Graywolf-ELM
Explorer
Right there with you. I went back and recently re-read the .pdf It was fun to recall forgotten sections of the adventure.
GW
GW
The Liberation of Tenh (updated April 24)
- Thread starter (contact)
- Start date
Capellan
Explorer
(contact) said:
Nice play, but aren't Undead "immune to all mind-affecting effects (charms, compulsions, phantasms, patterns, and morale effects).", and isn't dominate monster a compulsion?
I'm just askin'
(Maybe they just look like undead. Yeah, that's the ticket.)
(contact) said:
Is its name Igor, by any chance?
Loved Heydricus' vanity and the whole 'discovery' interchange in general.
Darthjaye
First Post
I must say that I have enjoyed the s**t out of this storyhour so far. One of our GM's (coyote6) got me into it and I love every entry. Glad that they started out what may be their last hours ignoring the subtlety of sneaking past the guards and just plain wasted them. Although after reading the entire story hour (up to this point) and experiencing the creatures polymorphed to look like dragons thing first hand, I can only say...STOP GIVING MY GM IDEAS!!!! Next thing you know we'll be stuck on a boat heading towards the Amedio Jungle while some idiot decides to ascend in the middle of the ocean while we are passing by......wait...never mind....strike that....ahhh crud......
I've been reading Liberators for about a year or so now and its deifinitely one of my favourite story hours. While Pcat, Sagiro, Destan and Sepulcrave are great too, I think that Liberators is probably the best in capturing the fun and giddiness of handing out the smak to the party's enemies.
My favourite bit so far was when the boys took on some of the boon companions...
'Your first... just so you know'
Classic
My favourite bit so far was when the boys took on some of the boon companions...
'Your first... just so you know'
Classic
(contact)
Explorer
Hey, welcome to the new readers, and welcome as usual to the old crusties. I'm glad people are having fun reading these logs. I'm not updating as often as I used to, but I haven't forgotten about the Libs, and you'll see periodic updates all the way 'till the end.
The bitter, bitter end.
The bitter, bitter end.
(contact)
Explorer
Coldeven 11, CY 594
93—Drip, drip, drip goes our days.
“Swallow your intestines,” Prisantha commands, and the undead begins re-swallowing its insides with wet slurping noises, tossing its head back like a sea-bird. The Liberators shove open one of the iron portals, and slip into the Dungeons of Dorraka.
The entry hall just beyond the bridge gates is a grand open space, simultaneously heady and oppressive. The tall sweeping arches seem to threaten collapse, provoking subtle thoughts of cave-ins and suffocation. Ghastly murals decorate the walls and floor, featuring death at its most mundane undermining and boring rotting holes through the life of Oerth. Peasants and kings alike are struck dead by disease or sickness, accidents and circumstance. People starve, and infants die for no apparent cause. Demons cavort along the sides of these images, but unlike the decorations in the Temple of Elemental Evil, it is clear that within Dorraka they do not rule so much as observe. The entire place is silent save for a few echoing footsteps wafting through the labyrinthine passages beyond the entry hall.
As the Liberators orient themselves, a faint scream drifts down from the North and slowly echoes away. Prisantha’s new rotting friend spills his guts, and after a short interrogation, she dismisses the thing with instructions to await further orders at the bottom of the river.
“I hasten to obey, mistress,” it hisses as it shambles away.
“There are three Boneheart within this section of the dungeon,” Pris reports. “Panshazek, Marynnek and Helga. Panshazek is closest to us, due North, with Marynnek further to the South and Helga to the East. The creature does not know for sure if she is herself present, however, as none of Iuz’ servitors are allowed within her demesne.”
“Did it say ‘demesne’?” Lucius asks.
“No, I am paraphrasing.”
“So, she does or she doesn’t have sovereignty?”
“Don’t be pedantic, Lucius,” Gwendolyn says.
“Uh,” Hastur says.
“He has a good point,” Dabus interjects. “Either Helga ordered Iuz’ servants away, or she is keeping them away with a threat of violence. This distinction could be critical.”
“I did not ask, although I assumed the latter from its tone,” Prisantha says.
“Either way, she’s going to get some violence,” Heydricus says. “But I want to kill Panshazek again first.”
“Again first?” Hastur says.
“Before your time,” Jespo whispers.
The party moves through a long passage leading north, and as they do they hear a renewed burst of screaming, this time clearly coming from directly ahead. After another hundred feet they find themselves within an area where the corridor blooms wider for several yards before resuming its course. Within the wider section of the passage, three massive ogre-sized orcs bearing the Iuzian Palace Guard livery stand barring the way with horrid chopping axes and jagged end-weighted swords.
The guards sneer down through narrowed eyes at the swaggering Irregulars advancing on them. “State your business,” one says.
