Another month, another game of D&D 4th edition — in a fairly loose (but now gelling up) campaign set in the world of Titan, the setting of the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks. I used to read these books all the time in the late ’80s when I was in junior high, and Kazushi Hagiwara liked them too. Hagiwara has never admitted to actually playing tabletop RPGs, despite all the D&D art references in Bastard!!, but in an interview translated in an early issue of the Viz Bastard!! pamphlet comics, he said that he liked playing the Japanese editions of the FF gamebooks. (In fact, a few monsters from the Out of the Pit monster supplement show up in the background around volumes 6-10 of the manga.) Anyway, Titan is kind of a standard mishmash European fantasy world, with a lot of questionable Warhammer influence that’s probably just caused by everyone in Britain reading Michael Moorcock. But it has a grimy, rough, low-fantasy, anything-goes feel, and I like it for that.

When last we left our heroes, they were facing a horrible fate — Turjan, the evil necromancer imprisoned in Bone Hill for the past two hundred years, had created himself a new body by assembling pieces from several dead wizards into a nine-foot-tall, three-headed monstrosity. As the vaguely Egyptian-looking crowned colossus advanced, the party –

* Sklragagul the Dragonborn Cleric of Kilanirax, the Dragon God
* Grimlock the Dragonborn Warlock
* Shantak the Dragonborn Warlord
* Rima the Halfling Rogue
* Sariel the Eladrin Rogue
* and Klondor the Human Fighter (really more of a barbarian)

– prepared to fight their last stand. However, their fiercest blows merely bounced off Turjan’s layers of magical protective shields and iron-hard mummified flesh. Turjan’s presence started to awaken the dead bodies stuffed like bee larvae in the walls of the underground chamber, and the entire room began to come to life, one corpse at a time. Too late, the party started to flee, following strange visions from the silver chalice of holy water which Rima had earlier looted from a nearby shrine. Sklragagul and Klondor stayed behind to allow the rest of the party to escape, and in the end Sklragagul was cut down, mauled by living corpses and brained with the iron scepter of the Skull Lord.

Retreating upstairs to the ground level of the ruined castle, minus their companion, the party found themselves still trapped by the poison “death rain” which killed and reanimated whatever it touches. But Shantak had an idea: return the chalice to the shrine and perhaps the god of the shrine would give them a way out of their predicament. To reach the underground shrine, they had to sprint across several yards of deadly rain to the trapdoor entrance, but they made it. Unfortunately, as they were climbing down the trapdoor the rotten ladder broke, sending half of the group in a sprained, splintered heap on the floor 40 feet below. Bandaging their wounds, they made their way to the underground shrine, which (once assessed by non-thief eyes) turned out to be a shrine of Erathis-Hamaskis, the composite god of learning and civilization. Clearly, the shrine had once belonged to Mazirian, the wizard scholar who built Bone Hill.

The party prayed to the shrine of Erathis-Hamaskis, and the idol answered, being imbued with a fraction of the god’s divine presence. The idol forgave them for taking the chalice, and told them that its chief worshipper, Mazirian, still “lived” — or rather, dwelt in a state of unholy half-life — somewhere in the underground chambers of the castle. Mazirian had been betrayed and killed by his evil brother Turjan, his living corpse locked away — but in death they shared the same heart, and whatever killed Mazirian would kill Turjan as well. The party vowed to free Mazirian from his suffering and, in the process, kill the giant evil three-headed wizard who was rapidly reassembling his undead army.

The heroes descended deeper into the dungeons which only Rima and Klondor had glimpsed before. Entering an abandoned wine cellar full of barrels of vinegar and sediment, they were attacked by a seething blob of brownish-orange ooze, an ochre jelly which fed on flesh. After killing it, they proceeded to the next room, a finely decorated wizard’s workshop guarded by five mechanical soldiers. The party managed to convince the soldiers that they came in Mazirian’s name, and passed unopposed. Within the chamber was another shrine — a statue to Ioun-Sindhla, the goddess of magic, luck and fate. Like Erathis-Hamaskis, Ioun-Sindhla was a syncretic fusion of gods from the two chief continents, the Old World and Allansia. The idol of Ioun-Sindhla accepted the characters’ incense and sacrificial offerings and came to life. It explained that both Turjan and Mazirian had been its faithful worshippers. However, it agreed to help hide them from the wizard, who was even now approaching the chamber. The heroes ducked behind the shadow of the again-immobile statue, and hid there while Turjan, and his court of zombie followers, asked the goddess where the intruders had gone. The idol weaseled out of the question with technicalities (”They are somewhere that even my eyes cannot reach”) and protected the characters. Turjan left, saying that he was about to imprison his brother Mazirian in a more permanent fashion, and that (now that he had his new body) he would gather his army and leave Bone Hill, to pursue his evil plans in the world outside.

