Help design a necromancer's lair

Gilladian

Adventurer
If you were designing a necromancer's lair, what would you include?

The following things are already established:

  • this is a 3.5e game, the PCs will be about 5th level, and it is set in Ptolus
  • the necromancer is about 7th level, and he has a companion/boss who is a brain in a jar; their goal is to build a new body for the biaj
  • when the PCs find the lair, they MAY already have killed the necromancer, so it is possible the lair will have only traps and guardians in it, plus the biaj.
All ideas and suggestions welcome!
 

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1) I'd treat the biaj as a toned-down demilitch of sorts- he should have some potent necromancy of his own.

2)
Because its a necromancer's lair, there should be an assortment of body parts around...possibly some unusual stuff representing his and the biaj's new experiments in necromancy. For instance, perhaps they were doing experiments in infusing zombies with alchemists' fire, which caused an accident that caused the biaj to wind up in the jar in the first place. As this is but a temporary setback to those with their skills, the raw materials for the experiment are still around...

Or perhaps your necromancer and his teacher were more along the lines of the Gray Man from the Phantasm movies, so you'd have an assortment of Constructs to go along with some unique undead.

3)
Mindless undead should abound- the tireless servants of the dark masters.
 

Thanks, Danny; your ideas are right in line with my own. I really like the infused zombies - there could easily be several types of them.

Anyone have a good map to suggest? Or other ideas for "minions"? One further tidbit is that there have been children going missing from the city streets. This guy is NOT actually the guilty party, but he does have a son, who is a budding necro. The kid will not be here, but some traces of his personality would be fun to bring out...
 

The necromancers probably have some tools of the trade.

Giant covered pits full of flesh eating beetles: insert corpse, wait five minutes, remove skeleton. Works on adventurers too.

Some sort of paralysis monster, to restrain victims for convenient vivisection. Ghouls work well, but I imagine you've got to keep them under strict discipline or they eat their work.

How about a swarm of body bits: as the necromancer and his brain friend have been building the perfect body out of flesh, they've been throwing the extra bits away. Infused with necrotic energy, they rise up and attack anything that passes through them.

Alternately, they might have some kind of garbage disposal: an otyugh, gelatinous cube, or pudding.

If the body is finished and the necromancer is just trying to get the mounting ritual right, he might have kidnapped some people and made them into other brains in a jar...so he has test subjects. These brains would have gone insane and only seek death...but if you can calm one of them down, they might tell you what they know before begging you to kill them.
 

Is the Necromancer trying to conceal his necromancy?

Is he actually in the confines of Ptolus? What district? What sort of non dead cronies, companions, family does he have?

What is his payoff for the effort? Labour, Love, Information?
 

If you were designing a necromancer's lair, what would you include?

The following things are already established:

  • this is a 3.5e game, the PCs will be about 5th level, and it is set in Ptolus
  • the necromancer is about 7th level, and he has a companion/boss who is a brain in a jar; their goal is to build a new body for the biaj
  • when the PCs find the lair, they MAY already have killed the necromancer, so it is possible the lair will have only traps and guardians in it, plus the biaj.
All ideas and suggestions welcome!

Obviously the biaj wouldnt want to be the first attempt, so obviously there are several prior failures as well as newly captured "spares" awaiting their destiny.

animated hands/claws mounted to walls/tables to hold stuff in addition to free-ranging for fetching per Adams Family/Munsters.

likewise the mounted deer-head in the receiving room is trained to secretly watch visitors to later report their activities/conversations; either by playing 20-questions or perhaps was Awakened/Animal Companion before dying.

Animated heads might also be secreted around the actual lair watching for intruders - mounted on walls, set on bookcases, laid in treasure/burial pits, etc.

some means of flesh/corpse removal -- insect pits, ooze, otyugh(sp), etc; again a likely place for an animated head to remind minions of the danger/watch for intruders.

the necro (biaj's?) familiars are likely wandering around

chances are the biaj has some means of self-transport on standby, awaiting instructions.
 

Well, there will be all of the usual stuff (many of which have been mentioned) - body parts and other strange/disturbing/mysterious things.

However, that is what is expected... so, I would also think of including something unexpected. Some ideas off the top of my head...

1) An unsent love letter, written by the necromancer... maybe many unsent letters

2) A music box with a soft, soothing melody (perhaps he plays it while "experimenting"... creepy).

3) A vase of beautiful flowers... maybe many flowers, indicating the necromancer is a florist by hobby


Anyway, the idea is to contrast all the "omg-that's-nasty-but-totally-what-we-would-expect!" with something very normal that you would not associate with a necromancer. Something like THAT will make the players say... "WTF?"
 

Dovetailing off of weem's suggestion...

Perhaps the lair is well hidden, and the necromancer maintains a very normal life as a facade.

And- lifting a page from The Fantastic Four- perhaps part of that life is a beautiful, blind artistic girlfriend/lover/wife.

For a modern Hollywood twist, perhaps she is undead herself, though she is insane enough that she doesn't consciously realize it...and doesn't manifest her true nature until her beloved is threatened.
 

Sigurd; he is concealing his necromancy. I have not yet decided where his actual lair is, but he owns a home in the Midtown area, and it might simply be beneath that. He's got only the BIAJ as an ally, but he's buying some of his victims from a very bad man down on the docks. And he's also buying corpses from the arena (animals and such), claiming to be a taxidermist.

The way the PCs stumble across him is a bit complex, but I'll try to describe it:
Weeks ago, the PCs were involved in a mission to retrieve a dead Litorian's body. The litorian had been killed in a barfight, and his body vanished. The necromancer had bought it, and taken it to a secondary lair where he was trying to build a flesh golem. The Litorian body was his main material. The PCs recovered the body, and rescued 3 people whom they then hired as servants. (They rescued more, but these 3 had nowhere to go). The PCs knew the real necromancer got away, but had no way to trace him (they were only 2nd level).

Now, they have been worrying over the apparent disappearance of street children in Midtown. When one of their servants comes home and reports that she SAW the necromancer escorting a shabby little boy into a home nearby, I'm sure they'll jump to the right conclusion! In truth, the necromancer HAS a son of his own, and is bringing the child home from a morning playing in the park (who says evil can't be nice once in a while?).

The PCs will probably run to confront the necro, who will simply try to grab his son and flee any attack. But they'll discover info that can lead them to the lair. They may get lucky and kill the necromancer, or they may not. They may even try to "adopt" his son, knowing some of my PCs. Good luck to them (he's very evil...).

But this is all outside the bounds of WHATS IN tthe lair, which is where my imagination hit a wall.
 


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