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God, I love this thread. So, I know everyone's heard of the TOMB OF HORRORS. It has a (well-deserved, in my opinion) reputation as the most infamously hateful, sadistic dungeon ever printed. A lot of people know its tricks and most famous traps. But how many know about the  Imagine the TOMB OF HORRORS™ inside three other Tombs, all Horrible in their own way. And an actually decent plot. And tons of new monsters and magic items, all of which are Horrible, too. This is the most pitilessly sadistic dungeon of all time and it contains my favorite room in any RPG ever (I know that's a weird favorite thing to have, but trust me, you'll love it as much as I do). I know this is a bit off the beaten path for this thread, but would anyone like to visit the TOMB OF HORRORS? Anything I write would be hugely spoileriffic, but if you can handle that then I think I'd like to do it.
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Jun 22, 2013 06:39
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Ok awesome! Return to the TOMB OF HORRORS Part 1: What the gently caress is an Acererererereraker? Before I begin, a preface: This is a long adventure. Really, really, really long. And involved. And it comes with tons of backstory, unique foes, unique items, and so on. So I'll post tonight about backstory, next post will be new enemies/items, and then we'll start the adventure itself. Obviously huge spoilers all over the place. Be warned. Although if you seriously want to play through this adventure, gently caress man, you have my respect, and you may just want to forget to mention to your GM that you read this stuff. I'm not kidding about how fatal this thing is. Seriously, even extremely skilled min-maxing parties of all clerics and wizards will lose a few people permanently to this, and the chance of TPK is pretty high. So, Acererak. Our story begins sometime past in the world of Greyhawk. Acererak's parents meet via that old story: wizard summons balor, wizard loses control of balor, balor eats wizard and rapes servant girl, servant girl gives birth to half-demonic cambion offspring. Mother killed by torch-wielding mob in front of ten year old son. Cambion child rescued by Vecna, gigantic evil rear end in a top hat. Acererak, being the ambitious sort, vows to become an even bigger rear end in a top hat than Vecna. Will he succeed? Yes, he will succeed. That part is pure speculation on my part but is basically a reasonable explanation. So Acererak is a Huge rear end in a top hat, but is not yet a Colossal rear end in a top hat (+16 size bonus on dickishness checks). He worships Orcus, the demon god of undeath, and eventually becomes a lich himself. At some point, he discovers the True Name™ of his balor father and uses it to bind him into service, and through him, a whole swarm of lesser demons. With the help of these demons and some really naive and doomed mortal craftsmen, he constructs the TOMB OF HORRORS, where he sits. And waits. You see, the entire TOMB OF HORRORS is the first step in Acererak's ridiculously convoluted plan to harness the power of sheer assholery and ascend to semi-Godhood. So he sits and lurks in his TOMB OF HORRORS, encouraging the spread of rumors about the vast wealth that can be found within to entice travelers. Once they arrive, he taunts them with poems about how much smarter he is than they are, gives abstruse clues to getting past the many traps in his TOMB OF HORRORS, and then waits. If any of them make it to the end, he deals with them personally. At this point Acererak is a demilich, a floating skull with a penchant for soul-sucking. That's the background to the original Tomb of Horrors. Since then, his plan has advanced a whole bunch of stages, and he's abandoned the original Tomb. It's still relevant for a bunch of reasons, but master's not home anymore. So who is? Shitloads of necromancers! See, Acererak has gotten to be a fairly legendary figure. Scores of the bravest, strongest, smartest, quickest, and best-equipped adventurers descended on the tomb. Almost none returned, and those that did were horribly scarred in body and mind. Given that the TOMB OF HORRORS is, in some ways, a temple to undeath, and Acererak himself is one of the most powerful forms of self-willed undead that exists, it's pretty natural that necromancers would flock to the site. They worship him, in fact, as the Devourer; Acererak's best-known sigil, the great wide-mouthed demon face. He got this name for a bunch of reasons, not least of which because his TOMB OF HORRORS chews up adventuring parties (and then doesn't spit them out). The necromancers have built a city, aptly named Skull City, over the site of the tomb, along with a necromancy school that might as well be called Evil Hogwarts and so will be from here on out. The adventure hook at the start is the Dark Intrusion. Corpses have started to wise fwom their gwaves, and nobody knows why. Even the necromancers aren't sure what's causing all of the  but they're excited about it, because it means their God is Up to Something. Is he? he is.One other setting deserves some background: Moil, also known as the City that Waits. You see, on the prime material world of Ranais, there was a city called Moil, full of assholes. They worshipped Orcus, the aforementioned demon god of undeath. Well, Orcus isn't a very nice guy even when you're worshipping him, and they probably got sick of random undead slayings in the middle of the night, so they found some other less killthirsty gods. Orcus took a very dim view of this and cursed the whole city with a horrible curse of dread and devastation! He cursed them... to fall asleep all night and only be woken up by the sun! WHAT A JERK RIGHT GUYS Oh wait, then he picked up the whole city and put it in a private little demiplane where, indeed, there was no sun and it would never shine again. That's Our Orcus!   So of course all of the Moilians (as they are known, apparently) fell asleep and never woke up. One by one they died until the city was totally purged of the living. And Orcus went and got himself killed by Kiaransalee, but that's neither here nor there (well, actually, it's There, if There is The Great Modron March/Dead Gods, two of the best adventures ever written). Acererak found out about the City That Waits through his occult research and instantly saw the possibilities. He raised a bunch of zombies from Moilian dead and used the demiplane's proximity to the Negative Energy Plane to have them build a citadel for him there. (As an aside, the Negative Energy Plane is probably the most hostile place in the entire cosmology of D and D; I'd rather be dropped naked and hogtied in the Abyss than step foot in there. GUESS WHERE WE'RE GOING!!!) Moil's towers now rise out of and disappear into "writhing black fog" which is basically a big one way portal to the Negative Energy Plane. It's also full of these guys:  Why hello there, Zombie Richard Simmons! Up next: Magic items, monsters, and new spells!
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Jun 22, 2013 07:21
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Return to the TOMB OF HORRORS Part II: Monsters, Magic and Martifacts So. Before we dive into the adventure itself (next post, I promise!) I wanted to go over some of the cool magic items and monsters that this adventure introduces. Partially because I will be referencing them later, and partially because they bring up some themes that will recur throughout the adventure. In no particular order, let's start with the monsters. Bone Weird  It begins, innocuously enough, with the Bone Weird. This is a fairly powerful but not particularly unfair monster with a neat concept. It's basically an invisible, serpentine energy being, and its "body" is composed of bones animated by this energy into a pile. Warmachine/Hordes players will recognize the Boneswarm. It likes to grapple enemies and also bite them. If you're bitten, save vs. death magic or it rips out your bones to add to itself  This causes 4d10 damage and a system shock roll. It's also stated that which bones you lose are random, so it could be anything from your coccyx to your tibia. Good luck! It turns as a lich (but can only be turned 25% of the time anyways), takes no damage from non-magical piercing attacks and 1 point of damage from any other non-magical attack, and must be reduced to -10 HP to kill it.Moilian Heart & Moilian Zombie  The Heart isn't really much of a monster, more of a hazard, and in any case it functions the same as a Moilian Zombie so I'll describe them together. Both types of Moilian undead are naturally dormant, lying there in a sheet of ice until living things come nearby. Any living thing coming within 20 feet of either triggers their signature ability: roll a 12 or higher on a d20 each round (add your con bonus) or lose 1d10 HP, which the Moilian adds to its total. HP lost this way can only be magically healed, it will not return normally. If you die this way you have a 13% (?) chance of animating as Moilian zombie after death. They remain animated as long as they have HP, losing one per day until they stop moving and go dormant again. To permanently destroy either, you need to consume them in flames or acid or something similar to that. The only difference is the Zombie can project frost and beat on your with zombie hands, the heart just sits there because, well, it's a heart. The Zombie is Zombie Richard Simmons in my previous post. Negative Energy Elementals  A lot of this adventure (well, some of this adventure) takes place on the Negative Energy Plane, where you might run into these guys. They have an aura that makes healing weaker and undead stronger. Their touch rots you and your stuff and drains levels. Pretty standard undead-type stuff, except for their aura, but they take bonus damage from elemental typed attacks so they're not super hard to get rid of. Negative Fundamentals  These are weird headless bats made of negative energy. So ~kawaii~! They're not very strong, but they flock and can be very annoying. The Vestige  Hoo boy. This thing is the manifestation of the nightmares the Moilians had as they died in cursed sleep. There's only one of it, and it's not really fightable because it's so deadly (to characters of the appropriate level, anyways); it's more of a hazard of Moil. It's insanely difficult to hurt with weapons, resists or is immune to most kinds of magic (and has 90% MR anyways against the few kinds it's not immune to), inflicts a -4 penalty on all of your actions just for being near it, can't be turned, can attack the whole party at once, drains Int, etc etc. You are explicitly supposed to run from it whenever you find it. Very evocative, though; it's a rolling fog that emits whispers, moans and murmurs (the sounds Moilians made as they died in their sleep) and it wants to absorb you and make its suffering yours. Winterwight  The "oh, gently caress you" monster and the first appearance of the dreaded blackfire. It's a skeleton coated in ice whose head burns with black fire (or blackfire I guess). It's pretty beefy and hits hard with decent MR and some immunities (obviously cold, among other things) and regenerates by "sublimating moisture" into the ice that makes up its body. The real threat is the blackfire. Anyone touching it automatically catches. Each turn you... blackburn, I guess, you roll a d20 and add your Con bonus, wanting an 11 or higher. Three successes in a row and it goes out. A failed check costs you 1d2 Con. This repeats until it goes out or you hit 0 Con, at which time you die and turn into ash. Not even a wish can restore you, from this fate-- notably, this is the first of many times you will hear "not even a wish" on this adventure. Acererak has no time for your reality altering magicks  . If you go within 2' of someone who is on blackfire, you get to share the love. The only ways to put it out without passing those checks are an antimagic shell, negative plane protection spell, or getting hit with a fireball or lightning bolt or similar spell of at least 8 dice, which "blows it out." Yes, truly Acererak is history's greatest rear end in a top hat.That's all the new monsters, and really, isn't that enough? Magic items Most of these are hideously evil things you can pillage from the Skull City and Evil Hogwarts. I won't go into too much detail. Acererak's Haphazard Wheel And we're off to a great start! This is a cursed roulette wheel, basically. If anyone says a number 1-6 while near it, it lights up and starts spinning. Roll a d6 to see where it lands! If it lands where they said, their "prime requisite" ie most important stat is instantly raised to 21. Wow, awesome! But if it misses, then you suffer the ill effects of wherever it lands. This can permanently reduce your HP, reduce your prime requisite, age you, drain a quarter of your levels, erase your eyes, ears and hands from existence, or simply suck out your soul into Acererak's phylactery. Good news! A wish will work to restore whatever the wheel steals. But nothing else will. Oh, and don't gently caress with the wheel in any way while spinning, it sucks your soul out. Amulet of the Void This is a plot item with no powers outside of the plot. Neat! Blackcloak Evil armor that gives you AC 7. The book helpfully informs us that only evil people would use this. EVVVVVVIIIILLLLLL ARRRRMMMMMOOOOORRRR. The Blade Perilous This is an intelligent magic sword used by the leader of Moil's armies, the Grand High Exultant. It is a sword of wounding +3 with a shitload of special powers and abilities, including the ability to entrace people who look at the wielder swangin' it around. The Blood Codex Turning yourself into a vampire for dummies. Reading the book makes you obsess and brood over it, and it makes you more eviler when you read it. If you collect tons of items and spend lots of gold and XP you can attempt to turn yourself into a . Failure turns you into dust instead and not even a wish can bring you back.Bonemail More EVIL ARMOR, this time made of bones. It's chainmail +3 and enhances your strength and gives you a few other bonuses. Hilariously, your armor can be turned, which is a bit awkward when you're in it. Bonewand A wand that contains various bone-themed powers, including some spells (suffocate, bone blight) and the ability to fuse all of someone's bones into one big megabone. Only evil people would even consider using it! Brooch of Access This is neat, it's a perma-Knock spell centered on you. You can walk through any door you want!  Cursed Rending Hooks of DargeshaadThese incredibly metal hooks are daggers +1 that are +4 on a living target. On a hit, they magically fuse with you. Once they do, only a 15th level or greater dispel magic or similar spell will remove them. Until then they chew up 1d4 ability score points per round (save vs. death magic each round to prevent) until you die and your spirit gets sucked into the hook. Cumulative 1% chance per use of turning on the wielder, too, so everyone joins in the fun! Again, don't use if you're not EVILLLLLLLLL. Deathtooth Much less than the Hooks, this dagger +2 sometimes does a bonus 1d4 damage to the target and if you want to use one you better be EVIL.Ferranifer's Brooch A brooch invented by Vampire Dumbledore, this lets her (and any undead wearing it) save vs. spells as a wizard to resist turning. Living creatures putting it on get fingered. Finger of Death, to be exact. Gauntlet of Guard A glove that grows to give your whole body AC 0 and 20% MR. It can also PEW PEW out of its finger for 10d6 damage three times a day (save vs. breath weapon for 0). Headsman's Axe of Moil Belonging to Moil's chief executioner, this axe is a vorpal sword +3 despite being an axe. If someone is standing or lying motionless and defenseless before you you can automatically, no dice required, just chop their head right off. Useless, unless paired with... Headsman's Hood of Moil This hood lets you, three times per day, use an uber-suggestion on a target, which must work to complete this task to the exclusion of all others. If you command someone specifically to lie motionless with their head on a chopping block, they get a -5 to save against this exact command. And of course these two items are encountered together. Illuck stone When this stone is in your possession, you believe you are getting a +1 on all dice rolls, you are actually getting a -1. If you spin Acererak's Wheel, the DM rolls 2d6 and picks the worse result for you. No affect on attack and damage rolls, though. It looks just like a luckstone and is likely to be mistaken for one. Mask of the Devourer Hoo boy. Lots of stuff here. It's a green leather mask in the shape of Acererak's "Devourer" sigil. Actually, it's a permanently shapechanged tanar'ri, but shhhhh. The eyes open up so you can see through them but the mouth opens into utter darkness. Anyone putting it on can't remove it except by wish, and doing so steals your face; only eyes and two small nostril holes are left, you need a second wish to get the rest of your features back. At night, the mask has a 20% chance to "begin chortling in maniacal glee, belch forth sulfurous gas, drool copiously, or engage in some other annoying or disgusting behavior. The wearer is not aware of this and does not awaken. His or her companions are not so lucky and will find that only waking the wearer of the mask causes the disgusting mouthings to cease."  The mask has an absolute assload of abilities as well, most notably the ability to make a bite attack once per day at a THAC0 of 7. If successful, the mouth grows huge and swallows whatever man-sized or smaller creature you hit, chewing and grunting contentedly. 1d10 memories, spells or both are transferred to the wearer, generally driving them insane. It has an 18% chance to attempt this attack whenever you try to do any attack, unless it already did today. Every time you do the attack, it has a cumulative 2% chance of turning on you, inverting and consuming you utterly. And, as you may have guessed by now, not even a wish can recover someone lost this way.Ring of Negative Elemental Mastery Lets you summon, command and converse with negative elemental plane elementals, and provides some protection from the attacks of negative aligned creatures (including undead). Has a few other powers as well but nothing super notable. Ring of Universal Movement Walk on anything you want! Water? Sure! Underside of a cliff? Ok! Up the side of a skyscraper? No problem! You can walk on air and thus fly a little, too. Sentinel Mask This mask has a gemstone over one eye; wearing it, the gem acts as a gem of seeing, letting you see invisible and ethereal creatures, see through fog or mist, etc etc. You can even see through lady's clothes into their BATHING SUIT AREA. Spirit Shroud A cloak with the essence of a wraith. Helpfully, the wraith does not level drain you while you are wearing it. Nor can other undead! Also you get an AC of 4, can't be hurt by nonmagical nonsilver weapons. The cloak can also attack, can be turned, and can take damage (if it takes too much it just becomes a normal cloak). Only evil people would want to wear this! New spells! Not as many as new items, but just as fun. Corpse Candle This level 2 spell lets you light a magical candle made of intelligent-creature fat. It creates dim illumination that overrides the effects of a darkness or light spell. That's all! Enlarge (Reduce) Undead Duh. Shadow Barge Creates a flying shadow-boat you can ride. Sunward This blocks the sun from affecting objects, useful given how much stuff in this adventure is affected adversely by sunlight. Vampires can walk around in daylight for one hour per caster level. No sunburns on normals either! Vapor of Idiocy/Agony "Any creature with less than 4 Hit Dice that steps into the mist immediately becomes an idiot (as if feebleminded)." More hit dice gives you a save. Wears off when you breathe fresh air outside in daytime. Agony vapor just hurts and does a little damage. Animate Moilian Special Moilian zombies, anywhere you want them. Must be EVIL!!! Blackfire An offensive spell version of the horrible awful fire we saw above. Acererak's Blackstone This spell turns a spell-absorbing ioun stone into a special blackstone that absorbs magic from spells, spell-like abilities, etc. If it enters the aoe of a spell, it absorbs and cancels it. Once it absorbs up to a set limit (the amount the ioun stone could have absorbed) it EXPLODES!!! for 4 points of damage/spell level stored, save vs. breath weapon for half. All inanimate objects save or be disintegrated. The holder saves at a penalty and takes double damage. Create Winter-wight Yup. Of note: it's a 9th level spell, it requires a lab with lots of incredibly expensive and specialized equipment, and it only works 1d10% of the time (that is, roll 1d10, then try to roll percentile below that number). Weight of the Wait A hilarious spell! This one creates a parchment that stores 75% of the time that passes in its area. Time flows at only a quarter rate in the bubble, the rest is absorbed. If you move or break the sealed parchment, you (and everyone in the bubble) get hit with all of that stored time at once and usually age to death. So that's what awaits us. Next time: The beginning of the adventure!