Although the characters knew they had little time to act, they also knew they were bloody and beaten to within an inch of their lives. They slept a few hours in the alcove behind the statue, resting and regenerating their magical powers. They were awaken by the sound of tremendous explosions somewhere nearby, explosions that shook the walls of the cave. They hurriedly headed down an unexplored passage which they believed might lead in the direction of Mazirian. They survived a trapped gateway which slammed them into a wall covered with spikes; barely escaped a giant gelatinous cube that guarded the next chamber; and found Mazirian’s old workshop where his familiars, the Eyes of Ioun, still guarded Mazirian’s spellbook and his dried-up, severed tongue. The Eyes of Ioun had been tricked into serving Turjan, and were distraught to find that their master Mazirian was really dead, and not merely out of the office for a few centuries.

After another close call with the gelatinous cube, the heroes’ path took them through a long and low-ceilinged passage barely supported by crumbling rafters. They emerged near Turjan’s chambers, having gone full circle through the dungeon and emerged from the other end. But as they approached the room where Mazirian was imprisoned, they saw to their horror that the door to Mazirian’s room had been intentionally blocked off by a 20-foot-thick cave-in. As they surveyed the damage, skeletons and zombies started to gather from all parts of the underground complex, shuffling towards them, clacking their dry hungry jaws.

The characters had one hope: Sariel’s eladrin power to teleport through solid objects. But first she had to find an opening, even a crack, through which she could see her destination. Shantak cleared rocks with his massive strength while the others fought off the undead. But soon the thunder of the Skull Lord’s steel boots announced its arrival. Wights and zombies rushed in from the seemingly infinite chambers full of the undead. Just in time, Sariel cleared away a tiny crawlspace in the rocks, and teleported through to the next room, carrying Rima. The others were left behind in the cave as the Skull Lord arrived, blasting Grimlock and Klondor with its horned skull of fire and its howling skull of fear.

Sariel and Rima rushed into the secret chamber, which turned out to be a well-appointed old-fashioned bedroom, flush with an aura of warmth, and a fresh breeze, totally different from the death-reeking rooms outside. Shackled to the wall was a crumbling skeleton with living human eyes sunken in its skull. The skeleton turned to Sariel and Rima with a pleading look, and when they returned its tongue to its mouth, it begged to be released from its undeath. “All that I have is yours, even the Jewel of Wind” it said. “Just let me drink from the Chalice of Erathis-Hamaskis.” The two rogues rushed to find some water, finally producing some with the magic pitcher in Mazirian’s desk.

Meanwhile, outside, everyone but Shantak had been taken down by the undead mob. Charred by the Skull Lord’s flames, Grimlock fell to the ground and his life ended. Klondor lay bleeding out on the ground. Just when everything looked hopeless, Rima and Sariel gave the holy chalice to the undead wizard Mazirian. As the holy water poured into his throat, his eyes rolled back and the life went out of him. A second later, the wizard Turjan screamed, and the three heads of the skull lord split apart as the massive body toppled to the floor. The other undead, without the evil force that sustained them, staggered and collapsed, dead as well.

The evil of Bone Hill had been exorcised, but several adventurers had died in the process. Emerging into the dawn, the heroes found that the skies were clear, the puddles were simply water puddles, and the “death rain” had fallen for the last time. The sun rose over the green hills of the Isle of Lendore to the east while the survivors settled down to count the vast wealth they had found within the castle.

(To be continued sometime after the script for King of RPGs volume 2 is finally finished… in the meantime, Stephen Douglas (aka Sklragagul) took a bunch of awesome photos.)

