And, again, there's material here that my players have not uncovered yet. If you're in my game, be ye warned that this way lies ruin(ed fun).
I haven't done a ton to clean my notes up for public consumption. Apologies. This is a gritty glimpse into the way I make notes.
I have done some work to inject commentary on how the playtest went as the players went through the dungeon. Retrospective-ing is one of the reasons I'm mocking up these play reports.
The Skeleton Castle
The City of Gafferdy had a huge necropolis. Within its crypts, generations of dead were revered, respected, and consulted.
When the Moon King rose, the dead roused too slowly to save the living. However, the necropolis succeeded in driving off the invaders and building the Walls of Ot. The powerful undead raised new ranks from the fallen and then fortified the city against further invasion. They walled themselves off from the outside world, creating a city where the dead were the only citizens.
The necropolis limped away from City, crawling on skeletal arms. Now it waits in the Barrowlands, terrified of the living.
Playtest Note: I cover my Meatgrinder basics in this post.
I. Resources taxed
II. Resources taxed
III. Resources taxed
IV. Resources taxed
V. Resources taxed
VI. [Curiosity] Distantly, one of the bells of the necropolis tolls. It sends a shiver up your spine.
VII. [Curiosity] An obelisk bearing the ancient inscription (Cups 4 or Linguist to read): YVAIN - WHO TAMED THE SUN
VIII. [Curiosity] A sarcophagus wrought of many bones, depicting several skeletal hands reaching out towards a skeletal maiden. The inscription reads: HER LOYAL KNIGHTS NEVER LEFT HER SIDE
IX. [Curiosity] A beautifully carved statue of a nude queen, her modesty kept by her long hair, wearing only a crown of sun’s rays. The inscription reads: YLLYSA, COLD AS THE DEW, SWIFT AS THE DEER
X. [Curiosity] The cherubic faces of ghost children are illuminated by their tiny candles that they hold in their chubby little hands. They provide dim light.
XI. [Travel Event] A little grey kitty, the starveling cat, mews and runs through their feet and kneads at their bedroll and looks pitiful. Its ribs stick out. It looks hungry.
If the PCs don't shoo it away, the starveling cat will begin to follow them everywhere. It hunts for itself and is generally agreeable, but will always hungrily eat any food offered it. They have a pet.
XII. [Travel Event] Finely-dressed skeletons emerge from the ground. One plays the violin while the others try to dance with characters. If danced with for the entire time, skeletons sink back into ground leaving [discard coin] behind them.
XIII. [Travel Event] “Hey new guys! Someone threw a bloated dog over the fence, and it’s gotten all stinky. Come grab a leg!”
Skeletons assume PCs are fresh ghouls. Will grow suspicious if the PCs don’t want the gross dog.
XIV. [Travel Event] A gust of corpse wind and a swarm of skeletal bats extinguish and destroy all light sources.
XV. [Travel Event] A ghoul’s head is undergoing cleaning by maggots, who are eating off his face. He can talk to you if you blow through his neck hole, and knows about a hidden door in this room that leads to treasure.
XVI. [Encounter] [PC - 2] Hungry Coffins emerge from the ground. The zombies bear grave goods (two wedding rings, a gold tooth, an amethyst pendant, a pocket watch - ~20s a piece)
XVII. [Encounter] Blurmen trying to distance themselves from the cadaver wizards (each carrying 1 random spell component), but terrified to see the corpse dragging along behind them. Scattering, trying to hide.
XVIII. [Encounter] Toe Gue Goola displaying the territorial aggression display; absolutely terrifying.
XIX. [Encounter] Phantoms weeping around a kingly corpse. The corpse has 500sp of jewelry and a cursed shield shaped like a woman's face. The phantoms will haunt anybody that takes the treasure, weeping and pointing towards them.
XX. [Encounter] Three Blood Liches solemnly removing the bones from a dead mammoth; they will bring them back to the Skeleton King.
