Ashes of the Unclaimed Crown

Investigation

Ashes of the Unclaimed Crown

Lvl 5-74 to 5 characters3 to 4 sessions, roughly 10 to 14 hours total· Deadly

“A grieving son turns a buried war into an undead crusade, and the truth may be more dangerous than the army he raises.”

— Hook · Investigation

QuestgiverCaptain Elira Voss

Investigation

D&D 5E

Deadly

Lvl 5-7

4 to 5 characters

3 to 4 sessions, roughly 10 to 14 hours total

4 NPCs

3 encounters

The Opening

“The king's old war is not as buried as the court claims. A grieving son has turned memory into a weapon, and the dead are gathering where the throne's blood was first spilled.”
— Hook · Investigation

Set the Scene

At dusk, the bells of Blackmere ring for no funeral, yet the burial pits outside town have begun to smoke. Captain Elira Voss hands the party a sealed packet of war records and asks them to investigate why dead soldiers are being seen walking near the old chapel ruins before the next moonrise.

Patron

Questgiver

Captain Elira Voss

Urgent, grim, and deeply personal. The questgiver does not want a purge of enemies; she wants the truth before the realm turns on itself.

On the Streets · In the Books

Rumours

d5 · table

01
The dead in the west burial field only rise when the wind blows from the old chapel.
02
A masked scholar has been buying funeral ash and child-sized gloves from the market.
03
Someone in the royal archive has been removing pages from the war chronicle for years.
04
Farmers say they hear a boy shouting orders to the dead after midnight.
05
The chapel ruins were sealed by both armies at the end of the war, not just by the king.

Stakes

If the party fails, the kingdom does not simply lose a battle. It risks learning the wrong lesson from a tragic war, and that can create a new regime of fear, revenge, and the living dead.

Ticking Clock·At the next new moon, Corvin's ritual will finish binding the battlefield dead into a marching host that can reach the capital in two nights.

Background Lore

Thirty years ago, the realm was shattered by a brutal succession war. The reigning king ended the conflict by killing his rival in open battle, then spent the next decades rebuilding roads, lowering taxes, and binding feuding houses into a fragile peace. The dead rival's son grew up on whispers, grief, and a half-true story of murder, and from that wound he built a hidden cult of ash and grave-light. He does not see himself as a villain; he believes he is the blade of justice returning to finish a war the world refuses to remember.

What the World Knows

A hidden necromancer has raised the dead around the old war chapel and is gathering an army to strike the capital. The party must trace the source of the undead, uncover the cult behind the attacks, and stop a deadly assault before it begins.