If you came here looking for the King of RPGs Video Trailer, the correct link is here.

In between writing the script for King of RPGs volume 2, last weekend I got together with my friends Konstantin, Paul, Steve, Mark, Greg and Liz for a game of D&D 4th edition. This was actually our fourth game in a sort of rambling, intermittent pseudo-campaign, which started back in 2008 because some of Konstantin’s ex-coworkers had wanted to play Dungeons & Dragons. I decided to start ‘em out on the 4th edition rules adapted to an ancient, ancient module I have always had a soft spot for: The Secret of Bone Hill.

Anyway, several party member arrivals and departures later, including a brief prequel adventure using the D&D 3rd edition shipboard module Maiden Voyage (which was kind of a letdown — as a mystery scenario, it’s pretty uncompelling, and as an adventure, it’s railroady and only has one real fight scene), the characters had finally defeated the goblins who inhabited the upper ruins and captured their leader, the necromancer Telvar. The original party, consisting of Konstantin, Liz, Greg and Paul, were hired by the authorities to bring the necromancer back to town “alive or dead,” although the necromancer’s sister, the local baroness, had strongly hinted that there might be something in it for them if he was brought back alive. However, the newcomers, Mark and Steve, who were playing intimidating, reptilian Dragonborn outsiders, were hired by another faction to bring Telvar back dead, and deliver his severed head to prove it. Thus, when they met up, they immediately started arguing over whether to kill or merely incapacitate their quarry. The one thing everybody could agree on, however, was that they ought to finish exploring the catacombs beneath the castle. Entering the cobwebby chambers, they were attacked by swarms of undead rats, ghouls and other creatures. Eventually they descended a concealed staircase into a chamber where they were attacked by seemingly endless waves of zombies. In the midst of the fight, however, the zombies withdrew from the attack and stepped aside, standing in position like courtiers as a masked, white-robed figure — the undead wizard Turjan, the builder of the castle — came out of the darkness to beg the party to help lift his blood curse by giving him the one thing he needed… TELVAR’S HEAAADDD.

The party soon got the feeling, however, that Turjan was untrustworthy, even by the standards of undead wizards who tell you that they need to feed on the life force of living wizards or their unstoppable lifethirst will cause them to attack you instead. So now the heroes had to decide whether to give Telvar (a jerk who had already attempted to backstab them repeatedly) up to Turjan, to chop his head off for their own purposes, or to take him back alive, against all odds. Complicating the situation further was that there was another evil wizard, Ligotti the snake-summoning tiefling, roaming the ruins searching for loot and harassing the party.

Eventually the party decided not to give up Telvar’s head, and after making some excuses to Turjan, they camped out for the night inside the castle, trying to wait out the deadly “death rain” which had just started pouring from the sky around the castle, killing everything it touched and turning them into zombies, a plot device I stole from “The Breeze Horror.” Before going to bed, they also managed to kill and dismember Ligotti and toss his bodyparts out in the courtyard. But Turjan (another stolen name) would not take no for an answer, and sent his undead minions to attack the party and steal Telvar. Racing downstairs to the cellar, fighting through hordes of zombies, the party was unable to stop Turjan from using both Ligotti’s and Telvar’s corpses in a hideous necromantic scheme: to create a THREE-HEADED SKULL LORD from the combination of Telvar’s head, Ligotti’s head, and his own! Watching victory snatched away right before their eyes as Sklragagul failed his “Turn Undead” roll before Turjan could complete the ritual and take off his own head and put it in the creature, the party fled before the terrifying, three-skulled, nine-foot-tall, fire-breathing monstrosity!

Then it was 1 AM and everyone had to go home and collapse unconscious, leaving the adventure to be ended another day. Without giving too much away since my players can read this, this whole plot was basically my attempt to wrap up the “too many evil wizards” syndrome which has afflicted my D&D campaign since the beginning, by compressing them all into one AWESOME wizard, like how Cell absorbs the androids in Dragon Ball. The other thing I’d like to say is that the Skull Lord is one of the best new monsters in D&D 4th edition. It’s just so ridiculous and Yu-Gi-Oh! but the design is awesome in its simplicity.