Welcome to part 1 of my second annual Halloween Nightmare post, where I present a terrifying Dungeons and Dragons adventure for your players to play through and experience firsthand what evil wroughts. This time, we explore the slasher genre and the real-life terror of rampage killers. This also marks the first time I fully integrated OSR design principles into a 5th edition adventure. As per the famous advice by Justin Alexander, I purposely created a situation instead of a plot. The players have plenty of tools to deal with the killer, who has an exploitable but not immediately apparent weakness, evacuate the undercity, or escape and abandon everybody else to their fate. It’s a true horror sandbox. I hope you enjoy. Mwahahahaha.

Note: This adventure is meant to be used with the Underberg Gazetter and His Gospel is Murder appendix.

Author’s Commentary and Disclaimer

Before we begin, I want to speak plainly about this adventure and its subject matter.

When I started writing His Gospel is Murder, I had never experienced rampage violence firsthand — not school shootings, not spree killings, not the nightmares that scar so many communities. I did not initially intend for The Red Graal to mirror workplace and school shooters, but in my pursuit of grounding evil in the human and the real-world causes of evil, aspects of a school shooter slowly crept in. Once I realized what the Red Graal had become on the page, I knew I had to approach the topic carefully and at least try to do my due diligence.

The Red Graal is, in essence, a supernatural reflection of a rampage killers — a god born from alienation, resentment, and misplaced rage. That kind of horror is not something to treat lightly. So let me be clear:
I do not believe that violence can ever be a meaningful path to change or fulfillment. That road only leads in small vicious circles, leaving nothing but bodies behind.

I also reject simple answers. It’s comforting to look for one villain — the gun industry, mental illness, moral decay — but the truth is never that clean. My research suggests that rampage killings arise from many overlapping failures: access to weapons, untreated despair, social alienation, and a culture that prizes power over empathy.

I believe something in our late capitalist world isolates certain people so entirely that they stop seeing others as human, and see only “them,” the faceless enemy. That sickness will not vanish by banning one weapon or blaming one factor; Japan’s knife massacres prove that despair finds its outlet even without guns.

This adventure is not about glorifying despair. It’s about confronting it, showing how vengeance, loneliness, and divine power twist together into tragedy.

Safety Pack

Content Warning:
This adventure contains portrayals of graphic violence, mass murder, and psychological trauma. It draws on imagery and events similar to real-world rampage killings. Review these safety tools carefully and discuss them with your players before play.

---

Lines and Veils

The Lines and Veils system is a classic safety tool for a reason — it helps establish clear boundaries.

• Line: A topic that will not appear in play in any form.
  
• Veil: A topic that can exist in the world but will only be referenced indirectly or “off-screen.”
  Before playing, collect a list of each player’s lines and veils. Be open about this adventure’s themes and intensity. Players always have the final say in what they want to experience.
  

---

The X-Card

Place an index card marked with an “X” in the center of the table. Tell your players they may point to or touch the card at any time if they wish to skip or end a scene. When it happens, immediately stop, rewind if necessary, and move on to the next moment.
Your goal is to make the players feel terrified but safe.

---

Tone Toggle

This adventure contains five scenes that show or imply graphic violence (two mandatory: Dead Pigs and Manifestation). Adjust their intensity to fit your table’s comfort level.
For example, the “Dead Pigs” scene can appear in three ways:

• Full:
  
  Beyond the corner lies a grisly tableau: thirteen watchmen hang upside down from rusted hooks, their throats slit, their chests split wide, their innards gone. A slick message is daubed beneath them in their own blood.
  
• Moderate:
  
  Beyond the corner lies a grisly tableau: thirteen watchmen hang upside down, gutted like pigs. A message beneath them is written in their blood.
  
• Implied:
  
  Beyond the corner lies a grim tableau: thirteen watchmen dead, a taunting message left behind.
  
  

Use these tone levels as a guide for all violent or distressing material.

---

Post-Session Debriefing

After play, check in with your players—ideally one at a time. Ask if they’re all right and if anything felt uncomfortable. Some players will stay quiet during the game even when unsettled, especially if others are enjoying themselves. Provide space for honest feedback and take all concerns seriously.

---

During Play

If a player seems distressed, pause the session and check in privately. No story beat or scene is worth harming your players’ sense of safety.

Background

Nobody is born a killer; nobody is born destined to walk into a public place and start killing their peers in cold blood, but Darragh’s life comes close to disproving that rule. Born half-human, half-hobgoblin to a hobgoblin chambermaid of the von Kessel family, his birth signaled the first time he was cast out; his mother was chased out of the household as the Von Kessels threw accusations of affairs and rape between them.

His life after that was one long, slow slide downward. His mother’s reputation was ruined, and their home was a set of increasingly dangerous streets. Darragh never had any real friends; he was constantly picked on for his half-bred nature by every community of beggars and urchins he found himself in. 

When he was 15 his mother died of exposure during the long New Mountainheart winters, and with nowhere to go, he drifted down into the depths of Underberg, the place below the Undercity where the most desperate of folks end up, and even here, among the lepers and freaks that called the deep caves their home, he was an outcast. With nothing but the fantasy of making the nebulous, faceless them pay for the injustices dealt to him, he drifted even deeper and found the one thing that did not mock his half breed nature, a dying archetype. 

The archetype was young, a barely formed bundle of beliefs that most well-adjusted people would find repulsive, the undirected desire to kill, burn, and destroy to receive a vague sense of satisfaction, an outcast even among his dark kin who came here to seek his own cult and found no worshipers nor adulation. In Darragh, he saw a kindred spirit and even more, the missing half to his identity. 

He offered Darragh a deal that was too good for either to pass up. If he would give up his body to be his vessel, he could merge with Darragh, he would have the missing elements of his identity, and Darragh would have the power to enact his revenge. Darragh agreed. Under the nameless archetype’s instruction, he inscribed onto his skin using the archetype’s divine ichor a Manifesto, a gospel of revenge, blood, and death, turning himself into a living reliquary.

