Waylander the Slayer
Explorer
Final Dragon...wish it was the Last Dragon....dastardly judges! Shakes fist.
-
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Iron DM 2012 -- R2 complete, Finals in Progress
- Thread starter Nifft
- Start date
Final Dragon...wish it was the Last Dragon....dastardly judges! Shakes fist.
Radiating Gnome
Adventurer
Iron DM 2012 Final Round
Final Round: Deuce Traveler vs Waylander the Slayer.
As in years past, we expect that our contestants will be quite close with the core set of ingredients. So, as a way of further challenging our contestant and providing more ways for judges to differentiate entries, we've added three bonus ingredients. You will not be penalized for not using these bonus ingredients, but they're worth extra credit if you do.
Here are your ingredients:
Required Ingredients
Seared Seer
Desert Dessert
Knave's nave
Terraced Terrasque
Still Stiletto
Party Parity
Bonus Ingredients:
Rouge Rogue
Slippery Slippers
Demonstrable Demon's Trouble
You have until 8pm Eastern time Tuesday to complete your entries.
-rg
Final Round: Deuce Traveler vs Waylander the Slayer.
As in years past, we expect that our contestants will be quite close with the core set of ingredients. So, as a way of further challenging our contestant and providing more ways for judges to differentiate entries, we've added three bonus ingredients. You will not be penalized for not using these bonus ingredients, but they're worth extra credit if you do.
Here are your ingredients:
Required Ingredients
Seared Seer
Desert Dessert
Knave's nave
Terraced Terrasque
Still Stiletto
Party Parity
Bonus Ingredients:
Rouge Rogue
Slippery Slippers
Demonstrable Demon's Trouble
You have until 8pm Eastern time Tuesday to complete your entries.
-rg
Radiating Gnome
Adventurer
Ender Wiggin and Lwaxy: There has been some talk earlier in the competition about having a 3rd place match -- are both of you interested in taking part in a contest for the Bronze Medal?
-rg
-rg
Waylander the Slayer
Explorer
Deuce Traveler
Adventurer
Damn! Just... damn...
Deuce Traveler
Adventurer
Well, it took me a full day, but I finally have my outline put together. Yay! Now I have to get around to writing it...
Radiating Gnome
Adventurer
I see what you did there. I hate you all.
A friend just recommended one we missed, one that would have been perfect.
Awful Offal.
So, yeah, you're welcome. It's just our way of saying thanks for being good sports about the delays.
-John
PS - blame Wicht, he started it.
Deuce Traveler
Adventurer
Rouge Blues
Ingredients (not included in word count)
seared seer=> Stone construct with seer powers. Destroyed by rouge rogue for telling her Cambion was killed or betrayed her. Now just an angry head baking underneath a desert sun.
desert dessert=> Desert plant that seared seer wants as reward for telling party where to find stiletto.
knave's nave=> Center part of small, evil chapel where stiletto is housed. Dedicated to cambion's god.
terraced terrasque=> Villanous complex of platforms built upon terrasque for harvesting magical components.
still stiletto=> Long blade embedded into the rear base of terrasque's head. In possession of rouge rogue.
party parity=> Ethereal tether used by party to get ahead of rouge rogue.
Bonus Ingredients (not included in word count)
rouge rogue=> Farrah, a red-haired and red-skinned ifrit spellcaster-rogue gestalt who stole the still stiletto.
slippery slippers=> Magical items that allow Farrah to skate across terrain.
demonstrable demon's troubles=> Gruuhl, the half-cambion demon running the cult and who was left by his mistress, Farrah. He's having a lot of troubles, with his woman leaving him, cult in shambles, financial operations ruined, terrasque going amuck, and heroes dropping in.
Adventure (1939 words)
A local border town is in an uproar as scouts have reported that a giant beast has been shambling nearby the settlement. On its back can be seen several shacks connected by platforms and banners flying the colors of the Horned Devil Cult, a group of enterprising fanatics that run a black market specializing in the sales of poisons and magical instruments of murder and torture. The desperate town leaders ask for the party to investigate.
