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Mintiper's Chapbook - Part 4
Crypt of the Black Hand

By Eric L. Boyd

Crypt of the Black Hand

Lunargent raced through the catacombs with the ghoul pack slavering at his heels. Blood dripped from a score or more cuts, witness to the sharp teeth and cruel claws of the flesh-eaters, and his stomach roiled against the pervading stench of carrion. From up ahead he could hear the mad howls of another ghoul pack racing to cut him off, leaving him no option but to dash into the nearest side chamber and bar the door shut, hoping against hope it was the one he sought.

His eyes wild with fear, Lunargent looked about the room, noting the bones of rotting corpses and streaks of blood across the floor and walls. Once a safehold for the citizenry of Ascalhorn in times of attack, the room had been transformed into a macabre playroom for the demons to indulge themselves. From outside the door, a fiendish baying heralded the arrival of the ghoul pack’s master, a fearsome glabrezu. With desperate haste, Lunargent raced to the rear of the chamber and dove into the tainted, brackish waters of the cistern. Lady Luck was kind to him, for at the bottom of the fouled reservoir he found the slight hand-shaped depression carved into the stone that he sought.

With a sense of impending doom, Lunargent pressed his right hand against the symbol of the Black Lord and then swam back up to the surface. The half-elf found himself in a dark pool at the center of a chamber with walls of basalt and a high, arching ceiling. The air was heavy with smoke from a handful of guttering torches placed in sconces along the walls, and his crazed fear quickly transformed into an awareness of dreadful majesty. Directly above him loomed an immense obsidian hand standing six feet high and hovering high above the room. The walls were lined with a dozen obsidian sarcophagi, the lids of which were all carved in the form of a human male clad in the vestments of the Lord of Darkness.

Taking care not to disturb anything within the unholy crypt, Lunargent made his way around the room, studying each sculpted figure in turn. At last he found the one he sought, whose twisted visage mocked the noble features of the long-dead High Mage of Silverymoon, Ederan Nharimlur. Shoving aside the heavy lid, the half-elf lay down within its dank confines and closed himself within for the space of three terrifying heartbeats.

After what seemed an eternity, the coffin walls slowly melted away, and the half-elf found himself standing in a narrow crevice at the base of the western cliff face of the ancient igneous plug once known as Ascal’s Horn. It was only a matter of time until the ghoul packs found his trail again, but at least he was free of Hellgate Keep and had a brief head start.

fragment of a narrative epic entitled "Hellstorm"
attributed to Mintiper Moonsilver
Year of the Harp (1355 DR)

 

Keeper’s Annotations

Mintiper Moonsilver has long been recognized as the only man to have stormed the ghoul-hold of Hellgate Keep and lived to tell the tale. The recent fall of that centuries-old bastion of evil ensures that he will be the only one ever to do so. [1] As mentioned in an earlier annotation, the hero of the "Hellstorm" epic, Lunargent, is simply a commonly employed alias for Moonsilver and those who have told him of their adventures. In this narrative, at least, Mintiper’s tale is definitely autobiographical. [2]

There is little agreement among scholars as to exactly when Mintiper’s famous raid on the fiend-held redoubt occurred, as some sages place it before the half-elf’s founding of the Moonlight Men, while other chroniclers believe it happened it immediately following the Battle of Turnstone Pass or several years later, during the five years he spent with the druids of the Tall Trees after his return to the North. It has been established, however, that Mintiper did not compose his "Hellstorm" epic until the last year of his residence among the druids of Tall Trees. The Journal of Ilygaard Stormhawk, Druid of the Tall Trees Circle, which now lies in the Vault of Sages in Silverymoon, speaks of Mintiper creating the narrative epic as a gift to his companion, the slave girl Noura, in the early stages of her descent into madness and death as a way of giving her hope that even the greatest of horrors could be surmounted. [3]

This passage from the "Hellstorm" narrative undoubtedly describes the Crypt of the Black Hand, a vault said to lie within the depths of Hellgate Keep and hold the bones and treasures of the Brotherhood of the Black Hand. This cadre of Bane-worshipping wizards was founded in Ascalhorn shortly after the fall of Myth Drannor. The Brotherhood was driven into exile in the Year of the Cowl (765 DR) after the Ascalhi authorities discovered the group’s activities, only to resurface in Silverymoon a year later where their spies were employed as builders of the High Palace of Silverymoon. Most of the Black Hand wizards were found an executed, although a few escaped with a number of priceless magical artifacts, including High Mage Ederan’s staff of Silverymoon, the chain mail glove of Taarnahm the Vigilant, and Tasmia’s necklace. Those who did survive returned in secret to a safehold in Ascalhorn, where the remaining Brothers became enmeshed in the rapidly escalating conflicts and power plays between the wizards of that city. In the Year of Thorns (856 DR), the last wizards of the Black Hand fell to the attacks of rival sorcerers and the burgeoning host of baatezu that had infiltrated Ascalhorn. Of all the Brotherhood’s places of power, only the legendary Crypt of the Black Hand is thought to have escaped discovery, although Lunargent’s tale suggests some means of accessing the subterranean vault survived and remains known today.

From Mintiper’s description, we can conclude that the symbol of Bane is carved in the floor of a cistern in one of the lesser assemblies beneath Ascalhorn, assuming it survived the destruction of Hellgate Keep, and that, by placing one’s right hand in it, can be employed as a gate to the Crypt of the Black Hand, which lies elsewhere within Ascal’s Horn. (No hint is given as to whether or not magical passage in the reverse direction is also possible.) [4]

A comparison of this account with one found in the Annals of the Helmstar Company, a band of adventurers who plundered a temple of the Dark Lord over a century ago, suggests that the Crypt is guarded by a holy hand of Bane, a rare type of magical relic sometimes found guarding the innermost altars of temples dedicated to the Black Lord. The means by which Lunargent escaped its attentions is left unstated, although perhaps his care to avoid disturbing anything contained within the Crypt ensured his safety. [5]

Ederan Nharimlur was known as Catseye after he miscast a find familiar spell in the Year of Portents Perilous (707 DR) and mixed his form with that of a summoned feline, giving him a light gold fur covering his skin and the green eyes of a cat. The inclusion of the High Mage’s twisted representation amidst the Brotherhood is undoubtedly a mocking jest alluding to their vindictive theft of his staff of Silverymoon as well as a distinctive marker indicating which sarcophagus functions as an exit gate from the Crypt. One wonders what horrors lurk within the sarcophagi that Lunargent did not disturb. Perhaps they contain the purloined treasures of Silverymoon? [6]

Chronicler’s Footnotes

References

Introduction

General references to Mintiper Moonsilver are cited in the first column of "Mintiper’s Chapbook."

 

Crypt of the Black Hand

Read the other articles of Mintiper's Chapbook:

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