Post by Heron on Oct 16, 2020 4:26:23 GMT
Original Adventure: The Last Stand of the Silver Shroud
The "Map" of Blackthorn: It's Google Draw, but I hope it helps
Warning! Before we commence with this adventure, let's cover a few important points.
◘ This is going to be extremely dark. Things are dead. Things that didn't die pleasantly. And the people that made them that way are going to try to do the same to you.
◘ Your characters and shinies can get hurt! BADLY, unless you tell me otherwise. Investing in a message of some kind (PM, IM, cbox) to let me know how much leeway I have would be both advised and appreciated.
◘ Trigger warnings: Violence, undeath, torture, body horror, dismemberment, bad things befalling children...tell me if I need to update this and I will.
◘ You get TWO SHINIES. Choose wisely. Also, dragons/rocs won't actually fit IN the village, so you may want to aim smaller.*
◘ Be prepared for your characters' various superpowers to be thrown back in their faces by enemies that really aren't impressed. They've been at this for twenty six thousand years, now, and they've...had some time to work up some pretty good countermeasures. Check with me before you assume anything drastic succeeds. Also use your environment to its fullest. And be prepared to gain new superpowers via the gods native to Kassan'ha, the world of origin for this whole mess. Talk to me. Also. IF IT'S IN THE LIBRIS MORTIS, YOU'RE ALLOWED TO KNOW ABOUT IT IC.
◘ One to two posts between mine, a few smaller ones if you're trying to work out a multi-character interaction. And we'll see if we can't get everyone home sunny side-up! With maybe a few OOC bonuses for players who impress me. :3
◘ And, uh, I'll try to make this fun for you at least, though exactly nobody's active character is going to be Heron's biggest fan. XD
Skeleton
A basic humanoid skeleton with most of its bones intact, this ramshackle thing is the reanimated shell of an old corpse, so old no flesh remains on its bones. Skeletons have all senses but taste intact, but hold little to no real sapience to speak of. Skeletons are cheap and easy shock troops readily mastered by even novice necromancers, and quickly procured from any cemetery.
- Armed, sword/shield or bow/arrows, damaged armor
- Immune to arrows, resistant to slashing damage, only blunt and elemental damage is taken in full.
- Generic troops, not terribly sturdy as far as undead go.
Zombie
A basic humanoid cadaver, the zombie has much of its flesh intact, or at least present. Much of the flesh is decaying and damaged, but it is still there, granting the zombie a unique and truly terrible rotting stench. Zombies have all five senses intact, though no real intelligence or sapience to speak of. They are cheap and easy shock troops easily mastered by even novice necromancers, and quickly procured from the first village victims brought down by the first wave of skeletons. They're a staple of any invasion, the bulk of the army, the footsoldiers, the fodder.
- Unarmed, clothed but unarmored
- Resistant to all but elemental damage
- Generic troops, as fast and sturdy as any human who can't feel pain
Ghost
The spiritual and disembodied remains of the average humanoid, the ghosts of Blackthorn occur for several reasons. Some were native, enslaved and subjugated by the invading Withered Mask, the others, the fractured remnants of the poor sods who became the skeletons and zombies, positioned as watch-dogs at the village gates, advance warning for the occupying force should their position be breached. Ghosts generally appear to be translucent images of the people they were in life, frozen in time at their time of death (a beheaded mortal will leave a headless ghost, bloodstains remain, clothing never changes). Ghosts are usually sapient and independent, but under Withered Mask control they've become restless, rabidly violent, and seek to cure their own torment by lashing out at the living, as if this will make their masters' grip on them less agonizing.
- Can be armed or unarmed, varies by individual
- Resistant to all but holy and magic damage
- Slightly unorthodox troops, but excellent sentries
Wraith Spider
Giant spiders are generally enough to unnerve your average arachnophobe. Necromancers take this a step further, however, raising slain giant spiders from the dead as servants. The Withered Mask doesn't rely on wraith spiders for much, but they make decent enough tunnel sentries. Flimsy, but...they have a certain creep factor that even human dead just don't.
- Unlike most troops, these are not immune to holy damage or Turning
- Highly flammable
- Has lost webbing ability, venom replaced with diseased bite, retains excellent stealth, however
Ash Wraith
Cremation is an easy go-to for people who wish to not have necromancer problems in their cemeteries, burning the bodies of the dead down to otherwise unusable grit to avoid skeletons and zombies later. The Withered Mask finds this practice adorable, and quite useful in the creation of the Ash Wraith, a cloud-like creature composed of the cremains of the deceased, cursed to rise and serve a powerful necromancer's command. Given their insubstantiality and their ability to dissipate and re-form freely, Ash Wraiths are extremely difficult to pin down and even harder to hurt.