XXI. Ouzel
I. Resources taxed
II. Resources taxed
III. Resources taxed
IV. Resources taxed
V. Resources taxed
VI. [Curiosity] Distantly, one of the bells of the necropolis tolls. It sends a shiver up your spine.
VII. [Curiosity] An obelisk bearing the ancient inscription (Cups 4 or Linguist to read): YVAIN - WHO TAMED THE SUN
VIII. [Curiosity] A sarcophagus wrought of many bones, depicting several skeletal hands reaching out towards a skeletal maiden. The inscription reads: HER LOYAL KNIGHTS NEVER LEFT HER SIDE
IX. [Curiosity] A beautifully carved statue of a nude queen, her modesty kept by her long hair, wearing only a crown of sun’s rays. The inscription reads: YLLYSA, COLD AS THE DEW, SWIFT AS THE DEER
X. [Curiosity] The cherubic faces of ghost children are illuminated by their tiny candles that they hold in their chubby little hands. They provide dim light.
XI. [Travel Event] A little grey kitty, the starveling cat, mews and runs through their feet and kneads at their bedroll and looks pitiful. Its ribs stick out. It looks hungry.
If the PCs don't shoo it away, the starveling cat will begin to follow them everywhere. It hunts for itself and is generally agreeable, but will always hungrily eat any food offered it. They have a pet.
XII. [Travel Event] Finely-dressed skeletons emerge from the ground. One plays the violin while the others try to dance with characters. If danced with for the entire time, skeletons sink back into ground leaving [discard coin] behind them.
XIII. [Travel Event] “Hey new guys! Someone threw a bloated dog over the fence, and it’s gotten all stinky. Come grab a leg!”
Skeletons assume PCs are fresh ghouls. Will grow suspicious if the PCs don’t want the gross dog.
XIV. [Travel Event] A gust of corpse wind and a swarm of skeletal bats extinguish and destroy all light sources.
XV. [Travel Event] A ghoul’s head is undergoing cleaning by maggots, who are eating off his face. He can talk to you if you blow through his neck hole, and knows about a hidden door in this room that leads to treasure.
XVI. [Encounter] [PC - 2] Hungry Coffins emerge from the ground. The zombies bear grave goods (two wedding rings, a gold tooth, an amethyst pendant, a pocket watch - ~20s a piece)
XVII. [Encounter] Blurmen trying to distance themselves from the cadaver wizards (each carrying 1 random spell component), but terrified to see the corpse dragging along behind them. Scattering, trying to hide.
XVIII. [Encounter] Toe Gue Goola displaying the territorial aggression display; absolutely terrifying.
XIX. [Encounter] Phantoms weeping around a kingly corpse. The corpse has 500sp of jewelry and a cursed shield shaped like a woman's face. The phantoms will haunt anybody that takes the treasure, weeping and pointing towards them.
XX. [Encounter] Three Blood Liches solemnly removing the bones from a dead mammoth; they will bring them back to the Skeleton King.
XXI. Ouzel
Monsters
Blood Lich (Stolen from Goblinpunch)
An ooze monster born from the blood of those that adventurers have killed. It seeks vengeance on those who killed it.
HD: 1 (but it doesn't matter)
Special: Immune to damage
This is a symbiotic organism formed between an undead skeleton and a necromantic slime. The skeleton's bones are squishy, like lutefisk. You can't hack it apart, and any injury it takes is automatically healed. They don't even burn, and acid just makes them smell worse. They're about as strong as a neurasthenic poet, so give them -2 to grappling or something.
Playtest Note: My PCs wasted an entire session trying to defeat the blood liches that shambled out in traditional ways: they tried iron and silver weapons, they tried torches, they targeted their heads and chests and arms. We ended the session mid-combat. The next session, they got serious. They trapped the blood liches in empty cells, shut them inside of iron maidens, and wrapped them up in chains. A+ monster, good job Arnold K.
Blurmen
A mimic that hides in the chest cavity of a wizard’s corpse. They are a meat puppet that knows at least one spell.
