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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RangerWickett" data-source="post: 6597940" data-attributes="member: 63">My party got its hands on a jar that contains the demon lord Baphomet. They adventured inside a history book to find the lost true name of the Demon Prince of Beasts. They stopped <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?438288-Designing-a-fantasy-army-in-5th" target="_blank">an army</a> led by a group of mages who wanted to get control of the demon. Now the party wants to banish Baphomet back to the Abyss. The players have been discussing how to set up a binding circle to hold the bastard once they break open the jar, and then they'll use his true name to command him to fail his save against banishment. But of course it cannot be that easy.Next session I'll start by letting the players settle in, get their minis and dice out, shoot the sh** for a b**, and then I begin narrating that they're in a strange narrow valley, twenty feet wide, with a stone floor and walls composed of curving ivory tusks that rise thirty feet up on either side, mortared together with crushed bones. They stand at a T-intersection, though the path is not entirely straight in any of the three directions. The sky above is drizzling blood, and from all directions they hear howling beasts in the distance. Among the bedlam, they hear human screams for help.They're in a labyrinth, being pursued by demonic minotaurs and other horrors. (And one crazy <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0u4M6vppCI" target="_blank">actual cannibal</a>.) What's actually going on is that hey, the party got everything right. The ritual circle will hold, and if they can just spit out Baphomet's true name they'll be able to force him to fail his save. But when they broke open the jar, Baphomet's essence of savagery swept out and began to drive everyone around him mad. In the real world, all the PCs are unconscious, writhing while their minds are trapped in the ivory labyrinth. Baphomet sent out a call to the beasts in the wilderness, and if the party takes too long to get out of the maze their twitching bodies will be mauled to death.What I hope to accomplish is to have the events in the labyrinth represent a struggle for the PCs to keep their minds intact. As they navigate the maze they'll be more and more blood-soaked; eventually the ground itself will become ankle-deep with blood, and as they slog through it they'll find it harder to think straight. Whenever they kill a monster in melee the rain will intensify (though disabling a creature without killing it is fine). If you 'die' from HP damage you have an aneurysm in the real world and die. If you end up getting swept away in the blood, you become a beast. If you get out of the labyrinth, you wake up.Along the way they'll find nooks set off from the labyrinth, each of which depicts a sliver of memory, acting as a light recap of the campaign. They'll also be able to piece together what happened just before they got kicked into the labyrinth, what's about to happen (being torn apart by beasts), and some elements of a mystery that the players clued into but never quite figured out. And as they navigate the maze there will be three general areas:* The Hunting Grounds - the starting area, where beasts pursue the party* The Cages - rows of cells with other people who've faced Baphomet and gone mostly feral, but who can recall bits of the ancient lore of the demon lord* The River of Blood - a part of the labyrinth with 'white water rapids' - except it's red water, and it's still a labyrinth full of demon beasts and clogged with half-devoured charnel from previous hunts; some of those bodies would make a lovely makeshift raftFinally there's the 'boss fight' against Baphomet's essence, who towers over the blood-flooded labyrinth near its exit. He tries to stop you from making it out, crushing walls beneath his hooves as he leaps after you. He's too strong for the party to kill, but I expect them to be clever enough to evade him and make it out.(I might need to write some good 'demon lord dialogue' that he can roar at them.)When they make it to the exit of the labyrinth the river tumbles into a bloodfall, and they drop into an endless black abyss. And then awaken. They can then command Baphomet and banish him.  What do you think? Advice, suggestions? In particular, does anyone have a good game mechanic to model navigating a labyrinth, something where I can balance speed of success against the slowly encroaching blood-madness?</blockquote>

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