 It took him two days, and afterward, there was no more distinction between Darragh and the archetype.  Out of that deep, dark hole crawled the Red Graal, the god of the Teenage Revenge Fantasy — his skin painted with the holy words of violence, his every cut and scream a sermon. To him, every victim is an offering, every staged tableau of murder a prayer. And in his gospel, there is only one truth: that all who mocked him will drown together in a Graal of blood.

Running The Horror

This adventure is designed around the TOMBS cycle, popularized by Mothership. As such, it is split into five phases: the transgression, omens, manifestation, banishment, and slumber. The transgression phase already happened once the players arrived on the scene.

Timeline of events

This is the sequence of events from Transgression to what happens if the players fail to stop the Red Graal. Assume the player’s actions will change when and where events happen or if they even happen at all. Also note that the five stages of the TOMBS cycle are indicated in the timeline, and when these events occur, transition to the document section that describes how to run the phase.

Day -3: Transgression: Darragh meets the half-formed archetype in the lowest part of the depths below the Sliberberg. He starts to paint the archetype’s gospel, a collection of rants and semi-coherent revenge fantasies on his body using the archetypes’ ichor.

Day -1:0:00 Darragh finishes painting his body, and the two merge into the Red Graal.

Day -1 3:00 Red Graal slaughters everybody in the last group that rejected Darragh, the outcasts in the outcast camp.

Day -1: 8:00 The Red Graal officially takes its first victim, a prostitute, in the Red Lantern warrens. There is barely anything left for the watch to identify. Corporal Knobbs arrives in Goblintown to visit his ailing mother.

Day -1 12:00 Victim number two is found, A gambler making its way from the Red Lantern Warrens out of the ward via Quarry Junction. The Red Graal signs the kill with a taunting message announcing his presence.

Day -1 19:00: Victim numbers 3, 4, 5, and 6 are found in quick succession, no discernible pattern in the victims, the bodies are all found posed with messages written in their own blood. Rumors and panic start to spread. Captain Brakka at Quarry Junction watchhouse decides to call in reinforcements.

Day 0: 3:00 Numerous unconfirmed reports of the Red Graal stalking people flood the Quarry Junction watchhouse. The extra watch constables and two dozen detectives and criminologists arrived. Victim number 7, a pit boss at the Stacked Deck Casino, is discovered strung up outside the establishment, eyes removed and placed on the ground, pupils up, and a taunting message written in blood in the street.

Day 0: 8:50 Omen phase starts. The players arrive in Undermountain. 

Day 0: At 9:00, all neighborhoods in the Undermountain are under a shelter-in-place order, and the gates of the Undercity are closed and barred from the outside. The watch starts its dragnet, and the players are forced onto it.

Day 0 9:00-17:00 Watchmen drop like flies as Red Graal stalks them through the tunnels. The players find ample evidence of the Red Graal’s handiwork.

Day 0: 17:00 The Manifestation: The Red Graal strikes in broad daylight, killing Captain Brakka One-Tusk and several dozen other watchmen in front of a large crowd in the blink of an eye. The belief and terror generated allow the Red Graal to start flexing its powers. The Red Graal expends most of the power it gained to seal off the Goblin Market, Dragon Gate, and Red Lantern Gate.

Day 0: 18:00 Banishment Phase starts: The communities try to organize a response to the killings. No consensus can be reached without Nib or Captain Brakka. The kobolds start excavating a tunnel as a possible evacuation route.

Day 0: 19:00 Orlaez noticed she could not scry on her subjects and immediately raised the alarm with King Fredrick.

Day 0: At 20:00, panic spreads through the undermountain as unconfirmed sighting reports of The Red Graal circulate. Don O’Malley fortifies the Stacked Deck.

Day 2 0:00: The topsiders’ response to the cave-ins arrives, and dwarf engineers and miners start to excavate an evacuation tunnel parellel to Dragon Road

Day 2 to three: The killing accelerates, multiple people are found dead with the Red Graal signature all over the ward, with most of the deaths centered in the Red Lantern Warrens and Goblintown. All the victims are supposed authority figures or local bullies. Messages left at the scene expound the virtues of violence as revenge. Sporadic looting starts in Dwemercourt as people seek magical arms and armor.

Day 4 17:00: Scale Speaker Ziska and her priest are killed in Orlaez’s lair. The kobolds double their efforts to dig an escape tunnel.

Day 5 9:00: Several vulnerable young men and women (those with mental health problems, abusive parents, loners, etc) take up the Red Graal cause and start killing those in their social circles. 

Day 5: 18:00 The Red Graal leads his new followers into the Red Lantern Warrens and promptly goes on a murder spree, butchering everybody in the warrens. The syndicate put up a spirited defense at the Stacked Deck but are ultimately slaughtered to a man. Don O’Malley is skinned alive and becomes the Red Graal’s cloak. All cooperation between the communities ends. The evacuation plan is abandoned, and the communities hunker down for desperate defenses. The kobolds retreat to the deep mines, hoping to wait out The Red Graal’s killing spree.

Day 6: Goblin town burns, no survivors. The Red Graal becomes too strong for the players to defeat

Day 6+ The Red Graal killing spree continues onward unabated for 12 more days until every soul in Sliberberg lies slain. After the killing stops, the Red Graal and his followers head to the mountains, and they build a temple to him. His cult expands anywhere that young men and women believe that they can use violence to get back at the people who supposedly wronged them.

Starting the Horror: The Transgression

Every horror story begins with a transgression—someone breaking the world’s rules—sometimes by choice, sometimes by accident.

The city itself dealt the first wound. Dozens of people denied Darragh the slightest kindness, leaving him isolated, humiliated, and stripped of any sense of belonging. That neglect opened something in him, and the half-formed archetype waiting below the Sliberberg slipped in.

The players, though, are guilty of their own minor transgression: being in Quarry Junction when the wrongness bled into the world. They put themselves in the Red Graal’s hunting ground, whether by bad luck, bad choices, or bad timing.

Why are you in Quarry Junction?

