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View Full Version : Traumatize The PCS: Harsh Adventure Creation



Lord Loss
2009-05-29, 07:38 AM
Okay guys. thanks for coming to read this. I am in the middle of a 3.5 campaign in which Undead and Abberations are slowly contaminating the world.
The Pcs just stepped into a portal into an alternate Material (well, inner as my cosmology works) plane that is ALMOST COMPLETELY overrun by Undead, Grell and other abberation, such as grimlocks, kaorti, Mindflayers, etc. They are en route to a sinister looking castle.

Currently there are 4 OVERPOWERED LVL Nines in the party : A shadowcaster/Child of night a topaz guardian / blackguard, a Ghostly Samurai and a human sorcerer. And maybe a half dragon stormtalon. We're not sure bout that one.

So anyway, I'm having trouble coming up with an adventure that is SO CHALLENGING. that every encounter will contain life-and-death situation, that PCS May be dropping at a rate of One-Or-Two Per Session. This is going to be a mixture of Tomb of Horrors style gameplay with strategy filled combat and the occasional hack'n Slash encounter. There will also be a bit of roleplay.

So, gentlemen, thank you, and let us design the adventure. Thanks for helping me.

purplearcanist
2009-05-29, 09:53 AM
Ideas:

-Have an undead town outside the castle. Have it admit only undead, and attack non-undead on sight. Have a bar that serves real bloody marys. Have a resistance force with useful anti-undead aid (if the PCs can find them).
-Separate the PC's. Have walls that slide into place.
-Sphere of Annihilation.
-Room with infinite undead. Have a way out (lock, puzzle) but it takes time and requires concentration (if you get hit by an undead, make a concentration check).

Lord Loss
2009-05-29, 03:46 PM
Good So, the Beggining of an adventure is coming along.

THANK YOU PURPLEARCANIST!!!

First off, we want to challenge them so...

Here are some ideas of how we could start this off:

Woods surround the castle

In the forest, we should have ...

A) Zombies? Everyone loves having Undead. We could have little undead (Human Zombies), bigger undead like Umber Hulk or Owlbear Zombies and finally two or three bigger zombies or abberations such as Queth-Maren or Vampire Illithids (Though I used Vampiric Illithids two sessions ago so maybe it's time to make this more original) last adventure.

B) Trees that are alive, maybe some evil treants and other plant-based monsters from Heroes of Horrors... They could split the party into little groups of doomed people who will get attacked by trees. And They're fire resistent... so smart alecks ruining potential deathzones with a One Cp torch...

C) A trap filled area of ultimate doom that sets off this whole tree collapsing, mane and vrock summoning, Flame Spitting Trap Fiesta... or should we save that for the castle.

D) We need sentient beings that have conceled traps that lead into the food pit in their burrows...

Please submit some ideas like.. more ways to populate the forest, a larger theme or some (VERY CREATIVE) Idea for a reccuring main villain!

THANKS!

Aditionally, the Undead Town seems really cool and twisted because the PCs think they're heading for a town of good-aligned people, one of the last remaining in this plane so, thanks Purplearcanist for the brilliant, genius, evil IDEA!!!

I have some nefarious ideas for the inside of the castle. I will post them once we have more ideas for the Forest.

Sphere of Ahnillation? GENIUS!

The Tygre
2009-05-29, 04:18 PM
Dude, if you want an undead town, I recommend Necromancer Games' 'Bonegarde'; it's a one mile wide magical graveyard. Healing doesn't work right, any undead killed rise the next night, all ways out are locked, and the lich king of the place attacks all spellcasters. And rest? Forget about it; the entire area is cursed with nightmares.

Lord Loss
2009-05-29, 04:51 PM
I had intended to create my own, bu this gives us some material to work with.

First Up:


NorSkull

In this world, the sun will Never Rise

Norskull is a large graveyard-city. At first, it simply seems like a huge graveyard, but the Graves are the residences of the poor, the large crypt underneath is home to the middle-class citizens as well as the market, and the Mausoleums are where the rich may be found. All undead here are sentient, even skeletons and zombies, and anyone to die in this area becomes a Neutral Evil Zombie with no memories of it's past life.

The Rulers of this city, however, are the inhabitants of the castle ,At lest the ones in the highest (or should it be lowest) parts of the castle. They should be Ahloon (Lich) Mind Flayers.

Vampiric mind flayers march the streets of the city, searching for living beings that they can quench their thirst with. The most elite missions in this town are carried out by a special force composed of intelligent Flesh Golems (They lose their intelligence if they go berserk, ravaging all around them).

Like it so far? Post more ideas (Not just suggestions, you can put text too)

Roc Ness
2009-05-29, 09:53 PM
The Pcs just stepped into a portal into an alternate Material (well, inner as my cosmology works) plane that is ALMOST COMPLETELY overrun by Undead, Grell and other abberation, such as grimlocks, kaorti, Mindflayers, etc. They are en route to a sinister looking castle.


This sounds like the Castle series by Oscar Johannson. If you want to check that out for ideas look up deletionquality on google.

(The series is actually several stickmen animations. The first one sucks but the others are really good if you like 3D stickmen and special effects)

Icewalker
2009-05-29, 10:27 PM
Stolen significantly from Tamora Pierce, although generic enough in subject matter to not be stealing:

A group of horrific spider-esque monsters which live in the tops of the trees, very large, powerful webs, with lots of dark and horrific ambushes for the PCs, often with stealing members of the party away to be eaten.

purplearcanist
2009-05-29, 10:28 PM
I had intended to create my own, bu this gives us some material to work with.

First Up:


NorSkull

In this world, the sun will Never Rise

Norskull is a large graveyard-city. At first, it simply seems like a huge graveyard, but the Graves are the residences of the poor, the large crypt underneath is home to the middle-class citizens as well as the market, and the Mausoleums are where the rich may be found. All undead here are sentient, even skeletons and zombies, and anyone to die in this area becomes a Neutral Evil Zombie with no memories of it's past life.

The Rulers of this city, however, are the inhabitants of the castle ,At lest the ones in the highest (or should it be lowest) parts of the castle. They should be Ahloon (Lich) Mind Flayers.

Vampiric mind flayers march the streets of the city, searching for living beings that they can quench their thirst with. The most elite missions in this town are carried out by a special force composed of intelligent Flesh Golems (They lose their intelligence if they go berserk, ravaging all around them).

Like it so far? Post more ideas (Not just suggestions, you can put text too)

OK.
Heres some ideas:
-Make some areas minor-negetive energy dominant, and some major-negetive energy energy dominant. This place is filled with undead, after all.
-If an undead creature is killed, give it a chance of respawning within a day or so, because of the undead nature of the city. This could lead to an interesting situation: The PCs kill a notable undead, and several days later it respawns and attacks again. However, this respawn only occurs once. Also, give PCs a simple way (sprinkling a touch of holy water on the spot where the undead was killed for example) to prevent this from occuring. Sprinkle some clues as appropriate.
-Have traps that ignore undead, but do a nasty effect to a living creature.
-Make it hard for the PCs to use abilities that involve light/positive energy. Perhaps a Charisma check, DC 15. Allow the PCs to ignore this check with vile charms.
-Have the PCs fight their evil duplicates. Perhaps a la Mirror of Opposition.

Plot Twist Idea:

-Before entering the undead city, the PC's meet someone, who promises to help them disguise as the undead. He shows the PCs that the undead are relatively ignored, but the living are killed on sight. If the offer is taken, he pulls out undead costumes for the PC's to wear. When they get to the village, they find that their disguises work very well, not arousing suspicion. Later, they realize that they are undead (give the PC's undead traits, but be sure to alter some of their abilities so that they work as though the PCs were mortal, like healing). When they find out, they may confront the person (if they can find him around town). If they confront this person, he argues that he was doing it for their own good, since it is actually beneficial to be an undead in this town. While he appeared to be living when they met him, he is also undead.

DracoDei
2009-05-29, 11:56 PM
You looked through my organ undead yet? If not, I recommend them as a change of pace as far as mindless undead go. Half of the reason I mention this is because I there is a lot of enthusiasm for them, but intellegent critique is a bit rarer so I am plugging them... the other half is, of course, that they get good reviews, so thing you really should use at least some of them.

wizuriel
2009-05-30, 12:00 AM
a dirgesinger from Libris Mortis would be great for that city. If you really want something nasty have a living hydra attack the party than use song of awakening.

Lord Loss
2009-05-30, 05:12 AM
I had intended to create my own, bu this gives us some material to work with.

First Up:

NorSkull


In this world, the sun will Never Rise

Norskull is a large graveyard-city. At first, it simply seems like a huge graveyard, but the Graves are the residences of the poor, the large crypt underneath is home to the middle-class citizens as well as the market, and the Mausoleums are where the rich may be found. All undead here are sentient, even skeletons and zombies, and anyone to die in this area becomes a Neutral Evil Zombie with no memories of it's past life.

The Rulers of this city, however, are the inhabitants of the castle ,At lest the ones in the highest (or should it be lowest) parts of the castle. They should be Ahloon (Lich) Mind Flayers.

Vampiric mind flayers march the streets of the city, searching for living beings that they can quench their thirst with. The most elite missions in this town are carried out by a special force composed of intelligent Flesh Golems (They lose their intelligence if they go berserk, ravaging all around them).

Like it so far? Post more ideas (Not just suggestions, you can put text too)

Minor Negative-Energy Dominant. For a new twist, ONLY nonmagical lighting works. I think they forgot to buy nonmagical torches. Heheheh...

I like the 'They Come Back To Life' idea, and it could work this way. Undead come back to life a number of times equal to their CR minus 5. Or should it be minus 4?

I like the spider monster idea. There could be an army of wild Chichwenda or other large spiderlike monsters in the forest. Once near the castle, however, they find kaorti or other abberations/undead there, riding them.

Mirrors of opposition will line the walls of a room in the castle. To get to the last boss, they will need to go through a specific one.

Lots and lots of Organ Undead. Being Thrown at the Pcs By more powerful undead. then the PCs realize they're alive. Then I laugh at them. However, should i use the fine or diminutive versions? And should the Undead be chucking them like grenades? Or should larger ones be catapulted like boulders? Oh, The possibilities are endless...


The Garden Of Fugue

In between the town and the castle there lies a large garden which contains all sorts of horrific plants. Those Shreiking Fungus thingies from MM 1 will alert undead guardians (unless the Pcs stealthily bypass them. Others will try to eat them. Some may ask riddles and some may spit flames. Also should I add a hedge maze or is that a bit too much before the actual castle?
PLZ Send in IDEAS for plant monsters

And when the PCs leave the town, they will be undead because the mirror of opposition will have turned them into undead. Good idea? Or should i make it an NPC? Or Remove it altogether?

Dagren
2009-05-30, 05:32 AM
I like the 'They Come Back To Life' idea, and it could work this way. Undead come back to life a number of times equal to their CR minus 5. Or should it be minus 4?How about instead of a fixed number of times, they have to make some kind of skill check each time. Maybe charisma?

Lord Loss
2009-05-30, 05:42 AM
Hmmm... A Charisma Check... sounds good. To add some flair, coming back to life is immediate and they gain some template to seriously piss off the players. And their bite attacks gives negative Levels. Sounds good...

Also, in my opinion we should have a trap at the Castle (or should it be a tomb? more flavorful, but less impact.) entrance that dumps a swarm of Hopping Stomachs on the PCs backed by a few Dark hearts.


Oh And Guys...

Plz, if you dont like something CRITICIZE IT. PLZ!!!

Pyrusticia
2009-05-30, 05:44 AM
I like the 'They Come Back To Life' idea, and it could work this way. Undead come back to life a number of times equal to their CR minus 5. Or should it be minus 4?

I don't really like this, just because it seems too arbitrary. A good world should hold together under the logic of its own construction. That being said, why would a certain vampire rise perfectly fine 7 times, and then just suddenly not rise the 8th time he's killed?

If you want to limit number of risings, I'd recommend making it like someone being raised from the dead, i.e. they lose a level (-1 CR, with appropriate reductions in abilities) each time they rise. This represents the damage to his body that isn't repaired when (un)life is forced back into it. If a CR 1 undead dies, his corpse is too damaged to raise again.

Alternatively, just make it so that they can rise again an unlimited time, unless they're prevented from doing so (body sprinkled with holy water, or burned, or something similar). Then see how many times the PCs have to kill the same undead before they figure it out. :smallwink:

EDIT: The idea mentioned above would also work. A skill check, probably Charisma-based. You could give the check penalties if they were killed with positive energy, sunlight, etc, if you like. You could also give a few of the more important undead in town max ranks in this skill, making them very difficult to keep down for long...

Lord Loss
2009-05-30, 05:59 AM
Genius! Penalties.

Penalty Ideas:

DC: 20 + CR? 15 + CR?

-2 If Killed With positive Energy.

-2 For each time it has died previously.

+2 If Killed with negative Energy.

-4 If killed by a cleric of a good god or a Paladin.

+4 If killed by a Blackguard or Cleric of an Evil Diety.

EDIT: This Skill would be rankable, but we would need to increase the DCs for the skill to Maybe 20/25 +CR. Should Ranks be Class or Cross-Class?

P.S Libris Mortis DIRGESINGERS are a genius Idea, but I was also wondering if anyone had ideas for homebrewed undea. With your help i will now Start Creating Encounters For the Hellhole forest

Lord Loss
2009-05-30, 07:31 AM
D&D Adventure

Area 1:


Reaper Forest

The Pcs walk from the glowing portal into awaiting forest (fools!) The Trees in the forest are in fact (mostly, anyway) treants. A DC (25? 30?) Spot Check Shows that the trees in fact have faces on them. The Boneleaves will drop on the PCs (They're Like evil branches of ultimate doom), and the Treants will move while the PCs arent looking, splitting them up. A few treants will move in to Attack.

Encounters


One: Durkon Was Right!

Attack Treants (8) CR: 2 (each)

Boneleaves(2) CR: 6 (each)

Once the PCs are nice and split up, I'll continue attacking one group while the other(s) head for the town (They think it's Good Aligned Humanoids).

For the Second Encounter i'd like to put some sort of Spider-Based monsters up against the PCs as well as more Treants. Suggestions are welcome. Homebrewed ones are also encouraged.

Thanks!

DracoDei
2009-05-30, 10:42 AM
The hearts and eyes are the only ones that could be catapulted/thrown from a wall as-is without taking damage... the lungs can float, but they have too much air resistance to fly far ballistically... solution is to tie them by a length of string around the trachea (with padding and several windings to keep it from getting crushed by the tension) to a small ceramic or glass bottle of water. The lungs are pulled along like a streamer, and if the bottle doesn't break on contact, they can have instructions on when to blast it with a Shout. The larger gut snakes probably have the HD to take some damage and still be a threat, especially if a direct hit is scored (both since that will get the grapple started, and because the target would probably take equal damage). The stomachs are probably a poor choice for thrown weapons from any height, but a few rounds of pulses from a dark-heart might make even those viable (don't forget to have them make jump checks to reduce the falling damage...) if you REALLY insist, you can have the stomachs in double layered bags with padding between the layers that they can squirm out of after landing... but the stomachs should probably be kept up on the walls with the rest of the archer types... the decent sized ones have pretty good range.

Drogorn
2009-05-30, 01:58 PM
You can also rework the treants so they are undead. Make them charred and blackened horrors.

Lord Loss
2009-05-30, 02:36 PM
Good, so we'll make the Treants Undead , dealing unholy damage. And , (Thanks DracoDei) include nets that Fall from trees containing Hopping Stomach Swarms (CR 13) and Dark Hearts for support. How many forest encounters should we have? Five Maybe? Not too many, just enough for the characters to get in tune with their new enviroment.

Post suggestions (Or Even Encounters, that would be great) of the other encounters. We need...

A Spider monster (I'm thinking maybe Driders) Related encounter, CR 10-12

Another encounter involving the evil treants, attempting to split the members up (CR 12+)

A different kind of plant monster (Cr 8-10)

Some sort of Worm, Wurm, or other inhabitant of the forest. (Cr 8-14)


I wasn't joking about trying to kill the PCs.

Je dit Viola
2009-05-30, 04:48 PM
Please submit some ideas like.. more ways to populate the forest, a larger theme or some (VERY CREATIVE) Idea for a recurring main villain! (bold added, of course)

I have an idea, but it's not very fleshed-out, and I don't think it's very creative...but it sounds like it could be fun.

:Regarding the 'resistance' of living survivors mentioned earlier (I think), the PCs meet up with them, and one of the leaders is a NPC Paladin. However, that Paladin goes off (for one reason or another) and is defeated by the endless waves of undead (off-screen of course).
The next time they see that paladin, he's an Undead Recurring-Villain Leader who fights against the PCs...and is a recurring villain. It'll make the PC's think "What the hey? Isn't that so-and-so Paladin, who was leader of the survivors? Why is he fighting against us? Oh, no...he's an undead!"
And make him retain Paladin Skills, or have corrupted Paladin skills...or something. It would be amusing to see their reaction when an ally paladin turns on them because he turned into an undead.

\/ *shrugs* You're welcome.

Lord Loss
2009-05-30, 05:01 PM
THANK YOU! That's... GENIUS! How's this? Some undead warlord would be the Big bad. His apprentice would, however, be the paladin. He could be a paladin/blackguard or a paladin/Kinslayer or even a paladin/corrupt avenger. I espescially like it with the Kinslayer Variation. Of course, instead of a paladin, we could make it the guild archivist who turns evil and starts taking levels in tainted Scholar/Dirgesinger... Eventually becoming a Lich or other undead... A Vampire maybe?

So, Guys, should we use an archivist (Kinda like a wizard-cleric-loremaster, but with ownage abilities) or a paladin? The PCs have never even heard of archivists before. :smallsmile: Heheheheheh.

Lord Loss
2009-05-30, 08:10 PM
Sorry, But I Kinda Had to double post.


NorSkull


In this world, the sun will Never Rise

Norskull is a large graveyard-city. At first, it simply seems like a huge graveyard, but the Graves are the residences of the poor, the large crypt underneath is home to the middle-class citizens as well as the market, and the Mausoleums are where the rich may be found. All undead here are sentient, even skeletons and zombies, and anyone to die in this area becomes a Neutral Evil Zombie with no memories of it's past life.

The Rulers of this city, however, are the inhabitants of the castle ,At lest the ones in the highest (or should it be lowest) parts of the castle. They should be Ahloon (Lich) Mind Flayers.

Vampiric mind flayers march the streets of the city, searching for living beings that they can quench their thirst with. The most elite missions in this town are carried out by a special force composed of intelligent Flesh Golems (They lose their intelligence if they go berserk, ravaging all around them).

Minor Negative-Energy Dominant. For a new twist, ONLY nonmagical lighting works. I think they forgot to buy nonmagical torches. Heheheh...

Reaper Forest


The Pcs walk from the glowing portal into awaiting forest (fools!) The Trees in the forest are in fact (mostly, anyway) treants. A DC (25? 30?) Spot Check Shows that the trees in fact have faces on them. The Boneleaves will drop on the PCs (They're Like evil branches of ultimate doom), and the Treants will move while the PCs arent looking, splitting them up. A few treants will move in to Attack.

Encounters


One: Durkon Was Right!

Attack Treants (8) CR: 2 (each)

Boneleaves(2) CR: 6 (each)

At this point the Path Forks, and the pCs either go to encounter two

2: Drider Ambush!!!

Three Driders assail the PCs from within the Forest. Dead End.


3: More Treants will attack the PCs, backed up by a Flesh Golem Inquisition, by the End of the fight one will go Berserk (if the PCs are near Ahnillation)

4: A group of Slaymates try and convince the PCs to be their friend whilst actually trying to set up flanking and such. if things get violent, a multitude of Qth-Maren and tomb motes back them up.

DracoDei
2009-05-30, 08:32 PM
The nets are probably overkill given that even with touch AC 18 the CR 13 Swarm does 108 damage if it gets its turn while a target is in it. I know that you said these guys were very powerful level 9's but if you assume the swarm has a held action for someone to drop the net that should still be instant death regardless of if there is a net involved or not. They could equally well be poured out of a barrel, this would give the swarm the ability to move afterwards.

EDITED to correct "double phrasing" 9 AM eastern.

Edit: Alternatively, alter my assumptions about how many can get an angle around eachother to fire, and thus halve the damage.

Lord Loss
2009-05-31, 04:39 AM
108 damage... some can take it... still, I guess I'll make them fall beside the Pcs... Thanks!



So Far, we have...

NorSkull


In this world, the sun will Never Rise

Norskull is a large graveyard-city. At first, it simply seems like a huge graveyard, but the Graves are the residences of the poor, the large crypt underneath is home to the middle-class citizens as well as the market, and the Mausoleums are where the rich may be found. All undead here are sentient, even skeletons and zombies, and anyone to die in this area becomes a Neutral Evil Zombie with no memories of it's past life.

The Rulers of this city, however, are the inhabitants of the castle ,At lest the ones in the highest (or should it be lowest) parts of the castle. They should be Ahloon (Lich) Mind Flayers.

Vampiric mind flayers march the streets of the city, searching for living beings that they can quench their thirst with. The most elite missions in this town are carried out by a special force composed of intelligent Flesh Golems (They lose their intelligence if they go berserk, ravaging all around them).

Minor Negative-Energy Dominant. For a new twist, ONLY nonmagical lighting works. I think they forgot to buy nonmagical torches. Heheheh...

Reaper Forest


The Pcs walk from the glowing portal into awaiting forest (fools!) The Trees in the forest are in fact (mostly, anyway) treants. A DC (25? 30?) Spot Check Shows that the trees in fact have faces on them. The Boneleaves will drop on the PCs (They're Like evil branches of ultimate doom), and the Treants will move while the PCs arent looking, splitting them up. A few treants will move in to Attack.

Encounters


One: Durkon Was Right!

Attack Treants (8) CR: 2 (each)

Boneleaves(2) CR: 6 (each)

At this point the Path Forks, and the pCs either go to encounter two

2: Drider Ambush!!!

Three Driders assail the PCs from within the Forest. Dead End.


3: More Treants will attack the PCs, backed up by a Flesh Golem Inquisition, by the End of the fight one will go Berserk (if the PCs are near Ahnillation)

4: A group of Slaymates try and convince the PCs to be their friend whilst actually trying to set up flanking and such. if things get violent, a multitude of Qth-Maren and tomb motes back them up

By now the PCs should be nearing the town.

5: A purple Wurm leaps out from the darkest reaches of the forest.

The Gates of NorSkull

A large gate stands between the PCs and a sinister graveyard. To oyur horror, however, undead fill the field, some dressed in tattered robes, others in fine dresses, conversing, trading and even playing betting games. The gate is covered in sinister staues, horrendous Gargoyles promising misfortune to those who enter the town.

Worse still, a darkly castle awaits behind the city, it's twisted spires and ghastly windows promising a sure death to the fools who enter.

Encounters

6: The gargoyles erupt, transforming into juvenile Nabassus. (Hordes of the Abyss)

Lord Loss
2009-05-31, 05:36 AM
Sorry for double-posting. I was just wondering if anyone here enjoys and would like to contribute by creating fearsome traps for within the castle.

nysisobli
2009-05-31, 07:53 AM
A good trap is a 5 ft by 80ft hallway that square/hex is a spelled trap to cast summon undead 4 =) make the end an indestructable door lol and its locked =) only way to open the door is to run back across the hallway and open the door on the other side simultaneously, (first door is also made of said indestructable and locks behind the pc's.

Lord Loss
2009-05-31, 08:11 AM
Thanks! Will Use it!!!

P.S Do you Think The Villain Should be a paladin gone kinslayer or an archivist gone tainted scholar?

Jpmaggers
2009-05-31, 10:04 AM
I've got an idea for a trap at the castle. I always like to put lots of illusions into adventures, especially adventures with undead as undead are immune. In first edition there was a spell called phantasmagoria, the main use of which was making players believe that they were going to be hit by a train. When the players get half way into the corridor the door they came through locks and a light appears at the end of the tunnel, a full illusion of some large object is coming towards the party. However at the sides of the corridor are alcoves for them to hide in and avoid it. The trick is that the alcoves have an illusionary floor which drops players silly enough to hide in them into whatever you want (glass spikes and acid :smallbiggrin:). The best thing is that as undead are immune to its effects you could mask some undead with the illusion.

On another note, as undead are immune to illusions would they in this world study illusions which they were effected by. Also would the undead society be very mechanical almost, where people follow strict patterns and routines or would there be crime and such within the society?

I would certainly suggest that you watch the EvilDead films for some inspiration, they are very atmospheric and ... odd. You could even have the players meet the main character Ash.

Other than that I have to applaud you on what sounds like a challenging and fun campaign :smallsmile:

Lord Loss
2009-05-31, 10:34 AM
Expanation of the way Undead Society Works:

In the Necropolis of NorSkull, the King a Lich or other Sentien undead's word is law. Society is very rigid. Crime exists and is rather comment, but is Punishable by Destruction.

Undead in this town can be permanently destroyed by The Guillotine, a magical Scythe charged with positive energy, wielded by the King. The King stays in his castle at all times. The first three floors contain his minions and an assortment of traps, bu the two upper ones contain only traps, and the highest floor is home to the King and his allies and most trusted servants. Entertainment is sparse in this village, people laugh about as much as they breathe (which they don't).

Relationships between undead are complicated, they can, and frequently do make friendships, but they are also always trying to get ahead of each other. This society seems to be a much lessened, but still noticeable, relation to drow society. In fact, unknow to civlians (But known to the king) this used to be a drow citadel. Driders eventually overthrew it, but in turn the undead repelled them, at lest from the main city.

The Undead consider themselves as the highest form of life existed, but wretched and unnatural at the Same time. A high paying job in this city is that of philosopher, followed closely by the Hunters. Some Undead make the Ultimate sacrifice, turned into Flesh Golems for the sake of their community. They lose their power of ressurection in exchange for might and respect.

Unknown to all but their king and Three Flesh Golems, the Kingdom is actually ruled by a Brain in A jar (LM) hidden somewhere in the Frostfell. The King is in fact a mindless puppet comanded by this entity.

nysisobli
2009-05-31, 01:15 PM
archivist or paladin? Why not gestalt both =)

Lord Loss
2009-05-31, 01:16 PM
So... The Evil paladin will be the second in command, aided by a covenant of Archivists... Brilliant! thanks!

nysisobli
2009-05-31, 01:30 PM
you said you wanted to screw with them lol, also if anyone wants some trap ideas pm me ;)

Lord Loss
2009-05-31, 02:07 PM
Thanks! Can you help with some more trap design (and possibly the castle layout)?

Gerwulf
2009-06-01, 02:04 AM
For your spider encounter how about these:

Bone Widow

Size/Type: Large Undead
Hit Dice: 8d12 (52HP)
Initiative: +4 (0 dex, +4 Improved init)
Speed: 60’, 60' (Climb)
Armor Class: 21, touch 13, flat-footed 21 (-1 size, +4 deflection, +8 natural)
Base Attack/Grapple: +4/+14
Attack: Spear +11 (1d8+8) Spit +6(1d4 + poison)
Full Attack: 2X Spear +11 (1d8+8) or Spit +6 (1d4+ poison)
Space/Reach: 10'/10'
Special Attacks: Lunge +13 (2d8+16)
Special Qualities: DR 10/- ; Undead Traits
Saves: Fort +2, Ref +6 Will+7
Abilities: STR 22, DEX 10, CON -, INT 12, WIS 12, CHR 22
Skills: Jump +22, Hide +10 (+16 in forests), Spot +12, Listen +12, Move Silently +10 (+16 in forests)
Feats: Improved initiative; Weapon Focus Spit, Weapon Focus Spear, Lightning Reflexes
Environment: Forests, negative energy planes
Organization: Pack 2-5 or Gang 4-10(2d4 +2)
CR: 10 (this may not be right. They have low hit points, but the DR and poison bring them up to par I think)
Treasure: 1/2 Normal (magical or mundane items only)
Alignment: CE

Explanation of special attacks:
Spear: A Bone Widows primary attack is to thrust its large from legs into an opponent and try to pin them to the ground so that their Spit attack will be more effective. A Bone Widow that hits with both Spear attacks in the same round may initiate a grapple as a free action and does not draw an attack of opportunity for doing so.

Lunge: A Bone Widow may charge even if their target is not in a straight line from them, they may make a single attack against their opponent, and if they succeed they spear the opponent with both of their front legs, initiating a grapple for free without provoking an attack of opportunity.

Spit: A Bone Widow may attempt to spit poison at their opponent 3 times per day. They must succeeded on a ranged touch attack, if they do their opponent must make a DC 24 (Charisma based) Fort save or immediately loose 1d6+2 points of Con (This is treated as ability Drain for purposes of healing) regardless of whether they succeeded on the first save a second save must be attempted the following round or they will suffer an additional 1d6+2 points of Con Damage. Any creature reduced to 0 Con or lower immediately rises as an undead warrior. Retaining any and all class abilities/ ability scores/ and Knowledge they had in their old life. A DC 30 Will Save is allowed to resist this effect, if resisted the character simply dies.

Tactics:
The Bone Widow is a fearsome beast that stalks the forests near places of negative energy. Necromancers’ castles, temples to evil clerics and the like make excellent homes to the Bone Widow. Bone Widows prefer to ambush their prey, relying on their natural +6 to hide and move silently in forests to their advantage. The preferred tactic is for one bone widow to charge the smallest target and attempt to grapple it with its lunge attack while the others circle around and attempt their spit attacks on larger opponents. Bone Widows do not need to eat, they hunt for the pure joy of watching their prey's life fade from their bodies. Bone Widows are intelligent and hunt for the joy of killing. If they have the upper hand they will drag a battle out to enjoy the suffering of their prey a little longer.

Appearance:
In front of you stands a large spider with thick black skin that shines under its matted, blood stained fur. Its massive red eyes peer down at you and you could swear you see a smile spreading on its face. Thick green foam hangs from its mouth, and you can see dried blood caked on its front legs.

The Bone Widow resembles a large spider except for a few things. 2 of its legs are used as weapons so it only uses 6 legs to walk, its thick black skin shines like obsidian behind a forest of thick black hair. The Bone Widow’s eyes are massive, larger than they should be even for a giant spider; they glow with an unholy red light. Due to their favorite hunting tactics their front legs are often covered in blood or pieces of their last victim.

Lord Loss
2009-06-01, 04:33 AM
Thanks, GreyWulf! So, we've got the Forest covered, as well as how the town works. We're missing:

A)The resistance Group Description + a few members

B) garden (Pretty Big)

C)Castle (HUUUGE)

Thanks for the spiders, we'll definitely use them.

