I was posting some recent deaths in the obituary thread and was going to explain all of this there, but I thought it warranted it's own thread, as it might give future DMs some ideas.
While my players have been trying to stop the Age of Worms, a sidestory has been grabbing at least as much of their attention. In Hall of Harsh Reflections, with two deaths in the doppelganger's warehouse and three more in Zyrxog's Domain. In the room right before encounter Zyrxog, down two party members and (unknowingly) holding a ton of cursed items, they made the decision to retreat. This was probably a wise move, as they would have had trouble taking on Zyrxog in the state they were in, but it was followed by two major mistakes. First they decided to wait for a few days, and second, they decided to make the doppelganger's warehouse their new base.
Zyrxog, being an intelligent fellow, used his scrying pool and watched as they rested. Seeing that it was only a matter of time before they came for him, he decided to hit them first. He procured a scroll of teleport, grabbed his two surviving octopins, cast his buffs, and teleported in to the room where the doppelganger's leader had been while the party was testing out the mind gem device on a captured drow.
The fight was over in a few rounds. The octopins overwhelmed and cornered the party wizard. The fighter, reincarnated as a tiny lizard creature after dying in Zyrxog's lair, was next to useless and had his brain eaten by Zyrxog. The artificer and spellthief tried to run. The spellthief used a potion of Gaseous Form to slip away, but the artificer wasn't so lucky, and was mindblasted and dominated. Luckily for the party as a whole, her familiar was intelligent enough to take a bite out of the dead wizard and sneak away, finding the druid who had reincarnated party members several times in the last few days. The wizard was brought back (now a lizardfolk instead of a dwarf), and managed to regroup with the spellthief at Eligos's house.
After that defeat, they hoped Zyrxog would leave them alone, and decided to investigate the Free City Games (they'd been wanting to join since they first arrived in the city, so no motivating was required). They signed up, and agreed to help locate their sponsor's missing sister. They recruited two new party members, Eligos's brother, a warmage, and a hulking frenzied berserker dedicated to Pelor. After a few days in the arena, Eligos came to visit them with troubling news. He and Celeste had decided that Zyrxog was too dangerous to stay in the city and had entered his lair to try to deal with him, but the mindflayer wasn't there at the time. They took the opportunity to look around, and found the ledger with details of Zyrxog's transactions with Raknian. The party was concerned about the Apostolistic Scrolls, but dismissed the idea that they would be under the arena somewhere, and decide to focus on winning the games so that they could get into Raknian's manor. In the final fight, the Ulgurstasta showed up, ate Auric, and turned the entire audience into wights. By the time the party escaped, rested, and returned to the Free City, it was being overrun and being evacuated, the wights contained by powerful wizards and clerics from around the world, but too great in number to be destroyed quickly.
The party did check Zyrxog's lair for themselves a few days later, but by that time he had left town. They spent the next few months cleaning up their mess in the free city and hunting down the Ulgurstasta (I decided to skip A Gathering of Winds, and used this instead). When they finally felt the situation was under control enough to return to their quest, they set off to Magepoint. A few attempts were made to locate their captured Artificer friend, but none were successful. The Spire of Long Shadows gave them some a lot of trouble, and while taking a few days of downtime in Magepoint between attempts to reach it's lower levels, they were attacked. An assassin targeted the frenzied berserker in the town square, causing him to fly into a rage and, unable to see his assailant, attack the villagers. The assassin was found and captured, and the berserker was able to get away with a large fine and exile from Magepoint, as the guards doubted the could hold or execute him without more deaths.
The assassin had a note with directions to a meeting place, so the party followed that and found a cave. Inside, they were surprised to find octopins, but as they traveled deeper, it became clear that this was one of Zyrxog's bases of operation. They found their artificer deep in the caves, channeling magic to enhance three octopins to great size. The wizard was able to dispel her domination, and, realizing that the they stood little chance against the giant creatures, the frenzied berserker offer his (now disgraced) life to hold the creatures back while the rest of the party escaped. The artificer tells the party that she was forced to make magic items for Zyrxog during the months of her imprisonment, not mentioning the fact that she was also used as an assassin for him.
Fast forward to the Library of Last Resort now. When Lashonna scrys on Darl Quethos, they see an all too familiar illithid on the ship. When the party arrives on the real Tilagos island through the portal of storms, and after speaking with the wild watchers, the artificer hears a disturbingly familiar "voice" in her head. Zyrxog tells her that he is working with Darl in hopes of taking his delicious, knowledge filled brain. He knows that the party seeks the information of the island, so he tells them that he plans to betray the cleric at a time when it would turn the course of the battle between the two parties.
When the party arrives at the Lair of Harrowdroth, they are able to take out the nightmare beast without any trouble, but the artificer is warned by Zyrxog that Darl's party is about to arrive. The party takes defensive positions, but are quickly overwhelmed by the number of intelligent, tactical foes. The cleric (a replacement after the spellthief died in the Spire of Long Shadows) and artificer are killed, while the fighter (the one who was originally killed by Zyrxog, brought back at a higher level by a miracle) and wizard manage to grab the bodies and escape. Darl has little interest in pursuit, having succeeded in his goal of weakening the party while taking no casualties on his own side. Zyrxog remained out of the way during the fight, sending out a few mindblasts and a lightning bolt, but knowing that most of the party was immune to his stunning now.
After retreating, resurrecting, and resting, the party returned to Tilagos and turned Darl's tactics against him. They scryed on one of his monks, and watched until the realized that they were going after the Night Twist. They quickly made their way to the forest and, when Darl's party was engaged in combat with the tree, they attacked. The open terrain was much more to the party's advantage, and the artificer put walls of stone all over to shape the battlefield to their needs. When several of Darl allies were dead, Zyrxog told the artificer that he would turn on Darl. She put a dome shaped wall of stone over them, trapping them in a tight space together. Once the rest of Darl's party was dead, they opened up the dome. Inside they found Zyrxog, who had tried to grapple Darl and failed. He had been hit with a dimensionally anchor, then harm, and finally Darl had used carved the words "All yours, Ellizabella" (the artificer's name) into his forhead. Darl was nowhere to be found, but Zyrxog was at one hitpoint, and unable to escape. Before he could even try to reason with the party, he was knocked unconscious by the fighter. As he bled out, they debated what to do with him, but in the end the artificer decided to get her long delayed revenge and finish him off.
So now, after more than half of the time we've been playing Age of Worms, they've finally defeated their biggest foe. Of course, now Darl Quethos is out there with a grudge....
Anyway, it's been interesting trying to adapt the adventures to make Zyrxog be a recurring threat, but still keep things mostly on track. I'm pretty pleased with how well the player's reacted to it, and finally getting him was certainly a highlight of the campaign for them. Let me know if you have any questions, and thanks for reading!
