Dead Gods - Mysteries of the Stones

Tonight we wrapped up the "side adventure" that is meant to be threaded through the main storyline in Dead Gods. Honestly, they probably should have just published it on its own. It's pretty good but it has nothing to do with the main Orcus storyline.

If I were to run this again, I think I might have changed the side adventure to link it to Orcus. In Dead Gods, we learn that the actual skull on the Wand of Orcus is a guy named Anarchocles. Orcus used to command his skeletal remains to do stuff for him using the golden circlet (which the heroes used last session to destroy the Wand of Orcus).

I think I would change the story of Anarchocles to make it that Anarchocles was a god who fought Orcus long ago and perished. And now, through the stones in his fallen temple, he is reaching out to aid the heroes in defeating Orcus.

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Drow Wizard

Trapped

We picked up right where we left off last time. The group had just defeated Orcus and destroyed the Wand of Orcus. They kept the iron handle of the wand, and Bidam decided to keep the shattered Orcusword.

They were seemingly trapped in the 4th layer of Pandemonium with no way out. Theran used his wand of darkness to summon a nightmare. If you read the 5e monster manual, you'll see that nightmares want food and if they don't get it, they still serve their master but do so resentfully.

The heroes used the nightmare to shift into the ethereal plane. They floated around there and followed their planar compass until they found an ethereal curtain which got them back to Sigil, in the poor and dangerous district known as The Hive. I later realize that you can't get to the Ethereal Plane from Pandemonim (in the 2e cosmology, at least), so I guess there was some weird cosmic conjunction caused by the death of Orcus.

Demonic Madness

The heroes were in Sigil but they were still suffering from demonic madness. Bidam had the urge to make the weak suffer. He viciously berated a poor slovenly strumpet. Theran wanted to experiment on the dead, and Fall From Grace nearly abandoned her faith. She had to be restrained from using her deadly kiss, something she swore never to do.

The adventurers were able to pay a healer 450 gold each to cast Greater Restoration on each of them, curing their madness.

The group met with the leader of the Sensates, Factol Erin Montgomery Darkflame. There, they pieced together what had happened in this campaign:

• Orcus had killed Primus, lord of the modrons, and replaced him. 
• Orcus sent the modrons out on a march to search the planes for the Wand of Orcus. 
• Once he got some lead, he left and another modron transformed into Primus and none was the wiser.
• Orcus made visages to go hunt down the wand and the two amnesiac drow who had hid it, but the heroes beat him to it.

The heroes were given high faction ranks, as a result of their heroic deeds.. Bidam is now a factotum in the Sensates, and Theran is a.. guy in the Free League. The Free League has no Factol or structure, that's part of their whole gimmick. Both are potentially movers and shakers in the faction world, if they want to be.

The Heart of the Lady of Pain

At last it was time to pull the trigger on this. After a few days of rest, the heroes were accosted by Gonard Flumph. This Donald Trump NPC was angry at the heroes for what happened to his daughter (she had found a cursed gem which Orcus used to summon and kill her.

Flumph had some hired goons and went on a rant which turned into a tirade on the Lady of Pain. I tried to include all the classic Trump quotes, including of course the Megyn Kelly "Blood coming out her.. wherever.." comment.

The Lady of Pain appeared and mazed Flumph for daring to speak her name. Then, she stood there looming over the adventurers. They handed her the Heart of the Lady of Pain. The Lady pressed it into her chest. Things got trippy. Her shadow turned to iron and floated toward the heroes' festhall. The lady vanished.

The heroes followed the Iron Shadow (which is the villain of Tales From the Infinite Staircase, which I may or may not run one day). The Shadow passed through the door that would not open in the festhall.

This triggered an event the Dabuses had been preparing the building for - the building was about to 'give birth' to a new section of the city! The door that would not open swung open and building materials rocketed out. Everyone ran for their lives. When they came to, the group found that they now owned an entire square in the Lower Ward.

The square included relocated Sigil locales, including the Zactar Cathedral (Umbra's temple), The Screaming Tower (home of Zaraga the hag and her 99 gargoyles), Vrischika's Curiosity Shoppe and more.

Additionally, there were many archways in the square, each containing a portal to a plane. A dabus handed the heroes three metal keys. These keys could unlock any door or portal in the square.

