To War Against Felenga (FINAL UPDATE POSTED!)

[the Jester]

Desatysso's Renewing Reward

The first door into the Fortress of Conclusion opens to them uncontested; there is no trap, no deadly spell that triggers to cast them into the Void.

This may be the only door that they shall find so easy...

Almost immediately the Fortress opens up into a 30’ square room. The plastered walls are covered with weird scenes and glyphs; the floor and ceiling, too, are covered with bizarre art pieces in a disorganized mess of insectoid dragons, long tentacles, ant-like humans, and other disturbing imagery. Opposite the entry, another arch leads out.

“Freaky,” breathes Lester.

“Let’s go,” urges Rex, and the group moves through the room without disturbing anything. Ahead they can see into another chamber-

“Oh my god,” Sybele gasps. She, a hardened adventurer, almost vomits.

A 20’ square chamber opens up from a short hall beyond the painted room. In the ceiling, in the corner, a metal hook has been affixed to the ceiling. Dangling from this, head down, is a human, battered and thin, with a look of agony on his face. He wears a tattered robe. Worst of all, he is sewn up. His eyes and mouth are stitched shut; his arms have been sewn to his sides and his legs have been sewn together.

Our heroes start as a low, inarticulate groan of pain issues from the figure, and Orbius gasps, “He’s alive!”

The form jerks, as if suddenly aware of them, and a voice telepathically speaks in their heads. Release me from this horrible bondage, I beg you! Kill me! I’ve lost all track of time, but it seems an eternity since I, Desatysso, entered this most accursed of places!

Sybele draws her sword. “Orbius, Horbin- can you get him down from there?”

A few failed spells ensue.

“I don’t know if you should just kill him,” Orbius says hesitantly.

“He’s in agony, and has been for who knows how long,” Sybele answers. She steps up and stabs Desatysso through the heart.

Thank you... ahhhhhhh....

Desatysso’s agonized form relaxes as he dies, and for an instant Sybele feels a fierce burning pride at having done the right thing.

Then the stitches start to move.

“Wait...” she says, but it’s too late.

They squirm free of Desatysso’s body, then move like bugs to Sybele, his killer; and in seconds they crawl up her body. She thrashes and screams.

The stitches are quick and horribly efficient. Sybele jerks and shrieks as her legs are stitched together and her arms are sewn to her sides; and then her screams stop as the stitches reach her mouth, and then, most horrible of all, her eyes; and with a sudden jerking motion she ends up hanging from the hook, head to the floor, in unbelievable agony.

Next Time: Can our heroes rescue Sybele from this horrible trap?? Or will all efforts be futile??

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

That is unbelievably unpleasant! A real Hellraiser moment. Yech.

 

[Knightfall]

Bump?

 

[the Jester]

Demilich Weirdness

“SYBELE!” Thrush screams. “NOO!!!”

“Mom,” Jezebel whispers.

The party stands aghast. The sight of Sybele, stitched up like a corpse and hung from a hook in the ceiling, makes their collective stomach roil, and when she moans and squirms it’s almost enough to make them heave. Thrush’s blade is naked in his hands, but there’s no one for him to kill. He whirls and glares at Horbin and Orbius. “Get her down, now!!” he cries wildly.

“I’ll do my best,” Orbius says, and proceeds to unleash a tremendous amount of magical power to that effect- but to no avail. Horbin steps up to try, and Sybele even tries to trigger the contingency that Orbius laid on her* to plane shift out, but the magic that has snared her is beyond the power of anything they can throw at it.

“I’ll use some divinations,” Orbius states grimly. “Maybe I can determine what will free her.”

Thrush is shaking with rage and grief. Sybele briefly spasms. From her sewn shut eyes, tears are falling. She is in the worst agony she’s ever experienced and can’t even think.

But when Orbius casts contact other plane he is in for a horrible shock.

Why has Acererak led us to his Fortress of Conclusion? I seek apotheosis.

Eeek! thinks Orbius, and swallows.