- Immune to holy damage, positive energy, and sanctified things that usually harm the undead, immune to Turning
- Immune to all physical damage of all types
- Can be slowed with water, is resistant to but not immune to magic
Zombie Hunter
Not every zombie is a cheap shock trooper. Once the Withered Mask has gotten a foothold, they can produce a stronger, smarter, more quality zombie, more than just a lumbering soldier of rotting flesh. The zombie hunter is a fresher kill, likely obtained in an attack by the weaker zombies and retrieved for processing in short order. It retains its human appearance, mostly, but its wounds have been tended. Broken bones have been reinforced, joints have been supported, torn flesh has been sewn shut, and every part of this zombie drips with both protective and offensive magic. It has also undergone reconstructive surgery to make it more dangerous, in that long, sharp claws have been added to every finger and the teeth have been replaced with something sharper. Above all else, however, one should note that the zombie hunter is FAST.
- Has only "natural" weapons that have been surgically added to each finger, this is normally quite sufficient to render swords and shields irrelevant
- Is hasted, moves at three times the maximum speed of a healthy and athletic human
- Was built to take heavy damage without dropping, though is not invulnerable, particularly to strong acids; IS, however, fire-proof
Zombie Goliath
Not every zombie is made from a single cadaver. Likewise, not every retrieved cadaver is in good enough condition to raise on its own. A goliath is created by attaching and reinforcing parts from multiple bodies, and adding in a whole lot of natural armor in the process. No two goliaths look the same, nor do they typically have the same number or proportion of limbs. The Withered Mask wastes nothing, so they're scrupulous about using every possible scrap in their supply of body parts to its fullest. Waste not, want not, and sometimes spare parts are even deadlier than purpose-built creations.
- Huge lump of dead flesh with no particular design plan in mind, is reinforced to be nearly immune to physical damage and strong enough to bench press an apartment complex
- Unlike the zombie hunter, the goliath is generally proportionally as slow as it is strong, which is to say everyone in the aforementioned apartment complex has plenty of time to get clear before their collective home is moved
- Requires heavy use of magic, fire, and acid to take down, as it is built with physical durability in mind and can withstand literally anything else thrown at it
Slag Heap
Waste. Not. Want. Not. Even the rotten, decomposing goo and sloughed-off skin and congealing blood clots have a purpose! The leftovers from the scrap used to build the goliaths seem poorly suited to fueling an army, but with a little extra enchantment, the decaying medical waste can live again! Roughly the texture of a gelatinous cube (without the geometric aesthetic or underlying structure), a slag heap is one of the ugliest innovations of the Withered Mask, capable of killing with little more than its sheer stench. It isn't fast, it isn't strong, it isn't smart, but a slag heap can choke the living to death simply by existing too closely, and if that fails, it causes everything it touches to begin decaying also.
- Formless pile of disgusting slop that spits even more disgusting slop at nearby target, any contact with any of the slop will cause flesh to undergo necrosis at an extremely rapid rate; Bone also subject to rot (slower than flesh), wood subject to decay, water will be immediately fouled -- only totally inorganic composites are immune to a slag heap's toxic touch
- May kill things that breathe simply because it stinks lethally
- Has nasty tendency to destroy weapons that make contact, Miralet suggests killing it with fire -- LOTS of fire
Childer Revenant
The most tragic custom creation of the Withered Mask, usually reserved for the children born to members of the Silver Shroud...except here, apparently. The child, older than four but younger than ten for optimal size, is tortured to death over a course of weeks, sometimes months, as the restrained parents are forced to watch. When the child's body finally gives up to where healing magic and force-feeding no longer sustain life, the child's soul is swiftly and agonizingly bound to its small corpse, and the whole construct is steeped in strengthening magic wards -- wards fueled by the child-spirit's own pain, so it behooves the Mask to make the binding pretty damn painful. As with the specialized zombies, the children's bodies are subjected to transformative surgery to weaponize them. Much of this surgery is done before the children die, to maximize the torture inflicted on both child and parents, and also so that the flesh can be healed around the alterations, thereby making them sit naturally. What remains at the end, what the parents are then freed to face, is no longer a child in anything but size. It's a weapon. An extremely powerful weapon.