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Jun 23, 2013 03:02
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 Tomb of Horrors Part 3: The Adventure Begins Sorry about the delay, folks! My apartment got really really hot and so I had to evacuate to my parents' house for a few days so my ferrets wouldn't die. A weird problem to have. I'll probably be on a once a week schedule. Sorry, busy. Anyways, today we're going to start on the adventure. I'm going to lay out basically what's happening and briefly skim the encounters and what not, because this is a FATAL & Friends post so we don't care about the normal stuff. We care about insane, unfair encounters. In the Beginning The event that kicks off the adventure is known as the Dark Intrusion. Acererak's long-laid plans in the Negative Energy Plane are approaching fruition, and a side effect of this is that the area around his TOMB OF HORRORS in Greyhawk is becoming supercharged with negative elemental energy. The practical result of this is drat near everything rising from the dead. The necromancers of Skull City have noted this and are exacerbating things, though they're not privy to Acererak's plans (he's not so big on living servants; of which more later). The PCs start in the typical tavern (though there's really a lot of ways to hook them in) in a city built on river trade. One foggy night, a gentleman leaves the bar and is immediately torn to pieces by angry wights in the mist. This serves as an intro combat encounter, incidentally also serving as a very quick way to weed out parties who aren't ready for the Tomb since it consists of ten Wights. Investigation of their corpses reveals tattoos that point to "Payvin's Pearl," which some investigations reveal is a river barge the unlucky owner of which was deserted by his crew the prior week. The wights provide pretty strong evidence of where that crew ended up, and hopefully the PCs seek out Captain Payvin, who's been drowning his sorrows. Poor Payvin relates a story of finding his ship deserted one misty night and being threatened theatrically by a pair of red eyes in the mist. Here the adventure does one of my favorite things, which is to provide a great deal of background for the GM on what actually just happened. The PCs will likely never figure this out, but it helps to know where monsters came from, why they struck when and where they did, and what they're off doing while the PCs are blundering around. RttToH does this a lot, and it really helps build a sense of active enemies with agency not just waiting around to be pulled like mobs. Turns out the zombies were just crew dumped into the river after their blood was harvested by three evil vampires sent from Skull City for blood-harvesting purposes. Anyways, the threat included a mention of "The Devourer" and this should set the PCs off. There's a few sages in the area, and the GM is encouraged to provide one of Acererak's trademark rhymes if they use legend lore. "The city that waits was the city of Moil. Where dreams truly died, but bodies yet toil. In slumber unrelenting, they lie yet in wait. Biding their time to seal your fate. Discovery of the void and my fortress within, demands exploration through peril again. Find amid towers degenerate the single key, and resolve the dilemma of problems three. Beard the brine dragon in its frozen hallow, remove the key, avoid its starved swallow. Beneath webs of glowing emerald, hangs a riddle box rife to be solved. The darkweaver endures the cold in her lair, grasp your fate with consumate care. The lifeless dream that marks the crime, is the vestage that guards the sand of time. Each resolution removes one obstacle, for those who peruse this written oracle. The phantom released flies you in fashion, to my inevitable fortress of conclusion." Acererak loves to give abstruse hints about the insane traps he's got set up, mostly 1) so that he can feel superior when people die anyways and 2) because he's an rear end in a top hat. So. Assuming they go to a sage, they get some very generic background that Acererak is a Bad Enough Dude and that another wizard, named Desatysso, was also interested in pursuing information on him-- along with directions to Desatysso's home. Hopefully the PCs realize that they're in something really deep and could use the help. His home is in a mountain range called the Glorioles (  ) and, as an amusing aside, the random encounter table for the trip ranges from a pack of ranging wild dogs (35 xp each)to a scouting party of mountain giants (7000 xp each).Mission to Giantville Anyways, after fighting past a couple of boulder-tossing hill giants that assail them as they try to climb a rocky slope, the PCs find Desatysso's ruined stronghold, which is now occupied by a pack of giants. This is the first and least fatal "dungeon" of the adventure, appropriately enough. In fact, it's possible for charismatic and quick-thinking PCs to talk their way past most of the encounters. It's full of hill and mountain giants who love to throw stones, so if you do want to fight you're in for a rough one. There's a magical fountain that's kinda broken and now infects you with a horrible disease that takes ten points off STR, CON and DEX while you poop it out of your system. There's also a magical trap with this charming description: "anyone who passes through the corridor has a 90% chance to step on the large concealed rocky pressure plate that covers a 5-foot-by-4-foot section of the floor. If the plate is trod upon, the rocky walls of the cavern magically constrict in the space of a heartbeat, almost like the mineral analog of an organic sphincter muscle, pulping anything in the passage and causing 2d10+20 points of damage."  There's a fire elemental in the fireplace, swinging blade traps, fairly standard dungeon accouterments. As you can see, I'm kinda rushing through this one because it's not particularly interesting. There are a couple of notable encounters, though. "From the level of Desatysso’s Stronghold, the passage begins a very steep ascent, spiraling up and up a total of 1,000 feet before opening out onto the ledge at area 10, a giddy height above the valley floor. The tunnel remains 10 feet wide and 15 feet high throughout its steep length, and giant-sized creatures may only pass through it single file." Once PCs enter it, a giantess at the top releases a giant spherical boulder almost the exact dimensions of the tunnel to roll down and crush them! The DM is supposed to count down from 10 to add "dramatic tension." You can't outrun it without magical speed, but there's a 5 foot space between it and the ceiling. Amusingly, the GM is told that if any character 5 feet tall or above attempts to magically leap over the boulder, they bonk their head on the ceiling and fall back to the floor stunned in front of it. This is the first of many instructions to be a particular dick to the PCs. Anyone who can't figure out how to get safe takes 12d10 points of damage with no save.  Once you make it up, more giant-fightin' takes place. Notably, one of them prefers to pick up PCs, requiring a normal attack roll (ignoring their armor bonus). PC gets a Bend Bars/Lift Gates roll, then over the edge they go, for 20d6 points of falling damage (and effective removal from the fight). One of the giants is a shaman with some spells and magic items and a retinue of trolls. Here the PCs are strongly encouraged to negotiate, though the book notes it won't be easy with the belligerent, confident and stupid giants. There's also a helpless infant giant, though in a rare show of self control on the part of the writers it does not give XP if you kill it. However they manage it, if the PCs get past the giants they get what they really want: access to Desatysso's notes in his desk. (It is of course trapped). Opening it reveals a battered piece of a document, noting that Desatysso felt he was ready for his expedition to confront the Devourer and that he wanted to contract the serves of Falon T'Selvin in Kalstrand. And this clue, aside from the treasure, is all there is. Off to Kalstrand Aside from an ominous but ultimately dead-end encounter involving a burial mount (the inhabitants of which have become more frisky due to the Dark Intrusion), the PCs make it to Kalstrand easily. They find easily enough that Falon can be found at the end of Elmwood Lane, but upon visiting this address, they find it's a cemetery  . Falon's tombstone is easy to find, and finding it also finds his old friend, come to pay his respects: GRUNTHER! haha what a  holy poo poo Grunther, despite losing his arm in the dumbest way possible (you will find out later), is a pretty cool dude. He'll come with the PCs if they let him and make it clear that they mean to attack the Devourer, even though he doesn't really know who that is beyond "the grinning skull." He's been to the TOMB OF HORRORS before so if a DM is feeling merciful, having him in the party might help them avoid some of the more unfair gently caress-you traps. He'll also take them to the other survivor of the doomed expedition: Sather, the priestess. The PCs pass through an abandoned town (everyone was kidnapped by the aforementioned vampires and taken to Skull City) and arrive in Pitchfield, Sather's hometown, where a "plague" is in progress. In actual fact the vampires have been killing people in the night, but nobody knows that. If the PCs stick around there'll be more wights to fight, but the priority is finding the priestess. A lot smarter than Grunther, she remembers the TOMB OF HORRORS pretty well, but she flat out refuses to accompany them and in fact can be sent into seizures just from being pressed to hard on it (an event which will make Grunther abandon the PCs). She wouldn't be much good, anyways, since her experience in the TOMB OF HORRORS destroyed her faith and cost her her powers. She has Desatysso's journal, which in addition to obliquely referencing many of the traps in the TOMB OF HORRORS, also provides some background on who Acererak is and what he wants. The important bits of info are twofold; first, a map to the TOMB OF HORRORS; and second, a reference to the Amulet of the Void, a magical item which can guide the user to the "true Tomb." What she doesn't know is that the Amulet broke in the struggle; half of it was left in the lair of the demilich by Desatysso, who no longer needed it, and the other half was left at the entrance by Sather, where it was stolen by the necromancers. Into the Swamp Skull City and the TOMB OF HORRORS are located in the middle of the Vast Swamp, which is exactly what it sounds like. It's full of swamp-appropriate random encounters, and one extremely nonrandom encounter. You see, throughout their trip, they are eventually noticed by the unfortunately named Dim Triad, the personal servants of Mistress Ferranifer, the master of Skull City. These three vampires (Absalom, Blaesing and Harrow) carry with them scrolls of sunward (see my last post) and some of their coffin soil. The vampires notice the PCs and night and send Blaesing down in gaseous form while the other two return to the city. Blaesing preferentially targets priests, or anyone wearing or possessing holy regalia. He has a base 95% chance, minus twice any active guard's Wisdom score, of silently killing any PC in their sleep without alerting anyone. If he silently kills three PCs he will flee in gaseous form. If discovered, he hits automatically, draining two levels and doing damage, then flees in gaseous form. The next night all three vampires do the same. This is by no means the last time a PC can be killed simply by not doing something it would not necessarily occur to them to do. And with that, the (surviving) PCs arrive in SKULL CITY!  Next time: Skull City, the Black Academy, and maybe some of the TOMB OF HORRORS itself (but probably not).