1. You came down to shop at the goblin market—the fastest way runs through Quarry Junction.
2. You partied all night in the Red Lantern Warrens, woke up in Quarry Junction with a hangover, and only scraps of memory.
3. You’re headed for a day of vice in the Red Lantern Warrens.
4. You’re one of the few topsiders who work in the Undercity, and Quarry Junction lies on your commute.
5. You’re visiting family or friends in one of the Undercity’s enclaves, passing through Quarry Junction on your way.
6. You’re hiding from the law, lying low below.
7. You were bound for the deep caves—spelunking for rare ores or crystals
8. You simply got lost topside, wandered too far, and stumbled into Quarry Junction.

What the Players Know

At the beginning of the adventure, the characters already know a handful of facts about the Underberg Ward — enough to get by, but not enough to stay safe. The Ward is an isolated world beneath the streets of SLiberberg, filled with secrets, grudges, and dangers both mortal and divine.

They also begin play with 1d4 rumors from the Rumors and Whispers table, rolled individually for each character (or collectively for the party, if you prefer). Most rumors contain a kernel of truth, but even the true ones may be distorted or incomplete.

---

🌑 The Ward at a Glance

The Undercity Ward is divided into six neighborhoods. Each is distinct, with its own power structures, threats, and opportunities for discovery:

Neighborhood	Description
Quarry Junction	Where most of the “normal” folk live — miners, masons, and laborers. The beating, weary heart of the Ward.
Goblintown	A sprawling goblin slum built atop the city’s old dump and sewage treatment system. The air reeks, but trade and invention thrive here.
Jaspera Deep	A claustrophobic kobold warren that runs deeper than most maps show. Rumors say it’s connected to far older tunnels.
The Goblin Market	A dangerous bazaar where strange goods are sold beside everyday wares. Many stalls never appear twice in the same place.
Dwemercourt	The dwarves’ and deep gnomes’ quarter, where magic items are crafted secretly and sold at extravagant prices.
The Red Lantern Warrens	The red-light district and vice quarter is controlled by the Dead Rabbit Syndicate. Pleasure, crime, and danger in equal measure.

Entrances to the Undercity:

• The Red Lantern Gate, located in the Warrens.
  
• The Dragoness’s Gate, at the beginning of the Dragon Way.
  

Other Known Facts:

• The people of the Ward are standoffish and distrust outsiders.
  
• The Ward connects to a larger network of natural caverns and forgotten mines.
  
• Don O’Malley, a bugbear and retired super-heavyweight boxer, runs The Dead Rabbit Syndicate.
  
• The Ward has multiple large airshafts with pump stations, and several ancient catacomb connections running above it.
  

---

🕯️ Rumors and Whispers

Each player starts the adventure with 1d4 rumors from this list. They can trade, share, or investigate them. Some are true, some false, and a few contain dangerous half-truths.

Note for the DM:
True rumors are potential solutions, resources, or leads to help players survive or defeat the Red Graal during the banishment phase.
False rumors and red herrings exist to complicate investigations and create opportunities for paranoia, wasted time, or confrontation.

#	Rumor	Truth
1	“You didn’t hear it from me, but the Stacked Deck Casino is a front for the Dead Rabbit Syndicate.”	✅ True
2	“There’s a Theurgist in Quarry Junction who looks like a giant pile of hair with a nose.”	✅ True
3	“A secret smuggling tunnel leads to the surface somewhere in the Ward.”	✅ True
4	“A drainage channel runs straight to the harbor from the Sewage Plant in Goblintown.”	✅ True
5	“A goblin alchemist in Goblintown’s working on a new kind of explosive.”	✅ True
6	“Ever been to 8th Heaven? The bartender there gives the best advice in the city.”	✅ True
7	“They say Jaspera left treasure behind in her old lair — she hasn’t returned in decades.”	✅ True
8	“The old goblin who runs the Goblin Market? They say he’s an archfey in disguise.”	✅ True
9	“Nib sometimes keeps powerful magic items as collateral for debts.”	✅ True
10	“There are other entrances to the Deep Caves beyond the main one.”	✅ True
11	“The city catacombs link all the churches on the mountain— and connect to the House of Bones.”	✅ True
12	“The Chapel of Heart’s Union has a priest who can work miracles.”	✅ True
13	“The chapels inside the House of Bones are Hallowed Ground.”	✅ True
14	“A hag mother and her half-hag daughter are in the Goblin Market. One sells curses, the other sells fortunes.”	✅ True
15	“Large airshafts run across the Ward — with pump stations built centuries ago.”	✅ True
16	“Cassidy Rose, King Fredrick’s secret daughter, denied her title and turned bitter. She’s got archfey blood.”	❌ False
17	“Jaspera isn’t gone — she’s still down there, watching her kobolds from the shadows.”	❌ False (though she is still in the city)
18	“There’s a secret tunnel from the Quarry Junction Watchhouse to the Alteburg.”	❌ False (but there is a speaking tube line)
19	“Those mining crystals? Full of Wyrd Magic. Shatter one, and it’ll explode.”	❌ False
20	“Scale Speaker Ziska can be bribed to let anyone into Jaspera Court.”	❌ False
21	“There’s a hidden portal in Nib’s money-changing stand.”	❌ False
22	“That big book Nib carries? It has the answer to every mystery in the Undercity.”	❌ False
23	“The House of Bones and catacombs are so heavily warded that even gods can’t get through.”	❌ False (partly true — the wards are strong but not divine-proof)
24	“There’s a third hidden gate into the Undercity, bricked up behind a wall.”	❌ False
25	“There’s something ancient and hungry in the Deep Caves. The miners woke it up.”	❌ False
26	“Don O’Malley’s got a secret cache of enchanted weapons hidden somewhere.”	❌ False
27	“There’s a god-proof doomsday vault down here — big enough for everyone if things go bad.”	❌ False (the real vaults exist under Castle SLiberberg but are too small)
28	“Ezohr the Mole isn’t a Theoretical Theurgist at all — she’s a witch.”	❌ False
29	“Scale Speaker Ziska can channel divine magic when the moon’s full.”	❌ False
30	“There’s an archdevil living in the Undercity. Owns one of the bars, they say.”	❌ False

Omens: The Dragnet

When the players enter the small cavern that forms the junction of Quarry Junction, read the following.