- Childer Revenant has a banshee's howl that can rip the souls out of the living within a certain range if ears are not covered VERY quickly
- Despite its size, the Childer Revenant is amazingly powerful, capable of picking up and throwing much larger, heavier opponents before leaping at them to make the kill with its devastatingly efficient new claws, or, if necessary, the Childer will find another avenue to inflict pain and injury; it is an incredibly intelligent and adaptable thing, capable of processing tactical strategy and battlefield logic
- Due to haste and durability, physical damage is both easily evaded and not terribly effective; Childer has been warded against all holy, positive, sanctified, and other anti-undead effects; Childer Revenant cannot even be damaged by any weapon with less than a +5 enchantment unless another enchantment (eg elemental damage) is at play
Gravesteel Weapons
While obviously not an undead type, Gravesteel is a weapon unique to Withered Mask undead and operatives. Natural steel is smelted with alchemical compounds known only to the Withered Mask, and finished products receive their god's personal blessing, and the end result is something truly, truly nasty. Gravesteel is just a smidge off color from proper steel, a little darker, a little more purple around where light strikes along the blades -- and it's always blades, never blunt things, things meant to dig into flesh and inflict their curse as deeply within the body as possible.
- Wounds caused by Gravesteel HURT to heal either naturally or via healing magic; the curse is from the god of inflicting suffering, after all, so suffer you will if you get hit and need healing.
- Limbs amputated by Gravesteel can be neither regenerated nor reattached, and the victim is doomed to remain an amputee for life no matter what surgical procedures or healing magic are available that would ordinarily correct the problem.
- Anything with angelic/celestial blood is hit with a necrotizing curse that turns the blood to tendon-eating acid and makes the organs begin to decompose while the angel (or partial angel) is still alive to suffer the agony of rotting from the inside out. A specific counter-curse known only to the Veiled Sisters of the Withered Mask and the Cryptkeepers of the Silver Shroud is needed to save the angel's existence and remove the aspect of the curse that causes healing magic to accelerate the decomposition.
The God, the Order
The Withered Mask is a religious organization, a church, as much as it is a necromantic cult or an army of grave-defilers. The Masks are a group of highly intelligent, passionate, creative, determined people, possessed of faith, courage, loyalty, and a fiercer kind of love than the Silver Shroud can comprehend. These would be positive qualities if they didn't devote themselves to Nalthraxxi, patron god of torture, pain, enslaving the weak, enslaving the dead, and undermining the afterlife. Nalthraxxi is the twin brother to Myune the Grave-Watcher, matron goddess of the Silver Shroud, and the two religious orders have long had a terrifying kind of sibling rivalry, driving each other to further and further extremes in their battles for dominance...and ultimately genocide.
What makes the living servants of Nalthraxxi more terrifying still, however, is that Nalthraxxi, being the god of undeath, has a tendency to bless His servants with a second go at things, and when Masks pop back up again, they tend to be incredibly powerful. The individual blessings vary by class purpose, but every specialized undead form is unique and devastatingly lethal if allowed to gain momentum. As such, members of the Withered Mask are to be killed with extreme caution and with much attention payed to purpose served and predicted mode of return.
Death Mask of Nalthraxxi
If you say "paladin", the average person thinks of the paragon of goodness and law, but the word breaks down to "defender of the faith", and every faith has defenders. The Death Masks are the paladins called to Nalthraxxi's banner, the knights who flank the necromancers. Guardians, protectors, soldiers, servants, unflinching and unfailing, brutal and unrelenting. It takes a great deal of physical power to be a Death Mask in the first place; it's a demanding set of duties as merciless on the dark paladins as they are expected to be on the world. However, when a Death Mask is slain, that physical power more than doubles -- his strength, his fortitude, his nimbleness. A risen Death Mask attacking from beyond the grave can easily fling aside adult dragons more often than not, and while not fully hasted, he's a lot faster than most of the living are on their feet. Given that and the sheer amount of damage he can soak without being actually injured, members of the Silver Shroud favor disabling Death Masks without killing them: they cannot continue the fight if they're unconscious, they don't resurrect if they're not dead, and the time and space that reprieve allows gives the Shrouds time to derive something physically devastating enough to render the Death Mask inert even in resurrection. No matter how strong they are, there is only so much they can do without arms and legs, for example, which, while ugly, is often sadly necessary.
Recognizing a Death Mask: Death Masks of Nalthraxxi are distinctive from the Withered Mask ranks by the vivid face paints they wear. A bone white base, mimicking the cheekbone and mandibles, reds and browns to depict decaying flesh, eerie purple winding around the too-lifelike details in what almost looks like a pulsing glow, veins of corruption wrapped around disease and decay.
They are also the members of the Withered Mask who wear the best armor, significantly technologically advanced articulated plate mail that both takes a hit and allows the wearer to continue moving freely and without undue encumbrance. The armor is expensive, but the Withered Mask spares no expense for its most valiant and courageous defenders...much to the chagrin of the Crypt Knights of Myune, who must then struggle to strike a blow against their well-fortified foes. Death Masks, alive or undead, are nimble, powerful, armed and armored to the teeth, and are not only willing to go to extremes, but look to extremes as a first resort.