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Jun 29, 2013 20:56
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Return to the TOMB OF HORRORS Part 4: We Built This Skull City On Skulls and Bones Shut up. Anyways, if the PCs made it through the vast, swampy Vast Swamp they have arrived at the outside of The effects are: -All undead are turned as if one category higher on the turn undead table. -Spells of the "necromancy" school have their casting time reduced by 1 -Anything rat-sized or larger that dies in or near the city has a 20% chance to spontaneously zombify within 24 hours Gettin' in Around the outside of the city is the Quaking Bog, a mat of vegetation floating on the stagnant waters of the swamp. You can only get within 300 feet of the city by boat (boats are, thankfully, provided), but the peat supports your weight-- it does kind of shake uncomfortably below your feet, though. The real danger, however, is the fuckton of ghasts that live below the peat. The mistress of the Black Academy set them there and instructed them to attack anyone who crosses the peat and doesn't chant a dirge while doing so. However, underwater ghasts can't hear all that well, so you can basically just chant anything loudly and they'll leave you alone.  If you do get attacked, they burst up through the peat, releasing noxious odors that cause a saving throw vs. poison to avoid suffering a -2 on all attacks. Ghasts can paralyze with a touch, so they paralyze PCs and drag them down into the water, where they drown and/or get eaten. It should go without saying that the ghasts almost always get surprise. Needless to say this is a very nasty and potentially lethal combat; four ghasts attack round one and two more join each round until 14 in all are attacking. Still, ghasts are pretty low-level compared to the PCs, so let's assume they make it past. There are ways to do this without fighting-- flying over the peat works, and if they wait and scope out the city some necromancers will cross the peat chanting, which may give them a clue. Anyways, however they do it, the PCs make it to the wall. Here they face their next challenge. The wall is pockmarked with pits about 18 inches across. In reality, the holes are tunnel entrances and the entire wall is honeycombed with them. Inside the wall dwells a whole family of dark naga. They constantly patrol the walls using ESP on anyone who gets close. PCs stand a 75% chance of detection if they get within ESP range of the walls, ie 80 feet. If the PCs are thinking about breaking into the city, the naga emerge from the wall and warn them to enter the city lawfully. If the PCs tell them to gently caress off, combat ensues, and in 1d4+1 rounds the naga summon their matriarch. They also send someone in to warn the necromancers that rear end in a top hat murderhobos are comin'. The necromancers send the three vampires from before to attack, unless they've been destroyed, in which case Evil Dumbledore comes herself. If the fight goes on long enough, regular Joe Necromancers come and join in against the PCs. This is an extremely nasty combat and it's likely that even appropriately leveled PCs will have a hard time with it. There are five dark naga, each of which has poison stings, lots of resistances, and spells as a sixth-level wizard. The matriarch casts as an eighth-level wizard and has more hitpoints and damage. It's very unlikely that this fight could wrap up quickly, and if the inhabitants of the city get involved the PCs will quickly find themselves overwhelmed. So, let's assume the PCs bluff or fight or trick their way past the naga. Again, there are plenty of ways to do it, the easiest of which is probably just to agree to enter the city lawfully. This presents its own problems, however. PCs are directed to the Bone Portal, a 10-foot wide gate in the wall that appears to be made of bony plates and spurs in a vaguely humanoid shape. The gate is, in reality, a custom, intelligent bone golem that can see right through illusion and invisibility. Anyone approaching the gate is asked "What is the Sign?" PCs can, hopefully, guess at this point (from repeated references) that the answer is "The Devourer." They can also lurk in wait and spy on incoming necromancers to get the answer. If they do, the bone golem folds itself up into a mobile form and steps aside to let them into the city. If they fail to answer correctly, it does the same, but attacks. The Bone Golem is a horrible foe, since it has absolute spell immunity (except the spell "shatter"), resistance to edged and piercing weapons, and the ability to laugh in a manner so frightening that you drop dead. Fortunately, like the naga above, this combat can and probably should be bypassed. Skull City Blues So we're in! Hooray! Directly inside the city is a graveyard, known as the "grave district." At first blush, this makes no sense, since anything and anyone that dies in here rests for about ten seconds before some necromancer raises it. But think about it: tons of necromantic spells rely on components from a graveyard: grave soil, pieces of a tombstone, etc. Plus those are useful components in spell research. So they do have a graveyard, the turnover rate is just extremely high. The necromancers capture people from outside (see previous segments), kill 'em, stuff 'em in the ground, then dig 'em up and raise 'em. The next interesting thing to note is this wall:  See, one of the necromancers, Danele, was driven mad by visions of Acererak and expelled from the Academy, but allowed to stay in Skull City itself. He's torn out his own eyes to get rid of the visions, but they still come, and he still is compelled to draw and sculpt them down. He'll speak to the PCs, but nothing understandable; "At the Conclusion, the Devourer awaits your souls" and the like. He explains about the picture of the woman and child, "We made him what he became. The scorn of man birthed the rage of the Devourer." There is one vital clue to get from Danele, though, even though it's not important until the very end of the adventure. If asked about the glowing orb, he says "The Devourer's phylactery holds the souls of the lost. The souls can only be saved by the pure light of the sun; all other roads shall drat these souls eternally." There are also stats for Danele, but there's no earthly reason to attack him other than spite. Back to the city, the book provides some descriptions of residential districts, and the contents of houses, in case your murderhobos want to go all Legend of Zelda on you. There's also a giant circus-style tent called the Dead Pool, full of skeletons and zombies. See, the necromancers drop off any undead they don't need here, and anyone who wants can come and pick up some for whatever purpose he requires. It's like necro-Communism!  There's also a market (a Black Market!), a courtyard with skeletal koi in the pond, and the Academy itself. It's basically a standard D&D village, but SUPER EVIL. It's Lawful Evil, though, so unless the PCs are openly displaying marks of Pelor or whatever, or actively trying to shut down the necromancers, they can basically wander unmolested. Getting into the Academy is something else, however. Evil Hogwarts The Academy itself is an imposing dark stone building built over the TOMB OF HORRORS itself. Much like the original hill, the facade of the building looks like a HUGE SKULL FACE, with giant pillars for teeth covered in EVIL CARVINGS. The PCs' real goal here is the recovery of the Amulet of the Void, which they read about in Desatysso's journal; asking the necromancers (politely) will get them the information that Mistress Ferranifer aka Evil Dumbledore wears a medallion during certain necromantic rituals. The best way to get in is, of course, to pretend to be necromancers; a frontal assault on the Academy is really really dumb and fatal, since it brings everything in the city down on the PCs at once. Getting in while ethereal is an extremely bad idea due to the Academy's location near the TOMB OF HORRORS; I'll leave the details to my next post, covering the TOMB OF HORRORS itself, but suffice it to say it is a very rapidly fatal plan.  So true The Dark Intrusion in here is double the strength it is outside: Undead are turned two levels higher, necromantic spells have casting times reduced by 2, and dead things have a 40% chance to reanimate within 12 hours. In the entrance, there are a few necromancers just mancin' around, plus a guard. The PCs can chill and talk with the students if they want, but the guard (Leon) keeps everyone out of the Academy unless 1) it's nighttime and 2) they have legitimate business in there. He also tells them that the TOMB OF HORRORS, as a holy place, is off limits. The only way to get past Leon is to convince him that the PCs are established members of the Academy or want to petition to get in. If you want to fight him, sure, but he's a 14th-level fighter covered in magic items and, of course, everyone nearby comes to help him.  Beware: EVIL! There's four bone naga lounging around in the foyer, making attacking Leon even more of a bad idea. Once inside, PCs can poke around various classrooms. Each one has a percent chance of being in session-- there's a few instructors, each of which might be in one of several places throughout the school, and if they happen to be in their classroom then class is in session. Closest to the door, there's an anatomy class (described as "remedial"  ). If the PCs arrive while class is in session (40% of the time) Instructor Ngise says "Sit down, sit down! Take your seats in the front here, since you are so late!" and attacks if they try to skip class without a good excuse. He's a necromancer-- they don't do detention, I guess. Ngise is a pretty nasty and crazy necromancer, who will attack students or PCs for any reason at all. Next class is "Adventures in Animation," an advanced class Ngise teaches to more high-level students, who are all armed with their own magic items (Deathteeth and Blackcloaks from my prior post). If the PCs wander in here, Ngise knows they're not supposed to be here and kicks them out, violently if necessary. The blackboard has his complex and fascinating theory of necromancy:   After this is "Applied Necromancy," taught by Academician Drake, who's much nastier and crazier than Ngise. If the PCs come to the class while it's deserted, they can peek at Drake's tome (a Libram of Ineffable Damnation,) but doing so without saying a command phrase summons a minor Death just as if they drew the Skull from the Deck of Many Things. So, to recap: it's a book that's got a really nasty and probably fatal trap preventing you from reading it, but if you get past this trap the book itself is useless and horribly fatal to non-evil characters anyways. Attached to this room is a "Necrohazard" lab, containing the results of some of Drake's experimentation: the Moilian Heart from my previous post. An attached lab contains a sample of blackfire also from a previous post, which is (in some ways) substantially more dangerous than the Heart. This version causes permanent Con damage instead of temporary, because of Drake's experimentation. Drake's lab is attached to these "Necrohazard" labs and contains more of his research. Drake's been to Moil (quite by accident) which is where he got the Moilian heart and Blackfire, and he's obsessed with becoming a Moilian lich and giving himself the Moilian ability to steal life. There's a mostly-dissected by somehow still alive cat in his lab, which the PCs should probably put out of its misery, as well as Drake's book of research. Connected to this lab is his personal meditation chamber. See, Drake's so infused with negative energy from years of study that he doesn't sleep anymore; he just meditates and has horrible necro-dreams. He is a 16th-level Necromancer, though, and therefore a really serious threat if the PCs are unlucky enough to run into him. The academy also has an auditorium (if there's a lecture going on and if Mistress Ferranifer is the lecturer, she'll be wearing her half of the Amulet), a backstage section with a secret passage to Ferranifer's quarters, some open-use labs full of low-level necromancers and their concoctions, and importantly the Hall of Petition. This is where Leon directs you if you pretend to be trying to enroll in the school. There's a big statue of a skeleton with hands upraised that says "Enter and be judged, petitioners!" to anyone who comes into the room. If you do enter, it says "To gain complete access to the Black Academy, place your hands in mine." If you do, it says "Hold still" and grabs your hands. This is an exceedingly bad idea, because the statue proceeds to scan you with eye lasers. You have one round to get free (bend bars/lift gates) before the Evil Sorting Hat finishes and sorts you into Dead. See, if your alignment is good, or you're any class other than mage or necromancer, you have to make a saving throw vs. death or die instantly and have your soul transported to Acererak's phylactery. Your body takes 20d6 points of damage with no save in any case. The statue then releases you and says "Admittance denied. Next!" If you do meet the requirements, the beam burns a skull tattoo into your forehead and the statue releases you and instructs you to see Ngise for remedial classes.  Anyways, the statue swings out on a hinge if you find the secret activation stud. Back here is the entrance to Ferranifer's rooms and the TOMB OF HORRORS itself. She doesn't want people getting in who shouldn't be there, so Ferranifer trapped this hallway; Leon knows the way through, but cannot be compelled, even magically, to spill the beans. The walls are lined with sarcophagi, each a bit different. -One has a depiction of a noble elf-lord on it. Opening it (bend bars/lift gates) reveals a poorly concealed false door in the floor. Stepping on this floor causes sharp blades to shoot through slits in the ceiling for 5d6 damage to anyone in the sarcophagus. -One has a female warrior in full plate on it. Inside there is an actual, non-undead mummy. Behind that is a double-secret door (elves do not get a special chance to discover it) leading to Ferranifer's rooms. There's a small metal button that opens the door, but it is double-trapped. Pushing the button triggers a save-or-die needle trap; pulling the button opens the door and sets off a separate save-or-die needle trap. Ferranifer has learned assholishness from the master. -A statue of a robed skeleton with a scythe. This is just decoration to wig out the PCs. -One has a burly dwarf depicted on it with emerald eyes. Any attempt to tamper with the statue makes it open its mouth and spew forth green gas that makes PCs save vs. petrification at -4 or turn to stone. Also, the sarcophagus is empty. Also, the emeralds are cursed. -A statue of a demonic skeleton with a scythe. This is an iron golem with a +3 scythe. Extremely powerful and nasty. There is a secret door behind it, however. It won't attack unless you try to get into the door or attack it. -A sarcophagus with a human male warrior on it. It's empty; but if you search for traps inside it, the door slams shut (unless you propped it open with something that resists 20th level magic effects). The person trapped inside saves vs. spell at -4 or is subject to the sink spell, causing them to sink into the floor and be trapped, at which point the sarcophagus reopens. -A sarcophagus with a human barbarian depicted on it. Bend bars/lift gates to open it, at which point it sprays you with iron shards for 6d6 damage, save vs. breath weapon for half. -A sarcophagus depicting "three innocent children, holding hands in merry laughter." Empty, but a secret door in the back leads to the room of the Dim Triad. -Sarcophagus depicting human male undergoing horrible torture. Empty, but with a door (with a viewing grate) leading to a room full of live captives. -Sarcophagus with a human skeleton in flames. Empty and not trapped. -Sarcophagus with a fishman hybrid on it. Secret door leads to experimentation chamber. No traps. Some of these rooms are useful but not necessary; if the PCs haven't killed the Dim Triad, they'll find them in their room. The room of captives has 20 innocents in it; freeing them safely without being noticed would be very difficult, but is worth 1000xp per captive that makes it home. The experiment room has a grisly Frankenstein's monster chained to a table; PCs should probably put the poor guy out of his misery. The important rooms are Ferranifer's. There's her drawing room, complete with tea set (full of blood, of course); her study, complete with a massive library; her bedchamber; and her crypt (she is, of course, a vampire). PCs might encounter her in her study. If they study her notes (and take long enough-- it takes a full day to glean this info, during which time they will certainly run into her) they can discover the following:  The last is false, of course. Ferranifer only has half of the Amulet, which is why she can't understand it, but she doesn't know that. Ferranifer's bedroom is full of Nice Things, because just because you're undead doesn't mean you don't appreciate them. Her dresser is trapped, however, and if tampered with releases an incendiary cloud while the door closes and locks itself. The trap is super dangerous and does tons of damage each round, destroying all of the furnishings (but she's rich enough to rebuy them whenever and regards the trap as conspicuous consumption). Reopening the door is difficult and requires finding a secret door, with difficulty modifiers due to the room exploding around you. Her crypt contains a flameskull, which the party may mistake for Acererak (especially as it rises into the air and proclaims "You have found me and I am Death!"). Ferranifer will be here, lurking invisibly, if the PCs set off her bedroom trap; otherwise she may or may not be here. She is a deadly enemy, since she's an 18th level necromancer and Vampire Scion, covered in magic items. She also has a perma-contingency spell cast on herself. If she takes enough damage to cause her to shift to gaseous form, it casts a magic jar that shifts her essence into the Amulet of the Void itself. At some point later in the adventure she will attempt to possess one of the PCs from the amulet, usually while they are unconscious, and attempt to pretend to be the PC him or herself. So there's that to worry about. Also, 18th-level spellcaster. After beating Ferranifer and taking her amulet, PCs can head into the corridor. There's a trap here, of course; opening the door at the far eastern end of the corridor reverses gravity, causing the western end to be the new "down" and PCs to fall all the way down the corridor, a usually fatal distance. Closing the door fixes gravity. The real exit is a secret door in the wall. Passing through it takes you to a shrine built around the original entrance to the TOMB OF HORRORS. And with that, we end our time in Skull City! Next time: Into the TOMB OF HORRORS! DAD LOST MY IPOD fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Jul 7, 2013 |
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Jul 7, 2013 19:05
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Return to the TOMB OF HORRORS Part 5: gently caress you, gently caress you, gently caress you So, here we are. At the dread portal to the TOMB OF HORRORS itself. I'm going to cover the first half of the TOMB OF HORRORS in this post, and aim for another post later for the second half. So, you've probably heard that the TOMB OF HORRORS is insanely fatal. And this is true. But why is it so fatal? A few reasons. First, there's a lot of instant-kill poo poo. There are exceptions, but most effects don't do damage (or don't JUST do damage), they flat kill you. Second, a lot of the traps force you to make a decision with limited or no information/time, and making the wrong decision (which may seem as wise as any other) will kill you. But mostly, it's because the TOMB OF HORRORS breaks rules. All of the rules. Stuff in here is just more fatal than stuff outside. Lots of effects kill you without rolling. Lots of stuff that would normally allow a save simply doesn't. Some magic items or spells that might work well for the TOMB OF HORRORS specifically don't work, or work poorly. Your poo poo breaks. Your spells fail. You are eaten by a Grue. This is originally a 1st edition AD&D Module. Here, in a 2nd edition adventure, it's included in its original form, with instructions for the DM to modernize it. Doing so is not so difficult, since 1st and 2nd edition AD&D resemble each other much more than any other two editions (unless you count the different 3.xs as different editions). In modernizing it, you may choose to make it less fatal. You may choose to allow saves. If you do, you are WEAK. This is the TOMB OF MOTHERFUCKING HORRORS. If gruesome, wanton PC slaughter was not on your menu, you should not have opened this adventure in the first place. This is the one area I really grog out about D&D. I'm not normally a fan of PC death in games; I think it should happen by mutual consent and serve to advance the story, so my favorite systems are ones like Dark Heresy with "Fate points" one can burn to avoid death. But not here. Here, the Old Ways rule. So, before we plunge in, a few notes. There are some effects that are present throughout the TOMB OF HORRORS. First is the Dark Intrusion, which is three times stronger than its original form (60% chance of spontaneous zombification within 1d6 rounds, undead turn as three categories higher, etc.) Second is the dangers of otherplanar travel: for each round you spend ethereal or astral, you have a one in six chance of attracting a vrock, hezrou, glabrezu or nalfeshnee. These demons serve Acererak indirectly. See, part of the ritual Acererak used to turn himself into a lich required him to know the "true name" of his demonic father, Tarnhem. Through this name, Acererak controls his father; and as his father is an extremely powerful balor who rules a layer of the Abyss, Acererak controls many lesser demonic servitors. These servants are in charge of "cleaning up" the TOMB OF HORRORS; resetting traps, repairing damage, etc to ready it for the next party of adventurers. The point is that going ethereal to just waltz through the dungeon is simply not going to work unless your party is capable of fighting off a horde of true tanar'ri-- tanar'ri who are likely to gate in friends as soon as they see the intruders "cheating" the Tomb. Other notes: the TOMB OF HORRORS is, appropriately, festooned with pits. Unless stated otherwise, every pit is ten feet deep, and lined with five iron spikes coated in poison. Anyone stepping on a pit trap has a 100% chance of falling in, minus 1% for each point of Dex 1-12 and 2% for each point of Dex 13+. When a character falls in, in addition to falling damage, roll a d6; on a 1-3 that many spikes have wounded the character, on a 4-6 none have. Each spike that wounds you does d6 points and forces a save vs. poison or YOU DIE. Expect to see a lot of that. Anyways, here's the map. I'll be going through the rooms in order.  Sections 1, 2 and 3 are entrance tunnels. 1 and 2 are false, 3 is correct. 