Wizard as a Strategic Resource

In another installation of ramblings about unplaytested magic systems cribbed from books I read so long ago I only half-remember a few bits, what if spells were a long-term, strategic resource?

In Markus Heitz's The Dwarves series, magi are very powerful. High level D&D wizard powerful, even, which most writers tend to avoid for the understandable reason that it breaks many stories apart. The magi can fly, blow up a building with a single gesture, spam teleportation spells, or heal from anything not instantly lethal. However, all that comes with one big caveat: They have limited reserves of magical energy that can only be refilled at a magical wellspring, of which there are like six in all the kingdoms where the books take place.

What if instead of the tactical refill-on-sleep magic, wizards had a strategic refill-in-town magic?

This approach assumes that resource management is a part of your intended gameplay. It only works well if the dungeon is not easily/quickly accessible from the town, so the party needs to spend another resource (time, food) to refill their magic, otherwise you are only buffing the wizard. But when it works as intended, the five minute adventuring day is gone. The party can no longer start every fight with all spells refreshed by sleeping in a rope-tricked pocket dimension all the time.

Many systems can easily be converted to strategic magic by giving the magic-users more spell slots / mana / MD. Caster level still limits the highest spell slot / the amount of mana a wizard can use in a single spell. This makes wizards more powerful as long as they can regain magic, so make sure that ley lines are not ubiquitous - which brings us to the interesting domain-level considerations that all magic-users must now deal with: Ley lines are a limited, extremely precious resource that everyone wants to control.

Generated with Bing Image Creator:
"sorcerer drawing power from a ley line,
clean old-school lineart for swords and sorcery"

 

All wizard towers are built atop a ley line, capping it and concentrating the energy flow into a specific room, a sanctum, thus limiting who has access to the mana. A wizard's tower is his most prized possession and will be filled to the brim with wards, traps and protective enchantments. A wizard's tower is a fortress to make other wizards flinch. A wizard in his tower is basically unassailable, and not only because he will never run out of spells.

A rare and difficult ritual exists that allows one to link a wizard tower to a ring of power. Who wears such a ring can draw mana through it as if they were always within reach of a ley line. Battling an archmage who has such a ring would thus entail damaging their tower first to disrupt their supply of magic. Stealing such a ring is a big deal and will see the thief hunted down tirelessly, as breaking the bond between the ring and the tower to re-link a new ring would require destroying the tower completely, foundations included.

An easier way to gain some extra mana exists - store it in a gemstone. That's not even a spell - all mages can push mana from themselves into a gem, or draw it back. Thus it is often the job of apprentices to prepare spell gems for their master.

While larger gems can contain more magic power, only flawless gemstones should be made into a spell gem at all. While you definitely can imbue an imperfect gemstone with power, this will sooner or later result in a blast of wild magic.

Spell gems are very expensive and very much sought after. Every wizard wants one, but just as with towers, there are never enough. Even some nobles with no magical talent will hoard them, as the magic held within gives spell gems a strange, unearthly twinkle unseen in any other jewel, plus they can be used to bribe a wizard in a pinch.

Spell gems are usually worn set into a ring (only the most pretentious of wizardling upstarts would call that a "ring of power", everyone knows what a real ring of power is), a circlet or at the tip of one's staff. A master granting such jewelry to an apprentice is seen as one of the highest of praises one can receive.

Most ley lines in the civilized lands have been taken over, either by powerful mages or by the Mage Guild. A solitary sorceress will allow friends and apprentices into her sanctum, but strangers will nigh-definitely be met with refusal (and it's not a good idea to oppose a sorceress in her tower). The Mage Guild offers their ley lines to all members - for a fee. Becoming and staying a member incurs other fees. Therefore a PC wizard with no mentor will have a nice money sink in simply restoring mana.

There are still some free ley lines in places where seizing them would be too much of a hassle - underwater, deep in wilderness or underground, in sacred groves and other holy places of yore. There might also be very weak ley lines that escaped the notice of the Mage Guild either by pure chance, or thanks to some secret sect or cult veiling it from detection. The Mage Guild would pay rather nicely for information about even the weakest ley lines. They have a monopoly to maintain, after all.

Illegal mages have a hard time. Either they are very good at pretending to be law-abiding magic-users, or they belong to a secret sect with their own ley line, or they need an alternative source of mana. Thus there is a blooming black market in spell gems and power smuggling (legal mage selling their mana to illegal mages), while even possessing power-draining spells is a felony.

Königstein, the King's Stone

I've been to many castles, but during these Christmas holidays, I visited one that really stands out. It would fit right amongst the exaggerated fortresses of many fantasy worlds.

Königstein, the King's Stone.

 

To give you an idea of how imposing the fortress is, the river beneath the fortress lies at about 100 metres above the sea level. From the river banks rises a hill that reaches to around 300 metres above the sea level, which alone gives us some 200 vertical metres (650 ft) of steep, forested slopes, then there are 42 metres (130 ft) of sheer rock and bulwarks, and only then do the multi-storey buildings start. Standing down below, "towering" doesn't even begin to describe it.

The fortress just keeps going on being excessive. It stands atop cliffs of solid rock, but because the builders were anticipating a siege, they needed a secure source of water. Thus they dug a 152 meter (500 ft) deep well through the rock to the acquifer below. The wine cellar used to hold a single barrel with a capacity of nearly 250 000 litres (66 000 gallons) of wine, though it had to be eventually removed due to disrepair. Also half of the fortress is a literal forest, because they could. Well, and because it can provide a massive amount of firewood and building material during a siege.

The only one to ever scale its walls was a chimney sweep who cheated, because he was cheered on rather than shot down.

Notice the many trees atop the bulwark? That's still the fortress proper.

Now imagine standing beneath the cliffs.

 

You can read as much as you like about Königstein on Wikipedia, but here is my re-imagined fantasy version.

