A recent earthquake has unearthed a standing stone inscribed with cryptic ogham runes, unleashing an ancient curse upon a troubled village — and awakening the spirit of a long-dead tyrant.
Welcome to “The Unquiet Stone” 5E adventure! Within these pages, you’ll discover everything necessary to embark on this thrilling quest, complete with detailed descriptions of locations, encounters, NPCs and stat blocks, maps, and handouts.
This adventure also features a versatile and scalable system, allowing Game Masters to easily adjust the difficulty and complexity of encounters to suit their players’ preferences and skill levels. Whether you have a party of advanced players or beginners, you can tailor the challenges to ensure an exciting and engaging experience for everyone involved. The scalable system guides modifying creature statistics, making it simple to customize the adventure to fit your party’s level.
In “The Unquiet Stone,” a party of 4-6 characters (levels 5-7) arrives in Dunshelm, a village gripped by nightly terrors, spectral attacks, and a creeping blight that is killing crops and livestock. A recent earthquake unearthed a standing stone etched with ogham runes — the ancient seal of a druid conclave that bound the spirit of Abhartach, a legendary undead tyrant. With the seal broken, Abhartach’s corruption spreads, and a cult known as the Disciples of the Abyss races to bring him fully back to the material plane. The adventure is divided into three parts.
Part 1: Gathering Shadows
The players arrive in the eerily silent village of Dunshelm, its doors barricaded and streets deserted. They meet with Eamon, the worried village elder, who recounts the spreading blight and nightly spectral attacks since the earthquake. At the Unquiet Stone itself, the scholar Professor Elidyr helps the players decipher a hidden message in the runes, confirming Abhartach’s awakening and pointing them toward the Circle of Druids as the key to stopping him. The village’s one inn offers a brief respite — but also an ambush from a cultist spy — and as night falls, specters emerge to attack the village once more.
Part 2: The Cursed Wildlands
Venturing beyond Dunshelm into a forest twisted by necromantic blight, the players navigate corrupted terrain and face random encounters with blighted bears, restless spirits, and cursed undead hunters. Deep in the forest, they find the Circle of Druids — a sanctuary where Archdruid Caolainn offers guidance and crucial resources, but only to those who prove their respect for natural balance. To earn her trust, the players must defend a sacred ritual site against a pack of Shadow Wolves and a Blighted Bear. Success rewards them with the Heart of the Forest gem, a runic key to the ancient crypt, healing potions, and the crypt’s location. The road onward demands one final confrontation with a corrupted Evil Treant before they reach their destination.
Part 3: The Ancient Crypt
The players descend into a centuries-old crypt — Abhartach’s resting place — now crawling with Disciples of the Abyss who have already completed a ritual to manifest the tyrant. The crypt’s twelve chambers present a gauntlet of escalating threats: a stone knight guardian at the sealed entrance, a trapped staircase, a corridor of animated skeletons, a grand hall guarded by ethereal spirits bound to stone statues, cultist patrols, a necromancer’s invocation chamber, and a fire-trapped hallway. At the heart of the crypt, Abhartach himself emerges from his sarcophagus in a clash of necrotic power. The players can destroy the sarcophagus to strip away his regeneration — or use the Heart of the Forest to permanently seal his spirit once his strength wanes, ending the curse and restoring Dunshelm to life.
Release Date: 2024
Format: Digital (PDF)
Items Included
- The Unquiet Stone 5E (PDF)
- A B&W Printer-Friendly Version (PDF)
- Maps
- Illustrations (Generated with Midjourney)
- Monster Stat Blocks
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