I didn't include the town encounters because it'll be rather open-ended.

Kornaki
2009-06-01, 06:05 AM
For the garden, the first "encounter" should be three or four corpses with a bunch of vines tangled up around them. Make it clear that the vines seem to be feeding off the corpses. Don't have a fight at this point; it's just good form to make the PCs scared of all the plants :smallsmile:

Later, when they're fighting something else, have them be attacked by some ad hoc improved assassin vines

http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/35/sovelior_sage/monstersA.html#assassin-vine

Differences
+5 hit dice
Str +8 Wis +8
Tangible differences:
HP 67
Attack: Slam +15 (1d8 + 13)
Full Attack Slam +15/+10
Constrict 1d8+13
Saves Fort +9, Ref +5, Will +8
Entangle DC 17
Feats: Lightning Reflexes, Improved Natural Attack

Lord Loss
2009-06-01, 04:38 PM
Thanks! Will Do!

NorSkull



In this world, the sun will Never Rise

Norskull is a large graveyard-city. At first, it simply seems like a huge graveyard, but the Graves are the residences of the poor, the large crypt underneath is home to the middle-class citizens as well as the market, and the Mausoleums are where the rich may be found. All undead here are sentient, even skeletons and zombies, and anyone to die in this area becomes a Neutral Evil Zombie with no memories of it's past life.

The Rulers of this city, however, are the inhabitants of the castle ,At lest the ones in the highest (or should it be lowest) parts of the castle. They should be Ahloon (Lich) Mind Flayers.

Vampiric mind flayers march the streets of the city, searching for living beings that they can quench their thirst with. The most elite missions in this town are carried out by a special force composed of intelligent Flesh Golems (They lose their intelligence if they go berserk, ravaging all around them).

Minor Negative-Energy Dominant. For a new twist, ONLY nonmagical lighting works. I think they forgot to buy nonmagical torches. Heheheh...

Reaper Forest


The Pcs walk from the glowing portal into awaiting forest (fools!) The Trees in the forest are in fact (mostly, anyway) treants. A DC (25? 30?) Spot Check Shows that the trees in fact have faces on them. The Boneleaves will drop on the PCs (They're Like evil branches of ultimate doom), and the Treants will move while the PCs arent looking, splitting them up. A few treants will move in to Attack.

Encounters


One: Durkon Was Right!

Attack Treants (8) CR: 2 (each)

Boneleaves(2) CR: 6 (each)

At this point the Path Forks, and the pCs either go to encounter two

2: Spider Ambush!!!

Bone Widow (1)

Size/Type: Large Undead
Hit Dice: 8d12 (52HP)
Initiative: +4 (0 dex, +4 Improved init)
Speed: 60’, 60' (Climb)
Armor Class: 21, touch 13, flat-footed 21 (-1 size, +4 deflection, +8 natural)
Base Attack/Grapple: +4/+14
Attack: Spear +11 (1d8+8) Spit +6(1d4 + poison)
Full Attack: 2X Spear +11 (1d8+8) or Spit +6 (1d4+ poison)
Space/Reach: 10'/10'
Special Attacks: Lunge +13 (2d8+16)
Special Qualities: DR 10/- ; Undead Traits
Saves: Fort +2, Ref +6 Will+7
Abilities: STR 22, DEX 10, CON -, INT 12, WIS 12, CHR 22
Skills: Jump +22, Hide +10 (+16 in forests), Spot +12, Listen +12, Move Silently +10 (+16 in forests)
Feats: Improved initiative; Weapon Focus Spit, Weapon Focus Spear, Lightning Reflexes
Environment: Forests, negative energy planes
Organization: Pack 2-5 or Gang 4-10(2d4 +2)
CR: 10 (this may not be right. They have low hit points, but the DR and poison bring them up to par I think)
Treasure: 1/2 Normal (magical or mundane items only)
Alignment: CE

Explanation of special attacks:
Spear: A Bone Widows primary attack is to thrust its large from legs into an opponent and try to pin them to the ground so that their Spit attack will be more effective. A Bone Widow that hits with both Spear attacks in the same round may initiate a grapple as a free action and does not draw an attack of opportunity for doing so.

Lunge: A Bone Widow may charge even if their target is not in a straight line from them, they may make a single attack against their opponent, and if they succeed they spear the opponent with both of their front legs, initiating a grapple for free without provoking an attack of opportunity.

Spit: A Bone Widow may attempt to spit poison at their opponent 3 times per day. They must succeeded on a ranged touch attack, if they do their opponent must make a DC 24 (Charisma based) Fort save or immediately loose 1d6+2 points of Con (This is treated as ability Drain for purposes of healing) regardless of whether they succeeded on the first save a second save must be attempted the following round or they will suffer an additional 1d6+2 points of Con Damage. Any creature reduced to 0 Con or lower immediately rises as an undead warrior. Retaining any and all class abilities/ ability scores/ and Knowledge they had in their old life. A DC 30 Will Save is allowed to resist this effect, if resisted the character simply dies.

Tactics:
The Bone Widow is a fearsome beast that stalks the forests near places of negative energy. Necromancers’ castles, temples to evil clerics and the like make excellent homes to the Bone Widow. Bone Widows prefer to ambush their prey, relying on their natural +6 to hide and move silently in forests to their advantage. The preferred tactic is for one bone widow to charge the smallest target and attempt to grapple it with its lunge attack while the others circle around and attempt their spit attacks on larger opponents. Bone Widows do not need to eat, they hunt for the pure joy of watching their prey's life fade from their bodies. Bone Widows are intelligent and hunt for the joy of killing. If they have the upper hand they will drag a battle out to enjoy the suffering of their prey a little longer.

Appearance:
In front of you stands a large spider with thick black skin that shines under its matted, blood stained fur. Its massive red eyes peer down at you and you could swear you see a smile spreading on its face. Thick green foam hangs from its mouth, and you can see dried blood caked on its front legs.

The Bone Widow resembles a large spider except for a few things. 2 of its legs are used as weapons so it only uses 6 legs to walk, its thick black skin shines like obsidian behind a forest of thick black hair. The Bone Widow’s eyes are massive, larger than they should be even for a giant spider; they glow with an unholy red light. Due to their favorite hunting tactics their front legs are often covered in blood or pieces of their last victim.



3: More Treants will attack the PCs, backed up by a Flesh Golem Inquisition, by the End of the fight one will go Berserk (if the PCs are near Ahnillation)

4: A group of Slaymates try and convince the PCs to be their friend whilst actually trying to set up flanking and such. if things get violent, a multitude of Qth-Maren and tomb motes back them up.

The Gates of NorSkull

A large gate stands between the PCs and a sinister graveyard. To oyur horror, however, undead fill the field, some dressed in tattered robes, others in fine dresses, conversing, trading and even playing betting games. The gate is covered in sinister staues, horrendous Gargoyles promising misfortune to those who enter the town.

Worse still, a darkly castle awaits behind the city, it's twisted spires and ghastly windows promising a sure death to the fools who enter.

Encounters

5: The gargoyles erupt, transforming into juvenile Nabassus. (Hordes of the Abyss)

After the town (This will be open-ended so i'll go into limited detail later)

The PCs will arrive at the Gardens of Fugue

In between the town and the castle there lies a large garden which contains all sorts of horrific plants

four corpses with a bunch of vines tangled up around them. Make it clear that the vines seem to be feeding off the corpses. Don't have a fight at this point; it's just good form to make the PCs scared of all the plants:

Later On:

3x

ASSASSIN VINE

Large Plant

Hit Dice: 4d8+12 (30 hp)

Initiative: +0

Speed: 5 ft. (1 square)

Armor Class: 15 (–1 size, +6 natural), touch 9, flat-footed 15

Base Attack/Grapple: +3/+12

Attack: Slam +7 melee (1d6+7)

Full Attack: Slam +7 melee (1d6+7)

Space/Reach: 10 ft./10 ft. (20 ft. with vine)

Special Attacks: Constrict 1d6+7, entangle, improved grab

Special Qualities: Blindsight 30 ft., camouflage, immunity to electricity, low-light vision, plant traits, resistance to cold 10 and fire 10

Saves: Fort +7, Ref +1, Will +2

Abilities: Str 20, Dex 10, Con 16, Int —, Wis 13, Cha 9

Environment: Temperate forests

Organization: Solitary or patch (2–4)

Challenge Rating: 3

Treasure: 1/10th coins; 50% goods; 50% items

Alignment: Always neutral

Advancement: 5–16 HD (Huge); 17–32 HD (Gargantuan); 33+ HD (Colossal)

Level Adjustment: —
The assassin vine is a semi-mobile plant that collects its own grisly fertilizer by grabbing and crushing animals and depositing the carcasses near its roots.

A mature plant consists of a main vine, about 20 feet long. Smaller vines up to 5 feet long branch off from the main vine about every 6 inches. These small vines bear clusters of leaves, and in late summer they produce bunches of small fruits that resemble wild grapes. The fruit is tough and has a hearty but bitter flavor. Assassin vine berries make a heady wine.

An assassin vine can move about, albeit very slowly, but usually stays put unless it needs to seek prey in a new vicinity.

A subterranean version of the assassin vine grows near hot springs, volcanic vents, and other sources of thermal energy. These plants have thin, wiry stems and gray leaves shot through with silver, brown, and white veins so that they resemble mineral deposits. An assassin vine growing underground usually generates enough offal to support a thriving colony of mushrooms and other fungi, which spring up around the plant and help conceal it.

COMBAT
An assassin vine uses simple tactics. It lies still until prey comes within reach, then attacks. It uses its entangle ability both to catch prey and to deter counterattacks.

Constrict (Ex): An assassin vine deals 1d6+7 points of damage with a successful grapple check.

Entangle (Su): An assassin vine can animate plants within 30 feet of itself as a free action (Ref DC 13 partial). The effect lasts until the vine dies or decides to end it (also a free action). The save DC is Wisdom-based. The ability is otherwise similar to entangle (caster level 4th).

Improved Grab (Ex): To use this ability, an assassin vine must hit with its slam attack. It can then attempt to start a grapple as a free action without provoking an attack of opportunity. If it wins the grapple check, it establishes a hold and can constrict.

Blindsight (Ex): Assassin vines have no visual organs but can ascertain all foes within 30 feet using sound, scent, and vibration.

Camouflage (Ex): Since an assassin vine looks like a normal plant when at rest, it takes a DC 20 Spot check to notice it before it attacks. Anyone with ranks in Survival or Knowledge (nature) can use one of those skills instead of Spot to notice the plant. Dwarves can use stonecunning to notice the subterranean version.

Will add
Differences
+5 hit dice
Str +8 Wis +8
Tangible differences:
HP 67
Attack: Slam +15 (1d8 + 13)
Full Attack Slam +15/+10
Constrict 1d8+13
Saves Fort +9, Ref +5, Will +8
Entangle DC 17
Feats: Lightning Reflexes, Improved Natural Attack

NakedCelt
2009-06-01, 04:55 PM
Hey, how about some kind of Ooze with a permanent gaseous form effect that deals negative energy damage instead of acid? And maybe level drain if it engulfs you? Call it a "death cloud" or something...

Lord Loss
2009-06-02, 04:53 AM
Nice! I'll make one thanks for the idea.

Trap Idea:

Four Adjacent 5-ft squares. When stepped on, a wither limbs (Legs) , if stepped on again (arms) spells hits the target (LM). From there the PC(s) are unable to move, so scarabs start swarming from slots in the walls.

Mercenary Pen
2009-06-02, 05:53 AM
Undead Dryads anyone?

Realms of Chaos
2009-06-02, 04:10 PM
I have a couple ideas...

Idea 1: The Gate of Hearts: This could be the gate to the castle, the undead town, or some other dungeon. It is a large iron gate with three metal indentations, all of which pulse rhythmically "like a heart". As you may have guessed, the only way to get past the gate is to place a heart in each indentation. Vermin and animal hearts don't count and any undead heart placed in gets a negative level as they place it in. It has to be a humanoid, monstrous humanoid, or similar type of heart. After all three hearts have been placed in, it is noticed that the various orifices don't quite line up with those of the door, requiring the party to fiddle around with them by hand. After all of this, the hearts are compacted in small, bloody explosions and the door opens.

As you can tell, this gate isn't intended to kill people. It's intended to traumatize them. They have to kill three sentient creatures, put their hearts in a doorway, fit them in perfectly, and watch them explode.
However, that isn't to say that this won't hurt people. Anyone using undead hearts gets a negative level, alignments might change, and somebody might stupidly kill another player or even offer up their own hearts.

Idea 2: The last survivors: After a couple fights against evil-pally, most or all of the allies that the party had will probably be dead. That's when they get an invitation to join the last group of survivors out there, a group that hates the undead and still has decent numbers, even after the attacks.
The only problem is who these survivors happen to be. Now, this isn't one of those traditional evil-cult-of-asmodeus-hates-the-zombies dealies. No, I'm talking about something as ironic as it is cruel. The remaining survivors are indeed a cult but one of flesh-warpers, abberations (like mindflayers), masochists, and ghouls (not the monster, people who eat dead and undead flesh).
On the one hand, the cult really is well-equipped to help them. Their leader is a rot-reaver (Monster Manual III, a creature that destroys the undead to eat them), supported by a couple of avolakia (Monster Manual II, a wormlike creature who makes undead to eat them) and with a cadaver collector (Monster Manual III again) to collect bodies. Together with high-level humanoid cultists and mind flayers, they stand a decent chance of fighting the undead if the party cooperates. Furthermore, having always had to fight off undead just to get their meals, the cult has a stash of items for fighting them off and has been judiciously looting the town throughout the proceedings (if the party joins them, at least a couple items should be all but thrust upon them).
On the other hand, the party is dealing with a cult. They may demand offerings of flesh for membership, a surviving NPC or two may simply vanish one day (though adressing the rot reaver will ensure that punishment is delivered), and most of the food is necrotized and diiseased, causing the humanoid cultists to go slowly insane and perhaps infecting the party with mindfire.
The secret to sealing the deal between the party and the cult is to make it absolutely clear that the object of the cult's worship is absolutely no threat to the party; either a real entity who has no reason to care about the cult (such as a demigod of soil) or an utterly fictional character devised by the fevered minds of the cultists (such as "the long waba", a stick figure with cartoonishly large eyes and a stovepipe hat).

Once again, almost nothing about the situation itself is innately dangerous (other than the food). Still, it opens up room for any number of gruesome and degrading occurances, such as accidentally crossing an insane illithid, mandatory scarring rituals, compulsory missions, festivals where raw undead are strapped to tables and eaten, clerics that refuse to heal interesting wounds, addle-minded cultists who can't remember their part in an important plan, and rituals requiring the party to bow down in front of a stick figure. Even if the party winds up victorious, their sense of accomplishment is shattered by the fact that they relied on a sham of a cult.

Lord Loss
2009-06-02, 04:36 PM
THANK YOU!!!

The resistance group we had mentioned will be your cult, and the heart thingy will be the door of the castle. I'll put undead Dryads in the Garden.

Mercenary Pen
2009-06-02, 05:59 PM
Turn one of their usual locations for resting into a newly trapped area (possibly set up by the proposed traitor within the resistance and/or the traitor's underlings).

Trizap
2009-06-02, 06:05 PM
bah, I'd just start with Tomb of Horrors, then modify things from there.

Lord Loss
2009-06-02, 07:13 PM
Three words: Rites of Initiation :smallbiggrin:!

Stormthorn
2009-06-02, 07:33 PM
Sorry for double-posting. I was just wondering if anyone here enjoys and would like to contribute by creating fearsome traps for within the castle.

A large room with a very high pyramid ceiling and patches of spikes on the floor. Reverse Gravity trap to make them fall into the ceiling and take damage and a second trap set into ceiling to set gravity right and make them fall into the collection of spikes located on the floor just below the apex of the pyramid roof.

Fall up for 6d6 damage. Fall down for 6d6 damage. Spikes for 6d6 damage. Poison on the spikes. Spikes can then trigger a crushing wall trap or a flooding room trap if you want.

I suggest a really weak golem thats full of Ungol Dust or some other inhaled poison. If they kill it it explodes and fills the room with the stuff.


As you can tell, this gate isn't intended to kill people. It's intended to traumatize them. They have to kill three sentient creatures, put their hearts in a doorway, fit them in perfectly, and watch them explode.
However, that isn't to say that this won't hurt people. Anyone using undead hearts gets a negative level, alignments might change, and somebody might stupidly kill another player or even offer up their own hearts.

How about if its set so that ONLY the PCs hearts work but that the gate keeps the heart alive outside of the body for a time. The gate drains them 1 points of Con every hour until one of them dies, at which point it closes. The y have to run the castle before the guy with the lowest Con score collapses and dooms them all.

tribble
2009-06-02, 08:03 PM
anybody else remember Tucker's Kobolds? you could apply that idea to the undead, and there you go: the PCs die, quickly.

Stormthorn
2009-06-02, 08:43 PM
anybody else remember Tucker's Kobolds? you could apply that idea to the undead, and there you go: the PCs die, quickly.

I dont get why people call them Tuckers Kobolds.

As far as i can tell from asking around the only differance is that he played them with realistic and brutal guerrilla tactics. This isnt somehting special people!

Dagren
2009-06-02, 09:23 PM
I dont get why people call them Tuckers Kobolds.

As far as i can tell from asking around the only differance is that he played them with realistic and brutal guerrilla tactics. This isnt somehting special people!Because Tucker is the guy that popularised playing them in an intelligent manner rather than typical dungeon fodder? Sure, some people realise that the monsters are not just going to be sitting around a table in a 20x20 room, (maybe it's monster poker night?) but that seems to be fairly common.

brujon
2009-06-02, 10:36 PM
I have a wonderful idea. Think of a room, an ordinary room, with 3 colums each side, up and down, like this:

x x x
x x
x x x


So each of the colums, is a vampire sarcophagus. The walls around the room are hollow, with barely visible (Less than 1 centimeter) gaps, at every odd junction of the bricks that compose the room. The hollows are big enough for 1 medium-sized creature to walk around the room. Inside the gaps, there's some traps connect to a targeted detect undead, that's detecting any undead on the gaps. What does this do is shut down the doors of the room (Iron Porticullis), and collapse the columns. So here's the drill:

The pc's enter the room, which just looks like a normal intersection room with 4 doors. When they enter, 4 CR10 Vampire Monks(Well, you SAID they were overpowered...) jump from the coffins, surprising the players unless they succeed in a DC 30 Listen Check or have Detect Undead active. If ANY of the vampires is killed, he immediately enters gaseous form and goes inside the gap on the wall, collapsing the ceiling on the players (DC 20 15d6 reflex for half). The doors will be locked and the lock is busted (From the debris), so the players will have to succeed in breaking the porticullis apart. Just to make things harder, another set of 4 vampires appear if the players don't open the doors in 10 minutes.

Stormthorn
2009-06-03, 12:06 AM
Because Tucker is the guy that popularised playing them in an intelligent manner rather than typical dungeon fodder? Sure, some people realise that the monsters are not just going to be sitting around a table in a 20x20 room, (maybe it's monster poker night?) but that seems to be fairly common.

My personal idea is to start it out like that and have the eneies get less poker-y as they become more aware of the presence of invaders.
Im working on a dungeon where the boss will stalk the PCs and recruit any they fail to kill for a major ambush.
That and a Mimic who eats apples.

TooManySecrets
2009-06-03, 01:17 AM
A very underused spider is found in Monster Manual III. It's called the Harpoon Spider.

Basically, it works like this: It shoots out it's harpoon-fang at a creature and pierces it's flesh. It then reels it in and bits it. Anybody who's played Left 4 Dead can tell you why this is a Bad Thing™.

Works sort of like this:
The party is going through a dungeon/cave/whatever. They pass through a door/go around a corner and just as the last person goes BAM! harpooned and dragged back to an 8ft tall spider which starts to munch on you. At the same time, hundreds of smaller spiders start to swarm over the target, nibbling away.

Also in MMIII is the cadaver collector which is an Eberron golem which picks up people and puts it on it's spikes. Now, I don't know whether golems would be appropriate for your campaign, but take a look at it's impale ability. The harpoon spider is described as having a body covered in spikes, so why not give the harpoon spider that ability? It harpoons a hapless party member, bites it injecting a paralyzing toxin (Dex damage), then throws it onto it's spikes. Now the party is facing an 8ft tall spider which has a screaming party member on it's back who is slowly bleeding to death.

Which brings me to this suggestion: the essence of horror for tabletop games is to not gloss over things which are normally glossed over.
Normal D&D: You find a dead body. It's been exposed to the elements for at least a couple of days.
Horror: You find a dead body. Bloated and greying, it's not in very good condition. The skin is pockmarked with the trail of maggots and flies buzz in the air. The face - what's left of it - is stuck in a rictus grin.

Now, don't be too gratuitous. First, because some people just can't handle that and second because it starts to lessen the impact. If you start rattling off the gallons of blood, yards of spleens, and pounds of brains, it gets predictable and boring. Likewise, if every evil artifact is "so dark it seems to absorb the light", every dark ritual is "unspeakable", and every corpse "smells of death", it gets old.

When you get right down to it, horror games are about making people feel uncomfortable. If you've been having a pretty normal game so far and then all of a sudden you go onto a minute-long description of a decaying dog's head, then you're players are going to be freaked out. DON'T GO TOO FAR! If you're players start thinking you're a psychopath, you've probably gone too far.

Oh, and one last thing that I just remembered: You're players are going to know as much about story creation as you. They know not to go into the dark basement alone, to go into that shower, read that dark tome of eldritch evil, etc. They've watched movies and read books. They know what will happen.

So give them no choice. In one of my games, I was running a zombie apocalypse and one of the players heard a sound underneath a bed. Everyone knows what's going to happen: he looks underneath it, he gets bit in the hand or the face or what-have-you. The thing is the characters was looking for a scientist who's house he was in. He HAD to look underneath that bed. The look on his face and the realization that he was just about to do what would make audiences yell "DON'T GO IN THERE!" was priceless. (Needless to say, he was bitten. The zombification wasn't passed by bites, however, but the players didn't know that)

NakedCelt
2009-06-03, 01:46 AM
Is there room for an insane undead demon god in this scenario?

Lord Loss
2009-06-03, 05:26 AM
A large room with a very high pyramid ceiling and patches of spikes on the floor. Reverse Gravity trap to make them fall into the ceiling and take damage and a second trap set into ceiling to set gravity right and make them fall into the collection of spikes located on the floor just below the apex of the pyramid roof.

Fall up for 6d6 damage. Fall down for 6d6 damage. Spikes for 6d6 damage. Poison on the spikes. Spikes can then trigger a crushing wall trap or a flooding room trap if you want.

I suggest a really weak golem thats full of Ungol Dust or some other inhaled poison. If they kill it it explodes and fills the room with the stuff.

Nice! I'll use it!!! THANKS!!!



have a wonderful idea. Think of a room, an ordinary room, with 3 colums each side, up and down, like this:

x x x
x x
x x x


So each of the colums, is a vampire sarcophagus. The walls around the room are hollow, with barely visible (Less than 1 centimeter) gaps, at every odd junction of the bricks that compose the room. The hollows are big enough for 1 medium-sized creature to walk around the room. Inside the gaps, there's some traps connect to a targeted detect undead, that's detecting any undead on the gaps. What does this do is shut down the doors of the room (Iron Porticullis), and collapse the columns. So here's the drill:

The pc's enter the room, which just looks like a normal intersection room with 4 doors. When they enter, 4 CR10 Vampire Monks(Well, you SAID they were overpowered...) jump from the coffins, surprising the players unless they succeed in a DC 30 Listen Check or have Detect Undead active. If ANY of the vampires is killed, he immediately enters gaseous form and goes inside the gap on the wall, collapsing the ceiling on the players (DC 20 15d6 reflex for half). The doors will be locked and the lock is busted (From the debris), so the players will have to succeed in breaking the porticullis apart. Just to make things harder, another set of 4 vampires appear if the players don't open the doors in 10 minutes.

Nice! I'll Include it!!!

So, How Big should The Gardens Be

A)5 Encounters

B)10 Encounters

C) 15 Encounters

D) More?

Garden of Fugue Ideas:

Improved Assasin Vines

Evil Dryads

A HUGE, Half-Illithid Treant

Anything Else?

ImmortalAer
2009-06-03, 05:54 AM
More fun with Orbs of Annihilation.

You remember the scene from Indiana Jones with the giant boulder? Well, replace the boulder with an enormous Orb, and make the floor collapsing on thier way back across, and the gap is too large to jump across this time. And to insure they don't escape through use of flight, a twirling Catherine's wheel on the cieling. To stop the use of Force Wall/etc stopping the Orb, an AMF except on the very edge of the gap, where summoning one would push them off anyways.

Some possible ways out : Party Teleport while balancing on the edge. Here's hoping they ran fast enough that the casting time doesn't get them run over.

Gate Rings : Only if thier Small or tinier. Not likely.

Whip : ...Indiana Jonesing it.

Rings of Jumping : One, two, three!

Don't set off the giant Orb : ...speaks for itself.

Other : Hey, I'm not a mastermind.

Mercenary Pen
2009-06-03, 07:44 AM
Areas where they take negative energy damage any time they try to cast a spell?

Possibly do this with a visual cue, for example a blackish vapour that can be thicker or thinner depending on how badly you want to shut down the casters in a given area. This could range from a barely perceptible black vapour that might sting the caster for 1d3 damage on his concentration and/or spellcraft checks, all the way up to a billowing black fog you can barely see through that will half kill the caster on his first concentration check (e.g. 8d8 negative energy damage)

Dagren
2009-06-03, 11:30 AM
<Stuff about descriptions>That reminds of the Ravenloft campaign setting. It's got some good advice for running a more horror oriented D&D game, without going all the way into another game system. Do you have/can get a copy of that?

Realms of Chaos
2009-06-03, 11:42 AM
Another good idea, a bit more dangerous this time.

As all undead are powered by negative energy, why not take advantage of this. Throughout the undead town, perhaps the undead set up large stones to stimulate the negative energy plane. To the undead, this would provide peaceful ambience. To the living, it would stimulate the minor negative energy planar trait (1d6 damage per round unless deathwarded) out to 5,000 feet and the major negative energy planar trait (1 negative level per round unless deathwarded) out to 50 feet.

By scattering them sporadically throughout the city (leaving some spots [like the resistance hideout] out of range), the party has a choice when stealthily battling the undead.

They can a) go around under the effects of a deathward spell, hoping that the mission will end soon.
b) forego the deathward and run from safe spot to safe spot as they travel (the cult will probably have a map of safe spots, but it may be partially inaccurate or become innacurate over time if rocks are destroyed or installed).
c) destroy the stones (which have high hp and hardness and are usually in very public areas), ending the damage but alerting all undead in the area (AKA: within 5,000 feet) to their pressence.
d) move a stone. Though they are likely incredibly heavy, if a stone is only slightly in the way, a party could probably move it up to 100 feet without drawing too much attention (I doubt the undead would be expecting it). If they keep doing it, however, someone is going to realize what is happening.

To make matters worse, have the town replace broken rocks at a rate of, say, 1 per week. If no rocks have been destroyed, the town installs a new one instead. Imagine the horror when one is installed that renders the hideout of the resistance useless or (perhaps more diabolical) makes half of it inhospitable (meaning that some people may want to stay).

The party could destroy such a rock whenever it is installed but security would increase each time and doing so could tip off the town as to where the resistance is located (in fact, if enough rocks are broken, the party might be trailed back to their hideout one time). On the other hand, a smart party may keep destroying a single rock on the opposite side of town, luring the police away from the resistance (a good reward for good thinking).

Edit: Oh, and one more:

The Bath:
After the undead town became an undead town, it is likely that most of the aquatic systems went unnoticed or were left alone for decoration, unknowingly giving the resistance a place to get their water. When the resistance really becomes a thorn in the town's side, you can have the city's leader make a proclamation: Every (undead) citizen is to bathe for the next 24 hours.
This event is great because it gives the personalities of your players a real chance to shine. Once the undead have finished their bathing (in previously public water supplies), that water will become utterly unpotable (though ghouls from the cult may try drinking it anyways).
Your party has a number of choices on this day, any of which is completely viable but has its downsides:
a) attack: with so many citizens bathing in large clusters, the party may be tempted to kill as many undead as possible, using every area effect that they and the cultists can muster. Unfortunately, that so many enemies have gathered means that the more powerful citizens are also assembled and that the party may be mobbed. Furthermore, if the bodies are left in the water, it is still polluted (though the battle may serve to lure the undead out of the water).
b) loot and pillage: that everyone is resting in the aquifers means that nobody is guarding the houses and stores. The party can loot to their heart's content, destroy small structures that have been blocking potential paths, or even clear the city of the malevolant stones (see previous suggestion). However, doing so means that they are doing nothing to stop the undead and just lost their water supply. Note, however, that making too much noise may lure undead out of their baths (which may be viewed as a good thing).
c) subterfuge: if the party simply hides in the shadows and spies (or scries) on the undead (on the intelligent ones anyway), they may learn important facts about the town, its history, future plans, the heirarchy, or, to pad their egos a bit, the rumors told about the resistance (and the PCs in particular. Nothing is more rewarding than hearing your character described as a terrible monster by a reanimated corpse).
If the party seeks to drive the undead out of the water without a fight, a single flask of holy water or a bless water spell can disperse over 1,000 cubic feet (a 10-foot cube) over the space of (about) 1 minute, making the water irritating (but not painful) to the undead and likely inspiring them to leave. Spreading the water over a smaller area hurts the undead a bit (1 damage) and alerts them that something is wrong.
If the undead were about to discuss something of interest and are about to leave, the party may keep them there a bit longer with unholy water, which disperses in the same way to make the water feel like a spa for the undead.
The downside to this mission is the risk of discovery by the undead.
Storm the Castle: Though the "city officials", the undead paladin, and the ruler of the castle are probably exempt from the baths, the odds are high that at least some of their guards aren't. With the city streets clear, the party may decide that now is the time to a deciding assault (or at least for a clever assassination), taking on the undead paladin, storming the castle, or attacking whichever "city offcial" has been giving them the biggest headache.
The risk here is doing nothing to stop the polluted water, that a toppled tyrant doesn't suddenly make the other undead go away (it may just make them mad), and that some (but not all) of the leaders may have anticipated this, setting up traps/ambushes for would-be assassins.