The Horned Devil Cult made its fortunes by using a special artifact called the Still Stiletto on a dormant terrasque. With the aid of divine intervention, a small hole was blasted into the back of the terrasque's skull, and the thin blade shoved into an internal pressure point. This was accomplished by a cambion cleric named Gruuhl, and his lover Farrah, a red ifrit rogue/wizard. The two used the stilled and constantly regenerating terrasque as a source of components, using the funds to expand their cult following and to create a significant criminal organization. After time, a settlement of shacks and platforms was built atop the immobilized terrasque. In honor of Gruuhl's god, a small chapel was built atop of the creature's skull, the nave of which was designed to center and seal the stiletto in place.
Farrah and Gruuhl had one of their frequent spats, which normally involves loud screaming and prolific arson. However, this time Farrah decided to break the seal to the still stiletto, take the object, and skate off into the night using her magical slippers. The terrasque has been slowly shaking off the paralyzing effects of the artifact and Gruuhl's god, resulting in it moving randomly for miles, and many of the cultist terraced shacks being ripped apart. The terrasque is dormant when the party arrives, though the panicking cultists will be in a vibrant discussion about how to salvage the situation. They will be hostile towards intruders and difficult to talk down from fighting. Gruuhl and the cultists believe that they just need to buy time before a solution comes into play, and are unwilling to involve outsiders who might try to move in on their racket. If combat does take place, Gruuhl makes a final stand at the nave of his chapel. Gruuhl and any surviving followers gain a bonus to their hit rolls and saves while in the chapel, while good-aligned characters fight at a corresponding penalty.
If the party finds a way to talk the cultists down from combat, Gruuhl asks them to go to a seer he knows about in a near desert. The party will need a personal affect of the subject they wish divined, in this case a comb of Farrah's that Gruuhl provides. If the party kills Gruuhl, they will find the same idea discussed in a letter Gruuhl had written for cultists he planned to send, and the exact location of the seer.
The seer is an ancient stone statue with self-awareness named Paleet, built by a long-crumbled civilization in order to act as a talking divination device. He was designed so that he must answer one question truthfully per day. He became tired of the petitioners a few centuries ago and decided to get some peace and quiet in the desert. When the party finds him they will see that Farrah had beaten them to it. The seer was seared, as Farrah blasted his body to the point where only his upper torso and grimacing head remains, baking on the sand under the blazing sun. Farrah came to him the day before the party, asking him whether or not Gruuhl would forgive her. Paleet answered either that Gruuhl betrayed her by sending the party to track her down and bring back the stiletto or that Gruuhl had been killed, depending on the party's actions. Paleet then refused to answer further questions for the day, resulting in Farrah blasting him apart in rage.
The party should approach the seer with one of Farrah's personal effects, and ask him for her location. Paleet is sullen, and though he is supposed to answer a question put to him each day, he warns the party that he will only answer the question of Farrah's location to a very basic level. As he is tired of being mistreated for so many years, Paleet says that his answer will be much more helpful if the party treats him with the respect he has been missing for the last few millennia. He wants to be dragged into shade, propped up, entertained, and, most of all, be given a nice refreshing dessert using some of the local, tasty desert plants in order to soothe his hurt ego and baked insides. Someone in the party will have to make a difficult DC survival check to find some fruit or sweet enough vegetable. The party will then have to make a wisdom-based check for the proper food preparation, with a corresponding bonus if the preparer has a way to keep the dessert chilled (likely through magical means).
If the characters insist on receiving an answer from Paleet, he tells them that Farrah is stewing in a seedy inn in a city that is a three days walk, where she will remain until morning. She was able to get there within a day due to her magical slippers, and after she has breakfast, Farrah will use these to quickly travel to further settlements. Unless the characters can reach her soon, the roguish spellcaster will soon transport herself out of the region. The characters may not be able to travel quickly enough to the city that Farrah is staying, and if that is the case, the party will lose time as they have to pamper the seer properly and wait another day before he will answer another question.
If the party at least somewhat succeeds in pampering Paleet and makes him a desert dessert, he will grudgingly tell them the name of the inn Farrah is staying at and where she plans to travel the next day. He will also tell them about the Ethereal Tether, a magical device that Paleet has in his treasure horde which enables the users to cover long distances on the material plane. If the party greatly succeeds in pampering Paleet, he will volunteer to be the base of the tether and also tell the party the nature of Farrah's slippers, as well as her other defenses.