HD: 3, AC: Leather
Stats, generally as a mimic.
Special: Can cast 1-4 spells, randomly determined. Will drop the components of that spell if defeated.
Gripp
8 foot tall naked tattooed giants with huge hands.
Stats as an undead ogre in plate.
Each gripp has a particular obsession. Look at the discard pile to determine what this one’s is:
1. Food
2. Shiny Things
3. Beautiful People
4. Eyes
5. Stolen Things
6. String & Rope
7. Tools
8. Weapons
9. Clothing
10. Skin
11. Tongues
12. Maps
13. Potions
14. Pets
Ja Ja Ghoul
Ghosts that jump out of their pots to scare you. Cannot harm directly. Feast on souls of the dead. Less of a monster and more of an opportunity to telegraph danger nearby.
Omar
Friendly NPC. Half-man dog. Lord of Dogs/Slayer of Men. Agile, Loyal. Powerful. Love. Tame. Protect.
Stats: 5th level Fighter
Toe Gue Goola
A creature, roughly gorilla shaped, that walks on its hands and has small, stubby legs. It is robed in red with the symbol of an eye on it. Its hooded mouth is about where its face should be, and long red streamers blow out of it.
Stats generally as a zombie. Undead, with standard undead abilities.
Special: Each "tongue" is a unique curse. Can invoke a curse with a lick.
Hungry Coffin (Stolen from Goblinpunch)
Essentially the police of Ot. If they perceive the PCs as being alive, it’s their job to undo that unfortunate state.
Phantoms (Stolen from Goblinpunch)
CRUMULA KREMELEN - THE SKELETON KING (Stolen from Patrick Stewart)
Like a man made of dandruff, or quarried from rocks with big crystals that got eroded away. How he has not worn away in full you do not know. Certainly dead, and rather worn. As dry as old lips. A black robe with silvery square stitch skulls staring out. The silver thread is fraying like guitar strings. One still has a needle forgotten in it. The robe has a bat-wing collar that has actual bats nesting in it. Maybe its just part of his look. A little black yarmulke kept on with a bright tack pin pushed into the skull (he doesn't seem to feel it).
What Can He Do?
He can raise the dead. He has a Death Touch; "It's a little black finger I have on my hand, don't let it poke you?"
One poke kills you and makes a zombie. Two pokes makes your flesh fall off and makes a skeleton. Three pokes makes you dust.
He can talk to spirits and find out creepy stuff about them if their parents didn't like them (this is why you should always be nice to your parents).
Wants: A new body. This one is being worn out.
Hates: Solvents. Acids in particular. Backs away from wine, fears vinegar utterly. "I'm extremely alkali you know."
Zones of the Necropolis of Ot
 |
| The Necropolis of Ot with the Mausolem of Kings beneath the Skeleton Castle |
Playtest Note: To set the stage for the "heist" part of the dungeon delve, I established the Necropolis of Ot as a mostly-friendly city-crawl. The players took in an enormous amount of uncontextualized lore dump and generally got into trouble, which is what PCs are wont to do.
The Walls of Ot
The obstacle of the Skeleton Castle is getting past the Walls of Ot. It is a low stone wall. Any living thing that passes over the Walls of Ot dies. Only the dead may pass freely. The Walls of Ot are very easy to destroy, but the curse is deadly...
Weeping pilgrims with side quests:
- Lumbering Jack, a lumberjack, wants to ask his brother, Laboring Jim, about where their father’s axe is. He’s a big kitten and weeps openly.
- The axe is in the Forest of Drood, stolen by the shamanders. (The elf of the well now has it.)
- Madam Millicent wants her late husband’s, Master Mellious, permission to remarry. Asks for a concrete sign.
- He takes off his wedding band and gives it to you to give back to her.
- Can also sell the wedding band, if you’re bad.
- Fable and Mavel, two quarreling raccoon half-men twins, want to ask their father, Nigel A Racoon Sneaking, to settle an inheritance dispute. WHO should own the family’s secret ale recipe?
