| Tinalles |
My players ran into some serious trouble at the end of The Harrowing, and I've worked up a detailed scenario for what happens next. I need a sanity check to see if this all makes sense.
- Varen, elf ranger 7/Magus 2/Arcane Archer 1
- Unfettered Sky, sylph wizard 10
- Delano, halfling cleric of Nethys 10
- Arrhi, gnome sorceress 9/bard 1 (fey bloodline)
- Tiri, human cleric of Milani 8 (cohort, primarily a healer)
- Quiche, gnome alchemist 10
On Saturday, they acquired the last token they needed to locate the Striding Castle, and began their assault. Quiche got left behind: the player could not attend and we lacked an up-to-date character sheet, so the party had only 5 going in.
They took out Marouka and his ogre minions with aplomb. Between a really good Confusion spell and some Murderous Commands, the ogres did most of the work for them.
Alas, then they found the succubi, and the mind control started going the other way. Varen got dominated in round 1 and, at his new mistress' behest, killed Unfettered Sky outright with a single volley of arrows. Delano freed Varen with a Dispel Magic, and Tiri supplied Protection from Evil. Then Varen's protection got dispelled by a Babau demon one of the succubi summoned, and he got dominated again. Eventually the 2 clerics and the sorceress were forced to flee via Dimension Door, leaving Sky dead and Varen as a plaything of the succubi.
I've come up with what I think is a reasonable scenario for how the members of Team Evil will behave in this situation. I'm trying to work out if it's too brutal or not.
1) The succubi will destroy Varen's cold iron arrows (so those cannot be used against them if he gets freed).
2) The succubi will interrogate Varen to learn the party members' abilities.
3) They'll report all this to Zassrion, along with news of the deaths of Marouka and his ogres.
4) Zassrion will order the succubi to seek out and capture the interlopers for use in his plan to become a real boy. I mean, dragon.
5) Varen knows that the party left Quiche at the Sanguine Playhouse, and it's a no-brainer to figure they'll rendezvous there.
6) In order to get there fast, the succubi will ask Zassrion to give Varen the Boots of Teleportation from his horde, and Zassrion will agree.
7) One of the succubi will use her Profane Gift ability on Varen, both to give him a minor combat boost from the stat increase, but also so that TWO succubi have some measure of control over him.
8) Because Varen was freed from domination by a Dispel Magic in the previous fight, the succubi will take measures to prevent that. Specifically, they'll bargain with the efreeti Agrasug to get him to use his Wish spell-like ability to place a Contingency on Varen such that the next time he fights his former comrades, he comes under the effect of Spell Immunity to Dispel Magic -- rendering him immune to Dispel Magic, and therefore making it essentially impossible for the party to free him from domination (at least during this encounter).
9) At the same time, they'll ask Agrasug to use Wish to put the Merciful weapon property on Varen's bow, so that he can deal non-lethal damage with it.
10) With all these preparations made, the three succubi and Varen will teleport to the Sanguine Playhouse to confront and capture the party. They'll have Varen completely secure, and he'll be able to shoot the bejeesus out of the party, doing non-lethal damage. They'll also be able to summon Babau demons with that tasty at-will Dispel Magic to clear any mental protections from the party so that the succubi can take control of them.
It all makes perfect sense. It's a smart plan that makes effective use of the resources at hand. It doesn't leave the baddies sitting around waiting to be chopped up.
And I'm having a really difficult time seeing how it can end in anything other than the whole party getting captured and stitched into Zassrion's tatterdemalion hide.
So, the counter-plan goes like this:
1) Once they're captured, the party will be locked up (sans gear) and Zassrion will come to gloat over them, giving a lovely little monologue about how he needs JUST ONE more skin to complete his transformation. Varen's too useful charmed, and Arrhi, Delano, and Quiche are small-sized humanoids -- not enough skin. That means the only choice is Tiri. I'm okay with sacrificing her, because she's actually my own cohort from a character in the Kingmaker campaign that this Harrowing thing is a side-quest from.