 

1. Paved main road which ends beneath the cliffs and bulwarks.
2. Soldiers' market. Soldiers have needs too and the small village of shops and businesses along the road provides.
3. Knitted tower. Holds the controls for dropping the hanging road. Named after a well-liked soldier who kept bringing his knitting to guard duty.
4. Hanging road. Snaking along the side of the cliff towards the entrance, it is suspended on support beams that can be remotely demolished as a last resort to prevent assault on the gates.
5. Twin gates. The small yard between the gates is facing several shooting galleries and can be flooded with alchemical gases or liquid flames.
6. Lookout tower. Holds several looking glasses enchanted to pierce invisibility and illusions.
7. Old castle. Standing atop the highest peak of the cliffs, it might not boast the modern defensive architecture of the new palace and the bulwarks, but the garrisoned wizards have been layering protective enchantments into its walls for centuries. Currently it houses the treasury and archives.
8. Prison tower.
9. New palace. Houses the commander, his secretariat and servants, multiple officers, alchemists and wizards, plus when the occasion arises either members of the royal family, or enemy nobles held for ransom.
   The main entryway goes from the twin gates through a heavily sloped tunnel through solid rock beneath the palace. It includes murderholes, detection enchantments of all kinds, seven prismatic portculli and pipes connected to the cistern, which can suddenly turn the whole tunnel into very deadly rapids.
10. Church of Light and hospital. One cleric and several acolytes have a permanent residence here, ensuring religious well-being of soldiers as well as serving as healers.
11. Offices, workshops and an alchemical lab. The open area beyond them has been split into numerous little gardens that let the soldiers enhance their diet with fresh vegetables.
12. Barracks.
13. Monster pens. Hippogriffs are used for air support and xorns are used to secure the underground of the fortress from burrowing incursions.
14. Warehouses and granaries. The fortress should survive more than a year of siege at full effectiveness.
15. War machine platforms. Ballistas and catapults can be aimed at both the ground and the sky. In addition to standard rocks and bolts, alchemical ammunition such as liquid flames and anti-aerial flak is available.
16. King's Hooter. A small tavern near a vantage point at the end of the plateau lets the officers unwind. Festivities are often held in the open area by the tavern, too.
17. Dryad's oak. A massive, ancient tree housing a friendly nature spirit. She tends the fortress grove (green area) and blesses the soldiers' gardens for bountiful harvest if asked nicely.
18. Well house and cistern. The water is regularly blessed by the priest to prevent poisonings, plagues and infiltration by creatures of darkness.
19. Observatory. Several commissioned wizards are working here, both maintaining all wards in the fortress and manning the scrying room.
    

The fortress is warded against teleportation, dimensional travel (which includes pocket dimensions, such as bags of holding) and external scrying. The scrying room is the centre of a surveillance network that has the whole fortress covered with remote vision spells, tripwire alarm wards and other divinations. The bulwarks themselves are warded against siege rituals such as disintegration barrages, earthquakes or phasing.

d4 Hooks

1. One of the alchemists serving in the fortress was a war criminal back home, granted asylum by the king in exchange for her services. Kidnap her and bring her back home for justice. Quest-giver will not pay for a dead alchemist.
   
2. The archives in the old castle hold information that you need for whatever plot reasons. It is also top secret, so good luck getting it the legal way.
3. There are rumours of a vault somewhere within the King's Stone, a storage for dangerous artifacts and superweapons that the king wants to keep in reserve - biomantic plagues, mind-controlling alchemies, mass summoning contracts. If any weapon is capable of stopping the big bad, it will be locked in here.
   
4. There are other rumours, who claim that the vault is actually a maximum security prison for an ancient evil, the crown prince of a neighbouring nation and the good twin brother of the king.

GLOG: Class Quests and Campaign Metaprogression

One common way of dealing with the endless classes of GLOG is to have only a limited few available in each campaign, and then maybe add more as players go through characters and find new things. I like this, but I want to make the process of unlocking new classes as player-facing as possible.

One common way of dealing with multiclassing - and GLOG is basically tailor-made for easy multiclassing - is to require an in-world justification for suddenly taking a wizard template with your barbarian. I like this as well, because while multiclassing is more than fine, I would like to see some buildup before a character switches classes. Once again, though, this should be as player-facing as possible.

Therefore, I will be adding a "class quest" for each class, which will have a dual purpose: One, any character who wishes to multiclass into a class will have to carry out the corresponding quest before they can take its template A. Two, anyone in the party fulfilling a class quest (in-game, not in a backstory, you munchkins), whether they multiclass into that class or not, will unlock the class for future new characters. Exploits that do not fit a certain class' quest but would make sense still count for both purposes, at the GM's discretion - the class quests are here as a guideline for the players rather than the GM.

Ideally, common classes will have easy quests while weirder and rarer classes will have quests that are harder to accomplish, maybe even limited to a specific location/event/faction. This will hopefully have the side benefit of encouraging exploration of every nook and cranny of the world. Some players are sadly risk-averse and will avoid places such as the Swamp of Mutilation or the Screaming Tower of Slow and Painful Death unless there is a tangible benefit in going to such places. Knowing that you will get a new class out of dying in there might be just the push they need.

I am thinking of starting the next campaign with a funnel - everyone will be a 0th level human and all classes will be locked. They will also get a list of all the classes they can unlock and their quests. This should provide a nice set of goals the party can work towards before they find personal goals or unearth other plots and problems.

By Varguy

 

d20 Class Quests

1. Warrior: Triumph over a powerful foe, or watch your friends get slaughtered.
2. Soldier: Enlist in a military.
3. Knight: Be knighted.
   
4. Duelist: Win a duel, or lose a duel but win the crowd.
5. Thief: Steal something valuable, or escape certain doom.
6. Assassin: Get away with murder, or take money for killing someone.
7. Mountebank: Frame someone else for your crimes.
8. Ranger: Survive several days in the wilderness, or save an animal at personal risk.
9. Wizard, Orthodox: Enroll in a Wizard University, or impersonate a mage and make at least a village believe you.
10. Wizard, Illusionist: Take glamour from a Fae, or fake your death.
11. Wizard, Biomancer: Mutate through incaution, or have a body part replaced or grafted.
12. Wizard, Necromancer: Murder a family member, or visit the Land of the Dead.
13. Alchemist: Consume a magical substance without knowing its effects, or cause a huge explosion.
    