Death Mask already requires minimum stats STR 16, CON 14. Upon death and subsequent dark revival, Nalthraxxi throws in a few bonuses.
(STR + 2) x2
DEX x2
(CON + 5) x2
Doubled speed factor
Damage Reduction 50/-
Nalthraxxi loathes playing fair. There's also a reason the Silver Shroud likes to knock Death Masks unconscious and then strip naked and very hastily dismember them. All's fair in war and surviving the Withered Mask.
Veiled Sisters
Just as Nalthraxxi only ever seems to Call men to the path of paladin, only women ever make the truly elite clerical ranks. The Veiled Sisters are an elite cult within the Withered Mask, feared, revered, spoken of in hushed and fearful tones even by their own members. By some measure, she is a wizard, a necromancer capable of performing the foulest afterlife-defying rituals. She raises the damned and profanes the dead. In another measure, She is a priest, vastly blessed and favored by Nalthraxxi, to whom the Veiled Sisters are as cherished as daughters. But what makes a Veiled Sister most feared of all is not her arcane might, nor the divine bounty of her god that she wields as easily as breathing. What makes her most feared of all is that she is, above and beyond all else, an elite surgeon.
The various specialized undead forms deployed by the Withered Mask require special care in their creation. Much of this special care is actually perimortem, in fact comprising the bulk of the torture meted out to captured victims of the Withered Mask. The people who become the truly unique masterpieces are surgically altered while they are alive so that their alterations can be healed into their bodies. This creates a stronger, more natural foundation, most important for joint and bone reinforcements and things like finger-mounted blades that need to be very well secured so they don't sustain damage in combat.
And combat with a Veiled Sister can be truly vicious. The common perception of spellcasters as being fragile never quite took the surgically-strengthened Veiled Sisters into account, that and the Veiled Sisters hold pain sacred. Hurting them just tends to make their faith in Nalthraxxi that much stronger, a faith He repays tenfold should one of His daughters fall. A Death Mask rises as an unstoppable juggernaut of physical destruction; a Veiled Sister rises as a blizzard of necrotic magic and life-leeching corruption. She is also invincible, in the way of most liches, until her phylactery is destroyed. For Veiled Sisters, this phylactery is a single carved bone somewhere within her own skeleton, though which specific bone varies by individual, lest the Silver Shroud know where to look before they start cutting. Until this phylactery bone is destroyed, she can rise indefinitely, no matter how much damage her body actually takes. Silver Shroud protocol is usually immediate dismemberment and separation of parts, while teams simultaneously search for the altered bone in the various...chunks, preferably destroying it before she has a chance to get up and fight back again.
Recognizing a Veiled Sister: A woman who serves Nalthraxxi in the highest esteem can be easily recognized by her garb. She wears a long, flowing robe that is almost more gown-like than the ascetic robe one might associate with a priestess, except augmented with an armored breastplate and pauldrons protecting her shoulders. Most Veiled Sisters wear white, though higher-ranking Sisters dress in grey, and the Sister Superior, head of the cult, wears black. The veil for which the order is named is usually only worn during surgeries and rituals, not for day-to-day things. She carries a ritually decorated bone dagger in her belt, and holds her head high and her shoulders back, unafraid of anything. Her gloves were white when she first received them as an Initiate, but they'll be in shades of old brown and fresher reds by now, dyed by countless blood stains that are replenished too often to ever be washed clean. Surprisingly little blood gets on her robe from the surgeries, but the gloves take a lot of staining. Also in her belt is a long sort of satchel, which, when unfolded, reveals a terrifying array of surgical tools and implements of torture, though which are what is anyone's guess.
Veiled Sisters, minimum INT 16, WIS 16, DEX 18, CON 14, if your stats are not extraordinarily lucky or heavily tweaked during leveling there is no getting this prestige class -- and Nalthraxxi has it that way for a reason. His women are the best, don't you know. Might almost be admirable if He wasn't Himself. That said, they get a little something fun (not fun for you) for being such darling girls.
(DEX + 5) x2
INT x2
WIS x3
All spells are treated as having the metamagic feats Quicken Spell, Maximize Spell, Empower Spell, and then Epic Spell Penetration, Epic Spell Focus: Necromancy
Free Action: Shriek of the Damned -- Cone, 5D6 sonic damage, 5D6 negative energy damage
If defeated: Will rise again in three rounds if phylactery bone is not discovered and destroyed
3 Free Actions/Round [Nalthraxxi's rules]
Yes, I did mean to write that their Wisdom is tripled -- their perception is extremely heightened after you kill them. There are perfectly viable survival tricks, however. Just don't try to hide from a risen Veiled Sister, because it won't work, just sayin' that now, the dice'd have to be spectacularly moody. Also note these are epic level campaign enemies. XD Good luck! You can outsmart them anyway.