You are passing through Junction at the center of Quarry Junction, minding your own business, when the crowd around you freezes as the thunder of boots fills the tunnels. Dozens of watchmen surge into the cavern, lanterns throwing long, jagged shadows across the walls. 
A sergeant with a speaking trumpet raises his voice, the sound harsh and metallic in the echoing chamber, “Attention all citizens, a dangerous criminal is on the loose. For your own safety, Underberg is now on lockdown. Shelter in place until further notice.”

Before the players have an opportunity to react to the announcement, a big, mean-looking watch sergeant approaches them (individually or as a group)  and tells them in no uncertain terms that they have been officially “Volunteered” to help with the dragnet and that if they refuse, they are going to be thrown in the holding cells in the watchhouse. He pushes a badge on them and shoves them towards a goblin in an ill-fitting watch uniform. He loudly complains that he was on vacation time, and they dragged him away from his sick mother. The goblin gives the party a sour inspection and makes a dry but unflattering assessment of his search group before introducing himself as Corporal Knobs. 

Roleplaying Corporal Knobs

Corporal Knobs is the joke of the watch. He has dreams (delusions would be a better word) of being a hero like the swashbuckling heroes from the penny dreadfuls and cheap plays he loves so much. He is constantly trying to emulate the sort of heroics stunts he has seen on the stage or read about in the stories, and he never sticks the landing due to poor planning, failure to react to a change in situation, or bad luck. He holds the record for the most injuries on the job of any city watchman ever. 

He probably would have been demoted or fired years ago if it weren’t for his two most redeeming qualities: he, unlike most goblins, is unapologetically devoted to doing good, and he has a perfect memory; he can remember any face, any name, or any detail with ideal precision. 

When roleplaying, Knobs keep in mind the following

• He is in a bad mood. He was taking some vacation days to visit his sick mother in Goblintown, and he was literally dragged from her sickbed to participate in the dragnet. He constantly complains about this and everything else and is prone to unflattering sarcasm.
• He wants to get back to his sick mother; he will urge the players to get the drag net over and prompt them to hurry up if they drag their feet or search too long.
• Despite his bad mood, his fundamental goodness still shines through. He will insist on helping the citizens of Underberg if he can or on stopping crimes he witnesses.
• He always rushes in without a plan, or worse, a barely thought-through plan that involves swashbuckling action. He will try to swing on chandeliers, do diving tackles, use his spear to pole vault, kick a bad guy, etc. He constantly fails, and the results are often quite funny.
• Despite his bravado and love of stage heroics, he is not brave. When confronted with the omens, he gets increasingly jumpy and nervous.

A Parade of a hundred Omens

The players and knobs are assigned to the force sweeping Dwemer Court and the Red Lantern Warrens, returning to Quarry Junction via the Goblin Market. This mainly consists of them going door to door, sweeping shops and homes, alleyways and side tunnels, and generally leaving no stone unturned. They will not find the killer, but the Red Graal is omnipresent in the tunnels, and signs of his presence are everywhere. Every 10 minutes in real time, roll for an omen or choose one from the list; they do not encounter the omen immediately, instead encountering it when the situation is appropriate for the omen. Alternatively, if they ask to search an area more thoroughly, they stumble across an omen.

1. The players see a red pool flick across a shadow of a building or a group of people before disappearing out of sight.
2. The players encounter part of the Red Graal’s manifesto painted on the wall in blood (see manifesto section bellow).
3. The players encounter a dead body hacked to bits with a bladed implement and staged in a morbid vignette, a taunting message from the killer is painted on the wall, in blood.
4. The players hear blood-curdling screams from off in the distance.
5. The players feel someone watching them from behind. If they turn to look, they get a brief glimpse of a pair of bloodshot eyes hovering in the darkness of a nearby shadow.
6. The players hear a terrifying second-hand account of an encounter with the Red Graal, who heard it from a friend of a friend. It may or may not be accurate.
7. The players encounter random blood spatter from a previous attack on the walls, floor, and ceiling.
8. They hear a harsh voice whispering lines from the Red Graal’s manifesto or vague threats at an indeterminate point nearby. 
9. The players encounter a witness to a recent attack who has been reduced to a terrified babbling wreck. The person chatters excessively about the killer appearing from the shadows, walking on the walls, healing from massive wounds, having writing on his skin, and the killer’s long, shadowy chopper.
10. Roll twice, combine both results.

The Red Graal’s taunts

The Red Graal always signs his kills with a taunting message. Here are a few sample messages for you to use

1. “You looked away. I didn’t.”
2. “One cut for every slight.”
3. “You laughed at me. I laugh last.”
4. “The weak shall eat the strong.”
5. “I am the knife. You are the meat.”

The Manifesto

During this phase and afterward, the players will encounter snippets of Red Graal’s manifesto, the same manifesto written on his skin and left in various places in the Underberg by the killer, always written in blood. The players will encounter the manifesto lines in the order presented below.

1. They spat in my bowl and called it kindness. I drink deeper now.
2. Every laugh at my expense was a blade drawn across my soul. Now the blades are mine.
3. I was cast out by the world above. They called me half breed, they called me abomination, they beat me and starved me, yet I survived, I remember.
4. Yet even in the underground, I was still among the wolves. Here in the dark, they still did me an injustice just because I was half human.
5. I was left to the mercy of the vultures wearing suits and gold rings. I played their games and listened to their promises of fortune won through chance, yet they robbed me while secretly mocking me.
6. When they had cheated me out of the last of my meager inheritance, they cast me out of their dens of vice into the gutter, as if I were already dead. They will be the first to die
7. Even outcasts turned me out. Even the unwanted would not have me. So I am unwanted no longer—I am chosen.
8. In the darkest depths, I found a half-formed god, a thing of bloodlust and cruelty. I saw in it a kindred spirit, and it saw on in me.
9. He offered me a chance to exact revenge on those who wronged me; all I had to do was give him my hate and rage to make him whole.
10. I wrote this gospel for him, a catalog of injustices done unto me and every thought of revenge I had, onto my skin in his blood to make us one. He is my power, and I am his motivation.
11. He walks within me now, the half-born king of knives. His gospel is murder, and I am his prophet and his vessel.
12. To the gamblers, the bullies, the whores, the priests: every slight, every coin denied, every cruel word returns upon you.
13. I will drench this city in red. You will die screaming upon my knife

Dead “Pigs”

Once the players reach the halfway point of their route through the ward, as determined by you, the DM, it is time to spring this jumpscare on them.