14. Barrow Sword: Steal an ancient cursed blade from a barrow.
15. Noble House:  Play as a child of a previous character.
16. Paladin of the Word: Keep a secret to your detriment, or learn a True Name of God.
    
17. Paladin of the Wild: Hunt, kill and eat a bear.
    
18. Sand-Cursed: Visit haunted desert ruins.
19. Songstress of Many Tongues: Lose your tongue.
20. Sword Exorcist: Die to save innocents.

d12 Race-as-Class Quests

1. Centaur: Receive hospitality from a centaur tribe.
2. Dragonborn: Work for a dragon, or consume dragon flesh.
3. Dwarf: Carouse away 1000 gp, or cause trouble for yourself by being greedy.
   
4. Elf: Eat or marry a Fae.
5. Goblin: Have a contraption you built explode.
6. Kobold: Worship a dragon, or die in a dungeon trap.
7. Orc: Ride a giant wolf to battle.
   
8. Really Evil Goat: Sacrifice a goat to the Dark Powers.
   
9. Really Good Dog: Save a dog.
10. Tiefling: Have sex in Hell.
11. Troll: Visit the city of Trollamor, or consume troll flesh.
12. Vampire: Drink vampire blood after being bitten by one, or commit murder-suicide.

Any ideas for good class quests?

GLOG: Everything is a Template

Race-as-class is the only true way and everyone doing it differently is doing it wrong.

Beastfolk Party by WarpZoneTrigger

 

Okay, now that I've started a flame war, an explanation is in order. I have been struggling with races in my GLOG, or how to implement them in a way that supports character-making consistent with the world as I envision it. Here are my personal design goals:

1. I like largely human worlds surrounded by weirdness you can venture out into. While the standard super-simplified races of GLOG work fine mechanically, having that many easily used races encourages players to be something strange rather than the plain old human, so you end up with a menagerie of a party. Which is not a problem, except that a thousand lings force a different vibe on the game than what I prefer.
2. I want humans to be plain and basic. That means you can play up both the weirdness around them and how their adventuring life is changing them. Every mutation, every new ability is making them stranger and more interesting, which is much harder to properly emphasize when you already start pretty weird. On the other hand, just giving them a free skill/feat/attribute point to make them desirable is pure gameist trash.
3. I do want other races to be available, but I think they work better in juxtaposition to the mostly human civilization around them. They should have interesting abilities that set them apart, and here the design space of only one perk and one flaw, as is custom for GLOG races, is actually quite limiting. Some races could do with more abilities, even more power, so there needs to be a way of scaling different races rather than fitting them all in the same mould.
4. I also don't want to limit race/class combinations, as standard race-as-class often does by locking you into the abilities of only your race. Let there be halfling barbarians and half-ogre courtesans.

So I want humans to be boring and desirable at the same time, and without giving them any numeric bonuses. You can see my dilemma, now.

I may have figured it out. It's in the first sentence. It's a wheel re-invented, really, but I'm still excited to try it out.

Every non-human race is a class now, whose template A you can only take at character creation. Some races will only consist of template A, some may have more templates with more powers and abilities. Multiclassing is the heart of GLOG anyway, so every character can now take up to five templates and starts with two. If you want to be a dwarf cleric, take the templates Dwarf A and Cleric A.

And humans? They are the assumed race for anyone with no racial templates. They literally have no abilities at all, yet they could (hopefully) be quite desirable with their "ability" to start with two class templates, and to finish a whole class and then take one more template from another one.

We shall see if this actually works as intended.

5e House Rules

I found out I don't really like D&D 5e.

Now, I don't think it's a badly designed ruleset. It works well, it is consistent, it's reasonably easy to get into - though more for people who had already played some D&D-style games rather then for role-playing beginners - and it has a lot of support. That being said, the combat system is slow and encumbered with way too many strange action types and flashy but samey abilities, some skills are pointless unless you enjoy rolling for failure (Yes, I'm talking about perception.) and some abilities are way too common (Looking at you, darkvision and flight!) or cheapen certain aspects of gameplay that I enjoy (diseases, light, food).

All in all though, this isn't a failure of the system, but rather of expectations. It simply doesn't mesh well with the OSR style of play I want in my games and it comes with way too many preconceptions that I need to weed out - which is actually the most painful problem I have with D&D 5e. It is too well known. People have ideas and expectations. There's the implied setting and the character planning minigame. No matter how much stuff you tweak, you will still end up with a combat-focused superhero game with little to no resource management.

That's not bad, that's just not what I want.

From here.

 

Frankly, the majority of my changes to 5e are in the style of play rather than the rules:

• Give the players information. If they take the time to search the room, they don't need Perception to find the secret door. If they question a NPC, they will notice what she says is fishy even without Insight. What the PCs do with this information is the interesting part.
• Let the players be competent. Roll only for risky, dramatic actions that will have consequences, otherwise they just do it successfully.
• If you want to use a skill, describe how you use it. This ties to the two points above - good plans don't roll and I will try to provide you with enough information to formulate a good plan. On the other hand, fiction trumps a good roll, so some skill uses simply won't work no matter what - don't worry, I will tell you if something is impossible.
• If it seems obvious that an ability should do something it doesn't do, screw the rules and go for it.
• Role-playing is way better than Charisma-based skills.
  

Character Creation

• Feats are allowed.

The players were so eager to take them I didn't have the heart to forbid it. I am a weak GM.

• No races with unlimited flight.
• Languages of Althan are a bit different from standard D&D, plus you can take an expertise in a language.

Items & Abilities

• Darkvision does not work in complete darkness. Think of it as more of a low-light vision.
• Lesser Restoration may need a Medicine check to cure certain rare or magical poisons and diseases.
• Potions and similar consumables can be used as a bonus action.
• Slot-based encumbrance is a thing. You can carry a number of slots equal to your Strength score with no issues.