The "Map" of Blackthorn: It's Google Draw, but I hope it helps
Warning! Before we commence with this adventure, let's cover a few important points.
◘ This is going to be extremely dark. Things are dead. Things that didn't die pleasantly. And the people that made them that way are going to try to do the same to you.
◘ Your characters and shinies can get hurt! BADLY, unless you tell me otherwise. Investing in a message of some kind (PM, IM, cbox) to let me know how much leeway I have would be both advised and appreciated.
◘ Trigger warnings: Violence, undeath, torture, body horror, dismemberment, bad things befalling children...tell me if I need to update this and I will.
◘ You get TWO SHINIES. Choose wisely. Also, dragons/rocs won't actually fit IN the village, so you may want to aim smaller.*
◘ Be prepared for your characters' various superpowers to be thrown back in their faces by enemies that really aren't impressed. They've been at this for twenty six thousand years, now, and they've...had some time to work up some pretty good countermeasures. Check with me before you assume anything drastic succeeds. Also use your environment to its fullest. And be prepared to gain new superpowers via the gods native to Kassan'ha, the world of origin for this whole mess. Talk to me. Also. IF IT'S IN THE LIBRIS MORTIS, YOU'RE ALLOWED TO KNOW ABOUT IT IC.
◘ One to two posts between mine, a few smaller ones if you're trying to work out a multi-character interaction. And we'll see if we can't get everyone home sunny side-up! With maybe a few OOC bonuses for players who impress me. :3
◘ And, uh, I'll try to make this fun for you at least, though exactly nobody's active character is going to be Heron's biggest fan. XD
Libris Mortis
Skeleton
A basic humanoid skeleton with most of its bones intact, this ramshackle thing is the reanimated shell of an old corpse, so old no flesh remains on its bones. Skeletons have all senses but taste intact, but hold little to no real sapience to speak of. Skeletons are cheap and easy shock troops readily mastered by even novice necromancers, and quickly procured from any cemetery.
- Armed, sword/shield or bow/arrows, damaged armor
- Immune to arrows, resistant to slashing damage, only blunt and elemental damage is taken in full.
- Generic troops, not terribly sturdy as far as undead go.
Zombie
A basic humanoid cadaver, the zombie has much of its flesh intact, or at least present. Much of the flesh is decaying and damaged, but it is still there, granting the zombie a unique and truly terrible rotting stench. Zombies have all five senses intact, though no real intelligence or sapience to speak of. They are cheap and easy shock troops easily mastered by even novice necromancers, and quickly procured from the first village victims brought down by the first wave of skeletons. They're a staple of any invasion, the bulk of the army, the footsoldiers, the fodder.
- Unarmed, clothed but unarmored
- Resistant to all but elemental damage
- Generic troops, as fast and sturdy as any human who can't feel pain
Ghost
The spiritual and disembodied remains of the average humanoid, the ghosts of Blackthorn occur for several reasons. Some were native, enslaved and subjugated by the invading Withered Mask, the others, the fractured remnants of the poor sods who became the skeletons and zombies, positioned as watch-dogs at the village gates, advance warning for the occupying force should their position be breached. Ghosts generally appear to be translucent images of the people they were in life, frozen in time at their time of death (a beheaded mortal will leave a headless ghost, bloodstains remain, clothing never changes). Ghosts are usually sapient and independent, but under Withered Mask control they've become restless, rabidly violent, and seek to cure their own torment by lashing out at the living, as if this will make their masters' grip on them less agonizing.
- Can be armed or unarmed, varies by individual
- Resistant to all but holy and magic damage
- Slightly unorthodox troops, but excellent sentries
Wraith Spider
Giant spiders are generally enough to unnerve your average arachnophobe. Necromancers take this a step further, however, raising slain giant spiders from the dead as servants. The Withered Mask doesn't rely on wraith spiders for much, but they make decent enough tunnel sentries. Flimsy, but...they have a certain creep factor that even human dead just don't.
- Unlike most troops, these are not immune to holy damage or Turning
- Highly flammable
- Has lost webbing ability, venom replaced with diseased bite, retains excellent stealth, however
Ash Wraith
Cremation is an easy go-to for people who wish to not have necromancer problems in their cemeteries, burning the bodies of the dead down to otherwise unusable grit to avoid skeletons and zombies later. The Withered Mask finds this practice adorable, and quite useful in the creation of the Ash Wraith, a cloud-like creature composed of the cremains of the deceased, cursed to rise and serve a powerful necromancer's command. Given their insubstantiality and their ability to dissipate and re-form freely, Ash Wraiths are extremely difficult to pin down and even harder to hurt.