1 is a shallow tunnel with big oak doors at the end and a cobwebby ceiling. If you clear away the cobwebs, you see that the roof stones are ill-fitting. Opening the doors or prodding the ceiling causes it to collapse on the PCs for 5d10 damage, no save. Section 2 has a low ceiling and doors at the end. When the PCs get 50' in, you let them know they hear a rumbling, then start counting to 10 at about 1.5 seconds per count. See, a 10' stone block has started to seal off the entrance, and when you reach 10 it slams shut and pulps anything caught in it. PCs who start to move get to move their movement rate per count out, so if they book it at 5 they get 5* their movement rate. An iron bar placed on the floor can wedge the door open, but if it's placed elsewhere it snaps, delaying the block only by one count. Once trapped, PCs can ONLY escape by disintegrate, phase door, stone-flesh (and then hacking), transmute rock-mud, wish. The adventure explicitly says only these means will work. Yay! 3 is correct. The floor is a colorful mosaic with a red band in the middle. The walls and ceiling are plastered and then frescoed. They depict animals, humanoids, human-animal hybrids, and places like a wizard's tower, a torture chamber etc. The Xs on the map are all pit traps, of course. The section marked "A" is the torture chamber painting; part of the painting depicts a door hiding a scaled and horrible creature. If you chip away the plaster and stucco, behind that door there's a real door in the wall. We'll get to that in a bit. If you study the mosaic to the end, you are rewarded by a sudden flash of insight, realizing there's a message in them: congratulations from Acererak on your powers of observation, and a poem: "Go back to the tormentor or through the arch, and the second great hall you'll discover. Shun green if you can, but night's good color is for those of great valor. If shades of red stand for blood the wise will not need sacrifice aught but a loop of magical metal - you're well along your march. Two pits along the way wiii be found to lead to a fortuitous fall, so check the wall. These keys and those are most important of all, and beware of trembling hands and what will maul. If you find the false you find the true and into the columned hall you'll come, and there the throne that's key and keyed. The iron men of visage grim do more than meets the viewers eye. You've left and left and found my Tomb and now your soul will die." As I said, he is a huge rear end in a top hat and loves to taunt people, knowing that he's smarter than they are and even with his help they'll die painfully in the end. This poem does have important clues, though. Anyways, the section of the wall next to A, marked 4, is a fresco of a wizard's lab. There are two jackals, or jackal-headed men or whatever, painted on the wall, and between them is a bronze chest that is actually real and sticking out of the wall.  There's a catch on top with a poison needle trap (easily detected) that, when pressed, opens the chest. But it's empty! Although if you actually feel around, there's a lever inside! If you pull the lever... it opens a pit trap 30' deep below your feet! Full of spikes as the others are! Also, this trap's entrance is thicker, so it can't be discovered by probing with a ten foot pole (the 1st edition PC's best friend), and the spell true seeing only reveals a faint rectangular outline around the stone plug of the trap. There are no other treasures and nothing to gain here. Area 5 is an archway into which the path leads. The arch is full of mist which cannot be magically dispersed or seen through. If you come within 1' of the door, the base stones will glow yellow on the left, orange on the right, and blue on the keystone. If the stones are pressed Yellow, Blue, Orange, the fog dissipates. Any other order does nothing. If you step through the wall arch while it's foggy, you are teleported to Area 7 (of which more in a bit). If you clear the fog, then stepping through on the path takes you to Area 11, off the path just back to Area 3. Area 6 is a dead end with a huge green Face of the Devourer.  The statue's mouth is absolutely pitch black. The whole thing radiates evil and magic. The mouth is a sphere of annihilation and anyone or anything entering it is immediately and irrevocably destroyed. This is, incidentally, how Grunther lost his hand. There is literally nothing to be gained here. Area 7, as you can see from the map, is a tiny prison. There is no means of exit, not even magic can detect one. The south wall has three iron levers that can move in any direction. Moving them all upward opens a small trapdoor in the ceiling, 10' above. Moving them all downward causes the entire floor to drop away into a pit 100' deep, and after 1 turn the floor seals up again. The trapdoor in the ceiling leads to a tiny crawlspace; it goes northward a ways, then terminates in a stone plug. This can only be detected a secret door by magical vision or, literally, rapping on the walls. Explicitly no other means will work. If you find it you can crawl east a bit until, as you see, the tunnel ends in a magical one-way door which deposits on on the floor of one of the pit traps in the entrance corridor. Area 8 is a room containing a mutated four-armed gargoyle in temporal stasis. Opening the door to its room frees it from its stupor, and it immediately attacks. It's a nasty foe, with 12 HD, six attacks per round plus a bonus rend per two claws that hit, but if you beat Ferranifer you should have no trouble with this thing. It has a gem-studded collar with a secret compartment, containing a note from Acererak; "Look low and high for gold, to hear a tale untold. The archway at the end, and on your way you'll wend. -A" Area 9 is, seriously, just one secret door after another. Each room has a secret door in the wall. Each must be opened by hand and each has a different required method. There are two "clear" rooms in the center, but aside from those each round anyone is in any of the rooms, concealed devices in the wall and ceilings are firing bolts at you, and one randomly determined PC per room must save vs. magic or take 1d6 damage. Each round. And there is no way to make them stop shooting. To quote verbatim from the adventure: "There is absolutely no way to prevent the bolts from being triggered and from hitting, and armor and spells will NOT have any effect either." The required methods for opening the doors are as follows: Door A: pull down Door B: pivot centrally Door C: pull inward and up at the bottom Door D: slides up Door E: double panels pull inward Door F: slide left Door G: 7 buttons; if you press 1 or 7 the door falls inward for 3d6 damage, if you press all 7 it opens. Area 10 is another tiled-floor room; the walls and ceiling are painted with weird animals, glyphs (meaningless) and humans/humanoids, each holding a sphere of a different color. On the west wall, the figures are from north to south: -A gold sphere held high above the head (this is an illusion covering a crawlway to area 11) -A false door -An orange sphere held waist high -Another false door -A purple sphere held at the feet -A grey sphere held at the shoulder -A blank space -A bright blue sphere held at the feet -A white sphere held high above the head -A turquoise sphere held at the shoulder -A scarlet sphere held waist high -A pale green sphere held at the feet On the east wall, from north to south: -A pale blue sphere held at the shoulder -A silver sphere held at the feet -A secret one-way door that can be opened by knock, disintegrate, rock to mud or stone to flesh. -A green sphere held high above the head -A yellow sphere held at the shoulder -A pink sphere held high above the head -A black sphere held at the feet (actually an illusion covering a crawlway to area 14) -A pale violet sphere held at the shoulder -A blank space -A red sphere held waist high (actually an illusion covering a crawlway to area 13) -A buff sphere held at the feet -A blank space -An indigo sphere held high above the head Whew! Anyways, the area in this room marked A is another foggy arch. Same rules as before. This time, the colors are olive on the lower left, citron on the lower right, russet at the keystone. No matter in which order they are pushed, the arch remains foggy. Anyone stepping through is teleported to area 3. Oh, that's not so bad? Ok. Only the person him or herself is teleported to area 3. All of their clothing, gear, items etc. is teleported to Area 33. They arrive at Area 3 totally nude and defenseless. Snort. Area 11 contains a broken 8' tall statue of a four-armed gargoyle. One arm is on the floor and cannot be reattached no matter what the PCs do. The three attached arms each have a concavity that exactly fits a gem... say, one of the ten gems from the prior gargoyle's studded collar. If a large gem is placed in each of the three hands, the hands animate and crush them to powder. If nine total gems are crushed this way, putting one more in one of the hands triggers a magic mouth which says "Your sacrifice was not in vain. Look to the fourth to find your gain." As it says this, an invisible gem of seeing appears in the fourth hand. Be careful not to knock the arm around and cause the gem to fall off! The gem is covered in an oil which renders it invisible, which must be wiped off before it can be used. Detect Invisibility and similar spells will not work; explicitly, only feeling around will find anything. The gem will operate 12 times, then shatter. I was hoping to do this place in two posts, but I think it'll take three. Join me next time! Next time: More suffering!
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Jul 10, 2013 04:10
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A little explanation: It's not technically a sphere of annihilation, it just acts like one. For one thing, it's much bigger-- 3' across. For another, it's not spherical, it's shaped to the inside of the statue's mouth. It's more of a "zone of annihilation" than anything else. There is a real sphere of annihilation later on in the adventure, the controllable kind, except not quite. Also, I'd love to run this Paranoia style. A six-pack is the best way to run through the TOMB OF HORRORS because a lot of the stuff that kills you also explicitly disallows resurrection. In the original adventure, it comes packaged with a bunch of pregens, with instructions to let each person control 2-3 of them. The idea is that if you throw about 10 appropriately leveled PCs into the TOMB OF HORRORS maybe one or two will come out.
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Jul 10, 2013 12:31
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Return to the TOMB OF HORRORS part 6: TPK'o'clock Welcome back! I had the New England Team Tournament for Warmachine yesterday and couldn't update. So here I am! We'll pick up where we left off in the TOMB OF HORRORS itself. For a refresher, here's the map again:  When last we left our heroes, they were poisoned, stabbed, gassed, crushed, trapped, annihilated, and teleported nude. We left off at Area 11. Where to next? The marking 12 on the west wall (and elsewhere in the TOMB OF HORRORS, as you can see) indicates a trapped false door. The door opens into a wall, and opening it causes a spear to be launched. The target is randomly determined, and must save vs. magic or take 2d8 points of damage. Closing and re-opening the door produces another spear. This is one of the least lethal traps in here, but it makes up for it by being annoying and pointless! The red sphere, as marked above, is an illusion covering a crawlspace. This crawlspace, unfortunately, dead ends. If the PCs poke around a bit they can (4 in 6 chance) discover a secret door. Hooray! Anyone opening this door will be dropped onto his rear end by a tilting stone into the next room for 1d6 damage (Gygax notes "a mere annoyance, but it erodes the strength of the party." Also, I think it is a special mark of Acererak's unbelievable rear end in a top hat nature that he interspersed his insanely deadly save-or-die traps with a bunch of really minor irritating ones. Anyways, the PCs will find themselves in Room 13, a room with three chests. Could this be Acererak's secret treasure hoard? Are we finally, finally going to get some reward out of the TOMB OF HORRORS? Haha, nope!  Joe Rogue is called to the forefront. The PCs, having suffered losses to unforeseen hazards so far, wisely tell Joe to check for traps before they open any of the chests. Poor Joe, who is strongly reconsidering his choice of career after his time in the TOMB OF HORRORS, does so. He checks the first chest carefully, detecting no traps. Opening it reveals...  OH poo poo SNAKES! 12 Asps, each of which can bite for 1hp of damage and a save vs. poison at -2 or... something, I'm not sure (I don't own the AD&D 1st ed monster manual) but presumably you die. So poor Joe, his ophidiophobia now straddling the line between "latent" and "incipient," checks the second chest. Once again, he is relieved to find it trapless. Opening it reveals no nasty surprises-- in fact, the chest's only contents are a small crystal box inside which is a ring. Lifting this box triggers the chest to...  SHOOT DARTS AT YOU OH NOOOOOO These can hit up to two characters, there are 8 total darts, and each deals 1d6 damage with no save. Thankfully they are not poisoned. The box actually does contain a normal, not cursed ring of protection +1 which, while pretty meager as a reward for the level of hardship suffered, doesn't suck. The box is worth something too! So Joe's nerves are shot, but he figures he's had the bad luck to find the two trapped chests first. He checks the third and finds no traps. Well, fool me once etc. So he's real careful with this one. He opens it with the tip of his dagger to reveal...  loving COME ON Yup. The box can't even contain the skeleton, it is teleported it when the lid opens. It will ALWAYS strike first and wields two scimitars, attacking 2x per round for 2d6 damage per hit. It's a lot beefier than a normal skeleton and shares its near-immunity to edged weapons, plus complete magic and turning immunity. At least the fighters get to do something. Also, there's nothing else in the chest. Back to the sphere room, the black sphere is an illusion covering another crawlspace. This one also dead ends, and this time the secret door is a 1 in 6 chance to find, with no magic useful except for the gem of seeing from earlier. It leads to a mysterious chapel area. The walls are covered in scenes of normal people doing normal people things, except they are rotting and decomposing, being eaten by worms etc. But it also has holy symbols of good gods and a faint aura of good! Is there more to Acererak than meets the eye, or is he just loving with people? yeah he is There's a mosaic up the center of the floor to the altar, and rows of pews. Each pew is hinged and opens. The back two each hide 4000 silver pieces! The next two each hide 3000 electrum pieces! The next two each hide 2000 gold pieces! The last two each hide gas traps! This gas fills up the chapel in two rounds and causes everyone inside to lose 2d4 points of Strength for 48 hours. There's some candelabras and other religious trappings, and stoppered white pottery urns in the corners. Area A is the altar, which is made of opalescent blue material and glows with inner light. It detects faintly as evil. Touching it causes a bolt of lightning to shoot up the aisle for 40 points of damage, save vs. magic for half. After it blows its wad it starts to glow blue-red, and touching it causes it to EXPLODE for another 60 points of damage within 30', save for half. A human skeleton in rusted black chainmail points to Area B, an archway full of glowing orange vapor, with no stones that light up. Of course it is impossible to see through the mists with magic. Passing through the archway leads to a 10x10 room and reverses both your sex and your alignment (haha!). If you back out and go back in your alignment goes back, but you take 1d6 damage. A third time will fix your sex back to normal but teleport you nude to the entrance and all of your poo poo to the end room, as before. Only wish or alter reality can fix you without the arch's "help." But if you restore your own alignment with it, remove curse can restore your sex. In Area C, careful inspection can notice (4 in 6) a small slot with a faint O above it. It cannot be magically detected. This marks the stone gate, area 15, a stone plug 2'x4'x10', which is heavily antimagiced so you cannot move, open or transmute it by magic. The slot will accept a coin or flat gem-- or a magic ring. Putting anything but a ring into it does nothing but lose you the item forever. Putting a ring in makes the block sink into the floor so you can proceed. From the other side, at least, it opens easily. The following hallway has, as you can see, a series of three doors, each with a pit beyond it. In fact, the doors open so easily, that a roll of 1 or 2 on a d6 opening it indicates that the opener falls into the pit beyond. Even if they don't they're likely to step on it. Anyways, by the third pit the PCs expect and likely avoid it, which is awesome because the only way to proceed is through the floor of that pit. Assuming for now they bypass it, there's a long hallway leading north, with a locked oaken door at the end of it. Listening to the door reveals the faint sound of music and happy singing! Unfortunately the door is super-locked and can't be opened, even by knock or similar, instead requiring the party to disintegrate it or physically chop it to bits. Doing so causes the sounds to change to confusion and fleeing, and the party sees a faint glow northward. The tunnel floor from here is a carefully balanced beam. When someone steps on the point three squares from the door, the floor starts to tilt downward in that direction. DM starts counting to 5 as before-- anyone north of the door at 5 will start to fall at 10'/round northward. When they're 40' north of the door they take 1d6 heat damage per round, 50' it becomes 2d6, and after that they fall in lava and die with no save. Fun! So, let's assume they backtrack. If they think to check on the floor of the third pit trap (as seen above) they have a 5 in 6 chance of spotting a wooden door painted to look like stone. Feeling up the walls also instantly discovers it. Proceeding through here takes us to Area 17, another magical secret door. This can be found in any way magical secret doors are found, but to open it requires 1) detect magic or 2) the use of the gem of seeing to pinpoint the door's magical aura, followed by dispel magic or remove curse to remove it. Once this is accomplished you can proceed to Area 18. This begins with a tunnel filled with fear gas, which makes you save vs. poison or run at top speed for 2d4 turns (you can announce you are holding your breath though). It also blocks vision, so it's only 3 in 6 to notice the south door, though opening the door gets rid of the gas. This leads to a crypt full of magical webs that can only be removed by magical fire. Any other method simply tangles you unless you are burned or wished out. The bottom of the staircase has a silver-inlaid mace which glows brightly golden when a PC picks it up. The crypt itself is full of moldy old furniture and stuff, plus a SOLID GOLD COUCH upon which rests a lich with a crown on its head. A booming voice declares "WHO DARES TO DISTURB THE REST OF ACERERAK? IT IS YOUR DEATH WHICH YOU HAVE FOUND," and the lich attacks them. Actually, it's just a magically prepared zombie, so it's not super dangerous, though it does have magic resistance. It will pretend to cast spells by gesturing with its hands between attacks. If you hit it with the mace it will let out a roaring bellow (a magic mouth prepared by Acererak[/i] and the weapon staggers it (the DM is instructed to "roll dice and shake [his] head." Three hits makes the zombie poof into dust, shatters the mace, and makes the room shake and start to collapse. DM is instructed to take his time describing it. PCs who search can find a jade coffer, the crown, and a fine leather bag nearby. Now you count slowly to ten (and watch them run! The TOMB OF HORRORS is Pavlovian PC-training at its finest) as dust and stones fall from the ceiling. You're also now instructed to ask the PCs if they thought it was too hard. Anyways, the treasure is real, but not super awesome; for instance, there's a scroll with only 1st level spells (though you are supposed to pretend to roll) and a fake treasure map to a distant treasure. The collapse was a programmed illusion, though, and the "lich" was a nothing zombie. Entertainingly enough, this encounter is depicted on the cover of the module, so PCs who saw it in the store are likely to think this was the climax. This is a hilarious little piece of metagame on Gary's part. Any magical means will reveal that wasn't really Acererak, though. So it's back to the stairs and secret door above, and on to Room 19. This is a massively cluttered magical laboratory; tons of shelves, jars, dust etc. There's a couple of tables used to prepare mummies, and urns that used to contain herbs, oils, unguents etc. Mummy wrappings all over the place! The south end of the room has three big vats full of murky liquid. The first? Gross stinky water. The second is full of a slow acting acid that does 1d4+1 damage per round of substantial exposure to flesh (not just a tiny sprinkling). At the bottom of this vat is half of a golden key. The third vat has a giant grey ochre jelly with the other half of the key underneath it. The vats can't be moved, and the key parts are indestructible; if joined they snap together to form one real key. Killing the ooze is annoying but not super difficult, but getting the key out of the acid is difficult since it can eat through even magical weapons and reaching in to grope for it has a cumulative 1% chance per round of success (while it eats away at your flesh). This gold key is useful, though. The corridor in Area 20 contains a HUGE PIT FULL OF 200 SPIKES. It's 10' deep, open, and completely fills the passageway. Walking along the bottom is safe until the final 3', when suddenly all of the spikes launch upwards and automatically hit each person in the pit or leaning over its edge 1d4+1 times for 1d6 points of damage each hit, no save allowed. It also regrows its spikes when this happens. Room 21 is interesting. There's a normal secret door leading in, nothing special about it. It's full of furniture and funereal goods, but the stuff is scattered all over the floor, among 6 locked trunks and 24 locked coffers. There's also broken chairs, sofas, urns etc all over the place. It looks pretty thoroughly looted, except for the tapestries on the east and west walls. The trunks are all empty, but the coffers each contain either 1d3 asps, or some gems and money. There's two traps here. The first (and less deadly) is the rolling floor; each round PCs are in here roll a d6, and on an odd number next round the room is subject to a tiny earthquake as the floor jumps and bucks. Each PC has a 2 in 6 chance of falling and taking one damage in bruises from this happening. The tapestries are trap #2. They depict undersea life-- weedy rocks and so on. If they are torn they instantly turn into green slime and cover a 20' long by 10' deep section of floor, including any PCs in that space. A PC covered in green slime instantly turns into green slime and is gone forever; of course, no save allowed. You can touch them, but don't tear them; but if you're holding one when the floor bucks, you have a 75% chance of tearing it. Burning them turns them to brown mold which drains 4d8 damage worth of heat from PCs near it each round. Of course the exit is a secret door behind one of the tapestries. As you can see from the map, the next corridor has a couple of pits and another sex/alignment reversing arch. At the end is a grotto full of silvery mists shot through with golden streamers. These limit sight to 6'. It dimly radiates good. Inside the mists is a cursed siren. She's good-aligned, but you can't see her in the mist, and the only way to let her out is to ask her to come out-- and of course she can't tell the PCs this. Anyone stepping into the mist must save vs. poison or "become idiots until they can breathe the clean air above ground under the warm sun." The siren's a pretty cool lady, and if the PCs free her she will be appropriately grateful and be their friend and adventuring buddy for life. She doesn't fight all that well but has a bunch of useful spell-like abilities, including charm person, suggestion, polymorph self, invisiblity, and the ability to heal "idiocy." She comes with two sacks, one large and one small. The big one is a bag of holding fulla cash, the small one has randomly determined contents that could be anything from wool to useful magic items. There's a catch, though. Asking the siren to accompany the party causes the sacks to disappear forever; touching either sack causes the other sack and the siren to disappear forever. You cannot touch them both simultaneously. The siren doesn't really know anything about the TOMB OF HORRORS (she was just abducted and placed here). And with that, we're 2/3 of the way done! Hopefully the PCs didn't lose more than 1 or 2 more people this segment to slime, fire or poisoned spikes (save or die!). Coming up next time: THE THRILLING CONCLUSION (of this one small part of the adventure).
