Ghoulish Tales

[demiurge1138]

In honor of Halloween, I thought it'd be appropriate to share various stories of the undead, and specifically how they've tormented player characters.

In my quasi-Greyhawk campaign, the party had to venture through the Sea of Graves, a massive abandoned graveyard that stretches for hundreds of miles. In it lurked many ghouls, but those spoke of only in whispers was the Great Pack.

A century ago, the Great Pack was a band of pirates, who were feared for eating their captives. They were eventually captured and sentenced to hang, but they tore each other apart with their bare hands rather than die on the noose. Their restless corpses rose soon after burial, with the captain and his two lieutenants rising as ghasts and the rest as ghouls. The Great Pack now roams the borders of the Sea of Graves, preying on travelers.

So, of course, the party was a bit paranoid about ghoul attacks. And, naturally, they were foolish enough to split up.

The Great Pack had the nastiest habit of stalking the party, paralyzing, coup de grace-ing and devouring a single member, then retreat, whispering "you're next..." and all pointing at one PC as they went.

Once the party got reunited, they managed to beat the ghoul pack (in a counter-ambush, as the pack became surrounded by the halves of the party), but they got a lot of mileage out of a low CR creature.

What are your great tales of the undead?

Demiurge out.

 

[shilsen]

In my last campaign, the party found themselves leading part of the defense forces of an elven town under attack by an undead army. Expecting to face ranks of skeletons and zombies, they were pretty confident that they'd whittle them down easily with archery before the undead became a danger. They were right about the skeletons and zombies. Unfortunately, the leaders of the undead army had furnished the soldiers with makeshift tower shields, so while the PCs stared at them in horror, these ranks calmly walked towards the town, arrows bouncing vainly off their shields.

And then when they got down to melee, the characters were especially freaked to find that some of the zombies were children from another recently destroyed elven town and new enough to seriously resemble their normal selves. Apparently beating up on a zombie toddler in a little pinafore, with her teddy bear still dangling from one rotting arm, is not something my players expected to be doing. This ain't your daddy's D&D

Maybe later I'll post the story about the female vampiress hitting on the paladin and inviting him and his girlfriend to a threesome.

 

[Morpheus]

It started off as your typical trek into the Banewarrens-it ended as horror show for the citizens of Rel Spiros. Here's the story...
The PCs descended into the Banewarrens and discovered a large, purplish gem on a pedestal. Despite subtle hints (like an electrified floor), the PCs took the crystal and were attacked by a wraith. Repeatedly. They then took the crystal back to the city; all the while fighting this wraith that kept coming back after they destroyed it.
Once they got topside, they destroyed the wraith again and threw the crystal down a well next to a street where they saw children playing. Needless to say, the wraith reformed; killed a child right in front of the party (tore its head off) and would have kept killing except that the party went down to get the crystal. The got the crystal (fighting the wraith the whole way up and down the well) and smashed the crystal-forever rid of the menace. Or so they thought...
Just as the rogue was the leaving the church where he got his CON restored, the broken crystal in his pouch reformed (as did the wraith) and more hijinks ensued. It, literally, took 10 hours of real time for the PCs to undo all they had wrought...Good times, Good times...

 

[Nightcloak]

The group in my campaign ransacked a series of planar dungeons similar to MC’s Banewarrens. This was filled with creatures that were locked up for a reason-they were that evil and had been put away because they were hard to destroy permanently.
Once in they found an imprisoned beholder lich with levels of the beholder mage prestige class from the MoF. It was one nasty battle, and worse, they knew they had to find the phylactery or it would return. Amongst the loot was the mages spell book, a huge diamond the size of a man’s head, a powerful sword of undead bane, and much magic appropriate to a high level encounter. After an extensive search, the group decided that either the diamond or the heavily enchanted magic book must be the culprit, so they secured the items and decided to research them safely away from the dungeon.

Within the week they discovered the diamond to be plain (but still worth a lot), the book to only be enchanted with protective magic. The sword, however, the one that the fighter had been bashing undead left and right with was noticed to have one less glowing gem on it. Examination showed it was enchanted to temporarily trap a soul – similar to a phylactery.

In horror, the group realized that the beholder allowed itself to be defeated so the party would carry it out of the prison and free it! They had checked everything but the magic sword, because it was just “another magic sword” and gave it to the fighter. I have to admit the look on their faces was priceless

We’ll see how it ends. The group is now planning on hunting the beholder down to fix what they have done - if they can find it. Of course, the lich has returned to his original tomb now and is back to working on his original project.

Hmmmmm… Demi-lich beholder mage…