Saint Benoit Church is an abandoned Catholic church dating from the fourteenth century, reckoned the first of its kind in these parts. It fell to ruin after an earthquake some hundred and twenty years ago, and was thereafter forsaken. The fabric remains in ruins, and the people round about tell of disturbances — infestations of demons, so they will have it, unsettling noises in the night, and sightings of the walking dead. Such tales are commonly bound up with a certain parashad of a century past and with rumoured treasures said to lie about the place.
Inquiry among the locals brings out both the church's standing in history and its eerie name, the townsfolk warning any who would enter against the supernatural doings they suppose to haunt it. A careful map marks several entrances, one of them by way of the graveyard and so into the church.
Exploration of the church led to the finding of an unmarked trapdoor in the cemetery, which gave upon a run of subterranean corridors not shown upon their map — a basement added later, beneath the level of the first church. Descending deeper they met a suit of armour set to guard certain chests, animate cadavers, and chambers of several sorts, a torture-room and a storeroom of silver pieces among them. The place proved to hold both the undead and a spectral audience, and their venture came to its head in a ghostly encounter, wherein a spirit begged their aid in confronting his brother, Vlad, bound within the church. The Ghost of March warned of the peril in the shedding of blood, which would but strengthen Vlad, and asked their help in breaking the seals that held him.