“I don’t present orders to my inferiors,” Heydricus growls in his best oricsh.
“See this patch?” the guard growls, jabbing his thumb at a pair of serrated black stripes fixed onto his left breast. “That’s Boneheart, and that’s who you’re answering to.”
“F-ck the Boneheart,” Heydricus says.
The guards look at one another, amused surprise rippling their lips back and revealing long, sharp teeth. “Well, that’s the end for you,” one of them says, and reaches for a horn at his waist.
“Your masters will reward you if you let us pass,” Prisantha suggests.
The orc reaching for his horn nods his agreement and stands aside. His nearest companion snarls and raises his poleaxe. Before it can drop the blade, Lucius shoots it three times, a tightly-placed nest of shafts punching through its femoral artery, and lodging within the bone. The creature grasps its leg, and hits the ground dead before it can wonder where all that blood is coming from.
Lucius levels his flat gaze on Gwendolyn, who replies with a sneer and roll of the eyes.
The other giant-orc brandishes a long, wickedly re-curved butcher’s-axe and hefts it menacingly, but uses the butt of the haft to slam on the door behind it, provoking a sudden cacophony of metallic clanging and thuds from behind the wooden portal.
“I smell celestial,” the giant-orc mutters in common, giving Heydricus a knowing glance.
“Maybe it’s just your ass,” Prisantha suggests.
The orc with the horn raises his hands to protest, “Brothers! We will be rewarded if we let them pass!”
The door bursts open and four more of the creatures come charging forward, only to be met by arcs of lighting from Jespo, Prisantha and Gwendolyn. As the screaming and seizures reach their peak, Heydricus jumps forward and slices the arm from the closest guard. Lucius fires another trio of arrows into the thing, blinding it, and Dabus finishes the job with a flame strike.
Jespo strides toward the front of the party, the static charge in the air causing the wisps of hair at his temples to stand straight out from his head. He sends magic missiles arcing over Heydricus’ shoulder and into the smoking mass of giants, killing a second one.
“Great job, Gwendolyn!” Heydricus yells without looking over his shoulder.
“That was Crim!” she shouts back.
Jespo raises his hand to interject a point, but before he can speak, the surviving giant-orcs recover their wits and put their heads down for a charge. Dabus moves forward to support the front, but he is a step to slow. The giants charge into the party’s midst, knocking both Heydricus and Jespo to the ground, with one of the things crushing the frail wizard underfoot.
“Get off my wizard, you f-ck!” Hastur screams as he flies into a blind rage. The tiny dwarf nearly punches through the giant’s leg with three separate strikes of his axe, and overbalanced, the giant falls face-first, to spend the rest of its remaining few seconds of life contemplating the dungeon floor.
“Aaah,” Jespo moans softly. “Oh, gods, it hurts.”
Dabus sends a mass inflict critical wounds through his enemies, and wracked with pain, the creatures are nearly unable to defend themselves from Heydricus and Lucius’ lashing swords. The last orc staggers forward, dead on its feet, but too stubborn to fall. Dabus hits the thing hard right at its thighs, and the giant topples backwards with a grunt and sits hard on Jespo’s legs.
-----
“I say follow the screaming,” Heydricus suggests, as the party regards a maze of cross-corridors and doorways ahead of them. They have left the bodies of the giants where they fell, and Dabus’ mass heal has mended all breaks, sealed rends in flesh, and restored something of the youthful vigor of even the most beaten down Liberator.
Heydricus’ course proves to be well-thought, as the sounds of screaming lead eventually to a long alchemist’s laboratory, decorated tastefully in rarewood and silk draperies. At the center of the room, a human male lies strapped to a tall stone slab, held immobile beneath several nozzle-lipped tubes that dangle from a larger patchwork array of coils, flasks, funnels, condensers, skin-bags, retorts, crystalline tubing and other bubbling apparatus. An elderly degenerate crouches atop a short ladder, perched above the man like a vulture, his head cocked forward at the end of a long, supine neck. He twists knobs and squeezes bags, producing a rhythmic drip from the multiple tubes above him. Foul chemicals pop and hiss as they mix on the screaming man’s flesh.
“You’re welcome,” Prisantha says, startling him.
“You!” Panshazek says, as the Liberators step forward. “I know you . . .” he releases his contraption and steps off of his ladder, wiping his hands absentmindedly on his apron. He strides toward the door, squinting and attempting a wooden smile through a face long unused to even the attempt.
“Third time’s the charm!” Heydricus says as he lunges forward, bringing his sword down in a whistling arc. A moment later, Panshazek is without a head, and Heydricus is painted head to toe with the old man’s blood. “It’s just like the Temple,” he exclaims excitedly. “Did you see that!”