- They were supposed to split it and open up a tavern together. This would make them get closer.
None of the pilgrims know how to get into the necropolis, but they’ll see an undead parrot squawking when its mentioned.
Near the Walls of Ot, there are several things (graffiti, undead parrot) that mention how Modest Madroff the Smuggler can smuggle you into the Skeleton Castle.
It's easy to track down Modest Madroff. He died five years ago, and was buried in the cemetery back at the Wicked City.
Playtest Notes: The NPCs waiting outside of the death wall is exactly the sort of warning sign you need to make sure that PCs don't cross over a horrible death wall and die. The PCs enjoyed these NPCs, grokked their "deals," and made (unfulfilled) oaths to solve their problems. Once the PCs got into the necropolis, shit hit the fan (as it does). As near as I know, these NPCs are still waiting outside of the wall to this very day.
The Lucky Pig Statue
A copper pig statue, smiling and winking. Around its neck, a (copper) braided rope and bell. The bell says “Lucky” in an ancient mode. A slot on its back obviously accepts coins.
- Every [Castles Cleared]+2 silver placed into the statue, a journal page extrudes from the pig’s mouth.
- The journal pages are from the Knight with the Pentangle Shield
- Trying to pry open the lucky pig causes the pig to squeal. This is a magical effect and triggers a Wandering Monster’s check.
- Unless carefully disarmed, acid floods the pig’s stomach and ruins the remaining pages.
Tomb of the Queen
Her tomb (built after her disappearance, at her instructions) reads, "A queen, a life, a guide, a light. She will be missed."Under this inscription is a “carving” of a key.
- This is a clue to where she is located: in the lighthouse.
- The key is real and can be removed from the tomb.
- The tomb is empty if searched.
Plague Inn
Three friendly diseases trying to invent a cure for themselves. They struggle with human language+culture, adorably.
They want to throw parties and invite all those delightful humans over, but their guests keep dying on them. This makes them sad. It was rude of the guests to die at the party, but it was also rude of them to infect their hosts.
Malaria is busy replanting orchids in the garden amid a cloud of mosquitos. She is furious at Lord Cholera's sabotage of her work. She wears a bishop's mitre.
Likes: Gardening, being cozy, humans and their little cute ears
Wants: To make the inn a nice, cozy, homey place
Anthrax loiters in the boudoir, lounging on a couch. She is a bit worried about Sister Malaria, who used to be so much fun. Her plague cauldron simmers in the fireplace. She wears a wimple.
Likes: Parties, drugs and booze
Wants: To make the inn a fun place to hang out
Cholera sits in the dining room, gnawing bones and writing terrible poetry. He is looking for someone to read it to, now that Anthrax has begun acting so strangely. With a talon-like toenail, stirs the frothy mixture in his plague tureen. He wears a tricorn hat.
Likes: Art, poetry
Wants: To make the inn an art collective
Dislikes: Frivolous people, normies
Staying in their presence is dangerous, but they know how to solve most riddles of the Skeleton Castle.
The Plague Inn should have one of the following groups visiting each time you visit:
- S: A group of vikings are drinking mead and weeping about how they all killed each other, and agreeing about just how honorable they all are.
(Playtest Note: My PCs managed to start a huge tavern brawl by accidentally casting a lightning bolt on everybody in the tavern, including the vikings. The vikings HULKED OUT and proceded to have a real fight. Things totally went to shit, with spells totally destroying the poor tavern.) - P: Modest Madoff is drinking rum with his pirate companions, the Drownies (sea-weed covered). They’re swapping big fish stories. Laboring Jim, a skeleton with a dented skull, is carving one of the Drownies a peg leg.
- C: A group of animal skeletons (maskless) are gambling and arguing. Anybody with 4 Pentacles notices a raccoon skeleton (Nigel A Racoon Sneaking) is rolling the bones with a trick toss.
