Loot taken from the lich:
2 potions of invisibility
+3 chain shirt
+1 heavy mace
Amulet of natural armor +3
Belt of incredible dexterity +2
Cloak of resistance +3
Headband of mental prowess +4 (Wis, Cha)
Ring of protection +2
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Those with ranks in Knowledge (religion) may attempt a DC 23 check to know about liches and their phylacteries....
Koran smashes the albino lich into a pulpy mess with his second swing of Mjolnir.... Due to his unfortunate positioning, he takes slashing from the force blades while attacking....
Counting Radsworth's acid breath bullet, which DID punch SR, down 188 hp!
Down 139 hp!
Down 111 hp from Yingzen and MJ!
Lavinia takes 57 damage from Yingzen's surprise slash! G'NAAAAAH!!
Lavinia deftly parries all of Yingzen's strikes! (AC 36)
Concentration vs DC 27 to cast harm on self defensively succeeds.... An ultraviolet radiance envelops Lavinia and all of her damage is healed by negative energy! Ye can't destroy me, puny mortals! I be immortal! HAHAHAHAHA!!!
The lich seems unaffected by Radsworth's dragon's breath bullet!
Yingzen takes slashing from the force blades whipping and spinning throughout the lich's blade barrier.... His first strike misses....
The lich is still up! Marcus gets off another sunburst that scorches her unholy flesh.... So far, Marcus' sunbursts have dealt a total of 119 damage to the lich....
Assuming Koran makes all the saves necessary to carry out his full attacks, the lich has sustained 193 bludgeoning plus Marcus' light damage, and is now destroyed.... Mythic Blade barrier deals Koran slashing damage....
Lavinia screams as two of Koran's mighty blows impact her through the blade barrier and her armor.... Koran must make a DC 28 Fortitude save vs creeping paralysis.... Strength reduction from blasphemy lasts rounds....
Before anyone can react, Lavinia utters a blasphemy (DC 25 Will) so utterly foul, it kills the six innocent sacrificial victims as soon as it leaves her withered lips! DC 25 Will save from Koran, Mikey Jay, and Yingzen (and Kepler, most likely) or be weakened and dazed....
Mikey Jay, Koran and Yingzen are all within 60 ft of lich.... Will save DC 28 vs the lich's fear aura
Lavinia also burns one more power point to immediately cast mythic blade barrier to try to saw Marie apart.... Mythic blade barrier deals damage (DC 24 Ref)....
Casting mythic flame strike defensively, DC 25.... Concentration .... Concentration to keep casting in spite of getting chopped by Marie's axe.... Concentration .... Lavinia manages to still cast the mythic flame strike....
Right! Lavinia goes on initiative 32.... She casts mythic flame strike on the casters, creating a 20-ft-diameter, 40-ft-long cylinder of roaring flames that catches Daisy, Levinson, Marcus, and Radsworth.... Mythic flame strike (Ref DC 23 for half) deals fire damage to the FOs' casters!
Lavinia shrieks as beams of searing divine sunlight lance out in a burst to burn her undead flesh! (Her SR is 32, so burn the surge....)
Initiative
In Aklo: Gugs and night gaunts of the Stygian depths! Fetch us some worthy sacrifices for the calling of Yog-Sothoth! Raid yonder city of Baghdad.... Take from whatever His children left alive.... Quickly! In obeisance, the two gugs lumber off, and the four night gaunts fly off, to ruined Baghdad in search of survivors of the spawns' rampage to sacrifice to Yog-Sothoth!
Lavinia awaits the return of the spawn of Yog-Sothoth from their night-time rampage in Baghdad.... As she waits, other dark things creep forth from the ruins, drawn to the thrumming power of the open gate atop the great ziggurat.... Night gaunts--black, slender, bat-winged horrors from the nether depths of the Earth's deepest cavern-realms--flutter up through miles of labyrinthine passageways in the Earth's crust to emerge under the starry sky and flit wildly about the circular gate, like giant moths drawn to an unholy fire.... A pair of shaggy gugs burrow up from nighted crypts below, monstrous vertical jaws drooling and slavering, grunting and roaring with bestial anticipation of the advent of Yog-Sothoth! They sway and hoot in antiphonal response to the chanting of the albino lich clad in the panoply of the high priestess of Yog-Sothoth!
Them others as came after your brother were children o' your Paw by other women.... I ain't reckoned on that.... But ain't no matter.... Them as bore them other'n's is dead now.... I'm the Queen! I'm the new bride o' Yog-Sothoth, now!! HAHAHAHAHA!!! Lavinia exults in her imminent moment of triumph.... Her wedding to Yog-Sothoth....