Death & Healing

• There is only one death save.
  When a PC is reduced to 0 hp, they roll a death save at the start of their next turn. On success, they remain conscious and may continue with their turn, stabilized but still with 0 hp. On failure, they loose consciousness and start dying. The DC is 10 if they were above 0 hp before taking the last damage, but [10 + damage] if they took damage while already at 0hp!
  A dying character is helpless and dies at the start of their next turn with no further saves. Allies may still help, though.

This is the main rule change and a surprisingly well-received one. We had an incident in the very first session where a character was left to bleed out on the floor as he still had two more saves to fail before dying, and that is simply not fun. Now that there is only one save, everyone gets really quiet when it comes to death saves, and the scramble to save a dying companion in the middle of a fight is delicious. To my utter surprise, the players not only agree, but some actually tried to have this rule implemented at other tables, too.
Many thanks to Spwack for suggesting that a successful death save should let the PC remain conscious and capable of action. Rounds in 5e can be really frigging long, so being unconscious even for a round is about as fun as paralysis, plus retaining agency often leads to funny and foolhardy attempts to fight with 0 hp.
I should note that my players seem to be really good at making their death saves. We average about one brush with death every two sessions, but so far there was not a single death from combat.

• Massive damage is replaced with permanent injuries. When a hit would take a character below negative Constitution score in hit points, they roll on a dismemberment table.
• Slow natural healing (see DMG).
• Resurrection spells are forbidden for PC spell-casters, though that doesn't mean that resurrection is impossible.

Experience

• Experience is gained from encounters (killing optional, it's often easier to bribe, befriend, circumvent or drive the enemies away), returning ancient treasures to civilization, role-playing and philanthropy.
• If a PC dies, a replacement PC is created with half XP of the dead one.

Game Mastery

• Reactions and Morale are in effect.

Tomb of the Serpent King 5e, sessions 9 & 10

Everybody was dead, but then it got worse.

Dramatis personae:

• Brent, a halfling rogue. Upstanding and competent.
• Gour-Gash, a goliath barbarian. Lost, confused, horny.
  
• Licmorn, an eladrin sorcerer. Depetrified after a thousand years and kind of insane for it.
• Rotti, a tiefling cleric. Likes to bad-mouth people to their face.
• Yanzar, a dark elf druid. Very sneaky, except he loves loud, thunderous spells.

 

From K6BD.

 

prior | next

From the diary of Yanzar, nowhere and never
Pushing the button on the magic egg might have been a mistake.

We all woke up on a beach, fog everywhere around us and the surface of the water absolutely motionless. In the distance, huge skeletons were wading through the fog and water, but no waves reached our shore. We all had two copper coins with us, except Licmorn.

For who knows how long we stood on that beach, until we heard the ringing of a bell from somewhere inland and went to investigate. After kicking open the door to a belltower, we climbed it and saw the many islands jutting up from the fog. There was a pier on our island and a strange tower on another nearby island, so we went to the pier. On our way, we met Hans, a labourer from the Balalán cathedral, who was trying to find his way back to the construction site. We took him with us to the pier where there was a small bell. When we rang it, a ferryman dressed in long black robes emerged from the fog, riding a long boat. For the way across, he demanded two coppers. So Licmorn sent Hans away, claiming that the distant bell was the belltower of his cathedral, and Brent robbed him of his two coppers in the meantime. Thus all of us could pay the ferryman and he took us to the other island with a seemingly sky-high tower.

We landed on a beach covered in and made of bones. Rotti and Licmorn immediately set off towards a long line of people waiting in front of a swirling pool hanging in mid-air atop a low hill, some portal for sure. The rest of us stopped by Klaus, an armor-wearing and axe-wielding guy who was sitting near the line of people, but didn't seem interested in joining it. Nobody here had weapons and armor, just him. Reluctantly, he told us he got it from a "friend" as an early reward for killing Médard Malévol, who is the leader in construction of that impossibly tall tower. He then suggested that he could introduce us to his friend if we killed Médard for him, because he failed and couldn't try again without drawing murderous attention of all Médard's henchmen.

In the meantime, Rotti advanced to the front of the line and found an angel standing by the portal, carrying out the Last Judgement. They talked and Rotti smiled and she went through the Pearly Gate. Licmorn decided that he doesn't fancy being judged and sneaked away before he could be noticed. With a party one member smaller, we went to find out if Médard's life was worth our meeting with Klaus' friend.

Halfway to the tower, we came upon a wide crevasse, with a bridge blocked by a knight in shining armor. For passage, he requested answers to riddles three, which we eventually provided to the loud disappointment of the many talking crows on the trees all around us, who were haggling for a piece of our soul in exchange for helping us. Approaching the tower, we found a line of people dragging stones up endlessly upwards and an older man sitting in the midst of all the hustle and bustle. He had a rather fancy sword and a bandaged leg. We stopped one of the stone-carrying people - Cornelia, a half-orc in a kilt - and asked to be introduced. Médard was quite happy to talk and told us how he died soon after the Golden Day, fighting some of the last Dark Ones, and how he had been wounded by a demonic weapon - probably Klaus' doing. He also told us about the tower - the goal was to build it so high that one could get to Heaven without being judged by an angel.

"Who gave them the right to judge us?" he asked. "Are we not beings of free will, capable of rational thought and decision-making? The souls of the people can only be judged by a jury of their peers, established by the will of the people."

Cornelia had nothing better to do, so she joined us. We returned to Klaus and pretended that we killed Médard, and he agreed to take us to his friend. He showed us a narrow path just below the surface of the water leading to the next island, imperceptible to the naked eye. On the island stood a ruined church and as we set a foot inside, a dagger flew out of the shadows and took Klaus in the neck. A crow came out of his mouth as he collapsed, while his body quickly turned into dust, leaving behind a bare skeleton.

