Quest Title: “The Echoes of Gears and Flesh”
Introduction:
The party is hired by a desperate village elder from a small, isolated village near the cursed Manor of Lost Souls. Adventurers and villagers have been vanishing near the manor, with some claiming to hear unnatural grinding noises and the screams of those long gone. The elder reveals that a group of adventurers entered the manor a week ago and has not returned. The party’s task is to discover what happened, rescue any survivors, and eliminate the source of the horror.
Background:
The Manor of Lost Souls was once the estate of a brilliant but mad artificer named Professor Aldric Venn. Obsessed with immortality, Venn experimented with binding souls to metal, creating warforged beings—humanoid machines powered by trapped souls. Most warforged were created with their memories wiped, but those in the manor retained theirs. Over the years, they grew twisted, longing to reclaim their former organic lives.
These warforged have developed a gruesome practice: capturing those who venture into the manor and harvesting their organs. They believe that by wearing the organic parts over their metallic frames, they can regain their lost humanity. However, their attempts are flawed and deadly. The warforged bodies have a spring lock mechanism, controlled by a key at their napes, that allows them to be worn by medium-sized humanoids. However, this mechanism is unstable, and any wrong move could cause the springs to release, crushing the wearer from within.
Part 1: The Approach
As the party nears the manor, they notice the area is unnaturally silent. The air is thick with an oppressive aura, and the path is littered with the remnants of failed adventurers—broken weapons, torn clothing, and bloodstains. Strange, deep grooves in the ground hint at something large and metallic having been dragged into the manor.
Encounters:
- Wandering Spirits: The restless spirits of those who died trying to escape the warforged haunt the grounds. These spirits can provide cryptic warnings or try to possess the party members to seek vengeance on the warforged.
- Doomed Adventurers: The party finds one of the missing adventurers, severely injured and babbling about “walking corpses with metal skin.” Before they can get much information, the adventurer dies in a fit of terror, their body crumpling as if crushed from within.
Part 2: The Manor Interior
The manor is dark and labyrinthine, with winding corridors that seem to shift when not observed. The walls are adorned with grotesque trophies—pieces of flesh, organs, and bone, haphazardly stitched to metal frames. Echoes of grinding gears and distant, metallic footsteps can be heard.
Rooms and Encounters:
- The Operating Theater: This room contains a large table covered in bloodstained tools. Warforged are found here, mid-operation, attempting to graft flesh onto themselves. They attack on sight but can be distracted by their need to complete their grisly task.
- The Hall of Mirrors: A hallway filled with cracked and distorted mirrors that reflect the party as warforged versions of themselves. Navigating this hall without attracting the attention of patrolling warforged requires successful stealth checks.
- The Clockwork Library: A room filled with books and journals detailing Venn’s experiments. Here, the party can learn about the spring lock mechanisms and how to deactivate them. However, the warforged guardians of this room will not let this knowledge be taken easily.
Part 3: The Workshop of Despair
At the heart of the manor lies Venn’s old workshop, now a twisted factory where the warforged produce more of their kind. The centerpiece is a massive warforged named The First, created from the remnants of Venn himself. The First is the leader of the warforged and the most desperate to reclaim his humanity. He believes that by using the perfect organic body, he can restore his lost soul.
Final Encounter:
- The First and the Warforged: The First is a massive, grotesque warforged with mismatched organic parts. He wields the keys to the spring lock mechanisms and can command the other warforged to attack. The battle is complicated by the unstable environment—machinery clanking, steam hissing, and chains rattling.
- The Spring Lock Mechanism: During the fight, the party can attempt to turn the key in The First’s nape to disable his mechanism. However, this requires a successful series of skill checks, and failure could result in the springs releasing, causing massive damage or even instant death to the character attempting it.
Conclusion:
After defeating The First, the manor begins to collapse as the remaining warforged go berserk without their leader. The party must escape the crumbling building, dodging collapsing walls, malfunctioning warforged, and other hazards.
If the party successfully escapes, they will have saved any surviving adventurers and can return to the village as heroes. They will also carry the dark knowledge of the warforged’s origin and the horrifying consequences of Venn’s experiments, which they may choose to share—or keep secret.
Rewards:
- Warforged Key: A key taken from The First that can deactivate or control certain mechanical constructs.
- Tome of Lost Souls: A book detailing advanced artificer techniques, potentially leading to new crafting options or story hooks involving soul-binding.
Aftermath:
The party’s actions will have repercussions. If they share the knowledge of the warforged, it could spark a movement to hunt down similar creations, or even incite fear and mistrust toward all warforged. The party may also be haunted by the spirits of those they could not save, leading to future encounters or quests.