Welcome, my son! Welcome back to our'n world! I reckon ye be a-thirstin'.... Sate your thirst on yonder man-things as dwell in ol' Baghdad.... Then return ye here, my son, an' witness the glorious entrance o' your Pa when I calls 'im out o' yonder gate!! Lavinia dotes on the Horror called through the gate as a mother would her newborn infant....
The demon-skull rod comes down with brutal force on the sacrificial victim's head, caving in her skull and splattering her brains upon the altar stone.... In Aklo: Innocent blood has been spilt! Brains on the stone of the Opener of Ways! Come through the gate, my second-born.... Come, Son of Yog-Sothoth!
Clad in the shining, blue-green panoply of the high priest of Yog-Sothoth, Lavinia Whateley presents a demonic aspect with her rams-horned helm and skull visor, demon-skull-topped rod uplifted.... Standing atop the Great Ziggurat, before a slab of sand-scoured stone that had served as an altar for time immemorial, the high priestess of Yog-Sothoth faces the great gate and chants in an echoing voice like the baying of jackals! Wilbur Whateley, the giant flesh golem, lumbers up the steps with a wiggling, kicking, screaming, sobbing young woman--abducted recently from a survivor camp in the ruins of nearby Baghdad, about 50 miles away--held under one magically-empowered arm.... In Aklo: Ia! Ia! Yog-Sothoth! Opener of the Ways! Throw wide the starry portal, and send forth mine second-born.... Thine son! The very fabric of reality begins to swirl inward like a whirlpool....which expands like the dilating pupil on the eye of a Great Old One.... A circular portal opens where the rectangular brick gateway had once stood.... Beyond were stars, nebulae, geometries, and physical laws abhorrently alien to those of the known universe....
Oh, Wilbur!.... This be the moment we been a-toilin' an' a-travailin' about.... We gonna call your Pa through the gate, my sweet boy!.... Lavinia clutches the hulking flesh golem's stitch-riddled face with her birdlike claws.... Your brother....him as was driven out o' this here world into your Pa's world by Armitage and his ilk.... He ought see this glorious day, Wilbur.... Afore I calls your Pa through, I'm a-gonna call your brother back through the gate....so's he can revel in his Pa's entrance into hither world!! HAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!! The lich trembles as she opens the Book of Thoth to the summoning she seeks....
The four mummy porters lower Lavinia's litter gently to the ground, and stiffly lurch toward the great mound at the center of the ruined city.... Raising their bandage-wrapped arms in unison, they invoke a primal supernatural command over desert sands.... A sandstorm begins to form, first as a series of small dust devils that lift the sand off the great mound, merging together in a great whirlwind of sand that soon towers menacingly over the receding mound.... A rectangular brick frame or gateway is unearthed at the peak, 40-ft high and 20-ft wide.... There! There be the doorway!.... Keep it up, my darlin's! Unearth the priestly portal, so's I can enter the old vestry, an' don the ceremonial panoply.... The mummies keep their arms upraised, jaws working in a soundless chant, and the sandstorm continues to unearth more of the cyclopean ziggurat buried within the mound....
Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, in the desert wastes outside the ruined city of Baghdad, among the rubble and dune-covered ruins of the far more ancient city of Babylon.... Lavinia's mummy porters bear her covered litter over the sand-and-rubble-choked ruins, the hulking flesh golem that was once her son, Wilbur Whateley, ponderously trudging along beside them.... Head for yonder great dune, my darlin's.... There be buried the Great Ziggurat of Yog-Sothoth.... We must unearth it, so's I can call the Opener o' Ways through the gate....
We ain't scare o' ghosts, Neferkaptah! Nor o' curses! Your illusions won't fool me, like they done that ol' fool from the story! The Book o' Thoth is mine, now! So you jus' lay back down in your sarcophagus an' shut yer mouth!.... Come on, Wilbur.... Come, my darlins.... We have the Book, now we must get t' Babylon.... That's where we'll find the best gateway to call Yog-Sothoth! Lavinia leads her grotesque band out of the dark crypt, veritably crooning and caressing the ancient binding of the Book of Thoth....
