Kobold Lord's page

My group ended their last session in the sargasso, so there's only a few fights before they're out of Dark Mountain Pass. I've been wanting to make Olangru a villain to remember, so I've been reviewing some of the previous threads on this topic, so I have a fairly action-packed seven days between Dark Mountain and Fogmire. A rough schedule is as follows:

Day 1: During camp, the fire is twice plunged into Darkness for one hour or until dispelled, meanwhile random NPCs are hit by Cause Fear. Steal some supplies during the distraction.

Day 2: A native elven woman stands on the road ahead, watching the PCs. As they approach, she draws a ceremonial dagger and cuts her own neck. Her body rots with unnatural speed, and her spirit points and curses the existence of the survivors. While the PCs are distracted Thunderstrike is hit by Cause Fear, possibly knocking some NPCs off the cliff. That night, a log with a centipede swarm is dropped into camp at night, and at same time the supplies are returned with the food replaced by bloody meat.

Day 3: Decapitated bird carcasses are discovered in the middle of the campsite arranged to match the sleeping arrangements. During the day there is the skull slide. A suicidal elven native stabs himself and dives off the cliff from above; where he stood they can find a throne with a misassembled elven skeleton. While they're looking, Telekinesis shoves an NPC off the cliff.

Day 4: The head of a gargoyle is discovered in the middle of camp in the morning, warning "The winged ones come tomorrow. Do not die yet, meat." Sabotaged lift. After making camp for the night, individual fiendish baboons rain monkey scat onto the camp. The illusory ghost of a dead NPC gives false warning of betrayal from within.

Day 5: Combined gargoyle ambush by Quotoctoa's forces. A minor NPC is abducted and then tortured within earshot overnight; if they try to find the victim they run into an illusory half-eaten yet still breathing body that explodes into gore and green maggots. The illusion then rots away with unnatural speed. More abductions occur while the PCs are away from camp.

Day 6: A backpack is dropped into camp containing the organs of the kidnapped NPC, tied with article of his or her clothing. They discover a path heading into the jungle. Ahead, an illusory pathway covers a ruined section of causeway, and after the illusion is uncovered the path is found to be impassable.

Day 7: Fogmire. The native zombie is replaced by a zombie of the undoubtedly-dead-by-now Thunderstrike, which has its legs broken in order to be nailed spread-eagle. If Thunderstrike is taken down before being destroyed (and Avner will foolishly try to order somebody to do so, or eventually do it himself if nobody else will), the horse will immediately try to eat some delicious brains. At dusk, Olangru starts picking off NPCs in earnest, although he's careful not to overwhelm the abilities of his naga healer.

I'm looking for fun/creepy things to do that I missed, of course. I'm also thinking it might be possible to rearrange some of the events to make it flow better, but I thought the eyes of other DMs would be helpful. Also, I'm a bit concerned that I might be going a bit too far at certain points, running the risk of becoming tedious rather than creepy, so if something seems like too much or otherwise not worthwhile, I'd like to know.

Note that the group of PCs will probably have a large entourage of shipwreck survivors, since I'm planning to have almost everybody survive. All of these survivors have names, and there are quite a few noncombatants (three of which are children, including Tavey). There are quite a few red shirts to burn through, but I'd prefer to make it possible to save some.

We have one PC who can detect invisible creatures, but she doesn't have any ranks in Spot. So Olangru can come and go pretty freely.

Until the group reaches Fogmire, the standard operating procedure for abduction will be to hit an NPC with Cause Fear from three different casters. Any NPC with 6HD or less will automatically be panicked for one round even if they make all three saves, so they will be abducted as soon as they run out of sight.

All right, comments?

There are quite a few ways for the dealings with Ahazu to be irreparably ruined. Maybe there's a paladin in the party who'd lose class features. Maybe the party has nobody with a high enough Diplomacy check to even try hitting DC 40. Maybe somebody gets sucked into the pool and annihilated and the players decide to avoid the obvious deathtrap. Maybe the PCs decide that getting information on the Prince of Demons is not worth leapfrogging another demon lord all the way up to the currently-vacant God of Demons position. Maybe Ahazu's minimum terms are considered too unreasonable. I have no doubt that many PC groups will not want to play along, but going by the plain-reading of Wells of Darkness, it seems the plot grinds to a halt unless you make the bargain.

So... Is there any *real* significance for the Tome of Infinite Spells, or is Freedom simply adequate to free Shami-Amourae? Freedom is, after all, the ultimate jailbreak spell in the game, and it is otherwise pretty underpowered as a 9th-level spell if it can't even do its job.

Maybe Ahazu is simply trying to get the party to offer themselves willingly? According to the text, Ahazu is seeking godhood by using the power of the trapped entities... if he always demands a more powerful sacrifice in trade for a freed servant, his "minimum demands" will always eventually result in somebody failing to procure the more powerful prisoner and becoming willing sacrifices themselves. If the party PCs don't fail now, then whomever comes along trying to free Demogorgon will fail in their place, since there aren't a whole lot of CR38 sacrifices out there.

If only the willing sacrifices are suitable for Ahazu's purposes, then that explains why he's so intent on making these deals, and it also explains why he spends the lives of his loyal followers so carelessly. Ultimately, the unwilling sacrifices are just bargaining chips by which to acquire more willing sacrifices. If the PCs make a foolish bargain with a demon here, they get a handy instruction manual for freeing Shami-Amourae, but freeing her was always within their power. If the PCs are willing to do the legwork, the research, and the trial-and-error, though, they can free Shami-Amourae and even set Ahazu's plan back indefinitely.

So... a few questions to James Jacobs, Eric Boyd, or whomever else ends up reading this. I would certainly roll with it if the PCs refused to deal with Ahazu, but I kind of what to hear the "official" opinions on the subject.

#1: Will any Freedom spell work, or does it have to be that particular Freedom spell?
#2: If it does have to be the Freedom spell from the book, what's the Use Magic Device DC to fool Shami-Amourae's Well of Darkness into thinking a regular Freedom spell is from the book?
#3: If there is no way around bargaining with Ahazu, how do Paladins get to Enemy of My Enemy without losing all their class features? They can skip dealing with Orcus and whatnot and just face a somewhat more powerful Demogorgon in the end, but how do they bypass this part here?
#4: Isn't feeding sacrifices to a Demon Lord a little bit more over-the-top EEE-VIL than has been customary so far in the adventure path? Seriously, most of the characters I've played over the years would refuse to sacrifice a living being to a demon, even if that living being was a bad guy. I would have to imagine there are a lot of other players out there who would also refuse. This really isn't a shade of grey.
#5: Anybody else got an idea on what sort of thing might work to get Shami-Amourae out? It can be a lot harder, as long as it is more appropriate to ruthlessness-challenged PCs.