Will your apotheosis be achieved by sucking my soul alone?** Come see.
What good-aligned deity has the most to be gained by us destroying you?[/b] Most of them.
Where is your phylactery located inside your Fortress of Conclusion? If you are worthy, you will find it.
Out of all of us, who do you fear most? Undead are immune to fear.
Will a gate allow us to travel to the Fortress of Conclusion from Var? Yes.
Why have you trapped Felenga? To serve my apotheosis.
Is Felenga trapped within your phylactery? Yes.
If we destroy your phylactery, will Felenga be set free? Depends.
What must we do to not free Felenga when we destroy your phylactery? You will fail to destroy my phylactery.

“Well, crap,” the Eye says grimly, and tells the others of his conversation.

“What about Sybele?” cries Thrush.

“I think,” Horbin sighs, “we have to defeat the demilich before we can free her.”

“Wait a second, let me try a divination,” Lester offers, and casts one.

How can we get Sybele off the hook?

Ask Acererak.

“Right,” the L nods cheerfully. “Kill the demilich it is.”

“Then let’s go!” Thrush cries. His knuckles, wrapped around the hilt of his huge sword, are white.

“He’s everywhere,” the Eye says, his voice a little frightened. “I cast a locate creature and he’s everywhere here.” To his perceptions, everything around them if full of demilich. He concentrates, trying to resolve detail, to see if he can differentiate anything; and he notes two strange concentrated areas, but he can’t quite tell...

“What do you mean?” Ulla asks.

“I’m not entirely sure.”

***

There’s only one hallway leading away from Sybele’s Folly, and Orbius scouts it out with an arcane eye. “Hmm, get’s incrementally darker... I think there’s another of those dark shadow things down there, like in that one trapped hallway in the Tomb of Horrors!”

“Let’s f**king kill it!” Thrush cries, and gives out a frustrated, angry scream.

“Right,” Orbius says, “that corridor is probably trapped again, so instead of going to it we’ll lure it out to us.” And he fires a volley of seeker missiles which streak off down the hallway.

Then his perceptions, still under the locate creature spell, twist as one of the concentrations he noted earlier vanishes and reappears down the hall.

Then a meteor swarm explodes around the party.



*Orbius has a custom feat, Bestow Spell, that lets him cast spells with a range of personal as if they were touch spells. (Metamagic yay!)

**In a lucidaphen-given dream, the pcs saw Acererak achieve some sort of great triumph by absorbing Orbius’ soul.

Next Time: Our heroes battle do a lot of battle!

 

[Brilbadr]

Notes

G'day,
I run a homebrew world with Conan rules. Lots of conversion required from 2nd ed.
I was wondering if you could email me those 3.5 "return to the tomb" notes. I have been dropping hints as to the existence of the Bleak Academy for years...
My website needs updating, it's in it's 3rd format but ...

http://www.users.bigpond.net.au/kos/


Thanks

 

[Brilbadr]

"*cough"

Looking back over the thread and at the module, you must have done a fair bit of conversion work. The new versions of some of the monsters are ridiculous...


of course any notes (pretty please) would require an email address...

ashhelen@bigpond.net.au

... grateful and unworthy anticipation

 

[the Jester]

No problem, I'll email you notes I have.

It's mostly creature conversions, a few spells and notes... a lot of it got skipped by my pcs (they hardly scratched the surface of the Academy) so I never got to some bits, never got to use some other bits, and did some wholesale changin' to some other bits.

 

[Knightfall]

Another great update, Jester. Sybele is in quite the bind.

 

[the Jester]

The Amusement of Acererak

Acererak the demilich is amused.

They’ve come this far, and there are more than enough of them to finally fuel the Apotheosis- if only they can survive to reach his Phylactery.

It is dangerous, of course; but so it must be. And they are perhaps the most dangerous ones to come- and they still come, even now that they have seen how horrible Acererak’s curses can be.

Will enough of them survive to the Chamber of the Apotheosis? He thinks so.

