| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
(Spoilers up until the Demilich are fair game, but as I'm linking this to my players, please try not to spoil anything beyond that. Especially the Special Stuff about Serithiel, they're about to find that out next week.)
I've been running a group through Curse of the Crimson Throne for the last year and a half, maybe two years, and they're reaching the end of Skeletons of Scarwall. There was an encounter with Bishop Zev Ravenka, the Demilich, that I think must be shared.
I've been stalking the Paizo messageboards for a few years now hearing about how the demilich has wiped out entire parties in one or two rounds through use of Wail of the Banshee, and I've noticed all of the threads talking about how dangerous he is and how he's been a veritable Player Character Meatgrinder that has chewed up and spit out whole unaware parties. There's even a sidebar in the Skeletons of Scarwall book about how to weaken the demilich so that your party isn't utterly destroyed by him, so I figure this guy is a really tough cookie, right?
I actually overcompensated a little bit in the realm of anti-undead things that they received from my wandering "Varisian" trader Silviu (I'll have to start another thread all about him, that guy is fun), and I even allowed them to spend Harrow Points to end up at 1 HP away from death and stabilized instead of being slain outright, but in the end neither of those things ended up mattering.
Here's the scenario: The player characters (a Dwarven Cleric of Torag, a Half-Elven Swashbuckler, a Shoanti Ninja, a Human Monk, and a Human Shadow-Sorcerer) walk into the cathedral and everyone immediately OOC recognizes that it's a demilich, and IC a few of them make the Knw: Religion checks to know that disturbing the remains is a bad idea. I expected your typical preparations to take place; buffing spells, the Ninja and Swashbuckler flanking to get their sneak attacks off, etc. What I didn't expect was for the Cleric to stride right over to the remains, whip out his warhammer, and crack the skull for 2 damage over the head.
Everyone who isn't the cleric freaks out. They know what he just did, and they think they're toast. Two of the more rules-searchy players know that a Demilich can use Wail of the Banshee, and they're both figuring the party is screwed. Initiative is rolled, the demilich rolls highest and the cleric rolls right after him. Demiliches have to spend one round reforming their various dusty boney-bits into a serious threat, so it gets its one sluggish round off, and that's the only action it ever got to make. On his initiative count the Cleric figured he needed a way to weaken the Demilich and keep it from casting spells at them, so he uses his Protection Domain spell to cast Anti-Magic Field.
This turns the Demilich into a very angry, very shiny, very helpless Skull.
I looked through a Demiliches abilities to see what it could do in an Anti-Magic Field. It can't use spell, so Wail of the Banshee is out. It can't use Su Abilities, so there goes Devour Soul, Bestow Curse, Torpor, and Unholy Grace. Well it could just move out of the anti-magic field, right? Well... it's a Corporeal Undead that doesn't have wings, so that means it's 30 foot Fly speed is magical in nature. It's a Skull, skulls can't fly without magic. So there's that gone. It can't fly, it can't Wail, it can't absorb souls, it can't hurl people across the room, it can't even use its dust as a cloud. The Demilich retains it's Damage Reduction, and due to being in an Anti-Magic Field they can't use spells on it, but the thing has been reduced to a cursing skull that can do nothing but try to bite them if they get their fingers too close.
Initiative ends due to how long an AMF lasts and how utterly the demilich is dominated, and they proceed to draw a moustache and monocle on his skull, pry out his ruby eyes and ruby teeth, and then spend four straight minutes cracking him with a hammer in order to reduce him to a pile of demilich dust whose resurrection ability is...a Su, and he's in Scarwall, where souls are trapped in the building and bad things happen. So he's destroyed and I think that's the end of the matter, they loot his corpse and go about the rest of their merry way.
That isn't where it ends, but I'll make another post for the rest.
Part 2
The week after they dominated Bishop Zev Ravenka so utterly and thoroughly that our Skype call devolved into nothing but laughter, crying, and a funny little limerick about how utterly he was dominated, they headed on to take out the Chain Spirit (the demilich was their fourth and final spirit anchor slain) and end the Curse of Scarwall. The fight is actually rather bland and boring. That over-compensation I mentioned let them basically do what a Ninja and a Rogue flanking a target tend to do even though he was incorporeal, and even when he ripped a spirit chain out of Laori Vaus (who he had been Cha-Draining to try and turn into another anchor), they made short work of him.
Count Andachi appeared and gave his little spiel, and the majority of the curse was lifted. This coincidentally meant that the Bishop's soul was free to go down to Hell where it belonged, but we'll get back to that. On learning that the full curse hadn't been lifted, they headed to the Star Tower (whose entrances are very poorly labelled I might add, I ended up having a secret entrance behind the statue of Zon-Kuthon in the Cathedral room, though what happened next would have happened whether they came in the 'proper' way or not) to try and remove the rest of the curse.
They encountered Ildervork, the Nightwing, who as luck would have it was waiting Six Hundred and Sixty Six years for a new Curate. From the date given as to his arrival to 4709, the year I've been running CotCT in, it was actually 666 years. Fun coincidence.
