Curse of the Crimson Throne Recap # 81 [RPG]

[Fireday, 7 Arodus 4708 A.R. continued]

Having explored most of the second floor of Castle Scarwall proper, the Harrowed Heroes decide to turn their efforts to the roof of the guest wing.  A stubborn door has to be broken down.  But once The Reckoner and Anorak pass through it, the pieces of the door suddenly reassemble and Lorien’s voice can be heard shouting in an ominous tone: “Destroy the weak to weaken the strong!”  Yraelzin calls out “she’s been entranced!  Run!”  Eldritch and Yraelzin, trapped on the other side of the door with a suddenly-dangerous ally-turned-foe, flee at top speed while The Reckoner hammers furiously to break the door down again.  He succeeds just in time for Anorak to wrap Lorien up in a conjured mass of writhing black tentacles.  Soon, the group’s newest member is safely manacled, although bruised severely from the crushing grip of the tentacles.  The group’s two controlled zombies also perished in the fighting, but none consider that a great loss.

When he returns to the scene, Eldritch whispers to Anorak that he’s been saying all along there were assassins in the group!  The reptilian bird says they should slit Lorien’s throat while they still can, and that you can never trust a half-orc.  Anorak rebuffs the paranoid rantings as the group explores the roof of the guest wing to discover little of interest save a staircase leading down into it.  They decide to instead turn their attention to Castle Scarwall’s donjon (a fortified inner keep) and approach the set of bronze double doors leading to it.  The doors are so tarnished that they almost appear black, and gruesome images of devils and priests cavorting among the corpses and tortured souls of the damned are cast in bas-relief on its exterior while a skull and spiked chain overlook the entire scene from the center of the doors.

The Reckoner examines the doors carefully and realises two surprising things.  First, the stone wall around the doors has been magically altered to form a seal around their edges.  Second, the central seam has likewise been sealed with lead.  But where keys and picks may fail, The Reckoner’s trusty adamantine hammer never does!  He smashes down the door with several swings to reveal a foyer tiled in blood-red marble.  An altar resembling a skull, its lower section wrapped in iron chains and its top cut off flat to form a level surface, stands in an alcove to the east, while an alcove to the west contains a ten-foot-diameter pool of what appears to be stagnant water.

The Reckoner moves in cautiously, but is suddenly hurled back by blinding waves of magical force that would have killed a lesser man!  As he uses a wand of healing to recover, Anorak scrutinises the wards protecting the donjon and comes to a startling conclusion: there are two separate wards to keep people out, and two additional wards to keep people in!  Is the castle’s donjon a vault or a prison?  Anorak explains that it may be possible for he or Yraelzin to dispel the repulsion field, but the pain ward is far too powerful to remove.

Finding their efforts to force their way in stymied, the Harrowed Heroes regroup and decide to try to get in through the roof!  The Reckoner tries to climb the smooth stone walls of the donjon, but finds himself sliding back down repeatedly.  Anorak levitates up, a smirk on his face, and lowers a rope.  Soon, everyone is on the roof of the donjon.  Weak sunlight filters through the ever-present thin mist that hangs around Castle Scarwall like a gloomy veil.  Even the chill wind that blows off the crater lake at this altitude doesn’t disturb the mist at all.  Plate urges the group to hurry, reminding them that the rebels in Korvosa are planning to attack Castle Korvosa immediately because of the dark blood magicks killing random civilians.  In just minutes, the group find themselves at the point where the rest of Castle Scarwall connects to the strange, star-shaped tower that looms over it.  Interestingly, it becomes immediately obvious that the “Star Tower” is in fact much, much older than the rest of the castle—perhaps dating to Thassilonian times or even before!

With Anorak’s help, the group fly to the top of the Star Tower.  There, they find a single stone building with no obvious entrance.  The marble of both the building and the surrounding tower show no seams and are polished to a sheen, almost as if the entire structure were carved from a single immense shaft of stone.  But on the southeastern wall of the small stone building, a carving of a ten-foot-wide skull with spiked chains dangling from its eye sockets looks out over the castle below.  The carving can only represent one thing: Zon-Kuthon! Anorak examines the symbol carefully with his magically-enhanced senses, and realises that the carving is a type of magical entrance called a phase door, normally passable only by a true worshipper of the Midnight Lord.  But alas, with the curse affecting Scarwall, even the potent magic of the phase door cannot operate.

Although scarcely an hour has passed since they broke camp, the explorers are concerned that they’ve exhausted too many of their arcane resources and decide they should rest.  As they go about the procedure to set up camp on the roof of the Star Tower, little do they realize that their actions have been observed from afar ever since they first ascended.  For Castle Scarwall has many guardians, and not all stand sentinel inside the building.  Almost before it’s too late, the Harrowed Heroes see a quartet of four-armed brutish gargoyles swooping toward them!  Eldritch happens to be the closest to the gargoyles, and two immediately turn their attention (and appetites) to an exotic meal!  Anorak’s familiar flees with grievous wounds.  Yraelzin conjures spheres of crackling lightning to down two of the foes, but Anorak and The Reckoner (with the help of Plate’s limited enchantments) fly off the roof to help Eldritch.  It’s a near thing, but they manage to get there just in time!  The strange reptilian-bird that is Eldritch will live to fly another day . . .

Repulsed by the magical protections guarding the donjon and the Star Tower, the Harrowed Heroes have certainly learned one thing: nowhere in Scarwall is truly safe . . .

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GM Commentary

As I've commented before, I really like to give familiars, intelligent weapons, hirelings, eidolons, and so forth a real personality and presence in the game if I can.  Eldritch was always fun to role-play, as he was paranoid and psychotic, always convinced that everyone was out to betray and kill him and Anorak.  When an NPC is only going to get limited screen time, you really have to give them some extreme personality characteristics to make them "pop", and that worked well with Eldritch.

The combination repulsion and forbiddance (if I remember correctly) wards were complex and a little confusing to run, because they had very different effects depending on each PC's alignment and the results had to be applied in a particular order.  The damage really hit animal companions and familiars hard.

I made it sound all smooth here, but I found Castle Scarwall a real challenge to run just given its enormous size and complexity.  (even physically juggling several flip-mats and finding table space was a logistical issue)  The challenge was even harder when the PCs went outside, because then I had to try to match up the (very detailed) interior maps with the (very sketchy) external drawing.  The gargoyle brutes ended up being pretty nasty, mostly because they were able to get in close before the PCs spotted them.  Eldritch just happened to be the closest, and the psycho bird barely escaped with his life.