21Creature
20Stratos -Creature save vs. spell: DC 161d20+5=15
15Paper
12Modius
12Rufinus
11Isat
10Crassus
Stratos casts a short spell, almost slurring the syllables together in his haste. He dabs a dot of chalk on Paper's face, but nothing seems to happen. He then dabs Isat, and Modius, who are closest to the creature. Still nothing seems to happen, in the instant before the answer spills from Paper's lips, but the creature is hissing now in rage, and glancing from Crassus, to Rufinus, to Stratos.
Paper struggles and blurts out
"I am of the Cornelius Papyrii gens witch! You use sorcery to force me to break my pledge, which means you have no hold over me!"
Then Modius grabs him around the mouth, and presses his jaw shut.
Rufinus moves toward the creature, with his hands wide to grapple, but catching the cues given by the group, he just stands poised to strike, close to the being, but unwilling to get within a few feet.
The words come to Isat too late to help.
"Be silent. Honour your family with silence."
Crassus grabs Rufinus by the poncho, and hauls him back.
Stratos calls out: "The chalk makes you invisible to it. It is dead. It has been dead and sealed away, and this is only its shadow."
The dress twists and writhes, the goat drops flaccid as a skin, then contorts, and contracts back into the creature. The old woman grows taller shockingly fast, and putresces and elongates, into a bleached and angular form that looks like a crone, but is seven feet tall. Crows legs, thick with maggots, and attached backward, flex and paw the ground. The thing that stands amid you now has dark tendrils of shadow steaming from its etiolated skin. unnatural tendons warp the skin, and its grey lips extend to the width of a fist, filled with jagged and browned needle teeth. A black tongue coils in the maw. The skin of the creature is deathly pale, and covered with some strange mucus, like blasphemous amniotic fluid. it has no claws, just nails ripped away by clawing at grave dirt.
Perception checks, and will saves needed. Will DC is 15.
The creature has exerted its will in the change of form and has no other actions to take this turn.
Isat thoughtfully hefts the horseshoe he's holding and wonders if he can aim well enough to knock out his friend with it.
My humble apologies to Modius. I swapped his touch attack and his to hit in my copy-and-pasteathon. He had 20, well enough to muffle Paper. As it happens, Stratos' invis to undead kept it from hearing the name, but I will happily say that nothing else could hear Paper either, because he was being gagged by his hibernian friend.
Isat
Creatures like this may drain energy, or cause disease or damage by touch. It is an undead. Channeling may affect it.
If you want to tell the party what you have seen, you need to paraphrase it in your own words. Please don't tell them just to open the spoiler.
Gnaeus Cornelius Papyrus is panicked. He needs to get away, and hide. He has no other option. The creature looks taller and tougher than it is to him.
Isat reaches for his holy symbol and places it carefully within the iron horseshoe before extending the whole contraption towards the creature. To the surprise of his companions, he is not looking at shape changed fiend itself, but somewhere else entirely.
"This is not as it seems. The beast is there." He gestures.
"It is an illusion, yet real. Dismiss it from your mind, it is a creature of evil, bound in iron and stone and seeking only our doom. It uses fear to snare us. Dismiss it I say. It can only harm us if you believe in it."
With a sharp gesture, he follows his own advice, tracing an ancient symbol of expulsion in the air with his holy symbol.
"In the name of the Great Mother who is nameless yet ever-present, I deny you!"
Channel Positive Energy
When you channel positive energy, you unleash a wave
of positive energy in a 30-foot burst. All undead in this
radius take 1d6 points of positive energy damage plus
1d6 points of positive energy damage for every two cleric
levels you have attained beyond 1st (1d6 at 1st level, 2d6
at 3rd, 3d6 at 5th, and so on) and must flee from you (as
if frightened) for 1d4 rounds + your Charisma modifier.