Aftermath: If the party didn't stop the water supply pollution, it is completely unpotable. Anyone trying to drink it gets no nourishment, is nauseated for 1 round, and has to make a saving throw to resist catching mindfire. The cult will only have what water they can create magically (and the party may be sent on missions to collect a couple water-producing magic items [such as a sink at what was once a high-end inn])
On the plus-side, undead simply weren't designed to take baths, let alone such long ones. If their bath went uninterrupted, their skin (if any) has become a bit bloated and their bones have softened. All undead suffer a -2 penalty to initiative checks, a -5 foot speed penalty to all movement speeds, and a -1 penalty to their AC for 24 hours after their bath.

However the party chooses, the day of the bath will be a major event.

Edit Edit: Good lord! I just remembered the scariest monster ever.
From Heroes of horror, the scariest monster I can think of is the bane wraith.

A couple of things to say first. That the picture in heroes of horror isn't what it naturally looks like. If you read the text of the creature, it is described in its natural form as being "a vaguely humanoid mass of sickly gray mists and energies" (though the players may never see this true form). It also says that "living beings often feel vaguely uneasy around one...". So far, so good.

One thing about this guy is that he is incorporeal. 90% of your party's attacks have a 50% miss chance, it is completely silent (unless it wants to make noise), and it can walk through walls. Making things stranger, the thing doesn't look incorporeal unless you succeed on a spot check (that is one of its special qualities), making it creepier when it goes through walls.

It's personality is scarier. First of all, it takes less to tick this guy off than it takes to tick off an Africanized bee. Next, this guy doesn't attack you, or at least not right away. No, this guy wants to mess with your head first.

Whenever this guy passes within 30 feet of a creature, it instantly learns the appearance and name of every family member and friend that creature possesses. Furthermore, it learns where that creature thinks its friends and family are located. No Saving Throw. That's right! The moment that it comes within 30 feet of a PC, it learns where where the resistance is located.

It's not quite done messing with your head, though. This thing has a couple of at will spell-like abilities. First is disguise self. You remember how this thing learns the appearance and name of every friend...now you know why. Secondly comes detect thoughts. Though this ability does allow a saving throw, you can really mess with your party's head if this goes off.

This guy has a couple more abilities up its sleeves. First of all, it's touch attack. When this thing touches you, it deals strength or wisdom drain. Furthermore, if it drains your wisdom, you only notice if you make a wisdom check (with your reduced wisdom).

The one saving grace about fighting these guys is that they deal pretty little drain and that they need to completely drain your strength before they can drain your Con and kill you. Of course, as you immediately notice Str drain, they normally start with Wis drain (complicated little buggers they are :smalltongue:)

The last thing worthy of note about these guys is their ability to create spawn. fortunately (or unfortunately) their victims only become normal wraiths when killed (not another bane wraith). Like other wraiths, bane wraiths can control any number of spawn. What is so sick and twisted about this ability is the wraiths all resemble their victims.

To sum it up, because you happened to look at a bane wraith "the wrong way", it decides to hunt down your friends and family, kill them, and then have their unholy spirits kill you. That, my friend, is pure M!ndf*#k.

There are two ways to play this guy.
1. Free agent. The party bumps into this guy at some point, thinking that it's another cultist sent by the resistance until it sinks through the floor. When the party returns to the hideout, they see the wraith sitting down on a chair. It waves to them before vanishing into the crowd (or through an object). In reality, this banewraith works for nobody, instead deciding to torment and kill the resistance by pure chance. If the party reports that the resistance has been found, they may have to relocate. Every now and then, the Bane wraith appears to either read someone's mind and tell the party a vital detail about their own plan (making them think that the enemy knows), to impersonate a close friend (or even a family member or loved one from a PCs past if you are feeling cruel), or to simply kill someone and take their wraith with him.
2. The Difficult Choice.
This creature can also be used to populate a room in the castle. Replace its three feats with dodge, mobility, and spring attack. He is the only creature in normal (20 x 20 foot) castle room, apparently sitting down on a chair at the far end of the room in the disguise of a human aristocrat. As a free action, the banewraith chooses someone as the target for his dodge feat. As he gets up and walks towards the party (moving 10 feet over to them, the banewraith "walks" at a speed of 40 feet) he congratulates them on having gotten so far, tells them that their reputation precedes them, and informs them that he has no intention of fighting them. He motions to the far door and bows his head before, almost as an afterthought, asks how a couple of their close friends in the resistance are doing and making reference to the resistance's headquarters' location with a small diabolical chuckle (EX: "By the way, how are Borris and Klimbwater doing? It must be pretty cold for them under those docks, hmmhmmhmm"). Veiled threat accomplished, the bane wraith "brushes past" whomever looks like a cleric (unless doing so would provoke an AoO from a big, burly PC, in which case they chose another target), draining thier wisdom in the process (in game terms, the bane wraith makes a touch attack and takes another move action thanks to spring attack). The banewraith heads out of the exit (not through a wall) an down through the floor as soon as he is out of sight. Unless someone in the party made a good spot check, nobody will know that he is incorporeal.
After this, the party has a choice, they can go through to the next room (setting off only a minor mechanical trap [relying on a pressure pad that the bane wraith couldn't set off]) or head back to save everybody.
The bane wraith's plan is set. First, he waits under the floor for a couple rounds to see if anyone comes, activating his detect thoughts SLA so he'll be ready to know what the party is planning. Whether they come or not, the bane wraith sets off underground towards the ruler of the castle to inform them of the intruders before heading to the cult's headquarters to make good on his threat.
If the party keeps going, assume that the bane wraith kills most of the cult before coming back and waiting at the entrance to the castle in its true form with his army of spawn (with the spawn of the PCs' friends in the front line).
If they go back, the party gets a bit of a head start while the bane wraith reports to the castle's lord but the wraith has a fly speed of 80 feet and can ignore solid objects, increasing the odds that he will beat the party back (though the wraith, unlike a horse, can't run). If the banewraith gets there first, it attacks the close personal friends of the PCs first so assume that some of them are already dead, more if the PCs were somehow held up on the trip back and less if they arrive soon after the banewraith. If the party arrives first, it is possible to prevent any ally fatalities if the party plays their cards right.
Either way, going back gives the castle's lord some time to set more defenses and muster more troops.

Bonus Content:

Here's a fun trap:
Pit of Opposition: It's just a normal 50-foot pit whose bottom is lined with a mirror of opposition. When someone falls in, they look down and are forced to fight against a copy of themselves (who has not taken falling damage as the copy was made as the character fell) while isolated from everyone else. If anyone looks down to see what's going on, another copy is created, a copy that can only reach and fight the character that fell.

Even I like a bit of orb of annihilation fun every now and then. This is what I recommend. :smallamused:
Just as Advertised: near the entrance to the castle, an overlarge skull, perhaps from a stone giant, is built into a wall. In its mouth is an immobile sphere of annihiliation (yep, just like tomb of horrors with a skull instead of a demon). There are engravings in the wall to both the left and right of the skull, written in the common tongue.
To the left: The last remaining sanctuary rests beyond the orb.
To the right: The last remaining refuge is a fast and painless death.
This is just what is looks like, a last chance for intrudors to painlessly commit suicide (though it was built mostly for intimidation purposes). 90% of the time, it is simply decoration that helps set the mood of the dungeon.
The last 10% of the time, characters either roleplay or metagame their characters into the skull's mouth.
Ex 1: There's no way you'd rip off tomb of horrors like that.
Ex 2: A death trap would never actually say it's a death trap. maybe the fast and painless death is a magic weapon.
Ex 3: well, if the refuge is death, than I'll just head for the sanctuary (this guy didn't know that sanctuary=refuge).
When someone dies to this "trap", you get the honor of explaining to the player how they just walked into a deathtrap that proclaimed itself to be such.

Extra Note on Spheres of Annihilation: It is generally aggreed upon that SoAs are the best component you could use for an instant-death trap. However, keeping in mind that it is an artifact, you probably shouldn't use more than two or three (at tops) in the design of the castle and no more than 4 or 5 in an entire campaign (unless that campaign has and entropomancer, who may collect them).

Lord Loss
2009-06-03, 03:34 PM
NorSkull



In this world, the sun will Never Rise

Norskull is a large graveyard-city. At first, it simply seems like a huge graveyard, but the Graves are the residences of the poor, the large crypt underneath is home to the middle-class citizens as well as the market, and the Mausoleums are where the rich may be found. All undead here are sentient, even skeletons and zombies, and anyone to die in this area becomes a Neutral Evil Zombie with no memories of it's past life.

The Rulers of this city, however, are the inhabitants of the castle ,At lest the ones in the highest (or should it be lowest) parts of the castle. They should be Ahloon (Lich) Mind Flayers.

Vampiric mind flayers march the streets of the city, searching for living beings that they can quench their thirst with. The most elite missions in this town are carried out by a special force composed of intelligent Flesh Golems (They lose their intelligence if they go berserk, ravaging all around them).

Minor Negative-Energy Dominant. For a new twist, ONLY nonmagical lighting works. I think they forgot to buy nonmagical torches. Heheheh...

Reaper Forest


The Pcs walk from the glowing portal into awaiting forest (fools!) The Trees in the forest are in fact (mostly, anyway) treants. A DC (25? 30?) Spot Check Shows that the trees in fact have faces on them. The Boneleaves will drop on the PCs (They're Like evil branches of ultimate doom), and the Treants will move while the PCs arent looking, splitting them up. A few treants will move in to Attack.

Encounters


One: Durkon Was Right!

Attack Treants (8) CR: 2 (each)

Boneleaves(2) CR: 6 (each)

At this point the Path Forks, and the pCs either go to encounter two

2: Spider Ambush!!!

Bone Widow (1)

Size/Type: Large Undead
Hit Dice: 8d12 (52HP)
Initiative: +4 (0 dex, +4 Improved init)
Speed: 60’, 60' (Climb)
Armor Class: 21, touch 13, flat-footed 21 (-1 size, +4 deflection, +8 natural)
Base Attack/Grapple: +4/+14
Attack: Spear +11 (1d8+8) Spit +6(1d4 + poison)
Full Attack: 2X Spear +11 (1d8+8) or Spit +6 (1d4+ poison)
Space/Reach: 10'/10'
Special Attacks: Lunge +13 (2d8+16)
Special Qualities: DR 10/- ; Undead Traits
Saves: Fort +2, Ref +6 Will+7
Abilities: STR 22, DEX 10, CON -, INT 12, WIS 12, CHR 22
Skills: Jump +22, Hide +10 (+16 in forests), Spot +12, Listen +12, Move Silently +10 (+16 in forests)
Feats: Improved initiative; Weapon Focus Spit, Weapon Focus Spear, Lightning Reflexes
Environment: Forests, negative energy planes
Organization: Pack 2-5 or Gang 4-10(2d4 +2)
CR: 10 (this may not be right. They have low hit points, but the DR and poison bring them up to par I think)
Treasure: 1/2 Normal (magical or mundane items only)
Alignment: CE

Explanation of special attacks:
Spear: A Bone Widows primary attack is to thrust its large from legs into an opponent and try to pin them to the ground so that their Spit attack will be more effective. A Bone Widow that hits with both Spear attacks in the same round may initiate a grapple as a free action and does not draw an attack of opportunity for doing so.

Lunge: A Bone Widow may charge even if their target is not in a straight line from them, they may make a single attack against their opponent, and if they succeed they spear the opponent with both of their front legs, initiating a grapple for free without provoking an attack of opportunity.

Spit: A Bone Widow may attempt to spit poison at their opponent 3 times per day. They must succeeded on a ranged touch attack, if they do their opponent must make a DC 24 (Charisma based) Fort save or immediately loose 1d6+2 points of Con (This is treated as ability Drain for purposes of healing) regardless of whether they succeeded on the first save a second save must be attempted the following round or they will suffer an additional 1d6+2 points of Con Damage. Any creature reduced to 0 Con or lower immediately rises as an undead warrior. Retaining any and all class abilities/ ability scores/ and Knowledge they had in their old life. A DC 30 Will Save is allowed to resist this effect, if resisted the character simply dies.

Tactics:
The Bone Widow is a fearsome beast that stalks the forests near places of negative energy. Necromancers’ castles, temples to evil clerics and the like make excellent homes to the Bone Widow. Bone Widows prefer to ambush their prey, relying on their natural +6 to hide and move silently in forests to their advantage. The preferred tactic is for one bone widow to charge the smallest target and attempt to grapple it with its lunge attack while the others circle around and attempt their spit attacks on larger opponents. Bone Widows do not need to eat, they hunt for the pure joy of watching their prey's life fade from their bodies. Bone Widows are intelligent and hunt for the joy of killing. If they have the upper hand they will drag a battle out to enjoy the suffering of their prey a little longer.

Appearance:
In front of you stands a large spider with thick black skin that shines under its matted, blood stained fur. Its massive red eyes peer down at you and you could swear you see a smile spreading on its face. Thick green foam hangs from its mouth, and you can see dried blood caked on its front legs.

The Bone Widow resembles a large spider except for a few things. 2 of its legs are used as weapons so it only uses 6 legs to walk, its thick black skin shines like obsidian behind a forest of thick black hair. The Bone Widow’s eyes are massive, larger than they should be even for a giant spider; they glow with an unholy red light. Due to their favorite hunting tactics their front legs are often covered in blood or pieces of their last victim.



3: More Treants will attack the PCs, backed up by a Flesh Golem Inquisition, by the End of the fight one will go Berserk (if the PCs are near Ahnillation)

4: A group of Slaymates try and convince the PCs to be their friend whilst actually trying to set up flanking and such. if things get violent, a multitude of Qth-Maren and tomb motes back them up.

The Gates of NorSkull

A large gate stands between the PCs and a sinister graveyard. To oyur horror, however, undead fill the field, some dressed in tattered robes, others in fine dresses, conversing, trading and even playing betting games. The gate is covered in sinister staues, horrendous Gargoyles promising misfortune to those who enter the town.

Worse still, a darkly castle awaits behind the city, it's twisted spires and ghastly windows promising a sure death to the fools who enter.

Encounters

5: The gargoyles erupt, transforming into juvenile Nabassus. (Hordes of the Abyss)

THE TOWN

The last survivors: After a couple fights against evil-pally, most or all of the allies that the party had will probably be dead. That's when they get an invitation to join the last group of survivors out there, a group that hates the undead and still has decent numbers, even after the attacks.
The only problem is who these survivors happen to be. Now, this isn't one of those traditional evil-cult-of-asmodeus-hates-the-zombies dealies. No, I'm talking about something as ironic as it is cruel. The remaining survivors are indeed a cult but one of flesh-warpers, abberations (like mindflayers), masochists, and ghouls (not the monster, people who eat dead and undead flesh).
On the one hand, the cult really is well-equipped to help them. Their leader is a rot-reaver (Monster Manual III, a creature that destroys the undead to eat them), supported by a couple of avolakia (Monster Manual II, a wormlike creature who makes undead to eat them) and with a cadaver collector (Monster Manual III again) to collect bodies. Together with high-level humanoid cultists and mind flayers, they stand a decent chance of fighting the undead if the party cooperates. Furthermore, having always had to fight off undead just to get their meals, the cult has a stash of items for fighting them off and has been judiciously looting the town throughout the proceedings (if the party joins them, at least a couple items should be all but thrust upon them).
On the other hand, the party is dealing with a cult. They may demand offerings of flesh for membership, a surviving NPC or two may simply vanish one day (though adressing the rot reaver will ensure that punishment is delivered), and most of the food is necrotized and diiseased, causing the humanoid cultists to go slowly insane and perhaps infecting the party with mindfire.
The secret to sealing the deal between the party and the cult is to make it absolutely clear that the object of the cult's worship is absolutely no threat to the party; either a real entity who has no reason to care about the cult (such as a demigod of soil) or an utterly fictional character devised by the fevered minds of the cultists (such as "the long waba", a stick figure with cartoonishly large eyes and a stovepipe hat).

Once again, almost nothing about the situation itself is innately dangerous (other than the food). Still, it opens up room for any number of gruesome and degrading occurances, such as accidentally crossing an insane illithid, mandatory scarring rituals, compulsory missions, festivals where raw undead are strapped to tables and eaten, clerics that refuse to heal interesting wounds, addle-minded cultists who can't remember their part in an important plan, and rituals requiring the party to bow down in front of a stick figure. Even if the party winds up victorious, their sense of accomplishment is shattered by the fact that they relied on a sham of a cult.

As all undead are powered by negative energy, why not take advantage of this. Throughout the undead town, perhaps the undead set up large stones to stimulate the negative energy plane. To the undead, this would provide peaceful ambience. To the living, it would stimulate the minor negative energy planar trait (1d6 damage per round unless deathwarded) out to 5,000 feet and the major negative energy planar trait (1 negative level per round unless deathwarded) out to 50 feet.

By scattering them sporadically throughout the city (leaving some spots [like the resistance hideout] out of range), the party has a choice when stealthily battling the undead.

They can a) go around under the effects of a deathward spell, hoping that the mission will end soon.
b) forego the deathward and run from safe spot to safe spot as they travel (the cult will probably have a map of safe spots, but it may be partially inaccurate or become innacurate over time if rocks are destroyed or installed).
c) destroy the stones (which have high hp and hardness and are usually in very public areas), ending the damage but alerting all undead in the area (AKA: within 5,000 feet) to their pressence.
d) move a stone. Though they are likely incredibly heavy, if a stone is only slightly in the way, a party could probably move it up to 100 feet without drawing too much attention (I doubt the undead would be expecting it). If they keep doing it, however, someone is going to realize what is happening.

To make matters worse, have the town replace broken rocks at a rate of, say, 1 per week. If no rocks have been destroyed, the town installs a new one instead. Imagine the horror when one is installed that renders the hideout of the resistance useless or (perhaps more diabolical) makes half of it inhospitable (meaning that some people may want to stay).

The party could destroy such a rock whenever it is installed but security would increase each time and doing so could tip off the town as to where the resistance is located (in fact, if enough rocks are broken, the party might be trailed back to their hideout one time). On the other hand, a smart party may keep destroying a single rock on the opposite side of town, luring the police away from the resistance (a good reward for good thinking).

Edit: Oh, and one more:

The Bath:
After the undead town became an undead town, it is likely that most of the aquatic systems went unnoticed or were left alone for decoration, unknowingly giving the resistance a place to get their water. When the resistance really becomes a thorn in the town's side, you can have the city's leader make a proclamation: Every (undead) citizen is to bathe for the next 24 hours.
This event is great because it gives the personalities of your players a real chance to shine. Once the undead have finished their bathing (in previously public water supplies), that water will become utterly unpotable (though ghouls from the cult may try drinking it anyways).
Your party has a number of choices on this day, any of which is completely viable but has its downsides:
a) attack: with so many citizens bathing in large clusters, the party may be tempted to kill as many undead as possible, using every area effect that they and the cultists can muster. Unfortunately, that so many enemies have gathered means that the more powerful citizens are also assembled and that the party may be mobbed. Furthermore, if the bodies are left in the water, it is still polluted (though the battle may serve to lure the undead out of the water).
b) loot and pillage: that everyone is resting in the aquifers means that nobody is guarding the houses and stores. The party can loot to their heart's content, destroy small structures that have been blocking potential paths, or even clear the city of the malevolant stones (see previous suggestion). However, doing so means that they are doing nothing to stop the undead and just lost their water supply. Note, however, that making too much noise may lure undead out of their baths (which may be viewed as a good thing).
c) subterfuge: if the party simply hides in the shadows and spies (or scries) on the undead (on the intelligent ones anyway), they may learn important facts about the town, its history, future plans, the heirarchy, or, to pad their egos a bit, the rumors told about the resistance (and the PCs in particular. Nothing is more rewarding than hearing your character described as a terrible monster by a reanimated corpse).
If the party seeks to drive the undead out of the water without a fight, a single flask of holy water or a bless water spell can disperse over 1,000 cubic feet (a 10-foot cube) over the space of (about) 1 minute, making the water irritating (but not painful) to the undead and likely inspiring them to leave. Spreading the water over a smaller area hurts the undead a bit (1 damage) and alerts them that something is wrong.
If the undead were about to discuss something of interest and are about to leave, the party may keep them there a bit longer with unholy water, which disperses in the same way to make the water feel like a spa for the undead.
The downside to this mission is the risk of discovery by the undead.
Storm the Castle: Though the "city officials", the undead paladin, and the ruler of the castle are probably exempt from the baths, the odds are high that at least some of their guards aren't. With the city streets clear, the party may decide that now is the time to a deciding assault (or at least for a clever assassination), taking on the undead paladin, storming the castle, or attacking whichever "city offcial" has been giving them the biggest headache.
The risk here is doing nothing to stop the polluted water, that a toppled tyrant doesn't suddenly make the other undead go away (it may just make them mad), and that some (but not all) of the leaders may have anticipated this, setting up traps/ambushes for would-be assassins.

Aftermath: If the party didn't stop the water supply pollution, it is completely unpotable. Anyone trying to drink it gets no nourishment, is nauseated for 1 round, and has to make a saving throw to resist catching mindfire. The cult will only have what water they can create magically (and the party may be sent on missions to collect a couple water-producing magic items [such as a sink at what was once a high-end inn])
On the plus-side, undead simply weren't designed to take baths, let alone such long ones. If their bath went uninterrupted, their skin (if any) has become a bit bloated and their bones have softened. All undead suffer a -2 penalty to initiative checks, a -5 foot speed penalty to all movement speeds, and a -1 penalty to their AC for 24 hours after their bath.

This will be an important political member in the town:

bane wraith.

A couple of things to say first. That the picture in heroes of horror isn't what it naturally looks like. If you read the text of the creature, it is described in its natural form as being "a vaguely humanoid mass of sickly gray mists and energies" (though the players may never see this true form). It also says that "living beings often feel vaguely uneasy around one...". So far, so good.

One thing about this guy is that he is incorporeal. 90% of your party's attacks have a 50% miss chance, it is completely silent (unless it wants to make noise), and it can walk through walls. Making things stranger, the thing doesn't look incorporeal unless you succeed on a spot check (that is one of its special qualities), making it creepier when it goes through walls.

It's personality is scarier. First of all, it takes less to tick this guy off than it takes to tick off an Africanized bee. Next, this guy doesn't attack you, or at least not right away. No, this guy wants to mess with your head first.

Whenever this guy passes within 30 feet of a creature, it instantly learns the appearance and name of every family member and friend that creature possesses. Furthermore, it learns where that creature thinks its friends and family are located. No Saving Throw. That's right! The moment that it comes within 30 feet of a PC, it learns where where the resistance is located.

It's not quite done messing with your head, though. This thing has a couple of at will spell-like abilities. First is disguise self. You remember how this thing learns the appearance and name of every friend...now you know why. Secondly comes detect thoughts. Though this ability does allow a saving throw, you can really mess with your party's head if this goes off.

This guy has a couple more abilities up its sleeves. First of all, it's touch attack. When this thing touches you, it deals strength or wisdom drain. Furthermore, if it drains your wisdom, you only notice if you make a wisdom check (with your reduced wisdom).

The one saving grace about fighting these guys is that they deal pretty little drain and that they need to completely drain your strength before they can drain your Con and kill you. Of course, as you immediately notice Str drain, they normally start with Wis drain (complicated little buggers they are )

The last thing worthy of note about these guys is their ability to create spawn. fortunately (or unfortunately) their victims only become normal wraiths when killed (not another bane wraith). Like other wraiths, bane wraiths can control any number of spawn. What is so sick and twisted about this ability is the wraiths all resemble their victims.

To sum it up, because you happened to look at a bane wraith "the wrong way", it decides to hunt down your friends and family, kill them, and then have their unholy spirits kill you. That, my friend, is pure M!ndf*#k.

There are two ways to play this guy.
1. Free agent. The party bumps into this guy at some point, thinking that it's another cultist sent by the resistance until it sinks through the floor. When the party returns to the hideout, they see the wraith sitting down on a chair. It waves to them before vanishing into the crowd (or through an object). In reality, this banewraith works for nobody, instead deciding to torment and kill the resistance by pure chance. If the party reports that the resistance has been found, they may have to relocate. Every now and then, the Bane wraith appears to either read someone's mind and tell the party a vital detail about their own plan (making them think that the enemy knows), to impersonate a close friend (or even a family member or loved one from a PCs past if you are feeling cruel), or to simply kill someone and take their wraith with him.
2. The Difficult Choice.
This creature can also be used to populate a room in the castle. Replace its three feats with dodge, mobility, and spring attack. He is the only creature in normal (20 x 20 foot) castle room, apparently sitting down on a chair at the far end of the room in the disguise of a human aristocrat. As a free action, the banewraith chooses someone as the target for his dodge feat. As he gets up and walks towards the party (moving 10 feet over to them, the banewraith "walks" at a speed of 40 feet) he congratulates them on having gotten so far, tells them that their reputation precedes them, and informs them that he has no intention of fighting them. He motions to the far door and bows his head before, almost as an afterthought, asks how a couple of their close friends in the resistance are doing and making reference to the resistance's headquarters' location with a small diabolical chuckle (EX: "By the way, how are Borris and Klimbwater doing? It must be pretty cold for them under those docks, hmmhmmhmm"). Veiled threat accomplished, the bane wraith "brushes past" whomever looks like a cleric (unless doing so would provoke an AoO from a big, burly PC, in which case they chose another target), draining thier wisdom in the process (in game terms, the bane wraith makes a touch attack and takes another move action thanks to spring attack). The banewraith heads out of the exit (not through a wall) an down through the floor as soon as he is out of sight. Unless someone in the party made a good spot check, nobody will know that he is incorporeal.
After this, the party has a choice, they can go through to the next room (setting off only a minor mechanical trap [relying on a pressure pad that the bane wraith couldn't set off]) or head back to save everybody.
The bane wraith's plan is set. First, he waits under the floor for a couple rounds to see if anyone comes, activating his detect thoughts SLA so he'll be ready to know what the party is planning. Whether they come or not, the bane wraith sets off underground towards the ruler of the castle to inform them of the intruders before heading to the cult's headquarters to make good on his threat.
If the party keeps going, assume that the bane wraith kills most of the cult before coming back and waiting at the entrance to the castle in its true form with his army of spawn (with the spawn of the PCs' friends in the front line).
If they go back, the party gets a bit of a head start while the bane wraith reports to the castle's lord but the wraith has a fly speed of 80 feet and can ignore solid objects, increasing the odds that he will beat the party back (though the wraith, unlike a horse, can't run). If the banewraith gets there first, it attacks the close personal friends of the PCs first so assume that some of them are already dead, more if the PCs were somehow held up on the trip back and less if they arrive soon after the banewraith. If the party arrives first, it is possible to prevent any ally fatalities if the party plays their cards right.
Either way, going back gives the castle's lord some time to set more defenses and muster more troops

The PCs will arrive at the Gardens of Fugue


A Large gate stands between the PCs and the garden

The Gate of Hearts: This could be the gate to the castle, the undead town, or some other dungeon. It is a large iron gate with three metal indentations, all of which pulse rhythmically "like a heart". As you may have guessed, the only way to get past the gate is to place a heart in each indentation. Vermin and animal hearts don't count and any undead heart placed in gets a negative level as they place it in. It has to be a humanoid, monstrous humanoid, or similar type of heart. After all three hearts have been placed in, it is noticed that the various orifices don't quite line up with those of the door, requiring the party to fiddle around with them by hand. After all of this, the hearts are compacted in small, bloody explosions and the door opens.

As you can tell, this gate isn't intended to kill people. It's intended to traumatize them. They have to kill three sentient creatures, put their hearts in a doorway, fit them in perfectly, and watch them explode.
However, that isn't to say that this won't hurt people. Anyone using undead hearts gets a negative level, alignments might change, and somebody might stupidly kill another player or even offer up their own hearts.




In between the town and the castle there lies a large garden which contains all sorts of horrific plants

four corpses with a bunch of vines tangled up around them. Make it clear that the vines seem to be feeding off the corpses. Don't have a fight at this point; it's just good form to make the PCs scared of all the plants:

Later On:

3x

ASSASSIN VINE

Large Plant

Hit Dice: 4d8+12 (30 hp)

Initiative: +0

Speed: 5 ft. (1 square)

Armor Class: 15 (–1 size, +6 natural), touch 9, flat-footed 15

Base Attack/Grapple: +3/+12

Attack: Slam +7 melee (1d6+7)

Full Attack: Slam +7 melee (1d6+7)

Space/Reach: 10 ft./10 ft. (20 ft. with vine)

Special Attacks: Constrict 1d6+7, entangle, improved grab

Special Qualities: Blindsight 30 ft., camouflage, immunity to electricity, low-light vision, plant traits, resistance to cold 10 and fire 10

Saves: Fort +7, Ref +1, Will +2

Abilities: Str 20, Dex 10, Con 16, Int —, Wis 13, Cha 9

Environment: Temperate forests

Organization: Solitary or patch (2–4)

Challenge Rating: 3

Treasure: 1/10th coins; 50% goods; 50% items

Alignment: Always neutral

Advancement: 5–16 HD (Huge); 17–32 HD (Gargantuan); 33+ HD (Colossal)

Level Adjustment: —
The assassin vine is a semi-mobile plant that collects its own grisly fertilizer by grabbing and crushing animals and depositing the carcasses near its roots.

A mature plant consists of a main vine, about 20 feet long. Smaller vines up to 5 feet long branch off from the main vine about every 6 inches. These small vines bear clusters of leaves, and in late summer they produce bunches of small fruits that resemble wild grapes. The fruit is tough and has a hearty but bitter flavor. Assassin vine berries make a heady wine.

An assassin vine can move about, albeit very slowly, but usually stays put unless it needs to seek prey in a new vicinity.

A subterranean version of the assassin vine grows near hot springs, volcanic vents, and other sources of thermal energy. These plants have thin, wiry stems and gray leaves shot through with silver, brown, and white veins so that they resemble mineral deposits. An assassin vine growing underground usually generates enough offal to support a thriving colony of mushrooms and other fungi, which spring up around the plant and help conceal it.

COMBAT
An assassin vine uses simple tactics. It lies still until prey comes within reach, then attacks. It uses its entangle ability both to catch prey and to deter counterattacks.

Constrict (Ex): An assassin vine deals 1d6+7 points of damage with a successful grapple check.

Entangle (Su): An assassin vine can animate plants within 30 feet of itself as a free action (Ref DC 13 partial). The effect lasts until the vine dies or decides to end it (also a free action). The save DC is Wisdom-based. The ability is otherwise similar to entangle (caster level 4th).