- Immune to holy damage, positive energy, and sanctified things that usually harm the undead, immune to Turning
- Immune to all physical damage of all types
- Can be slowed with water, is resistant to but not immune to magic
Zombie Hunter
Not every zombie is a cheap shock trooper. Once the Withered Mask has gotten a foothold, they can produce a stronger, smarter, more quality zombie, more than just a lumbering soldier of rotting flesh. The zombie hunter is a fresher kill, likely obtained in an attack by the weaker zombies and retrieved for processing in short order. It retains its human appearance, mostly, but its wounds have been tended. Broken bones have been reinforced, joints have been supported, torn flesh has been sewn shut, and every part of this zombie drips with both protective and offensive magic. It has also undergone reconstructive surgery to make it more dangerous, in that long, sharp claws have been added to every finger and the teeth have been replaced with something sharper. Above all else, however, one should note that the zombie hunter is FAST.
- Has only "natural" weapons that have been surgically added to each finger, this is normally quite sufficient to render swords and shields irrelevant
- Is hasted, moves at three times the maximum speed of a healthy and athletic human
- Was built to take heavy damage without dropping, though is not invulnerable, particularly to strong acids; IS, however, fire-proof
Zombie Goliath
Not every zombie is made from a single cadaver. Likewise, not every retrieved cadaver is in good enough condition to raise on its own. A goliath is created by attaching and reinforcing parts from multiple bodies, and adding in a whole lot of natural armor in the process. No two goliaths look the same, nor do they typically have the same number or proportion of limbs. The Withered Mask wastes nothing, so they're scrupulous about using every possible scrap in their supply of body parts to its fullest. Waste not, want not, and sometimes spare parts are even deadlier than purpose-built creations.
- Huge lump of dead flesh with no particular design plan in mind, is reinforced to be nearly immune to physical damage and strong enough to bench press an apartment complex
- Unlike the zombie hunter, the goliath is generally proportionally as slow as it is strong, which is to say everyone in the aforementioned apartment complex has plenty of time to get clear before their collective home is moved
- Requires heavy use of magic, fire, and acid to take down, as it is built with physical durability in mind and can withstand literally anything else thrown at it
Slag Heap
Waste. Not. Want. Not. Even the rotten, decomposing goo and sloughed-off skin and congealing blood clots have a purpose! The leftovers from the scrap used to build the goliaths seem poorly suited to fueling an army, but with a little extra enchantment, the decaying medical waste can live again! Roughly the texture of a gelatinous cube (without the geometric aesthetic or underlying structure), a slag heap is one of the ugliest innovations of the Withered Mask, capable of killing with little more than its sheer stench. It isn't fast, it isn't strong, it isn't smart, but a slag heap can choke the living to death simply by existing too closely, and if that fails, it causes everything it touches to begin decaying also.
- Formless pile of disgusting slop that spits even more disgusting slop at nearby target, any contact with any of the slop will cause flesh to undergo necrosis at an extremely rapid rate; Bone also subject to rot (slower than flesh), wood subject to decay, water will be immediately fouled -- only totally inorganic composites are immune to a slag heap's toxic touch
- May kill things that breathe simply because it stinks lethally
- Has nasty tendency to destroy weapons that make contact, Miralet suggests killing it with fire -- LOTS of fire
Childer Revenant
The most tragic custom creation of the Withered Mask, usually reserved for the children born to members of the Silver Shroud...except here, apparently. The child, older than four but younger than ten for optimal size, is tortured to death over a course of weeks, sometimes months, as the restrained parents are forced to watch. When the child's body finally gives up to where healing magic and force-feeding no longer sustain life, the child's soul is swiftly and agonizingly bound to its small corpse, and the whole construct is steeped in strengthening magic wards -- wards fueled by the child-spirit's own pain, so it behooves the Mask to make the binding pretty damn painful. As with the specialized zombies, the children's bodies are subjected to transformative surgery to weaponize them. Much of this surgery is done before the children die, to maximize the torture inflicted on both child and parents, and also so that the flesh can be healed around the alterations, thereby making them sit naturally. What remains at the end, what the parents are then freed to face, is no longer a child in anything but size. It's a weapon. An extremely powerful weapon.