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Jul 15, 2013 00:03
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Lemon Curdistan posted:Between the asps and the secret door hidden in a pit, I can't help but think that the local law is taking the wrong approach by sending in adventurers. They should be sending in a full work crew following union safety regs and just dismantle the dungeon. Acererak has a whole bunch of demons under his control to restore damage to the TOMB OF HORRORS and they're all union. You don't want to scab on demons (at least according to D. Vincent Baker).
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Jul 15, 2013 12:37
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What worries me more is what happens afterwards. After all, the demons under Acererak's control are assigned to reset the whole TOMB OF HORRORS. Do they fly out to abduct the Siren and put her back in the cave? "Oh Adventurers, ever since you freed me from that awful place my life has been so-" GANK'D Next update to come. Warning: The third and final part of the TOMB OF HORRORS is by far the most dangerous and unfair. I'm not joking, it makes Parts I and II look like a complete cakewalk. I think every single room has either 1) a deathtrap with no save or 2) a puzzle with absolutely no clues as to how to solve it. Special preview image:  What could it be?!
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Jul 17, 2013 04:19
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Return to the TOMB OF HORRORS part 7: Roll to see if you cry, and if so, how hard. Sorry about the lateness folks! In my defense, my pet ferret has cancer .So as a refresher, here's the map: Hopefully no adventurer tore, cut, or firmly held any of the tapestries in room 21, instantly turning into an unrecoverable pile of green slime with no save or magic defense of any kind possible. Also hopefully nobody touched any of the treasure with the Siren, dooming her to an ambiguous fate. Today: THE MYSTERY OF THE GEM, REVEALED! it is awful, don't touch it It's a little hard to tell from the map, but our adventurers should be a bit stymied now. After freeing the siren, they head north, the last unexplored direction, at the four-way intersection, and reach Area 23. There is a perfectly ordinary door here, which opens into a perfectly ordinary solid blank wall of stone. This wall contains a secret door; this is almost needlessly petty and juvenile, which means it's perfect for the TOMB OF HORRORS. The party continues to the north in this corridor, likely missing the secret door in the floor. As you can see, there's a door on the east wall to leads into a little side corridor. This passage goes east a little ways and then turns north. Opening this door to the north releases sleep gas which causes everyone to fall asleep with no save. This sleep lasts for 2d4 turns. Every turn that everyone is asleep, roll a d4. On a 4, a STONE JUGGERNAUT is released from that little square room. It travels 1d6 squares per turn, first south, then turning west. Everyone squished by it is instantly killed with no save of any kind allowed. In the words of Gary Gygax, "Everything it rolls over is squashed to a pulp. There is no appeal." It also provides this lovely picture, which you are instructed to show the PCs in case they are destroyed this way, I guess as a sort of triumphant little dance on their pulpy remains.  a heffalump!!! Anyways, assuming the PCs don't all loving INSTANTLY DIE WITH NO SAVE DUE TO OPENING THE ONLY OBVIOUS DOOR, they can find the secret door (marked "s"). This opens into a narrow little passage towards Area 24. That's just an adamantite door that's totally impervious to everything, being heavily antimagiced. There are three slots on the door at waist height; shoving a sword blade in each at once opens it (for 5 rounds only, and it's a one way door). At least nothing in here kills you. Area 25 is one of the more infamous areas of the TOMB OF HORRORS. It's a throne room full of pillars. There's lots to digest in here, so I'll take it one thing at a time. The pillars radiate magic; touching one makes you float uncontrollably, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory-style, towards the ceiling. Dispel Magic or Remove Curse will prevent this. While annoying, this is hardly life-threatening. However, there is a gentle breeze in the room at ceiling level. It will gradually push PCs either to the northeast or northwest. In the northwest, at area A, there's a mosaic of a green devil face-- just like the one at the entrance! This one doesn't annihilate you on contact; but if you get within 3' of it, you are forcibly sucked in and spat out of the other green face's mouth, way back at the entrance. (Note that PCs who have not yet discovered the TERRIBLE SECRET of this face may assume it's a two-way portal and jump back in to try to get back to the pillared room, tee hee). And of course, to add insult to injury all of your gear, clothing and equipment doesn't come with you, instead being teleported to Area 33. If the wind takes you to the northeast, to Area B, it's a blue-tinged devil face. This one sucks you in the same way but spits you out in Room 27A (to be detailed later) I'm a little confused, since areas C and D are detailed as being in this room, but don't appear on the map. In any case, C is familiar! This gigantic, glowing orange gem is surrounded by corpses and menaces with spikes of EVIL and MAGIC if detected for. It's so powerful that you get the impression it's wish magic. And it is! It grants a wish to anyone touching it. Anyone taking such an incredibly obvious trap this deep into the TOMB OF HORRORS deserves everything they get: the reverse (or a perversion) of what they wanted happens, that brings doom to them and anyone named in the wish. This is basically handing a blank check to the DM, so for Gygax's sake, take it! The gem begins to pulse with light after casting the wish, count to ten as normal. At 10 it explodes, utterly annihilating anyone within 15' with no save of any kind, leaving behind only a puddle of stinking, purple mold which "bubbles and chuckles." It reforms as a gem in one week. Area D is the south end of the room, a massive ebony dais on which sits a silver throne, on which sit a crown and scepter (both of which emanate magic).  The crown is gold and negates the floaty effect of the pillars. It's also cursed; outside of the pillared hall you are blind, and putting it on grants the knowledge that the only way to remove it is by touching it with the scepter. The scepter is electrum, with a gold ball on one end and a silver ball on the other. If the silver end ever touches the crown, the wearer is instantly turned into a fetid powder and cannot ever come back, not even with a wish. The gold knob lets you remove the crown. There's a small crown replica inlaid in silver on the front of the throne; touching that with the silver end causes the throne to sink into the ground, revealing a passage beyond. These are both exceptionally valuable items, but taking either from the TOMB OF HORRORS summons vrocks to take them back, so probably don't do that. Because the PCs won't assume that fooling around with the scepter is the way forward, they're likely to go north first, into room 26 or 27. Room 26 has a shimmering, electric blue door (both Room 26s); touching the door makes it glow, but there's no effect. The western room is empty. The eastern room contains a wooden sarcophagus, looted funereal goods etc. Inside the sarcophagus is a mummy (just a mummified human) with tattered remains and a huge amethyst poking out of its forehead wrappings. Taking the gem animates the remains a mummy (the monster) with haste, permanent resist flames cast on its wrappings, and wearing a ring of fire resistance to boot. The door to room 27 is scintillating violet. Also glows when touched. Entering it reveals a room with a door to the north and crossed pairs of swords hung on the wall. There are 8 pairs and each comes with a shield. Crossing the threshold makes one fly off and attack! Each has 11 hp and AC 3, and you must kill the shield first (it interposes itself) and attacks as a +1/+1 sword wielded by a 1st level fighter. They can ONLY be affected by magic in the following ways: -Repulsion puts them back on the wall -Heat metal or a rod of cancellation destroys one item -Transmute metal to wood turns two items to inert wood -Disintegrate destroys a set -Enchant weapon turns one item into a normal iron weapon Recrossing the threshold causes another set to animate and attack; this set has 12 hp each, AC 2, and attacks as +2/+2 swords wielded by a second level fighter. And so on. There are 8 of these sets. You will notice that the only area beyond this chamber is 27A, the place the blue face teleported you. This is a horrible little chamber, aptly called the "Chamber of Hopelessness." It contains a little fountain (so you won't die of thirst) and the following magically etched on the north wall: "YOU WHO DARED TO VlOLATE MY TOMB NOW PAY THE PRICE. STAY HERE AND DIE SLOWLY OF STARVATION. OR OPEN AND ENTER THE DOOR TO YOUR SOUTH WHERE CERTAIN BUT QUICK DEATH AWAITS - WHICHEVER YOU CHOOSE, KNOW THAT I, ACERERAK THE ETERNAL, WATCH AND SCOFF AT YOUR PUNY EFFORTS AND ENJOY YOUR DEATH THROES." Entering the south door before the swords and shields have been destroyed causes them ALL to attack you at once (and, I imagine, all get their respective bonuses). There are adventurer corpses here, plus some phat loot and minor magic item treasure. So, we go south past the dais to area 28. There are some super fancy steps made of exotic materials and the walls are made of copper, ivory and rare wood. On the fourth step there's a big bronze key! However, it has a permanent antipathy spell cast on it, and anyone who touches it must save vs. magic at -2; failure means you will NEVER willingly touch the key or allow it within 2' of your presence. This is silly but not terrible. At the top of the stairs there's a pair of mithril doors with a keyhole! These "valves of mithril" are 14'x28' wide/tall and 3' thick. They are heavily antimagiced because of course they are. There's a little hemispherical depression in them with a keyhole in it. Inserting the bronze key does nothing but shock the inserter for 1d10 points of electricity (no save) while using the gold key does 2d10 points (also no save). Touching the scepter to the depression is the key, but make sure you use the right end; the silver end spits you out nude from the Devourer face, as before, with all of your poo poo going to Area 33. The gold end, of course, opens the doors. Attacking the doors is a super duper bad idea. Cutting it makes it start to gush forth blood; the blood of the victims of the TOMB OF HORRORS! In 6 rounds, it'll fill the area to the top of the first step; one more step per round, filling the foyer to the ceiling in 20 rounds. You can make the blood stop with cure critical wounds, heal, 2x cure serious wounds, or 4x cure light wounds. A few other spells affect it: cone of cold freezes it for three rounds, stopping the flow; create water turns it to normal water (but it's still flooding); disintegrate destroys it all; levitate causes it all to coagulate and float towards the ceiling, where it becomes a huge red ochre jelly; polymorph creates 3d4 wights which attack immediately; purify water turns it into a gas which reduces the Strength of everyone in it to 3 for one day; and raise dead or resurrection not only destroys all of the blood, it causes a shade to appear on the top step which will bless all party members, healing 10hp each and curing status conditions  .Oh, and any fire at all turns the blood into poison gas which kills you all with no save unless you're in the passageway leading into the foyer, in which case you can save at -4.  Let's assume they make it into Area 30. They won't, but let's assume. This treasure room has a silver ceiling, ivory walls with gold inlay, and two big 9' black iron statues with huge weapons; each has a huge magical aura and radiates evil. Each is also an inert lump that does nothing but troll the players with their existence. The room itself is lead-lined and in a permanent anti-magic bubble of some sort (it just says no spells and no magic items work inside of it except detecting auras). Area A is a bronze urn with gold fill on its stopper, letting out a thin stream of smoke. Prying out the stopper releases an efreet; if the PCs hosed with the urn violently, it's pissed and attacks, otherwise it performs three nebulously defined services and departs. Area B is a granite sarcophagus with ACERERAK spelled out on it in platinum. There's broken poo poo and a shattered skull in there, nothing else. Area C is two big iron chests. Each is triple-looked with poison needle traps (duh); the eastern one has 10,000 gems of >50gp value each, the western one has 10,000 platinum pieces. Except once you get them 13 miles from the TOMB OF HORRORS you see they're actually 1gp quartz gems and copper pieces, respectively. Wah wah wahhhhh. Anyways, the statue in area D can be moved by three burly muscular men of STR 16 or higher, revealing a ring pull. Pulling this raises a stone plug and reveals The doors marked 31 are actually one way doors that lead back to the corridor outside the grotto. They're phase doors, so they can ONLY be opened from the north; you cannot possible enter from the south, no matter what magic you have, wishes included. Doing so summons a pit trap into the place it appears on the map. The door marked 32 cannot be discovered by any magic means, but careful inspection reveals a keyhole. Of course the door cannot be penetrated by magic or force. Only the golden key causes it to sink into the ground. And here we are, at Area 33. This room has an arched ceiling 25' feet high. It's otherwise empty but for a 2" square depression in the floor. Putting the gold key in here causes an explosion that blows you upwards for 5d6 points of damage. The bronze key fits in here but does nothing until you turn in clockwise 3 times. When that happens the room rumbles and the southern end of the floor peaks upwards. DM counts to 5; at the end of that anyone in the bottom 15' of the room (it's 10x20) is "squashed to jelly" against the roof. The southern part of the room is now full of a mithril vault. The door just swings open, no key required. Inside is: -Everything stolen by teleport traps -SHITLOADS of gems, including a 50k gp one and a 100k gp one -12 potions and 6 scrolls (randomly determined) -1 ring, 1 rod, 1 staff, 3 misc magic items (DM picks) -a +4 sword of defending -two cursed swords -a cursed backbiting speak -the other half of the amulet of the void -one (1) Acererak Because of the metaphysics of Acererak's plan, to be covered in more detail later, this can be his demilich skull and he can be present (the use of the keys magically alerts him, wherever he is, that there's intruders in his base killing his traps). Killing him won't make a difference (but hah, good loving luck!) All that's left of Acererak is the dust of his corpse and his skull, the eyes and teeth of which are replaced by extraordinarily valuable gems. A minor point: you could update the frankly unfair demilich stats to the ones from the 2nd edition Monster Manual, but that doesn't really make things better; a Demilich is still an absurdly powerful enemy, and you're also giving him all of Acererak's wizard levels (later on it lists which spells he has: it's a FUCKTON, and yes, one of his prepared spells is wish). So. What happens is this: Nothing. If the treasure is touched, the dust of Acererak's body forms itself into a vaguely humanoid shape and advances threateningly. It can be attacked, and attacks obviously stagger it. If it's ignored, it dissipates in 3 rounds. Attacks, however, grant it "energy levels;" 1 for a physical attack, X for a spell, where X is the spell level. At 50, it forms into a ghost and attacks. Still, not unstoppable. Touching the skull is bar none the dumbest thing a party can do. If they do, it rises into the air, scans the party, and picks the strongest; magic user -> fighter -> cleric -> thief (yes, I know, but that's Acererak's opinion, not mine). The selected party member simply has their soul sucked out and dies instantly with no save of any kind allowed. Touching it again causes this process to repeat. If the The only possible ways to harm it are: -Forget or Exorcise make it sink down and not steal a soul -Shatter deals 10hp damage -Power word: kill if you're astral or ethereal kills it -To harm it with weapons, you need: a vorpal blade if you're a fighter, a sword of sharpness +5 or vorpal blade if you're a ranger, or those items or a +4 weapon for a paladin -Dispel evil hits it for 5 hp -Holy word does 20 hp -A thief can sling a gem at it, doing 1hp per 10k value of the gem, but the gem is crushed, and even on a miss it must save vs. crushing blow or disintegrate Skull's AC is -6 and it has 50 hp (!) If it dies, everyone who's trapped in a gem gets to make a saving throw vs. death or disappear entirely forever. Those left alive can be freed into a fresh body by crushing the gem. But guys, just don't touch the goddamn thing. You'll get a shot at it later. So why are we here again? Joining both halves of the Amulet reveals the rest of its message. It's a simple transformation cipher, with some intentional misspellings. It says, translated: "The face of the fiend does more than devour/with the least of my form, tis the path to power." The secret is some Acererak corpse dust, which can be collected without causing Bad poo poo (as seen above). Having it on your person turns the Great Green Face into a portal (in the mouth, of course) to the City of Moil, where your next step lies. We're out the original TOMB OF HORRORS, but things really do get worse from here. There's nothing quite as "gently caress you" as the original TOMB OF HORRORS, but it's just as deadly coming up. Next time: Moil! DAD LOST MY IPOD fucked around with this message at 04:16 on Jul 20, 2013 |
