The Tomb of Hungry Echoes
by Reverend Dungeon MasterYou push open the crypt’s rusted door, the sound screaming like a banshee in the suffocating stillness. The air here carries the weight of forgotten sins, heavy and rancid, clinging to your skin. Your torch flickers, shadows leaping like trapped souls desperate for escape.
The ground beneath your boots feels wrong, too soft, like walking on matted hair soaked in decay. A faint squelching noise begins to echo, growing louder as something wet and many-limbed slithers into view. A Carrion Crawler. Its segmented body ripples as its tentacles twitch, each one dripping with the promise of paralysis. It stares at you with cold, insectile focus, hungrier than a starving jackal.
Before you can rally, a guttural snarl drips from the darkness behind you. Your torchlight wavers, revealing a Shadow Mastiff, its smoke-like form shifting and warping. Its red eyes burn like embers as it vanishes into the shadows, only to reappear behind your cleric. The beast’s low growl vibrates through the stone floor, carrying the weight of ancient dread.
Then the crypt itself seems to come alive. The walls ooze black ichor that pools at your feet, the stench worse than any battlefield you’ve known. From these pools rise Shadows, their emaciated forms dripping darkness. Their claws twitch in a rhythm only the damned could understand, and their whispers slither into your ears, taunting you with promises of eternal despair.
The crawler strikes first, tentacles whipping toward your fighter, while the mastiff lunges at the cleric, jaws snapping like steel traps. The Shadows swarm, their claws slicing through armor and pride, each hit sapping your strength and your hope.
Your wizard hurls a fireball (of course!), and for a moment, the crypt is lit like midday. The monsters recoil, but the shadows return, thicker and hungrier than ever. This isn’t a skirmish, it’s a fight against oblivion itself.
Monster Stats
Carrion Crawler
AC: 7
HD: 3+1
THAC0: 16
Move: 120’ (40’)
Attacks: 8 tentacles
Damage: Paralysis
Save As: F2
Morale: 7
Treasure Type: C
XP: 50
Shadow Mastiff
AC: 6
HD: 4+3
THAC0: 15
Move: 150’ (50’)
Attacks: 1 bite
Damage: 2d6
Save As: F4
Special: Blends with shadows, howl causes fear
Morale: 8
Treasure Type: E
XP: 175
Shadows
AC: 7
HD: 2+2
THAC0: 17
Move: 90’ (30’)
Attacks: 1 claw
Damage: 1d4 + Strength drain (1 point per hit)
Save As: F2
Morale: 12
Treasure Type: D
XP: 75
Environmental Effects
Weeping Walls: At the start of each round, roll 1d6. On a 1-3, the puddles spawn an additional Shadow.
Darkness Thickens: After three rounds, all light sources lose half their range unless magical.
The crypt is a vault of terror, but its treasures lie deeper. Will you press forward or join the whispers in the dark?