- W: A group of skeletons is posing for Cholera as he tries to paint “unlife - between still life and the quick life.” One of these skeletons is Master Mellious.
(Playtest Note: My PCs managed to meet Master Mellious and get his permission for his widow. This was a simple and fun quest.)
Playtest Notes: I thought this would be a fun little hub with evocative NPCs and a chance to roleplay. Boy howdy, I was wrong. Because of a subsystem in my game where sorcerers can make magical oaths which prompt spell failures when they're broken, one of PCs accidentally unleashed a lightning storm onto the vikings. The vikings were pissed and because the event happened in a "city" where people could go "guards! guards!" eventually the whole thing broke down into being hauled before the SKELETON KING.
These are the sorts of twists that make roleplaying fun for me. A little setting with non-hostile NPCs can suddenly turn sideways from the interesting interaction between mechanics and player choice.
The Well of Lethe
In the center of a pool of milky white water is the huge, porcelain woman with a cracked, burned, and scarred face.
- Milky fluid gushes from her fractured skull.
- By drinking of this water, all memories are irrevocably annihilated.
- Undead that drink of this water enter the cycle of rebirth.
- The waters of this underground river power the avatars of Ot.
- Phantoms have gathered around to drink the milky fluid.
- It trickles through their flesh-less hands.
- Blurring their fingers into spectral rainbows.
- They want the PCs to feed them milky fluid.
- If they do, they enter the cycle of rebirth.
- If they fail to do so, they become enraged and haunt the PCs.
- PCs emerge from the river near here if they ride in on Modest Madoff’s ship.
Skeleton Castle
The skeleton castle has grown up around the original mausoleum of kings. It is impossible to get to the mausoleum without going through the castle.
- If the PCs just try to walk into the castle, they will be stopped by skeleton guards.
- The Skeleton King is genuinely surprised if the PCs reveal they are alive.
- “Goodness. How did the living come here?”
- The Skeleton King is terrified of the Siege Castle.
- “If it rouses itself, we’re doomed!”
- ... and acids.
- “I’m terribly basic you know.”
- If the PCs try to kill the Skeleton King, he does not resist. He welcomes them to try.
- Will only use his Death Touch as the very, very last resort. Doesn’t care what happens to him.
- DOES care what happens to the memory of his heir.
- If they attempt, he takes them into his castle himself...as PRISONERS. Then it becomes a jailbreak scenario.
- The Skeleton King calls up hungry coffins to capture the PCs.
- The dungeons of the Skeleton Castle are analogous to the Larders of Ill Omen and Catacombs of Ravenloft.
Playtest Note: You never know what players are going to do. I had imagined that the PCs would treat this as essentially a stealth scenario--sneak into the Skeleton Castle and then into the Mausoleum of Kings. They were well positioned to do this. However, they instead pleaded with the Skeleton King to give them Princess Sun's memory. This was something that the Skeleton King was very against, and the players offered not collateral or incentives. As such, they were imprisoned, and the whole affair became a protracted jailbreak. This is definitely not how I had imagined things going down (they never are), and reminds me that role-playing games are a special medium because it's fun for both the "storyteller" and players.
The Mausoleum of Kings
In a garden atrium inside the Skeleton Castle sits the Mausoleum of Kings, built by the Old King Ot for himself.
Depictions of the mythological first queen and king of Gafferdy are displayed on a mosaic on the outside walls of the mausoleum: the Conquering Queen and the Seer King. As you travel around the walls, you see the outline of their story: uniting the city states under the rule of Gafferdy, the visions and madness of the Seer King, the Seer King holding the city of Gafferdy against his wife’s siege, each dying on each other’s blades.
- Entering the mausoleum takes you to a set of wide, shallow stone stairs that descend into darkness.
- Much of the mausoleum is like a drowned church: a flooded cathedral library. Everything is stained by meta-text.
- Doors in the mausoleum are stained-glass angel-windows. They appear on the walls, ceiling, or floor.
