Adventure Atlas: The Mortuary is a supplement that explores the grim Mortuary location of Planescape lore. It is home to the Heralds of Dust faction and the undead that serve them.

The Mortuary can be used to create adventures for characters from 1st to 16th level and expand your campaign setting, whether you're in the City of Doors, Waterdeep, or Sharn. It includes information on the necropolis, new monsters, and more. You don't need to own Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse to enjoy this supplement, just the core rulebooks.

Below, you can follow along as we take encounters from The Mortuary to make our own one-shot adventure for 3rd-level characters!

• Our Setting: The Mortuary, a Towering Necropolis
• Let's Build a Tier 1 Adventure in the Mortuary

The Mortuary Is Maps-Ready

Master-tier subscribers who purchase this supplement will find its maps preloaded in the Maps tool. Take your players to locations like the Spirit Sump and the Path of Graves as they come face to face with new monsters, including the animated coffin.

Our Setting: The Mortuary, a Towering Necropolis

Artist: CALDER MOORE

Adventure Atlas: The Mortuary explores the headquarters of the age-old faction the Heralds of Dust. In this immense house of the dead, they prepare and entomb and hold funerals for the dead and the undead alike.

The Heralds of Dust believe that we are all already dead—that our world is just the first step toward True Death. Day in, day out, the Dusters and their undead look after the deceased. It may be grim work, but the Heralds of Dust are vital to any city; if not for them, the bodies of the dead would overflow into the streets.

The Mortuary itself is broken up into a series of domed towers, each vaguely shaped like a massive tree or open-air monument. Countless graves and tombs dot the base of these towers and in catacombs below.

Let's Build a Tier 1 Adventure in the Mortuary

Using materials found in The Mortuary and my little brain, I'll walk you through creating an adventure for four 3rd-level characters. This supplement, however, can be used to create adventures for various tiers of play, or to simply fill out your world with an iconic location and new monsters.

1. Character Creation and Setting
2. The Quest and the Reward
3. Arriving at the Mortuary
4. Exploring the Mortuary
5. Entering the Corpse Receiving and Shipping Facility
6. Getting Out of the Mortuary

1. Character Creation and Setting

The players will create 3rd-level characters for this adventure. Clerics and paladins will fare particularly well against common enemies in the Mortuary. The necropolis is difficult to navigate, and the party may draw unwanted attention, so characters with good Wisdom (Survival) and Charisma (Persuasion or Deception) will also be assets.

The Mortuary is native to Sigil, the City of Doors, but it can be dropped into any city where there is a need for a large house of death. The City of the Dead in Waterdeep could be home to the Mortuary, as could Sharn from the Eberron setting. But perhaps in your game the Mortuary is found on an open plain, and all nearby towns must ship their dead bodies there to be prepared and buried.

2. The Quest and the Reward

The Heralds of Dust are not keen on resurrection magic. After all, they believe we are already dead, and "dying" is just taking the next step toward True Death. For this one-shot adventure, let's put the party in direct opposition to the faction while building off the "Corpse Receiving and Shipping" encounter detailed in The Mortuary.

The Quest

Eight days ago, a nobleman was murdered and his body was taken to the Mortuary against his wife's wishes. There, the Heralds of Dust will process and entomb his body. His wife has summoned you to her estate to ask that you retrieve the body before it is entombed. She does not believe in the ideologies of the faction and wishes to have her husband reincarnated.

To help the party find the body, the noblewoman describes her late husband in detail.

The Heralds of Dust won't be thrilled to have a body taken from their headquarters to be reincarnated. To complicate matters, the reincarnate spell only works on those who have been dead for less than 10 days, imposing a tight deadline on this quest.

The Reward

Keeping with the theme of the quest, the reward is something that would be handy for the party but upset members of the faction. In exchange for the successful retrieval of the nobleman's body, the party will be rewarded with a spell scroll of revivify.

The noblewoman offers no reward if the party does not return her husband's body in time for the reincarnate spell.

3. Arriving at the Mortuary

With their quest in hand, the party can go to the Mortuary to kick off the adventure. The supplement includes boxed text to read aloud as the characters approach the megastructure. Once there, the party has three ways into the Mortuary:

• Death's Door: Around the back of the Mortuary, an iron door is used by corpse collectors to deliver the dead. The party may be able to convince a corpse collector that they wish to join the Heralds of Dust and to give them a tour of the headquarters.
• Front Gate: A stone gate covered in razorvine bars the way into the Mortuary. If the party convinces the guards on duty to let them in, they will be met with various undead that roam cemeterial grounds.
• Planar Portals: Detailed in the Dungeon Master's Guide, the party may have a portal key that allows them access to the Mortuary. The NPC who gave them their quest may have this key. In such a case, you decide where the party turns up inside the Mortuary.

For a low-level party, it's best that they enter the Mortuary legitimately, as four guards and two mages protect the entrances, and undead inside can distinguish between guests and trespassers. However, you may simply have four guards on duty if you suspect the party would rather fight or sneak their way in. Once inside, they could encounter small numbers of roaming undead. (See level-appropriate undead in the Monster Manual and Basic Rules here.)