2) There will be another captive in prison: a replacement character for Unfettered Sky.
3) As per the description in the adventure, the Rabbit Prince has been trailing them all this time using his Locate Objects ability. He'll see them get captured, continue following, and infiltrate the castle to help them.
4) One part of that aid will consist of damaging the bow strings of Varen's bows, so that they'll snap the next time they're drawn.
5) After Tiri is taken away, the Rabbit Prince will steal the key to the prison while Agrasug is occupied with Tiri's torture. He'll desperately want to aid Tiri, but make the wiser choice to sacrifice her to save the other five instead. Trembling with shame at his cowardice, he'll appear in the prison with the key, and set the party loose.
5) He'll also give them a jar of Marvelous Pigments -- the one from Marzalee, which they found but left alone. They can use this to create the armor, weapons, spell components, and so on.
6) Due to skulking around the castle, he can supply them with detailed info about the inhabitants they haven't encountered yet.
7) He'll offer to use his Dimension Door ability to port them directly from the prison to Zassrion's library. It's imperative that they take him out right now, because he's about to finish his transformation. They'll appear just in time to witness the final stitch affixing Tiri's skin into Zassrion's patchwork.
8) He'll stay and fight with them, to the death if necessary, spurred by the hope of finding his broken Sword of Oaths in Zassrion's hoard -- and by the shame he feels at abandoning Tiri to die.
It's hard to say how things will go after that. I'll make sure they have a way to refresh their spells before the fight begins, and that their original gear is visible in Zassrion's hoard, so they can stand a chance of getting it. But it'll still be a super-tough fight taking on an adult blue dragon on his home ground using all-mundane gear from a pot of marvelous pigments. It could still be a party wipe. But even if that's how it plays out, at least I'll know I did everything I could think of to keep them in the action.
So, sanity check: is this reasonable? Is there anything I've overlooked, or other things I could do to throw them a bone?
Oh, and on a final note, the three succubi now have nicknames: Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup. ^_^
Jayson MF Kip
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Damn. That's a spot your players got themselves into.
It's seems reasonable (from an action of enemies persepctive). It also seems impossible from a player's persepctive. Fighting the Tyrant with mundane gear? Damn.
| Tinalles |
You're right, it's a really tough situation. After a good deal more thought, I've figured out a few ways to make it easier for them.
2) Bishop Ezrael will also not be present at the final fight. He'll decline to be there for Zassrion's transformation, because he's a creepy half-being and obsessed with tormenting Biyo Venna. So he'll be safely out of the way. If all goes well, they can fight him later, by himself.
3) The two genies, Agrasug and Essesol, will be present. However, they will not partake in the fight. I have decided that Agrasug's contract with Zassrion involved helping him achieve transformation into a real dragon. Once the final skin is stitched into place, the terms of the contract are complete, and Agrasug and Essesol will simply turn invisible and leave, eventually plane-shifting out of the Harrowed Realm altogether.
4) The PCs will arrive exactly as Zassrion's transformation begins. His body will be reconfiguring itself during the fight. To represent that in-game, I'm going to nerf him for 5 rounds: -10 AC, no breath weapon, no auras, no DR, and -10 on attack rolls because things keep changing inside of him and throwing his bodily control out of whack.
It seems a little unlikely that they'll be able to take him out in five rounds even with those nerfs in place. So I have one more card up my sleeve, which is heavily party-specific.
Meloigne Garracy, the captured Taldan scholar, proved unsuitable because he has a nasty skin condition (per GM fiat).
Zassrion also has a second prisoner destined to be a replacement PC for the wizard who died last session. This one's unsuitable because he's a halfling, too small.
Varen, the dominated archer, would suit. He's an elf with a good complexion. BUT, he's much more useful as a dominated minion.
Out of the remaining party members, we have two gnomes, a halfling, and a human. The two gnomes and the halfling are too small.
The human, Tiri, is the only suitable person. And, as it happens, she's not a PC: she's a cohort. Specifically, she's MY cohort, from my PC in the Kingmaker campaign. I sent her along when I began GM'ing this because I thought they might need a healer, which is what she does.