- Submerged windows miraculously support the weight of what is above them.
- Access to the angel windows requires a skeletal eye.
- You can learn this by observing skeletal librarians move around.
- The angels animate, look down, scan their eye sockets with a beam of light, and become partially transparent.
The Mausoleum works like a hive.
- Inside, skeletons will not automatically attack.
- Instead, certain actions increase the castle’s threat response.
- Action that increase the threat response include:
- Damaging the structure
- Damaging the active elements
- Interrupting the work of the active elements
- Magic cast inside the castle
- Taking the Memory of Princess Sun raises the threat level to 5, where it remains
- It’s hard to get out
1. The Archive
Shelves of ancient, poorly kept scrolls.
- The paperwork is largely useless to the PCs. It details things like supplies in the library, rotas for the librarians, and so on.
An ornate lectern, raised on a slight platform. On it, open, a large book..
- Each corner of the book’s cover is fastened to the lectern, and the lectern is bolted to the floor. When no-body is observing it, it gives a soft creak or gentle rattle, as if straining against restraints.
- The book is called: Lessons of House Cat and Tiger.
- A text detailing the techniques of a lost martial art. Somebody with Swords 4 who reads the book becomes is able to treat his hands as daggers as long as he takes a stance that requires 3 belt slots.
- This version, however, is dangerous. Reading it results in paper-cuts as the pages twist awk-wardly beneath your fingers, dealing 1 damage for each turn spent reading. If two corners of the book are unfastened (perhaps in order to remove it), the book animates and rips itself free of its bindings.
- Furious Book
- 3 HD
- Can levitate. Immune to poison, cold, backstabs and other things that need the victim to be alive. Double damage from fire.
- Major Dooms: A Wound instead deals damage to Cups. Each time this happens, the book gains another chapter and a half-inch of thickness.
- They are intelligent, and self-aware, but single-mindedly devoted to their task. If you engage with them while they work, they will happily talk with you, and prove to be well-educated and philosophical. Many of their conversations among themselves take an existential bent.
Playtest Note: A badly told lie in this room alerted the gripps that the PCs were intruders. This was the start of bad things for them. Chased by gripps, the PCs hurried to room 2.
2. The Scriptorium Eternum
Skeleton archivists here do the work of writing the histories of kings and queens of Gafferdy forever. Lit by an oil lamp.
A blurman is restrained here by the skeleton archivists. (The magical inks are derived from mimic blood.) The blurman has gotten free, and several skeletal archivists are struggling with it.
- Help the blurman escape or help the archivists restrain it.
- The black ink is mundane.
- The red ink stings when touched: anything written on flesh in it appears as if it were a birthmark or scar.
- The green ink permanently stains anything it touches, and can never be washed off.
- The blue ink is invisible during the daytime.
- The purple infernal ink can be used to write infernal contracts. Any contract written in this ink is magically binding. Every signatory on the contract instinctively knows if anybody else has broken the contract as soon as it happens.
Playtest Note: My players, on the run from gripps in room 1, just sprinted through this room.
A ruined statue of Justice dominates an Escher-esque courthouse. Water stands on the floor about hip high.
- Robes stained black from inky water.
- Jaw cracked, head slumped at a distressing angle.
- Riddled with man-size maggot holes.
- Sword is broken.
- Her scales replaced with gibbets, from which two naked corpses hang, one slightly heavier than the other.
- It is, effectively, a necrotic computer.
- Pushing a tile results in a series of clicks and new wheels within the machine starting to turn. You can type things into the engine using these tiles.
- Anything the players type in is input to the calculation engine. The output will be written on the paper ribbon, extruded out into the pile. The players can read the response, which will vary depending on what input they used.
- If the players input a fact that is known to be true (which is to say, correctly recorded as factual in any book anywhere in the world), the response is: ###Data Confirmed###
- If the players input a fact that is known to be false (which is to say, correctly refuted in any book anywhere in the world), the response is: ###Data Contradictory###
- If the players input a question to which no answer is recorded in any book anywhere in the world, the response is: ###Data Not Found###
- If the players input anything which is neither a stated fact nor a question, the response is: ###Unknown Input### ###Recalibrating###
- The blood liches gasp one thing: “You don’t remember us?”