Improved Grab (Ex): To use this ability, an assassin vine must hit with its slam attack. It can then attempt to start a grapple as a free action without provoking an attack of opportunity. If it wins the grapple check, it establishes a hold and can constrict.

Blindsight (Ex): Assassin vines have no visual organs but can ascertain all foes within 30 feet using sound, scent, and vibration.

Camouflage (Ex): Since an assassin vine looks like a normal plant when at rest, it takes a DC 20 Spot check to notice it before it attacks. Anyone with ranks in Survival or Knowledge (nature) can use one of those skills instead of Spot to notice the plant. Dwarves can use stonecunning to notice the subterranean version.

Will add
Differences
+5 hit dice
Str +8 Wis +8
Tangible differences:
HP 67
Attack: Slam +15 (1d8 + 13)
Full Attack Slam +15/+10
Constrict 1d8+13
Saves Fort +9, Ref +5, Will +8
Entangle DC 17
Feats: Lightning Reflexes, Improved Natural Attack

TRAPS

A good trap is a 5 ft by 80ft hallway that square/hex is a spelled trap to cast summon undead 4 =) make the end an indestructable door lol and its locked =) only way to open the door is to run back across the hallway and open the door on the other side simultaneously, (first door is also made of said indestructable and locks behind the pc's.

I've got an idea for a trap at the castle. I always like to put lots of illusions into adventures, especially adventures with undead as undead are immune. In first edition there was a spell called phantasmagoria, the main use of which was making players believe that they were going to be hit by a train. When the players get half way into the corridor the door they came through locks and a light appears at the end of the tunnel, a full illusion of some large object is coming towards the party. However at the sides of the corridor are alcoves for them to hide in and avoid it. The trick is that the alcoves have an illusionary floor which drops players silly enough to hide in them into whatever you want (glass spikes and acid ). The best thing is that as undead are immune to its effects you could mask some undead with the illusion.

Four Adjacent 5-ft squares. When stepped on, a wither limbs (Legs) , if stepped on again (arms) spells hits the target (LM). From there the PC(s) are unable to move, so scarabs start swarming from slots in the walls

A large room with a very high pyramid ceiling and patches of spikes on the floor. Reverse Gravity trap to make them fall into the ceiling and take damage and a second trap set into ceiling to set gravity right and make them fall into the collection of spikes located on the floor just below the apex of the pyramid roof.

Fall up for 6d6 damage. Fall down for 6d6 damage. Spikes for 6d6 damage. Poison on the spikes. Spikes can then trigger a crushing wall trap or a flooding room trap if you want.

have a wonderful idea. Think of a room, an ordinary room, with 3 colums each side, up and down, like this:

x x x
x x
x x x


So each of the colums, is a vampire sarcophagus. The walls around the room are hollow, with barely visible (Less than 1 centimeter) gaps, at every odd junction of the bricks that compose the room. The hollows are big enough for 1 medium-sized creature to walk around the room. Inside the gaps, there's some traps connect to a targeted detect undead, that's detecting any undead on the gaps. What does this do is shut down the doors of the room (Iron Porticullis), and collapse the columns. So here's the drill:

The pc's enter the room, which just looks like a normal intersection room with 4 doors. When they enter, 4 CR10 Vampire Monks(Well, you SAID they were overpowered...) jump from the coffins, surprising the players unless they succeed in a DC 30 Listen Check or have Detect Undead active. If ANY of the vampires is killed, he immediately enters gaseous form and goes inside the gap on the wall, collapsing the ceiling on the players (DC 20 15d6 reflex for half). The doors will be locked and the lock is busted (From the debris), so the players will have to succeed in breaking the porticullis apart. Just to make things harder, another set of 4 vampires appear if the players don't open the doors in 10 minutes.

More fun with Orbs of Annihilation.

You remember the scene from Indiana Jones with the giant boulder? Well, replace the boulder with an enormous Orb, and make the floor collapsing on thier way back across, and the gap is too large to jump across this time. And to insure they don't escape through use of flight, a twirling Catherine's wheel on the cieling. To stop the use of Force Wall/etc stopping the Orb, an AMF except on the very edge of the gap, where summoning one would push them off anyways.
(Will only be used if not all PCs are targeted)

Possibly do this with a visual cue, for example a blackish vapour that can be thicker or thinner depending on how badly you want to shut down the casters in a given area. This could range from a barely perceptible black vapour that might sting the caster for 1d3 damage on his concentration and/or spellcraft checks, all the way up to a billowing black fog you can barely see through that will half kill the caster on his first concentration check (e.g. 8d8 negative energy damage

Pit of Opposition: It's just a normal 50-foot pit whose bottom is lined with a mirror of opposition. When someone falls in, they look down and are forced to fight against a copy of themselves (who has not taken falling damage as the copy was made as the character fell) while isolated from everyone else. If anyone looks down to see what's going on, another copy is created, a copy that can only reach and fight the character that fell.

Just as Advertised: near the entrance to the castle, an overlarge skull, perhaps from a stone giant, is built into a wall. In its mouth is an immobile sphere of annihiliation (yep, just like tomb of horrors with a skull instead of a demon). There are engravings in the wall to both the left and right of the skull, written in the common tongue.
To the left: The last remaining sanctuary rests beyond the orb.
To the right: The last remaining refuge is a fast and painless death.
This is just what is looks like, a last chance for intrudors to painlessly commit suicide (though it was built mostly for intimidation purposes). 90% of the time, it is simply decoration that helps set the mood of the dungeon.
The last 10% of the time, characters either roleplay or metagame their characters into the skull's mouth.
Ex 1: There's no way you'd rip off tomb of horrors like that.
Ex 2: A death trap would never actually say it's a death trap. maybe the fast and painless death is a magic weapon.
Ex 3: well, if the refuge is death, than I'll just head for the sanctuary (this guy didn't know that sanctuary=refuge).
When someone dies to this "trap", you get the honor of explaining to the player how they just walked into a deathtrap that proclaimed itself to be such.

ImmortalAer
2009-06-03, 03:40 PM
Just random cruelty : a quest brings them into farmer's fields after a monsoon-like rainstorm, and a mage goes running by and casts mud-to-stone. Feet-encased in rock calamity follows, giving the perfect opprotunity for hundreds of HD1 zombies to swarm them.

Mercenary Pen
2009-06-03, 04:48 PM
@ arb514: Spoiler tags will make the whole thing much more manageable...

These can be done as follows (noparsed for clarity):
this is a spoiler

and would look something like this:

this is a spoiler
this is a spoiler within a spoiler, see how this can improve the organisation of your ideas...


Maybe you could try using some sort of Lich infiltrator? I'm thinking in particular an elven lich for the availability of the excuse "I'm a Baelnorn, I'm not evil", and that's once the PCs have seen through any illusions that this lich has up. Use him to screw with their minds (possibly make him a bard, for diplomacy and bluff related antics) and lead them into traps, possibly using him as an overt ally for an encounter or two until he can lead them into a trap and turn on them...

Dagren
2009-06-03, 04:57 PM
Maybe you could try using some sort of Lich infiltrator? I'm thinking in particular an elven lich for the availability of the excuse "I'm a Baelnorn, I'm not evil", and that's once the PCs have seen through any illusions that this lich has up. Use him to screw with their minds (possibly make him a bard, for diplomacy and bluff related antics) and lead them into traps, possibly using him as an overt ally for an encounter or two until he can lead them into a trap and turn on them...A bardic lich? That's just... wow, I'd never thought of anything like that. And checking the SRD, I see that unlike in 3.0, it's book legal for 3.5. (Of course he'd probably lack the stopping power of a sorcerer, but still. Bardic Lich!)

wizuriel
2009-06-03, 04:58 PM
Some suggestions for horror is be descriptive with some things, but very non descriptive of others. Like as suggested above describe the effects of undead killing in great detail. If the PC's question stuff about the castle though don't make anything definite. "Well be think we saw stuff in the trees" or "I heard some kind of creature howling". Fear of the unknown is fun :D


also when exploring make some useless skill checks so they can't tell what is what. Example walking through the forest call for listen checks and depending on the results can describe things like birds sounding angry or the sound of screams somewhere off in the distance. If a PC tries to interact with something like the angry birds can let them and use it to throw them further off. The birds don't know why they are angry they just are.

Mercenary Pen
2009-06-03, 06:44 PM
A bardic lich? That's just... wow, I'd never thought of anything like that. And checking the SRD, I see that unlike in 3.0, it's book legal for 3.5. (Of course he'd probably lack the stopping power of a sorcerer, but still. Bardic Lich!)

Of course it's book legal, I double-checked myself before finalising the idea. There's still the issue of getting around the usual Detect Evil if they cast it, but bluff checks (combined with glibness) are your friend (in fact, a magic item with metamagic persisted glibness once per day would really help... especially one fragile enough that they could sunder it without trying, so they don't get the ability to lie to everyone upon beating this guy...

Dagren
2009-06-03, 07:11 PM
Of course it's book legal, I double-checked myself before finalising the idea. There's still the issue of getting around the usual Detect Evil if they cast it, but bluff checks (combined with glibness) are your friend (in fact, a magic item with metamagic persisted glibness once per day would really help... especially one fragile enough that they could sunder it without trying, so they don't get the ability to lie to everyone upon beating this guy...Oh, I know it's legal. As I said, I checked myself. The reason I mentioned it is because I didn't think it was legal, since my copy of the monster manual explicitly restricts liches to being wizards, sorcerers, or clerics. (Hmm, makes me wonder what other casting classes would be like as a lich. Druidic Lich, I wonder? How about Assassin? Anyway, I can truly say you have inspired me, and that's not something I say often)

Realms of Chaos
2009-06-03, 08:00 PM
...(in fact, a magic item with metamagic persisted glibness once per day would really help... especially one fragile enough that they could sunder it without trying, so they don't get the ability to lie to everyone upon beating this guy...

Instead of a fragile item, why not just enchant the lich's phylactery. That way, they can only use the item if they want the lich to return over and over and over again (not that it would ever happen. After killing a lich, someone always casts detect evil and destroys any item on their purpose that glows).

For the purpose of adding cohesiveness between a couple ideas, if an alhoon turned out to be the ruler of the castle, that might help explain why mind flayers are in "the resistance" (mind flayers hate alhoons and this one might've taken out the colony to which it once belonged).

Also, one thing to consider placing in charge of the flesh golems is a cadaver golem (from heroes of horror), a creature that never risks going insane but is always homicidal, grafting parts from corpses onto his body for more power.

Lord Loss
2009-06-04, 04:34 AM
Bardic Lich? Definitely. The whole beauty of this is a feat from exemplars of evil called

Mask of Gentility.

For purposes of Alignment-discerning Effects/Spells, your alignment registers as Neutral.

Preriquesites: Bluff 5 Ranks


By the way, HOW do we put stuff in 'spoiler'?

Mercenary Pen
2009-06-04, 06:30 AM
See my post at the top of the page, I've given you the exact tags to use there. Unfortunately, there's no button for the job, so you'll have to write the tags out each time...

like so:

For other tricks, see this link here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/misc.php?do=bbcode)

Fako
2009-06-04, 06:53 AM
By the looks of it, your party doesn't have any healing magic, aside from potions and wands (with UMD)...

*shameless plug* If you want to cause some problems, you can use this undead (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=87355) as a wandering encounter in the castle. While the encounter might not last long, the lasting disease could get them killed while they rest. You can also use flayed corpses lying around as a warning of where one or two might be patrolling.

EDIT: As far as traps for the castle go, this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=57791) should give you some fun ones to use.

Lord Loss
2009-06-04, 11:12 AM
Our Blackguard Pally operates under special conditions (his devotion to the destruction of abberations allows him to keep lay on hands and a bit of smite evil, as well as his Smite Abberations) So we have lay on hands (But not poison use)

HOLY FRIKIN CHIKIN THIS IS AMAZING!!! This creature is like the ones from the D&D Books except Better! You should write a D&D Supplement!

NorSkull



In this world, the sun will Never Rise

Norskull is a large graveyard-city. At first, it simply seems like a huge graveyard, but the Graves are the residences of the poor, the large crypt underneath is home to the middle-class citizens as well as the market, and the Mausoleums are where the rich may be found. All undead here are sentient, even skeletons and zombies, and anyone to die in this area becomes a Neutral Evil Zombie with no memories of it's past life.

The Rulers of this city, however, are the inhabitants of the castle ,At lest the ones in the highest (or should it be lowest) parts of the castle. They should be Ahloon (Lich) Mind Flayers.

Vampiric mind flayers march the streets of the city, searching for living beings that they can quench their thirst with. The most elite missions in this town are carried out by a special force composed of intelligent Flesh Golems (They lose their intelligence if they go berserk, ravaging all around them).

Minor Negative-Energy Dominant. For a new twist, ONLY nonmagical lighting works. I think they forgot to buy nonmagical torches. Heheheh...

Reaper Forest


The Pcs walk from the glowing portal into awaiting forest (fools!) The Trees in the forest are in fact (mostly, anyway) treants. A DC (25? 30?) Spot Check Shows that the trees in fact have faces on them. The Boneleaves will drop on the PCs (They're Like evil branches of ultimate doom), and the Treants will move while the PCs arent looking, splitting them up. A few treants will move in to Attack.

Encounters


One: Durkon Was Right!

Attack Treants (8) CR: 2 (each)

Boneleaves(2) CR: 6 (each)

At this point the Path Forks, and the pCs either go to encounter two

2: Spider Ambush!!!

Bone Widow (1)

Size/Type: Large Undead
Hit Dice: 8d12 (52HP)
Initiative: +4 (0 dex, +4 Improved init)
Speed: 60’, 60' (Climb)
Armor Class: 21, touch 13, flat-footed 21 (-1 size, +4 deflection, +8 natural)
Base Attack/Grapple: +4/+14
Attack: Spear +11 (1d8+8) Spit +6(1d4 + poison)
Full Attack: 2X Spear +11 (1d8+8) or Spit +6 (1d4+ poison)
Space/Reach: 10'/10'
Special Attacks: Lunge +13 (2d8+16)
Special Qualities: DR 10/- ; Undead Traits
Saves: Fort +2, Ref +6 Will+7
Abilities: STR 22, DEX 10, CON -, INT 12, WIS 12, CHR 22
Skills: Jump +22, Hide +10 (+16 in forests), Spot +12, Listen +12, Move Silently +10 (+16 in forests)
Feats: Improved initiative; Weapon Focus Spit, Weapon Focus Spear, Lightning Reflexes
Environment: Forests, negative energy planes
Organization: Pack 2-5 or Gang 4-10(2d4 +2)
CR: 10 (this may not be right. They have low hit points, but the DR and poison bring them up to par I think)
Treasure: 1/2 Normal (magical or mundane items only)
Alignment: CE

Explanation of special attacks:
Spear: A Bone Widows primary attack is to thrust its large from legs into an opponent and try to pin them to the ground so that their Spit attack will be more effective. A Bone Widow that hits with both Spear attacks in the same round may initiate a grapple as a free action and does not draw an attack of opportunity for doing so.

Lunge: A Bone Widow may charge even if their target is not in a straight line from them, they may make a single attack against their opponent, and if they succeed they spear the opponent with both of their front legs, initiating a grapple for free without provoking an attack of opportunity.

Spit: A Bone Widow may attempt to spit poison at their opponent 3 times per day. They must succeeded on a ranged touch attack, if they do their opponent must make a DC 24 (Charisma based) Fort save or immediately loose 1d6+2 points of Con (This is treated as ability Drain for purposes of healing) regardless of whether they succeeded on the first save a second save must be attempted the following round or they will suffer an additional 1d6+2 points of Con Damage. Any creature reduced to 0 Con or lower immediately rises as an undead warrior. Retaining any and all class abilities/ ability scores/ and Knowledge they had in their old life. A DC 30 Will Save is allowed to resist this effect, if resisted the character simply dies.

Tactics:
The Bone Widow is a fearsome beast that stalks the forests near places of negative energy. Necromancers’ castles, temples to evil clerics and the like make excellent homes to the Bone Widow. Bone Widows prefer to ambush their prey, relying on their natural +6 to hide and move silently in forests to their advantage. The preferred tactic is for one bone widow to charge the smallest target and attempt to grapple it with its lunge attack while the others circle around and attempt their spit attacks on larger opponents. Bone Widows do not need to eat, they hunt for the pure joy of watching their prey's life fade from their bodies. Bone Widows are intelligent and hunt for the joy of killing. If they have the upper hand they will drag a battle out to enjoy the suffering of their prey a little longer.

Appearance:
In front of you stands a large spider with thick black skin that shines under its matted, blood stained fur. Its massive red eyes peer down at you and you could swear you see a smile spreading on its face. Thick green foam hangs from its mouth, and you can see dried blood caked on its front legs.

The Bone Widow resembles a large spider except for a few things. 2 of its legs are used as weapons so it only uses 6 legs to walk, its thick black skin shines like obsidian behind a forest of thick black hair. The Bone Widow’s eyes are massive, larger than they should be even for a giant spider; they glow with an unholy red light. Due to their favorite hunting tactics their front legs are often covered in blood or pieces of their last victim.



3: More Treants will attack the PCs, backed up by a Flesh Golem Inquisition, by the End of the fight one will go Berserk (if the PCs are near Ahnillation)

4: A group of Slaymates try and convince the PCs to be their friend whilst actually trying to set up flanking and such. if things get violent, a multitude of Qth-Maren and tomb motes back them up.

The Gates of NorSkull

A large gate stands between the PCs and a sinister graveyard. To oyur horror, however, undead fill the field, some dressed in tattered robes, others in fine dresses, conversing, trading and even playing betting games. The gate is covered in sinister staues, horrendous Gargoyles promising misfortune to those who enter the town.

Worse still, a darkly castle awaits behind the city, it's twisted spires and ghastly windows promising a sure death to the fools who enter.

Encounters

5: The gargoyles erupt, transforming into juvenile Nabassus. (Hordes of the Abyss)

THE TOWN

The last survivors: After a couple fights against evil-pally, most or all of the allies that the party had will probably be dead. That's when they get an invitation to join the last group of survivors out there, a group that hates the undead and still has decent numbers, even after the attacks.
The only problem is who these survivors happen to be. Now, this isn't one of those traditional evil-cult-of-asmodeus-hates-the-zombies dealies. No, I'm talking about something as ironic as it is cruel. The remaining survivors are indeed a cult but one of flesh-warpers, abberations (like mindflayers), masochists, and ghouls (not the monster, people who eat dead and undead flesh).
On the one hand, the cult really is well-equipped to help them. Their leader is a rot-reaver (Monster Manual III, a creature that destroys the undead to eat them), supported by a couple of avolakia (Monster Manual II, a wormlike creature who makes undead to eat them) and with a cadaver collector (Monster Manual III again) to collect bodies. Together with high-level humanoid cultists and mind flayers, they stand a decent chance of fighting the undead if the party cooperates. Furthermore, having always had to fight off undead just to get their meals, the cult has a stash of items for fighting them off and has been judiciously looting the town throughout the proceedings (if the party joins them, at least a couple items should be all but thrust upon them).
On the other hand, the party is dealing with a cult. They may demand offerings of flesh for membership, a surviving NPC or two may simply vanish one day (though adressing the rot reaver will ensure that punishment is delivered), and most of the food is necrotized and diiseased, causing the humanoid cultists to go slowly insane and perhaps infecting the party with mindfire.
The secret to sealing the deal between the party and the cult is to make it absolutely clear that the object of the cult's worship is absolutely no threat to the party; either a real entity who has no reason to care about the cult (such as a demigod of soil) or an utterly fictional character devised by the fevered minds of the cultists (such as "the long waba", a stick figure with cartoonishly large eyes and a stovepipe hat).

Once again, almost nothing about the situation itself is innately dangerous (other than the food). Still, it opens up room for any number of gruesome and degrading occurances, such as accidentally crossing an insane illithid, mandatory scarring rituals, compulsory missions, festivals where raw undead are strapped to tables and eaten, clerics that refuse to heal interesting wounds, addle-minded cultists who can't remember their part in an important plan, and rituals requiring the party to bow down in front of a stick figure. Even if the party winds up victorious, their sense of accomplishment is shattered by the fact that they relied on a sham of a cult.

As all undead are powered by negative energy, why not take advantage of this. Throughout the undead town, perhaps the undead set up large stones to stimulate the negative energy plane. To the undead, this would provide peaceful ambience. To the living, it would stimulate the minor negative energy planar trait (1d6 damage per round unless deathwarded) out to 5,000 feet and the major negative energy planar trait (1 negative level per round unless deathwarded) out to 50 feet.

By scattering them sporadically throughout the city (leaving some spots [like the resistance hideout] out of range), the party has a choice when stealthily battling the undead.

They can a) go around under the effects of a deathward spell, hoping that the mission will end soon.
b) forego the deathward and run from safe spot to safe spot as they travel (the cult will probably have a map of safe spots, but it may be partially inaccurate or become innacurate over time if rocks are destroyed or installed).
c) destroy the stones (which have high hp and hardness and are usually in very public areas), ending the damage but alerting all undead in the area (AKA: within 5,000 feet) to their pressence.
d) move a stone. Though they are likely incredibly heavy, if a stone is only slightly in the way, a party could probably move it up to 100 feet without drawing too much attention (I doubt the undead would be expecting it). If they keep doing it, however, someone is going to realize what is happening.

To make matters worse, have the town replace broken rocks at a rate of, say, 1 per week. If no rocks have been destroyed, the town installs a new one instead. Imagine the horror when one is installed that renders the hideout of the resistance useless or (perhaps more diabolical) makes half of it inhospitable (meaning that some people may want to stay).

The party could destroy such a rock whenever it is installed but security would increase each time and doing so could tip off the town as to where the resistance is located (in fact, if enough rocks are broken, the party might be trailed back to their hideout one time). On the other hand, a smart party may keep destroying a single rock on the opposite side of town, luring the police away from the resistance (a good reward for good thinking).

Edit: Oh, and one more:

The Bath:
After the undead town became an undead town, it is likely that most of the aquatic systems went unnoticed or were left alone for decoration, unknowingly giving the resistance a place to get their water. When the resistance really becomes a thorn in the town's side, you can have the city's leader make a proclamation: Every (undead) citizen is to bathe for the next 24 hours.
This event is great because it gives the personalities of your players a real chance to shine. Once the undead have finished their bathing (in previously public water supplies), that water will become utterly unpotable (though ghouls from the cult may try drinking it anyways).
Your party has a number of choices on this day, any of which is completely viable but has its downsides:
a) attack: with so many citizens bathing in large clusters, the party may be tempted to kill as many undead as possible, using every area effect that they and the cultists can muster. Unfortunately, that so many enemies have gathered means that the more powerful citizens are also assembled and that the party may be mobbed. Furthermore, if the bodies are left in the water, it is still polluted (though the battle may serve to lure the undead out of the water).
b) loot and pillage: that everyone is resting in the aquifers means that nobody is guarding the houses and stores. The party can loot to their heart's content, destroy small structures that have been blocking potential paths, or even clear the city of the malevolant stones (see previous suggestion). However, doing so means that they are doing nothing to stop the undead and just lost their water supply. Note, however, that making too much noise may lure undead out of their baths (which may be viewed as a good thing).
c) subterfuge: if the party simply hides in the shadows and spies (or scries) on the undead (on the intelligent ones anyway), they may learn important facts about the town, its history, future plans, the heirarchy, or, to pad their egos a bit, the rumors told about the resistance (and the PCs in particular. Nothing is more rewarding than hearing your character described as a terrible monster by a reanimated corpse).
If the party seeks to drive the undead out of the water without a fight, a single flask of holy water or a bless water spell can disperse over 1,000 cubic feet (a 10-foot cube) over the space of (about) 1 minute, making the water irritating (but not painful) to the undead and likely inspiring them to leave. Spreading the water over a smaller area hurts the undead a bit (1 damage) and alerts them that something is wrong.
If the undead were about to discuss something of interest and are about to leave, the party may keep them there a bit longer with unholy water, which disperses in the same way to make the water feel like a spa for the undead.
The downside to this mission is the risk of discovery by the undead.
Storm the Castle: Though the "city officials", the undead paladin, and the ruler of the castle are probably exempt from the baths, the odds are high that at least some of their guards aren't. With the city streets clear, the party may decide that now is the time to a deciding assault (or at least for a clever assassination), taking on the undead paladin, storming the castle, or attacking whichever "city offcial" has been giving them the biggest headache.
The risk here is doing nothing to stop the polluted water, that a toppled tyrant doesn't suddenly make the other undead go away (it may just make them mad), and that some (but not all) of the leaders may have anticipated this, setting up traps/ambushes for would-be assassins.

Aftermath: If the party didn't stop the water supply pollution, it is completely unpotable. Anyone trying to drink it gets no nourishment, is nauseated for 1 round, and has to make a saving throw to resist catching mindfire. The cult will only have what water they can create magically (and the party may be sent on missions to collect a couple water-producing magic items [such as a sink at what was once a high-end inn])
On the plus-side, undead simply weren't designed to take baths, let alone such long ones. If their bath went uninterrupted, their skin (if any) has become a bit bloated and their bones have softened. All undead suffer a -2 penalty to initiative checks, a -5 foot speed penalty to all movement speeds, and a -1 penalty to their AC for 24 hours after their bath.

This will be an important political member in the town:

bane wraith.

A couple of things to say first. That the picture in heroes of horror isn't what it naturally looks like. If you read the text of the creature, it is described in its natural form as being "a vaguely humanoid mass of sickly gray mists and energies" (though the players may never see this true form). It also says that "living beings often feel vaguely uneasy around one...". So far, so good.

One thing about this guy is that he is incorporeal. 90% of your party's attacks have a 50% miss chance, it is completely silent (unless it wants to make noise), and it can walk through walls. Making things stranger, the thing doesn't look incorporeal unless you succeed on a spot check (that is one of its special qualities), making it creepier when it goes through walls.

It's personality is scarier. First of all, it takes less to tick this guy off than it takes to tick off an Africanized bee. Next, this guy doesn't attack you, or at least not right away. No, this guy wants to mess with your head first.

Whenever this guy passes within 30 feet of a creature, it instantly learns the appearance and name of every family member and friend that creature possesses. Furthermore, it learns where that creature thinks its friends and family are located. No Saving Throw. That's right! The moment that it comes within 30 feet of a PC, it learns where where the resistance is located.

It's not quite done messing with your head, though. This thing has a couple of at will spell-like abilities. First is disguise self. You remember how this thing learns the appearance and name of every friend...now you know why. Secondly comes detect thoughts. Though this ability does allow a saving throw, you can really mess with your party's head if this goes off.

This guy has a couple more abilities up its sleeves. First of all, it's touch attack. When this thing touches you, it deals strength or wisdom drain. Furthermore, if it drains your wisdom, you only notice if you make a wisdom check (with your reduced wisdom).

The one saving grace about fighting these guys is that they deal pretty little drain and that they need to completely drain your strength before they can drain your Con and kill you. Of course, as you immediately notice Str drain, they normally start with Wis drain (complicated little buggers they are )

The last thing worthy of note about these guys is their ability to create spawn. fortunately (or unfortunately) their victims only become normal wraiths when killed (not another bane wraith). Like other wraiths, bane wraiths can control any number of spawn. What is so sick and twisted about this ability is the wraiths all resemble their victims.

To sum it up, because you happened to look at a bane wraith "the wrong way", it decides to hunt down your friends and family, kill them, and then have their unholy spirits kill you. That, my friend, is pure M!ndf*#k.

There are two ways to play this guy.
1. Free agent. The party bumps into this guy at some point, thinking that it's another cultist sent by the resistance until it sinks through the floor. When the party returns to the hideout, they see the wraith sitting down on a chair. It waves to them before vanishing into the crowd (or through an object). In reality, this banewraith works for nobody, instead deciding to torment and kill the resistance by pure chance. If the party reports that the resistance has been found, they may have to relocate. Every now and then, the Bane wraith appears to either read someone's mind and tell the party a vital detail about their own plan (making them think that the enemy knows), to impersonate a close friend (or even a family member or loved one from a PCs past if you are feeling cruel), or to simply kill someone and take their wraith with him.
2. The Difficult Choice.
This creature can also be used to populate a room in the castle. Replace its three feats with dodge, mobility, and spring attack. He is the only creature in normal (20 x 20 foot) castle room, apparently sitting down on a chair at the far end of the room in the disguise of a human aristocrat. As a free action, the banewraith chooses someone as the target for his dodge feat. As he gets up and walks towards the party (moving 10 feet over to them, the banewraith "walks" at a speed of 40 feet) he congratulates them on having gotten so far, tells them that their reputation precedes them, and informs them that he has no intention of fighting them. He motions to the far door and bows his head before, almost as an afterthought, asks how a couple of their close friends in the resistance are doing and making reference to the resistance's headquarters' location with a small diabolical chuckle (EX: "By the way, how are Borris and Klimbwater doing? It must be pretty cold for them under those docks, hmmhmmhmm"). Veiled threat accomplished, the bane wraith "brushes past" whomever looks like a cleric (unless doing so would provoke an AoO from a big, burly PC, in which case they chose another target), draining thier wisdom in the process (in game terms, the bane wraith makes a touch attack and takes another move action thanks to spring attack). The banewraith heads out of the exit (not through a wall) an down through the floor as soon as he is out of sight. Unless someone in the party made a good spot check, nobody will know that he is incorporeal.
After this, the party has a choice, they can go through to the next room (setting off only a minor mechanical trap [relying on a pressure pad that the bane wraith couldn't set off]) or head back to save everybody.
The bane wraith's plan is set. First, he waits under the floor for a couple rounds to see if anyone comes, activating his detect thoughts SLA so he'll be ready to know what the party is planning. Whether they come or not, the bane wraith sets off underground towards the ruler of the castle to inform them of the intruders before heading to the cult's headquarters to make good on his threat.
If the party keeps going, assume that the bane wraith kills most of the cult before coming back and waiting at the entrance to the castle in its true form with his army of spawn (with the spawn of the PCs' friends in the front line).
If they go back, the party gets a bit of a head start while the bane wraith reports to the castle's lord but the wraith has a fly speed of 80 feet and can ignore solid objects, increasing the odds that he will beat the party back (though the wraith, unlike a horse, can't run). If the banewraith gets there first, it attacks the close personal friends of the PCs first so assume that some of them are already dead, more if the PCs were somehow held up on the trip back and less if they arrive soon after the banewraith. If the party arrives first, it is possible to prevent any ally fatalities if the party plays their cards right.
Either way, going back gives the castle's lord some time to set more defenses and muster more troops

The PCs will arrive at the Gardens of Fugue


A Large gate stands between the PCs and the garden

The Gate of Hearts: This could be the gate to the castle, the undead town, or some other dungeon. It is a large iron gate with three metal indentations, all of which pulse rhythmically "like a heart". As you may have guessed, the only way to get past the gate is to place a heart in each indentation. Vermin and animal hearts don't count and any undead heart placed in gets a negative level as they place it in. It has to be a humanoid, monstrous humanoid, or similar type of heart. After all three hearts have been placed in, it is noticed that the various orifices don't quite line up with those of the door, requiring the party to fiddle around with them by hand. After all of this, the hearts are compacted in small, bloody explosions and the door opens.