Farrah's slippers are a magical device from her elemental plane of fire. They create large levels of heat underneath the soles, causing the surface being traversed to become superheated and a layer of thin molten liquid to be created. The slippers slip along this surface, and are also enchanted to allow the wearer to maintain high speeds, even up steep inclines and through light vegetation. The wearer can move eight times their normal speed, and Farrah can travel between cities in a fraction of the time.
Once Paleet is placated, he will trust the party enough to help enact a bit of revenge. He tells the party how to operate the tether if they decide to use it. One party member (or Paleet) needs to be the base and tie himself down to the start of the tether. Other party members need to then tie themselves to the tether in equal distances apart. Failure to tie themselves in such a manner of parity results in the tether failing to activate. The character at the end of the tether needs to hold an object belonging to the place or person sought, in this case a personal affect of Farrah's. Once the last character takes a step he will automatically pull all characters in between himself and the tether-base character into the ethereal plane, while the end character himself is transferred along the ground a manifold distance along the material plane. The magic of the tether will keep him safe, making it so that the last character will not materialize inside a hill or wall, but atop of such places. The character could still sink underwater or fall into a lava pit, however.
The distance traveled by the tethered character equals the amount he would normally walk in the given time doubled for every one of the total characters tied to the tether. Also, he will sense the direction that his subject (Farrah in this case) is in, allowing him to walk towards her. Farrah will be unable to outrun a character travelling in this manner, though he will have his own challenge trying to judge distance and remove the stiletto from her possession. Characters in between the last character and the base tether will find themselves floating in the ethereal plane, and will also see the outlines of the base tether character and character tethered at the other end. As the lead character walks, the parity distance between each of the other tethered characters grows equally apart in the plane. At first the characters should be able to see each other easily enough, but after the first hundred feet walked by the lead character, they will find themselves lost to each other in the mists of the plane, though they will still be able to communicate by shouting. Once miles are walked (and dozens of miles traversed on the material plane), shouts will no longer have results. Every few hours the DM should roll to see if any of the plane's denizens decide to investigate the floating characters. Many denizens will be harmless nuisances, though some might be quite deadly. If a character escapes the tether for any reason, the entire party will take damage (1d6 points of damage per character level) and be transported back to the material plane. The characters will not appear next to each other, however, and instead appear an equal distance from each other, starting at the base tether and appearing an equal distance to what was walked by the last tethered character. For example, if a character and four other party members are tied to the tether, and he walks a hundred feet, he will have travelled 100 feet times 2 times 2 times 2 times 2 times 2, or 3200 feet on the material plane. On the ethereal plane, his fellow adventurers will see one another at a parity distance of 100 feet. If one character is untethered, all characters will appear in a straight line back at the location of the character acting as the base tether, but 100 feet in separation from each other.
The PCs should be reminded that their ultimate goal is to get the stiletto back from Farrah in order to deal with the terrasque, in case killing her is too difficult. She will sell the artifact in the black market for coin a week after she leaves the seer. On the same day, the terrasque will become fully awake and begin destroying settlements. If the characters do recover the stiletto, they will have to have a cleric bless the weapon, locate the current location of the terrasque, climb onto the remnants of the chapel nave, and drive the stiletto into opening of the nave and into the terrasque's never center to immobilize it. Follow on adventures should stem to what the party decides to do with the terrasque. If they decide to keep the dangerous beast for profit as the cult did so previously, the location will become a target for other evil organizations and agents of good who would like to see such an operation shut down and the terrasque neutralized. Alternatively, the party may seek out a way to end the terrasque threat permanently.
Ingredients (not included in word count)
seared seer=> Stone construct with seer powers. Destroyed by rouge rogue for telling her Cambion was killed or betrayed her. Now just an angry head baking underneath a desert sun.
desert dessert=> Desert plant that seared seer wants as reward for telling party where to find stiletto.
knave's nave=> Center part of small, evil chapel where stiletto is housed. Dedicated to cambion's god.
terraced terrasque=> Villanous complex of platforms built upon terrasque for harvesting magical components.
still stiletto=> Long blade embedded into the rear base of terrasque's head. In possession of rouge rogue.
party parity=> Ethereal tether used by party to get ahead of rouge rogue.
