becoming foggier with the soft crackling of frost covering them, soon people start to see their own breaths due to the cold.

Within a few seconds the two outside stand in front of a ghostly headless knight on top of a staggering skeletal warhorse that almost trumps Thalaï in height.

The headless knight appears to be wearing a withered leather armor with a knight's sigil on it, furthermore an eerie limegreen flame emanates from his neck upward, he can not move his head towards the two but his sudden standstill tells that he is aware of their presence.

The villager freezes in fright and decides to run in panic, within a split-second the rider picks up speed and takes out a scythe made out of onyx and ivory. With an almost untraceable flick of the wrist the head of the villager soon becomes separated from his shoulders only to slump forward in a spectacular fashion, splattering blood on the ground where he stood.

The knight then turns his horse towards Xaviér and prepares to make him meet the same end. Thalaï sees that Xaviér is in grave danger and with little effort throws the wooden barricade out of the way and storms outside to confront the knight.

Hulston Rootveldt attempts to communicate with the knight using telepathy and asks it to state his intentions with this village, it responds with 'heeelmeeeeet..........must......retriiiiiievvveee....heeeelmeeeeet' and breaks communication.

The villagers yell in anger at Thalaï and insult him for his brazen actions, Thalaï ignores this and considers saving friend Xaviér more important than anything else.

The knight immediately slashes Thalaï square in the chest but Thalaï retaliates by delivering a devastating blow to his warhorse, the knight underestimated his strength and chooses preservation of his horse over further combat and is thus repelled from Tobon for the coming night.

The villagers thank Thalaï and the travellers for repelling the fiend and a few villagers proceed to introduce themselves.

* There is the Dwarf called Thorin Bronzebeard, local smithy
* Salbrae Verstrax, Halfling and owner of the inn in Tobon
* Flimi Timbers, Gnome herbalist

A brief conversation reveals that the problem has been going on since somewhere last week and might be related to some visitors that the village has last week.

This is also around the time that the unusual cold has been lingering in the village and spikes during the knight's visits.

Salbrae offers to fetch her inn's ledger to see who or what guests she had last week.

After this verbal exchange the group proceeds to split up to do some investigation work and recreation of their own.

Thalaï, Hulston and Braxton go to the inn to have his wounds treated and then go drinking to 'ease the pain', this challenge went on for a few hours.

Hulston followed Salbrae to calmly assess the situation and find out who or what stayed at the inn.

Xaviér goes to the fountain and dances in a spectacular manner, people thought he would give up soon but they were proven oh so very, very wrong.

## Aredhel's investigation

Aredhel follows Thorin to his workshop and asks for information regarding the knight and anything special he might have seen. Thorin mentions that the knight was wearing some old leather armor with a symbol of the old Tobonian guard, this tells him that the specter has something to with the Tobon cemetery to the north.

He also mentions that he saw 2 unusual figures last week that were still up late in the evening. Further than that he can't elaborate further and proceeds to give Aredhel a discount on the crossbow bolts for helping the village with this problem.

Aredhel then proceeds to go to Flimi Timbers for some rope. Aredhel asks for some dungeoneering gear but was disappointed to hear that Flimi's last dungeoneering was sold out last week to 2 lanky brothers out of town.

Aredhel asks where she can find them and receives directions for the living district in the north-west.

Hulston asks Salbrae about her ledger and receives information that one "Kummer Forseit" and a "Floren Forseit" were the last visitors she had, a day before the horseman started appearing. She thinks that they had something to do with this but dares not investigate herself.

Aredhel goes to the living district and first collects information from a corpulent fellow that directs her to the correct house; offering to protect her in case anything happens.

Aredhel kindly declines and knocks the door at the presumed house, soon an otherworldly voice confirms that he is heading towards the door. The villager sounds like a screeching Mandagora and denies any accusations or suspicions from the town's villagers and soon closes the door on Aredhel.

She explains her findings to the others, confirming that these brothers had something to do with the recent problems and rest for the night.

Aredhel prefers to sleep outside in nature since and one the way to the nearby shrubbery sees a silhouette with a large object heading into the night. She transforms into a rat and spies on the silhouette which is revealed to be Kummer, she sees a bunch of dungeoneering equipment and an exotic onyx helm being buried.

She silently returned back to the tavern and told the others of that she saw the suspect burying something near his current living quarters.

The following morning they decided to excavate the goods and found an onyx helm together with some dungeoneering equipment and a bloodstained jacket.

The party confronts Kummer and presses him on what they found. Kummer realises he has no way of convincing them otherwise he drops his act and starts speaking in a normal voice. He confirms that he and his brother are indeed to blame for the recent problems and explains that he took this helmet from a large grave in the Tobon cemetery.

He also elaborates that the two had to flee for their lives upon taking the treasure. His brother was caught and decapitated by the vengeful spirit that materialised soon after.