As you can tell, this gate isn't intended to kill people. It's intended to traumatize them. They have to kill three sentient creatures, put their hearts in a doorway, fit them in perfectly, and watch them explode.
However, that isn't to say that this won't hurt people. Anyone using undead hearts gets a negative level, alignments might change, and somebody might stupidly kill another player or even offer up their own hearts.




In between the town and the castle there lies a large garden which contains all sorts of horrific plants

four corpses with a bunch of vines tangled up around them. Make it clear that the vines seem to be feeding off the corpses. Don't have a fight at this point; it's just good form to make the PCs scared of all the plants:

Later On:

3x

ASSASSIN VINE

Large Plant

Hit Dice: 4d8+12 (30 hp)

Initiative: +0

Speed: 5 ft. (1 square)

Armor Class: 15 (–1 size, +6 natural), touch 9, flat-footed 15

Base Attack/Grapple: +3/+12

Attack: Slam +7 melee (1d6+7)

Full Attack: Slam +7 melee (1d6+7)

Space/Reach: 10 ft./10 ft. (20 ft. with vine)

Special Attacks: Constrict 1d6+7, entangle, improved grab

Special Qualities: Blindsight 30 ft., camouflage, immunity to electricity, low-light vision, plant traits, resistance to cold 10 and fire 10

Saves: Fort +7, Ref +1, Will +2

Abilities: Str 20, Dex 10, Con 16, Int —, Wis 13, Cha 9

Environment: Temperate forests

Organization: Solitary or patch (2–4)

Challenge Rating: 3

Treasure: 1/10th coins; 50% goods; 50% items

Alignment: Always neutral

Advancement: 5–16 HD (Huge); 17–32 HD (Gargantuan); 33+ HD (Colossal)

Level Adjustment: —
The assassin vine is a semi-mobile plant that collects its own grisly fertilizer by grabbing and crushing animals and depositing the carcasses near its roots.

A mature plant consists of a main vine, about 20 feet long. Smaller vines up to 5 feet long branch off from the main vine about every 6 inches. These small vines bear clusters of leaves, and in late summer they produce bunches of small fruits that resemble wild grapes. The fruit is tough and has a hearty but bitter flavor. Assassin vine berries make a heady wine.

An assassin vine can move about, albeit very slowly, but usually stays put unless it needs to seek prey in a new vicinity.

A subterranean version of the assassin vine grows near hot springs, volcanic vents, and other sources of thermal energy. These plants have thin, wiry stems and gray leaves shot through with silver, brown, and white veins so that they resemble mineral deposits. An assassin vine growing underground usually generates enough offal to support a thriving colony of mushrooms and other fungi, which spring up around the plant and help conceal it.

COMBAT
An assassin vine uses simple tactics. It lies still until prey comes within reach, then attacks. It uses its entangle ability both to catch prey and to deter counterattacks.

Constrict (Ex): An assassin vine deals 1d6+7 points of damage with a successful grapple check.

Entangle (Su): An assassin vine can animate plants within 30 feet of itself as a free action (Ref DC 13 partial). The effect lasts until the vine dies or decides to end it (also a free action). The save DC is Wisdom-based. The ability is otherwise similar to entangle (caster level 4th).

Improved Grab (Ex): To use this ability, an assassin vine must hit with its slam attack. It can then attempt to start a grapple as a free action without provoking an attack of opportunity. If it wins the grapple check, it establishes a hold and can constrict.

Blindsight (Ex): Assassin vines have no visual organs but can ascertain all foes within 30 feet using sound, scent, and vibration.

Camouflage (Ex): Since an assassin vine looks like a normal plant when at rest, it takes a DC 20 Spot check to notice it before it attacks. Anyone with ranks in Survival or Knowledge (nature) can use one of those skills instead of Spot to notice the plant. Dwarves can use stonecunning to notice the subterranean version.

Will add
Differences
+5 hit dice
Str +8 Wis +8
Tangible differences:
HP 67
Attack: Slam +15 (1d8 + 13)
Full Attack Slam +15/+10
Constrict 1d8+13
Saves Fort +9, Ref +5, Will +8
Entangle DC 17
Feats: Lightning Reflexes, Improved Natural Attack

TRAPS

A good trap is a 5 ft by 80ft hallway that square/hex is a spelled trap to cast summon undead 4 =) make the end an indestructable door lol and its locked =) only way to open the door is to run back across the hallway and open the door on the other side simultaneously, (first door is also made of said indestructable and locks behind the pc's.

I've got an idea for a trap at the castle. I always like to put lots of illusions into adventures, especially adventures with undead as undead are immune. In first edition there was a spell called phantasmagoria, the main use of which was making players believe that they were going to be hit by a train. When the players get half way into the corridor the door they came through locks and a light appears at the end of the tunnel, a full illusion of some large object is coming towards the party. However at the sides of the corridor are alcoves for them to hide in and avoid it. The trick is that the alcoves have an illusionary floor which drops players silly enough to hide in them into whatever you want (glass spikes and acid ). The best thing is that as undead are immune to its effects you could mask some undead with the illusion.

Four Adjacent 5-ft squares. When stepped on, a wither limbs (Legs) , if stepped on again (arms) spells hits the target (LM). From there the PC(s) are unable to move, so scarabs start swarming from slots in the walls

A large room with a very high pyramid ceiling and patches of spikes on the floor. Reverse Gravity trap to make them fall into the ceiling and take damage and a second trap set into ceiling to set gravity right and make them fall into the collection of spikes located on the floor just below the apex of the pyramid roof.

Fall up for 6d6 damage. Fall down for 6d6 damage. Spikes for 6d6 damage. Poison on the spikes. Spikes can then trigger a crushing wall trap or a flooding room trap if you want.

have a wonderful idea. Think of a room, an ordinary room, with 3 colums each side, up and down, like this:

x x x
x x
x x x


So each of the colums, is a vampire sarcophagus. The walls around the room are hollow, with barely visible (Less than 1 centimeter) gaps, at every odd junction of the bricks that compose the room. The hollows are big enough for 1 medium-sized creature to walk around the room. Inside the gaps, there's some traps connect to a targeted detect undead, that's detecting any undead on the gaps. What does this do is shut down the doors of the room (Iron Porticullis), and collapse the columns. So here's the drill:

The pc's enter the room, which just looks like a normal intersection room with 4 doors. When they enter, 4 CR10 Vampire Monks(Well, you SAID they were overpowered...) jump from the coffins, surprising the players unless they succeed in a DC 30 Listen Check or have Detect Undead active. If ANY of the vampires is killed, he immediately enters gaseous form and goes inside the gap on the wall, collapsing the ceiling on the players (DC 20 15d6 reflex for half). The doors will be locked and the lock is busted (From the debris), so the players will have to succeed in breaking the porticullis apart. Just to make things harder, another set of 4 vampires appear if the players don't open the doors in 10 minutes.

More fun with Orbs of Annihilation.

You remember the scene from Indiana Jones with the giant boulder? Well, replace the boulder with an enormous Orb, and make the floor collapsing on thier way back across, and the gap is too large to jump across this time. And to insure they don't escape through use of flight, a twirling Catherine's wheel on the cieling. To stop the use of Force Wall/etc stopping the Orb, an AMF except on the very edge of the gap, where summoning one would push them off anyways.
(Will only be used if not all PCs are targeted)

Possibly do this with a visual cue, for example a blackish vapour that can be thicker or thinner depending on how badly you want to shut down the casters in a given area. This could range from a barely perceptible black vapour that might sting the caster for 1d3 damage on his concentration and/or spellcraft checks, all the way up to a billowing black fog you can barely see through that will half kill the caster on his first concentration check (e.g. 8d8 negative energy damage

Pit of Opposition: It's just a normal 50-foot pit whose bottom is lined with a mirror of opposition. When someone falls in, they look down and are forced to fight against a copy of themselves (who has not taken falling damage as the copy was made as the character fell) while isolated from everyone else. If anyone looks down to see what's going on, another copy is created, a copy that can only reach and fight the character that fell.

Just as Advertised: near the entrance to the castle, an overlarge skull, perhaps from a stone giant, is built into a wall. In its mouth is an immobile sphere of annihiliation (yep, just like tomb of horrors with a skull instead of a demon). There are engravings in the wall to both the left and right of the skull, written in the common tongue.
To the left: The last remaining sanctuary rests beyond the orb.
To the right: The last remaining refuge is a fast and painless death.
This is just what is looks like, a last chance for intrudors to painlessly commit suicide (though it was built mostly for intimidation purposes). 90% of the time, it is simply decoration that helps set the mood of the dungeon.
The last 10% of the time, characters either roleplay or metagame their characters into the skull's mouth.
Ex 1: There's no way you'd rip off tomb of horrors like that.
Ex 2: A death trap would never actually say it's a death trap. maybe the fast and painless death is a magic weapon.
Ex 3: well, if the refuge is death, than I'll just head for the sanctuary (this guy didn't know that sanctuary=refuge).
When someone dies to this "trap", you get the honor of explaining to the player how they just walked into a deathtrap that proclaimed itself to be such.

Lord Loss
2009-06-04, 11:30 AM
Sorry For the Double Post. Our Party Paladin will most likely have no means of healing (our pally is most likely unable to come for a few weeks)
Hehehehehehe.

To Be Added Soon:

Town Officials Section:

Includes town officials like...

The VampiLich Behind All of This...

...and the brain controlling him

The Bane Wraith

The Bardic Lich

One Kickass Qth-Maren

Also, although i said all undead were sentient, the real ruling is: All undead keep the intelligence they had in life, unless their intelligence, wisdom or charisma would be increased by the ... um... Undeadshification?

Oh and.. About the phylactery... (YES THIS IS A VAMPILICH)

the Phylactery is going to be A living pendant with multiple levels of Wizard
It stays immobile until someone makes and attack on it, in which case it is affected by the spell Saved Time

Saved Time
Casting Time: One Hour
target: Self

When the caster begins casting this spells, he enters a trancelike state and the hour required to cast this spell passes like an instant. He then wakes up. From then on, the caster may take no attack actions until he is attacked or otherwise touched by another living creature who's attitude is Unfriendly or worse, or whose alignment is conflicting with his., at which point he gains Two rounds of uninterrupted actions, where only he may moves. Time returns to it's normal state after this. A creature may not be targeted by more than one Saved Time effect at a time.


Or is that a bad idea?

Dagren
2009-06-04, 01:14 PM
Oh and.. About the phylactery... (YES THIS IS A VAMPILICH)

the Phylactery is going to be A living pendant with multiple levels of Wizard
It stays immobile until someone makes and attack on it, in which case it is affected by the spell Saved Time

Saved Time
Casting Time: One Hour
target: Self

When the caster begins casting this spells, he enters a trancelike state and the hour required to cast this spell passes like an instant. He then wakes up. From then on, the caster may take no attack actions until he is attacked or otherwise touched by another living creature who's attitude is Unfriendly or worse, or whose alignment is conflicting with his., at which point he gains Two rounds of uninterrupted actions, where only he may moves. Time returns to it's normal state after this. A creature may not be targeted by more than one Saved Time effect at a time.


Or is that a bad idea?Why not just give him a contingent Time Stop set to activate whenever he's touched by a living creature? Unless he's too low level for that, it would seem to be a better option. (I forget if you've mentioned what level this is at. Sorry.)

Lord Loss
2009-06-04, 01:40 PM
The general idea was that this would be a lower level version of time stop (yes, you're right I did forget to mention what level he'll be, I'm not sure what level to put him at, suggestions are welcome).

Also, I'd Like to expand on the Garden (Coming Up Soon)

D_Lord
2009-06-04, 02:11 PM
Now this is not fitting with your corent place but you said you wanted a giant undead. You could try a Corpse Gatherer, with is a living graveyard. or you could use a Flesh Colossus. It's not really undead but it's made of 300 dead bodys, and is healed by Negative Energy. The magic jar way of controling it could have use. like the they nearly beat the BBG and he uses magic jar to take control over his premade Flesh Colossus and use that to try and destroy them.

Lord Loss
2009-06-04, 03:40 PM
Thanks! Will Use It!

josh13905
2009-06-04, 04:37 PM
Hey If you've ever seen the new King kong there's a part where evolutionized bugs swarm the film team engulfing, tearing and ripping them apart... Don't know how that would work mechanically but a gorge filled with small lairs of bugs would be cool.

NakedCelt
2009-06-04, 09:05 PM
Hey, just to really boop with your players' heads: Lead them through nastier and nastier horrors, make them feel that they're getting deeper and deeper into the belly of the beast... and then, as they reach the boss-monster's lair, throw them something that totally contrasts with all of that. A palace/garden/whatever of exquisite beauty and goodness. It is of course a powerful illusion masking a stronghold of death and evil, but make your players have to work to find that out and regret it when they do.

Realms of Chaos
2009-06-04, 09:35 PM
On the topic of leaders, here's what I can gather, combined with suggestions of my own (take or leave whatever you please):

Assumptions about the town's power structure:
Vampilich rules as a king from the castle, often leaving power to a viceroy in his stead. The viceroy in turn leaves most administrative duties to someone else while letting districts of the cities rule themselves with sub-viceroys answerable to the viceroy, his assistant, and the king. Sources of martial and policing power in the town have no set area of power but can move about at will. Nobody but the vampilich (and possibly not him/her) knows about the true power running the kingdom.
I think this system works so that the party can explore the full town without worrying about running intot he vampilich for awhile, they learn of different leaders as they explore different parts of town, and no matter where they are, someone with the police or military might pass by and find them, a constant risk of adventure.


Vampilich (likely level 15-18) with intelligent phylactery (identity unknown, but I suggest making it the key to the gate leaving the town so that the party can't destroy it right away). Possibly a vampiric ilithilich (mindflayers can become both vampires and liches, strangely)?
Something to remember: There is no creature as frustrated as a vampilich. They likely became a lich to continue their arcane studies uninterrupted but the demand for blood keeps them on the run (unless the vampilich has a system for raising and slaughtering people/animals).

Well, obviously, we have our lich bard, probably level 12-14. Has the mask of gentility feat and a phylactery on their person. Though the vampilich rules over everything (or so the players think), the lich bard probably rules the town for all intensive purposes (unless the vampilich is putting a plan in motion).
Possibilities:
phylactery is also alive (but weaker than vampilich's phylactery)
phylactery acts as perpetual glibness spell.
phylactery is disguised by perpetual nystul's magic aura to hide any necromantic aura.
phylactery is a pocketwatch, handkerchief, or other such item of gentility.

Quth-Maren: Probably in regular contact with the vampilich, answerable only to him and the bard-lich (he/she doesn't know of the true ruler hiding behind the scenes). As the bard is often "busy" (talking with the PCs, pretending to help them out, "living" the high life), most of the day-to-day matters probably fall upon the shoulders of the quth-maren.

Idea: Cadaver golem: from heroes of horror. In charge of the team of flesh golems. An amulet hidden in its torso grants it control of the golems. In charge of martial defense of the town. Whenever somebody dies, the cadaver golem "investigates" the murder himself (as natural deaths are very rare for undead). This is just a pretense to take the choicest bits of flesh for himself before the undead gets back up. Fittingly, he cares little about or ignores the death of incorporeal creatures (whom he can't assimilate) while rushing to the corpse of a previously living creature (whom he has yet to take any flesh from at all). By staging a murder, the party may be able to lure the cadaver golem away from his building or into an ambush (though he takes a couple golems with him to his "investigations").

Idea regarding flesh golem army: As far as numbers, between 25 and 50 sounds like a suitable force (considering that a single one can handle most average breaches of the peace). Also, one possible idea to consider is that their sentience may be located outside of their body. If this were so, consider having an equal number of brains in jars (libris mortis) held in a castle room. Though the jars are individually weak, if the party enters the room, the first person in gets spammed with 25+ dominate person spells. If they are slain, however, the flesh golems lose their intelligence, simultaneously losing the ability to effectively police the city autonomously (though they can still travel with others or get placed on guard duty).

Idea: Ghost Commander: A monk ghost with the corrupting touch, draining touch, and telekinesis abilities. Its lack of armor doesn't make a difference anymore (in fact, it now adds its charisma bonus to AC as well), its improved speed applies to flying, and you can rule that the monk unarmed damage applies modifies corrupting touch damage (not to mention how well draining touch comboes with flurry of blows). This guy would probably be in charge of another defense organization, running parallel with the golems but with more military purposes in mind. The ghost commander may have a grudge against or rivalry with the cadaver golem.

Bane Wraith?: Even if this guy is a free radical, running through town on his own, he probably isn't a leader (although he rules his spawn). If anything, this guy is probably something of a "pet" to the vampilich, usually kept in the castle and sent out when someone is deemed too annoying to deserve mere death.
If you send this guy out into the city, keep in mind that this guy gets ticked off at almost everybody (including other undead) but has no way to hurt other undead. In fact, characters may mistake him for an ally when he directs them to destroy another undead that it has held a grudge against for awhile.

A couple weaker leaders: The below are a couple of city officials that the players could probably kill the moment they got into town. The secret to them, however, is that they are more useful to the party alive than dead, if they can figure that out.

Idea: The Necropolitan: Assuming that the city is split into sections run by local politicians, some of these politicians may seem a bit... odd. One possibility is a simple necropolitan, a previously living aristocrat from the city (necropolitan aristocrat 6). When the town was overrun, he turned himself into a necropolitan rather than letting the other undead have their say with him, allowing him to retain his memories. Intrigued by his willingness (or something like that), the lich bard or quth-maren may have let this necropolitan continue running a small part of town.
Having memories of his past life and knowing how terrifying everything must seem for the resistance, the necropolitan has started a campaign to turn any willing subjects into necropolitans, saving them the horror of being torn to shred by undead. Continuing campaign strategies from his life, he might have even hung up posters ("Tired of life? Join us on the other side"). Though some citizens are a bit weary of necropolitans, a few souls have taken his offer, something that has earned him respect.

Now that we know his history, how does he fit into the campaign? Many ways. First of all, the players can seek to talk to the people he has already converted, trying to win them back to the side of the resistance (though they'll likely want assurance that they won't be destroyed). Alternately, an NPC or even a player can offer themselves up and become a spy in the undead ranks (the necropolitan leader, being a naive idealist, hasn't thought of this). Note that citizens keep a close eye on necropolitans and that the resistance may not want to deal with them, making this a delicate balance.

Furthermore, the necropolitan leader is probably the best person to speak to, being willing to talk peacably and even keep conversations private (at least as long as he thinks there is hope for convincing them to convert). After enough time, he may even be convinced to fight on behalf of the resistance.

Lastly, as cantidates need to stay alive until the end of the ritual turning them into a necropolitan, the leader keeps a large cache of healing potions on hand, a useful treat for the party to discover.

Idea: Have you ever heard how the Roman Emperor Calligula made (or tried to make, I forget) his horse a consul so that everyone would be answerable to his horse? That seems like something that the bard-lich would do for fun. To that end, one leader is a generic, unintelligent human zombie.
the zombie has "chosen" (happened to point at) a ghast to interpret his groans and shakes as decrees for the small area that the zombie rules.
Not wanting to bow down to an inferior ruler, most powerful undead abandoned that area of town and no other leaders (other than the ghost and cadaver golem) have anything to do with it, though there are a long line of (far stronger) cantidates if either the zombie or ghast dies.

But of course, the party can kill both the zombie and his "interpreter" as soon as they enter town. However, this is a case of choosing the lesser of two evils. So long as the zombie rules, stronger undead leave the area alone and the leader can be dealt with at any time. Furthermore, it is possible for a ghast to be browbeat into following orders or to be bribed with food (ghasts, being greater ghouls, love dead flesh, something that the cult hordes in abundance), though there are inherent dangers with either option.

That is just from the top of my head. Once again, take whateve looks nice.

brujon
2009-06-04, 11:44 PM
I have a new idea. I think it's the best idea i ever had. I mean it.

I'll begin with a rough description of what i envision should be described to the players...

"As you open the door, you come upon a large corridor, it's 5ft wide and 60ft deep. The walls of the corridor are rough and darkened, as though by fire or charcoal, and the air is dense and thick. As you walk through the corridor, the air begins to smell of rotten flesh, the air gets more and more damp, it's difficult to breath, the smell so pungent it seems to burn through your lungs."

"As you approach the door, you notice it's not locked, and it doesn't feel like wood, it feels like hardened flesh, it's smell and touch so awful you rather not think about it."

"As you open the door, you can see what appears to be a slaughterhouse of sorts... Tens and Tens of chains dangle from the ceiling, bodies of dwarf, human, and elf alike, ripped apart and dismembered, their eyeballs gouging and rotting, being chipped away by rats, that are scared away by your presence."

"The air is so damp, it's overpowering, the stench so awful that you think you'd rather not breath again then to put up with it... The sound of the chains pounding against each other seems like hammers at your eardrums... The bodies seem to move as the chains dangle here and there, it's hard to walk without bumping onto one of them, even harder is to see, with the dust and rotten gases"

"As you approach the middle of the room, sounds everywhere cease. The chains stand still, silence. Overpowering, overwhelming silence, deeper and darker than the soul of Asmodeus himself."

"Suddenly, a sound most horrific breaks the silence. The door slams shut. And then silence. For one, maybe 2 seconds, there is again that deep silence, there is no echo from the door. A sound, like that of a siren(Imagine here, silent hill the movie, i can't really describe that) goes on for about 10 seconds."

"Then, immediately as the siren dies slowly, you hear a dozen moanings, and then, the chains rippling and grappling your every arm, everywhere the chains are like snakes, those chains with their spikes at every other link, tearing down your flesh, and you know, you know that those sounds of metal and death, that smell of rotten and fear, may very well be, the last thing you'll ever hear."


So, maybe the ropes are animated objects, maybe just animated ropes, maybe the zombies are ghouls, maybe they are wights. But the main point is that the ropes can, and will bind the characters as the zombies lash and tear them. And they must break free from their bindings so as to fight back... I'm rusty on the rules on grapple and animated objects, but as i see it, just the description will give the chills and get the PC's at their bearings in no time. They'll learn to fear the very air, the very soul. They'll come to think the building is alive, that the world is against them. And that's what's fun!

I seriously HAVE to build an adventure just for that encounter as well.

Lord Loss
2009-06-05, 10:14 AM
WOW! I Love Feedback. This project is going really well (better than I expected)

Right it's about time we fleshed out the town officials and their agendas.

The Districts (of the town):

Morrengmai is one of the richer (but not the richest) district of town. It's inhabitants are skilled in the practice of arcane magic and spend most of their time studying or inventing magical items ranging from more effective watches to demon-summoning swords to torture chambers, but their specialty is Golems, and each resident of this town has at least two golems at his command. The nobles who live in this district (though most live in Laven) have near armies of golems of just about every imaginable type.
The Cadaver Golem Vitchtai, was once a plaything of Azurius, a noble in this district, until his master was slain. he is now the leader of Militia. This District is under the rule of the Qth-Maren Aileen , but several of Her closest guards are under orders from the Bard (His name is simply 'the bard'. he will never give out his actual name do to a mix-up with some truenamers resulting in his death (Who will be a Grey Jester from Heroes of Horror/Bard) to slay him if he takes actions against the king (like ordering an assault of golems). Behind laven lie the gardens, and behind that, the castle.

Laven is a rich and flowing place. The people here live in lavish citadels, ruins of the old city. Each home is decorated in a different (but very beautiful/grotesque, depending on the whims of the owner) manner. Giagantic Palaces stand beside grotesque forteresses made out of dragon bones. A house that looks like a giant teacup to the left. A a large iron maiden stands tall, covered in blue flame. This district is a realm of wonder and madness, with thousands of years in the making. It is under the command of the Bard.

Korgen is the Miltary district. It is under command of Vitchtai, and is where the Flesh golem Armada and other Elite fighter forces are found like the (Sorry I have the french version of Fiend Folio so I don't know the actual name its called Golem Sanglant D'Hextor, Which would translate to Hextor's Bloody Golem, but that sounds crappy so I hope you know what I'm talking About).

Asoreus is the middle-class district, which is under command of the Bard. Other than the king, the bard is the most respected and powerful of the town officials.

Yokkai is a strange distict under command of the Necropolitan urging live followers to convert and become a Necropolitan, prisoners are taken here. They generally have the choice to convert before they are sent to the Prison, if they convert they are freed. However the King is unsure of this developement, and if he hears of the Necropolitan's treachery, he will not hesitate to kill him with Guillotine.

Black Makai is the slum, and is under jurisdiction of the Qth-maren. the Resistance group is situated here. The town gates are found here, and so is the resistance group.

Domon is the scholary and religious district, where the sorcerers, clerics and wizard can be found. It is under the control of Rashk an undead Drider sorcerer.

Suktahl is the land where the poor live (not as poor as the slum, but almost). It is under the jurisdiction of the Zombie. The ghoul interprets in a way as to gain power, taxes are high, punishment is abundant and no form of law is in place.

Realms of Chaos
2009-06-05, 02:14 PM
There was one thing that I forgot to write down, either two connected outlier-districts or two larger areas in an existing portion of town, both of which an undead town would probably benefit from.

1: The Boneyard: Though undead are, for the most part, immortal, some of them (such as normal zombies) continue to decompose, albeit at a greatly slowed rate. Once an undead has become a skeleton, the odds are that it has has lost most of its strength, can't speak, and has limited opportunity to advance. When this occurs, the undead report to the boneyard, a place akin to a graveyard for undead.
Leader/"Leader": A Skull Lord (MM V) named Borim has dominion over the boneyard. He rules the skeletons with an iron fist and creates far more skeletons, bonespurs, and serpentirs than he can normally control, knowing that the laws place them under his dominion either way. His right-hand-man is his spectral rider.
One special role that Borim plays is in the area of undead discipline. Normally, undead who break the laws can at worst be subjected to imprisonment (death simply results in revival the next day). If their crimes are great, however, they are slain and brought to Borim for revival into a skeletal creature (before they could otherwise return to life). Once Borim is slain, lawlessness increases in town, making golem patrols more frequent by necessity.
Adventuring in the Boneyard: Actually, considering the starting level of the party, this would be a great place to start adventuring, a place where none of the enemeis are too powerful for them to take on but where they exist in great numbers and can ambush at will (skeletons really blend in with giant piles of bones when they want to).
Other than the skeletons, serpentirs, bonespurs, spectral rider, Borim, and the occasional golem patrol, there are a couple more threats, however. First are the bonedrinkers (MM III) who find the boneyard to be paradise (though Borim constantly tries to get rid of them). Secondly is a boneyard (the monster from the libris mortis), a powerful creature hidden amongst the pile of bones.

II: The fields of flesh: Though most undead are free from hunger and thirst, some (including the resident vampilich) have need (or at least a desire) for a snack every now and again. To this end, we have the flesh fields, fenced pens filled with animals, sentient creatures, and (for those with little coinage) piles of entrails taken from both sources. Most creatures are kept unconscious and fed by cursed rings of sustenance (the wearer falls unconscious right as the other effects of the ring take hold) except for times when they are made to breed.
Undead with coin to spare can pay for time in a torture chamber, during which the creature is conscious to witness itself being consumed. Alternately, if the undead wants the thrill of the hunt, there are some small wooded areas for that purpose (the hunted is sometimes even given a spear for the sake of sporting chance).
Also in the fields of flesh is the building in town closest in function to hospital, Grandpa Stitch's Workhouse (details on grandpa stitch and his workhouse below).
Leader/"Leader": Grandpa Stitch didn't earn the status of Grandpa from old age, either in actuality or appearance (and anyone who expected otherwise should prepare for a shock). In fact, Stitch is a Spellstitched Deathbringer (spellstitched template and deathbringer both in MM II) with +2 Wisdom and Corpsecrafter feats (libris mortis) in place of his normal combat feats. His mouth is completely stitched closed, keeping him from speaking.
He previously held the rank that the bard-lich holds now but was deposed when the king grew bored with him (helping to explain why the bard-lich tries so hard to seem unusual and interesting). Possessing humility that few would expect, he has coped well with the demotion, eventually founded the fields of flesh, and has no active plans for reclaiming his position (though he would jump at the chance).
Thanks to his spellstitched template, grandpa stitch can cast animate undead, among several other spells. Using iron rings and the dead bodies of resistance members, he has created a team of necrosis carnexes (MM IV) that he keeps in his workhouse) When someone reports an injury, grandpa stitch heads out with a couple of his creations to fix the problem (and collect some money). Injured creatures also come in for treatment.

Adventuring through the flesh fields: looking through the flesh fields, players may find fresh food (a rarity) and/or possible recruits for the resistance. On the other hand, almost anyone in the entire city can be there, making it one of the most dangerous places in town (save for the castle, of course).
Grandpa Stitch's Workhouse, however, is another story. Except for Stitch himself, the inhabitants are CR 3 necrosis carnexes or stronger undead that happen to have wounds. In short, if the party manages to get stitch out of the house, running through the workhouse would be great stress relief for the PCs (don't forget that due to the corpsecrafter feats, each carnex gets a bonus to natural armor, speed, initiative, turn resistance, strength, hit points, deals extra damage with a hit, and explodes on death [healing the undead and harming the living]). In fact, this would be a great mission for the party to get early on (if they charge head in without getting stitch out of the house, they will learn quickly what type of campaign you're running).

Also, the flesh fields holds a dark and terrible secret. buried beneath a treestump in a famine spirit (MM II), an undead that once destroyed a good part of the town before a lucky entomber finally sent it underground. As a cruel punishment, air holes were drilled down to the famine spirit so it could smell the abundance of food and the famine spirit constantly howls in anger and hunger (PCs may mistakenly think these holes are meant to let a living prisoner breathe and let out the famine spirit.)

