Age of Worms Campaign

Week 54 - A tripartite sprit once again becomes one, and at its advice are the mighty undone.

Well, I found it a shade anticlimactic. At these levels the bonuses are so enormous that they swamp the result of the d20. Many rolls only fail on a 1 or succeed on a 20. The designers of 4th ed are right about one thing: the game does not work well at high levels.

As they consider the rain of freezing cold slime that does god knows what, the party decide to clean out the rest of this level. Spotting a secret door, they open it, and behind it is an old acquaintance whom Frith recognises from Alhaster: Mahudril! She commences her attack, and is swiftly joined by two other wormpriests. Mahuudril succeeds in dividing up the battlefield with Walls of Force, but it’s no use. She is forced to teleport away.

After a little more looting, the party determine that it’s only unsafe to teleport out from within the tabernacle itself. So they step out the front door and teleport away for some much needed rest.

Meanwhile, Dragotha withdraws all of his troops to his lair, reading himself for a final confrontation.

— † —

22. The Writhing Sanctum

The tube-like tunnel opens into a vast cavern lit by the undulant green glow of a huge ziggurat built of worm-infested stone. It appears that a small structure once stood atop the ziggurat, but now nothing remains but a great and jagged hole. The green liquid that ran down the passageway to the west gushes from this wound, cascading down the front stairs of the ziggurat in a chain of miniature waterfalls. Two ledges overlook this cavern. The one to the north is only fifteen feet high, while the southern one is nearly thirty feet off the ground, and in the southwest corner of this ledge lies heaped an amazing mound of treasure. The ceiling rises to a dizzying vaulted height of nearly a hundred feet.

The party return, Knocking their way past the doors. They head back to the wormvent, and cast Etheralness. In etheral form, the warning against teleportation is explained. Here on the etheral plane, the stone of the citadel is a solid writhing mass of Kyuss worms. They travel up the vent, avoiding contact with the walls.

At the top is a passage leading on, and another wormdoor. But as the door extends onto the etheral plane, Flash’s Knock spell affects it. They investigate some empty rooms - one containing a font of water, and eventually make it though to the heart of the citadel: the Writhing Sanctum.

I saw nothing in the Dragothatha’s stat block indicating that he could see into the etheral plane. he can See Invisible, but that’s not the same thing. Sorry if I’m wrong.

On one of the ledges stands Mahuudril, but that’s not the important thing, for Dragotha himself sits atop the ziggurat. And something interesting happens. Hgere, at the site of his defeat and death, the fragments of Balarde’s spirit separate from the items they haunt and each manifests here on the etheral plane as a ghost and beholds the dracolich. The fragments are no whole enough to speak, but on each of his three faces is an expression: Balakarde the scholar looks upon Dragotha with keen interest and calculation, Balakarde the artist takes in the lich and the ziggurat on which he crouches with disgust, and on the face of Balakarde the slayer is written implacable hatred.

The party adopt their positions - Gauthakan ready to deal with Mahuudril, Flas and Mend off to the left, and Frith somewhere in between. Flash or Mend ends the Etheralness spell.

The party hit hard in the surprise round. Gathakan deals with the Avolakia priestess, and Flash drops a Maximized Bolt of Glory into the lich, his Rod of Dragonkind empowering it, and then he draws upon that reserve of fate and luck that adventurers have to do the same again. Frith casts a Maximised version of an Enervation spell, but one that is impued with positive energy and affects undead. I forget what Mend did - sorry, Dave.

Then it is Dragotha’s turn. Roaring in frustration, his ability to cast his most potent spells stripped away, he calls for help, and then breathes his Wind of Death on Flash and Mend, but their Death Ward protects them from the negative energy, and they resist being knocked over. Dragotha’s help arrives - a trio of dreadful Nightcrawlers. Again the party fling their spells, and Gauthakan slays Mahuudril (and I think incidentally takes care of a Nightcrawler.)

Dragotha does something again - I forget what (not much without his high level spells) - and Gauthakan leaps across to the ziggurat, his thick natural armour protecting him from the worms that infest it. But then the spellcasters drop another couple of hundred points of hurt into Dragotha, and it’s all over.

— † —

As with the Spire of Long Shadows, once the BBEG is down, Kyuss loses his link with the place. The nightcrawlers discorporate into masses of seething kyuss worms, which all swiftly die.

Vision: The Age of Worms

The room melts away into darkness as the air ﬁlls with strange and frightening whispers. It sounds as if a hundred diﬀerent voices speak in a hundred diﬀerent languages, but an instant later, the voices have joined into one and the language resolves into familiar words. These words speak of the prophecies of the Age of Worms, and as they speak, visions of the prophecies coming true manifest before you, allowing you to observe the events as if you were a god looking down upon a troubled world. The visions are violent and horriﬁc. Legions of worm-eaten dead rise from soggy graves. An immense and demonic tree explodes into destructive life from the heart of an unfamiliar city. A burning comet lances down from the heavens to strike the earth in a tremendous, mushroom-shaped cloud of devastation. Another city, its town square wreathed in a cloud of black smoke ﬁlled with eyes, is held in the grip of shadows that move independently from their source. A cackling man attaches a clawed and withered hand to the bleeding stump of his arm, and the hand writhes into unholy life. A city built in the heart of a volcano suﬀers tragedy during a partial eruption that sees the collapse of its southeastern quadrant. As each of these scenes ﬂash by, they are accompanied by a crushing sense of certainty—these events have already come to pass.

But now, the penultimate prophecy also is accompanied by that same sense of crushing certainty, and a vision of what has come to pass. The party see: themselves! Themselves, before a mound of grave dust that was Dragotha the terrible, the reunited spirit of a grateful Balakarde before them. The voices speak: “A tripartite spirit once again becomes one, and at its advice are the mighty undone,”

There remains only one prophecy, accompanied by blackness. The voices whisper, strangely tinged with excitement, “On the eve of the Age of Worms, a hero of the pit shall use his fame to gift a city to the dead.” After this, there is only silence. One last prophecy remains yet to be realized.

Balakarde’s ghost appears before them, whole and complete. Jubilant with victory. But then, as at the Spire of Long Shadows, once again there is a flash, and instant, no more than the space between two heartbeats, and they experience a vision, the prophecies of the age of worms.

Balakarde’s expression turns grave. He leaves them with a gift - before each of the four appears a gold coin, tumbling slowly to earth. Each party member catches their coin, and as the last one is caught, Balakarde vanishes.

The party loot, and by jingo there’s a lot. They rest - there is no danger here now. In one of the abandoned rooms they find a treasure: three tarnished silver dragon scales.

They take their leave of the now inert Tabernacle of Worms, but as they prepare to teleport out …

— † —

“dot dot dot” indeed.

Plot twist, or what! The whole Three Faces of Evil thing, the cult that attempted to fulfill the penultimate prophecy - it was always completely on the wrong track. The party have fulfilled it themselves. Now there remains almost nothing more for the minions of Kyuss to do. The eve of the Age of Worms could be as little as a week away. It could be tonight.

But where’s the monolith? Dragotha had it right here - you could see the hole at the top of the ziggurat where it used to be. I got a nasty suspicion as to who took it and where it is right now …

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