In the lightless catacomb below the Necropolis of Giza: Lavinia Whateley and her macabre party of grave robbers have arrived in the chamber they have long sought, a 30-ft-square vault with a 20-ft-high ceiling, walls graven with hieroglyphs and reliefs depicting the gods, goddesses, and strange demons of ancient Egypt.... At the center of the vault lies a great, gilt sarcophagus, it's lid depicting a near-mythical Egyptian King.... Ia! Ia! Yog-Sothoth! All glory 'n praise to the Opener o' Ways! We found it, my darlins! We found it! It be inside yonder sarcophagus! Bring it to me, Wilbur, my son! Bring your maw the Book o' Thoth, so's she can call your paw into our'n world! Then, the work we begun in Dunwich can finally be done! Your paw....Yog-Sothoth, Opener o' Ways....will purge this world o' every livin' thing....make it pure again, as it were afore the Elder Things done contaminated it.... Your paw, my beloved husband, will make the world clean 'n ready to be drawn into HIS realm, 'twixt the universes! The grotesque flesh golem that was once the repugnant, semi-human giant known as Wilbur Whateley lurches toward the sarcophagus in obeisance to its mother and creator's command.... On touching the sarcophagus lid, the golem is suddenly bathed in a web of crackling electricity that briefly illuminates the chamber.... The golem seems to barely notice the arcane lightning coursing through its form, causing muscles and sinews to jerk and spasm.... Suddenly moving with invigorated haste, the golem throws the sarcophagus lid to the chamber floor with a resounding crash that echoes like thunder in the vaulted chamber.... It reaches into the sarcophagus, a scythe blade (still razor sharp after some five millennia) slices cleanly through its forearm, and it draws back the bloodless stump! Oh! My poor baby boy! Don't you worry none, maw can sew that back on, good as new! Now, there shouldn't be no more traps, my boy.... Bring maw the Book! Flesh golem Wilbur reaches into the sarcophagus with its remaining hand, and plucks the mythical Book of Thoth from it's eons-long resting place.... As the golem turns back to its creator, Book of Thoth in hand, a ghostly form materializes--a handsome Egyptian in the raiment of an ancient king, translucent and grim....
Lavinia's expedition halts before a dusty, web-shrouded valve.... Yonder valve opens into the Vault o' Blades, if'n what Paw used to tell o' this place be true.... I'll cast a spell what ought still the blades for a time so as we can pass safely, my sweets.... She lays a bony hand on her son Wilbur's arm and points a bony finger at the ancient valve.... Open it, boy! The flesh golem that was once Wilbur Wately shambles to obey its mother's command.... Sinews given unnatural strength by the lich's necromancy strain and creak as the golem turns the ancient valve and pulls it open, releasing a groan of stale air and dust.... In the circular vault beyond, the whistling and whirring of steel blades whipping around in a lethal orbit echoes in the darkness.... Lavinia raises her bony hands, moving them in arcane patterns, and chanting a brief incantation.... Dispel magic fails! The blade barrier persists.... Blast! The priest what laid this ward was mighty indeed, my dearies.... She tries again.... Dispel magic succeeds! This time, the blades fall with a great clangor to the vault floor and lay still. Quick, now! Afore the magic reanimates the blades! The lich leads her ghastly entourage through the vault and into a passageway on the other side.... T'ain't far now, my darlin's....
The lich Lavinia and her flesh golem son, Wilbur, follow the four mummies through the winding, zigzagging corridor far beneath the Necropolis of Gisa.... Ahead, a scintillating rainbow of colored lights dances in a chamber.... Ahhh.... Here be the Rainbow Chamber pa used t' tell of.... Those as knows the answer t' the riddle, as I do, can pass through safely.... The emaciated, redheaded lich halts her macabre company.... Step only where I step, children! she commands. Lavinia walks below the archway, engraved with a combination of Middle Kingdom hieroglyphs and Greek letters, and sets foot only upon specific bands of the rainbow-hued floor of the chamber beyond, as radiant as a noon day.... Her ghastly entourage shuffles in her footsteps, avoiding the perilous magic that destroys those who misstep....
A cluster of long spikes shoots out of small holes in the mortared wall, filled in with clay millennia ago to conceal them.... ....and impales Lavinia's lead mummy! It groans and slowly pulls itself off of the spikes.... Oh, my poor baby! Did it hurt much? The mummy nods.... Oh, poor, poor mummy-baby! Mama's so sorry you done got hurt, my sweet baby.... Now you tear them mean ol' spikes off'n the wall for Mama.... The much-punctured mummy obliges its mistress, and with an unholy strength fueled by necromancy, rips the spikes off of the corridor wall, one by one....
The lead mummy steps on a pressure plate, triggering a jet of searing flames to blast it from the open mouth of a bas relief hell hound carved on the wall of the passageway!
Mummy's Ref save succeeds! The fire deals 19 damage to the vulnerable mummy.... Oh, dear! Are you hurt, darlin'? fusses Lavinia, pushing past the other three mummies to smother the flames still leaping off the lead mummy with her cloak.... The lead mummy shakes its head and pats at a rogue flame on its thigh....
