Dungeon Deep

Acacia Bookender, a Royal Arcanist to the Queen of Normangord, creates floating eyes to chronicle her duties, hoping it will ingratiate her to the Crown, and her aggrieved father after she gets royal soldiers killed on her first mission as an arcanist because of her drunken inappropriate behavior. Seen through these magical devices (a la “found footage”), Acacia is trusted to investigate the disappearance of a royal platoon patrolling the border of Qadira, a neighboring kingdom, for enemy extremists. Unsure she is capable of taking this new mission, she finds out the platoon was accompanied by her father, and she vows to find him.

She recruits an apprentice and deploys with a team of soldiers, led by a Qadirin refugee, Team Master Merlin. They encounter patrolling Paladins, an order of knights associated with Acacia and her father, and are informed that Qadirin extremists are the probable reason for the platoon's disappearance. That night, after taking drinks from her flask, Acacia makes a sexual advance toward her apprentice.

At the village where the platoon was last contacted, Acacia and the soldiers are attacked by villagers, now undead ghouls. Acacia and apprentice are separated, encountering a Qadirin extremist, now ghoul. Believing Merlin and the team dead, Acacia follows the undead extremist’s tracks to an ancient dungeon. With her apprentice admonishing her for drinking in high-stress situations and keeping her on track, they delve in. In the dark, creepy catacombs, they find evidence of a Qadirin hideout and vats of ghoul plague.

They stumble upon an entire horde's worth of Qadirin ghouls and are about to be devoured when Merlin and the team rescue them. As one of the soldiers is bitten, and reanimates, Acacia finds a Qadirin wizard. The wizard leads another level down, where they must defend against one of the missing platoon's soldiers, now an even more dangerous undead, a wight, and chase it away with Acacia's flaming sword.

Knowing the missing platoon is connected to the dungeon, Acacia and the team delve to the next level. They find the lab where the ghoul infection was produced and kill the wight with silver weapons they discover. After the remaining soldiers are killed at the hands of an even more deadly soldier wight, and ooze, the Qadirin wizard saves the apprentice and promises to help the survivors escape after it is revealed that Paladins kidnapped the wizard to create the infection, hoping to use it against Normangord, and frame Qadira into a new holy war.

It is then discovered that the infection was created with the blood of a living River Hag. The hag reveals that the head of the traitorous Paladins is Acacia's father, and then kills her apprentice after he and Acacia have a sweet moment. Unwilling to believe her father responsible, Acacia incapacitates Merlin, delves into the deepest part of the dungeon, and is confronted by her father's second in command who confirms her father's involvement.

Left incapacitated, Acacia is attacked by the roving wight, and rescued by Merlin. They vow to bring the Paladins to justice and escape out of the dungeon, chased by the River Hag. Merlin almost sacrifices himself to kill the hag, and Acacia is confronted by her father. She denounces him, kills her father and his Paladins with a magic item, and races the magical recording devices that had been the "cameras" this whole time, back to the Queen's court.