Quest Line · Original Adventure · Pathfinder 2e
Level 5 · One-shot
Ancient dwarven warning bells have begun ringing deep beneath the city's oldest quarter, causing tremors and panic. The heroes must descend into forgotten tunnels to discover what triggered the bells after centuries of silence—and confront the slumbering horror the bells were meant to warn against before it fully awakens.
Players should create characters with reasons to be in a large metropolitan city and willing to explore dangerous underground locations. The adventure involves confined spaces, earth tremors, and body horror elements (parasitic fungi). Characters with darkvision, stonework knowledge, or experience fighting aberrations will find advantages. Expect combat, environmental challenges, and moral choices about containment versus destruction.
Choose the hook that best fits your group:
The Official Request: City officials hire the party to investigate tremors originating from beneath the Forgeward district. The bells started ringing three days ago, and structural damage is worsening. Payment: 50 gp each plus salvage rights.
The Dwarf's Plea: An elderly dwarven scholar named Kelda Ironwhisper approaches the party. Her ancestors helped seal something terrible below the city centuries ago. The bells ringing means the seal is failing. She's too frail to investigate herself but offers her family's maps and a 200 gp heirloom if they'll stop whatever is awakening.
Tremor Victims: A building collapse in the district where the party is staying injures several people. Local authorities are overwhelmed. Following the tremor patterns leads to an unsealed entrance to the old dwarven underworks—someone or something has recently opened it.
The entrance to the dwarven underworks lies beneath a partially collapsed warehouse. Stone stairs carved with weathered clan marks descend fifty feet into worked tunnels that predate the surface city by centuries. The air grows cool and carries a faint mineral scent mixed with something organic and wrong.
The tunnels show masterful dwarven construction—perfect right angles, drainage channels, and ventilation shafts. But recent disturbances mar the ancient stonework: cracks spiderwebbing across walls, fallen support beams, and a thin layer of pale fungal growth on some surfaces.
After twenty minutes of exploration, the party encounters Thom Cartwright, a looter trapped under fallen masonry. He and his crew opened the sealed entrance four days ago seeking dwarven artifacts. They found a chamber full of mechanisms and, foolishly, started dismantling them for scrap metal. That's when the bells started and the tremors began. His companions fled or were killed when something attacked them in the dark. He's injured (broken leg) but can provide directions to the bell chamber.
Rescue Check: DC 20 Athletics to safely lift the rubble, or DC 18 Crafting to leverage it properly. Failure causes another minor tremor and 2d6 bludgeoning damage to Thom.
As the party continues, they notice the fungal growth thickening. It pulses faintly, almost like breathing. Characters succeeding at DC 22 Nature or Occultism recognize it as a magical symbiotic fungus that connects living creatures into a shared consciousness—often dominated by a central intelligence. The growth is fresher toward the bell chamber, suggesting something is spreading it.
Environmental Hazard: Every 10 minutes in the tunnels triggers a tremor. DC 19 Reflex save or be knocked prone. Prone characters must succeed at DC 17 Acrobatics to avoid sliding into fungal patches, which attempt to attach (DC 18 Fortitude or become sickened 1 as spores invade the respiratory system).
The tunnel opens into a vast hemispherical chamber, its ceiling lost in darkness sixty feet above. Seven massive bronze bells, each fifteen feet tall, hang from an intricate framework of chains and gears. They're ringing arhythmically, creating a discordant clamor that reverberates through bone and stone.
The mechanism that controlled the bells lies partially dismantled on the floor—Thom's crew's handiwork. Scattered among the debris are two corpses, their bodies grotesquely swollen with fungal growths that have burst through their skin.
The Fungal Thralls: Four humanoid figures shamble from the shadows—the remaining members of Thom's crew, now completely overtaken by the fungal intelligence. Their eyes are milky white, and mushroom caps sprout from their shoulders and skulls. They attack mindlessly.
Fungal Thralls (4): AC 20, HP 60 each, Fort +12, Ref +8, Will +6. Melee fist +14 (2d8+4 bludgeoning plus spore cloud). When reduced to 0 HP, they explode in a 10-foot radius (DC 21 Fortitude save or contract fungal spores—sickened 2 and must save each hour or progress toward thrall conversion over 24 hours). Weakness to fire 5.
The Choice: The bells are both warning system and containment mechanism. Stopping them requires either:
Examining the chamber walls reveals dwarven inscriptions: "Here sleeps the Sporemother, the Mind Beneath Stone. The bells warn. The bells ward. Silence them at your peril."
A locked iron door at the chamber's far end leads deeper. It's sealed with both mechanical locks (DC 25 Thievery) and magical wards (DC 23 Arcana to disarm). The tremors have cracked it partially open.
Beyond the door lies a natural cavern converted into a prison. Massive stone pillars carved with containment runes surround a central depression filled with what appears to be dried fungal matter. But it's not dried—it's dormant.
The Sporemother is a massive fungal entity, twenty feet across, with a bulbous central body and dozens of writhing tendrils. When the party enters, it's still mostly asleep, only partially aware due to the looters' interference. How awake it becomes depends on the party's earlier choice about the bells.
The Sporemother (Partially Awakened): AC 23, HP 140, Fort +16, Ref +10, Will +14. Resistance to physical 5. Weakness to fire 10.
Possible Endings:
Containment Restored: If players repaired the bells and act quickly, they can reinforce the containment runes (DC 22 Arcana or Religion, requiring 3 successes while fighting the Sporemother). Success re-seals the entity before it fully awakens. The city is saved, but the threat remains imprisoned below.
Destruction: Defeating the Sporemother in combat is possible but dangerous. If reduced to 0 HP by non-fire damage, it explodes in a final spore cloud (40-foot radius, DC 26 Fortitude or begin transformation into fungal thrall). Fire damage prevents this explosion. Destroying it eliminates the threat permanently but risks infection spreading.
Escape and Pursuit: If the party fled or the Sporemother fully awakens (if bells were destroyed earlier), it begins spreading through the underworks toward the surface. The party must race ahead to evacuate civilians and prepare the city guard for a fungal invasion. This leads to a desperate fighting retreat and sets up future consequences.
Kelda Ironwhisper: Elderly dwarven historian, keeper of forgotten lore. Wants the Sporemother's threat eliminated to honor her ancestors' sacrifice.
Thom Cartwright: Opportunistic looter, early thirties, quick with excuses. Wants to survive and avoid legal consequences for his actions.
Captain Mora Steelgate: City guard commander, pragmatic and efficient. Wants the threat contained quietly to avoid citywide panic.
The Sporemother: Ancient fungal intelligence, alien and hungry. Wants to spread its consciousness throughout the city's population, creating a unified collective mind.
Infected Guard: A city watchman who investigated earlier, now partially converted. Can still speak but struggles against the Sporemother's influence. Wants help or mercy.
Combat Experience: Award 40 XP per character for each major encounter (thralls, Sporemother).
Treasure: The bell chamber contains 240 gp worth of ancient dwarven coinage scattered among the mechanism parts. The Sporemother's chamber holds a +1 striking warhammer embedded in stone and a moderate elixir of life preserved in dwarven stasis.
Story Rewards: Successfully containing the threat earns the party a favor from Kelda's clan and reputation with city officials. Destroying the Sporemother grants permanent recognition as city defenders. Either outcome provides contacts for future urban adventures and access to previously restricted historical archives.
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