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Jul 20, 2013 03:40
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Now seems like a good time to discuss Acererak's plan. Return to the TOMB OF HORRORS Part 7.5: I love it when a plan comes together! So Acererak is old. Very, very, very old. He was an apprentice of Vecna when Vecna was alive (or undead, maybe, but still farting around on Acererak is very smart. If you were to, say, arbitrarily assign his intelligence a numerical value on a scale of 1-18, it would be 20. Watching adventurers burned, poisoned, impaled, annihilated, crushed, turned to green slime etc. was probably pretty entertaining for the first three thousand years, but the novelty's worn off. Plus his old master is now a God, and Acererak wants a piece of that pie. Not just divinity, though. He played second fiddle to Vecna for centuries, now to do it for eternity? No thanks. Acererak wants to be more. So he came up with a plan. A really, really horrifying, awful plan. Acererak has found a way, through the EXTREME expenditure of arcane energy, the sacrifice of literally thousands of souls of peerless quality, and magic unknown to anyone else, to bind his very essence with the Negative Energy Plane. If he were to be successful, he would merge with the plane entirely. Not even a perfectly worded wish would extract him. From there, his power would be godlike; all undead everywhere take their energy from the Negative Energy Plane, and so Acererak would be able to directly control any undead on any plane at any time. Any of them. Anywhere. Combine that with complete and true immortality beyond even that of the Powers (because the field of Dead Gods in the Astral points to their "mortality," even if it's not like ours) and nigh-infinite magical energy, and there'd be almost nothing beyond his reach. Acererak's already partway through this plan (called the Apotheosis). He can directly control any of the undead under his command, hopping from body to body at will. He can control a demilich skull (of which he has more than one) just as easily as a humble skeleton-- and while the skeleton doesn't have "immune to nearly everything" listed under special defenses like the demilich skull, it DOES have access to all of Acererak's spells. Which, let's recall, include wish. The Dark Intrusion is a side effect of this process, and a wholly unintended (but welcome) one. So Acererak's goal is to collect the last few souls. The souls he needs now have to be of EXTREMELY high quality-- that is, they have to come from high-level PCs. He can't just soulsuck a bunch of 0th-level NPCs and call it a day. The TOMB OF HORRORS, the city of Moil, and the Fortress of Conclusion serve as a sort of sieve, killing any PCs who can't hack it and leaving only the toughest. Acererak's biggest flaw is his arrogance-- he's confident that any PCs who make it through all three can be defeated by him personally. He is an incredibly dangerous mage with extremely well-prepared defenses, so he's probably right, but that's the only hope left.
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Jul 21, 2013 01:31
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Lemon Curdistan posted:That is... actually a surprisingly sane and cool master plan for a world-threatening villain to have. Not what I was expecting at all. There's a reason I picked this adventure. A lot of modules cashing in on the well-known names of old modules are kind of "this, but again" but RToH actually has a really competent and well-sketched out metaplot. Like I said, there's tons of notation of what's going on the background of all of the neat places the PCs explore, so you can actually wing it easily if they get off track and the whole thing hangs together really well. Plus there's sooooo much new stuff; the TOMB OF HORRORS is one thing, but Moil has a real explicit "test" vibe to it, and is personally one of my favorite set pieces ever. I really, really want to use Moil next time I GM a fantasy game. The Fortress of Conclusion is really wacky, it's like TOMB OF HORRORS redux; lots of callbacks, it's like the old TOMB OF HORRORS kind of mixed up with a lot of cool new elements and turned a bit on its head.
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Jul 21, 2013 02:19
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Sorry for the delay everyone! I went to a wedding across the country. Return to the TOMB OF HORRORS part 8: Moil, Moil, City of Toil So, when last we left our heroes, they were poisoned, skewered, crushed, exploded, electrocuted, melted, asphyxiated, hacked, burned, turned to green slime, made into idiots, had their gender and alignment reversed, stripped of their gear, annihilated and had their souls sucked out. But we're, like, so over that, because now we're in MOIL! Some background: I mentioned this earlier, but to reiterate. Moil was once a city on the Prime Material world of Ranais (exceptionally spergin PCs will remember this world from Dead Gods, the Planescape adventure, as a place of Orcus worship). The Moilians were extremely advanced in both science and magic, but also very cruel and twisted-- they worshipped Orcus, after all! Gradually, though, they grew sick of their evil, capricious god and switched to ones less dedicated to fuckery. Orcus found their lack of faith... disturbing, and cursed them to sleep in a deathlike state until the light of the sun hit them. He then cast Moil into a private demiplane where no sun shone, dooming them to slow death in their sleep. One by one, the Moilians died, and their city crumbled around them, preserved by the bitter cold. Until Acererak found it. Fascinated by the unique Moilian zombies that the demiplane generated, Acererak experimented in Moil for a while, restoring parts of it to a "functional" state and using most of the inhabitants as labor to build his Fortress of Conclusion in the Negative Energy Plane. He then set it up as the next "leg" in his challenge to adventurers, for those who survived his original TOMB OF HORRORS. Moil is now full of the kind of devious traps that Acererak is known for, plus the remains of its original inhabitants-- not just their zombified forms, but the remnants of their culture, for Moil was an evil place indeed before its fall and bits of that remain. Moil is laid out as a series of towers, like so:  Before I go into detail about the exact locations and puzzles, a few notes. First, the Dark Intrusion is stronger in Moil than outside. Undead are turned as four categories higher. Spells from the Necromancy school take 4 fewer units of time to cast. Living creatures rat-size or larger have and 80% chance of spontaneously animating as zombies within 1d3 rounds. Healing spells are only 75% effective, and finally, the city is supernaturally cold; you must make a Constitution check at -4 every 6 years or take 1hp damage. Secondly, due to Moil's status as a pocket demiplane, some weird stuff happens. The "borders" of the city are a wall of writhing black fog; stepping through it earns you a one-way ticket to the Negative Energy Plane. As a reminder, this is the most hostile place in the multiverse, worse than the Abyss. There's nothing to breathe, so you immediately start suffocating. Life energy is drained from you at a rate of 2d6 hp/round. Dying this way means no resurrection of any kind is ever possible and also you become an Undead. Magical items lose two pluses, spells that cause damage cause the maximum amount while healing spells heal the minimum, anything created here with magic crumbles in a single round, and you can't conjure/summon from anywhere but the negative quasielemental planes (Ash, Dust, Vacuum and Salt). It's a death sentence. Flying up into the "clouds" above Moil gives you a 45% chance each round of being struck by a bolt of lightning for 10d6 damage with no save. The Vestige haunts Moil, and every four hours the PCs have a 20% chance of running into it; this is a "supposed to lose" fight and they had best run away if they want to live because the thing is loving tough. So, here we are. A vast, dark city, wreathed in black fog and grey clouds, lit by colossal lightning flashes. Bone-achingly cold, it's a city of narrow metal spires and fragile-looking bridges, haunted by beings of negative energy, the undead remains of its inhabitants, and one horrific monstrosity born from the fear and misery of thousands of dying people. Welcome to Moil. We arrive in location one. You stand on a BRIDGE. Before you stands a RUSTED IRON OBELISK. Exits are to the EAST, WEST and SOUTH. It is really loving COLD. There's BATS or something in the sky, I don't know. I HATE it here already. >read Obelisk "Acererak is impressed; you now stand under the darkling sky that most never dreamt of. Your only path is forward through this crumbling demiplane of broken piety. The journey shall task you to your mortal limits. However, this verse may help you on your way to me within the Void, where you shall receive a fitting prize for your persistence: The City That Waits was the city of Moil Where dreams truly died, but bodies yet toil In slumber unrelenting they lie yet in wait Biding their time to seal your fate. Discovery of the Void and my Fortress within Demands exploration through peril again. Find amid towers degenerate the single key And resolve the dilemma of problems three. Beard the brine dragon in its frozen hollow; Remove the Key, avoid its starved swallow. Beneath webs of glowing emerald Hangs a riddle-box, ripe to be solved. The darkweaver endures the cold in her lair; Grasp your fate with consummate care. The lifeless dream that marks the crime Is the Vestige that guards the sands of time. Each resolution removes one obstacle For those who peruse this written oracle: The Phantom released flies you in fashion To my inevitable Fortress of Conclusion. So, here we are on the bridge. The negative fundamentals swarm around overhead; they're annoying but not dangerous, unless they push you off the bridge, in which case sucks to be you. I'll start us off with the tower marked 2 on the map, the Tower of Morning. It's mostly a rubble-choked ruin, and what's not tumbled stone is covered in a layer of ice; an open doors roll is required to break the ice and open each door. Unlike many of the other towers, only one level here is available. In fact, flying or otherwise clever PCs who manage to get to other layers somehow realize that they are empty; the tower's a hollow shell except this one part. Acererak's magic preserves the ruined city in even the lovely state it's in-- without it it would have collapsed long ago. The arched doorway leading into the building is covered with frost, through which a carving of a sunrise is visible. Rubbing off the ice the get a better look gives you the idea that it's a sunset, not a sunrise-- and makes you save vs. spell at -5 or be affected by the curse of Moil, i.e. you fall asleep until the sun hits you! Remove curse gives you another save at -5, if you fail then it's lights out and not even a wish will wake you up. You gotta get in the sunlight, and there's no sun here. Inside the chamber is a room with a lovely mural.  Touching a panel makes it glow dimly. Only one can glow at once-- touching another makes the glow in the first fade. They all depict a pastoral scene with a road and with the sun at a different position-- rising, noon, setting, etc. The paintings are marked with runes in ancient Moilian; while it's theoretically possible a PC knows it, yeah, no. Comprehend languages or similar reveals that they say "Manifest the power of the Wand of Days." Next room is empty but coated in frost-- except for one bare patch on the floor, human-shaped, covered in bits of ice. Something pulled itself out of the ice here... Next room used to be full of statues. Now, it's full of smashed statues. The floor is covered in stone arms, legs, torsos and heads, all rimed in the everpresent frost; it's very disconcerting. On the eastern side of the room, PCs spot an un-smashed statue. Actually, it's a Moilian zombie, and getting within 20 feet of it causes it to "activate," springing to life and draining the PCs of hp every round as Moilian zombies do. It pulls itself free and attacks. As a refresher, Moilian zombies are usually quiescent, but have a constant 20-foot radius life drain effect (in addition to a suite of cold-based powers and immunities). This is how they activate, and once they run out of hp they go back into sleep mode unless really hacked apart or similar. Anyways, this one has simple clothing, a non-magical headband with a carving of the rising sun on a metal disk, and 46 Moilian platinum pieces; they have towers on one side and Orcus's face on the other. Next room is the Seat of the Long View, a stone chair in front of a window into the outer darkness. The Sect of the Morning Sun was based here, and this group was responsible for turning Moil away from Orcus. Too bad about how all that turned out. They focused their contemplation and adoration on the sun, so Orcus decided that if they thought the sun would save them, why not make it so? And so they died, waiting for the sun. Sitting in the seat whilst wearing the zombie's headband lights you up for an instant like a sunrise; you are suddenly invigorate as from a full night's sleep, and you regain 3 hp and can rememorize spells. Only once per PC per 24 hours. Sadly, the throne had more cool powers, but none of the keys survived. Proceeding northwest, the PCs enter a hallway where the ice has grown very thickly into pillars, stalactites and stalagmites. Every 10 feet you travel, you have a 20% chance of dislodging an icicle; save vs. breath weapon or take 1d4 damage. Not crippling, but flavorful. The door at the end is frozen solid and requires magic or hard work to open. Next room is filled with layers of ice, reducing its size to a ten-foot cube. In the center is a pedestal, topped with a vise holding a wooden wand. If the PCs touched any of the sun art panels in the previous room, runes on the pedestal and wand glow; the runes on the pedestal say "The choice of Days empowers the wand, but the choice cannot be made from here." The wand says "Kindle" on the side (all of this is in Moilian, of course). "Kindle" in any language is the command word, and causes the wand to shed light in a 50-foot radius for two rounds. The light is exactly identical to the light of the sun at the time of day indicated by the currently glowing panel, and functions as such for all purposes (injuring vampires, lifting the Moil curse etc). If the PCs chose the "sunrise" panel, Panel 2, triggering the wand instantly destroys any Moilian zombie in the radius as the curse is ended and its spirit is set free. The wand has ten charges and can be recharged once a week at the pedestal. This is the most important item in the entire adventure-- fortunately it's hard to miss. The following chamber is a library without books (they all rotted years ago) and a Moilian zombie. Anticlimactic! I will post more on the other towers later, but for now I will leave you with this. Next time: Casinos and Bus Stations, Moil has Everything!