- Childer Revenant has a banshee's howl that can rip the souls out of the living within a certain range if ears are not covered VERY quickly
- Despite its size, the Childer Revenant is amazingly powerful, capable of picking up and throwing much larger, heavier opponents before leaping at them to make the kill with its devastatingly efficient new claws, or, if necessary, the Childer will find another avenue to inflict pain and injury; it is an incredibly intelligent and adaptable thing, capable of processing tactical strategy and battlefield logic
- Due to haste and durability, physical damage is both easily evaded and not terribly effective; Childer has been warded against all holy, positive, sanctified, and other anti-undead effects; Childer Revenant cannot even be damaged by any weapon with less than a +5 enchantment unless another enchantment (eg elemental damage) is at play
Gravesteel Weapons
While obviously not an undead type, Gravesteel is a weapon unique to Withered Mask undead and operatives. Natural steel is smelted with alchemical compounds known only to the Withered Mask, and finished products receive their god's personal blessing, and the end result is something truly, truly nasty. Gravesteel is just a smidge off color from proper steel, a little darker, a little more purple around where light strikes along the blades -- and it's always blades, never blunt things, things meant to dig into flesh and inflict their curse as deeply within the body as possible.
- Wounds caused by Gravesteel HURT to heal either naturally or via healing magic; the curse is from the god of inflicting suffering, after all, so suffer you will if you get hit and need healing.
- Limbs amputated by Gravesteel can be neither regenerated nor reattached, and the victim is doomed to remain an amputee for life no matter what surgical procedures or healing magic are available that would ordinarily correct the problem.
- Anything with angelic/celestial blood is hit with a necrotizing curse that turns the blood to tendon-eating acid and makes the organs begin to decompose while the angel (or partial angel) is still alive to suffer the agony of rotting from the inside out. A specific counter-curse known only to the Veiled Sisters of the Withered Mask and the Cryptkeepers of the Silver Shroud is needed to save the angel's existence and remove the aspect of the curse that causes healing magic to accelerate the decomposition.
The Withered Mask
The God, the Order
The Withered Mask is a religious organization, a church, as much as it is a necromantic cult or an army of grave-defilers. The Masks are a group of highly intelligent, passionate, creative, determined people, possessed of faith, courage, loyalty, and a fiercer kind of love than the Silver Shroud can comprehend. These would be positive qualities if they didn't devote themselves to Nalthraxxi, patron god of torture, pain, enslaving the weak, enslaving the dead, and undermining the afterlife. Nalthraxxi is the twin brother to Myune the Grave-Watcher, matron goddess of the Silver Shroud, and the two religious orders have long had a terrifying kind of sibling rivalry, driving each other to further and further extremes in their battles for dominance...and ultimately genocide.
What makes the living servants of Nalthraxxi more terrifying still, however, is that Nalthraxxi, being the god of undeath, has a tendency to bless His servants with a second go at things, and when Masks pop back up again, they tend to be incredibly powerful. The individual blessings vary by class purpose, but every specialized undead form is unique and devastatingly lethal if allowed to gain momentum. As such, members of the Withered Mask are to be killed with extreme caution and with much attention payed to purpose served and predicted mode of return.
Death Mask of Nalthraxxi
If you say "paladin", the average person thinks of the paragon of goodness and law, but the word breaks down to "defender of the faith", and every faith has defenders. The Death Masks are the paladins called to Nalthraxxi's banner, the knights who flank the necromancers. Guardians, protectors, soldiers, servants, unflinching and unfailing, brutal and unrelenting. It takes a great deal of physical power to be a Death Mask in the first place; it's a demanding set of duties as merciless on the dark paladins as they are expected to be on the world. However, when a Death Mask is slain, that physical power more than doubles -- his strength, his fortitude, his nimbleness. A risen Death Mask attacking from beyond the grave can easily fling aside adult dragons more often than not, and while not fully hasted, he's a lot faster than most of the living are on their feet. Given that and the sheer amount of damage he can soak without being actually injured, members of the Silver Shroud favor disabling Death Masks without killing them: they cannot continue the fight if they're unconscious, they don't resurrect if they're not dead, and the time and space that reprieve allows gives the Shrouds time to derive something physically devastating enough to render the Death Mask inert even in resurrection. No matter how strong they are, there is only so much they can do without arms and legs, for example, which, while ugly, is often sadly necessary.
Recognizing a Death Mask: Death Masks of Nalthraxxi are distinctive from the Withered Mask ranks by the vivid face paints they wear. A bone white base, mimicking the cheekbone and mandibles, reds and browns to depict decaying flesh, eerie purple winding around the too-lifelike details in what almost looks like a pulsing glow, veins of corruption wrapped around disease and decay.
They are also the members of the Withered Mask who wear the best armor, significantly technologically advanced articulated plate mail that both takes a hit and allows the wearer to continue moving freely and without undue encumbrance. The armor is expensive, but the Withered Mask spares no expense for its most valiant and courageous defenders...much to the chagrin of the Crypt Knights of Myune, who must then struggle to strike a blow against their well-fortified foes. Death Masks, alive or undead, are nimble, powerful, armed and armored to the teeth, and are not only willing to go to extremes, but look to extremes as a first resort.
Death Mask already requires minimum stats STR 16, CON 14. Upon death and subsequent dark revival, Nalthraxxi throws in a few bonuses.