Bonus Ingredients (not included in word count)
rouge rogue=> Farrah, a red-haired and red-skinned ifrit spellcaster-rogue gestalt who stole the still stiletto.
slippery slippers=> Magical items that allow Farrah to skate across terrain.
demonstrable demon's troubles=> Gruuhl, the half-cambion demon running the cult and who was left by his mistress, Farrah. He's having a lot of troubles, with his woman leaving him, cult in shambles, financial operations ruined, terrasque going amuck, and heroes dropping in.
Adventure (1939 words)
A local border town is in an uproar as scouts have reported that a giant beast has been shambling nearby the settlement. On its back can be seen several shacks connected by platforms and banners flying the colors of the Horned Devil Cult, a group of enterprising fanatics that run a black market specializing in the sales of poisons and magical instruments of murder and torture. The desperate town leaders ask for the party to investigate.
The Horned Devil Cult made its fortunes by using a special artifact called the Still Stiletto on a dormant terrasque. With the aid of divine intervention, a small hole was blasted into the back of the terrasque's skull, and the thin blade shoved into an internal pressure point. This was accomplished by a cambion cleric named Gruuhl, and his lover Farrah, a red ifrit rogue/wizard. The two used the stilled and constantly regenerating terrasque as a source of components, using the funds to expand their cult following and to create a significant criminal organization. After time, a settlement of shacks and platforms was built atop the immobilized terrasque. In honor of Gruuhl's god, a small chapel was built atop of the creature's skull, the nave of which was designed to center and seal the stiletto in place.
Farrah and Gruuhl had one of their frequent spats, which normally involves loud screaming and prolific arson. However, this time Farrah decided to break the seal to the still stiletto, take the object, and skate off into the night using her magical slippers. The terrasque has been slowly shaking off the paralyzing effects of the artifact and Gruuhl's god, resulting in it moving randomly for miles, and many of the cultist terraced shacks being ripped apart. The terrasque is dormant when the party arrives, though the panicking cultists will be in a vibrant discussion about how to salvage the situation. They will be hostile towards intruders and difficult to talk down from fighting. Gruuhl and the cultists believe that they just need to buy time before a solution comes into play, and are unwilling to involve outsiders who might try to move in on their racket. If combat does take place, Gruuhl makes a final stand at the nave of his chapel. Gruuhl and any surviving followers gain a bonus to their hit rolls and saves while in the chapel, while good-aligned characters fight at a corresponding penalty.
If the party finds a way to talk the cultists down from combat, Gruuhl asks them to go to a seer he knows about in a near desert. The party will need a personal affect of the subject they wish divined, in this case a comb of Farrah's that Gruuhl provides. If the party kills Gruuhl, they will find the same idea discussed in a letter Gruuhl had written for cultists he planned to send, and the exact location of the seer.
The seer is an ancient stone statue with self-awareness named Paleet, built by a long-crumbled civilization in order to act as a talking divination device. He was designed so that he must answer one question truthfully per day. He became tired of the petitioners a few centuries ago and decided to get some peace and quiet in the desert. When the party finds him they will see that Farrah had beaten them to it. The seer was seared, as Farrah blasted his body to the point where only his upper torso and grimacing head remains, baking on the sand under the blazing sun. Farrah came to him the day before the party, asking him whether or not Gruuhl would forgive her. Paleet answered either that Gruuhl betrayed her by sending the party to track her down and bring back the stiletto or that Gruuhl had been killed, depending on the party's actions. Paleet then refused to answer further questions for the day, resulting in Farrah blasting him apart in rage.
The party should approach the seer with one of Farrah's personal effects, and ask him for her location. Paleet is sullen, and though he is supposed to answer a question put to him each day, he warns the party that he will only answer the question of Farrah's location to a very basic level. As he is tired of being mistreated for so many years, Paleet says that his answer will be much more helpful if the party treats him with the respect he has been missing for the last few millennia. He wants to be dragged into shade, propped up, entertained, and, most of all, be given a nice refreshing dessert using some of the local, tasty desert plants in order to soothe his hurt ego and baked insides. Someone in the party will have to make a difficult DC survival check to find some fruit or sweet enough vegetable. The party will then have to make a wisdom-based check for the proper food preparation, with a corresponding bonus if the preparer has a way to keep the dessert chilled (likely through magical means).