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Aug 9, 2013 00:07
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Kurieg posted:
Haha, it's supposed to be hours, nice catch. It's still basically an annoyance and it's more for flavor than anything else.
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Aug 9, 2013 00:44
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Compared to everything else the city has going on, 1 damage every 6 years seems like more of an annoyance than anything else.
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Return to the TOMB OF HORRORS Part 9: I call it "Lost Wages." So when last we left our intrepid As a refresher, here's our map of Moil. The PCs arrived at location 1. I detailed Tower 2, but that one's kind of a dead end. We'll next go to Tower 3-- the Tower of Chance! The bridge leads into an archway surrounded by chaotic groupings of Moilian runes, which turn out to be numbers. They're not magical or anything, and they're truly random and meaningless-- because this tower was a casino. Yup.  Location 3.2 is a pretty massive room that used to be a casino floor full of intricate gambling machines, presumably slots and the like. They're all smashed up. The room definitely used to be a bit luxurious-- there were mirrors on the walls (all now smashed) and there's all kinds of crumbled stone, wood and metal all over the place. If the PCs feel like picking through the remnants of slot machines, they can get some cashola (141 Moilian platinum pieces). 3.3 is a cabaret-- I guess Moil really was like Vegas. There's scattered furniture everywhere, except for a single table and chair that have been drawn up against a window. There's a wine bottle and a crystal cup on the table. Along the western wall there's a long, low counter: a Moilian bar. Ice is, of course, everywhere, except for the ominous human silhouettes where something pulled itself free. The ground behind the bar is littered with smashed glass; searching through it or walking through it in insufficient protective gear forces a Dex check or suffering 1hp of damage from cuts. There are three intact bottles of red ("Warren & Son's Merlot") among the wreckage. There's a secret compartment in the bar with an exquisitely crafted crystal glass, enchanted to protect the drinker from any ill effects of the fluid within, including poison, inebriation etc. The table was drawn up by Desatysso when he passed through here nigh-on 20 years ago and hasn't been disturbed since. PCs can tell by inspecting the table: he scratched "Desatysso was here" into the table with his knife. The bottle contains absinthe, which apparently requires a saving throw vs. poison to avoid losing 1 hp per minute for 20 minutes. I'm pretty sure absinthe doesn't deal 20hp damage on a failed save; maybe I'm just higher level than I thought. There aren't any monsters or traps in here, which is not indicative of Moil as a whole. 3.4 is a private suite with a naked body on a shattered table. The body is in fact a Moilian zombie and animates when the PCs get close. When destroyed, PCs can search it to find a deck of Moilian playing cards and some money. 3.5 is very securely locked and labeled "Final Round Games." It contains a wooden table and six chairs, with a large stone chair against the west wall.  This was a high-stakes gambling room. Very high-stakes: the souls of the players. The game master sat in the stone chair, and losers were subject to the effects of the mirror of life-trapping set in the ceiling. Typically, they'd be set free by the winner in exchange for an oath of service for a set period. Anyone searching or looking up becomes aware of the mirror-- if you look up you see your reflection and must save vs. spell or be trapped in the mirror. The command word that frees prisoners has of course been lost for ages, and you can't remove the mirror without breaking it. Fortunately, breaking the mirror releases trapped occupants! Unfortunately, occupants include more than any trapped PCs. There are two Moilian zombies stuck in there (they are not utterly mindless, and are intelligent enough to be trapped) and a woman named Lerxst, a Moilian from before the curse days, who was trapped there by a card shark named D'wart (details!) hundreds of years ago. Lexst speaks Moilian and Orcish despite being human, and is initially very disoriented and frightened. She will accompany the party, though, not having anywhere to go, once she adjusts. She's a Level 9 thief, with some magic items (boots of spider climbing, short sword of venom +2, darts of homing +3) and decent abilities, and she's not evil, just chaotic neutral. She's not dressed for the cold, so she may need some help, plus she can't help too much with landmarks since the city looks very different from when she was last about (the towers are much taller, for one). She's very self-centered and won't give her life for the party or put their needs above her own survival, escape and enrichment. With Grunther though this party is starting to get a little bigger-- assuming he's still around (idiot almost certainly looked in the mirror if he made it this far). Room 3.6 has three windows looking out into the city and several frozen columns of ice, including one with a human skeleton in it. Trying to bypass it reveals its true nature-- a winter-wight, who says "Come to feel my cold embrace, my darlings?" and attacks. This is a very, very dangerous and powerful undead, and unlike the ubiquitous zombies is likely to pose a serious threat, especially if a PC catches on blackfire. There are more winter-wights later, fought in more hostile conditions-- this is just an introduction to this kind of undead. Area 3.7 is an untrapped staircase that takes the PCs into the next level of the Tower of Chance. So is 3.8-- but this staircase contains a satchel resting on the steps. The buckle is trapped with a save-or-die needle trap (because of course it is); there's a hidden catch that opens it. Inside the bag are spell components for evil spells-- bones, skin, eyes, fear-sweat etc. In the intense cold the labels freeze-dried and flaked off. Very careful handling (ie not picking up) the satchel and visually observing it can remove the vials one by one and match them with their labels (requiring a pick pockets roll)-- otherwise the labels become hopelessly jumbled. If the roll was good enough one of the removed vials is "Corpse Dust (Acererak);" otherwise, that vial is mixed in with the others. There are plenty of vials with similar stuff ("powdered bone, corpse dust (mundane), funerary ashes, mummy crumbs") so it's tough to guess. There's a few random items in there, plus three potions of extra-healing, which are frozen solid and must be carefully thawed to work. This is the spell component satchel of Academician Drake from the Bleak Academy (remember him?) who lost it here in a scuffle with undead. Area 3.9 is a large, mostly empty chamber and the other exit from the tower. The chamber contains some rusting iron wire sculptures of humanoids, the one remaining standing holding a stone tablet. This is covered in Moilian runes, saying "... and by which token you are accounted guests in the Tower of Chance" (the other statue had the first half of this sentence, which is now smashed).  3.10 is a cloakroom-- there are still some clothes in there. Two are woolen cloaks, one's a red poncho, and one's a white brushed leather cloak. That one is a robe of powerlessness., though casting remove curse on it before putting it on turns it into a handy robe of warmth-- you have to recast every time you take it off or put it on, though. 3.11 is a roulette room! There's a roulette table and a brass plaque on the wall, reading (in Common) "In games of chance there are risks to be taken/The winner is rewarded but the loser, forsaken." Acererak of course left that here, and of course it's a trap-- it's Acererak's Haphazard Wheel, as detailed in my earlier post. Suffice it to say that it is not to be hosed with lightly. 3.12 is a display room full of cabinets and shelves, all smashed up and shaken as though a giant had picked the whole room up. Only one item is intact: a glass-fronted curio cabinet in the southwestern corner. It's covered in ice, so you can't see inside, but glows golden from inside. This is one of my favorite rooms in the adventure. Acererak put this here to test adventurers to see if they were just greedy. The cabinet is magiced against x-ray vision and scrying (but not psionics, making them useful for perhaps the first time ever). Melting the ice to look through undoes the curse and fades the light. The cabinet is empty. Opening the door, on the other hand, has dramatic effects. Every source of light in the room, including the golden glow, is magically extinguished. A random party member must save vs. spell at -4 or be silently teleported 50 feet to the east, which leaves them dangling outside the tower; without intervention they will fall through into the Negative Energy Plane and be gone forever. Nice knowing you! If the save is passed, another member must save at -3, then someone at -2, then -1, then nobody has to save-- so likely at least ONE person is going outside. Relighting a torch, generating magical light or any means of creating light causes the cabinet to swing shut and resume a golden glow. Every time you open it this happens again. Room 3.13 is a vault to hold valuables. It's lined with foot-thick steel plates, magiced against scrying, teleportation, or passing through them. Above the door is a symbol of death that will kill up to 80HD of creatures passing through the door who are unauthorized (like all of the PCs). The wheel that opens the door is locked, and the key is gone, and the lock gives you a -30% penalty to pick it, and also it has a symbol of insanity inscribed on it that will affect anyone with less than 120 hp fiddling with it. Man, that's a lot of security! Inside there's a fuckload of money. There's also a Moilian zombie, unfortunately, and this one's deadlier than most. It used to be the sentinel of the vault. In addition to Moilian zombie abilities, it has a sentinel mask and gauntlet of guard, both of which I described in a previous post. It can pew pew 10d6 damage energy bolts from its finger, has AC 0, and can see through almost all magical concealment. The vault, in addition to having more than 4000 platinum pieces, is a great place to hole up and recover, and it does open from the inside. So that's the Tower of Chance. Tower 4 is the Tower of Portals, which used to be the hub o the Moilian transit network.  You can see there's not much of it left. The arch simply reads "Tower of Portals." Inside, it's hollow-- there are catwalks that the PCs can use to navigate. There's a bridge and stairway down to another exit.  4.2 is just the catwalk. It glows with its own illumination. 4.3 is a "Portal of Peril." It's a silvery metal arch filled with haze that makes it impossible to see through. Carved into the left-hand side is a circular depression with a humanoid palm print in blue tile. The symbols atop the arch read "Kainrath" in Moilian-- this portal used to transport people to city of Kainrath. Now, of course, it leads nowhere. Well, not nowhere. Walking through it takes you to a random location in the Quasielemental Plane of Vacuum, a place where there is... nothing. Without air pressure, you breathe out in one round of long continuous breath. After that you must make a saving throw vs. death every round with a -2 cumulative penalty per round until you die. You also bleed off 1 hp of heat each round-- it's deathly cold, but vacuum is a great insulator, so you'll suffocate before you freeze. The handprint actually opens the gate, causing a tremendous howl as all of the air (and everything else!) is sucked through due to the pressure differential. Everyone within 100 feet is subject to this (beyond that you can hold yourself back) and is swept towards the gate at a movement rate of 21. Within 100 feet, you can attempt a Dex check to grab something. If you fail, you get another chance-- make a Dex check at -4 to grab the edge of the archway. Anyone who grabbed something must make a Strength check every round or lose their grip. Items like ropes make an item saving throw each round vs. fire. You can re-trigger the palm print to close it or wait 10 rounds, when it closes automatically. Anyone who can fly will still be drawn in, but slowly-- at a rate of 3 per round, not 21 (since fly confers a movement rate of 18) and get a +2 on Strength checks to not be sucked in. 4.4 is another portal, inlaid with three symbols atop the arch-- a blue, a black, and a red-- and with three handprints: blue, black and red. This is the intra-city transport, and the three glyphs read "Tower of Health," "Hub," and "Periphery," respectively. This one still works. Pressing a handprint and walking through the arch takes you somewhere-- the Tower of Health is an interesting place (we'll cover it later-- it's Tower 7) and the Hub is an essential location for proceeding once you're done in Moil (it's Location 16) but the Periphery takes you outside the bounds of the parts of Moil that Acererak has preserved. You simply teleport into thin air and fall into the Negative Energy Plane, goodbye forever! Not touching any palmprints means the arch is just an arch and doesn't take you anywhere. 4.5 is a portal with a yellow haze within and a yellow palm print. This one takes you into a torture machine in are 6.7 in Moil's police station tower if you walk through it. Don't do that. Opening the palm print opens a two-way gate to Area 6.2, summoning the Moilian headsman-- a deadly foe, and one that will be described when we get to Tower 6. This portal is best not hosed with. From here, the PCs can go to all manner of places-- the Tower of Chance's exit leads to a hub that can take you to Towers 11, 14 or 8, and the Tower of Portals exits into Tower 5. But I know where we're going: the best place of all! Next time: A visit to the po-pos and my favorite room in any RPG, ever, ever!
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Aug 11, 2013 21:20
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Glazius posted:Ah, blindly walking through portals as the key to plot progression. Now that's some Tomb of Horrors. To be fair, you don't need to go through any portals. The entire adventure can be completed while skipping the portals entirely and just entering and exiting the tower. The portals are just a quicker, more dangerous route.
