Chagmat!

So, here we are again....
Tens of irons in the fire, and another ginormous shiney chicken crosses my path. Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while, will know how susceptible I am to the lure of a new chicken. I was doodling one day and out popped a doodle of mountain that resembles a spider. So, the game brain kicks in and digs up some obscure gnosis in the form of an ancient adventure published in Dragon magazine 63. Chagmat! is an adventure where the PCs travel to a distant mountain to defeat an ancient evil returned to plague a small village. So far I have a map of the outside of the mountain, and something I jotted down at work the other day...

The fires on Mt. Aranae are lit once more. Shadows stir in the Temple of Eight Pillars
Beneath Mt. Aranae, in the pit of Krinz, dwells the Umaillar Spider of Leng, Chag.
Chag has awakened from his long slumber, and has called all manner of foul creatures to his mountain.
In the depths of the pit, the Chagmat stir. These disciples of Chag are merciless and many in number.
Fear will soon sweep the countryside once again.

I've been making notes furiously, and as usual, the finished product will be more "inspired by" than an actual re-write of the adventure. This will be written for Pathfinder. Only because it's the system I am most familiar with right now. That fact, and it has Leng spiders already statted out. The walled town of Marchande will serve as the PC's base of operations. That town is fast becoming a focal point of many of the things I'm  currently working on. So I might actually have to flesh out the entire town soon.

Anyhoo, this will most likely be the last post of 2016. I hope everyone has a happy new year.

Remember... "No matter where you go, there you are."

Happy Gaming!

The logging camp

   You and your companions come upon what appears to be a long abandoned logging camp high up in the mountains. The forest has grown in close around the buildings, as if in an effort to reclaim all the timber previously taken by the loggers. Trepidation hangs thick in the air. Mysteriously the ambient sound of wildlife and insects is absent.
   Was that movement you caught out of the corner of your eye? What was that noise? A distant clop... clop... clop... drifts to your ears. Hooves? On wood planking? 
   What secrets does this village hold? Will you investigate to find out?

Space fluff

Excerpt: Ships Log::TFN Colony Transport Ship KB28959 Oswego
                    Cpt Russton Lang
                                                TSD: 2366.53.1100
                    7562 days to spindown

Mission Day:1873
Cpt. Lang: All ship operations normal. Strength fluctuations in power converter 847J starboard have been investigated and resolved. [Chief engineers report attached] Colony Fleet Command has authorized the use of the tunnel drive to jump to K-Beta 31459 navigation anchor point. We commence jump in T-minus 17 hours.

Mission Day: 1876
Cpt. Lang: All ship operations normal. Long range scanners have indicated an unknown fleet presence in K-Beta 31459. Fleet commander Saint-Just has ordered alert status for all fleet units.

  

   The only thing that has saved the Earth thus far is the paranoid dreaming of the old Counter Intelligence Secretariat. They worked in a command into the fleet navigational computers that erased origin points from the tunnel drive computational matrix memory at the end of every jump. We did lose 500,000 colonists, but we learned a hard lesson. The universe is not a safe place. We learned the hard way that our arrogance with regards to being the only intelligent life form was, as a species, a "head up ass" assumption. Since the attack on the Alpha One colony fleet, we have learned how to fight an interstellar war.

   Due to the completely alien physical features of the Klem'entarthug actual pronunciation of not only their name, but there entire language is impossible to reproduce with human vocal apparatus. This coupled with the inability to establish a rapport has served to turn even the most passive among us into the killing machines we are.

The messenger

   The old woman turned and grabbed a quill and paper from the table beside her door. Scrawling "Your sister's name is Sinead. You still hunt her killer" on the paper. She barked out "Andrei!" A small boy came scurrying around from in back of her humble hut. "Tell the big man in the armor, that just got a room at the Dark Rose who sent this" The young boy took off at a run down the dirt street towards the other end of town.

   Lord Tobias Nathaniel Bishop Marchande, third hereditary Duke of Marchande, stared listlessly out the tower window. So many responsibilities weighed on his mind. He missed days past when he was free in the world. He and his companions roamed the world seeking out adventure and danger. "I should never have taken the land grant." He said to himself looking upon the sword in it's well worn scabbard propped up in the corner of his library.

   The small boy stumbled up to the front door of the inn. Huffing and puffing from the effort of running across town he says "Mister... Milady Rowena Bloodrose DeAmberville asked me to give you this." He handed the large red headed man a scrap of parchment.

More of the Nemyrothean Plains.

   Beneath the vast Nemyrothean plain, resides the greatest concentration of evil in the known universe. Under the chaotic weather, primordial swamps, and roaming vicious beasts is an enormous eternally dark necropolis. At the center of it all is The Arch Demi-Lich Vceshkark.
   Vceshkark was the first of the Sorcerer Kings. The most evil of the liches imprisoned beneath he Nemyrothean plains. He committed such atrocities that they are remembered to this day. The Slaughter of Skeleton Springs, The decimation of Laborton, The collapse of the Dwarven mines of Khragzuaille. All of this strife and torment inflicted upon our world. From what the legends tell us of this horrific otherworld creature. He has existed for 6000 years as an undead abomination. It might be longer than that, but that's as far back as written history takes us. It is said that he was among the first denizens in the realm of undeath, second only to Void Father.
   Kreschi of the Glareij, perpetrator of the Heineary massacre, resides under the flats and monoliths of the plain also. As does Praetax the Conqueror. There is such a concentration of evil in that place, it has blighted the surrounding countryside. The blasted landscape surrounding the the plain, is a stark contrast to the plain  itself. The plain  a scoured from time to time by great storms of such intensity that no animal can exist on the plain. Just a massive sea of grass, interspersed with the enormous stone slabs covering the tombs.
   There isn't a soul alive that has explored the plains fully. Many have tried, only to disappear into the legend of the plains. Some have vanished for a day or two. To return white skinned and emaciated. Almost as if their very life force has been sapped or drained away. None of these intrepid explorers has even spoken of their time on the plains. In fact they don't speak at all. Sages and scholars have all tried to pry from them what these poor lost men and women have seen, but to no avail.
  

Lair of the Lich Kings

A vast plain interspersed with areas of smoothed stone 500 feet across. Under each multi piece stone slab, is an inverted pyramid of stone. At the tip is a coffin sized area where the previous heroes of legend have imprisoned the various Lich Kings. These powerful diabolical sorcerers, have appeared periodically across the millennia. No one in living memory can remember the first one. During that period of eternal imprisonment, the Kings have learned how to cooperate and wreak havoc across the surface, across the sparse expanse of the Nemyrothean plains. No explorer has survived trying to count them all.

New BBEG

So, there I was the other night watching The Phantom. You know.. The one with Billy Zane. Ya ya ya ya, stow your judgments. I like it, and that's all that matters. O hey! I like The Shadow with Alec Baldwin too. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

Anyhoo... I was at the end, where Xander Drax is trying to kill the Phantom with the Skulls of Tuganda, and the way the skulls fit together gave me an idea. I have a new Arch enemy for some players.

Demi-Lich Vceshkark

He takes form as a triptych of skulls. One solid gold, one purest emerald, and one gilt and bejeweled human skull.

Reminiscent of the Imperial Magistrate in the Transformers movie.

Just thought I would share.

Happy Gaming!