We were still debating running away when a red-haired halfling in a huntsman's suit came to greet us. He apparently killed Klaus for failing to uphold his end of the bargain they made - and then he offered us a bargain. If we kill the angel who guards the portal, Zirael, he would revive us. We thanked him and told him we need to confer in privacy and then legged it.

Returning to the main island, we asked Zirael for a counter offer, but she wasn't willing to grant us resurrection, only a better chance of ending up in the Heaven. Unsure what to do, we went to explore the rest of the island and found Wilhelmina - Hans' mother. She wished to find her son, but she had no way to get to him. She told us about a treasure of souls, where she could lead us if we got her to Hans. Thankfully, we managed to snatch Klaus' axe and thus could fell some trees in those strange crow-infested woods and build a raft.

Wilhelmina navigated us to a tiny island, where we collected a locked chest from an eye socket-shaped cave. We dumped Wilhelmina on the island where Hans was and returned to the Friend to negotiate. He was drooling over that treasure, but he wasn't willing to resurrect us all for it. But he was willing to teach one of us how to steal more souls for him, something he was contractually forbidden to do himself. I took the initiative and agreed, making the Friend quite giddy. He took my hand and with one smooth motion skinned it, leaving me bleeding and screaming in pain. Yet a dark feeling spread through my hand and the pain stopped, replaced with a strange hunger I have never known before.

And thus a new plan was born. We went to Zirael to offer an ultimatum: If she doesn't revive us, we will go and slaughter every soul on the island, keeping everyone away from Paradise. In hindsight, this might not have been the best idea. With a sad smile, she unsheathed a flaming sword. Licmorn was the first to be struck and he instantly fell to the ground, a crow flying out of his mouth. The rest of us had just enough head start that we reached the crow-infested forest before she could destroy us too. We stayed in hiding until she had to go back to her duties.

Unwilling to become more indebted to the Friend and unable to go anywhere near Zirael, we sent now-flying Licmorn to scout the surrounding islands. We lost track of how long he was gone, but once returned, he announced the discovery of several giant sarcophagi to the north, a flooded forest to the east, black stone cliffs to the southwest and a tiny island with a church to the west. The church looked the most auspicious, so we boarded our raft and set sail. Well, set to pushing with a pole.

Anyway, with no Sun nor Moon nor biological needs, time blended together. Maybe after a few hours, maybe after a few years, we came upon shallower waters. The distant sounds of galloping hooves echoed out of the mists ahead of us and we immediately changed course and hightailed it out of there. After another undeterminable period of time, we actually found the island with a well-maintained church. It stood upon a small hill and bore the symbols of the goddess Samal. We left our raft on a beach and went up there, only to be greeted by the uneasy feeling of standing on holy ground.

The doors were unlocked and the inside neatly clean. Our attention was drawn to a locked door right next to the entrance gate, which hid a staircase going underground. There, after passing three doors suspiciously chained closed, we found a small warehouse. Yet we also found another room behind burnt door, from where three chubby children with beautiful white wings soared towards us, apparently upset with our presence. We were marched out of the church, but noticed one more interesting door in the room the little angels came from; a silver gate covered in arcane runes. The angels might have not wanted us in their church, but we decided to have a peek at the silver door anyway. They locked the front gate of the church, but we sent Brent to climb the belltower and distract the angels with ringing while we circle around to the back entrance and kick it in.

Still, two angels burst out of the broken door and sprinkled us with holy flames, but one was skewered by Cornelia's spear and the other grappled by Gour-Gash, who wrestled with it for a while and eventually beat it to death on the altar inside of the church. The altar cracked and the whole church shuddered. The third angel came at us from the rafters, catching Cornelia and me with a gout of flame that left me suddenly transformed into a crow. It's rather strange, I must say, watching your body dissolve into dust. Thankfully when the last little cherub was slain, I managed to tear out a chunk of its soul out swallow it. Quite a tasty thing.. The flood of life energy saw me exploding back to my humanoid form.

Later, Gour-Gash discovered a bottle of ambrosia in the angels' room and took a deep swig, which sent him into even deeper sleep. Cornelia immediately joined him, so Brent and I waited for the two of them to wake up, then drank some ambrosia too, as it apparently is as delicious as refreshing. I dreamt...

A ship makes its way through thick fog between jutting blades of sharp black rocks. Its passage leaves little to no ripples on the water's surface, which within moments becomes as motionless as a mirror once again. A small island emerges from the fog, with a majestic white tree of silvery leaves. On its the trunk, veins of amber can be seen, from which bountiful sap flows. Naked people are milling around the tree, dancing and giggling and licking the sap. The ship docks at the island and a squad of pallid-faced soldiers in jet-black armour disembarks. Harshly, they disperse the revellers and collect the sap into a large amphora. After a while, they are satisfied and return to their ship, leaving silently with next to no waves. The throng of naked people crawl back to the white tree and slowly, the island disappears into fog.

 
...and woke up feeling just amazing.

However, Gour-Gash has drawn our attention to some sinister chanting that was coming from the outside. From the shore of this little island, a crowd of cowl-wearing figures was slowly approaching the church. Brent's ringing must have summoned them. We found similar cowls in the basement, so we disguised ourselves and let the people into the church. Just as they sat in the pews, a bright light appeared in the sky and streaked towards us. A huge serpent with three pairs of wings entered the church and wrapped himself around the altar. His voice echoed in our heads, asking what had happened here. We cowered in the pews and no one other had an answer, so he started going person by person, apparently looking into their soul. That didn't seem like something we want ourselves be subjected to, so we waited for an opportunity to slip back underground. Sadly, we were noticed and pursued.

We barricaded the burnt door to the late little angels' room and with a key found on their corpses, opened the only other exit - the heavily reinforced silver gate. Behind it was a vast room with three concentric circles of runic silver. In the center lay a coffin, silver once again, fastened with three chains and locked with three locks. We hesitated for a moment, but as the burnt door started to buckle under the assault of the angelic serpent and his monks, Brent and Gour-Gash went to remove the locks. Cornelia and I tried to prop up the burnt door, but soon we were overpowered. A mass of monks spilled into the room and we barely escaped their grip, having to retreat into the coffin room. As I crossed the first of the silver circles, I suddenly heard a voice in the back of my mind, asking to be released and promising any wish fulfilled in return. Brent opened the last lock and Gour-Gash lifted the lid and inside was an endless light-absorbing void.