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Aug 11, 2013 23:04
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Return to the TOMB OF HORRORS, Part 10: Disregard the Law Enforcement Officials (And the Dragon) Hello again everyone! Let's continue exploring Moil! Tower 5 is known as the Aqueous Tower. Long ago, this was a reservoir of sorts-- this is where Moil got its potable water. Since then, the water's been polluted and salted, to the point of undrinkability. The salt has had the side effect of keeping it liquid in the intense cold of Moil, otherwise it would have frozen long ago. There's about 500 feet of water in the tower; the entrance is 20 feet above the surface, and magic keeps it in, but any PC who swims down the whole way for some reason is liable to be pulled into the Negative Energy Plane as normal. There is also a plug of solidified salt down there, which has been hollowed out into a lair for the tower's only inhabitant-- an adult brine dragon. While it is possible to try to hole the wall of the tower with spells and thereby drain out some of the water, the walls have been treated to reflect magic 45% of the time, and you'd have to blast through the salt to drain the tower beyond a certain level-- and doing so awakens and mightily pisses off the dragon.  So why do the PCs want to go into this deathtrap at all? Well, if not for the poem, they'd likely avoid it. There's one thing and one thing only they need down here: a key, necessary for proceeding past Moil to the Fortress of Conclusion. There's a rusted iron ladder that leads down to the water and a ways below it; fortunately, it won't snap if PCs step on it. DMs whose PCs go down here should familiarize themselves with the rules for fighting underwater (they're really nasty and crippling without magical assistance like a ring of free action), and should remember a few things: 1) Once you get into the brine caves it is pitch black. Infravision doesn't work well because the water is so cold, so bring a non-flame light source. 2) The water's so cold that hypothermia is a problem. Unless you're magically protected from cold, you must make a Con check every round, with each subsequent check having a -2 penalty. One failure sends you unconscious. A second failure kills you. 3) You, of course, cannot breathe underwater. Better get some water breathing cast on you. It's up to you if you want to use some water pressure rules. I can't find the 2e ones, but the 3e ones are 1d6 points of damage/hundred feet subsurface/round. So, it adds up. Anyways, the ladder goes down 40 feet underwater, where it terminates in a plateau of solid salt. This does not cover the entire floor-- around the center of the tower there's a lip, a 20-foot drop, and a wide cave mouth below. Entering this cave-- noted 5.4 on the map-- takes you to my favorite room in all of AD&D second edition. It's a trap, of course, but it's so elegant in its simplicity that I can't help but applaud. It's a grotto, fully submerged, and with salt making up the walls, floor and ceiling. One wall-- the far one-- is pitted, corroded iron; the interior of the tower. There's some glyphs scratched into the walls in typical Acererak style. These glyphs, when read, unleash a 20th-level dispel magic. Spell, active magic items, potions, and everything else instantly fails. It's... it's beautiful. So assuming that your PCs can survive freezing, drowning, crushing and pitch-blackness, they can continue. The next room has two skeletons, embedded in the salt wall-- victims of the dispel trap. The brine dragon stripped their bodies of possessions/nutrients and then stowed their remains here to keep his lair "neat and tidy" per the adventure. The bones are fragile and, if delicately handled, can be determined to be acid-scored (this is from the brine dragon's saliva). Area 5.6 is the brine dragon's hoard.  And there he is, trollfacing at you! The dragon's actually asleep, despite his massive grin. It's 50 feet long and has flippers instead of legs (brine dragons are wholly aquatic). It sleeps away the years, absorbing salt through its skin and guarding a silver key atop a salt pillar. The best way to defeat it is not to fight it-- grab the key and run like hell. You must pass a Move Silently check to do this, base 5% chance. Silently or not, 1d20 rounds after PCs enter its chamber the dragon wakes up. It is pissed off and hungry and will attack on sight-- it can't be reasoned with. In addition to biting, slamming etc. it has a breath weapon: a spray of alkaline salt and saliva. It also has Melf's Acid Arrow 3x a day. It's generally a nasty enemy, and it also doesn't suffer the really nasty underwater fighting penalties PCs do, as an aquatic creature. It has a hoard, if they manage to kill it, but the hoard's not too big, since the dragon can't leave the water. It has a lot of money, some potions (extra-healing, speed, clairvoyance and [/i]oil of fumbling[/i]), some art and scrolls (all ruined by the water), a shield +2, a rope of entanglement, a ruined magic tome, a dwarven throwing hammer +3, a scarab of death and a rod of resurrection with seven charges, which will definitely come in handy. So next we head to tower 6-- the Tower of Discipline. This is where Moil's criminal justice system was based, and the excesses of that system directly led to the rebellion and curse. As befitting an Orcus-worshipping city, justice in Moil was arbitrary and violent. There's only one level of this tower left, but that's dangerous enough.  6.1 is the entrance. 6.2 is the Hall of Slaying where public executions, a great source of spectacle for the depraved Moilians, took place. It's all smashed up now, except for Headsman, the magen executioner. A word on magen, since there are a few scattered about : magen are kind of like intelligent golems made of magically charged gelatin poured into molds-- they're human-looking, but designed for a specific purpose. Headsman was designed to chop off 'eads and that's what 'e does, especially now that he has gone insane from years without human contact or instruction. He wears a headsman's hood and wields an axe-- the Headsman's Hood and Headsman's Axe of Moil,, in fact. The Hood allows him to issue a suggestion 3x a day, but it's much more powerful than the standard spell-- the target will attempt to complete the command at the exclusion of all other tasks, and if they are asked to lay their necks down on the stone chopping block and wait motionless, they get a -5 saving throw penalty. The axe is effectively a vorpal sword +3, but if a creature is standing or lying motionless before the wielder they can be automatically decapitated with no roll required, regardless of mitigating factors. Naturally this a very fair and balanced combat and definitely won't result in one PC after another failing a save at -5 and being instagibbed with no save. When the PCs first enter Headsman will be completely stunned at the sight of them, but it will quickly get to loppin' off heads with the help of its hood. Headsman also has a key around its neck on a chain that opens the door at 6.4.6.3 is an "Interrogatorium," the only one of four that survived the transit to the demiplane. It's a torture chamber, of course. There's a 10'x10'x10' construction of iron bars against the south wall, suspended in the center of which is a giant cocoon connected to frost-coated webs. It's about 6'x2'. This tower used to contain tanar'ri torturers; the web is a remnant of a fiendish torture that killed its victim (so he didn't rise as a zombie). The body wears a chain around its neck and a loincloth-- attached to the chain is a brass vial containing a piece of durable parchment that reads, in Moilian, "Interrogation Until Admission," the fate of the prisoner. 6.4 is the entrance to the cell blocks, a 4' thick wall of iron enchanted against magical passage or destruction. The door has a bas-relief of a huge screaming face; if you try to pick the lock (-20% penalty) you have to be quick, because success or failure brings the jaws gnashing shut. Save vs. breath weapon to avoid it-- failure by 1-5 points means you take 1d6 damage, failure by more does 1d6 and you lose a hand (it's bitten off by the mouth!). Past the door is a cell block, complete with a mural of demonic beings preparing humans to eat. The cells contain flickering, multicolored lights that give the whole hallway an eerie aspect. Any PC who studies the whole mural from beginning to end must take a saving throw vs. paralyzation with a -2 penalty or be wracked by horrible nightmares for the next five nights, preventing them from re-memorizing spells and suffering a -1 cumulative Thac0, ability check and saving throw penalty due to fatigue. Remove Curse will get rid of this effect. The cells are all empty aside from the outlines of Moilian zombies, and each has a strobing light in it that sends out the flickers PCs saw earlier (a calculated attempt to break prisoners' spirits). The key you got from Headsman unlocks the cells in case you really wanna go in there, but don't touch the bars-- it causes severe pain. If you touch them for a full round you lose 1d4 Strength plus suffer horrible agony; if you reach zero, you fall unconscious for 1d4+4 rounds. One of the cells, 6.5, is dark; the light got smashed. Doing so is a very bad idea, since they're enchanted, and smashing them causes them to leak a mildly acidic black fluid endlessly (it deals 1hp of damage/round). Any prisoner who got rowdy and smashed the light was allowed to simply dissolve slowly and horribly in the acid that filled up their cell. 6.6 is actually occupied! There's a woman in there, shackled to the wall and with a hood over her head. She's wearing a frayed brown robe and her head lolls on her chest.  This is Isafel, until relatively recently one of Acererak's only living servants. Being a living servant of Acererak is risky and stupid; he has nothing but contempt for the living, and on a pretext he tossed her in here to "teach her humility" and then forgot about her. When she hears the party, she raises her head and shouts, "Acererak! Have you come finally to release me from this chill bondage? I've learned humbleness and will serve you faithfully! I beg you to release me!" She's smart and will quickly realize that, whoever the PCs are, they're not Acererak. She'll beg to be released and will promise to reveal all she knows if they do. She asks them to free her hands first, which she'll then use to free her head. See, there's something about Isafel she won't tell PCs-- she's not human at all, she's a medusa. She'll attempt to petrify them all as proof of her loyalty to Acererak. Isafel still has her possessions, and they're what have enabled her to survive this long. She has a ring of warmth on one hand and a nonmagical emerald ring on the other, and a pouch with some personal possessions and a petrified heart and stomach, which act as permanent rings of sustenance and regeneration. Anyways, area 6.7 is the Afflictionaria, another torture chamber. It's full of fully operational torture machines (one of the portals back at the Tower of Portals teleported a PC into one of these machines), including various harnesses and tables and razors and so on. The DM is encouraged to be creative when furnishing this room, and to just suggest a few items on a table next to a restraining chair and let the PCs' imaginations do the horrible filling-in of details. This is not Cthulhutech. There's a corpse strapped to a wheel that was tortured to death before the curse and didn't rise; his brass vial contains a parchment that says "Absolve," which the torturers chose to disregard. Fun! Anyways, that's it for 6.7. Some magic items and one really nasty combat encounter. Next time we pay a visit to the doctor and see what Moilian medicine was like! Next time: Spiders and Magens!
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Aug 19, 2013 01:21
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Bieeardo posted:Wait, magen? Goddamn, that's one seriously obscure monster. They appeared in the ill-fated Mystara Monstrous Compendium Appendix and there are a TON of monsters from that book in this adventure, leading me to believe that they were directed to push it with this adventure. Nightwalker, Fundamentals, Magen, and one that's worse than all of them coming up later.
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Aug 19, 2013 04:14
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Bieeardo posted:Fundamentals somehow merited a reprint in one of the Planescape sourcebooks too, but I managed to forget the Mystara compendium somehow. It makes sense trying to use critters from that one setting that almost nobody touched, if they were trying to really focus on how exotic Moil is. haha guess what 
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Aug 19, 2013 22:54
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 Pictured: The Pentex Board of Directors also, the content of RaA isn't worse than a lot of oWoD (which is not really saying much, I know) but man, the art is so bad. I keep expecting a semi-professional piece to pop up and it's all just so awful, uniformly, with no respite. What the gently caress, really?
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Sep 1, 2013 18:36
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Return to the TOMB OF HORRORS Part 11: WAAAAAAMBULANCE Sorry everyone! I've been really really busy, I just got a new job, and lacking motivation. But there's tons of cool stuff left! I'm only going to do one tower this time, but I promise I'll try to go back to a more regular schedule. So Tower 7 is next.  This was the "Tower of Health," where Moilians went to get healed from the various horrors that could readily befall members of an Orcus-worshipping society. Moilian medicine was very advanced, with the ability to regrow limbs, heal afflictions, etc. Naturally it's all gone to poo poo now, but the PCs don't know that! And neither do the staff... There are three levels of the tower left; one's empty and desolate and can only be accessed by flying because the bridge that once led to it has fallen away, so we'll ignore it. The entrances are marked by a Moilian caduceus symbol: a bandage-wrapped humanoid figure intertwined with two snakes, who stare at each other above its head. It's ominous and spooky but also pretty evocative and should give the PCs an idea of what's in here. The lobby, 7.2, is shattered, and full of paper debris (if the PCs can read Moilian, it's all ancient medical records). 7.3 was a waiting room, with a huge open window that now looks over the dead city. There's a bunch of viewing chairs, but there's nothing interesting in any of them, except for one which has a pair of Moilian zombies! 7.4 is a convalescent room, containing a steel-framed bed, armoire and mirror. The bed covers are pulled up over a figure, but after the PCs spend a moment freaking out they'll realize it's just the skeletal remains of a Moilian who died before the curse. 7.5 is another such room, but this one's occupied! It's been totally trashed and destroyed, and there's a youthful woman in there wearing a grey robe and a long white coat with platinum blond hair, with her head in her hands. This is Cyndia, a medron magen. Magen are, basically, golems of a sort. They're made of sorcerously charged gelatin poured into a humanoid mold, and they're much more intelligent than golems. They're all purpose-built and their personalities, interests and abilities entirely revolve around their purpose. As the term "medron" would imply, Cyndia and her former co-workers were all nurses and doctors. She's got skill proficiency in healing and herbalism along with 18/75 Strength, and she can cure light wounds three times per day. When the PCs enter, Cyndia greets them, saying (in ancient Moilian, natch) "Hello? Are you feeling poorly? I am a fully functional medron. I can help you with your wounds or hurts. It has been so very long since I have laid eyes upon a living being!" Cyndia is genuinely nice and wants to help the PCs; it's her function, after all. If any PCs are hurt, she will try her best to help them. This includes leading them to the medical stores. If one's really badly hurt, she'll want to take them to Doctor Tarr, the remaining doctor medron, in the operating room, and she'll insist on carrying them. Cyndia will accompany the party if they let her (she really wants to keep living beings alive and hasn't had any to help in a long time) and she is very familiar with the Tower of Health. However, she's not familiar with the city outside at all, and she implicitly trusts everything in the Tower is working properly, which is a very dangerous assumption. She'll use a weapon if they give her one, but she'll never willingly harm a living being. 7.6 is a "deepview chamber" with a "deepviewer," kind of a magical x-ray. It's a huge iron cylinder 30 feet long and 10 wide, with a 3-foot hatch and a cracked crystal screen above it. The patient lies down on a platform which is rolled into the door, the door closes, then the patient is magically paralyzed (so they don't confuse the machine by accident) and the crystal screen shows a silhouette of the person's body with any kind of illness, injury, or even curse shown on it for easy diagnosis. Then the machine reads off the diagnosis, frees the patient and spits them back out. At least in theory. Cyndia, of course, is a strong proponent of it, saying that PCs really should get checked out. She won't force them, but she will say "good deepviewing can only be to your benefit... it will not hurt a bit!" and assuring them that any previous bad experiences they've had with medical equipment in here are down to their lack of experience. Anyone who climbs up onto the platform is automatically paralyzed. The door creaks and tries to close, but can't. Regardless, the platform slides deeper into the machine, into a cargo pod, which hides the patient from sight. Steel-reinforced viewing grids close in around the patient, and the friends outside see the person's body, with injuries glowing green and yellow. Suddenly, the body convulses and gets bright red. The sensor grids closed a little too closely on the patient, and they must save vs. polymorph or take 4d10 damage. The deepviewer says in Moilian "This patient has been severely crushed, and needs medical attention immediately." The patient is then ejected and lands in a heap. If Cyndia sees this happen, she screams and grabs the body, trying to take it to Dr. Tarr for help, or for preservation in the freezing room (of which more later) if the patient died. PCs can stop her with threats of violence, but she's very insistent otherwise. Room 7.7 has a limb regrowing machine. It's a tall cylinder covered in glass pods, some shattered, with a human-shaped indentation in the side. It regenerated limbs and organs, not an infrequent requirement in a city as violent as Moil. The machine has not been maintained in a while and its effects these days are erratic, to say the least. Of course, Cyndia will encourage PCs to try it. If you step into the indentation with a full set of limbs and organs, nothing happens. Stepping in while missing something triggers the machine. The glass pods turn from green to yellow, and the whole machine hums. The smashed glass pods sizzle and crackle and fill the air with a burnt ozone smell. The DM can compare the PC's constitution to a chart, or roll a d20. In either event, this is what happens: 1-6 Subject killed outright. Also, limb doesn't regrow. gently caress you. 7-9 Subject falls into a coma for 1d4 days; withered, useless limb regrown. Haha. 10-14 Limb regrown with a mind of its own; attempts to bring about subject's demise. Snort. 15-17 Normal limb regrown. Neat. 18+ Limb regrown with beneficial supernatural characteristic of DM's choice (resistance to injury, strength, etc. So that's actually kind of cool. And if you don't roll d20 on this you are a bad DM. You can smash more globes to truly gently caress up the machine forever, if you really want to. Sections 7.8 and 7.9 are a stairwell connecting the levels. 7.10 is a deepfreezer; the floor is covered in 3-foot diameter pools, 16 in all, full of glowing bluish fluid. Three of the pools cast strange shadows, as if there's something in there blocking the light. The fluid bubbles and roils, and the room as a whole is VERY cold. This room used to be used to preserve critically ill or injured Moilians until a cure could be prepared. They contained a magically super-chilled fluid, and patients were dipped and frozen. An enchantment prevented cell damage or further injury from the freezing. However, this enchantment has worn off, but not the one that made the fluid super cold. Three of the pools contain Moilians, who simply died when the safety enchantment wore off. Any living flesh that touches the fluid takes 2d6 points of damage per round, and full submerging instantly kills anyone. If you're magically protected from cold you get a save vs. breath weapon, though even on a pass you still take 2d6 damage; a Dex or Str check at -4 each round gets you out of a pool. Fluid outside of the pool boils away almost instantly. Of course Cyndia trusts the fluid implicitly. 7.11 is full of medical supplies. It's magically locked against anyone but a medron. It's lined with shelves inside with a dizzying array of jars, pouches, etc., all of which are frosted and frozen. Some have been smashed and one of the shelves has toppled.  The toppled shelf, of course, rests on a Moilian zombie. Because gently caress you. And the referenced chart:  Hooray! 7.12 is the home of the infamous Dr. Tarr. He's the last of the other medrons, and was once a very competent surgeon. He's in a high-ceilinged room, filled with neatly made beds. It's an OR, in fact. Tarr himself descends from the ceiling when the PCs enter.  Meet the Doctor! He's on the end of an "ectodraulic" appendage of rusted iron. The ceiling is covered in tracks he can move along. He can go anywhere in the room and about 20 feet past it. Tarr's primary function is to perform operations, and he hasn't gotten to in quite a few years; as a result, he's quite mad. He's good at disguising this fact, though, and it won't be apparent right away. He has excellent bedside manner and seems to be a concerned, gentle healer with patients' best interests in mind. He and Cyndia will urge a PC to get on an operating table so he can have a look at the problem. If a PC gets on the bed, Tarr anesthetizes them, and from there will not ever let them go, no matter what. He'll keep putting the other PCs off, saying things like "He really needs a few more days of observation, and all of the tissue cell tests are not in yet!" He'll also try to get the other PCs to submit to examination-- he'd like nothing more than to have a whole party of PCs kept drugged and anesthetized so that he could operate on them until they inevitably die of complications from repeated surgeries, or old age. He'll really try to coax someone to agree to "just a basic checkup and physical," but if nobody will, he gets desperate and attempt to anesthetize the party-- he can shoot sleeping gas from one of his limbs three times per day. He is also a very competent fighter with his array of blades and stuff, due to his knowledge of anatomy. He won't kill any PCs, but he'll stabilize them and then knock them out and put them on tables. Cyndia will help him nonlethally, trying to restrain PCs. It's very hard to attack the iron pipe, so PCs should attack Tarr, but he's a tough customer himself. Nothing they can't handle, I hope. 7.13 is an emergency exit. This tower's not a bad place to rest a while, but it's not secure against the Vestige (always a concern). Cyndia's a great ally, though chances are it'll be hard to convince her to stay with them if they kill Dr. Tarr. No guidelines on that-- DM it how you think is appropriate. Tower 8 I'm skipping. It used to be the Moilian mint, but the insides have totally collapsed, so it's hollow now. Next time: Spiders and bridges!
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Sep 16, 2013 00:22
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