Help me defend an artifact!

[Macbeth]

Hidden "pocket caves" behind the walls.

In important areas, they've magically hollowed spaces and left constructs in them. Since the constructs don't need to eat, they just sit there till somebody digs through the wrong wall, then they attack whoever bursts in. When the PCs start burrowing through the walls, they run into a small cave holding a golem of some type.

 

[Morrus]

Cool - great ideas! We've successfully defeated the teleporting and burrowing plans!

I'm going to go with the admantite walls and the corrupted summoned creatures ideas. All summoned creatures in the area fall slave to the will of Orcus (or his representatives).

 

[RangerWickett]

Of course, don't forget the cardinal rule. Make sure you don't thwart all the PCs' plans. If the party has used the burrow trick a lot, then it's okay to stop them. But just make it hard for them. Don't keep them from using all of their tricks.

 

[Morrus]

Of course, don't forget the cardinal rule. Make sure you don't thwart all the PCs' plans. If the party has used the burrow trick a lot, then it's okay to stop them. But just make it hard for them. Don't keep them from using all of their tricks.

Don't worry - I'm of the school of thought that the idea is for the players to enjoy themselves.

I want them to come up with new tricks, though, rather than using the same old tired ones again and again and again ... (yawn). They did well last week when they obtained a pint of red dragon blood - a well executed plan which went off perfectly, quickly enough that they didn't have to fight the dragon.

 

[Shadeus]

One of the cooler "tricks" in the 2nd-edition Labrinyth of Madness was that the walls of the place were inhabited by spectres. So when the PCs used passwall or dug through the stonework, they released a bunch of undead. Although more complicated than adamantine walls, it might be more appropriate.

As for teleportation, one thing you might consider is putting an unhallow spell in the altar room. There's a variety of spells you can link to it, but one nasty one is dimensional anchor. So even if they somehow get the right dagger, there is no way they are teleporting OUT of that area (unless they have SR). Or, if you wanted to be incredibly cruel, link a silence spell to the location. Have all the guardians have silent spell. And as for alerting others, have a cord that leads to a bell outside the area of silence to alert others of infidels!

To go along with the unhallow and the whole Orcus/undead theme, I would put a 14th- to 15th- level lich in there. They don't have any clerics worth noting and it would be next to impossible to turn the lich in that area anyway.

 

[johndaw16]

i spent a little time a while ago detailing some minions of orcus. and taking the idea that your PC's are going to teleport in but be diverted to another location. id suggest you plunk them down on a wide rail-less avenue spanning a chasm of undetermined depth. have the whole avenue covered in a layer of bones a foot or two deep. now here comes the nasty part. id have the area trapped with two traps: one would be some sort of alarm spell to alert the proper guardians that someone is trying to infiltrate the temple; the second would be a series of traps that put the avenue under deeper darkness (id use onyx or real skulls mounted upon iron pillars on the avenues edges as the source for the darkness).

following this give the players a short pause to gather themselves and then throw the guardians at them. id use abyssal ghouls with the spellstichted template from the MMII and fiendish grafts (feathered wings) from the FiendFolio. this will be one tough monster but sticks to the whole demon/undead theme. just make sure one of the spells that the abyssal ghouls gains from the spellstiching is animate dead to raise more havoc with the bones at the party's feet.

now just imagine your PC's dismay as theyre assailled from the darkness by undead/demon monstrosities in tight quarters over an unending (???) fall into nothingness. plus you can raise skeletons right under the PC's feet when theyre least expecting it, not a challenge but good for a shock. id warn you though the abyssal ghouls might be too tough right off i could see a PC or two biting the dust. an easier foe would be some advanced ghasts with the same template and grafts added. maybe some boosts to the abilities to grant animate dead to the ghasts.

and even your party doesnt teleport in and get diverted to this location you can easily have it simply be part of the temple complex. well theres my rather long two cents. lol

 

[Morrus]

Fantastic ideas! johndaw, I'm going to be using that for the teleport divert location!

Now, I don't want that first encounter to be too tough, so it may need to be modified a bit. I think I'll nix magic there (just for fun!), but not make the critters too mean. The challenge will be to fight them without falling off. They will then need to use non-magical means to get away from this area - so I need to come up with a setup for it which is interesting and challenging, but assailable via mundane equipment and skills.

Once out of that "prison", they can have their magic back for a bit. I'm going to stick with the admantine walls (although the spectre idea was a good one!)

Now, between here and the temple itself I want no more than a few hundred yards. A few tricks and traps, maybe one more fight, and then the temple.

The temple will be silenced, as suggested. The dagger will be a fake, as Rangerwickett suggested. Lots of traps around the dagger.

A lich for the fight? That's a possibility, although maybe not quite interesting enough. The temple itself is sounding a little bland at present - what cool design could we have for it? I'm thinking that the altar is 100 feet up in an alcove of some kind, not accessible from the direction the PCs have come from. Something to ensure they have to actually scale the wall manually, fighting on the way up, but still able to use magic against foes... ? That's just one idea, anyway.

 

[Urbanmech]

Another good guardian for the artifact could be a fiendish Shadow Dragon. Their Shadow Blend ability makes them invisible in shadows and the only way to get rid of that ability is to use a Daylight spell. Plus the negative levels bestowed by the dragons breath weapon are nasty for everyone. The Draconomicon can help make your dragon extra scary.

Any temple to Orcus also needs a charnel pit of dead decaying bodies for animating when necessary.

 

[johndaw16]

thanks for the praise, glad you liked the ideas. heres a few ideas for a more unique set of guardians in the temple. since this is an underground temple why not have a dao guardian, maybe a dao cleric of orcus, if the entire temple isnt made of admantine he would make a troublesome foe with his affinity with stone.

another thought i had for a guardian at the temple would be a corrupted male lillend sorcerer, accompanied by a haram of half-fiendish sirines with levels in rogue, all residing near the altar on the shores of an underground lake/pond.

another thought i had concerning the final guardian and the silenced area was you might want to consider leaving a small alcove, well hidden by illusionary and natural camouflage un-silenced. place it high up in a wall above the entrance to the altar room for example. so that the guardians (if theyre spellcasters) could safely hurl spells upon the party, hopefully without being discovered.

 

[River]

my 2 cents.

OK 1st things 1st.... in the words of Eddy Murphy:

"There's no ground here!"

If the players teleport in they should start in an antimagic aura and in Free Fall... The pit isn't concealed by magic but by a clever optical illusion... And the pit isn't just a pit, it decends into a series of chutes... The purpose of the chutes is to split the party up. Split the players up... Hard to do the 1001 stupid mage tricks when the party is divided. This delays the players, allows the temples defenders to prepare and gives the players prep spells time to expire. It should also strike the fear of God into them.. PC's hate being divided...


Lastly! That evil artifact is going to require a SACRAFICE, an offering of flesh from the one who takes it up... My first choice would be a HAND... and make restoring the lost appendage more complicated than a simple regeneration spell....