Bonus Leader-ish Person: Skinner. Skinner isn't a leader in a traditional sense,
"living" in a cabin between the flesh fields and the boneyard. Skinner is respected a source of knowledge, having existed even before the king was born.
Also, skinner isn't a single person. Skinner is an evolved human skeleton (greater dispel magic SLA), an evolved Raiment (From libris mortis, advanced to 6 HD, circle of death SLA), an evolved forsaken shell (from libris mortis, cloudkill SLA), and an evolved skulking cyst (from libris mortis, UNholy Blight SLA), all of which have maximum hp per hit dice. When "assembled", skinner looks very much like a living person, complete with a heartbeat (provided by the skulkling cyst).
When skinner kills a living person (something that skinner rarely does and greatly enjoys doing), skinner fittingly skins them using a wide collection of tools from the cabin, separating the skeleton, flesh, and viscera into three piles. Skinner usually sends the bones to the boneyard and the rest to the flesh fields (much to the anger of the cadaver golem) but sometimes creates another forsaken shell or skulking cyst and sends them out into the city.

Edit:
I could just imagine how the undead talk about the slums:
Bob: You know, Fred, I've been thinking about getting a home in the slums.
Fred: What? You can't go there.
Bob: Why not?
Fred: Anything could happen to you out there. Hell, even the living might get you.
Bob: I keep telling you, Fred, the "resistance" is a bunch of unarmed, starving psychos hiding in a hole somewhere. Nobody's going to get me.
Fred: *sigh* I guess you're right.
...
:smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:

DracoDei
2009-06-05, 02:27 PM
Brujon's idea sounds like it calls for a Kyton or three to be operating the chains... or at least have one nearby with spell-casting levels and Craft Wondrous Item, and/or Craft Construct to have enchanted the chains like that...

Lord Loss
2009-06-05, 04:01 PM
Three new Districts Coming up! And The Rift!

1: The Boneyard:

Though undead are, for the most part, immortal, some of them (such as normal zombies) continue to decompose, albeit at a greatly slowed rate. Once an undead has become a skeleton, the odds are that it has has lost most of its strength, can't speak, and has limited opportunity to advance. When this occurs, the undead report to the boneyard, a place akin to a graveyard for undead.
Leader/"Leader": A Skull Lord (MM V) named Borim has dominion over the boneyard. He rules the skeletons with an iron fist and creates far more skeletons, bonespurs, and serpentirs than he can normally control, knowing that the laws place them under his dominion either way. His right-hand-man is his spectral rider.
One special role that Borim plays is in the area of undead discipline. Normally, undead who break the laws can at worst be subjected to imprisonment (death simply results in revival the next day). If their crimes are great, however, they are slain and brought to Borim for revival into a skeletal creature (before they could otherwise return to life). Once Borim is slain, lawlessness increases in town, making golem patrols more frequent by necessity.
Adventuring in the Boneyard: Actually, considering the starting level of the party, this would be a great place to start adventuring, a place where none of the enemeis are too powerful for them to take on but where they exist in great numbers and can ambush at will (skeletons really blend in with giant piles of bones when they want to).
Other than the skeletons, serpentirs, bonespurs, spectral rider, Borim, and the occasional golem patrol, there are a couple more threats, however. First are the bonedrinkers (MM III) who find the boneyard to be paradise (though Borim constantly tries to get rid of them). Secondly is a boneyard (the monster from the libris mortis), a powerful creature hidden amongst the pile of bones. Skinner. Skinner isn't a leader in a traditional sense,
"living" in a cabin between the flesh fields and the boneyard. Skinner is respected a source of knowledge, having existed even before the king was born.
Also, skinner isn't a single person. Skinner is an evolved human skeleton (greater dispel magic SLA), an evolved Raiment (From libris mortis, advanced to 6 HD, circle of death SLA), an evolved forsaken shell (from libris mortis, cloudkill SLA), and an evolved skulking cyst (from libris mortis, UNholy Blight SLA), all of which have maximum hp per hit dice. When "assembled", skinner looks very much like a living person, complete with a heartbeat (provided by the skulkling cyst).

NEW LEADER: SKINNER

When skinner kills a living person (something that skinner rarely does and greatly enjoys doing), skinner fittingly skins them using a wide collection of tools from the cabin, separating the skeleton, flesh, and viscera into three piles. Skinner usually sends the bones to the boneyard and the rest to the flesh fields (much to the anger of the cadaver golem) but sometimes creates another forsaken shell or skulking cyst and sends them out into the city.


II: The fields of flesh: Though most undead are free from hunger and thirst, some (including the resident vampilich) have need (or at least a desire) for a snack every now and again. To this end, we have the flesh fields, fenced pens filled with animals, sentient creatures, and (for those with little coinage) piles of entrails taken from both sources. Most creatures are kept unconscious and fed by cursed rings of sustenance (the wearer falls unconscious right as the other effects of the ring take hold) except for times when they are made to breed.
Undead with coin to spare can pay for time in a torture chamber, during which the creature is conscious to witness itself being consumed. Alternately, if the undead wants the thrill of the hunt, there are some small wooded areas for that purpose (the hunted is sometimes even given a spear for the sake of sporting chance).
Also in the fields of flesh is the building in town closest in function to hospital, Grandpa Stitch's Workhouse (details on grandpa stitch and his workhouse below).
Leader/"Leader": Grandpa Stitch didn't earn the status of Grandpa from old age, either in actuality or appearance (and anyone who expected otherwise should prepare for a shock). In fact, Stitch is a Spellstitched Deathbringer (spellstitched template and deathbringer both in MM II) with +2 Wisdom and Corpsecrafter feats (libris mortis) in place of his normal combat feats. His mouth is completely stitched closed, keeping him from speaking.
He previously held the rank that the bard-lich holds now but was deposed when the king grew bored with him (helping to explain why the bard-lich tries so hard to seem unusual and interesting). Possessing humility that few would expect, he has coped well with the demotion, eventually founded the fields of flesh, and has no active plans for reclaiming his position (though he would jump at the chance).
Thanks to his spellstitched template, grandpa stitch can cast animate undead, among several other spells. Using iron rings and the dead bodies of resistance members, he has created a team of necrosis carnexes (MM IV) that he keeps in his workhouse) When someone reports an injury, grandpa stitch heads out with a couple of his creations to fix the problem (and collect some money). Injured creatures also come in for treatment.

The Fields of Flesh

Adventuring through the flesh fields: looking through the flesh fields, players may find fresh food (a rarity) and/or possible recruits for the resistance. On the other hand, almost anyone in the entire city can be there, making it one of the most dangerous places in town (save for the castle, of course).
Grandpa Stitch's Workhouse, however, is another story. Except for Stitch himself, the inhabitants are CR 3 necrosis carnexes or stronger undead that happen to have wounds. In short, if the party manages to get stitch out of the house, running through the workhouse would be great stress relief for the PCs (don't forget that due to the corpsecrafter feats, each carnex gets a bonus to natural armor, speed, initiative, turn resistance, strength, hit points, deals extra damage with a hit, and explodes on death [healing the undead and harming the living]). In fact, this would be a great mission for the party to get early on (if they charge head in without getting stitch out of the house, they will learn quickly what type of campaign you're running).

Also, the flesh fields holds a dark and terrible secret. buried beneath a treestump in a famine spirit (MM II), an undead that once destroyed a good part of the town before a lucky entomber finally sent it underground. As a cruel punishment, air holes were drilled down to the famine spirit so it could smell the abundance of food and the famine spirit constantly howls in anger and hunger (PCs may mistakenly think these holes are meant to let a living prisoner breathe and let out the famine spirit.)

The Rift

In The Dead center of the town a rift into the abyss stands open, worshipped and respected by the inhabitants of the town, and even some resistance members. It spews out 1d6 manes and 1d4 juvenile nabassus every month, and one CR 8-16 Demon every 6 Months. The King uses these troops as a small army deploying them upon the resistance. Every 2 years, a full scale attack is launched on the Resistance, involving Golems, Demons and Undead. Talk of an upcoming assault that will ahnillate the resistance is common: For Six Years nothing has attacked the resistance. The Boneyard (monster) may even take part in the assault.

The Gardener's Town:

In the Center of the garden lies a small distict where the undead assigned to care for the garden live in relative peace. They are mostly plant-related undead: (Srry french version) Zombis Musc jaune, so Yellow Musk Zombies. I think. Under control of Plantkeeper, an Evolved Wraith with some plant-related abilities (This calls for a new prestige class, I think.

Realms of Chaos
2009-06-05, 11:52 PM
As undead plants seem to be a bit of a theme, perhaps a few rules for them are needed:

Undead Plants: Undead plants are powered by negative energy and are harmed by negative energy much like an undead. They don't grow, flower, or reproduce without specialized magic. Instead, they strangle nearby normal plants to death and reanimat those.
Undead plants aren't treated as plants for the purpose of spells unless they are cast by an undead caster. They may be turned or rebuked, animating as an animated object of the appropriate size if turned or controlled (destroying and rebuking work as normal, though it may be hard to tell when an inactive plant is rebuked).

Instead of looking through books for plant-related undead (yellow musc zombie is the correct translation by the way), why not try the following.

Tortured Fey: The undead and often mutilated remains of fey. To get a tortured fey, first reduce the creature's average hit points by it's hit dice (thus losing 1 hp per level), then add on undead traits and let them use their charisma modifier in place of their (nonexistant) constitution modifier to determine hit points (effectively granting the unholy toughness ability).
Now, replace their Spell-like abilities (if any) with more sinister ones, replace any ranks in diplomacy with equal ranks in intimidate, grant them the ability to rebuke and control undead plants (at an effective character level equal to their hit dice), and, if their land speed is 30 feet or more, impose a -5 penalty. They get two last special abilities. First of all, all animals within 30 feet are scared. Secondly, when someone slays them, they get a dying curse (choose a specific curse, about on par or slightly weaker than the bestow curse spell, per species of tortured fey) targetting the person to slay them (DC 10 + 1/2 HD + Charisma modifier Fortitude Save negates).

The remaining effects are mostly in flavor. Plants die around them, there is a sense of great wrongness when they're around, and their physical appearance has been marred (likely in a brilliantly cruel way).

Examples: A dryad chained to her previous tree through a chain with cold iron spikes piercing both her and the tree. To get around, she controls the tree.
A Satyr with bloody stumps instead of hooves. Uses an animated bush to get around.
A nymph with a horribly mutilated face and body. It causes blindness for completely different reasons.

You can also do similar things with magical beasts like unicorns if you wish (Hooray for Necrocorns).

Lord Loss
2009-06-06, 05:23 AM
Necrotic Fae? Working on it!!! Necrocorns are TAKIN OVER DA WORLDE!

(Undead are not immune to crits due to the amount of them in my campaign)



Them Mounds Went Shamblin On!

6x Shambling mounds (Hidden)

(Level 11 Encounter)

Skarlash's Run

4x Level 2 Satyr Rogues

2x Level 3 Satyr Rangers

2x Level 2 Satyr Vampire Rogue

Kaezer, Level 3 Satyr Ranger Vampire

(Level 13 Encounter)


Hellgrazer's Patch:

6x Deathclaw Pixie

DeathClaw Pixie

Small Undead
Hit Dice: 1d12+ Cha mod (9 hp)
Initiative: +4
Base Attack/Grapple: +3/-3
Attack: claws +7 melee (2d8+2) (17-20)
Full Attack: See Attack
Space/reach: 5ft
Special Attacks: Spell-Like Abilities, Deathclaws
Special Attacks: DR 10/Cold iron, Undead Qualities , Greater Invisibility, darkvision, SR 15
Saves: Fort + 0, Ref +6 Will +4
Skills: Look at pixie entry... PLEASE! (I'm being lazy here)
Feats: Dodge, Mobility, Spring Attack, Combat Reflexes
Environement: Desolate Swamps, Temperate Forests, Frostfell
Organiztion: Solitary, Gang: 2-4, Band 6-11 Or Tribe 20-80
Alignment: Any Evil

Greater Invisibility (Always Active)

Spell-Like Abilities: 1/day: Lesser Confusion (DC14) dancing lights, detect good, detect law, detect evil, detect chaos, detect thoughts (DC 15)
death knell, dispel magic, permenant image (DC 19)

Claw Abilities: When Hit, Choose:

Lose All memory, or +3d6 Unholy Damage, or Negative Level, Or 1d12 Ability Drain. Apply 2 On a Crit and all on a natural 20.

Hellgrazer:

Level 10 Cleric of Anorix (Domains are Fury and Spite), Vampire or other undead Ideas are welcome, guys!

Lestrahl
2009-06-06, 05:52 AM
Umm, I did something like this once. But it was kinda a one off thing. What I did to really give it some Umph was let the final confrontation take place in a brightly lit dance hall with mirrors on the walls. I gave the BBEG the ability to traverse through the mirrors while the heroes remained behind. This may work for you, but I kinda had a total party death... So yeah... It was just some fun to be had. With that said, good luck.

Lord Loss
2009-06-06, 07:36 AM
Will do. Anyway, it's Recap time! (Holy Chicken we have lots of material)

First Off:

REAPER FOREST

NorSkull



In this world, the sun will Never Rise

Norskull is a large graveyard-city. At first, it simply seems like a huge graveyard, but the Graves are the residences of the poor, the large crypt underneath is home to the middle-class citizens as well as the market, and the Mausoleums are where the rich may be found. All undead here are sentient, even skeletons and zombies, and anyone to die in this area becomes a Neutral Evil Zombie with no memories of it's past life.

The Rulers of this city, however, are the inhabitants of the castle ,At lest the ones in the highest (or should it be lowest) parts of the castle. They should be Ahloon (Lich) Mind Flayers.

Vampiric mind flayers march the streets of the city, searching for living beings that they can quench their thirst with. The most elite missions in this town are carried out by a special force composed of intelligent Flesh Golems (They lose their intelligence if they go berserk, ravaging all around them).

Minor Negative-Energy Dominant. For a new twist, ONLY nonmagical lighting works. I think they forgot to buy nonmagical torches. Heheheh...

Reaper Forest


The Pcs walk from the glowing portal into awaiting forest (fools!) The Trees in the forest are in fact (mostly, anyway) treants. A DC (25? 30?) Spot Check Shows that the trees in fact have faces on them. The Boneleaves will drop on the PCs (They're Like evil branches of ultimate doom), and the Treants will move while the PCs arent looking, splitting them up. A few treants will move in to Attack.

Encounters


One: Durkon Was Right!

Attack Treants (8) CR: 2 (each)

Boneleaves(2) CR: 6 (each)

At this point the Path Forks, and the pCs either go to encounter two

2: Spider Ambush!!!

Bone Widow (1)

Size/Type: Large Undead
Hit Dice: 8d12 (52HP)
Initiative: +4 (0 dex, +4 Improved init)
Speed: 60’, 60' (Climb)
Armor Class: 21, touch 13, flat-footed 21 (-1 size, +4 deflection, +8 natural)
Base Attack/Grapple: +4/+14
Attack: Spear +11 (1d8+8) Spit +6(1d4 + poison)
Full Attack: 2X Spear +11 (1d8+8) or Spit +6 (1d4+ poison)
Space/Reach: 10'/10'
Special Attacks: Lunge +13 (2d8+16)
Special Qualities: DR 10/- ; Undead Traits
Saves: Fort +2, Ref +6 Will+7
Abilities: STR 22, DEX 10, CON -, INT 12, WIS 12, CHR 22
Skills: Jump +22, Hide +10 (+16 in forests), Spot +12, Listen +12, Move Silently +10 (+16 in forests)
Feats: Improved initiative; Weapon Focus Spit, Weapon Focus Spear, Lightning Reflexes
Environment: Forests, negative energy planes
Organization: Pack 2-5 or Gang 4-10(2d4 +2)
CR: 10 (this may not be right. They have low hit points, but the DR and poison bring them up to par I think)
Treasure: 1/2 Normal (magical or mundane items only)
Alignment: CE

Explanation of special attacks:
Spear: A Bone Widows primary attack is to thrust its large from legs into an opponent and try to pin them to the ground so that their Spit attack will be more effective. A Bone Widow that hits with both Spear attacks in the same round may initiate a grapple as a free action and does not draw an attack of opportunity for doing so.

Lunge: A Bone Widow may charge even if their target is not in a straight line from them, they may make a single attack against their opponent, and if they succeed they spear the opponent with both of their front legs, initiating a grapple for free without provoking an attack of opportunity.

Spit: A Bone Widow may attempt to spit poison at their opponent 3 times per day. They must succeeded on a ranged touch attack, if they do their opponent must make a DC 24 (Charisma based) Fort save or immediately loose 1d6+2 points of Con (This is treated as ability Drain for purposes of healing) regardless of whether they succeeded on the first save a second save must be attempted the following round or they will suffer an additional 1d6+2 points of Con Damage. Any creature reduced to 0 Con or lower immediately rises as an undead warrior. Retaining any and all class abilities/ ability scores/ and Knowledge they had in their old life. A DC 30 Will Save is allowed to resist this effect, if resisted the character simply dies.

Tactics:
The Bone Widow is a fearsome beast that stalks the forests near places of negative energy. Necromancers’ castles, temples to evil clerics and the like make excellent homes to the Bone Widow. Bone Widows prefer to ambush their prey, relying on their natural +6 to hide and move silently in forests to their advantage. The preferred tactic is for one bone widow to charge the smallest target and attempt to grapple it with its lunge attack while the others circle around and attempt their spit attacks on larger opponents. Bone Widows do not need to eat, they hunt for the pure joy of watching their prey's life fade from their bodies. Bone Widows are intelligent and hunt for the joy of killing. If they have the upper hand they will drag a battle out to enjoy the suffering of their prey a little longer.

Appearance:
In front of you stands a large spider with thick black skin that shines under its matted, blood stained fur. Its massive red eyes peer down at you and you could swear you see a smile spreading on its face. Thick green foam hangs from its mouth, and you can see dried blood caked on its front legs.

The Bone Widow resembles a large spider except for a few things. 2 of its legs are used as weapons so it only uses 6 legs to walk, its thick black skin shines like obsidian behind a forest of thick black hair. The Bone Widow’s eyes are massive, larger than they should be even for a giant spider; they glow with an unholy red light. Due to their favorite hunting tactics their front legs are often covered in blood or pieces of their last victim.



3: More Treants will attack the PCs, backed up by a Flesh Golem Inquisition, by the End of the fight one will go Berserk (if the PCs are near Ahnillation)

4: A group of Slaymates try and convince the PCs to be their friend whilst actually trying to set up flanking and such. if things get violent, a multitude of Qth-Maren and tomb motes back them up.



the Town of Norskull

5: The gargoyles erupt, transforming into juvenile Nabassus. (Hordes of the Abyss)

THE TOWN

The last survivors: After a couple fights against evil-pally, most or all of the allies that the party had will probably be dead. That's when they get an invitation to join the last group of survivors out there, a group that hates the undead and still has decent numbers, even after the attacks.
The only problem is who these survivors happen to be. Now, this isn't one of those traditional evil-cult-of-asmodeus-hates-the-zombies dealies. No, I'm talking about something as ironic as it is cruel. The remaining survivors are indeed a cult but one of flesh-warpers, abberations (like mindflayers), masochists, and ghouls (not the monster, people who eat dead and undead flesh).
On the one hand, the cult really is well-equipped to help them. Their leader is a rot-reaver (Monster Manual III, a creature that destroys the undead to eat them), supported by a couple of avolakia (Monster Manual II, a wormlike creature who makes undead to eat them) and with a cadaver collector (Monster Manual III again) to collect bodies. Together with high-level humanoid cultists and mind flayers, they stand a decent chance of fighting the undead if the party cooperates. Furthermore, having always had to fight off undead just to get their meals, the cult has a stash of items for fighting them off and has been judiciously looting the town throughout the proceedings (if the party joins them, at least a couple items should be all but thrust upon them).
On the other hand, the party is dealing with a cult. They may demand offerings of flesh for membership, a surviving NPC or two may simply vanish one day (though adressing the rot reaver will ensure that punishment is delivered), and most of the food is necrotized and diiseased, causing the humanoid cultists to go slowly insane and perhaps infecting the party with mindfire.
The secret to sealing the deal between the party and the cult is to make it absolutely clear that the object of the cult's worship is absolutely no threat to the party; either a real entity who has no reason to care about the cult (such as a demigod of soil) or an utterly fictional character devised by the fevered minds of the cultists (such as "the long waba", a stick figure with cartoonishly large eyes and a stovepipe hat).

Once again, almost nothing about the situation itself is innately dangerous (other than the food). Still, it opens up room for any number of gruesome and degrading occurances, such as accidentally crossing an insane illithid, mandatory scarring rituals, compulsory missions, festivals where raw undead are strapped to tables and eaten, clerics that refuse to heal interesting wounds, addle-minded cultists who can't remember their part in an important plan, and rituals requiring the party to bow down in front of a stick figure. Even if the party winds up victorious, their sense of accomplishment is shattered by the fact that they relied on a sham of a cult.

As all undead are powered by negative energy, why not take advantage of this. Throughout the undead town, perhaps the undead set up large stones to stimulate the negative energy plane. To the undead, this would provide peaceful ambience. To the living, it would stimulate the minor negative energy planar trait (1d6 damage per round unless deathwarded) out to 5,000 feet and the major negative energy planar trait (1 negative level per round unless deathwarded) out to 50 feet.

By scattering them sporadically throughout the city (leaving some spots [like the resistance hideout] out of range), the party has a choice when stealthily battling the undead.

They can a) go around under the effects of a deathward spell, hoping that the mission will end soon.
b) forego the deathward and run from safe spot to safe spot as they travel (the cult will probably have a map of safe spots, but it may be partially inaccurate or become innacurate over time if rocks are destroyed or installed).
c) destroy the stones (which have high hp and hardness and are usually in very public areas), ending the damage but alerting all undead in the area (AKA: within 5,000 feet) to their pressence.
d) move a stone. Though they are likely incredibly heavy, if a stone is only slightly in the way, a party could probably move it up to 100 feet without drawing too much attention (I doubt the undead would be expecting it). If they keep doing it, however, someone is going to realize what is happening.

To make matters worse, have the town replace broken rocks at a rate of, say, 1 per week. If no rocks have been destroyed, the town installs a new one instead. Imagine the horror when one is installed that renders the hideout of the resistance useless or (perhaps more diabolical) makes half of it inhospitable (meaning that some people may want to stay).

The party could destroy such a rock whenever it is installed but security would increase each time and doing so could tip off the town as to where the resistance is located (in fact, if enough rocks are broken, the party might be trailed back to their hideout one time). On the other hand, a smart party may keep destroying a single rock on the opposite side of town, luring the police away from the resistance (a good reward for good thinking).

Edit: Oh, and one more:

The Bath:
After the undead town became an undead town, it is likely that most of the aquatic systems went unnoticed or were left alone for decoration, unknowingly giving the resistance a place to get their water. When the resistance really becomes a thorn in the town's side, you can have the city's leader make a proclamation: Every (undead) citizen is to bathe for the next 24 hours.
This event is great because it gives the personalities of your players a real chance to shine. Once the undead have finished their bathing (in previously public water supplies), that water will become utterly unpotable (though ghouls from the cult may try drinking it anyways).
Your party has a number of choices on this day, any of which is completely viable but has its downsides:
a) attack: with so many citizens bathing in large clusters, the party may be tempted to kill as many undead as possible, using every area effect that they and the cultists can muster. Unfortunately, that so many enemies have gathered means that the more powerful citizens are also assembled and that the party may be mobbed. Furthermore, if the bodies are left in the water, it is still polluted (though the battle may serve to lure the undead out of the water).
b) loot and pillage: that everyone is resting in the aquifers means that nobody is guarding the houses and stores. The party can loot to their heart's content, destroy small structures that have been blocking potential paths, or even clear the city of the malevolant stones (see previous suggestion). However, doing so means that they are doing nothing to stop the undead and just lost their water supply. Note, however, that making too much noise may lure undead out of their baths (which may be viewed as a good thing).
c) subterfuge: if the party simply hides in the shadows and spies (or scries) on the undead (on the intelligent ones anyway), they may learn important facts about the town, its history, future plans, the heirarchy, or, to pad their egos a bit, the rumors told about the resistance (and the PCs in particular. Nothing is more rewarding than hearing your character described as a terrible monster by a reanimated corpse).
If the party seeks to drive the undead out of the water without a fight, a single flask of holy water or a bless water spell can disperse over 1,000 cubic feet (a 10-foot cube) over the space of (about) 1 minute, making the water irritating (but not painful) to the undead and likely inspiring them to leave. Spreading the water over a smaller area hurts the undead a bit (1 damage) and alerts them that something is wrong.
If the undead were about to discuss something of interest and are about to leave, the party may keep them there a bit longer with unholy water, which disperses in the same way to make the water feel like a spa for the undead.
The downside to this mission is the risk of discovery by the undead.
Storm the Castle: Though the "city officials", the undead paladin, and the ruler of the castle are probably exempt from the baths, the odds are high that at least some of their guards aren't. With the city streets clear, the party may decide that now is the time to a deciding assault (or at least for a clever assassination), taking on the undead paladin, storming the castle, or attacking whichever "city offcial" has been giving them the biggest headache.
The risk here is doing nothing to stop the polluted water, that a toppled tyrant doesn't suddenly make the other undead go away (it may just make them mad), and that some (but not all) of the leaders may have anticipated this, setting up traps/ambushes for would-be assassins.

Aftermath: If the party didn't stop the water supply pollution, it is completely unpotable. Anyone trying to drink it gets no nourishment, is nauseated for 1 round, and has to make a saving throw to resist catching mindfire. The cult will only have what water they can create magically (and the party may be sent on missions to collect a couple water-producing magic items [such as a sink at what was once a high-end inn])
On the plus-side, undead simply weren't designed to take baths, let alone such long ones. If their bath went uninterrupted, their skin (if any) has become a bit bloated and their bones have softened. All undead suffer a -2 penalty to initiative checks, a -5 foot speed penalty to all movement speeds, and a -1 penalty to their AC for 24 hours after their bath.

This will be an important political member in the town:

bane wraith.

A couple of things to say first. That the picture in heroes of horror isn't what it naturally looks like. If you read the text of the creature, it is described in its natural form as being "a vaguely humanoid mass of sickly gray mists and energies" (though the players may never see this true form). It also says that "living beings often feel vaguely uneasy around one...". So far, so good.

One thing about this guy is that he is incorporeal. 90% of your party's attacks have a 50% miss chance, it is completely silent (unless it wants to make noise), and it can walk through walls. Making things stranger, the thing doesn't look incorporeal unless you succeed on a spot check (that is one of its special qualities), making it creepier when it goes through walls.

It's personality is scarier. First of all, it takes less to tick this guy off than it takes to tick off an Africanized bee. Next, this guy doesn't attack you, or at least not right away. No, this guy wants to mess with your head first.

Whenever this guy passes within 30 feet of a creature, it instantly learns the appearance and name of every family member and friend that creature possesses. Furthermore, it learns where that creature thinks its friends and family are located. No Saving Throw. That's right! The moment that it comes within 30 feet of a PC, it learns where where the resistance is located.

It's not quite done messing with your head, though. This thing has a couple of at will spell-like abilities. First is disguise self. You remember how this thing learns the appearance and name of every friend...now you know why. Secondly comes detect thoughts. Though this ability does allow a saving throw, you can really mess with your party's head if this goes off.

This guy has a couple more abilities up its sleeves. First of all, it's touch attack. When this thing touches you, it deals strength or wisdom drain. Furthermore, if it drains your wisdom, you only notice if you make a wisdom check (with your reduced wisdom).

The one saving grace about fighting these guys is that they deal pretty little drain and that they need to completely drain your strength before they can drain your Con and kill you. Of course, as you immediately notice Str drain, they normally start with Wis drain (complicated little buggers they are )

The last thing worthy of note about these guys is their ability to create spawn. fortunately (or unfortunately) their victims only become normal wraiths when killed (not another bane wraith). Like other wraiths, bane wraiths can control any number of spawn. What is so sick and twisted about this ability is the wraiths all resemble their victims.

To sum it up, because you happened to look at a bane wraith "the wrong way", it decides to hunt down your friends and family, kill them, and then have their unholy spirits kill you. That, my friend, is pure M!ndf*#k.

There are two ways to play this guy.
1. Free agent. The party bumps into this guy at some point, thinking that it's another cultist sent by the resistance until it sinks through the floor. When the party returns to the hideout, they see the wraith sitting down on a chair. It waves to them before vanishing into the crowd (or through an object). In reality, this banewraith works for nobody, instead deciding to torment and kill the resistance by pure chance. If the party reports that the resistance has been found, they may have to relocate. Every now and then, the Bane wraith appears to either read someone's mind and tell the party a vital detail about their own plan (making them think that the enemy knows), to impersonate a close friend (or even a family member or loved one from a PCs past if you are feeling cruel), or to simply kill someone and take their wraith with him.
2. The Difficult Choice.
This creature can also be used to populate a room in the castle. Replace its three feats with dodge, mobility, and spring attack. He is the only creature in normal (20 x 20 foot) castle room, apparently sitting down on a chair at the far end of the room in the disguise of a human aristocrat. As a free action, the banewraith chooses someone as the target for his dodge feat. As he gets up and walks towards the party (moving 10 feet over to them, the banewraith "walks" at a speed of 40 feet) he congratulates them on having gotten so far, tells them that their reputation precedes them, and informs them that he has no intention of fighting them. He motions to the far door and bows his head before, almost as an afterthought, asks how a couple of their close friends in the resistance are doing and making reference to the resistance's headquarters' location with a small diabolical chuckle (EX: "By the way, how are Borris and Klimbwater doing? It must be pretty cold for them under those docks, hmmhmmhmm"). Veiled threat accomplished, the bane wraith "brushes past" whomever looks like a cleric (unless doing so would provoke an AoO from a big, burly PC, in which case they chose another target), draining thier wisdom in the process (in game terms, the bane wraith makes a touch attack and takes another move action thanks to spring attack). The banewraith heads out of the exit (not through a wall) an down through the floor as soon as he is out of sight. Unless someone in the party made a good spot check, nobody will know that he is incorporeal.
After this, the party has a choice, they can go through to the next room (setting off only a minor mechanical trap [relying on a pressure pad that the bane wraith couldn't set off]) or head back to save everybody.
The bane wraith's plan is set. First, he waits under the floor for a couple rounds to see if anyone comes, activating his detect thoughts SLA so he'll be ready to know what the party is planning. Whether they come or not, the bane wraith sets off underground towards the ruler of the castle to inform them of the intruders before heading to the cult's headquarters to make good on his threat.
If the party keeps going, assume that the bane wraith kills most of the cult before coming back and waiting at the entrance to the castle in its true form with his army of spawn (with the spawn of the PCs' friends in the front line).
If they go back, the party gets a bit of a head start while the bane wraith reports to the castle's lord but the wraith has a fly speed of 80 feet and can ignore solid objects, increasing the odds that he will beat the party back (though the wraith, unlike a horse, can't run). If the banewraith gets there first, it attacks the close personal friends of the PCs first so assume that some of them are already dead, more if the PCs were somehow held up on the trip back and less if they arrive soon after the banewraith. If the party arrives first, it is possible to prevent any ally fatalities if the party plays their cards right.
Either way, going back gives the castle's lord some time to set more defenses and muster more troops

The Districts (of the town):

Morrengmai is one of the richer (but not the richest) district of town. It's inhabitants are skilled in the practice of arcane magic and spend most of their time studying or inventing magical items ranging from more effective watches to demon-summoning swords to torture chambers, but their specialty is Golems, and each resident of this town has at least two golems at his command. The nobles who live in this district (though most live in Laven) have near armies of golems of just about every imaginable type.
The Cadaver Golem Vitchtai, was once a plaything of Azurius, a noble in this district, until his master was slain. he is now the leader of Militia. This District is under the rule of the Qth-Maren Aileen , but several of Her closest guards are under orders from the Bard (His name is simply 'the bard'. he will never give out his actual name do to a mix-up with some truenamers resulting in his death (Who will be a Grey Jester from Heroes of Horror/Bard) to slay him if he takes actions against the king (like ordering an assault of golems). Behind laven lie the gardens, and behind that, the castle.