Playtest Notes: My players missed this room. Remember kids, Jayquaying your dungeons mean that players might skip whole sections of content.
4. The Flooded Halls
Once part of the Mausoleum, the River Lethe has flooded into the mausoleum and ruined the greater part of the archives. It has been abandoned and sealed off.
Stacks of shelves, Tetris-like, on top of each other. Rising, inky black water roars underneath.
There’s nowhere to go but down. It’s pitch black.
- Diving into the water ruins anything that’s vulnerable to water or ink.
- PCs can make essentially 4 actions while holding their breath. Thereafter, they suffer 1 (Piercing) Wound for action taken.
- It takes a successful Cups action to make it down to the next floor.
- Someone who has gone before can lead the rest of the group.
- Anyone swallowing the water for whatever reason loses their memories from that day. They wake up with a start, forgetting everything from the last Camp action.
- It is, after all, Lethe water mixed with other pollutants.
Each shelf ends with a china urn containing the ashes of a minor noble.
- Each urn has the death mask sculpted into it.
- Labelled with their name, and the date of their death.
This area is damp and water damaged. Everything smells moldy, old, and cold.
- The floor here is rotten. If 2+ people walk in the middle at the same time, it collapses and dumps everybody into the Hall of Kings. Everybody takes 2 damage.
Playtest Note: Running from the encounters in rooms 1 and 2, the players kited a bunch of enemies onto the rotten flood and collapsed the floor and fell down into room 7.
6. The Embalmer and the Ossuary
Outside this room, urns of ja ja ghouls are sitting, stacked on top of each other. They howl at you, ineffectively.
A terrible smell of rotting corpses, dust, and embalming fluid.
- Do you remember dissecting a frog from high school? It’s like that.
- Alcoves of perfectly preserved, beautifully arranged mummies set into walls of skeletal art.
- If carefully searched, the pile of bodies has 458 silver and a small handful of silver jewelry (1 slot worth 100 silver).
- The Embalmer is a huge ebony skull with a splash of molten gold on its face. It has five titanic arms extruding from neck, which it uses to prepare bodies for entombment.
- Anyone Wounding a Talent receives one of the following:
- Skeleton Arm
- Skeleton Leg
- Huge mummy arm
- Mummified mermaid lowerbody
- Trepaning - Permanent Wizard Vision, but also permanent mental scar
- Flayed Skull (can open angel windows, but disfavor forever from social interactions)
- Critical hit (starts pulling your brain out from your nose)
7. The Hall of Ten Kings
A low iron door made of a snarling skull.
- Not trapped, but difficult to open. The rusted hinges howl in protest.
A large room, dimly lit by brass-caged flames along the outer walls. 110'x100', 20' ceilings. Four enormous pillars, crudely chipped into shape, support the roof.
Ten corpses, wrapped in bandages and covered in dry resin, rest in on corroded bronze thrones, each in their own alcove.
- Their names and details are not important, though a character well versed in mythology or history may remember their mythic deeds.
- 1 - Rheman, carrying a severed, crowned head.
- 2 - Tarquin, carrying an iron tablet.
- 3 - Marcus, carrying a masonry trowel and block of stone.
- 4 - Severus, carrying an iron scythe.
- 5 - Lucius, carrying a staff with the symbol of the sun.
- 6 - Vibus, carrying an iron chain with shackles.
- 7 - Allectius, carrying an iron shovel.
- 8 - Caelius, a pair of iron tongs.
- 9 - Priscus, a broken iron sword.
- 10 - Gnomon, an iron cauldron.
Stairs, crudely carved, lead upwards to a giant bronze statue of a gargoyle. On her outstretched tongue is a coal shaped like a brain; it burns.
