From the introduction: The High Lord of Endreth is distraught. His crown is gone, seized while he slept by “scores of marching skeletons” who overwhelmed the few guards of tiny Endreth Keep, took the High Lord’s crown, and marched down Endreth Vale to the crypt of the Black Skull, an ancient dwarven goods-hold used for centuries to inter the noble dead of Endreth. The crypt is haunted, crawling with undead and fell magic, and local legends say it is ruled by the Black Skull—the undead remains of evil Lord Blackskell, who founded Endreth six centuries ago. High Lord Berlus Thoreraun is frantic to get his crown back. Persistent local rumors have whispered that the crown—a distinctive plain steel circlet with a single dagger-blade “glory spike” above the wearer’s forehead—keeps its wearers alive beyond their due span of years, if no steel or magic slays them. Since the crown was seized four nights ago, the tall and hale Thoreraun has become bent, wrinkled, and frail. His hair falls out in great tufts. He has offered his own weight in rubies to anyone who returns the crown to him, intact. The Endreth riches are scattered in the keeping of local holy men, who attest that there are rubies enough to make good the High Lord’s promise. User summary: For 7th - 9th level characters.