As it happens, she also gets to be the sacrificial lamb -- and my trump card. While Zassrion is inspecting the newly-captured PCs, who will be bound and gagged at the time, he'll have a great monologue enumerating his reasons for choosing Tiri. Then he'll give her an opportunity to speak, because he enjoys hearing the final words of those he's going to stitch into his skin. And it will go something like this:
Zassrion: "Have you something to say, woman?"
Tiri: "I serve Milani the Everbloom, goddess of just revolt against oppression, and I call her to witness this oath: I shall defy thee, tyrant, to my last breath and beyond."
Zassrion: *laughs uproariously* "Oh, I like this one. She has spark! You may defy me all you like, woman, but it will not save you."
And sure enough, she'll get skinned, and stitched into him in the one last place that needed a patch: the underside of his throat.
Then, after his 5 rounds of being nerfed are over, when he gets his abilities back, her face will appear in his neck, and she'll say "From beyond my last breath I defy thee, tyrant! All praise to Milani!"
Whereupon she'll open her mouth and allow Zassrion's newly formed blood to gout forth. In game terms, he'll be subject to bleed 15, with no way to stop the bleeding.
If the party is smart, they'll run away at this point and let him bleed out, because he is going to be SUPER pissed that he stitched his doom into his own flesh THIS close to achieving his goals.
If they don't, I'm going to let Tiri use her channel positive energy ability to hit the party with bursts of healing (while excluding Zassrion) despite being technically dead.
If they still wipe after all that, which is a real possibility, well ... I'd rather avoid it, but I'm not going to just handwave the threats down to nothing.
| Voxumbra |
8) Because Varen was freed from domination by a Dispel Magic in the previous fight, the succubi will take measures to prevent that. Specifically, they'll bargain with the efreeti Agrasug to get him to use his Wish spell-like ability to place a Contingency on Varen such that the next time he fights his former comrades, he comes under the effect of Spell Immunity to Dispel Magic -- rendering him immune to Dispel Magic, and therefore making it essentially impossible for the party to free him from domination (at least during this encounter).
Spell Immunity can only be used for spells that allow SR, which Dispel Magic does not. Contingency is a self only spell (so normally the efreeti could not cast it on Varen). Since neither case would be exactly duplicating a spell, the question is whether these issues were simply an oversight or if you were planning to get around these limitations by using the caveat that allows you to produce effects greater than the ones listed in the Wish description. If this was an oversight... no harm done! If it's the other, you should consider whether this is a fair use.
Wish's power is basically only limited by the DM, but this can create a conflict of interest when the DM wants to use Wish in a non-standard way. (From a player's perspective) there's a huge difference between using Wish in a non-standard way for amazing storytelling reasons and using it for something pedestrian, like giving the bad guys an edge in a fight. Take into consideration that PCs less often have access to Wish, and the result of using it in non-standard ways is always subject to your whim. If you want to pursue this tactic you should create some unintended effects for the succubi and/or efreeti. Why should NPCs expect that it will work as intended for them? Otherwise it seems like an abuse of power.Of course it all depends on your group. Maybe they wouldn't care.
| Tinalles |
The final session happened this evening, and I am pleased to report that it went very well. In case anyone cares, here is a narrative account of the session. I've tried to make it interestingly written.
- Delano, halfling cleric 10
- Arrhi, gnome sorceress 9/bard 1
- Quiche, gnome alchemist 10
- Varen, elf ranger 7/magus 1/arcane archer 2
- Yoshii Kukyo, halfling rogue 3/wizard 3/arcane trickster 4 (replacement PC)
- Tiri, human cleric 8
- Speckles, Tiri's familiar via the Eldritch Heritage feat tree
As play began, Varen had been left behind in the Striding Fortress as the dominated sock puppet of the three succubi, hereby renamed Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup. Quiche had been left behind at the Sanguine Playhouse the previous session, because we didn't have a character sheet for the PC (now remedied even though the player couldn't make this session either). Yoshii was in prison in the Fortress, because he was a replacement PC for the wizard killed last session.
