Galgarad

Galgarad sits at the base of the Dalnear Peaks, just across the river from Kelnys into Nyfi.

400 gp each to go and help out the keeper

the lonely warhammer inn

## History of the Dark Star

The legend in Galgarad is that over 300 years ago King Yorvarax Gilrean (although he was not yet king at the time) himself rode through Galgarad and brought the Dark Star, a powerful magical relic that would ward off evil, there to protect the town in return for a favor they had done him. It was given to the first Keeper of Galgarad, the leader of the town, and she gathered acolytes and secreted it away in a hidden shrine to the Platinum Dragon. None but the Keeper and her acolytes knew the true location of the Dark Star, though many have searched for it.

However, it seems that the power of the Dark Star has faded. A plague of undeath has fallen upon Galgarad, and every night for a week the village has been ravaged by an ever-growing horde of ravenous zombies with swift legs and long claws. All who die succumb to the plague, and become the undead themselves. The current Keeper, a selfish and arrogant lout named Ralyx Mirimm, isolated himself within his manor. Thus, the people rallied around a woman named Zef Beltune, who sent a desperate letter to the king in Nesroth in hopes that a group of mercenaries would hear their plea for help.

The mastermind behind the undead plague is the Dark Star itself. Though it said to be an amulet of protection granted by the King, the Dark Star is actually the skull of a lich that was the consort of the vampire Anastasia, and threatened the nascent dynasty in ancient times. Yorvarax Gilrean and his allies managed to defeat the lich, but could not find its phylactery. Rather than risk the lich’s revival, the King and his dunamancers froze the lich in time, and hid it in Galgarad—far from the capital—with secret dunamantic rites to keep the seal in place.

The Dark Star was hidden away to protect the town from its evil, not to safeguard the artifact from thieves. The office of Keeper was created to pass this secret knowledge down through the generations, but over time the purpose of the rites of sealing were forgotten. Ralyx’s greed caused him to embezzle the money used to buy ritual ingredients—and dismissed the acolytes that aided him in those rituals to keep his secret from being revealed. With the seals faded, the Dark Star awoke. Its hibernation had taken its toll, and it existed only a demilich, and a weak one at that. Using all of its strength, the Dark Star reached out with its consciousness until it found a secret cult of Lolth that worked its evil within the shadows of the Kryn Dynasty.

These occult followers of Lolth are known as the Children of Malice. The sect that heard the Dark Star’s call traveled in secret to Galgarad. In the intervening weeks, the Dark Star regained some of its former power and made itself master of the forgotten vault. With the demilich’s aid, the Children of Malice infiltrated the secret temple and pledged fealty to the ancient lich. The Dark Star demanded vengeance upon the people who had imprisoned him for so long, and the followers of Lolth conjured beings that could enact the lich’s horrible vengeance: nergaliids. These devil toads spread a curse of undeath upon the land, building a horde of husk zombies starting with the outlying farms, and then sending their undead army to ravage the town of Galgarad under cover of night.

The Children of Malice, their nergaliids, and the Dark Star itself still lurk in the depths of the forgotten vault, preparing one final attack that will finish off Galgarad once and for all.