Beyond the corner lies a grisly tableau: thirteen watchmen hang upside down from rusted hooks, their throats slit, their chests split wide, their innards gone. A slick message is daubed on the cobbles beneath them in their own blood:
“It is fitting that the pigs who tormented me die like pigs—squealing and thrashing as I tore their throats with my knife.
—The Red Graal”
Knobbs goes pale as chalk. He stumbles to a corner, retching violently until bile splashes across the stones. 

• Knobbs spends a few moments vomiting before regaining his color and a small bit of composure. He shakily apologizes for his reaction, saying that blood and gore always cause him to lose his lunch, but he’s fine now.
  • Knobbs is not fine. From now on, he will be extremely jumpy, panicking at the slightest sound or flick of shadow.
• From now on, when the players find fresh victims of  The Red Graal, they are former watchmen on the dragnet, strung up and gutted in the same way, and Knobbs will have the same reaction to each body he sees.

The Manifestation: The Quarry Junction Massacre

Once the players return to Quarry Junction after their grand and terrifying tour of the Underberg, it is time for the Red Graal to make his grand appearance. 

As you enter the junction, you find a crowd—mostly watchmen in dented helmets and blue jackets. Captain Brakka One-Tusk stands on a soapbox, tusks gleaming under the lantern light as he shouts for order.
“Stay calm! We will stop this depraved kil—”
His words choke off as a blade bursts through his chest.
The knife slides free, and Brakka collapses in a spray of blood. For the briefest instant, you glimpse a figure—bare-chested, lean, a massive butcher’s knife in his hand. His skin gleams white as bone, but blood red shadows cling to him like smoke.
“One dead piggy,” rasps a voice as he fades back into the dark.

Give the table a moment to absorb the horror. Knobbs shrieks, clutching desperately at one of the players’ legs, babbling in panic. Before they can react, a scream rips through the air right behind them.

The figure is there again—driving his knife into a watchman’s belly, grinning wide. His pale skin is scarred and marked with symbols that hang in the air, glowing red as his form dissolves into shadow.
“Two dead piggies.”
Then another scream. And another. The crowd erupts in chaos as the Red Graal flickers from shadow to shadow, reappearing only to slash, stab, and vanish again. In seconds, the square is nothing but torn bodies and spreading pools of blood.

At the end of the spree, the players stand alone. Then choose one of the players and say they feel a clawed hand on their shoulder. If they turn around, they see The Red Graal standing behind them. It gives them a wicked grin and says that he will save you for later, before vanishing into the shadows. Knobs faints at the sight of the killer.

Aftermath of the Manifestation

When the slaughter ends and the Red Graal vanishes, silence falls over Quarry Junction. The air is thick with the stench of blood and burnt oil. Dozens of bodies lie sprawled in grotesque heaps, the blue jackets of the watch now dark and sodden. Only the players and the unconscious Knobbs remain at the crossroads outside the Watchhouse.

Bystanders: After about five minutes of silence, the residents of Dragon Way and Quarry Road, including the wizard Ezohr the Mole, Father Anselm Vey, and Phirbith, the gnome druidess who runs the free clinic, come out to see what had happened. Most of the bystanders immediately started to recoil and retch at the sight of all the corpses. 

Only Ezohr and Phirbith are brave enough to enter the intersection. They introduce themselves, which is to say Phirbith introduces herself, her voice trembling. Ezohr mumbles something before they produce a business card from their great shambling mass of hair. The card proudly proclaims them a Theoretical Theurgist. They asked to explain what had happened.

The Red Graal taunt. If the players look around, they find that the Graal has left a message, “I counted 65 dead piggies, they will all be dead soon,” written in blood on the stones of the square. If the player asks when he wrote it, respond that you did not see him write the message; it has always been there.

Knobs Awakens. 

After a quarter hour, Knobbs stirs, eyes wild, face pale. He begins talking before he’s even fully awake—about the killer, about the knife, about the writing that covered the Red Graal’s skin. He cannot stop until the players listen.

Through gasps and tremors, he gives a disturbingly accurate description:

Taller than me, but shorter than an elf. Ears like mine—goblin ears—but his skin was pale, stretched thin over bone. Eyes bloodshot, staring like they’d forgotten how to blink. His whole body was covered in words, written in this scratchy, crabbed handwriting, all in red. I remember one bit—

‘In the darkest depths, I found a half-formed god, a thing of bloodlust and cruelty. I saw in it a kindred spirit, and it saw one in me. Its own dark kin cast it out for being too depraved, and the ungrateful masses starved it of attention. With its dying breaths it offered me the means to enact the vengeance unjustly denied me. He walks within me now. His gospel is murder, and I am his prophet and his v…’ did not catch the last bit of that sentence.”

If the players have seen pieces of the Red Graal manifesto during the omen phase, Knobbs immediately deduces that the text the Red Graal writes on the wall is probably the same or similar to that on his skin.

From this point on, Knobbs is visibly frayed—jumpy, muttering, barely holding it together.

The sealed Underberg. After about 10 minutes, the players will encounter some watchmen who managed to escape, fleeing towards them, screaming at the top of their lungs. They will stop once they realize they are back in Quarry Junction and will be utterly confused; they fled towards the Entranceways, or the Goblin market. If the players investigate, they find that all the paths towards the Goblin Market, the gate in the Red Lantern Warrens, and the route out via Dragon Way loop back on themselves, trapping them in the Underberg.

Banishing The Red Graal

After witnessing the massacre in Quarry Junction, it should be clear that the Red Graal is not a creature they can take head-on. Thus begins the banishment phase of the TOMBS cycle. From this point onward, the adventure stops guiding the players step by step. Instead, it’s up to you, the Dungeon Master, to maintain tension and help the players drive the story toward its conclusion with a mix of improvisation, recurring horrors, and scripted beats.

Encounters

In the wake of the massacre, the Underberg has become the Red Graal domain, and panic and desperation are starting to spread through the population. The Red Graal likes things this way; it makes it easier to toy with his prey, stalk them, and ultimately kill them.

