How would a Demon Queen defend her palace?

[Lordnightshade]

My players, stay out!

So what ever happened to that thread I saw on here a while back about how would you defend a fortress or something like that?

Anyway, if you were a Demon Queen who had a palace in the Abyss how would you defend it against an assault from 20th level characters who are already inside and attacking your forces? What kinds of Traps would you have in place? What kinds of minions would you keep about to repel just such an attack? Perhaps help me by designing an ambush in a corridor using any demons you like.

What interesting rooms would you have in your palace? What would they be used for? Design a room if you like. It needs to have a purpose for being there. This particular Demon Queen's whole business is set up to corrupt souls on a massive scale, so perhaps one room would be a storage room for souls trapped in gems.

If you are applying for membership in the Rat Bastard’s club, and you help me out here you can think of this as extra credit, as this is one of the types of questions that would get asked in the RBC.

Brainstorm with me now…

 

[Lordnightshade]

boy, things drop to page 2 quick.

So no one knows what happened to that "defending X fortress" thread that was on here?

 

[incognito]

a quickie - no extra credit needed

Hey Lord,

Have an idea for a room - not much in the way of direct traps, but treacherous none the less.

Call it the room of broken ideas...

Like everything in the limitless sprawl of the abyss, this room should be massive, and, and somewhat haphazardly placed in an endless corridoor.

Filled about half way up to the ceiling in places, and bare to the rusted metal floor in others, this room is filled with broken bits of abstract machinery, gobs of dried flesh, large broken shards of crystal, random coins of various denimnations and from all cultures past and present, and of course, a few undead drow zombies (or MotP petitioners) with brushes, sweeping up in the ultimate job of futility.

That should be enough to get the PC looking through, if not, have there be other exits looking half buried in the rubbish - or have their be possible valuables tossed in amongst the junk.

The room radiates dim magic, and dim evil.

And now (tah, dah!) the real story.

This room is an idea generator for Loth (or whomever) and some of her minions. It acts a a Intellect or Wisdom Focus to sentient beings. The longer one stays in the room, the more brilliant and fully fleshed the idea becomes (increase the save DC to act 'normaly', perhaps roll in secret?), until the character is overcome with the desire to build something/enact a plan/search for hidden knowledge in the rubble.

This is one of the rooms used to motivate the sometimes apathetic/chaotic servants of <insert evil personage here>.

The downside: becsaue of the faint hint of evil in the room, all of these ideas have a perverse, or corrupt aspect to them. Like a headband of intellct that recives a bigger bonus than normal, but only by inflicting (unknowingly) temporary INT damage on those within 20' radius of it. Probably only Wizards will every really notice the difference...

You can even have some machine's partially working, or an NPC that is not evil (just misled...heh,heh, heh) with some GREAT new inventions or plots to put in action.

Some PCs might even not be so down on the caveats that these evil ideas/inventions have, leading them down the slipperly slidely path to embracing EVIL (and giving up their souls...)

Go evil!

 

[Lordnightshade]

Hmmm I like that Incognito, I think I will use a slightly modified version of that but great idea. It reminds me that this particular Demon Queen (not Loth, but one of my own creation) is rather crafty and is always experimenting with souls, doing things like taking someone and trapping their soul inside an item, or fusing two creatures together. This room could be where all of her failed experiments are, just piled in big piles.

Perhaps adjoining rooms could be of gruesome experiments in progress.

Any ideas on what those could be? The more gruesome and disturbing the better!

 

[Lordnightshade]

Her failed experiments room just made me think of Toy Story and all of the grisly toy experiments that, that bad neighbor boy did... perhaps those are the creatures that inhabit the piles of rubbish, disturbing, abominations (could use the half golem template with some colorful descriptions to really freak out the players).

 

[incognito]

edited my old post for spelling, and I'll have some stuff tomorrow.

And yeah - I do have LOT's of gruesome ideas...

 

[Lordnightshade]

Ok this is sick and wrong so if you are easily disturbed don't read the following!

Have you guys seen the Demon's called Jovocs? They look like little black skinned babies with long arms and wicked red colored claws, they are either in the BoVD or MM2.

Well this particular Demon Queen has lots of those in her palace. Perhaps these are the result of one of her experiements that did work?

Perhaps she took an innocent babie and dipped it in liquid pain (from BoVD, to explain their black coloration) and then chopped off its arms and grafted on the longer claws of some other demon.

The result is a horrifying creature that when you attack it, you take damage too. Great in large numbers for palace defence.

It would also be great if the party stumbled into a room where these were in the process of being made. Imagine the wailing of the babies... Ack, my players would freak out!

*I feel dirty now, I hope my party gets out of the abyss soon, it really disturbs me I can come up with this stuff...*

 

[LoneWolf23]

Here's an idea for the whole keep. Give it an twisted, chaotic architecture that doesn't make sense to mortal logic. Such as anything imagined by Esher or found in the Winchester Manor: Rooms with staircases going up, down, sideways and upside-down. Have doors that open onto other doors, doors that open onto windows, doors that open onto brick walls, and doors that are just part of the wall.

All in all, just put away all your maps and make up the architecture as you go along, and don't be afraid of contradicting yourself. I'd imagine that shifting architecture would be a common feature in a castle built in the Abyss.

As for your Demon Princess and her minions, I'd imagine that they'd all be able to Teleport at will, so that the confusing layout would work to their advantage against any invaders.

Heck, you could even have completly closed rooms that can only be accessed by Teleporting in and out, where your demons could retreat into to find some healing items and patch up before going in for round two against the PCs.

That's all I got so far. Hope it helps.

 

[Sulimo]

ummm...build a palace that can move about the abyss on its own set of giant spider legs, and can traverse the multiverse via planar travel magics.*


*yes, I am a Paul Kidd fan.

 

[Ruined]

Hmm, I'm enjoying this. Maybe I will enter something for the RBDM gang...

Imagine that you have a path leading towards the heart of the fortress, or to one of the powerful inner workings, like a soul repository. If it's fairly sensitive, one way to protect it would be to force those travelling through to perform an act that, while casual for demons, would be painful or deadly to those who don't have the same mindset.

A narrow room that holds a pedestal with an orb and two medium-sized mirrors. The mirrors hold a hazy vision of a blood-soaked room, both appearing the same. To travel forwards to the room, a person needs to grasp ahold of the orb with both hands. What viewers see is the person activating the orb appearing in both rooms, similar, but slightly different. One is fine, but the defenses of the other room pierce, flay, and disintegrate the target, reducing them to base parts. The intact traveler moves on, seemingly unaware of the fate of the first. Then the images fade for a brief moment while the orb recharges.

This room serves a dual purpose for the demon fortress. It is a protection against non-evil creatures (and possibly lawful ones as well), and it creates fuel to be used elsewhere. The orb simultaneously creates a simulacrum of the user and teleports both entities, one to each location. One goes further into the fortress intact, the other to the hazy abbatoir.

The images in the mirror randomly switch back and forth between rooms making scrying checks a difficult prospect. Randomness is a facet of the chaotic evil demons, and it should be utilized.

For added malevolence, this abyssal orb could create evil duplicates of the victim. This would not bother demons in the least, but it could truly hinder a party.

It is not a foolproof deathtrap that can insta-kill characters who end up in the abbatoir, but it should be highly dangerous. And should they survive, they may have to encounter their sinister duplicates, either now or later on.