(STR + 2) x2
DEX x2
(CON + 5) x2
Doubled speed factor
Damage Reduction 50/-
Nalthraxxi loathes playing fair. There's also a reason the Silver Shroud likes to knock Death Masks unconscious and then strip naked and very hastily dismember them. All's fair in war and surviving the Withered Mask.
Veiled Sisters
Just as Nalthraxxi only ever seems to Call men to the path of paladin, only women ever make the truly elite clerical ranks. The Veiled Sisters are an elite cult within the Withered Mask, feared, revered, spoken of in hushed and fearful tones even by their own members. By some measure, she is a wizard, a necromancer capable of performing the foulest afterlife-defying rituals. She raises the damned and profanes the dead. In another measure, She is a priest, vastly blessed and favored by Nalthraxxi, to whom the Veiled Sisters are as cherished as daughters. But what makes a Veiled Sister most feared of all is not her arcane might, nor the divine bounty of her god that she wields as easily as breathing. What makes her most feared of all is that she is, above and beyond all else, an elite surgeon.
The various specialized undead forms deployed by the Withered Mask require special care in their creation. Much of this special care is actually perimortem, in fact comprising the bulk of the torture meted out to captured victims of the Withered Mask. The people who become the truly unique masterpieces are surgically altered while they are alive so that their alterations can be healed into their bodies. This creates a stronger, more natural foundation, most important for joint and bone reinforcements and things like finger-mounted blades that need to be very well secured so they don't sustain damage in combat.
And combat with a Veiled Sister can be truly vicious. The common perception of spellcasters as being fragile never quite took the surgically-strengthened Veiled Sisters into account, that and the Veiled Sisters hold pain sacred. Hurting them just tends to make their faith in Nalthraxxi that much stronger, a faith He repays tenfold should one of His daughters fall. A Death Mask rises as an unstoppable juggernaut of physical destruction; a Veiled Sister rises as a blizzard of necrotic magic and life-leeching corruption. She is also invincible, in the way of most liches, until her phylactery is destroyed. For Veiled Sisters, this phylactery is a single carved bone somewhere within her own skeleton, though which specific bone varies by individual, lest the Silver Shroud know where to look before they start cutting. Until this phylactery bone is destroyed, she can rise indefinitely, no matter how much damage her body actually takes. Silver Shroud protocol is usually immediate dismemberment and separation of parts, while teams simultaneously search for the altered bone in the various...chunks, preferably destroying it before she has a chance to get up and fight back again.
Recognizing a Veiled Sister: A woman who serves Nalthraxxi in the highest esteem can be easily recognized by her garb. She wears a long, flowing robe that is almost more gown-like than the ascetic robe one might associate with a priestess, except augmented with an armored breastplate and pauldrons protecting her shoulders. Most Veiled Sisters wear white, though higher-ranking Sisters dress in grey, and the Sister Superior, head of the cult, wears black. The veil for which the order is named is usually only worn during surgeries and rituals, not for day-to-day things. She carries a ritually decorated bone dagger in her belt, and holds her head high and her shoulders back, unafraid of anything. Her gloves were white when she first received them as an Initiate, but they'll be in shades of old brown and fresher reds by now, dyed by countless blood stains that are replenished too often to ever be washed clean. Surprisingly little blood gets on her robe from the surgeries, but the gloves take a lot of staining. Also in her belt is a long sort of satchel, which, when unfolded, reveals a terrifying array of surgical tools and implements of torture, though which are what is anyone's guess.
Veiled Sisters, minimum INT 16, WIS 16, DEX 18, CON 14, if your stats are not extraordinarily lucky or heavily tweaked during leveling there is no getting this prestige class -- and Nalthraxxi has it that way for a reason. His women are the best, don't you know. Might almost be admirable if He wasn't Himself. That said, they get a little something fun (not fun for you) for being such darling girls.
(DEX + 5) x2
INT x2
WIS x3
All spells are treated as having the metamagic feats Quicken Spell, Maximize Spell, Empower Spell, and then Epic Spell Penetration, Epic Spell Focus: Necromancy
Free Action: Shriek of the Damned -- Cone, 5D6 sonic damage, 5D6 negative energy damage
If defeated: Will rise again in three rounds if phylactery bone is not discovered and destroyed
3 Free Actions/Round [Nalthraxxi's rules]
Yes, I did mean to write that their Wisdom is tripled -- their perception is extremely heightened after you kill them. There are perfectly viable survival tricks, however. Just don't try to hide from a risen Veiled Sister, because it won't work, just sayin' that now, the dice'd have to be spectacularly moody. Also note these are epic level campaign enemies. XD Good luck! You can outsmart them anyway.