Laven is a rich and flowing place. The people here live in lavish citadels, ruins of the old city. Each home is decorated in a different (but very beautiful/grotesque, depending on the whims of the owner) manner. Giagantic Palaces stand beside grotesque forteresses made out of dragon bones. A house that looks like a giant teacup to the left. A a large iron maiden stands tall, covered in blue flame. This district is a realm of wonder and madness, with thousands of years in the making. It is under the command of the Bard.

Korgen is the Miltary district. It is under command of Vitchtai, and is where the Flesh golem Armada and other Elite fighter forces are found like the (Sorry I have the french version of Fiend Folio so I don't know the actual name its called Golem Sanglant D'Hextor, Which would translate to Hextor's Bloody Golem, but that sounds crappy so I hope you know what I'm talking About).

Asoreus is the middle-class district, which is under command of the Bard. Other than the king, the bard is the most respected and powerful of the town officials.

Yokkai is a strange distict under command of the Necropolitan urging live followers to convert and become a Necropolitan, prisoners are taken here. They generally have the choice to convert before they are sent to the Prison, if they convert they are freed. However the King is unsure of this developement, and if he hears of the Necropolitan's treachery, he will not hesitate to kill him with Guillotine.

Black Makai is the slum, and is under jurisdiction of the Qth-maren. the Resistance group is situated here. The town gates are found here, and so is the resistance group.

Domon is the scholary and religious district, where the sorcerers, clerics and wizard can be found. It is under the control of Rashk an undead Drider sorcerer.

Suktahl is the land where the poor live (not as poor as the slum, but almost). It is under the jurisdiction of the Zombie. The ghoul interprets in a way as to gain power, taxes are high, punishment is abundant and no form of law is in place.

1: The Boneyard:

Though undead are, for the most part, immortal, some of them (such as normal zombies) continue to decompose, albeit at a greatly slowed rate. Once an undead has become a skeleton, the odds are that it has has lost most of its strength, can't speak, and has limited opportunity to advance. When this occurs, the undead report to the boneyard, a place akin to a graveyard for undead.
Leader/"Leader": A Skull Lord (MM V) named Borim has dominion over the boneyard. He rules the skeletons with an iron fist and creates far more skeletons, bonespurs, and serpentirs than he can normally control, knowing that the laws place them under his dominion either way. His right-hand-man is his spectral rider.
One special role that Borim plays is in the area of undead discipline. Normally, undead who break the laws can at worst be subjected to imprisonment (death simply results in revival the next day). If their crimes are great, however, they are slain and brought to Borim for revival into a skeletal creature (before they could otherwise return to life). Once Borim is slain, lawlessness increases in town, making golem patrols more frequent by necessity.
Adventuring in the Boneyard: Actually, considering the starting level of the party, this would be a great place to start adventuring, a place where none of the enemeis are too powerful for them to take on but where they exist in great numbers and can ambush at will (skeletons really blend in with giant piles of bones when they want to).
Other than the skeletons, serpentirs, bonespurs, spectral rider, Borim, and the occasional golem patrol, there are a couple more threats, however. First are the bonedrinkers (MM III) who find the boneyard to be paradise (though Borim constantly tries to get rid of them). Secondly is a boneyard (the monster from the libris mortis), a powerful creature hidden amongst the pile of bones. Skinner. Skinner isn't a leader in a traditional sense,
"living" in a cabin between the flesh fields and the boneyard. Skinner is respected a source of knowledge, having existed even before the king was born.
Also, skinner isn't a single person. Skinner is an evolved human skeleton (greater dispel magic SLA), an evolved Raiment (From libris mortis, advanced to 6 HD, circle of death SLA), an evolved forsaken shell (from libris mortis, cloudkill SLA), and an evolved skulking cyst (from libris mortis, UNholy Blight SLA), all of which have maximum hp per hit dice. When "assembled", skinner looks very much like a living person, complete with a heartbeat (provided by the skulkling cyst).

NEW LEADER: SKINNER

When skinner kills a living person (something that skinner rarely does and greatly enjoys doing), skinner fittingly skins them using a wide collection of tools from the cabin, separating the skeleton, flesh, and viscera into three piles. Skinner usually sends the bones to the boneyard and the rest to the flesh fields (much to the anger of the cadaver golem) but sometimes creates another forsaken shell or skulking cyst and sends them out into the city.


II: The fields of flesh: Though most undead are free from hunger and thirst, some (including the resident vampilich) have need (or at least a desire) for a snack every now and again. To this end, we have the flesh fields, fenced pens filled with animals, sentient creatures, and (for those with little coinage) piles of entrails taken from both sources. Most creatures are kept unconscious and fed by cursed rings of sustenance (the wearer falls unconscious right as the other effects of the ring take hold) except for times when they are made to breed.
Undead with coin to spare can pay for time in a torture chamber, during which the creature is conscious to witness itself being consumed. Alternately, if the undead wants the thrill of the hunt, there are some small wooded areas for that purpose (the hunted is sometimes even given a spear for the sake of sporting chance).
Also in the fields of flesh is the building in town closest in function to hospital, Grandpa Stitch's Workhouse (details on grandpa stitch and his workhouse below).
Leader/"Leader": Grandpa Stitch didn't earn the status of Grandpa from old age, either in actuality or appearance (and anyone who expected otherwise should prepare for a shock). In fact, Stitch is a Spellstitched Deathbringer (spellstitched template and deathbringer both in MM II) with +2 Wisdom and Corpsecrafter feats (libris mortis) in place of his normal combat feats. His mouth is completely stitched closed, keeping him from speaking.
He previously held the rank that the bard-lich holds now but was deposed when the king grew bored with him (helping to explain why the bard-lich tries so hard to seem unusual and interesting). Possessing humility that few would expect, he has coped well with the demotion, eventually founded the fields of flesh, and has no active plans for reclaiming his position (though he would jump at the chance).
Thanks to his spellstitched template, grandpa stitch can cast animate undead, among several other spells. Using iron rings and the dead bodies of resistance members, he has created a team of necrosis carnexes (MM IV) that he keeps in his workhouse) When someone reports an injury, grandpa stitch heads out with a couple of his creations to fix the problem (and collect some money). Injured creatures also come in for treatment.

The Fields of Flesh

Adventuring through the flesh fields: looking through the flesh fields, players may find fresh food (a rarity) and/or possible recruits for the resistance. On the other hand, almost anyone in the entire city can be there, making it one of the most dangerous places in town (save for the castle, of course).
Grandpa Stitch's Workhouse, however, is another story. Except for Stitch himself, the inhabitants are CR 3 necrosis carnexes or stronger undead that happen to have wounds. In short, if the party manages to get stitch out of the house, running through the workhouse would be great stress relief for the PCs (don't forget that due to the corpsecrafter feats, each carnex gets a bonus to natural armor, speed, initiative, turn resistance, strength, hit points, deals extra damage with a hit, and explodes on death [healing the undead and harming the living]). In fact, this would be a great mission for the party to get early on (if they charge head in without getting stitch out of the house, they will learn quickly what type of campaign you're running).

Also, the flesh fields holds a dark and terrible secret. buried beneath a treestump in a famine spirit (MM II), an undead that once destroyed a good part of the town before a lucky entomber finally sent it underground. As a cruel punishment, air holes were drilled down to the famine spirit so it could smell the abundance of food and the famine spirit constantly howls in anger and hunger (PCs may mistakenly think these holes are meant to let a living prisoner breathe and let out the famine spirit.)

The Rift

In The Dead center of the town a rift into the abyss stands open, worshipped and respected by the inhabitants of the town, and even some resistance members. It spews out 1d6 manes and 1d4 juvenile nabassus every month, and one CR 8-16 Demon every 6 Months. The King uses these troops as a small army deploying them upon the resistance. Every 2 years, a full scale attack is launched on the Resistance, involving Golems, Demons and Undead. Talk of an upcoming assault that will ahnillate the resistance is common: For Six Years nothing has attacked the resistance. The Boneyard (monster) may even take part in the assault.

The Gardener's Town:

In the Center of the garden lies a small distict where the undead assigned to care for the garden live in relative peace. They are mostly plant-related undead: (Srry french version) Zombis Musc jaune, so Yellow Musk Zombies. I think. Under control of Plantkeeper, an Evolved Wraith with some plant-related abilities (This calls for a new prestige class, I think.

Coming up Soon: A complete compilation of all the work so far. We should put this in a PDF Format. in The emantime, we need to flesh out the town some more, like Slum and Boneyard encounters.

brujon
2009-06-06, 09:04 PM
Well, as the theme for undead plants seems to be coming to fruition, why don't make a living wall maze?

http://www.yannarthusbertrand2.org/index2.php?option=com_datsogallery&func=wmark&mid=1001

Make it so that the plants in the maze are under a permanent Animate Plants spell. As the party enters the maze, it changes configuration, making walls appear behind them, leading them to traps and such. If they try to fly over it, a ceiling appears and impedes them from going through. Also, make it so that the plants have contact poison, so hacking and slashing through them is impossible. They have to traverse through the maze in traditional fashion, and figure out a way to know where they are even as the maze changes configuration and lead them to dead ends. The plants could be Corpse Vines (Vines that feed off of carrion), or they could be Vampiric Vines, that feed off of blood. Making this one of the possible entry methods to the BBEG castle is nice. It's also very proeminently featured in castles around the round IRL.

Maybe the central part of the maze could be the Royal Family Mausoleum, with crypts leading to the inside of the castle. One of the things that can be done are dog pens filled with Hellhounds, which can be released to hunt down the PC's when they enter the maze. Some of these mazes also feature several statues and works of art, why not Gargoyles then? I mean, just because it's a den of evil doesn't mean it can't have several works of art. Maybe the Lich who's in charge of the place also has artistic inclinations? (His immediate subordinate is, after all, a Bard.) Inside the maze, it's also really easy to separate the PC's, make them be by theirselves.

This also gives me some ideas to the interior of the castle, which could feature several works of art, sculptures, paintings, afrescos, murals and whatnot. Maybe they're in most part dedicated to the god the Lich follows, there could be some depicting the day-to-day life of the undead village, the former patrons of the castle, etc... You could even borrow some ideas from the game Eternal Darkness, where some pictures change their landscape as your insanity grows. Maybe as the PC's get more and more frightened and deep into the reality of the place, they could change from beautiful barroque works of art, to mind-blowing lovecraftian horror dark landscapes and monsters. If the statues and artwork appear to be living, this could also lead to moments of tension, as the statues and paintings appear to be following the PC's with their heads and eyes. Localized gravity changes are also well and good. If you mess up with their sense of what's down/up things get interestings. Make it so that they see a door that is sideways, and as they approach it, it seems to twist and turn (Sort of like the Forest Temple in Ocarina of Time.) ultimately being right-side up.

Also, if you should feel inclined to really mess things up, you could abdicate from "normal" trap effects, and stitch some Symbols of Insanity in the murals, key some Charm Effects in the paintings, and maybe even a tome cursed with reverse alignment. If you can separate the PC's, you can also throw in a Shapechanger that takes the place of one of them. Make them doubt each other. When they're resting, make a Shadow steal the mage's Spellbook and put it on the Thief's pocket. Then make said spellbook fall from the pocket as the argument goes on. Use Ventriloquism, put words into their mouths. ABUSE ghost sound, make them go inside rooms that make it seem like a young maiden is being raped and tortured, only to close the door behind them and choke them with Mustard Gas. Put a golden crown in the back of a drawer and spill acid in their eyes if they grab it. Throw in some Wild Magic zones for good measure. Illusory walls concealing doors and illusory lava pits that are actually solid ground. If they can't trust their senses, themselves, or their members, who're they going to trust?

Tempt them with power. Show them tomes detailing just how much power can be gained by undeath... If you're really, really evil, you can also screw with their sense of morality...


WARNING: The following suggestions may offend some people for cruelty.



The pc's will be attacked by zombies and skeletons and whatnot the entire adventure. They will learn not to hold back and attack immediately and with strenght. Then, you put them against some zombies, only they're not zombies. They're CHILDREN. They're children under a Dominate Effect and a Veil. When the PC's kill the children, they'll realize they have just killed infants. Now what would you do? I know some people would go crazy. I know the sense of honor of some would lead them to take their own lives. Remember, the pc's are going against a Lich, an epitome of EVIL. Why wouldn't he use children to **** with the pc's sense of morality? I don't know how your players would react, and this is not something i would recommend to everyone. But if you pulled this off successfully, it could lead to a lot of interesting roleplaying. This is something i do on a regular basis on my campaigns. If the players are going up against a cave of goblins, i make it so that there are pregnant goblin womans frightened to their bones, infant goblins crying and trying to hit the PC's with their hands. I make the goblin chief give a speech about how they're the real evils and how they're being hunted and striped of the right of life. If you throw in some real world morality ambiguity issues, roleplay will get more and more intense. This kind of situation really touches the heart of a human being. This is one of those Kicking the Puppy moments of evil.

Lord Loss
2009-06-07, 04:40 AM
Good Idea, Brujon! So how'bout this: For quite a while, I scare the heck out of the PCs, they get lost step into lots and lots of traps, then when they make it to the center:

Hellgrazer's Patch:

6x Deathclaw Pixie

DeathClaw Pixie

Small Undead
Hit Dice: 1d12+ Cha mod (9 hp)
Initiative: +4
Base Attack/Grapple: +3/-3
Attack: claws +7 melee (2d8+2) (17-20)
Full Attack: See Attack
Space/reach: 5ft
Special Attacks: Spell-Like Abilities, Deathclaws
Special Attacks: DR 10/Cold iron, Undead Qualities , Greater Invisibility, darkvision, SR 15
Saves: Fort + 0, Ref +6 Will +4
Skills: Look at pixie entry... PLEASE! (I'm being lazy here)
Feats: Dodge, Mobility, Spring Attack, Combat Reflexes
Environement: Desolate Swamps, Temperate Forests, Frostfell
Organiztion: Solitary, Gang: 2-4, Band 6-11 Or Tribe 20-80
Alignment: Any Evil

Greater Invisibility (Always Active)

Spell-Like Abilities: 1/day: Lesser Confusion (DC14) dancing lights, detect good, detect law, detect evil, detect chaos, detect thoughts (DC 15)
death knell, dispel magic, permenant image (DC 19)

Claw Abilities: When Hit, Choose:

Lose All memory, or +3d6 Unholy Damage, or Negative Level, Or 1d12 Ability Drain. Apply 2 On a Crit and all on a natural 20.

Hellgrazer:

Level 10 Unicorn Cleric of Anorix (Domains are Fury and Spite), Vampire or other undead Ideas are welcome, guys!

Also while They go through the maze, Skarlash's Run Repetitively attacks them, using hit and run tactics and preparing them for a final assault.

Skarlash's Run

4x Level 2 Satyr Rogues

2x Level 3 Satyr Rangers

2x Level 2 Satyr Vampire Rogue

Kaezer, Level 3 Satyr Ranger Vampire

(Level 13 Encounter)

Lord Loss
2009-06-07, 06:18 AM
Sorry bout the double post, but I Need to show something i found on the WoTC site, (thanks robert wiese) the Greatest Unicorn EVER!!!

Apocalypse Demon Unicorn CR 7
Large outsider
Init +6; Senses darkvision 300 ft., low-light vision, scent; Listen +16, Spot +16
Languages Abyssal

Defense 21, touch 15, flat-footed 15
(-1 size, +6 Dex, +6 natural)
hp 54 (4 HD); DR 10/silver or magic; Mas 25
Immune poison, charm and compulsion effects, electricity
Resist cold 10, sonic/concussion 10
Fort +11, Ref +10, Will +8
Action Points 0

Speed 60 ft. (12 squares), fly 120 ft. (good)
Melee horn +15 (1d8+12) and
2 hooves +7 (1d4+1)
Fighting Space 10 ft.; Reach 5 ft.
Base Atk +4; Grp +17
Spell-Like Abilities:
3/day--cure light wounds (DC 21, CL 5th)
1/day--cure moderate wounds (DC 22, CL 5th), neutralize poison (DC 24, CL 8th)

Abilities Str 28, Dex 23, Con 25, Int 10, Wis 25, Cha 30
AL chaos, evil; Rep +0
SQ wild empathy
Feats Alertness, Skill Focus (Survival)
Skills Balance +8, Diplomacy +12, Intimidate +17, Jump +30, Listen +16, Move Silently +17, Sense Motive +14, Spot +16, Survival +17 (+20 within own forest), Tumble +15

Wild Empathy (Ex): A unicorn can improve the attitude of an animal. This ability functions just like a Diplomacy check made to improve the attitude of a person with a +20 modifier. The typical domestic animal has a starting attitude of indifferent, while wild animals are usually unfriendly. To use wild empathy, the unicorn and the animal must be able to study each other, which means that they must be within 30 feet of one another under normal conditions. Generally, influencing an animal in this way takes 1 minute but, as with influencing people, it might take more or less time. A unicorn can also use this ability to influence a magical beast with an Intelligence score of 1 or 2, but it takes a -4 penalty on the check.


enter Hellgrazer

And as for the Flesh Golems, our progress has, shall we say, advenced:

Advanced Flesh Golem

Flesh golems constructed from the body parts of giants are even more massive and terrifying than the normal versions. Giant flesh golems tower over their enemies, using their titanic might to pound intruders into jelly. The Huge flesh golem presented here is the largest version that can be created, and it makes a formidable guardian indeed.

Huge Flesh Golem: CR 11; Huge construct; HD 27d10+40; hp 188; Init +0; Spd 30 ft.; AC 21, touch 8, flat-footed 21; Base Atk +20; Grp +38; Atk +28 melee (3d8+10, slam); Full Atk +28 melee (3d8+10, 2 slams); Space/Reach 15 ft./15 ft.; SA berserk; SQ construct traits, damage reduction 5/adamantine, darkvision 60 ft., immunity to magic, low-light vision; AL N; SV Fort +9, Ref +9, Will +9; Str 30, Dex 10, Con --, Int --, Wis 11, Cha 1.

Berserk (Ex): When a Huge flesh golem enters combat, its elemental spirit has a cumulative 1% chance each round to break free, causing the golem to go berserk. The uncontrolled golem goes on a rampage, attacking the nearest living creature or smashing some object smaller than itself if no creature is within reach, then moving on to spread more destruction. The golem's creator, if within 60 feet, can try to regain control by speaking firmly and persuasively to it (DC 19 Charisma check to succeed). It takes 1 minute of inactivity by the golem to reset its berserk chance to 0%.

Construct Traits: A Huge flesh golem has immunity to poison, sleep effects, paralysis, stunning, disease, death effects, necromancy effects, mind-affecting effects (charms, compulsions, phantasms, patterns, and morale effects), and any effect that requires a Fortitude save unless it also works on objects or is harmless. It is not subject to critical hits, nonlethal damage, ability damage, ability drain, fatigue, exhaustion, or energy drain. It cannot heal damage but can be repaired.

Immunity to Magic (Ex): A Huge flesh golem is immune to any spell or spell-like ability that allows spell resistance. In addition, certain spells and effects function differently against the creature, as noted below. A magical attack that deals cold or fire damage slows a flesh golem (as the slow spell) for 2d6 rounds, with no saving throw. A magical attack that deals electricity damage breaks any slow effect on the golem and heals 1 point of damage for every 3 points of damage it would otherwise deal. If the amount of healing would cause the golem to exceed its full normal hit points, it gains any excess as temporary hit points. A Huge flesh golem gets no saving throw against attacks that deal electricity damage.

Realms of Chaos
2009-06-07, 09:21 AM
Hmm, assuming that anorix from your new sig is the shadowcaster/child of the night described in your opening post, is it safe to say that your campaign has started?

If so, can you convert this thread into a campaign journal (or post on on the gaming boards) as you go along? That would be so amusing. :smallbiggrin:

We will continue posting new ideas, however.

PS: Killing shadows is mean but not overpowered. Although the inevitable empowered, maximized killing shadows (120 hp) followed by a quickened killing shadows will come along every now and then, the odds are against anorix having more than 3 or 4 of those per day.
(those odds also state that, unless your character has been borrowing from my descent of shadows project, that your character is unlikely to have any other real form of damage, though he may be going for that chain lightning thing).
Shadowcasters are pretty weak against the dead (many have cold resistance, nonlethal damage and ability damage doesn't work). That said, wandering through town will give your shadowcaster a chance to use their bend perspective mystery.
If you want to be "cruel", use incorporeal monsters every now and again. Nobody unloads their big guns against a target with a 50% miss chance.

Jair Barik
2009-06-07, 09:34 AM
I have a fairly universal way of killing characters without a saving throw but in a relatively fair way

The hall of portals! (say it in a scary voice)
Basically the hall is a number of underground chambers with lots of protective abjurations to stop scrying/burrowing through it. Each room consists of a number of teleportation circles each giving off a coloured aura. At first its a simple case of get it wrong and you just become more lost but as they get further (choosing the wrong choices) the circles deal damage when travelled through.

When you get to the last sets (before whatever the hall protects) they each lead to near guaranteed death (a cliff face very high up, the elemental plane of fire, deep underwater, the room of vary many swirly slashy brilliant energy blades etc.) In most cases this will force the players to seek out someone/something that knows the correct colour sequence but at the same time stubborn characters can try plowing through (all the deaths can be avoided with a convenient item) or can result in the use of sometimes overlooked spells such as augery or divination

Lord Loss
2009-06-07, 09:34 AM
Right on time, Realms (as always)! The next session is in two hours, not that many of the PCs can come so I'll give you details of how it goes. the next encounter is the Treants :smallbiggrin:

Anorix: Shadowcaster, he's been with the campaign since the beggining. he'll be there today.The Forbidden: Anorix is an elven Shadowcaster (Tome of Magic) with some demonic blood in him. When his demonic nature was revealed, he was exiled from his tribe, never to return. During his journeying he met Krassus, a Drakkan (Half-Dragon mating with Half Dragon gives Drakkar)

Thingy (Unable to come) : We don't really know hid name (okay fine, we found out: Minamoto Yo****sune) So it's become a running joke to call him thingy (speaking of jokes this campaign is becoming a webcomic. Minamoto was born a noble Samurai in a noble Samurai Village. He was a superb warrior and became commander of a batallion at age 15. At age twenty, his kingdom was overthrown and he and his brother, heirs to the throne, were slain. He however died an honorable death in battle whilst his brother was poisoned. he has returned as a spirit to avenge his fallen brother.

New Player: Wants to play a sorcerer called steel. But we're not sure what he'll play

Sir Watermelon (In hospital): No Comment. Okay, fine, he's a paladin blackguard topaz guardian corrupt avenger. Who's alignment is evil , but (long story, can use smite evil, smite good and smite abberations, otherwise known as smite ugly)

Sharkal, : A Surikat Barbarian. If you don't know what a surikat is, check the homebrew forums. Here's a Hint: MEERKAT!!! He'll Be playing Today.

So Today we only have 3 players and a Dm. Things should be fun. too Fun. (DM EVIIIIL GRINNN) I just hope Anorix doesn't die too fast. The player gave me 6 Pages of backstory)

Color Coded hall of Portals of Doom? I LIKE it! It'll be one of the FINAL CHALLENGES!!!

Jair Barik
2009-06-07, 10:23 AM
Hehehe "final challenge"?
In the dungeon I used it in it was one of five challenges required to collect the 5 keys to the treasure room which was to some extent also booby trapped.
Ah hiding the key behind a devious trap who's solution was hidden elsewhere within the dungeon behind a marginally less devious trap, good times...

brujon
2009-06-07, 10:31 AM
Good Idea, Brujon! So how'bout this: For quite a while, I scare the heck out of the PCs, they get lost step into lots and lots of traps, then when they make it to the center:


Well, nice! The Satyrs will hunt the PC's down while they're in the maze, or the Unicorns will? Also, the pixie's ability "Lose all memory", how does that work? They become catatonic and lose all char levels or it's like level drain? Also, i think it'll be better if the unicorns chase the PC's through the maze (They have better speed and they have charge), and the Satyr's attack the PC's along with the faeries when they get in the middle. You could even pull something cool like, the Satyrs and Fey are doing a little dance in the center of the maze when the PC's arrive, with lots of music and pagan rituals, fire and whatnot, give them a cool description of what's happening, should set the mood. Then the Satyrs and Fey interrupt and attack them. Also, if there are trees in the middle, you could throw in some of those cool Dryads you were describing in one of your posts, the ones that're chained to their trees and stuff.

Also, i have an idea for the general map of the maze. Make it circular, with a star shaped centre, like a pentagram, so common of Witchcraft and such. If you could also rule that the center of the maze is a Wild Magic zone, and that the entire place is configured in a way to Boost natural spellcasting (The kind that fey and the likes use), it's also good fluff.

Lord Loss
2009-06-07, 10:33 AM
Yup, Final Challenge! Here's how it'll go: The PCs walk out of the Hall of Opposition, sick of getting mauled by their own clones, and - OH GOD NASTY THOUGHT: Shadowcaster Clone: Cone of Shadow, Cone of Shadows, Cone of Shadows. Anorix Falls down dead - Walk into a room filled with colored tiles.

Watermelon: i must say I believe I'll step on this Blue one! OH GOD surrounded by the THE FRICKIN PIRHANNNAS STOP THE PAIN! Maybe I,ll drown soon.

brujon
2009-06-07, 10:38 AM
Also, may i have a request? When you have the adventure all fleshed out and ready, could you make it available? I really like many of the ideas posted thus far, and would really like to DM something like this one of these days. These community driven projects are great, and i'm getting really inspired to create one adventure ala Heroes of Horrors. I'll get into it as soon as i talk my friend into drawing the maps for me =P

Jair Barik
2009-06-07, 10:50 AM
Also, may i have a request? When you have the adventure all fleshed out and ready, could you make it available? I really like many of the ideas posted thus far, and would really like to DM something like this one of these days. These community driven projects are great, and i'm getting really inspired to create one adventure ala Heroes of Horrors. I'll get into it as soon as i talk my friend into drawing the maps for me =P

One of the teleportation circles could lead to the orb of annihilation in the statues mouth!

Lord Loss
2009-06-07, 10:59 AM
Places that bad portals could lead:

back to the Doors of Dark Gaia (Where the PCs came in)

To The Orb in Statue's Mouth

A botomless pit with seventeen eriynes guardians who torment the eternal fallers.

the stomach of a gigantic creature

Hollow's Heart (See Hordes of the Abyss)

Modern Times...

The homeplanet of the Mind Flayers...

Other ideas?

Jair Barik
2009-06-07, 11:08 AM
well....

Somewhere very high up/ very high up with spikes at the bottom
Bottom of the ocean
Top of the lands tallest mountain
Planet core
Back in time where you fall from the sky killing your infant self
Lair of the dragons
A 5 by 5 brick room with no way out very deep underground (by far the most annoying way for a high lvl adventurer to die)
Remembering traditional party movement patterns a portal transporting you to a point exactly 10ft behind you could be amusing
To the lair of a fiendish half dragon/half kobold were tiger vampire lich (I like this one best due to the idea of the PC being beaten up by a kobold that has no Character levels)

D_Lord
2009-06-07, 09:22 PM
Well this isn't need be final stuff but you may want to have some GraveYard Sludges. They're oozes that are attracted to intelligent undead, that from from negative energy fields, so they would be prefect for this world of undead but valued enough for only a few undead to have one.

Lord Loss
2009-06-08, 05:56 AM
The Log. Chapter One: No, Bob that's just a tree.

So here's how it went (I decided not to play my character, the Surikat barbarian): The PCs stepped out of the Portal of Dark Gaia (If you want I can explain what happened up until now, but anyway:

Anorix and Rock Steel (Who is a duskblade who worships Obad-Hai , by the way)stepped out of the portal (cue a: who are you? - no who are you- i asked first- Okay, fine m'names Rock steel.

I tweaked the scenario a bit beacuse we were only 2 players and 1 dm so that to stop the animated trees only the Boneleaves had to die.

And so the PCs stepped into the forest. When they saw the trees had horribly disfigured faces they decided to put the whole place on fire. And I played my trump card: Fire Resistance. So the PCs saw, to their horror, the trees started to move towards them., splitting them up. Now, Luckily, Anorix had a bit of teleportation, so they were able to regroup. Now, They noticed that some of the trees were larger (hence the boneleaves contolling the massacre). Their plan was simple, but effective. The PCs knew that Boneleaves worked in pairs of three, and that there were three large trees. And so this is the discussion that ensued:

Anorix:So.. there's two large trees left, which one do we go after? Wait, there's another one over there! that Darktrooper mini occupies a large space too...

Rock Steel:I say we go after that one.

Anorix: Why? The other one is more isolated it's obviously defended by the trees!

Rock Steel: But look... The other one's mini is shaped like a plant (It was my old Storm-something Shambler)! It's obviously the Boneleaf!

I whacked myself in the head with Drow of the Underdark

Whay do I DM?

So anyway, the players fell to near-negative (and, in Rock Steel's case -5 hp) multiple times.

