NOW LIVE! Dungeon Delver's Guide: A Sourcebook for 5E and A5E. An essential tome for creating, exploring, and running dungeons in your 5E or A5E game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cerebral Paladin" data-source="post: 4451925" data-attributes="member: 3448">In keeping with the Hastur’s request, we began efforts to fortify our defenses.  Our first step was to send for the pachak to help us defend the tower.  We left the Eums at the manor we took from Bastion, as we feared that their traditional association with Shadow might reassert itself if they were tasked so soon with defending the Shadowline.  [At the manor, the vast majority of the Eums remained firm in their conversion.  However, one group, consisting of about a sixth of the total, panicked in response to the sudden appearance of sunlight and fled into the basement of the manor to hide, refusing to come out into the light.].  The Rakshasa paladin that had accompanied us went to the border and taunted the enemies on the far side of the Shadowline, apparently in an effort to induce a premature attack before the enemy had fully gathered its forces.[Sideh turned his initial attention towards restoring the Glor’diadelian temple in the village.  Most of the village’s buildings had simply decayed, but the temple was the object of a great degree of rage and suffered badly.  The Shadow broke the structure down nearly stone by stone.  They also pounded on the altar, a huge granite block, until it split.  Sideh’s examination of the altar showed a serious crack, graffiti, and sigils of various demon lords carved on and around it, but he was fairly sure that it could be restored with effort.  He began by cleaning it thoroughly over the course of the next three days.  On the third day, Sideh resanctified the altar.  When the holy energy surged through the altar, much, but not all, of the holy protections on the temple resumed.]A steady stream of forces gathered by the demon lords’ pavilions across the Shadowline.  By the end of the second day, the goblyns and the coach from whom we had hidden before restoring the Shadowline returned to the area.  A tall, robed, slender figure approached Lord Hisiii as the goblin set up a pavilion for him as well.  We could see that his robe was covered by marks, but while I recognized some symbols as minor demonic lore, I could not discern the meaning of the whole.  The figure also carried a staff made of bones that had been carved and screwed together.  I could not identify the creature’s nature, but Buzz asserted confidently that it was an undead goblyn, probably a lich.  I was familiar, of course, with the rumors of goblyn liches among the court of the Master of the Thronged City, in direct service to the traitorous Count.  If I believe the stories, the goblin liches command special hordes of highly disciplined goblyn troops—or at least as highly disciplined as Shadow forces can be—that serve as Borsh’tro’s arm in enforcing discipline.By dawn of the fourth day after we had restored the Shadowline, the forces ranged against us were fearsome.  Our estimates were imperfect, but we counted roughly 4000 goblyns, 2000 green eums, about fifty lesser demons, all vrock or below in power, and the two demon lords and the goblin lich.  Without the Shadowline, we would be utterly unable to withstand their assault, but even with it, if they were willing to take the chances involved, we would be at best hard-pressed to stop them.</blockquote>

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