That left Arrhi, Delano, and Quiche stuck somewhere in the Briar. Disheartened by their thorough whupping, they made their way back to the Sanguine Playhouse. They found it difficult to navigate the briar, and traveled the wrong direction for a while, but eventually arrived at the playhouse late the next day.
Perhaps half an hour (in-game time) after arriving, Phase 1 of the plot outline above went into effect. Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup appeared out of thin air with Varen -- the succubi using their native teleportation, and Varen his shiny new boots from Zassrion's hoard. The party had no warning, so the baddies got a surprise round. They also won initiative with a natural 20 on the roll.
In the surprise round, Blossom and Bubbles failed to summon babau demons. Buttercup brought hers in, and instructed it (via telepathy) to ready an action to cast Dispel Magic as a counterspell to any spell the party might cast. Varen then did a full attack on Tiri with his newly enchanted +1 merciful composite longbow, dealing a fair amount of nonlethal damage.
In round 1, the succubi each targeted a different PC with Dominate Person. One by one, Arrhi, Delano, and Quiche failed their Will saves, falling prey to the succubi's insidious mental snares. And Varen, with one more full attack, dealt enough nonlethal damage to Tiri that she fell unconscious.
None of the players even got a chance to act.
Returning to the castle with their captives, the succubi divested the party of their gear, and had Delano heal Tiri up. Tiri was bound and gagged, while the others were left unrestrained, as they were held more securely by the bonds of magic. Zassrion emerged from the castle, coming to the courtyard to inspect the catch. He may once have been a proper blue, but now only one patch of his surface still bore that color: the underside of his throat. A tatterdemalion patchwork of humanoid skin covered every other inch of his massive bulk.
One by one, he examined the prisoners, and interrogated them as to their backgrounds, until finally came to Tiri. "Ungag her," he said. "I wish to hear what she has to say."
Freed of her gag, Tiri raised her her eyes up and said: "I serve Milani, goddess of freedom, and I call on her to witness this oath: I shall defy thee, Tyrant, to my last breath and beyond."
Zassrion roared with laughter. "Oh, I like this one!" he said. "She has spark!" A bit of electricity arced between the tips of his wings. "Agrasug, take her and prepare her. The other three are to be locked up -- chain and gag them. Then let them free of the domination. I want them to know how utterly they have failed. Varen, come help me identify their gear and get it arranged neatly in my hoard."
This was duly done. The prison held two other occupants: Meloigne Garracy and Yoshii Kukyo. A single ogre was placed on guard duty. After an hour or so, Tiri's familiar Speckles came fluttering in the window, flying awkardly under the weight of a wand. "She managed to hide this," he told them. It was a wand of Cure Moderate Wounds. "She also gave me a message for you: have faith."
From below, Tiri's screams echoed from the abattoir at the base of the prison tower.
Time passed. The party spent a listless night. Against all odds, Arrhi and Yoshii got sufficient sleep to refresh their spells come the next morning.
The next afternoon, the ogre guard fell asleep -- unwisely, as it seems, as he got his throat slit by the Rabbit Prince. "Sorry old chap," he said, wiping off his shortsword. "Ordinarily I'd have challenged you to single combat, but time is a factor."
"I have the keys, and information, and supplies!" he told the party. "I've been following you ever since our first encounter, in the hopes that you might take down Zassrion. I think he may have the missing half of my sword, you see, in his hoard."
"Rrrmph hrr mmmph!" they said.
"Oh, right," he said, unlocking the cells and freeing them from their bonds.
"Now, information. First, the succubi are gone. Zassrion sent them out into the world to prepare the way for his coming. Second, your gear has been added to Zassrion's hoard -- and he was VERY pleased to have it. Third, I snuck into your friend's room and sabotaged his bows -- I damaged the strings. The next time he tried to shoot an arrow, the bow strings will snap. Lastly, Zassrion is about to complete his transformation into a real dragon."
