Curse of the Crimson Throne Recap # 88 [RPG]

 [Sunday, 9 Arodus 4708 A.R. continued]

The battle against Castle Scarwall’s third spirit anchor begins!  Having gleaned from the song of the Sun Shaman that a powerful devil resides in one of the fortress’s towers, the Harrowed Heroes smash their way into the central spire.  There, they find a tall, hollow tower, silent and menacing.  Forty feet above, an opening at the tower’s peak lets in faint light, while at the bottom of the tower is a shallow pool of stagnant water, a wide bed swathed in rotten and moldy blankets, and a large gilt throne.  To Lorien, the tower reeks from the presence of foul and abhorrent evils, though no creatures are visible.  He and The Reckoner move inside cautiously, only to be set upon instantly by a pair of bony, nine-foot-tall scorpion-tailed devils emerging from nowhere!  And to make matters worse, the beating of wings and whisper of a blade slicing through the air alert The Reckoner that another monster is hovering just above him, invisible!

“I’ve been watching you, little manling!” cackles the voice from above.  “Little manling loves his toys—will he pout if they’re taken away?”  A moment later, one of The Reckoner’s orbiting ioun stones is shattered into pieces!  But the masked warrior focuses on a visible foe, and shatters one of the bone devils into dust with his hammer.  From the doorway, Yraelzin calls out “I’ve been waiting to try this!” and briefly opens a portal to Hell itself that pulls the other bone devil through!  Frustrated by The Reckoner’s layered defenses, the true danger in the room, still invisible, uses devilish magic to draw the moisture from the Harrowed Heroes flesh, nearly dropping Yraelzin.  The arrival of several imps harry the former priest of Razmir and keep Lorien distracted, but The Reckoner stays focussed and somehow avoids being trapped in a cage of magical force.

Using his mask of the mantis, The Reckoner sees beyond the visible spectrum and spots his foe: a twisted, contorted humanoid with as much iron as flesh to her body, flapping batlike wings, and holding a brutal glowing scythe.  Swooping and diving, the devil tries to destroy The Reckoner’s vast array of magical items, but can’t land a single blow!  For his part, the vigilante has his enchanted armor lend him the power of flight to take the battle into the air.  The outcome is never in doubt, and soon the devil is destroyed.  A keening wail from somewhere in the castle confirms that another spirit anchor has been destroyed—as does the tower almost collapsing on the Harrowed Heroes! Lorien and Yraelzin barely survive.  After extricating themselves from the rubble, the victors reap the spoils by recovering thousands and thousands of coins hidden under the bed, as well as a vast array of jewellery and precious artworks—so much treasure, in fact, that after hours of sorting much has to be left behind!

A return to the chamber where Anorak’s body lays shows that it fortunately remains unaffected by the curse of Scarwall.  Discussion is had whether to rest for the night or continue on, with Plate and Lorien swaying the other two into starting an immediate search for the fourth and final spirit anchor.  Despite having spent a week in Scarwall, the Harrowed Heroes discover many unexplored chambers: an elegant, well-preserved room with valuable bottles of wine, an abandoned workshop rigged to pull the corks out of bottles if the main doors to it were opened, a hallway that leads nowhere, and more.  One room contains perhaps the strangest sight of all: a battered and nervous-looking halfling trapped in a net hanging from the walls!  She pleads for help, claiming that a witch kidnapped her from the forest nearby and will be back soon.  The lies are blatant and transparent, however, and the group starts to leave before the halfling changes her story.  She says she can direct the group to the last spirit anchor if they’ll take her with them; but The Reckoner replies that they don’t need any help, and shuts the door with finality.

 

The Reckoner hammers a hole in an interior wall to reach a small room with rotting scrolls on a desk and a rusty iron footlocker near a bed.  He starts fiddling with it before Lorien reminds him the group is looking for a dragon, not valuables, and should continue on.  “Focus!” the half-orc says.  A nearby guardroom looks out over the tarn and contains a dead orc inside; Lorien is able to read the Orcish message written in blood on the wall: “Beware of Ukwar”.  With a shrug, the group continue on.

 

In the long hallway that runs adjacent to the courtyard, the trio spot some doors they hadn’t previously opened.  The first one they breach reveals what must have been the castle kitchen: three huge ovens loom to the west of the room, each covered in layers of char and bits of blackened bone.  Four outlines of humanoids in positions of agony and death are burned into the brick of the oven walls.  After rubbing himself with magical Shoanti war point from the Cinderlands, The Reckoner proceeds into the room.  He resists a spectral apparition of the ovens opening and filling the room with flames, but what happens next is very real: the four outlines on the wall suddenly peel away and ignite into horrifying monstrous clouds of burning ash and bone, reeking of scorched flesh and roaring like a wind-stoked fire!

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GM Commentary

The invisible foe with the scythe and a predilection for sundering magical items had a little luck at first, but then The Reckoner's high CMD helped him avoid more loss.  When fully ready for a battle, he made for a pretty impressive combatant!

Yraelzin managed to use banish or dismissal (I can't remember witch) against one of the devils; a handy spell when it works.

If I remember right, the "halfling" was a hag of some type in disguise.  It didn't fool the PCs for a single moment.

The last, fiery creature are custom Curse of the Crimson Throne monsters called Cinder Ghouls.  Through the vagaries of exploration, the PCs ended up in one of the less dangerous areas of the of the castle near the end of their time there.  Perhaps a bit anticlimactic, but that's how things turn out sometimes in a free-form adventure.