Inspiring Roleplay in the Mortuary

If the party entered the Mortuary via the front gate or planar portal, describe the cemeterial grounds at the base of the towers and ask the players if their characters have a loved one or friend who is buried there. You may even ask the party to come up with engravings their characters spot on graves. Because undead roam the grounds, this is also an opportunity to ask the players how their characters feel about the undead.

If the party entered the Mortuary via Death's Door with the help of a corpse collector, the NPC could talk about the ideologies of the Heralds of Dust and why they joined the faction. (You may even hand out a Heralds of Dust recruitment poster.) The party will also see fresh dead bodies. Ask how the characters react to seeing bodies being sent through metal chutes.

4. Exploring the Mortuary

Given their quest to find a recently deceased person, the party will need to make their way to the Mortuary's corpse receiving and shipping facility, which is described in the supplement. The Mortuary is no simple place to roam, however; its layout defies logic. Have the party make Wisdom (Survival) checks to determine how long it takes to find the facility. To raise the stakes, whenever the party fails a group Survival check, they become lost. In such a case, roll a d8 to determine how many hours they lost on their quest.

The Mortuary includes rollable tables for chambers and encounters on their journey. For the purposes of this adventure, I rolled for two chambers and two encounters and include ways I would run them:

Mortuary Chambers

1. A cadaver room where maimed Undead can peruse replacement limbs. A pair of intelligent zombies argue over an arm. They seek the party's help in determining who should have it. Further, a character who searches the room discovers an alchemy jug that can only produce embalming fluids (2 gallons/day).
2. A craft room for caskets, ships, and other containers used in funerary ceremonies. If the characters take a casket or other container from this room, they receive advantage on checks made to pass off as Dusters.

Mortuary Encounters, Tier 1 (Levels 1–4)

1. A poshly dressed Duster wight asks the characters to help them write a eulogy that's due in 10 minutes. The wight is nervous about the eulogy and asks the characters to attend the service. There, the wight gets cold feet and asks one of the characters to speak in their stead. 
2. A lost animated coffin* lurches along, carrying a reverently laid corpse to its crypt. The Construct approaches the characters and silently petitions them to escort it to its destination. The animated coffin leads them to a crematorium to have the corpse cremated. However, before it can be cremated, the corpse jolts up as a zombie and makes a dash for the exit.

* Monster stat block included in the supplement

5. Entering the Corpse Receiving and Shipping Facility

Artist: MARTIN MOTTET

The Mortuary includes the corpse receiving and shipping location and an accompanying map and encounter. Let's build off of what we learn.

A Simple Job for Dusters

The facility includes an area where crafters measure corpses for coffins. One such crafter asks a character for help in measuring corpses, including one that is particularly close to bursting from built-up gas.

The Suspicious Mortician

The facility spans multiple floors, and the characters need to succeed on Wisdom (Medicine) checks to inspect the corpses for the nobleman. To complicate this task, a Duster mortician becomes suspicious of the party after they inspect a few of the bodies. If they fail a group Charisma (Deception) check or a similar check, the mortician will alert the other mortician and zombies to attack. They will seek to knock out and apprehend the party.

If the characters are knocked out, 1d8 hours pass before they awaken in a holding cell. There, they are interrogated about their intentions at the Mortuary by a skeleton who only speaks in Morse code. The door to the holding cell can be pulled open with a successful Strength (Athletics) check or picked by someone who who uses thieves’ tools and makes a successful Dexterity check. The skeleton makes sad clacking sounds but does not pursue the characters if they escape.

The Body Is Being Examined

A nobleman is a person of import, so it only serves that Dusters are examining his body in an autopsy room within the facility. The characters learn that the body will be cremated—not entombed—after their examination. They will need to convince the Dusters to release the body to them after the examination or take them out to nab the body.

6. Getting Out of the Mortuary

When the characters find the nobleman's body, they need to get it out of the Mortuary. They may travel through the chutes in the corpse receiving and shipping facility to Death's Door or make a series of Charisma (Deception), Dexterity (Stealth), or other checks to get out through the front gate.

If they succeed in returning the corpse to the noblewoman in time, she uses a sending stone to summon a local druid to her home. Once there, the druid casts reincarnate on the body. With her husband returned to life, the noblewoman rewards the party with the spell scroll of revivify.

If the party fails to return the corpse in time for the reincarnate spell, the noblewoman kindly asks the party to leave her home so she can grieve.

Dig Into Adventure Atlas: The Mortuary

Adventure Atlas: The Mortuary is a deep dive into the beloved Mortuary of Planescape lore. The supplement can be used to expand your existing campaign setting or help you build adventures for different tiers of play. The undead await you in the D&D Beyond marketplace!

Michael Galvis (@michaelgalvis) is a tabletop content producer for D&D Beyond. He is a longtime Dungeon Master who enjoys horror films and all things fantasy and sci-fi. When he isn’t in the DM’s seat or rolling dice as his anxious halfling sorcerer, he’s playing League of Legends and Magic: The Gathering with his husband. They live together in Los Angeles with their adorable dog, Quentin.