Coming across an ancient tomb-raider's skeleton, neatly bisected at the waist by a rusty, guillotine-like blade that still divided it into upper and lower halves, and obliged Wilbur to pry it out if the way before further progress would be possible for the bulky flesh golem, Lavinia flattens herself against one side of the narrow tunnel and orders the mummy porters to go before her.... Another 20 ft down the tunnel, the lead mummy pauses before a black, yawning pit, 30 ft deep and lined with rusty iron spikes, on which the bones and skulls of long-dead, would-be tomb-raiders are impaled. Pushing to the front to see what has caused the mummies to stop, Lavinia sees the black, spike-lined pit. She summons Wilbur. Come, my big, handsome boy.... Stretch your strappin' body across yonder pit, my son, an' us as is smaller 'n ye'll crawl across ye to t'other side.... Wilbur silently obeys, crawling to the edge of the pit and stretching his long, misshapen limbs across to the far side, forms a bridge of dead, animated flesh for Lavinia and the mummies to crawl across the pit on.... One by one, the hideous undead tomb-raiders crawl across the flesh golem bridge spanning the pit....
Lavinia had learnt from fell spirits via dark, blood-fueled divinations, that the artifacts she sought were, as lore suggested, sealed within the Tomb of Neferkaptah.... Further blasphemous rites yielded the exact location of Neferkaptah's Tomb.... Now her "son", Wilbur Whateley, and her four mummy porters, had dug away thousands of pounds of sand to unearth the long-buried secret door, which Wilbur had to drag out of its frame with magic-driven sinews straining.... A dark, bat-infested tunnel, so low and narrow that Lavinia and the mummies were obliged to stoop to pass through it, while Wilbur was forced to crawl on his belly like a monstrous worm, descended down into the Stygian darkness of Neferkaptah's Tomb....
By the spectral light of the moon, Lavinia Whateley surveys the black shapes of mastabas and sand-blasted monuments half swallowed by the desert.... Divinations performed with the potency of spilt blood to maximize results, she learnt from her god and master--Yog-Sothoth, Opener of Ways--the location of the specific tomb she sought.... The tomb that would soon yield its Stygian treasures to her! Three mighty artifacts of extreme power would soon be within her grasp.... Only a few hundred feet of sand and stone separated her from The Book of Thoth, The Ankh, and The Scepter of Osiris.... With these relics of the Stygian pantheon, the lich known as Lavinia Whateley would be a fitting bride for her evil, alien god, Yog-Sothoth! Finding the exact tomb she has sought for so long, she gives voice to a hideous cackle of triumphant glee! Yessss!! That be the tomb, for certain! The spirits can't lie about such things.... There be the place we seek, Wilbur, my handsome boy! Now.... You and the porters get to diggin', while Mama sings a hymn of praise to your True Pa.... As the grotesque flesh golem known as Wilbur Whateley and the four mummy porters stoop in the sand and begin to dig, Lavinia raises her cracked, painted visage to the pale moon and begins to croon an ancient and terrible hymn praising the Opener of Ways--Yog-Sothoth!
The sun blazed above the desert sands and ancient stone mastabas of the Necropolis, baking the City of the Dead as it had for many millennia, bleaching the stones of the ancient tombs as white as the bones entombed within them.... Lavinia rode in the shade of a litter born by tireless mummy porters, but the heat or shade made little difference to her, for she felt neither hot nor cold. She felt nothing but the utter emptiness, the vast, mind-shriveling vacuum of undeath. Even in the heat of the desert sun, her pallid, misproportioned body exuded an aura of chill....the cold of the grave.... Her frizzy red hair a wild mane around her white, almost luminous skull, her sunken eye sockets smoldering with a red glow, her decayed teeth jaggedly protruding from her rotten gums in her gaping mouth.... She was somehow grossly fat in her jowls, flabby white arms, hips, and belly, and yet almost skeletal along her spine and lower limbs, with almost birdlike lower legs and feet, and bony, gnarled, claw-like hands.... The Book of Thoth.... I know it be here.... Down in the dark, under the sand where the scorpions creep.... My pa swore it be here.... He done read it in the Big Book.... I'm fixin' to find it and make its secrets 'n powers mine! I'll be the greatest witch since Baba Yaga! With the mummy-born litter traveled Lavinia's son, Wilbur Whateley, or at least the grotesque, malformed, stitched-together frame that ambled ploddingly along next to the litter had been formed of Wilbur Whateley's mortal remains.... Now Wilbur was more machine than man, a fleshy automaton animated by Lavinia's dark witchcraft. Them as what stopped us afore be long dead.... Pathetic, snooty scholars.... Men o' science, they called themselves.... Nobody'll stop my Beloved from a-comin' to this here world, and claiming his dear Lavinny.... We'll get justice for what they done to my poor boy.... My poor Wilbur.... The world's a-squealin' and a-squawkin' now that old Cthulhu done come up from the deep with all his kin.... How the world'll scream for death when MY BELOVED come into the world! Every knee shall bend before Yog-Sothoth! |