Practical Magic - Dungeon 113

Practical Magic is an adventure full of personality. Many personalities in fact. 

A necromancer whose work is focused on making skilled undead even better at their jobs, he sees corpses that aren't being put to productive purposes as wasted material. He gets wind of another spellcaster with a sense for putting magic and inventions to practical uses and sees an opportunity for the two of them to work together, bettering both their efforts.

He sends an invitation to meet, but the message doesn't arrive because her boyfriend is breaking up with her. So the necromancer has his very smart undead servant kidnap the wizard.

The boyfriend is a dominated servant of a mermaid vampire. So is his cousin. 

The mermaid vampire has the boyfriend lure the downtrodden, poor, or depressed to her lair under the guise that she is a fortune teller that can help relieve them of their burdens. She then convinces the victims to go out of the world in an exotic way . . . as her food.

The boyfriend's cousin has turned evil and now wants to become a vampire.  

The ghast that kidnapped the wizard is addicted to fine clothes and fancy furnishings. He owns a Hat of Disguise that lets him pose as himself before being turned into a ghast, and allowed him to pull off the kidnapping.

The kidnapped wizard has heard out the necromancer's idea and come around to giving it serious consideration. She however has her own plan for how things should work.

Much of the adventure takes place in the two hidden lairs and will require time spent in the water. 

Now we just need to figure out where everything is and who else might be involved.

According to the module the mermaid vampire's lair is about 300' off the coast in about 20' of water, with a bunch of sharks around it. This could be almost anywhere as long as it stays not too far from Ptolus. Victims need to be able to reach the lair and her agents need to be able to return to the city fairly quickly, but it all needs to remain unnoticed. At first I thought to put it south of Beacon Island, but reading further into the adventure made it more likely that the necromancer's lair is under the south end of the island. Two major lairs that close together doesn't work for me.

Then I looked north of the docks. It might work, but it starts to come close to the territory of the Covenant of Blood and their Sahuagin allies. it could certainly work. She might be one of the 6 vampires in the Covenant. She's good with sharks and so are the Sahuagin. The drawback is that PCs that defeat or drive her away make enemies of the Covenant, the Sahuagin, the Balacazars, and all of their other allies. That's a lot of weight bearing down on the player characters. Maybe the mermaid vampire is viewed as unwanted competition by the Covenant and they'd like to see her gone, one way or another. 

"One thing about living in Ptolus I never could stomach is all the damned vampires."

Studying necromancy is not technically illegal in Ptolus, but creating undead or bringing undead into the city is outlawed. This is reason for the necromancer to have a hidden lair off shore. The lair is fairly large so he needs a big place to put it and under the south end of Beacon Island seems perfect. The island already has a reputation of being haunted. The necromancer is a known entity, and has in the past aided in fighting off pirates, so while dealing with unsavory things, nobody has gone out of their way to try and put an end to his practice.

Interesting is a great way to describe this adventure. It is possible for characters to make enemies of just about everyone in the module if enemies aren't killed. They could also end up with some bizarre semi-allies depending on their own sense of morals.

Lair of the Necromancer

Here are a few pictures from the lair of a necromancer the party only saw part of before retreating to safety. They were in bad shape with most of them at 1 or 2 hit points so a withdraw was the wisest option.

The lair contained the remaining cultists of the Rat God, the Necromancer, and numerous skeletons and zombies, including a number of ripening bodies in the fetid water in the lowest reaches of the dungeon. Had more than just one party member entered the place, the Necromancer would have animated the bodies in the water to bolster his already impressive force of undead.

During the confusion the necromancer would have made his escape, leaving behind 8 cultists, 4 skeletons, and 10 zombies to vex the adventurers. Treasures left behind included an apprentice spell book, several Lesser Wondrous Figurines, a talking Auguring Skull, and a journal.

West Marches -session something or other

I've lost track of the session count.

A quick update, the party is engaging the bandit/cultists and their necromancer ally. It has been a series of skirmishes in which the party has come out ahead until now.

Having decided to recon the bandit lair, the party have circled around to the east and then south of the encampment. They party is presently split into three units. The main unit is comprised of four characters and one npc, the second unit is two characters and two npcs, and the third unit is one character who is in big trouble.

Unit 2 is being tracked by a force of bandits and a war dog, which they are leading into an ambush by the main unit. Anton, alone, decided to get up close to see what the encampment held. His plan backfired when he triggered a magic mouth spell alerting the camp to his presence. Things are getting interesting and will be more so when the ambush kicks off.

We left off on that cliff hanger.

Below is a rough approximation of the positions. Not to scale.

Isle of the Abbey part two

When last we saw our adventuring band, the players and I gathered around my new Hammered Game Table. (see the posts about Getting Hammered).