Every 20 minutes of play, roll on this table for random events and encounters. If the situation is improbable, the event or encounter need not happen immediately; you can hold off for a few moments for the right time.

1. Scream — A blood-curdling scream echoes in the distance. Was it real, or bait?
2. Stalking — A fleeting glimpse of the Graal: a red pool sliding across a dark corner, bloodshot eyes staring from the dark, or letters burning briefly in the air before fading.
3. Close Encounter — The Graal toys with the party: a whisper in their ear, a hand brushing a shoulder, a shallow cut across the arm. Then he vanishes.
4. Looters — 1d6 looters (bandit stat block) ransack a shop or warehouse. They’re desperate, frightened, and quick to lash out.
   
5. Manifesto — A line of the Graal’s bloody manifesto is scrawled across the walls. (See the Omens section for sample lines.)
6. Murder Victim — A fresh body lies staged in a grotesque tableau. A taunting message bleeds across the wall.
7. Panicked Mob — 1d20 commoners surge through the street in chaos. They may trample the players or beg them for protection. Or Cultists (Day 5+) — 1d8 teenagers (cultists), half-feral and wide-eyed, chant the Graal’s name as they join his spree.
8. Eerily Quiet — No sounds of life. Shops shut. Lamps guttering. Even the rats are gone. The silence itself is an omen.
9. Nothing Happens — Nothing immediate occurs, but let dread build. Describe how the shadows cling to corners, how every footstep echoes too loudly, how the Graal’s presence presses invisibly closer
10. Roll twice, combine the results

What to do Now?

This is what the players are likely to think while they stand amidst the carnage of the massacre. They really only have two viable options. If the players do not figure these options out, have the NPCs gently point them in the general direction of these two options.

Evacuate the Underberg. 

This is Corporal Knobbs’ preferred plan. The Red Graal has closed off all obvious exits, but has not truly sealed the Underberg—only the routes that Darragh once knew. If the players find another way out and evacuate the citizens, they can starve the Red Graal of the fear and belief that sustain him. Once he weakens, a better-prepared group could return to destroy him for good.

The players can attempt any plausible means of escape. The following are the most likely options, but don’t limit their creativity. The Red Graal will do everything possible to stop the players, and time is limited. The final massacre will start in six days and will not stop until nobody in Underberg is left alive save the Red Graal and his followers.

The Sewage Processing Plant discharge tunnel: 

• The Sewage Processing Plant in Goblintown empties grey water through a 1.5-meter-wide circular channel into the Harbor, not too far from the Hags boardwalk.
• It’s a narrow fit; only one person can crawl through it at a time
• It also floods with 1 foot of dirty saltwater at high tide

The Air Shafts: 

•  Three vertical shafts run up through the mountain. Shafts One and Three are wide enough to climb but over 1,000 feet tall.
• The climb is nearly impossible without creative solutions—magic, ropes, pulleys, or jury-rigged platforms.
• The Red Graal will use his ability to walk on walls to stop people from climbing the shafts.

The Catacombs: 

• The oldest parts of the network of catacombs connect to several of the city’s oldest churches and the Cathedral. At the center of the network, the catacombs connect to the House of Bone in the upper part of the Underberg. 
• The gaunt, humorless goblins of the  Faoghair clan are generally hesitant to let anyone except their train priests and morticians into the maze of tunnels that houses the city’s dead. 
• The players can potentially bargain with them to guide the Underberg’s residents to safety.
• However, the Faoghair clan can only guide a few people at a time through the narrow passageways.

The Deep Caves:

•  The Underberg connects to a series of deeper tunnels and caves that spread out under the countryside. These so-called Deep caves are believed to connect to the Underwyrd, the Feengrenze’s own, stranger version of the Underdark, and may have other exits than those in Orlaez’s Court. 
• A trained spelunker would take at least 168 hours (7 days) to scour the tunnels, assuming they are going reasonably and taking time for sleep and rest. 
• Procedure:
  • Roll 1d20 + the party’s highest survival modifier.
  • On success(16+):, reduce the remaining total search time by half.
  • On a partial success(11–15) , no change in the amount of progress made to scout the tunnels
  • Add 1d4 × 6 hours on a failure(≤10): and trigger one random encounter.
  • Multiple teams can split the work; each search team divides the total time to search the deep caves in half. Each search team rolls separately, and each success reduces the time by half with each success.
• Alternatively, the players might pursue the rumor that there is a secret path through the deep caves from the Stacked Deck.
  • They must convince Don O’Malley to let them use his smuggling tunnel. Still, he becomes much more open to persuasion once Scale Speaker Ziska and her attendants are murdered, giving players advantage on persuasion checks against Don O’Malley.

Mining a New Exit

• Around 250 miners live in the Underberg, with plenty of tools and black powder for excavation.
• If the players do nothing, Scale Speaker Ziska orders her kobolds to dig from Orlaez’s Deep, but the tunnel won’t be finished before the final massacre begins.
• The party can organize the miners to dig elsewhere.
  • Each team of 30 miners digs a tunnel 10 ft. × 10 ft. × 30 ft. per day (using black powder).
  • Without charges: half that speed.
  • With Ek’s boom gel sticks: double that speed.
  • A successful Intelligence (Investigation) check, DC 17, identifies a point less than 100 ft. from the surface.
  • On failure, roll 1d100 × 10 ft. for the actual depth.
    
• Encourage multiple tunnels and shift rotations; the workforce is the only limit. Time pressure is key—if they dig too slowly, the Graal will strike before they break through.

Banishing the Red Graal

Despite the Red Graal’s status as a god, his manifestation in the Underberg is fragile; he needs a vessel to be more than just an unseen presence whispering to alienated teenagers, urging them to kill their peers. If the players can destroy Darragh’s body or alter the writing on his body, The Red Graal will be forced to leave Darragh’s lifeless body and seek a new vessel elsewhere. The real challenge for the players is figuring out their weaknesses and how to exploit them.

Hints and Clues

The players have multiple ways to determine the nature of the Red Graal and its potential weaknesses.