Darkness spilled out.

I was lying in darkness and I felt hungry. I haven't felt hungry in a long time. I think? Someone lit a torch and we found ourselves in the corner where the shimmering wall of death trapped us. We were all alive, Licmorn back in his elvish body, and Cornelia was here with us, too. Only Rotti remained on the floor as a desiccated corpse. On my left hand, where the tattoo Xiximanter left me with had been, a different one appeared. A wide-open eye. Everyone had been marked in the same way. Gour-Gash was also still gripping a bottle of ambrosia and I had a bottle with a fragment of an angel's soul on me. My hand that the Friend had flayed was also now skinless and bleeding slightly, yet it didn't hurt. We found the strange mechanical egg-bomb where we left it and Mirek was not far away - he fell victim to a gravity-reversing trap and lay pierced by spikes on the ceiling.

We died in the first days of Autumn in the year 198 after the Golden Day. How long have we been wandering the Underworld?

GM Commentary:
Just in case you were wondering, they were exploring these islands at first, but them left them and sailed beyond.

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Tomb of the Serpent King 5e, sessions 7 & 8

TPK, technically.

Dramatis personae:

• Gour-Gash, a goliath barbarian. Dislikes narrow passages.
• Licmorn, an eladrin sorcerer. Depetrified after a thousand years and kind of insane for it.
• Rotti, a tiefling cleric. Likes to bad-mouth people to their face.
• Yanzar, a dark elf druid. Very sneaky, except he loves loud, thunderous spells.

Followers:

• Toxin, an owlin alchemist. Once a familiar who became an apprentice, then an adventurer when his master has met an untimely end.

 

By Vladimir Petkovic

 

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After escaping from Balalán, Rotti went to the Trollish Mountains - scattered in the mountain valleys are so many tiny villages that nobody can search them all. If a person wants to disappear, this is one of the better ways. For perhaps a week or more, she continued deeper and deeper into the mountains, until one day she arrived to the Halfway Hamlet.

"Good afternoon, sir, I was wondering whether you have any free rooms? And a lunch?" she asks the innkeeper smoking his pipe on a bench in the shade of a large oak.

"Of course, miss! Come in, come in! I've got a delicious mutton goulash on the stove right now, you'll surely enjoy it, and a tankard of beer too, right? That'll come in handy after a long journey. Or two perhaps? To cheer you up a little, too, eh? Hey, Kača, get some goulash and two beers here for the lady! And you can sit here, my dear, please, and I'll be right back." The innkeeper never stops talking as he leads her inside.

The inn is rather deserted right now, cramped and a little smoky, but as clean as possible. An elderly, white-haired man is sitting at a table near one of the windows, drawing and writing something in a book. On the table in front of him is a tankard of beer and a golden statuette of a humanoid with a snake's head. As the man reaches for his beer, he misses the handle and looks up in surprise, as if he's suddenly snapped back to reality. When he finally grabs the tankard, he notices Rotti studying him. He gestures a greeting with a smile and a nod, but then returns to his book.

In the meantime, the innkeeper comes back, puts a beer and a bowl of hot goulash in front of her, and starts talking again. It quickly becomes simply a background droning sound to Rotti. She eats and rests, until on the floor above, there is a crash, as if something heavy had fallen to the floor. Both the innkeeper and the white-haired man look up at the ceiling, but when nothing else is happening, they let it go. Rotti startles a little.

Then there's a scratching sound from above and it sounds like someone is dragging something across the floor.

Rotti swallows a gulp of beer and, staring at the ceiling, asks the innkeeper "If I may, is this normal here?"

The innkeeper also looks concerned.

"Magister?" He turns to the old man. "Did something happen to your friend? Doesn't he need help?"

The magister breaks away from his book and puts it down. They all listen for a moment, the sound has suddenly stopped, but soon it's back.

"Well, I thought he was asleep," the magister says, getting up. "I'd better go check on him. He was actually getting better, I thought." And he heads for the stairs to the upper floor.

Rotti stands up, too, uncertain though as she is. "I'm a cleric, if anything... I can help."

"Ah, that would be very kind of you, miss. I did treat him, but then again, I'm not a healer, am I? Sorry, I'm magister Harant, an alchemist."

"Rotti," she smiles a bit.

And they go up the stairs, into a short corridor lined with doors to the rooms on both sides. The magister comes to one of the doors, knocks and opens it. There are four narrow beds, one of which is occupied by something with a lot of feathers.

"Are you okay?" the magister asks, "we heard some noises downstairs-"

But then he stops as the scraping and sliding sound comes again, from a different door across the hall.

"That's my room," he says, confused, "but there's no one there."

He turns to that door, opens it, and then freezes. He even seems to have stopped breathing. Rotti peeks around his shoulder, hiding behind him just to be sure. The room is very similar to the first one, except it has been thoroughly trashed. And in the middle of the room lies... something.

It could be a huge carcass, but it looks too alive for that. The massive head is half covered with lizard skin, the other half showing bare bone between tangles of raw muscles. Below the neck is something like a body, but most of it seems to be missing. Six limbs are growing out of the half-formed body, yet only the front left is complete, ending in sharp claws which the monster digs into the floor as it slowly pulls itself forward. The other five legs are stunted, spasmodic and non-functional. But then Rotti notices that the flesh on the skull appears to be growing and that the skin is tightening around the gaping wounds, that the lame limbs are quickly lengthening and even the buds of new claws are starting to show. And yes, there's also the creature's single eye. Amber in colour, almost as if it glowed with an inner light. Focused at the magister, who has gone strangely gray, as if there was a layer of dust covering him.

Rotti slams the door closed. Behind them, she can hear the monster getting closer and closer. In the other room, the feathered creature has woken up. He looks like an overgrown owl huddled under a duvet.