- If the memory-coal-brain in the gargoyle’s mouth is touched, the brass lamps flare as the Ten Kings awake. If players ignore the memory and smash the corpses of the Ten Kings, they can spend 2 rounds destroying corpses before the remaining Kings awaken and Phase 1 begins.
Phase 1: The Ten Kings (Skerped from Skerples)
They lurch to their feet, resin and rotting fabric falling to the ground.
Ten Kings Stats
HD: 1
Appearance: ancient kings in thin gold crowns. Their armor and robes are streaked with blue-green from their corroding thrones. Their steps are slow, but they do not stumble or stoop. Even in death they are proud.
Wants: to destroy interlopers, protect the wolf statue.
Armor: as chain
Move: 1/2 normal
Morale: 12
The Ten Kings are not very strong. In the end, they are just ten skeletons. They move slowly and can be herded into a group or picked off one by one. They will target anyone holding the key first.
When the last of the Ten Kings falls, Phase 2 begins.
Phase 2: The Gargoyle
A few moments after the last of the Ten Kings is destroyed, the Gargoyle awakens. She shakes herself with a screech of iron, raises her head, and howls. Her howl grows louder and louder, cruel and metallic, and then shrieks into a orange jet of flame. The howl cuts off. She lowers her head, scans the PCs, looks directly at the best armed PC, and charges.
The Gargoyle Stats
HD: 10
Cast in bronze, with iron teeth and iron eyes. Fire drips from her jaws. Her neck is covered with carved rings like chainmail instead. Her eyes never close and her expression never changes. Wants: blood and conquest and death.
Armor: Immune to iron weapons.
Move: normal Morale: 12
Attacks:
The gargoyle will only deliberately harm people with visible weapons. She will stare with unblinking eyes at swords and other weapons, ignoring everything else. Anything that a PC intends to use to harm the gargoyle counts as a weapon, including spellcasting implements.
Each round, the gargoyle makes one attack from the list below. She can also move up to 30'. She will try to isolate, corner, and devour the most powerful and violent PCs first.
Minor Dooms:
+Leap Back: If surrounded, the Gargoyle leaps back 20', swiping with one paw. A single target is Attacked.
+Devour: Can only be used on a prone, incapacitated, or pinned PC. The Gargoyle spends the entire round clawing and biting them, dealing 3 Wounds. If this kills the PC, the Gargoyle heals +1 Wound for each iron weapon or piece of armor the PC had.
Major Dooms:
+Charge: The Gargoyle moves up to 20' in a straight line towards a single target. Anyone she passes over (including the Ten Kings) takes a Wound. Whoever the Gargoyle lands on is knocked prone.
+Howl: The Gargoyle pauses and howls. 1d3 of the Kings lurch back to their feet. They are stunned for one round, but attack normally at the start of the next round.
Phase 3: The Gargoyle Bloodied
When the gargoyle suffers 5 Wounds, she pauses for one round and howls again. Black smoke and dark orange flames burst from her wounds. In the middle of each round she also makes one of the attacks below.
+Flame Burst: Anybody engaged with the Gargoyle suffers a Wound as intense heat erupts from her.
+Brutal Cough: The Gargoyle belches up a 40' cone of flame. Anything in the cone suffers a fire Attack,The pillars block the flame.
When the gargoyle is killed, she makes on final Flame Burst attack and slowly melts.
The burning coal of memory flickers dangerously low after the gargoyle has been dispatched.
Loot
The Gargoyle's ten iron teeth can be used as arrowheads or forged into a weapon. On a hit, they burst with flame, dealing fire damage.
The ten thin gold crowns of the kings, assuming they were not melted by the Gargoyle’s flames, are worth 200gp each.
Playtest Note: The gargoyle and the ten kings were an appropriate challenge for my party--daunting, but not insurmountable if the PCs are careful and tactical. The multiple stages of combat were fun and kept a "throneroom" battle interesting.
This stuff is all fantastic. So, so good.
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