Haunted Prison help

[Rogozhin]

I'm getting writer's block...

My adventurers need information from someone whose been in prison for a couple of years. The prison is in a remote, rocky location.

Upon arriving at the prison they find the doors open and "no one home". Some corpses and piles of bones... perhaps a frantic message scrawled on the wall in blood (suggesting there may be survivors hidden away somewhere)... as they delve further into the prison, they find more evidence that something terribly gruesome happened here. They also find they're not as alone as they thought...

I'm thinking an Alien-esque sort of thing could be going on, or the would of someone executed became a wraith or banshee and has turned the prison into a nest for the undead...

Players will be lol 3 or 4 when they get there. Any help or suggestions appreciated!

[Regwon]

That sounds cool. You could really play some nasty mind games with your players.

Let them see apparitions of drifting though the hallway, some of whom look like the players.

One note they come across, written in one of their.own handwriting, says "Whatever you do, do not look behind you." Then if one of them does look behind them, have them lose resources as if they had just finished a deadly fight. The casters have fewer spells, someone is dying, everyone is covered in blood, with no explaination of what happened.

You can have the place shift over time, changing in subtle but important ways so that the players cant help but get lost, and them have something that they cant easily defeat begin them.

In the very depths of the prison there could be some groudhog day stuff going on, where everything seems normal, but the creature is reliving the moment of its death day after day after day, and the characters have to come up with a way to defeat it other than a straight fight, since they will lose and become trapped in this cycle of torment for ever.

You could even go farther by separating the characters into guards and prisoners in some twisted game of the creature's devising, and if they dont play their roles amd make their friends suffer, bad stuff happens.

It all depends on how much you want to torture your players. I love torturing mine, and coming up with these ideas has made me very excited.

[Rogozhin]

Woah! That's some great stuff. I had also thought of having two rivals who were hung at the same time, and their rivalry continues on in death...

[JeenLeen]

If you can find the first book in the Pathfinder campaign series Carrion Crown: this arc resolves around a haunted prison. It could give some good ideas for manifestations of prisoners.

It used a mechanic that I think it called 'haunts', where the difficulty wasn't fighting a creature, but rather a manifestation of a dead spirit or the pain in the place. Something like the room becoming cold and everyone taking damage until a solution was found (or you retreat.) Sometimes haunts were creatures, though, but usually you could figure out a way to make the fight easier by understanding what happened.
It also had some nice cursed items. Really useful, especially against certain ghosts in the dungeon, but they had the taint of a ghost.

One caution though: there were a few haunts which were supposed to be nullified by doing a specific action. Like finding and breaking a sigil to dispel a ghost's influence in the room. But sometimes there was no clue as to what the solution was. (For most haunts, it was pretty clear, but that was a pet peeve of mine.)

[Vogonjeltz]

I'm getting writer's block...

My adventurers need information from someone whose been in prison for a couple of years. The prison is in a remote, rocky location.

Upon arriving at the prison they find the doors open and "no one home". Some corpses and piles of bones... perhaps a frantic message scrawled on the wall in blood (suggesting there may be survivors hidden away somewhere)... as they delve further into the prison, they find more evidence that something terribly gruesome happened here. They also find they're not as alone as they thought...

I'm thinking an Alien-esque sort of thing could be going on, or the would of someone executed became a wraith or banshee and has turned the prison into a nest for the undead...

Players will be lol 3 or 4 when they get there. Any help or suggestions appreciated!

Try not to get derailed from the ultimate goal here; the PCs came to this place to get a piece of information from one of the prisoners.

Ok, first, establish what the information is, and how it could be acquired.
Here are some questions you can answer to figure that out:
Is the prisoner alive? A ghost? Did they leave a journal in their cell?
How will the players determine where the prisoner is/was located to get that information? (Is there a record log kept by the Jailor/Warden? Will they encounter someone who can illuminate which cell the sought after prisoner/information was housed in?)

How many encounters do you want them to go through here? 6-8? What kind of Undead are you anticipating? If it's an infestation, what do you think the Cause will be? Is this something the PCs can fight and win against, or are they just passing through as fast as possible, maybe fleeing from overwhelming opposition?

