Rat Bastard Dungeon Master Story #1
Warning! Long post…
Let me pull up a chair, place the trusty staff known as “Big Stick 2000” by the fireplace, pull out my pipe and hobbit weed and contemplate some great tales of yore. *Puff* *Puff*
So many great stories, so few hours to closing time. Fine memories all. To what tales dare be told at this fine hour? *Puff*
Ah… Laerethen the Souless:
A fine group of five characters of 17th level find themselves on an epic quest to rid the land of a great curse. They learn that to reverse the curse they need mighty magics lost to man for the final battle with a Fendish Great Wyrm that presides over the font of the curse. Further, they will need a rare elven magic of lore, known as soul magic, to reverse the curse. The good news is that one place holds all they need to complete their quest! The bad news is that such awesome power resides in one locale: The Tower of Madness. The Tower is a prison hidden by gods and fiends alike in the middle of Limbo. A rare and uncharted branch of the river Styx can lead you there if you can justify your cause to the boatman. This prison was designed in a rare moment of cooperation by the hosts of heaven and hell to lock away that which was truly criminal or powerful in nature. The characters learn that the artifacts they seek are hidden in sub-complexes in the dimensional tower known as “cells”. Also, the worst of the worst monsters have been locked away do to ghastly crimes. At the very top of the tower rests the library where the soul magic resides.
Many quests, one tower in limbo, and a fully decked out and very experienced group go heads in. Many battles they face. Much blood is poured. Mind flayers so criminal they scared their own kind. Fallen Solars. An arachnomancer that failed to overthrow Lolth. But then the group arrives at the holding “cell” of Laerethen the Souless.
A fairly empty complex gets the characters laughing when an eye tyrant floats in. The confident high-level characters casually roll initiative and wonder off to grab a few drinks.
The first round goes something like this:
PC1: I won initiative! I tumble out of the eye arc and to its side and dice it.
Me: There is no central eye, but you tumble to its side. You hit. Roll damage.
PC2: No central eye? What kind of weird spin-off is this? But that’s fine, I’ll lightning bolt it.
Me: You cast the spell, but it doesn’t go off. It literally dies at completion.
PC2: WTF? I spend my hasted action on a spellcraft check. What happened? Am I in an anti-magic field?
Me: No, you’re not. It used its ready action to counter the spell.
PC2: !?!?!?!?
PC3: I spend an action doing a knowledge check (don’t remember which one)
DM: You don’t know, but I’ll give you the knowledge (Undead) check instead. It’s missing its front eye because it is quite dead. It’s skin sags and there is an evil glow of red from within the empty socket.
PC3: NO! That cannot be a lich!
Me: Eye #1, magic missile
PCs: What?
Eye #2, Lightning Bolt
PCs: Hey!
Eye#3: Empowered Haste
PCs: WHAT?!?!
Eye#4: Horrid Wilting
PCs: WTF!
It got ugly after that. But the PCs prevailed! Yes, they defeated the 8th level mage (MoF Prestige Class) Beholder Lich. Lots of cheering ensued. Along with that “You Bastard” look I was getting accustomed to in that tower. Time to loot the dead! The PC’s clean out the place, including many gems, much gold, ye ole’ portable hole, a fancy magical sword with a silver blade etched with elven runes and leather pommel cover. The beholders spell book, and a ring of gold set with a glowing ruby.
Then the cleric came upon a most troubling thought. That was a lich. His phylactery is somewhere about, and if we don’t destroy it, it’ll comeback again. A hunt ensues but nothing extra is found. The Archmage then hits upon the idea of casting see invisibility and scans the room. Lore! An invisible body sits in a corner. He searches the body and finds a diamond the size of a grown mans head!
Surely, that is the phylactery. But a fight erupts over what to do. The rogue appraises the diamond and finds its value to be 250,000 gps. Half the group does not want to destroy the diamond and lose all that wealth only to learn it was not the phylactery. Finally, the wizard (after a long debate in RL) decides to cast detect magic. The book is magical, so is the ring, the sword, one of the gems, but not the diamond. A spellcraft check reveals the diamond would be the perfect phylactery. But there is no magic. More debate. More arguing.
Finally, to keep the piece, the diamond, the glowing gem, the ring, and the magic book are put in the portable hole for safe keeping. The treasure is given to the rogue (also know as the treasure monkey) while the sword is thrown to the dwarven fighter.
The group leaves the “cell” and journeys on to complete their quest (but as they say, that is another tale)
* * *
Several months later, the group is still questing back in the Prime World. They know that the ring was a RoP +4. The gem was a unique gem of wisdom. The sword was an undeadbane ("now we find out!") the book has hidden mysteries on it and the diamond seems plain enough (beyond its value). Unfortunately, the group still doesn’t trust the book or the sword so all that knowledge and wealth sits in the other dimension of the portable hole.
After leaving a crypt, the group passes the entrance were some undead lie in a state of road kill (the sword finally did its job). One body looked to have exploded from within. One Knowledge (Undead) check later reveals that a lich raised from the body recently.
Complete silence.
The group panics then looks at the diamond, the ring, and the book. Everything is fine. A spot check reveals the fighter’s sword no longer glows. The Archmage does a full knowledge sweep of the weapon. Nothing.
Archmage: Hey [fighter], what does this pommel cover protect?
Fighter: * Shrugs* I don’t know. Doesn’t matter. It’s just a magic sword with fluff text.
Archmage * Shudder * I pull the pummel guard off.
Me: There is a darkened gem held in place by silver claws.
AM: * Horror * Spellcraft check please.
Me: * Evil grin * it use to be enchanted to act as a phylactery. But it was a limited one that would channel the trapped soul through the blade when specific conditions were met.
Players: D’oh!!!
Oh… but is gets better.
PC1: What have we done?
PC2: Helped an insane epic level abomination find a new home. Ours.
PC3: Wait a minute, why did it want us to carry it around?
SEVERAL PCs: * Groan * Because it couldn’t leave! It was a prisoner! It took a dive and used us to escape.
And that’s how 5 high level characters helped a beholder lich mage escape from his prison of millennia.
I almost cry when I think of the looks on their faces…
God I love this game!
. I prefer forests, chasms (sp?), and pretty much anything outdoors. I'll do dungeons occasionally, but I tend to keep them short (no more than 3 sessions).