Undead in this radius are allowed a Will save that negates
the frightened condition and results in half damage. The
DC of this save is equal to 10 + 1/2 your cleric level + your
Charisma modifier. Undead who take damage greater
than their hit points crumble to dust and are destroyed
by the power of your deity. If a f leeing undead is subject
to channeled negative energy, it is not controlled, but
does receive a new saving throw to dispel the f lee effect.
Living creatures within the area are healed a like
amount by this wave of positive energy. You can choose
whether or not to include yourself in this effect. Hit
points gained above a living creature’s total are lost.
Initiative order is as follows:
21Creature (Changed shape, with horrid visage.)
20Modius
20Stratos
15Paper
12Rufinus
11Isat
10Crassus
The creature's image is a scant fifteen feet from Isat, and five feet from Rufinus, ten from Crassus.
Isat, Paper and Modius are invisible to it.
Isat saw the real creature in the warded hill, about 350 feet away.
Oh. Modius gets +4 on the save.
Paper is panicked, and will need to get away from the monstrosity. I would like him to roll a d10 to see which way he runs. The creature is to the east of all of you. The hill, with the real menace, is due north.
1 = Runs to the north.
2,3 =Runs northwest
4,5,6 =Runs west, to the forest of the fey.
7,8 =Runs southwest
9 =Runs south
0 digs into the ground.
<Draws his sword on the move and engages the creature.>
<He looks at Crassus.>
"Can I attack this thing?"
Confusion reigns in the wake of the creature's shift.
Modius charges the hill. He sees the creature for what it is, a projection of the real creature. As he runs, blade drawn, he shouts to Crassus, and Crassus waves his arms and shakes his head.
Paper is terrified by the creature's illusory double, and he runs frantically away from it. His path takes him north, straight for the hill with the warding stones, that is three hundred feet away. Crassus is trying to pull Rufinus away from the image, and Rufinus heeds him and backs away.
Stratos runs after Paper and Modius, and shouts: "Modius, don't let Paper cross the stones!"
A flash of holy light bursts from Isat's outstretched medallion. The illusory creature does not react to the burst, until a moment too long, then seems to burn, but the reaction was slow, and conscious, as the real evil, in its warded prison, adjusts the projected image to account for the damage.
Initiative order is as follows:
21Creature
20Modius
20Stratos
15Paper
12Rufinus
11Isat
10Crassus
The real creature, in its wards, becomes visible. The seeming is an exact image of the original, except for the shadowy wreathing slick that surrounds it. The creature is standing on its reversed legs, with its pale slick skin stretched taut and gaunt over an unnatural frame.
It is three hundred feet away from the sprinting Paper and Modius. The rest of you are three hundred and fifty feet away from it.
Stratos is too far behind Paper to have any chance of catching him. The scholar is not built for speed.
Modius can only attack the creature by crossing the warding stones. He can attempt to catch paper by succeeding on an athletics roll vs an opposed athletics roll by Paper. To simplify the posting order, the DC assumes that Paper will take ten, yielding a DC of 13,
If that roll succeeds, Modius must succeed in a grapple to restrain Paper.
Alternately, Modius can try an intimidate or diplomacy check to get Paper to change course. DC 15.
Paper has not seen the real creature yet, He is almost blinded by panic, and his fear is riding him hard.
Heck, try both.
"You're enchanted Centurion, enter that circle and you will die."
<Then tackle him.>
<Modius takes him at the hips, grapple.>
Modius successfully tackles Gnaeus Cornelius Papyrus.
Stratos, wheezing and puffing, comes up to help.
Rufinus takes a good few steps back from the apparition, and moves to shelter Isat physically.
Crassus beckons you all to go into the forest. He looks distraught at the the way things are unfolding.
Seeing that Modius has Paper under control, Isat moves towards the centaur.
Still holding his symbol out, he calls "Away from here. Leave this evil."
So, are you going to retreat?