Too panicked to come back for his brother's corpse he spent the past few days cowering inside of his home thinking that he can simply wait the vengeful spirit out. He realises that the rider was actually looking for him, only simply unable to assess the exact whereabouts of its helmet.

He pleas to Aredhel specifically to retrieve his brother's corpse so he can give him a proper burial or his spirit won't be able to rest in the afterlife

The party doesn't make any promises and proceed to immediately head towards Tobon cemetery, travelling during daytime is better since undead have a natural aversion to sunlight.

## Vocado's discovery

The party enters the cemetery while noticing 2 sets of muddy footsteps and unlocked gates. Judging by the mud's dried crust it seems 2 figures have entered the cemetery somewhere last week.

Upon walking further they see a relatively small humanoid figure with spiky black hair staring at a grave right in front of him. He holds flowers in his right fist and firmly clenches it almost crushing the flowers with sheer power.

The individual holds a monologue and a sudden torrent of rain pours down from the heavens and vague Yamazoan music starts playing only deepening his sorrow.

He appears to be visiting an old rival's grave with the name "Boku" engraved on it, telling himself that he was searching for him for so long only to discover it was all for naught. A small stream of tears trickles down from his cheeks as he looks upward to the stormy heavens, eyes obscured by the windswept rain.

'WHHHHYYYYY', the party hears while being screamed at the top of the individual's lungs.

The party speaks to him and both the rain and music cease immediately, the individual aggressively responds asking a flurry of questions.

The person states his name as Vocado, a powerful Aasimar and comes along with the party to solve the problem since he is always looking for a challenge.

The party enters a spiral staircase into the underground hall of heroes with torches in hand.

## Venturing into Tobon's hall of heroes

The party enters the hall of heroes and immediately Braxton feels an unsettling sensation, signifying the presence of undead somewhere in these tombs.

The party later fights 8 undead and makes short work of them thanks to Braxton deafening thunderous smite plus Thalaï and Aredhel's radiant powers. Xaviér did a

backflip that landed horribly though, he received two 1/10's and one 2/10 for the effort.

After this fight the party encountered a creeping fiend that lashed out to Vocado from its sarcophagus and is also made into mincemeat thanks to the party's efforts.

The party opens the door to the main hall and is greeted by a headless ghost that happens to be holding his ghostly head in his right palm.

The ghost introduces himself as Floren Forseit; younger brother to Kummer Forseit and doomed to wander the tombs as a ghost due to the violent nature of his death at the hands of the headless horseman.

The ghost asks the party to bring his spirit to rest by returning his headless corpse to his brother, it is of utmost importance that his body is laid to rest by a blood relative.

The party seemed suspicous of this and Xaviér even went as far as to simply walk away while rejecting his request. The ghost proceeded to possess Xaviér with little struggle and used his body to retrieve the brother's corpse in the next room.

The ghost promised to return Xaviér's body once he has been laid to rest, the party tried to convince the ghost to leave the body by persuading and even intimidating him but to no avail. Vocado tried to tackle the ghost as a last resort but this also ended in failure. The ghost left the tombs and wasn't seen again.

## Standoff with the headless horseman

The party enters the final door to find themselves in a eerie room, lit only by a torch on both sides of the room.

The far side of the room contains an eerie large coffin fastened with heavy chains and numerous candles illuminating the grave to reveal a sigil on sarcophagus' head.

The specter senses the presence of intruders and soon a ominous gust of wind fills the room.

Braxton feels a sense of dread as the ghostly presence becomes more and more tangible even for those without sharpened senses for the undead.

Soon a swirling force of black and green energy spews from the coffin and out comes the headless horseman on top of his skeletal warhorse, still carrying the wound that was inflicted by Thalaï.

The knight and the party briefly exchange blows until Thalaï decides to offer the knight his lost helmet and ceases to fight further. He lets his scythe rest at hand and takes the helmet from Thalaï.

The specter returns to his coffin and with a final neigh of his warhorse closes the lid of the sarcophagus which then proceeds to be fastened once again with the heavy chains that contained him in his coffin, now for the last time.

A pile of loot materialises at Thalaï's feet and contained:

* Studded leather armor with a sigil of the old Tobonian guard
* The signature onyx scythe of the horseman, the blade is made of ivory with a precious ruby gemstone fastened on the blade gleaming with a luscious blood-red hue.
* A pouch with 50GP inside

The party recognises that the threat should be over now and later divide the spoils and return to Tobon.

## Epilogue

The party managed to solve the mystery of the headless horseman's rides into town and made sure that the villagers do not need to live in fear anymore.

The villagers discovered that Kummer Forseit was to blame for the headless horseman's revenge and the deaths of innocent villagers, he later stands trial for his thievery and is executed.

It is uncertain what happened to Xaviér, especially now that Floren's ghost is on his way with a decapitated body hoping to find his brother so he can be laid to rest. But considering Kummer was hanged the possibility of this happening is now forever lost, who knows what will happen with our favourite Elven chef.