“His head just blew up!” Hastur replies, growing excited. “That was . . . that was . . . awesome!”
“Damn,” Lucius admires.
Dabus moves toward the torture table, and sees that the human lies directly on top of the corpse of an orc—the humanoid has had multiple spikes of a flat black metal driven into its form, and as Dabus regards them, they pop and crackle like a campfire might. Dabus holds his lantern up to the body; it lies atop the spikes, balanced there and held immobile by tiny metal fingers that emerge from the ends of the spikes, and grip the human’s flesh. Heydricus looks closely—the human casts only one shadow.
“Help me with these binds, please,” he says to the group. “We can save this man.”
Slowly, they undo the arcane implements binding him to the orcish corpse, and as soon as he is free, Dabus’ heals him. After a moment of soft sobbing, the man is able to clear his throat and speak.
“Why?”
“We are not orcs, sir,” Prisantha explains. “We are adventurers, friends of King Belvor and Halrond.”
“You are too late,” the man says, “we are lost.”
“Oh, we’re not here to win,” Lucius says, “we’re just here to lose as spitefully as possible.”
93—Drip, drip, drip goes our days.
“Swallow your intestines,” Prisantha commands, and the undead begins re-swallowing its insides with wet slurping noises, tossing its head back like a sea-bird. The Liberators shove open one of the iron portals, and slip into the Dungeons of Dorraka.
The entry hall just beyond the bridge gates is a grand open space, simultaneously heady and oppressive. The tall sweeping arches seem to threaten collapse, provoking subtle thoughts of cave-ins and suffocation. Ghastly murals decorate the walls and floor, featuring death at its most mundane undermining and boring rotting holes through the life of Oerth. Peasants and kings alike are struck dead by disease or sickness, accidents and circumstance. People starve, and infants die for no apparent cause. Demons cavort along the sides of these images, but unlike the decorations in the Temple of Elemental Evil, it is clear that within Dorraka they do not rule so much as observe. The entire place is silent save for a few echoing footsteps wafting through the labyrinthine passages beyond the entry hall.
As the Liberators orient themselves, a faint scream drifts down from the North and slowly echoes away. Prisantha’s new rotting friend spills his guts, and after a short interrogation, she dismisses the thing with instructions to await further orders at the bottom of the river.
“I hasten to obey, mistress,” it hisses as it shambles away.
“There are three Boneheart within this section of the dungeon,” Pris reports. “Panshazek, Marynnek and Helga. Panshazek is closest to us, due North, with Marynnek further to the South and Helga to the East. The creature does not know for sure if she is herself present, however, as none of Iuz’ servitors are allowed within her demesne.”
“Did it say ‘demesne’?” Lucius asks.
“No, I am paraphrasing.”
“So, she does or she doesn’t have sovereignty?”
“Don’t be pedantic, Lucius,” Gwendolyn says.
“Uh,” Hastur says.
“He has a good point,” Dabus interjects. “Either Helga ordered Iuz’ servants away, or she is keeping them away with a threat of violence. This distinction could be critical.”
“I did not ask, although I assumed the latter from its tone,” Prisantha says.
“Either way, she’s going to get some violence,” Heydricus says. “But I want to kill Panshazek again first.”
“Again first?” Hastur says.
“Before your time,” Jespo whispers.
The party moves through a long passage leading north, and as they do they hear a renewed burst of screaming, this time clearly coming from directly ahead. After another hundred feet they find themselves within an area where the corridor blooms wider for several yards before resuming its course. Within the wider section of the passage, three massive ogre-sized orcs bearing the Iuzian Palace Guard livery stand barring the way with horrid chopping axes and jagged end-weighted swords.
The guards sneer down through narrowed eyes at the swaggering Irregulars advancing on them. “State your business,” one says.
“I don’t present orders to my inferiors,” Heydricus growls in his best oricsh.
“See this patch?” the guard growls, jabbing his thumb at a pair of serrated black stripes fixed onto his left breast. “That’s Boneheart, and that’s who you’re answering to.”
“F-ck the Boneheart,” Heydricus says.
The guards look at one another, amused surprise rippling their lips back and revealing long, sharp teeth. “Well, that’s the end for you,” one of them says, and reaches for a horn at his waist.
“Your masters will reward you if you let us pass,” Prisantha suggests.
The orc reaching for his horn nods his agreement and stands aside. His nearest companion snarls and raises his poleaxe. Before it can drop the blade, Lucius shoots it three times, a tightly-placed nest of shafts punching through its femoral artery, and lodging within the bone. The creature grasps its leg, and hits the ground dead before it can wonder where all that blood is coming from.
Lucius levels his flat gaze on Gwendolyn, who replies with a sneer and roll of the eyes.