Seeing as the PCs wanted to sleep to regenerate spells (Anorix was out of killing Shadows, his teleportation (I forget the name) and piercing sight. However, someone needed to take watch, so our resident duskblade accepted the fact that he would not have very many spells available to him.
I saw this as a perfect opportunity to pull the Slaymates in. he was Creeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeped out. with a Capital C. He tried to manage the request of 'play with us' with: I can't right now (yes, by the end of this the Player was stuttering as much as his character), then as they moved in: how about hide and seek? You guys go hide and I... no? Um.. Anorix... Oh crap i can't wake him He needs his spells... And so they got halleluhlia perfect flanking position, they said: please, play with us, it'll be fun.. to watch you die! And they leapt upon him (He nearly got the disease, damn, missed it by one...) the fun part: he doesn't have great cleave!

The PCs had a good time with the spiders. By Good i do not mean easy (The encounter was perfectly balanced)

The PCs had a bit of an easy time with the spiders, but they were too beat up to pull the Flesh Golems on them.

And so they saw the city: Using the Slaymate blood they had previously gathered (Anorix: But , you ,said, she said... THAT BITCH!)( Long, story...I can explain after)

And so they stepped into town. End of session one

Now it wasn't that exiting (but believe me, the tree thing was the most fun thing I've ever Dmed...)

Problems: I need to remember to say the descriptive passages... and the boneleaves special abilities

Positive stuff: The eerieness of the forest was coined when the pcs started asking me if the other trees were alive... and by the slaymates...

New player likes his character...

ImmortalAer
2009-06-08, 06:51 AM
Other random cruel tricks :

The local water supply was ruined (wait until thier outside of town, so it doesn't become repetitive with the other suggestions) by... Oh god, it's raining blood! (And mangled body parts, by preference.)

It turns out the local necromancer coven had a genius idea, but it turned out rather badly. Instead of removing the blood from villagers and creating subserviant Blood Golems, it ripped the blood from all of them, which congealed into a Greater Blood Golem (Or something more impressive sounding), beyond thier power to maintain. And now it's gone mad!

( I don't know if there's a current Blood Golem avaible anywhere, so I'm not going to bother statting one out.)

Randomness! :smallsmile:

Jack_Simth
2009-06-08, 07:05 AM
-Have the PCs fight their evil duplicates. Perhaps a la Mirror of Opposition.

No, no no... you copy the PC's character sheets, then apply the vampire template (or any other undead template you care to name) to them. They're not evil duplicates, they're evil undead duplicates.

ImmortalAer
2009-06-08, 07:31 AM
No, no no... you copy the PC's character sheets, then apply the vampire template (or any other undead template you care to name) to them. They're not evil duplicates, they're evil undead duplicates.

Add a bit of draconic scrollwork around the frame, and make them half-dragon-vampire evil duplicates! :smallwink:

Lord Loss
2009-06-08, 09:02 AM
Vampire Twins? Evil Vampire Twins? Killer Evil Vampire Twins with the Dark Template for Luck? I Like it... and Blood Golems! Cool!

Realms of Chaos
2009-06-08, 12:27 PM
Allow me to try posting this as a generic adventure path. I had to take a bit of creative license to make this dynamic and show how someone running another campaign could introduce this and make it clear to players that undead/mindflayers/far realms baddies are taking over the world. Note that this is just the first part.

Journey to Norskull:

General Synopsis:
This adventure is intended for four-five level 9 players.
At the start of this adventure, the parties are in or are led to a material plane in which undead and aberrations rule the world and humanoids make a sadly small majority.
More specifically, players find themselves in the undead nation of Corrigan, led by a vampiric-lich king from his castle near the town of Norskull.
This adventure path leads players through the grimwood forest to norskull, introduces them to a hidden cult in the city (likely the party’s only allies) and leads them on missions through the city until the party finds themselves ready to attack the castle itself.

Prologue: City of the Dead
If your party starts in a normal material plane, they need some reason to appear near Norskull. This miniature adventure will provide ample set-up for the campaign.


Three weeks ago, the small town of Werrisbir was mysteriously overrun
by the undead. Half of the town was slain and the others escaped to the
nearby town of Reals. A cry for heroes has gone out. It is your job to reclaim
the town and put an end to the zombie menace.

Encounter 1: On the right path

Walking along the path to Werrisbir, you hear a loud growl off
to the side of the road. Looking over, you see a couple of wolves fighting up
against a zombie. The wolves are fairly bloody but the zombie has only taken
minor wounds.

Wolf 1 (CR 1): 8 hp
Wolf 2 (CR 1): 9 hp
Human Zombie (CR 1/2): 12 hp

Course of Battle: If the wolves and zombies are ignored, they will leave the party alone.
If the wolves are attacked, they flee.
If the zombie is attacked, the wolves will attack the party, fearing that someone is going after their kill.

Rewards: 0 xp. No treasure.

When the party finally does reach Werrisbir...

Encounter 2: Welcome to Town
Milling through the streets and squares of Werrisbir are a total of fifty zombies, mostly human (though a few dwarves and elves exist).
42 Human/Dwarven Zombies (CR 1/2): 16 hp
8 Elven Zombies (As human zombies with +2 Dex, CR 1/2): 16 hp

Course of Battle: Generally speaking, a person can only see four or five of the zombies at a time. Unless handled in a quiet manner, however, the sounds of combat will draw more until all zombies have been dealt with.

Rewards: 0 xp. If their clothing is searched, a total of 900 cp, 600 sp, and 245 gp can be found among the zombies. Furthermore, unholy symbols of Nerull are found in the lining of seven zombies.

In addition, each of the sixty homes in Werrisbir have a 50% chance of housing 1d4 human zombies and each of the thirteen stores and other buildings have a 70% chance of housing 1d6+1 such zombies.

Each hour, an additional zombie enters the streets through the storm cellar of a single home. When investigated…

Encounter 3: In the Cellar

As you descend the cellar steps the scent of musk fills the
air, mingling with an odor of decay. As you turn around a corner, you see a
horrific sight. The unholy symbol of Nerull hangs on the opposite wall of
cellar. Several corpses rest suspended from chains while a couple others
clamber about. Three of them look more gaunt than the others, looking you
over with a gleam of intelligence in their eyes. In one corner of the room, a
mass of greenish slime lurches forwards, a few random bones lodged in its
form. In another corner, an opaque oval of blackness floats a couple inches
off of the ground

2 Human Zombies (CR 1/2): 16 hp. These zombies deal +1d6 acid damage with their natural attacks.
3 Deathlocks (Libris mortis, page 94) (CR 3): 19 hp
1 Graveyard Sludge (MM V, page 72) (CR 4): 63 hp

Course of Battle: Deathlocks alternate between casting summon monster 1, ghoul glyph, and magic missile while the zombies attack. The graveyard sludge empowers a deathlock each round, instead using spirit resurgence if there aren’t any left.
If all alone, the graveyard sludge moves through the portal in the corner.

Rewards: 365 xp (divided among players). 8000 sp, 900 gp, A bullseye lantern, a skill shard (knowledge [religion]), a potion of shield of faith +2, a scroll of ghost touch armor (Arcane), a masterwork silver dagger, a healing belt, powder of the black veil, and a hand of the mage.

As the battle is won, an additional human zombie emerges from the black portal, making it clear from where they are coming. Dimensional anchor spells make the portal shudder and quake but don’t make it collapse.
If the party confers with the refugees, they ask that the players go through the portal and stop the flow of undead from the other side.

Section 1: Hamlet of the Dead


Having crossed the threshold of the portal, you find yourself in a
strange new place. Judging by the sun, it appears to be dusk. Far more
shocking than the time is a giant black tear ripping its way through the sky
like an open wound.
You are standing on top of a small building and as you look around, you see
no entrance for the portal. Perhaps it was more erratic than it appeared.
Below you, you hear a dull moaning noise.

Encounter 1: The Endless Swarm
One hundred zombies and skeletons shuffle along the avenues of the hamlet, paying little attention to the building themselves or what rests above their heads.
The hamlet has nothing more than fifty small homes. 1d4+1 planks of wood can be ripped from each roof with a dc 10 strength check (pulling more risks weakening the roof) and 20 feet of rope rests tangled on the weathervane of the home where the PCs start. Each home is 1d4 x 10 feet away from its neighbors.
70 human zombies (CR 1/2): 16 hp
30 human skeletons (CR 1/3): 6 hp
Any critical hit scored by a zombie or skeleton deals 1 additional point of vile damage (can only be healed in a hallowed or consecrated area).

To be read as the fight continues:

As you move along, you notice that most of the houses are in a
terrible state of disrepair, as if they hadn’t been in use for years. Many of
them have their doors and windows boarded shut.
The town itself seems to rest against a mountain. You can see no familiar
landmarks from your location.

Rewards: 0 xp. No treasure.
If the houses are all raided, however, the party finds a total of 1,100 sp, 857 gp, and 52 small diamonds worth 50 gp apiece.

If the town is thoroughly explored, two (or three) things are discovered. The first is one house with some primitive fortifications around it and a single window that isn’t boarded up. The second is a cave carved into the side of the mountain. With a DC 10 survival check, a small path is discovered leading away from town, heading down some foothills.

Encounter 2: The survivor

As you peer into the fortified house, you see a single man
sitting on the ground. He is in the act of feasting upon a dog, crying as he
does so. A bookshelf rests against the left wall and a shortsword rests on the
ground near him.
The man himself has a red beard and haunted look in his eyes. He is a thin,
wiry man.

The man in the house is Howard Blackwell, the only survivor in the hamlet of Remwell. He and his hunting dog have survived for the past 5 years by jumping from roof to roof, gathering whatever materials he needed from the homes of others and then by sneaking food from nearby fields. His supplies have just run out, forcing him to eat his dog.
When the party first appears, Howard assumes that he has finally gone insane or that it is an undead or mindflayer trick, reaching for his weapon if anyone approaches him. It takes a DC 15 diplomacy or Charisma check to calm him down. Even when calm, he refuses to relinquish his meal and tries to run away (into another boarded up home) if the issue is pressed.

What Howard knows about…
Mindflayers: he knows that they and other abominations like them were coming close to taking over when the undead came around. As far as he knows, however, Remwell was never bothered by them (he doesn’t know about the cave).
The Undead: right before the mindflayers could take over everything, the undead started appearing. They overran the town in under a day, leaving only five people and one dog alive. After all this time, Howard is the only one left. One thing he has learned is that killing undead doesn’t always keep them dead.
The Rift in the Sky: Howard has no idea where it comes from but says he sees things come out of it sometimes. He blames both the undead and the mindflayers for it, not knowing which is really responsible.
The Caves: They were built for mining diamonds. They were still producing when the undead attacked.
Is there a safe place/how does one leave town: Howard tells the party where the road out of town is and that the only safe place left is the town of Norwood, located just beyond the Grimwood forest. As proof of his claim, he pulls a letter from the bookshelf, in which a close friend of Howard’s tells him that Norwood is holding up against the undead attacks. The letter, however, is old and starting to yellow.

When the party tries to leave, Howard asks to accompany them. If not allowed, he attempts to follow the party, knowing that his odds are better dealing with their ire than living in that house with the undead all around him and no provisions. Howard, though stronger than an average person, is cowardly and far weaker than the PCs in combat.

Howard’s Statistics:
Male Human Fighter 4; 34 hp; +6 Initiative; 30 feet; AC 13, touch 12, flat-footed 11; BAB +4, Grp +6; Shortsword +7 melee (1d6+4); 5 ft. reach; +6 Fort, +3 Ref, +1 Will; Str 15, Dex 14, Con 15, Int 13, Wis 11, Cha 9; +3 survival, +8 climb, +6 handle animal, +11 jump, -1 swim; skill focus (jump), improved initiative, weapon focus (shortsword), weapon specialization (shortsword), combat expertise, dodge; padded armor and shortsword.

Reward: If slain: 450 xp (distributed among players).
If dealt with peacefully: 200 xp per character.

If the party chooses to enter the cave in the side of the town, they instead contend with a very different situation

Encounter 3: Illithid’s Last Stand

bits of glittering minerals line the walls of the cave, suggesting
that it may have been a mine in the past. In the back of the cave are a
couple of motionless bodies. One is large and grey, a mass of rotting muscle.
The others look mostly humanoid in shape, although their skin is violet in hue
and their mouths possess tentacles. Several small metal spheres litter the
floor. As you approach, the bodies seem to spring to life, walking towards
you.

Battlefield:

--m---m
m-bgg--
r--gg-r
r-b---r
rb---br
r--b--r

Key:
-= empty space
r= rock walls
b= blast disc
m= mind flayer zombie
g= gray render zombie

This is where mindflayers recently tried to fight off a gray render zombie while inspecting Remwell. The spheres on the ground function as blast discs (Magic Item Compendium, page 152).

3 Mind Flayer Zombies (CR 5): 107 hp
Gray Render Zombie (CR 6): 133 hp

Course of Battle: Zombies mindlessly wander towards the PCs, setting off any blast discs in their path. If at least three blast discs are set off, a cave-in is triggered (DMG, page 66).

Rewards: 731 xp (split among players). 500 gp hidden on the person of the mindflayers.

From this battlefield, the party can hear pitched combat going on a bit further in…

Encounter 4: Ilithid’s Last Stand, part 2

In the middle of the road is a large pit dropping away into the
darkness. At the bottom of the pit, you can hear the sounds of combat. You
can see someone or something fighting on a small earthen ledge and you can
hear something splashing through water.
To those with darkvision/low light vision: You see another ilithid, still
alive this time, fighting up against some form of zombie in an underground
pool that resembles a primeval fish with slitted eyes and tentacles.
With a DC 20 spot check: You spot a small canister at the ilithid’s feet;
something grey is suspended within it.

Battlefield:

r---r
rm--r
aaaww
aaaww
aaaww

Key:
-=open space
r= rock wall
m= mind flayer
a= aboleth zombie
w= water

Down a 60-foot pit, a mind flayer is fighting up against an aboleth zombie, having little luck on his own.

Aboleth zombie (CR 5): 107 hp
Mind Flayer (CR 7): 36 hp

Course of battle: Any attempts to help the mind flayer are appreciated and the ilithid is willing to work with others. The zombie, however, being mindless as it is, won’t notice if the party helps to kill the mind flayer.

Rewards: 168 xp for slaying aboleth (shared among party) or 506 if the mind flayer is slain as well. The mind flayer has bracers of armor +2, a pouch with 500 gp, and a brain canister (currently full).

Aftermath: If the mind flayer (Sleznak) is allowed to survive, it is truly grateful (something rare for ilithids), at least enough to half-heartedly thank the party, eat the brain in the brain canister, and not ignore party questions before parting ways. The mind flayer can be coerced into joining the party but it may try to eat a PC’s (or Howard’s) brain while they sleep or to betray them in combat, dominating one PC and running off with his slave.

What the mind flayer knows about:
Mindflayers: quite a bit, actually. On the topic of their near dominance, they has 80% of the world under their thumb before the undead appeared, routing them into defensive bunkers set up for emergencies.
The Undead: the entire plague of undead is actually the fault of a human cult. Fearing ilithid domination, they called the undead, one of the few things that mind flayers have a hard time fighting. The ritual went overboard, however, and is close to driving humanoids into extinction.
The Rift in the Sky: That is the fault of the mind flayers. Some cultists among the ilithids tried to call upon their alien god when the rift opened up.
The Caves: Sleznak doesn’t know anything about the cave. Him and his associates were chased into the caves by the undead and he was running too fast to notice the hole in the ground.
Can you take us to a bunker: with fresh brains so rare nowadays, even slaves don’t last long in the bunkers. Taking the party with him would be a death sentence.


Mining For Diamonds: 10,000 gp of diamonds remain (relatively) easily accessible in the mine. For each hour of work, a miner makes a profession (miner) check, getting 100 gp of diamonds per point by which the check exceeds 9.

As the party leaves town via the mountain path, they witness something astounding:


Peals of thunder fill your ears as the rift in the sky shakes and
shudders. A gigantic flying beast of endless mouths and eyes descends from
the rift, black-clad figures barely visible on its back. As it descends from the
sky, a zombiefied dragon flies up from the forest canopy, catching the beast
in mid-air. The two of them fall back down to the ground together, shaking
the earth as they land.


Section 2: Grimwood Forest


As you walk through the forest, nothing seems quite as it should be.
The canopy is thick, blocking out the sun but yet letting some light through.
The forest carries the silence of death, free from the sounds of chirping birds
and even rustling leaves. Though the road is clearly marked, it suffers from
nearly no wear.

Encounter 1: Beware the Trees
In one portion of the forest, real trees have been replaced by close look-alikes. All players are entitled to spot and knowledge (nature) checks.

Spot DC 15: you notice that some of the trees seem a bit odd.
Their leaves stick out at odd angles and their bark seems flesh-like.
Knowledge DC 16: You note that there are only two or three types of
trees around you and that there aren’t any other plants in the area, as if
they have been cleared away.
Either way, the following event occurs:

You suddenly notice that a few trees have curtains hanging around
their roots, concealing their undergrowth. You think you can hear low
murmering from behind these curtains.
This is the illusory lure ability of boneleaves, disbelieved with a DC 14 will save. If the PCs investigate or leave it alone, the Treants and Boneleaves in the area attack.

Battlefield:

-ccc--bb-rr-bb--ttt-
-ccc--bb-rr-bb--ttt-
-ccc-----rr-----ttt-
-ttt-----rr-bb------
-ttt--bb-rr-bb------
-ttt--bb-rr-----ttt-
---------rr-----ttt-
-ccc-----rr--bb-ttt-
-ccc-----rr--bb-----
-ccc-----rr---------
-ttt-----rr-ccc--ccc
-ttt--bb-rr-ccc--ccc
-ttt--bb-rr-ccc--ccc
--ccc-cccrr---------
--ccc-cccrr---ccc---
--ccc-cccrr---ccc---
---------rr---ccc---
---ccc---rr---------
---ccc---rr---------
---ccc---rr---------

Key: r= road
-= empty space
b= boneleaf
c= controlled tree
t= treant

4 treants (CR 8): 66 hp
6 boneleaves (heroes of horror, page 143) (CR 6): 73 hp
8 controlled trees (CR -): 66 hp

Course of Battle: Throughout this battle, treants and controlled trees attempt to sunder weapons and armor while boneleaves attempt to grapple and constrict.

Treasure: 3150 xp (to split among party). No treasure.

Shortly after this encounter, the road reaches a fork. If Howard is with the party, he tells everyone that both paths eventually reach town but that the right path (a wider one) was built more recently to accommodate halfling caravans.

Down the left path:
Encounter 2: Spider Ambush
Two bone widows are waiting for unsuspecting prey to pass by their tree (DC 26 spot check spots them).

Battlefield

-t--rr-t--
t---rr--t-
bb--rr--bb
bb--rr--bb
t-t-rrt-t-

Key:
-= empty square
r= road
t= tree.
b= bone widow (note that they start in squares 30 feet up large trees).

2 Bone Widows (CR 10): 100 hp

Bone Widow Statistics:
Bone Widow
Large Undead
Hit Dice: 8d12 plus 48 (100 hp)
Initiative: +4
Speed: 60 ft. (12 squares), climb 60 ft.
Armor Class: 21, touch 13, flat-footed 21 (-1 size, +4 deflection, +8 natural)
Base Attack/Grapple: +4/+14
Attack: Spear +10 melee (1d8+8) or spit +4 ranged (1d4 plus poison)
Full Attack: Two spears +10 melee (1d8+8) or spit +4 ranged (1d4 plus poison)
Space/Reach: 10 feet/10 feet
Special Attacks: Lunge, Poison, Snatch Prey
Special Qualities: Damage Reduction 10/- , Undead Traits, Unholy Toughness
Saves: Fort +2, Ref +6 Will+7
Abilities: Str 22, Dex 10, Con -, Int 12, Wis 12, Cha 22
Skills: Jump +22, Hide +10 (+16 in forests), Spot +12, Listen +12, Move Silently +10 (+16 in forests)
Feats: Improved initiative; Weapon Focus Spit, Weapon Focus Spear, Lightning Reflexes
Environment: Forests, negative energy planes
Organization: Pack 2-5 or Gang 4-10(2d4 +2)
CR: 10
Treasure: 1/2 standard (no coins or goods)
Alignment: Always Chaotic Evil

In front of you stands a large spider with thick black skin that shines under its matted, blood stained fur. Its massive red eyes peer down at you and you could swear you see a smile spreading on its face. Thick green foam hangs from its mouth, and you can see dried blood caked on its front legs. As it moves, you see that its legs are purely skeletal, dyed black by bile.

The Bone Widow is a fearsome beast that stalks the forests near places of negative energy. They are the result of granting sentience to reanimated monstrous spiders. Though they no longer need to eat, they hunt for the pure joy of watching their prey’s life fade from their bodies.

Combat: Bone Widows often rely on ambushes, hiding until their prey has approached. Their front two legs, sharpened into spears, pierce their foe and allow them to drag their prey away. Failing that, they can still produce some venom as they did in life.
If they have the upper hand on their opponents, they drag out the battle and take their time killing their prey
Lunge (Ex): When a Bone Widow charges, they may make any number of turns. Furthermore, at the end of their charge, they make a single attack roll for two spear attacks (if the attack hits, snatch prey works as normal).
Poison (Su): Contact, Fortitude DC 24, initial and secondary damage 1d6+2 Con drain. Any creature drained to 0 Constitution in this way make a DC 24 Will save or be revived 1d4+1 rounds later with the undead type, a chaotic evil alignment, and none of their memories intact. Such creatures may not take offensive action against bone widows but need not serve their creators.
Snatch Prey (Ex): Whenever a Bone Widow hits with two spear attacks in the same round, they may initiate a grapple check as a free action without provoking attacks of opportunity.
Unholy Toughness (Ex): Bone Widows gain extra hit points equal to their Charisma modifier x their hit dice.


Course of Battle: The bone widows descend from their trees, lunging at pcs before dragging anyone they have grappled back up trees to deal with them.

Rewards: 2025 xp (for party to split). No treasure.

Meanwhile, down the right path:
Encounter 3: The Children
Two slaymates siblings whimper and cry on a treestump near some bloodleaves. Beneath the bloodleaves rest the detritus of their victims, a small hoard of tomb motes.


As you walk along, you hear a soft whimpering noise off to your left.
As you continue, you see a small boy and girl sitting on a treestump, hugging
and crying. As they see you approach, they stop their crying and rub their
eyes, as if to make sure that they aren’t dreaming. Content in what they’ve
seen, they stand up and run towards you, arms outstretched, sobbing a bit
once more.

Once more, the bloodleaves are concealing the true appearance of the slaymates underneath a major image (DC 14 will save disbelieves). The slaymates run to either side of a random player, tugging at their shirt before letting out a wail and biting into the player (taking advantage of flanking). This signals the start of the battle.

Battlefield:

--bb-----rrr--bb-tbb-
--bbt---mrrr--bb-tbb-
--t-s---mrrr----t-t--
-----bbt-rrr-tbb----
---t-bb--rrr-tbb-----
-bbt--t--rrr---------
-bb------rrr---------

Key:
-=empty space
r= road
b=boneleaf
m=slaymate
t=treestump
t=tomb mote

6 boneleaves (Heroes of Horror, page 143) (CR 6): 73 hp
2 Slaymates (Libris Mortis, page 122) (CR 2): 26 hp
12 Tomb Motes (Libris Mortis, page 128) (CR 2): 13 hp

Course of Battle:
The boneleaves are part of the same pervasive sentience as those that the party faced before, meaning that they know what tactics the party uses and who is most of a threat.
Both the slaymates and the tomb motes carry particularly virulent diseases, gaining ability focus in their disease as a bonus feat.
The slaymates try to stay close together (in adjacent squares if possible) throughout the combat while the tomb motes swarm.

Rewards: 1237 xp (to split among party).
After the battle is over, the female slaymate, previously thought slain, crawls over to her brother’s side, weakly points towards the treestump where they were sitting, and mouths out the words “thank you” before finally dying.
Behind the treestump is an old book that is labeled, in bad spelling, as an adventure book. It is filled with bad drawings of all sorts of childish adventures but within the book is an old platinum piece as well as a small jade, worth at least 40 gp.
Hidden in the trunk of a boneleaf is a +1 Plant Bane Longsword.

Also along the right path is another opponent to face:

Encounter 4: In a Black Suit
As the party continues along, they see, a good thirty feet to the right, the remains of the zombified dragon and the alien creature it fought. Among the wreckage are several beings, humanoid in shape, wearing some kind of black suit.
If the party chooses to leave or investigate, one of these black-suited figures shakily rises up, his helmet partially shattered to reveal an alien and monstrous visage. It charges the party with reckless abandon.

Koarti (Fiend Folio, page 108) (CR 1): 9 hp

Course of Battle: The koarti fights to the death, regardless of the danger.

Rewards: 0 xp. Ribbon dagger.

The Paths Reunite
After these encounters, both of the roads meet up once more and continue. One more hurdle lies in front of the PCs, however.

Encounter 5: Not Out of the Woods Just Yet
Eight intelligent flesh golems are fighting up against two treants and their animated trees. Due to damage reduction, however, the fight is going pretty slowly.


Up ahead on the road, eight automatons seemingly formed from
humanoid flesh fight off against another two treants and their allied trees.
Unlike other golems, however, these automatons seem to be using tactics. A
couple seem to notice you but continue fighting.

Battlefield:

----fftttffr----------
----fftttffr----------
------tttrrrttt-------
---------rrrttt-------
----ffcccrrrttt-------
----ffcccffr----------
------cccffr----------
---------rffcccff-----
------cccrffcccff-----
------cccffrccc-------
------cccffr----------
---------rrrccc-------
---------rffccc-------
---------rffccc-------

Key:
-= unoccupied square
r=road (note that many flesh golems are standing on the road)
f= flesh golem
c= controlled tree
t= treant

2 Treants (CR 8): 66 hp
4 controlled trees (CR -): 66 hp
8 flesh golems (CR 7): 79 hp

Course of Battle: Both the treants and the golems know that the other will absorb some of their attacks, making them more likely to direct their wrath towards interlopers (who are more likely to get the full brunt of the attack).

Rewards: 3,600 xp (to split among party). No treasure.

Section 2.5: Norwood At Last(?)
Shortly after the battle, the party comes across the town of Norwood (secretly now the town of Norskull).

At long last, you have reached the town of Norwood. To your right is
a large lake, likely Norwood’s water supply. In front of you is the large town
wall. It is clear that the town wall has taken a beating but you can still see a
few signs of life on the other side. Smoke rises up from a few chimneys and
candles burn in the windows of the castle held within the walls.
Eventually, you find the large iron town gate. Scribed onto it are the
words: “Welcome to the Norwood, our last sanctuary for all that is good, for
all that is right, for all that is alive.” The gate is completely flat, devoid of
even a knocker

If the party investigates the lake, what part of it they can see seems fresh, safe to drink, and free of undead infestation. They can even bathe without fear of attack.
If the party investigates the gate, read the following the moment they touch it.

As you touch the gate, you can feel a warmth spread through every
inch of your body. The warms ebbs and flows in time with your heartbeat.
After a few seconds, a small part of the gate seems to fade away, allowing
you inside.

I think that we all know what the party notices the moment that they get inside. :smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:

Lord Loss
2009-06-09, 05:36 AM
I'll organize everything that way soon.(Thanks RoC).

Also, how did the PCs get there, you ask? See, there was this town that was under attack by zombies and the PCs volunteered were forced to aid the town. A paladin (Sir Watermelon) who later became a PC tipped them off that the source of the evil was the Church, and so they went into the church. After fighting their way through my version of Intellect Devourers (Non-Psionic, i don't use psionics yet), grell, undead, two vampiric illithids and a vengeful Mind-Flayer sorcerer, the PCs made their way to the Doorway of Dark Gaia, an evil creation godess (will put my campaign world's creation story, as well as the Rebirth of a Plane story). Tricking the PCs, Dark Gaia explained that she was Light Gaia and that nearby there was a final fronteir of good. She was, of course, only trying to send Anorix to his death (She has a long-held grudge with Anorix's father and the Ancient ANorix (Anorix has lost all memory of his past, but since the dissapearance of his father and his father's Seal he is getting burst of Shadow Power wich he cannot control and flashes into his past life.

Dagren
2009-06-09, 08:45 PM
If you're still looking for more ideas, has anyone suggested Charred Horrors (http://www.giantitp.com/articles/6AaJhMSc1hfIf1zpbML.html) yet? I thought about them earlier, but I thought they were in one of my books and so I couldn't find them.

Jair Barik
2009-06-10, 12:21 PM
Any feedback from your game yet?

Lord Loss
2009-06-12, 04:00 PM
Complications have ensued and left me with little time to pursue this project. i will contribute as much as possible, but in the meantime leave you, Realms of Chaos in charge of this project. I apologize deeply, and will help as much as I can. If you deem yourself unfit to continue on the project, pass it on to someone else.

Lord Loss
2009-06-15, 09:26 AM
(If Realms does not respond by Wednesday I will find another adequate person to take care of this. Any volunteers?)

Also, The Boneyard encounters are almost ready (I have 6 some down on paper)! Coming up soon!

Realms of Chaos
2009-06-15, 10:48 AM
sorry.

I am a very distractable person and likely shouldn't be entrusted with duties such as this. I respectably decline this position.

But I'll still contribute ideas when I remember. :smallsmile:

Teln
2009-06-15, 02:19 PM
Add a bit of draconic scrollwork around the frame, and make them half-dragon-vampire evil duplicates! :smallwink:

Why just boring half-dragons? You could make them Ultimate Dragon Disciples (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=114861)!

Lord Loss
2009-06-16, 05:34 AM
Very Well. Leadership of this Project is up for grabs, guys!

cd4
2009-06-16, 09:26 AM
Here is a small way to irritate the PCs even more:
In the section with a lot of illusions a smart PC might decide to cast True Seeing and escape the traps. However if someone had cast invisibility on a localised mist, that resists all attempts to blow it away, all the true seeing spell will reveal is the mist!
Therefore they have to find another way to work out what is illusion and what is not, the simplest is to just walk forward and hope, and we know what would happen then.

DracoDei
2009-06-19, 12:00 PM
In case you missed it, there is a spell that you might find useful here: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=115352

Lord Loss
2009-06-26, 06:33 PM
Boneyard Encounters Finito (I've got eleven, tell me what you think). Coming out on Sunday. (I G2G, and will be BUSY Tomorrow)