Stratos tries to help drag Paper into the forest. He gets in the way, more than he helps, but Paper stops struggling, and moves with Modius into the tree cover. After a moment, Paper comes to his senses, and regains awareness of his surroundings. Rufinus stays a little longer than the rest of you. The creature lets go of the image it cast, and the image winks out of existence. Nothing is left, except the brooding hill, and a malevolent sense of hunger that emanates from it. On the cusp of the warding circle, you can now see bones glinting in the distance from previous victims of the wraithlord in its barrow. The seeming that made the hill seem tame has fallen away. A shifting mottled blur of wispy darkness twists and twitches on the perimiter of its prison, prying in vain for a way to reach outside with more than just a projection.
The wood you are in are too colourful and vivid to be comforting. Strange artifacts of vision flicker on the periphery of your awareness. Tinny hallucinatory sounds seem to come from all directions. Even your senses of direction seem a little off kilter. There is no mistaking that these woods are fey.
"I see why the Romans need roads. They run so fast! You need not feel any shame. That was strong witchwork. I know how it feels to lose yourself to a spell. Perhaps Modius is right, and this place is all accursed, though it seem so fair"
Glowers at Stratos.
Downcast, and obviously upset with himself"I am sorry. I failed you all. I was not thinking."
Isat applies himself once more to the task of soothing a comrade who feels like a failure.
"Stratos, without your skill, I doubt we'd have escaped so easily. And I don't think this place is accursed Rufinus. We were told it was a refuge for those with no place in our world. It seems to me that Lysoskevos has not set himself up as a judge. Refuge for all, but safeguards to prevent the rampant flourishing of evil."
He looks thoughtfully around the disturbing forest. "I'm getting more and more anxious to meet the wise one. And I use "anxious" in every way I can think of."
" I called out their names. When I wanted" points to Modius "him to stop him" points to Paper
"Ack. My apologies. I've just broken the prohibition myself."
Isat looks wildly around, hoping that nothing and nobody was within earshot.
Paper struggles under Modius
"Let me free Iberian!"
"Centurion, the Iberian holding you down is the only thing keeping you from a really revolting doom." Isat points at the bones adorning the area.
<Modius drinks from his skin and listens, rubbing the wooden cross he wears around his neck.>
Crassus guides you all back toward the road. He keeps the verge of the woods visible at all times. If any of you wander deeper into the woods, he quickly trots to intercept and herd you back to the verge.
Modius, Stratos, and Rufinus are the ones who most often drift toward the deeper woods.
Modius
Will save, DC 14. The emeralds give you a +4.
Rambling and dreamy at first, but becoming firm.
"Something is fogging my head. I feel sweet, I mean druggy. Like a moss in the.. I mean hash. Work long on hash. Poor Zalmoxis shouldn't have died like that. Pa...roman. Friend Roman. They want us to go in, and they have my name. Not my family name. They can't have that one. Just got my slave name. Not really my name at all. I will not be bewitched again."
Rufinus slaps himself hard, and his eyes clear.
Stratos starts walking into the woods directly. He seems completely distracted, and has turned pale. He has his arms open wide, and is muttering under his breath.
In Persian:" For the root of all magic is the symbol. The logos. Logos. Creatrix. "
It looks like he is gathering to break into a run. Any of you can make a dex check to intercept him. Roll a d20, and try to roll under your dex score.
Will save: 1d20 5=25 ... niiiiice.
"Brothers. It feels as if something is upon my spirit, too. Pulling me, attracting me. I smell lavender."
<Modius keeps the cross held tightly but focuses.>
"Stra..." he says, then stops himself. "Centurion, can you not stop him?"
In Persian
"The symbol is here brother. The path you need to follow lies before you. Walk with me."
"I see it now. The eyes of my eyes are open."
Isat deftly places a hand on Stratos' arm, and blocks his way. Stratos yelps suddenly in pain, and drops the horseshoe he carried. It is starting to glow red-hot. The ground singes and bubbles. Moss curls and fries.
Crassus moves directly between Stratos and the deeper woods.
A wind that is not there whips the trees into a sudden flurry. Leaves tumble from the giant limbs of ancient oaks and alders and hazel and ash.
Everyone needs to make a perception check, DC 17. Please roll a d12 at the same time. Roll high.