If the characters insist on receiving an answer from Paleet, he tells them that Farrah is stewing in a seedy inn in a city that is a three days walk, where she will remain until morning. She was able to get there within a day due to her magical slippers, and after she has breakfast, Farrah will use these to quickly travel to further settlements. Unless the characters can reach her soon, the roguish spellcaster will soon transport herself out of the region. The characters may not be able to travel quickly enough to the city that Farrah is staying, and if that is the case, the party will lose time as they have to pamper the seer properly and wait another day before he will answer another question.
If the party at least somewhat succeeds in pampering Paleet and makes him a desert dessert, he will grudgingly tell them the name of the inn Farrah is staying at and where she plans to travel the next day. He will also tell them about the Ethereal Tether, a magical device that Paleet has in his treasure horde which enables the users to cover long distances on the material plane. If the party greatly succeeds in pampering Paleet, he will volunteer to be the base of the tether and also tell the party the nature of Farrah's slippers, as well as her other defenses.
Farrah's slippers are a magical device from her elemental plane of fire. They create large levels of heat underneath the soles, causing the surface being traversed to become superheated and a layer of thin molten liquid to be created. The slippers slip along this surface, and are also enchanted to allow the wearer to maintain high speeds, even up steep inclines and through light vegetation. The wearer can move eight times their normal speed, and Farrah can travel between cities in a fraction of the time.
Once Paleet is placated, he will trust the party enough to help enact a bit of revenge. He tells the party how to operate the tether if they decide to use it. One party member (or Paleet) needs to be the base and tie himself down to the start of the tether. Other party members need to then tie themselves to the tether in equal distances apart. Failure to tie themselves in such a manner of parity results in the tether failing to activate. The character at the end of the tether needs to hold an object belonging to the place or person sought, in this case a personal affect of Farrah's. Once the last character takes a step he will automatically pull all characters in between himself and the tether-base character into the ethereal plane, while the end character himself is transferred along the ground a manifold distance along the material plane. The magic of the tether will keep him safe, making it so that the last character will not materialize inside a hill or wall, but atop of such places. The character could still sink underwater or fall into a lava pit, however.
The distance traveled by the tethered character equals the amount he would normally walk in the given time doubled for every one of the total characters tied to the tether. Also, he will sense the direction that his subject (Farrah in this case) is in, allowing him to walk towards her. Farrah will be unable to outrun a character travelling in this manner, though he will have his own challenge trying to judge distance and remove the stiletto from her possession. Characters in between the last character and the base tether will find themselves floating in the ethereal plane, and will also see the outlines of the base tether character and character tethered at the other end. As the lead character walks, the parity distance between each of the other tethered characters grows equally apart in the plane. At first the characters should be able to see each other easily enough, but after the first hundred feet walked by the lead character, they will find themselves lost to each other in the mists of the plane, though they will still be able to communicate by shouting. Once miles are walked (and dozens of miles traversed on the material plane), shouts will no longer have results. Every few hours the DM should roll to see if any of the plane's denizens decide to investigate the floating characters. Many denizens will be harmless nuisances, though some might be quite deadly. If a character escapes the tether for any reason, the entire party will take damage (1d6 points of damage per character level) and be transported back to the material plane. The characters will not appear next to each other, however, and instead appear an equal distance from each other, starting at the base tether and appearing an equal distance to what was walked by the last tethered character. For example, if a character and four other party members are tied to the tether, and he walks a hundred feet, he will have travelled 100 feet times 2 times 2 times 2 times 2 times 2, or 3200 feet on the material plane. On the ethereal plane, his fellow adventurers will see one another at a parity distance of 100 feet. If one character is untethered, all characters will appear in a straight line back at the location of the character acting as the base tether, but 100 feet in separation from each other.
The PCs should be reminded that their ultimate goal is to get the stiletto back from Farrah in order to deal with the terrasque, in case killing her is too difficult. She will sell the artifact in the black market for coin a week after she leaves the seer. On the same day, the terrasque will become fully awake and begin destroying settlements. If the characters do recover the stiletto, they will have to have a cleric bless the weapon, locate the current location of the terrasque, climb onto the remnants of the chapel nave, and drive the stiletto into opening of the nave and into the terrasque's never center to immobilize it. Follow on adventures should stem to what the party decides to do with the terrasque. If they decide to keep the dangerous beast for profit as the cult did so previously, the location will become a target for other evil organizations and agents of good who would like to see such an operation shut down and the terrasque neutralized. Alternatively, the party may seek out a way to end the terrasque threat permanently.