"Couldn't you do anything for Tiri?" Delano asked.
The Rabbit Prince looked distressed. "No. I had to choose: save her, or save all of you. I just ... I couldn't." He paused. "No one ever told me wisdom would hurt so much."
"Lastly, supplies. Here! These enchanted paints will let you create any gear you can think of, as long as it's not magical." (Note: I allowed cold iron and mithral as long as the price didn't exceed the 2,000 gp limit.)
"I also retrieved this from a trash heap." He carefully brought out placed a severely damaged book. It was the spellbook of Unfettered Sky, their late companion. Though horribly damaged by its time in the electrified pool, some of the spells remained readable. (50% chance of any given spell surviving, and the act of turning a page causes it to disintegrate.)
It took a long time for the party to prepare. (In-game, hours to paint all the gear. At the table, about an hour and a half to prep spells, research gear, etc.) During all that time, Speckles volunteered to scout the area, and was able to report from peeping in the windows of the library that the ceremony to complete Zassrion's transformation was indeed going on. The two genies were present, as was Varen and two ogres. No one else was around, except a weird shadow creature which seemed to be sticking mostly to the kitchen. He also spotted the Harrow Deck -- it was sitting on one of the tables in the library. And he was able to make a fair map of the room layout by tapping his beak on the cell floor to show where to draw a line with some chalk.
Preparations made, the party cast buffs. An assortment of Greater Magic Weapons got made, Spell Resistance got handed out, Communal Protection from Energy and Evil -- in that last one, Delano asked if he could give the Protection from Evil to everyone present in the cell, and then hold the charge so he could try giving it to Varen. I allowed that, so the party Dimension Doored directly into the library behind Varen and the two ogres.
Zassrion was in the very last stages of the process. The party arrived just in time to see Agrasug deliver the final stitch.
They got a surprise round -- AND they won initiative, exactly as the succubi had in the earlier battle.
During the surprise round, The Rabbit Prince came out swinging and severely damaged an ogre. Quiche used her wings to fly into position and did a fair amount of damage to Zassrion with a fire bomb, splashing onto the Efreeti in the process -- who didn't mind, of course, due to his fire immunity. Yoshii, having been briefed on the nature of the Harrow Deck, rushed over to it and threw the whole thing in the air all at once, hoping for the best (the cards The Tyrant and The Marriage came into play). Arrhi cast Haste.
At the end of the surprise round, Zassrion roared "Not NOW. Agrasug, deal with them!"
"Apologies, Master Zassrion," the efreeti said. "The terms of my contract specified that I was to help you achieve transformation into a real dragon. My role in that process is now complete. Essessol, shall we depart this wretched plane?"
"For once, I agree with you," the marid responded, whereupon both plane shifted out.
"Varen! You deal with them. Now is NOT a good time!" Zassrion commanded. Then the transformation began, giving him a -5 penalty on AC, disabling his auras, and just generally nerfing him. His skin shone livid white as the humanoid skins began to glow and sink into him, dark spots marking the faces of his victims.
I'll spare you a precise blow-by-blow, and just give you some highlights.
In Round 1, Quiche did ridiculous damage with three fire bombs. Both ogres went down, one having gotten in a single swing (and miss). The Rabbit Prince boldly charged in, provoking an AoO from Zassrion (that missed), and foolishly hurled a feather token beneath the tyrant, causing a massive tree to appear and instantly elevate Zassrion 60 feet in the air. Varen tried to shoot Quiche, only to break his bow string. Zassrion cast Resist Energy (Fire) on himself, because those fire bombs hurt.
In Round 2, Quiche did slightly less ridiculous damage, setting the tree on fire in the process. Varen got freed of the Dominate Person by a well-placed Dispel Magic. The others didn't manage to do a whole lot.
In Round 3, Quiche did even more damage. In 3 rounds, she took out a little over half his hit points, even AFTER the fire resist 10. It was truly ridiculous. The Rabbit Prince valiantly (but foolishly) used Dimension Door to teleport to the top of the tree, where he discovered it was on fire and painful. As for Zassrion, he cast Invisibility on himself -- provoking an AoO from the Rabbit Prince and taking 6 damage in the process -- then flew into the room.