• Knobs Knobs gave the player a few significant clues about what is going on with his description of the Red Graal, even if he or the players did not notice them. He revealed that he has a godling on his side and that the killer has written a manuscript over his skin. The wording of the writing suggests that the god is in Darragh’s body.
• Ezohr: Ezohr is a theoretical theurgist with an extensive library on divine magic, archetypes, and other celestials.
  • If the players can provide him with the writing they have found, he immediately recognizes it as a kind of gospel with the writer apparently believing himself some form of prophet.
    • If asked why he would write it over his skin, he shrugs (apparently) and says it’s a common thing for mad prophets to do
    • If they mention that the writing on the Red Graal skin lingers when he vanishes into shadows, Ezohr is perplexed and will take some time to search his references.
      • It will take him two days, but he will determine that the writing is magical and likely to enhance his abilities.
  • If the players have learned of Darragh’s identity before becoming the Red Graal, Ezohr has a 1 in 2 chance of suggesting that Darragh’s body is acting as a vessel for the Red Graal.
• Clerical power: If the players have a cleric among them, their relic-enshrined vestigial sparks can detect the Red Graal’s divine nature and freak out whenever he is near. They will scream at their keepers that the Red Graal is a dark god in a human body.
• Murray: The owner and barkeep at 8th Heaven has a secret. He is secretly a god of bartending, and his bar is his temple. His godhood allows him to create perfect drinks and give ideal advice, nothing more and nothing less. He does not advertise this fact preferring to stay in the background. He is also familiar with the Red Graal’s vessel. Darragh frequented the bar on several occasions.
  • He recognizes the description of the Red Graal as Darragh. He remarks that the poor kid never had a chance.
    • He came to the undercity a few months back, almost penniless, and gambled away everything he had at one of the shadier gambling dens in the Warrens. 
    • The last time he saw him, he had that hopeless, “I’m going to hang myself,” look on his face. Murray gave him a beer on the house in a vain attempt to cheer him up and watched as he shuffled towards the outcast camp when he left.
  • If the players tell him about the manifesto, he tuts to himself and says, “That sounds like Darragh.” The last few times he had seen him, he had started to blame the faceless them for his suffering and would rave at anyone who would listen about the machinations of them or accuse them of being part of them
  • If the players can convince him to leave his bar and try to get a good look at The Red Graal, he immediately realizes that the Red Graal is wearing Darragh’s body like a skin suit and that something is keeping the godling anchored to the body.
• Phirbith and Father Vey: Phirbith and Father Vey knew Darragh better than most, though neither saw what was coming until it was too late. Their recollections, in hindsight, sketch the picture of a boy quietly sliding into darkness.
  • Both reveal that he was a troubled young man, easily provoked and prone to getting into fights.
  • Phirbith recalls patching him up multiple times after he got into fights with various bullies.
    • He was a gaunt, malnourished boy who was not very strong and had a very thin skin about his half breed nature.
    • She witnessed one such incident with the bullies calling him a half breed to provoke him into a fight. She had to scrape him off the street when he lost the fight.
    • A few weeks before the massacre, she lost track of him completely
  • Father Vey reveals that Darragh was an infrequent congregation member who tended to go only when the masses were empty.
    • In confession, he revealed that he felt like he was being silenced by them, not elaborating on who they were.
    • The last time Vey saw him, Darragh was unwashed and trembling. He had lost the last of his money in the warrens; the outcasts in the deep caves had thrown him out, and he was contemplating committing suicide.
    • Vey now regrets that he missed the signs.
• Checks: If all else fails, let the players make checks to piece together the info.

Banishing the Red Graal

Once the players have armed themselves with knowledge, they can take on the Red Graal and live. As always, you should let the players come up with and execute a plan, but there are specific strategies they are likely to use, which are listed below.

Explosives: There are plenty of explosives in the mines under the  Underberg. 

• For damage dealt and area of effect, refer to the section on explosives in the DMG.

Taunting the Red Graal: The Red Graal has inherited Darragh’s fragile ego. 

• If the players mess up one of the messages or worse, create their own taunting message, he will throw a tantrum and seek out the players to kill them. 
• This is a perfect way to lead them into an ambush.

Milita: The Forges in  Dwemer court, the watchhouse in Quarry Junction, and the Stacked Deck have enough weaponry to arm over a hundred people. Furthermore, plenty of desperate and willing hands exist among the undercity’s citizenry.

• If the players choose this route, they can find enough gear to arm up to 100 people as cr ⅛ to cr ½ NPCs. 
• Numbers could turn the tide of the battle in the players’ favor.

Washing or altering the Red Graal skin message. Darragh painted a manifesto onto his skin with divine ichor to transform himself into a living vessel. Without a vessel, the Red Graal cannot act in the world.

• The players can attempt to wash off or change the gospel writing on the Red Graal skin. Rules for using improvised weapons and handheld firefighting pumps are in the appendix. 
• One good hit with paint or soapy water will do the trick. See the Red Graal stat block for the effects of washing off the writing.

Magic items: The smiths of Dwemer Court make magic items and might be able to lend some to the players

• The smiths of Dwemer Court can arm the players in complete sets of +1 armor and weapons.
• They also have some uncommon wands they could lend. 
• Several powerful items are also hidden in various corners of the ward. See the gazetteer for the locations of such weapons.

Light: The Red Graal’s shadow step ability requires him to stand in a shadow to use it.

•  The players can render him less mobile if they can eliminate the shadows he can use to teleport.

Hallow: Papa Faoghair can cast the hallow spell once per day, thanks to the relic in the chapel of the house of bones. 

• He could create some hallowed ground into which celestials cannot enter.

Events 

Time passes as the adventure and the situation in the undercity develop with or without the intervention of the players’ characters. The following encounters might be better described as events; the player characters can interfere if they want or can, but they are not strictly necessary for the adventure.

Emergency community meeting

News travels fast through the undercity after the Quarry Junction Massacre. At 3:00 p.m. on day 0, the leaders of the various neighborhoods gather in Our Lady of the Deep for an emergency meeting without coordination. 