"Hi, I'm Rotti, but that doesn't matter right now," Rotti half whispers, half calls at him. "We have a problem. Something petrified the magister, I guess, and we'll probably end up the same if we don't do something like immediately."

"Shit," the feathered guy says as he jumps out of bed. "Shit, shit, shit. I'm Toxin, by the way. Pleased to meet you. And shit." He pulls a satchel from under his bed and hurries over to the magister as he rummages through it. "Nothing in here... I have nothing. Shit."

The monster hits the door.

Rotti winces. "So... Any plan?"

"Barricade the door? We can try to drag the magister away and then hide somewhere. The rest of my party is gone now, but they should be back by evening at the latest. If the door holds until evening, we can take care of that thing. My party has some, y'know, stab-happy people."

"Oh-kay. Sure."

Yet they can already hear the monster slamming its claws into the door. They push the magister to the wall and take one bed from the first room, but as they're just about to prop it against the dangerously shaking door, a claw goes right through the wood and leaves a long gash behind.

“Shit, shit, shit,” says Toxin.

"Mirror?" Rotti blurts out.

“Good idea, but I don't have any."

"Well, we could try to find one, but..." She bites her lip. "Or I might try using a light spell? To dazzle that thing?"

“That might actually w-” and then Toxin jumps at her.

At that moment, the door almost explodes. Three claws and the head of a huge lizard, which is already growing its second eye, push through the wreckage. Toxin just barely manages to knock Rotti out of the way, so the razor sharp claws miss her by a hair's breadth. Judging by the cracks spreading on the walls, the monster probably won't stay trapped in the room much longer.

"Okay," Rotti says, lying on the floor. "I'll blind it temporarily and you then permanently. Ready?"

The wall becomes a cloud of shards and splinters and spills out into the hallway. One floor down, the innkeeper is yelling and a woman is screaming. The monster squeezes into the corridor, slamming into the magister's statue, and roars.

"Or we could run," Toxin says.

"Samal protect us," Rotti murmurs, but she's too shaken to move.

Toxin fishes some kind of vial out of his satchel and throws it at the monster, pulling Rotti towards the stairs at the same time. Whatever was in the vial splashes over the monster's head and begins to sizzle menacingly - and the monster roars in pain and rage. It starts thrashing about, twisting and tearing until it forces its way back to the destroyed room, slapping the two adventurers with its tail in the process. They roll down the stairs, wood creaking and walls shattering above them.

As they land in a heap on the floor of the inn, screams of alarm, then fear, then pain are heard from outside. From the village.

"What in the name of the Three-That-Are-One is going on?!" the innkeeper shouts.

He grabs a baton he had hidden under the bar counter and opens the main door. Rotti and Toxin glimpse a huge lizard swallowing one of the villagers under the oak tree. Then it gazes at the innkeeper, who turns to stone in mid-stride. The door swings back on its hinges and closes again.

***

From the diary of Yanzar, 27th to 29th day of Harvest, 198 Aureum Diem
We entered the inn, wary and properly paranoid. Gour-Gash went to investigate the situation upstairs, and in the meantime we discovered Toxin huddled in the kitchen with a broken wing and a tiefling woman named Rotti tending to him. While we were trying to find out what has happened, Gour-Gash found a statue of the magister lying in front of his destroyed room, his head and one arm broken off. All petrified.

The basilisk skull was not in the magister's room.

Schmee insisted that we must find a way to save the magister and Licmorn convinced him that he will be able to safely fuse a shattered statue this time. Second time's the charm, right? Predictably, when we smeared the magister with a dungeon cucumber, he was depetrified in pieces and Licmorn completely failed to heal him. He bled out immediately. Schmee was inconsolable and frankly quite angry. He was screaming a lot. Even at me.

The sudden, echoing animal roar did not add to the hilarity of the situation either.

When Gour-Gash went to investigate, he heard stomping and sniffing just around a corner. Licmorn threw a tankard of beer out of the window to attract (or distract) the beast, and immediately a large eye, definitely a basilisk's, peered inside. He shot it with an arrow and Gour-Gash rushed outside to meet the creature in melee. Though fighting with one hand over his eyes, he managed to keep the basilisk busy and the rest of our group brought it down with sustained shower of arrows and magic. Then we gathered a large pyre of wood and burnt the bodies of the basilisk and the magister, wary of further reanimations. With the setting sun and the crackling of the fire, only Licmorn's harp sounded in the night.

Also Schmee apparently packed up his things and left.

The next day, we collected the survivors from the village, hiding in the woods, and feasted on the food and booze left in the inn. Licmorn won some gold by drinking everyone under the table. The next next day, we set of towards Balalán. Rotti looked quite uneasy about our destination, until afer some probing she confined in us that she is viscount Malévol's wife and currently on the run. Well, we will have a week to figure something out.

From the diary of Yanzar, 32nd day of Harvest, 198 Aureum Diem
Today, we happened upon an overturned wagon in the middle of nowhere. Wolves gathered around it, tearing at some corpses. Licmorn threw them some sausages and they decided to take the bribe and run. After a closer inspection of the crime scene, Rotti realized that the wagon belonged to a tax collector - her husband's tax collector. The guards lying around had been slain by a blade, not fangs, though, and there were tracks leading to the forest, as if someone had dragged something heavy - and the chest with the taxes was gone.

We followed the tracks from the valley up into the mountains, until we came upon a small river springing from a rock face. The sun was already setting and campfire flickered between the boulders at the foot of the cliff. Rotti and Gour-Gash agreed on a tactic of confusion, where Rotti would play a damsel in distress pursued by a barbarian brute, to discombobulate possible lookouts. What they found instead was one sleeping and drunk bandit, though he was discombobulated alright when Rotti woke him up by repeatedly kicking him. Behind the campfire, an entrance to a dark tunnel loomed. We tied the lookout up and dragged him away from the tunnel, so that we could interrogate the young man in peace and learn more about the wherebouts of any danger or gold in the underground. Unfortunately, he was pretty out of it, so I went to have a look at the place myself, taking on the form of a panther.

