In my Broken Lands online AD&D campaign that has been on hiatus over a year, I planned to talk about it in today’s podcast. I thought I had written an article about the mountaintop Temple of The Necromancer along with the isometric map I drew. Turns out, it’s a false memory. I did write about it… on G+. No wonderI couldn’t find the article I was looking for. I didn’t go into great detail on G+, just showed off what I managed to do with isometric graph paper.
Via Roll20 this map made it a lot easier to convey the layout. Both the players and I appreciated that.
The players had found The Tomb of The Necromancer and sealed him in and faced the minions who were trying to free him. The party used a portal that had been opened via powerful magics to open from the mountaintop temple to the far off underground tomb. The party dealt with a hoard of undead that filled the tomb and used some things they found in another underground area to seal him in. Up to this point is a scenario that I ran at Marmalade Dog a last year ago, after the players had done it.
They then went through the portal and faced more undead and some living guards. The party managed to defeat the undead. A successful turn undead had the undead fleeing at top speed away from the good cleric. This was hilarious as the skeletons, zombies, and ghouls ran over the edge of the mountaintop temple, climbing over the winch for the elevator that provided access and resupply to the human guards. The undead were killed in the 500 foot fall and caused death and destruction to the people and equipment they landed on. NOTE: It took more than one turn to get them all, and some they still had to fight.
Just as they had defeated the last of the foes on the mountaintop, a figure in plate mail and flowing robes with four crossbowmen attacked from a flying carpet. The party managed to kill a couple of the archers, and wound the robed figure. They were amazed that he seemed to cast both clerical and magic user spells. One comment was along the lines of, “Wait a minute that’s a magic user spell and he’s wearing plate mail.” “Yup!” was my answer.
The party did all they could to try and take out this spell caster, but couldn’t do it. I forget what spell they used that sent him away from them, but the carpet was too fast and out of their reach. One of the players said, “That flying carpet is mine!”
They were nearly out of spells and all of them hurt, so they decided to flee through the portal and seal it so that the bad guys could not access The Necromancer without waiting for the right conditions to open a new portal, or traveling the unknown distance from the mountaintop temple.
Last we played, the party was making plans to find the individual with the flying carpet who they believe carries the title, Son of The Necromancer. I gave them a foe with his own neat magic items and abilities they were not prepared for. Interesting times lie ahead. I’m hoping to pick up where we left off in the coming weeks.
You can find the companion podcast episode here.