Present at the meeting are

• Father Vey
• Papa Faoghair
• Ezohr the Mole
• Scale Speaker Ziska and her entourage
• Don O’Malley and a few of his top lieutenants
• A gaggle of frightened goblins being herded by A goblin boss named Brex
• A few dozen dwarves led by a Veteran named Sidmack Barrelbrew.
• The players and Knobs, the only survivors of the Quarry Junction Massacre, will be invited to the meeting as a courtesy.
  

The meeting gets quickly bogged down as old tensions and feuds are brought to the forefront. For hours, arguments and accusations go around without progress. By the end, the only sensible plan floated will be Scale Speaker Ziska’s proposal to dig an escape tunnel out of the mountain. Beyond that, nothing constructive will come out of the meeting, and all involved will go their separate ways to pursue separate plans.

Don’t roleplay the entire meeting. Summarize it as a fiasco in motion and clarify that only player intervention can stop it from dissolving into chaos. Use NPC personalities and DCs from their entries if players try to mediate, intimidate, or inspire.

The Death of Scale Speaker Ziska

As Ziska performs her evening ritual in Orlaez Court on the fourth day with her two acolytes and her six kobold guards, the Red Graal strikes. Unless the players are with the group, he immediately targets Ziska and quickly dispatches her. Unless the players are there to rally them, her followers immediately flee after seeing their leader struck down. 

The Massacre in the Warrens

The Red Graal leads his followers into the Red Lantern Warrens to take revenge at sunset on the fifth day after the Quarry Junction Massacre. He leads a force of 5d20 cultists into the warrens. Half follow him to the Stacked Deck Casino, and the rest divide into groups of 4 to 6 to kill everybody they see.

The Dead Rabbit Syndicate and the citizens put up a spirited defense but are ultimately overwhelmed by the Red Graal and his knife-wielding followers. Unless the players intervene, everybody in the warrens dies by the end. The cultists lose 3d20 of their number + any cultists the players kill.

The Burning of Goblintown

After the rampage in the Warrens, the next target on The Red Graal’s list is Goblintown. On the morning of the sixth day, he leads his remaining force of cultists into Goblintown and starts killing. If the players do not intervene, it does not take long for the shantytown and the fungal forests to the south of it to begin burning, killing everybody in the the slum. By the end of the massacre, the Red Graal has gained enough belief and strength to be well outside the player character’s ability to defeat it.

Tricks for Keeping the Tension Up

The banishment phase is more demanding than the others. There’s no script, no structure—only you, the Dungeon Master, maintaining the illusion that the Red Graal is always one step behind the players.
Use the following techniques to sustain the pressure and keep your table on edge.

---

Keep NPCs in a State of Panic

Everyone in the Underberg knows they’re trapped with a godlike killer, and they should act like it.
Ordinary citizens should tremble, babble, and lash out irrationally. They cling to the players as their last hope—or blame them for every new death.
When a new body drops, the entire district should ripple with fear: barricades go up, mobs form, and priests mutter prayers through tears.

---

Use Encounters and Omens Liberally

The Red Graal should never feel distant. He is always watching—his influence leaking through graffiti, whispers, and flickering lights.
Drop an omen or encounter from the tables whenever tension begins to fade. A scream from down the corridor, a manifesto line written in blood, or the echo of his laughter in a storm drain—all are fair game.
Keep the players wondering: Is he near, or is it their imagination?

---

Make the Red Graal React

If the players start progressing—rallying survivors, preparing an ambush, or discovering his weakness—the Red Graal notices.
He will strike at them directly, attempting to kill at least one of their number or destroy what they’ve built.
Sabotage their escape routes. Burn their safehouses. Make it personal.
The Red Graal does not forgive defiance.

---

Play It Straight

Don’t wink at the horror. Treat the Red Graal and his cultists as truly deadly.
Their attacks are precise, brutal, and often over before anyone can react.
When the players realize that even a single mistake could cost them their lives—or the lives of hundreds—they’ll naturally stay on edge.

Slumber: The Aftermath

If the players fail to banish The Red Graal before he destroys GoblinTown

It takes two more days, but the Red Graal finishes murdering everybody in the underberg, finishing the spree by killing Nib. They then ascend to the surface to kill off everybody on the city’s topside. The killing spree lasts 10 days, ending when The Red Graal personally kills King Fredrick. The Red Graal and his cult proceed up into the mountains and establish a grim underground temple to the Red Graal, and his followers travel to the four corners of the Feengrenze to continue killing in his name.

If the players manage to evacuate the Underberg

After successfully evacuating the Underberg, the Red Graal is starved of the fear and belief that sustained him. A few days later, King Fredrick leads a heavy, armed task force consisting of himself, the copper dragoness Jaspera, Tansy Fleetfoot, and a few dozen high-level clerics, fighters, and wizards into the tunnels. The battle is bloody, but King Fredrick personally slays the Red Graal’s vessel. The players are given accommodations for their part in the evacuation.

If the players manage to banish the Red Graal

The players kill the Red Graal’s vessel, but the godling laughs as he fades away, saying it takes more than that to kill a god. The players are given accommodation for defeating the Red Graal.  

If Knobs Survives

Knobs takes the Red Graal Incident harder than anyone. Haunted by survivor’s guilt, he dedicates his life to understanding what turned Darragh into a monster. He pores over old records, interviews survivors, and excavates every trace of Darragh’s short, bitter life.

His work culminates in a book titled His Gospel Is Murder, a scathing exposé of the social decay, cruelty, and indifference that bred the Red Graal. The text becomes the definitive account of the massacre, though Knobs’ moral arguments are mostly ignored by the public.

Disillusioned, Knobs leaves the watch two years later and devotes the rest of his life to social reform.

A century and a half later, a film studio—White Unicorn Pictures—adapts His Gospel Is Murder into one of the Feengrenze’s first slasher flicks. The movie rewrites history: the Red Graal is reimagined as a supernatural punisher of vice, stalking gamblers and courtesans in a lurid parody of the Undercity. The player characters are portrayed as innocent teenagers in a by-the-numbers morality tale.

Regardless

For the next few decades, there are sporadic outbursts of violence by teenagers against their peers all over the Silver Highlands. These commonly become known as Red Graal Sabbaths, and the Red Graal is frequently blamed for driving the perpetrator to the act. The societal problems that created the Red Graal in the first place are simply ignored.