For two more rounds, the party was stymied. Arrhi cast Glitterdust twice, making portions of the ceiling shiny. Varen fired arrows at designated spots, but not hitting him. Quiche hurled bombs at the walls, setting patches of the stone walls alight and thankfully not torching the books; she also hurled some at the hoard, hoping to provoke Zassrion into revealing himself. They made perception checks to see swirling smoke from the Tyrant's wings, which gave them some clues until he flew lower in the room to avoid doing that.
During this time, Zassrion buffed himself with Mage Armor and Shield.
In round 6, Zassrion flew to the ground and dismissed his invisibility. The transformation completed: the last shreds of skin faded into his new cerulean scales, perfect over his whole body -- except for the faces. Scattered all over his body, the deathmasks of his victims stared out of his flesh.
"At last!" he said. "I am FREE!"
Then the eyes of Tiri's death mask snapped open, glowing white. "All praise to Milani!" she said. "From beyond my last breath I defy thee, Tyrant!" Then she opened her mouth, and blood fountained forth from his jugular. (Bleed 15, no save, no way to stop it.)
Zassrion reacted quickly. He went from shock and denial almost instantly to towering range. "Defeated ..." he said quietly. Then roaring: "But I SHALL NOT GO ALONE!"
But he did. He had already used a move action that round, and could make only 1 attack (on Varen) that round. Quiche and Varen between them dealt huge damage. His hit points dropped from 99 to 3 in one round.
In round 7, he got in one full attack on Varen, missing with one of his attacks, and dealing enough damage to put Varen just barely into negatives. Then the bleed effect killed him, and he collapsed on Varen, dealing half his normal crush damage because he was dying at the time. Varen came within 1 point of dying outright, but Arrhi whipped out that Wand of Cure Moderate Wounds and healed stabilized him at the top of round 8. So Zassrion failed even to take any of the party with him.
Except, of course, Tiri.
And even, in the end, he was cheated of that. After the fight was over, and Zassrion well and truly dead, the deathmasks burned into his scales began vanishing, one by one, until only Tiri's was left. Then she vomited forth a pool of wax; the last of it pulled her face from his flesh, and formed the wax into Tiri. A storykin Tiri.
She informed the party that Milani was pleased with her faith in the face of certain death, and had decided that the Harrowed Realm needs a caretaker. Tiri's been given that job, and re-formed by Milani's power from the cast-off wax that Zassrion purged from himself. She can never leave the realm. But she'll never grow old, and has a limited amount of control over the plane that may grow in time.
The Harrow Deck reformed with her, and the party will have it. With Tiri on the other side, able to peep through the telescope, she'll be able to pull them through when they want to visit, using Sonnorae's reconstituted kapenia; and when they leave, they'll find themselves back where they were when they entered, as long as they keep the Harrow Deck with them. It's Mage's Magnificent Mansion on STEROIDS.I did rule that Tiri's channel energy and curative spells now function only on storykin, so that the party can't use it as a portable hospital. She's really, REALLY good at healing. It's still a pretty dang useful thing to have, though they'll need some way to figure out how to contact Tiri across planes to say "okay, could you pick us up now?"
There also remains the problem of Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup. Three succubi are now on the loose in our Kingmaker campaign. Varen is still carrying a Profane Gift from Blossom. Who knows what chaos they'll cause? I gave them some of Unfettered Sky's gear, and I may give them each a level or two of some class or other before handing them over to the regular GM who will no doubt make me regret it.
Overall, this was a smashing success. The evening was a drama roller coaster. First they're up, and then they're down, and then they're back up. Afterwards, my players used words like "epic" and "brilliant" and "best session of the adventure" to describe the experience.
I'd like to thank Jayson MF Kip and Voxumbra for commenting on my plans. And a HUGE thank you to Crystal Frasier for writing this lushly imaginative and supremely enjoyable module!