Laori Vaus and Shadowcount Sial immediately turned on eachother. Both had grown rather useful and close to the party in different ways; Laori was perky and helpful but her damage aura and chain ended up being more hindrance than help in many cases, while Sial stayed on the sidelines and rarely helped, though when he did help he utterly dominated and proved himself arguably the most dangerous person in the room via the Harm spell and other evil cleric spells. The party wasn't willing to just throw one of them under the bus, but neither did any of them want to make the sacrifice and become the Curate.
They were at a loss, and things were quickly about to devolve into blows. At one point they thought to have Asyra be the Curate, but being not-an-idiot she got the heck out of there and plane-shifted back to her home area now that the majority of the curse was over and done with and she could do that. Before Laori and Sial could start throwing chains at each-other, the Cleric got an idea and went back into the Cathedral to gather up the Demilich Dust and hand it to Sial, telling him "I think you know what to do."
Ressurection can revive creatures that have been turned into Undead and destroyed. They'd found large amounts of diamond dust and a rather impressively-sized diamond in the two dragon hoards they found and Kazavon's secret spell-component room. Sial had prepared Ressurection that day because they planned on fighting as many battles as they could and he knew someone might die. I roll with the possibly-old rules that When you bring someone back to life, they get to know the Alignment and Deity of whoever is bringing you back to life, and get the chance to refuse, meaning that the party's Lawful Good Cleric of Torag would have been refused...but the Lawful Evil Cleric of Zon-Kuthon?
I cut to hell for a moment, where the soul of the Bishop gets word that he's being Resurrected. He jumps at the chance to get his revenge, thinking the party was slain and an evil cleric or one of his acolytes was bringing him back from the dead. He gleefully accepts and finds himself naked on the floor of the Star Tower. No holy symbol, no weapons, no armor. He sees the PCs standing outside the tower with Shadowcount Sial finishing the resurrection spell, and before he can so much as ask "What the hell is going on" or start using Wail of the Banshee, Sial shoves him at the Nightwing and runs out the door, slamming it shut behind him.
Ildervork was patient enough to allow them to do whatever they wished as long as someone stayed behind, but now that he's left alone in a room with a perfect candidate to be the Curate? He attacks, leaves him within an inch of his life (the PCs even heard the splatter), and then drags him off to a demiplane of torture in order to be molded (in multiple ways) into the perfect Curate.
This happened in the same in-game day as their original defeat and domination of the Bishop, and the game session directly after it.
They kicked down his door, walked right into his cathedral, cracked him over the head with a warhammer, turned him into an incredibly angry ornamental skull, drew on him, pried out the rubies in his eyes and teeth, spent four minutes hammering him into bonemeal, caused his soul to get absorbed by Scarwall and then sent directly to Hell, brought him BACK from Hell, and damned him to an eternal existence locked away in the Star Tower in a fleshy mortal body after who knows how long being tortured into a perfect Curate of Zon-Kuthon. In the span of one day.
;) So much for being a creature you have to "Handle with Care", huh?
(Spoilers up until the Demilich are fair game, but as I'm linking this to my players, please try not to spoil anything beyond that. Especially the Special Stuff about Serithiel, they're about to find that out next week.)
I've been running a group through Curse of the Crimson Throne for the last year and a half, maybe two years, and they're reaching the end of Skeletons of Scarwall. There was an encounter with Bishop Zev Ravenka, the Demilich, that I think must be shared.
I've been stalking the Paizo messageboards for a few years now hearing about how the demilich has wiped out entire parties in one or two rounds through use of Wail of the Banshee, and I've noticed all of the threads talking about how dangerous he is and how he's been a veritable Player Character Meatgrinder that has chewed up and spit out whole unaware parties. There's even a sidebar in the Skeletons of Scarwall book about how to weaken the demilich so that your party isn't utterly destroyed by him, so I figure this guy is a really tough cookie, right?
I actually overcompensated a little bit in the realm of anti-undead things that they received from my wandering "Varisian" trader Silviu (I'll have to start another thread all about him, that guy is fun), and I even allowed them to spend Harrow Points to end up at 1 HP away from death and stabilized instead of being slain outright, but in the end neither of those things ended up mattering.
Here's the scenario: The player characters (a Dwarven Cleric of Torag, a Half-Elven Swashbuckler, a Shoanti Ninja, a Human Monk, and a Human Shadow-Sorcerer) walk into the cathedral and everyone immediately OOC recognizes that it's a demilich, and IC a few of them make the Knw: Religion checks to know that disturbing the remains is a bad idea. I expected your typical preparations to take place; buffing spells, the Ninja and Swashbuckler flanking to get their sneak attacks off, etc. What I didn't expect was for the Cleric to stride right over to the remains, whip out his warhammer, and...
I officially LOVE your party!
That's HILARIOUS! And I've linked all my players to this thread!
(The bishop didn't do well in our party at all. Paladin with Aura of Justice = The whole party smiting evil = Dead demilich in under half a round. I even skipped the 1-round delay in the hopes of him getting SOMETHING off, but everyone was Death Warded as well, so Wail of the Banshee did diddly).
Wow.
Please, tell me someone said, "Puny Demilich."
That is hilarious. I'm glad my party didn't think of that. Of course, they had a paladin so they didn't need to. My group actually used Silence. Can't Wail if no one can hear it, right?