As he senses a fireball blossom around a Dark Shadow, he decides to take a hand in matters. Better to whittle them down to prevent inadvertently absorbing an unworthy soul. Only the strongest and most purified must enter the Phylactery. So he shifts into the Dark Shadow and casts a meteor swarm and is pleased to sense one of them collapsing. That unworthy will not soil my Apotheosis, he thinks.

Then the Elementalist blasts the form he’s wearing with a sunburst and a fireball, and the body is destroyed; but Acererak merely shifts his consciousness elsewhere. They are worthy, indeed; the one that fell did not die. Their cleric healed them all quickly. If they’re smart, they’ve just learned another valuable clue about him.

But of course, they’re never smart enough. No adventurers have ever been able to truly defeat him- even when they’ve divined his purpose. Most of the best of them now twinkle in his enormous Phylactery of the Apotheosis.

Acererak looks in on them. His spirit can look anywhere in the Fortress of Conclusion.

They’ve figured out that the Dark Shadow’s hallway was a trap, and they’ve found the secret door near Sybele’s Folly. Acererak renames traps like that as they find new victims. From Desatysso’s Renewing Reward to Sybele’s Folly. Yes, he likes that.

They found the secret door, and it leads them into a hallway that almost immediately turns right. The big fighter, Sybele’s mate, is furious at her fate. Acererak scoffs at him. You must be able to stand on your own. Attachments are weaknesses.

To the right the party passes a large hallway that leads to some sort of vapor-filled chamber. They halt, listening to a series of groans and cries from within.

“It’s a trap,” Orbius pronounces. He is wise, thinks Acererak approvingly, and the party apparently concurs, for they keep moving along their path. Soon the passage opens up into a large hall decorated with artistic splendors of all sorts. The floors are tiled, the ceiling bears a large number of glowing lights. Several prominent sections of the wall appear to be painted to resemble demons of various sort.

“This is obviously a trap too! We’re gonna touch them and they’re gonna come to life!” Lester seems a little put out. They have seen no other exits.

“Let’s slay them, then,” proclaims Patyn.

The party arrays themselves for battle, and the L touches one of the portraits, but nothing happens. “We must have to do something else,” worries Horbin.

A search turns up secret doors behind the panels with the demons on them. “Well, there you go,” says Rex. “That’s how we get them to activate.”

“Let’s go,” says Thrush, and he throws open the first secret door. In a burst of foul-smelling smoke, a terrible monster appears. Ahh, thinks Acererak, Terristigulth!

Terristigulth is a powerful zovvut sorcerer. The zovvuts are the spawn of long-dead Orcus, and many of them have greater power than their mere species would warrant because of it. As much as for his lineage and potential worth as an eventual sacrifice as for his sorcerous prowess- he can cast puncture!- Acererak has employed Terristigulth for many thousands of years, and he has always been satisfied with his service. It is because of this service that Acererak has given him the girdle of dark might. With this his prowess is greatly enhanced.

Terristigulth is a hulking brute, pale-skinned and fat with scabrous feathered wings. His maw is full of teeth and his claws are as long as a man’s forearm. He appears with a roar, ready to unleash his furious powers, but the angry Thrush roars back and hacks at him mercilessly, not giving him a moment to respond. Angelfire rushes in, falchion a blur, and hacks at the demon’s hand. Rex tears at its wings and back. A pair of searing lights shoot into it. And then, without a chance to do more than roar, Terristigulth dies.

Impressive, thinks Acererak.

The party moves to the next door.


Next Time: Our heroes kick some serious demon ass!


(btw, a quick note to James- I got your msg but my phone is acting up so I can't really talk on it right now... cursed thing!)

 

[PallidPatience]

I love what you've done with Acererak, Jester! Absolutely love it! It's beyond beautiful!

I have a favor to ask. You mentioned something about an Ascendant PrC for those wishing to attain Godhood... If you have it posted here, could you give me a link? If you simply have it written up on your computer, would you be so kind as to email me a copy at fthfulwrshipr1 at aol dot com? Thank you very much in advance. I love the work I've seen so far, both in the story hour and in your RG thread, and cannot get enough.