The other giant-orc brandishes a long, wickedly re-curved butcher’s-axe and hefts it menacingly, but uses the butt of the haft to slam on the door behind it, provoking a sudden cacophony of metallic clanging and thuds from behind the wooden portal.
“I smell celestial,” the giant-orc mutters in common, giving Heydricus a knowing glance.
“Maybe it’s just your ass,” Prisantha suggests.
The orc with the horn raises his hands to protest, “Brothers! We will be rewarded if we let them pass!”
The door bursts open and four more of the creatures come charging forward, only to be met by arcs of lighting from Jespo, Prisantha and Gwendolyn. As the screaming and seizures reach their peak, Heydricus jumps forward and slices the arm from the closest guard. Lucius fires another trio of arrows into the thing, blinding it, and Dabus finishes the job with a flame strike.
Jespo strides toward the front of the party, the static charge in the air causing the wisps of hair at his temples to stand straight out from his head. He sends magic missiles arcing over Heydricus’ shoulder and into the smoking mass of giants, killing a second one.
“Great job, Gwendolyn!” Heydricus yells without looking over his shoulder.
“That was Crim!” she shouts back.
Jespo raises his hand to interject a point, but before he can speak, the surviving giant-orcs recover their wits and put their heads down for a charge. Dabus moves forward to support the front, but he is a step to slow. The giants charge into the party’s midst, knocking both Heydricus and Jespo to the ground, with one of the things crushing the frail wizard underfoot.
“Get off my wizard, you f-ck!” Hastur screams as he flies into a blind rage. The tiny dwarf nearly punches through the giant’s leg with three separate strikes of his axe, and overbalanced, the giant falls face-first, to spend the rest of its remaining few seconds of life contemplating the dungeon floor.
“Aaah,” Jespo moans softly. “Oh, gods, it hurts.”
Dabus sends a mass inflict critical wounds through his enemies, and wracked with pain, the creatures are nearly unable to defend themselves from Heydricus and Lucius’ lashing swords. The last orc staggers forward, dead on its feet, but too stubborn to fall. Dabus hits the thing hard right at its thighs, and the giant topples backwards with a grunt and sits hard on Jespo’s legs.
-----
“I say follow the screaming,” Heydricus suggests, as the party regards a maze of cross-corridors and doorways ahead of them. They have left the bodies of the giants where they fell, and Dabus’ mass heal has mended all breaks, sealed rends in flesh, and restored something of the youthful vigor of even the most beaten down Liberator.
Heydricus’ course proves to be well-thought, as the sounds of screaming lead eventually to a long alchemist’s laboratory, decorated tastefully in rarewood and silk draperies. At the center of the room, a human male lies strapped to a tall stone slab, held immobile beneath several nozzle-lipped tubes that dangle from a larger patchwork array of coils, flasks, funnels, condensers, skin-bags, retorts, crystalline tubing and other bubbling apparatus. An elderly degenerate crouches atop a short ladder, perched above the man like a vulture, his head cocked forward at the end of a long, supine neck. He twists knobs and squeezes bags, producing a rhythmic drip from the multiple tubes above him. Foul chemicals pop and hiss as they mix on the screaming man’s flesh.
“You’re welcome,” Prisantha says, startling him.
“You!” Panshazek says, as the Liberators step forward. “I know you . . .” he releases his contraption and steps off of his ladder, wiping his hands absentmindedly on his apron. He strides toward the door, squinting and attempting a wooden smile through a face long unused to even the attempt.
“Third time’s the charm!” Heydricus says as he lunges forward, bringing his sword down in a whistling arc. A moment later, Panshazek is without a head, and Heydricus is painted head to toe with the old man’s blood. “It’s just like the Temple,” he exclaims excitedly. “Did you see that!”
“His head just blew up!” Hastur replies, growing excited. “That was . . . that was . . . awesome!”
“Damn,” Lucius admires.
Dabus moves toward the torture table, and sees that the human lies directly on top of the corpse of an orc—the humanoid has had multiple spikes of a flat black metal driven into its form, and as Dabus regards them, they pop and crackle like a campfire might. Dabus holds his lantern up to the body; it lies atop the spikes, balanced there and held immobile by tiny metal fingers that emerge from the ends of the spikes, and grip the human’s flesh. Heydricus looks closely—the human casts only one shadow.
“Help me with these binds, please,” he says to the group. “We can save this man.”
Slowly, they undo the arcane implements binding him to the orcish corpse, and as soon as he is free, Dabus’ heals him. After a moment of soft sobbing, the man is able to clear his throat and speak.
“Why?”
“We are not orcs, sir,” Prisantha explains. “We are adventurers, friends of King Belvor and Halrond.”
“You are too late,” the man says, “we are lost.”
“Oh, we’re not here to win,” Lucius says, “we’re just here to lose as spitefully as possible.”
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