How do you plan on conveying that the enemy may not be something they can overcome, and must therefore avoid? (i.e. A large pack of Ghouls would, almost certainly, slaughter the PCs....but they might not be aware of this).

Are there survivors who the PCs could assist to even the odds? Maybe the PCs come upon a broken down door at the prison chapel and find the local Priest, who is a low-level Cleric, and 3-4 guards engaged in combat with some of the ghouls. If the PCs intervene, they can save the group, otherwise the Ghouls easily overwhelm the NPCs and feast on them, providing a tacit lesson to the PCs that not every combat can be won.

For what it's worth, a Wraith is too dangerous for the group of level 3-4. A Banshee alone would be pretty terrible, but it doesn't create undead.

Consider a Wight, it could have Zombies under its control made from the bodies of Prisoners and Guards (12 maximum), or Ghouls (preferably no more than 2 at a time unless you're trying to TPK the group).

[furby076]

If you want to screw with their minds, then include sanity rules. Helps remove the aspect of players who have absolutely fearless characters

[Rogozhin]

Ok, first, establish what the information is, and how it could be acquired.
Here are some questions you can answer to figure that out:
Is the prisoner alive? A ghost? Did they leave a journal in their cell?
How will the players determine where the prisoner is/was located to get that information? (Is there a record log kept by the Jailor/Warden? Will they encounter someone who can illuminate which cell the sought after prisoner/information was housed in?)

How many encounters do you want them to go through here? 6-8? What kind of Undead are you anticipating? If it's an infestation, what do you think the Cause will be? Is this something the PCs can fight and win against, or are they just passing through as fast as possible, maybe fleeing from overwhelming opposition?

How do you plan on conveying that the enemy may not be something they can overcome, and must therefore avoid? (i.e. A large pack of Ghouls would, almost certainly, slaughter the PCs....but they might not be aware of this).

Are there survivors who the PCs could assist to even the odds? Maybe the PCs come upon a broken down door at the prison chapel and find the local Priest, who is a low-level Cleric, and 3-4 guards engaged in combat with some of the ghouls. If the PCs intervene, they can save the group, otherwise the Ghouls easily overwhelm the NPCs and feast on them, providing a tacit lesson to the PCs that not every combat can be won.

For what it's worth, a Wraith is too dangerous for the group of level 3-4. A Banshee alone would be pretty terrible, but it doesn't create undead.

Consider a Wight, it could have Zombies under its control made from the bodies of Prisoners and Guards (12 maximum), or Ghouls (preferably no more than 2 at a time unless you're trying to TPK the group).

Woah! Thanks so much. These questions and suggestions are all super helpful.

I'm thinking that they'll arrive at the prison and quickly discover that things are amiss. Details about what happened there and the fact that there may be some survivors (including the chap they need information from) will be revealed through a combination of messages scrawled on the walls, perhaps a journal as you suggested... maybe even a survivor who has barricaded himself somewhere on the upper floors...

I am thinking the ground floor and upper gallery will be the final encounter upon leaving (I'm thinking when they first arrive there will be a pile of bones that is only animated in the death throws of whatever is haunting below). The first level down will be haunted by a Wraith. Now, it's possible they never actually face the wraith, but rather that it represents a tremendous threat that forces them to hurry through. They could face the specters it raised though.

The third level down, where our survivors are hiding, i was thinking could be populated by a wight or two and some zombies. My thinking is that there was a necromancer or something like that that was taken to the prison and executed for performing dark rituals using prisoners as sacrifices (so, the wraith is the necromancer, the wight(s) are his sacrifice(s)... it feels maybe a bit too laboured...

And JeenLeen, thanks for the tips on Carrion Crown! I found the adventure and there is indeed some helpful inspiration there and with the pathfinder "Haunt" mechanic in general.

Alternatively I may just use this as an opportunity to introduce Slaads to the material plane... maybe a planar traveler returned having been attacked by a blue slaad. Thought to be mad he was thrown in prison where chaos phage turned him into a red slaad which decimated the prison. They would only have to fight the one Red Slaad and possibly some slaad tadpoles... but it means the man they rescue could eventually birth a blue slaad from his chest thus spreading a scourge for the party to deal with later on...