Immediately, the tunnel forked into three passages, but taking the straight and narrow path, I found a place where it opened into a larger cave, overlooking the underground part of the river we came here alongside. The cave kept going further, but I was more interested in a shaft in the ceiling above the water, from which faint light was coming. I returned for the rest of the group and we decided to climb up the hole. Still in my panther form, I easily jumped over the river and climbed the rock face on the other side. Licmorn jumped after me, but he was way short and the strong current immediately started dragging him under. Gour-Gash and Rotti managed to throw him a rope, though, so I let them to save him and climbed up the shaft.

I found myself right in the bandit' hideout, where two women were roasting a horse leg over a fire pit. They started screaming for help, but I wanted to have a peek at the next room. I got an axe in the face for my trouble. I guess I deserved that. Barely evading a second swing, I jumped down the shaft and landed in the river. The others have apparently started to fight a couple of giant wolves in the meantime, but thankfully Licmorn had the presence of mind to help me out of the water before I drowned.

The wolves were slowly pushing Gour-Gash back and the tunnel was too narrow for anyone else to assist him, and then we heard many feet coming running from the other direction. We were stuck. Licmorn decided that the best way to get out of this situation is to climb up the shaft and before anyone could stop him, he jumped into the river again. We had to pull him out again, while Gour-Gash was barely holding off the giant wolves. With the persuasive power of an arrow in the face, we stopped the bandits' charge, and Gour-Gash finally downed one wolf, scaring the other away. We made a tactical retreat, still exchanging arrows with the bandits, but not before Rotti managed to shoot Gour-Gash in the back and nearly kill him.

We ran towards the forest's edge, the bandits spilling from the cave behind us and preparing their pursuit. A quick plan was formed. Rotti and I were to go further into the forest while Gour-Gash and Licmorn would hide and then flank our pursuers. They disappeared into the bushes, but before we could get further than some hundred feet, I noticed the glow of a fire. Two mercenaries of viscount Malévol, apparently those who survived the bandit ambush earlier, were camped here. One of them was called Brent, and the other slept like a log. Then we heard the bandits drawing close, so Brent and I prepared to fight side by side. There was the big guy with an axe, several other bandits and an elderly druid riding the one remaining giant wolf. They saw us and charged, but at that moment Licmorn stepped from behind a tree and released a massive barrage of magic, taking several of the bandits down. Then he turned into a flower pot, but I don't think that was fully intended. Unfortunately, it was us who were distracted by the sudden transformation of our sorcerer, and the big guy with an axe used the opportunity to get to Rotti and cleave her down. In retaliation, I burned him to death. Then I went to administer first aid to the bleeding and unconscious Rotti while the others mopped up the remaining bandits. Apparently, the druid has disappeared on his wolf the moment the fight went sideways for their side.

We settled around Brent's campfire, deciding to try for some sleep while keeping careful watch for the druid. And indeed, during my patrol he returned, attempting to ensnare me in some enchantment. But luck was on our side and I roused Gour-Gash before the giant wolf could pounce at him, and along with Brent we had quickly slain them both. The druid's tattoo - a goblet overgrown with blackberries - revealed him to be a member of the black druids my master was hunting for. Interesting...

After some quality wolf steaks in the morning cooked by Mirek, the heavily sleeping mercenary, we returned to the cave - a second attempt, now with next to no resistance. We captured one of the remaining bandits and he led us to their treasure - a chest full of tax money was placed under a ceiling-high statue of a muscular man with a veiled face, the statue badly damaged. While we were busy dividing the loot, out captive somehow managed to escape his restrains - or so Licmorn says...

We also found a spiral staircase with the entrance arch bearing an inscription:
 

"Closing darkness frights the mind, yet oft-times light does naught but blind."

 
I persuaded the group - and did it take some effort - to climb the stairs blindly and with no light. No one was hurt or lost or whatever other trap was lurking there, so it was clearly the right decision, yet the others failed to properly congratulate me.

Anyway, we found ourselves in a grandiose corridor with a tapestry depicting a Dark One's triumph - a woman with a veiled face followed by a veiled army slaughtering through many different species and cities. Around the corner behind a broken bronze gate covered in scorch marks was a hall with a long table, the whole top of the table taken by a massive map of the Trollish Mountains, with tiny forts and towers and cities marked, and figurines bearing the standards of the Dark Ones and presumably their enemies standing all over it. We didn't recognize most of the iconography, but one figurine had the coat of arms of the Malévols. Around the table, some nicely decorated chairs were arranged with old corpses sitting in them, the corpse at the head of the table being pinned down by a silver spear through its back. The remains of their clothes bore golden military insignia.

While most of us investigated the map, Brent went to rummage through the cabinets standing by the walls, and soon he found a secret door. Behind it, there was a small, simple room with a heavily reinforced and rune-inscribed chest, but Brent didn't hesitate and opened it post haste. It seemed rather critically easy. Inside, we found a suit of black material that included gloves, boots, a hood and a mask, which would cover every inch of one's body if donned. There was a mechanical egg inscribed with countless runes, too, oozing deathly magic - and it had a big red button on top.

After some persuasion, we forced Mirek to put on the suit, yet nothing bad happened to him. Emboldened, Licmorn suggested that he presses the button. He seemed rather reluctant, but we once again persuaded him to do so.

He did so.

"Beep" and ten runes appeared. "Beep" and nine runes remained. Then eight. Seven. Six...

We ran, Mirek shouting after us in confusion. After the few remaining heartbeats, a shimmering wall appeared behind our backs and started to spread rapidly in all directions. Licmorn was the slowest and he fell to the ground the second the wall touched him, lifeless. Then it was Rotti, Gour-Gash, Brent and then I...

GM Commentary:

Well... I sincerely didn't expect them to press the big red button immediately, without any inspection of the device or rummaging through the books and scrolls in the hall. Does this even really count as a TPK?

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