The party were up against mad cultists and encountering an odd assortment of rather strange characters.

They discovered the elf Bayleaf, a mercenary instructor of arms, chained to a desk writing a letter home requesting he be ransomed. After cutting the leg off of the table to allow the elf to walk with them, they then went looking for the mysterious pale skinned individual who had ducked down some stairs.

Merenk was waiting further down the hallway standing behind the animated corpse of the captain of the cult guards. They parlayed with the necromancer and despite the paladin's distrust and dislike, the party agreed to put aside hostilities and see if Merenk could assist or advise in exchange for safe passage to the mainland.

Merenk, it turns out, was also hired by the cult to shore up defenses by leaving undead "traps" about the island to drive off the pirates and anyone else that might bother them.

With Bayleaf, Merenk, and the zombie in tow, the party decided to take on some more cultists they had been told might be in the ceremonial chamber.

The party wizard did the honors of opening the door to the ceremonial chamber using a fire bolt spell to do what the paladin had failed to achieve, and that is when Merenk's information about a third mercenary came into stark reality.

Merenk mentioned that the cult had hired Silas, an elementalist wizard well versed in fire magic, to train the membership in how to cast powerful fire spells. The success of that training was about to prove very dangerous.

Leznar and his remaining adherents were poised and ready for battle, or so they thought. The party was fast on the attack with only one cultist able to blast a vicious fire spell taking down the wizard.

To the relief of the adventurers the rest of the fight went their way. The wizard was pulled out of harms way and later healed. The party managed to do serious damage to Leznar before he could unleash his spells, hoping to stifle and unholy power he might have in his arsenal. (my very first roll as DM on my new table was a concentration save for the evil high priest - natural 20)

The paladin stormed into the room to engage some of the cultists, while the ranger, and halfling barbarian/sorcerer unleashed ranged attacks at their enemies.

Leznar proved far more resilient than expected as he called forth a roiling mass of smokey black tentacles centered in the hallway and blocking the rest of the party from attacking. Meanwhile the remaining cultists acted to repel the troublesome paladin. (he had slain one cultist, been hit with a fire bolt, and was now dodging - and a cultist, terrible with melee weapons - had to roll with disadvantage when attacking - two rolls, one a natural 20, the disadvantage die was a 19 and a hit.)

 Leznar never got off another spell. The ranger managed to fire a perfect arrow through a haze of writhing tentacles, through the doorway, over the raised dais wall, past a shielding cultist, and through Leznar's eye, slaying him outright. (natural 20 plus sharpshooter feat)

Mop-up was easy and resulted in a talkative prisoner, the last member of the cult.

Now the party became very suspicious of the strange company they were with. After rounds of questioning they bound the hands of both Merenk and the cultist. While this was going on, Bayleaf discovered a hidden storage chamber beneath the dais and recovered his personal effects, also showing the party some other valuables.

In the chamber were an arcane scroll, a chest with two old books, the captain's logbook the ranger was seeking, a history tome, and a very expensive looking small bottle containing a dark liquid.

Other loot from the dead cult leader and minions included a necklace of skulls that the paladin confirmed was evil, a single bracer later understood to have something to do with earth magic, either control or resistance (need the pair for definitive identification), and very valuable jewelry.

Moving on, the party opted not to risk going into the tower, understood to be where Silas likely was, and instead to continue with one of their main objectives, finding the holy book Interregnum of the Spirit, the sea priest asked them to recover from the crypts below the abbey.

Merenk confessed that the hallway he had hidden in lead to a false passage and not to the crypts, however there was a second way into the tower at the other end. The last cultist confirmed the fact that it was a false passage, but knew nothing of the secret door.

At sword point, Merenk led the party to the real passage, and to the first crypt. The party had learned from the captured cultist, of a trap of some type they would have to brave if they were to pass from the first crypt to the second.

While in the first crypt a brief search turned up little of any obvious value beyond a tarnished silver goblet.

With a plan in mind, the party opened the door that separated them from the trapped passages that the cultist feared. Endzique the halfling cautiously went forward to scout. He noticed an odd difference to the air - while the crypt was dry and musty, these passages were dry and smelled of earth.

It wasn't long before the trap was discovered. Hidden in beyond a somewhat narrow archway in a chamber between the passages was an animated armored guardian whose attention was now fixed on the diminutive scout. The guardian followed the retreating halfling, but refused to pursue Endzique into the crypt, instead continuing away down the right side passage.

Following the armored trap, the halfling watched as it went deeper into a seeming maze of halls. To try and lure it back, Endzique slung a stone striking the automaton. This only got it to turn it's head completely around to face him as it continued away.