The portals led to places the heroes had been, including: Limbo, the Astral Plane, Undermountain (in the Forgotten Realms), the City of Greyhawk, and more. There was one portal that led right to the Infinite Staircase, just in case I decide to run that down the road.

The basic idea here was that since Bidam had given the Lady a gift, she gave the heroes a gift in return. Bidam had attempted to fill the void inside the Lady of Pain, which is more than almost anyone else had ever done for her.

The First Stone

After the group had digested all of that stuff, it was time to kick off the actual adventure. This is the third part of the side-scenario in this book. It is about a temple with mysterious stones that two factions are fighting over. It is all a plot by this guy Argesh Fiord, who is trying to use the temple to force a faction war. Argesh hates both factions and wants them to destroy each other.

This is a really railroad-y adventure. It starts off with flavor text where Argesh walks up to the PCs and uses a geas on them - no saving throw. The heroes must go to the temple and say the word "Badir."

The adventurers went there, snuck past the guards into the temple, and said the word. They were sucked into a stone, into a quasi-realm.

They were adventuring through the memories of a dead god of wind and rain, named Badir. Each time the group completed a memory, one of them had a gem embedded into their forehead. Once they'd completed them all, they could place their gems into the stones.

The group appeared in a temple of Badir, where priests prayed. In a back room, the group found dead clerics and two men struggling. Basically, the other priests burst in and thought the heroes had killed all these people. Badir contacted Theran mentally and Theran spoke the wisdom of Badir to the priests.

This was a really weird one that I couldn't make a lot of sense of, so we just moved on.

The Second Stone

In this memory, we learn that Badir's father, Nol, hated Badir. Nol is a god of the sun and couldn't accept that his child was a lord of wind and rain.

Nol called on a brass dragon to kill his son when he was a child. Our heroes were there to protect him! Theran cast darkness where the dragon was, but the dragon had blindsight. The dragon breathed fire on Theran, but the wizard was protected by his amulet of flowing flame.

Theran summoned the nightmare and tried to escape with Badir to the ethereal plane, but alas these memory scenes are like an "instance." You can't leave their boundaries.

Bidam jumped on the nightmare with the kid and flew into the air. The dragon flew up after them. The group begged the kid to use his powers, which are not defined in the book. I decided to have the kid roll to see if he could pull something off - I rolled a natural 20. The kid created a storm cloud that blasted the dragon with lightning and did piles of damage.

Theran pelted the dragon with magic missiles. Fall From Grace flew up and cut into the dragon, killing it. Memory over.

The Third Stone

In that last memory, all damage the group took was healed. Even if they died, they'd come back to life. In the rest of these, any damage taken "counts."

The group was on a battlefield where the armies of Badir and Nol were at war. The heroes were soldiers of Badir. They rode into combat as archers fired on them. They tore into their foes, defeating enemy soldiers and berserkers. Piece of cake.

The Fourth Stone

The heroes appeared here as ghosts in a crumbling citadel. They looked down on Badir, who was old and dying. His followers were gone, and thus he had no power to continue on.

The group searched the citadel and found a lone weeping handmaiden. They brought her to Badir. She wept over him, and he died.

The Fifth Stone

The adventurers appear in the astral plane. They see Badir's followers, who are taking apart the dead god's stone body. They would use the stone to create the temple in Sigil.

There was nothing to do here but bear witness as Badir spoke in their minds about how what they did wasn't right or wrong, it just was.

The Sixth Stone

Argesh Fiord and his slaad

A sixth stone rose from the ground. This one is really, really weird. The heroes go into some sort of future memory. They're still in the church. Argesh Fiord and a red slaad attack the heroes.

Theran was slashed repeatedly by the slaad, and was infected by a slaad tadpole, which will hatch in three months. It was nice to see that even though I had run the Limbo adventures so long ago, the group remembered exactly what slaads could do.

The group defeated them and placed their gems in the stones. The final flavor text:

"Golden light shines everywhere. The ground shudders as if in a rumbling earthquake, though there's really no "earth" in Sigil. The entire floor of the church glows like an activated portal, and the stones and the ruins begin to tumble downward into what looks like the astral plane. In a sudden shaft of bright illumination, the silhouette of a fine-featured man turns toward you, nods, and walks straight into the portal's light."

The heroes fall back into real Sigil, and they see that the temple is entirely gone. This actually makes the factions happy, as there's nothing there to fight over.

It's an interesting adventure and I think the right DM could make it really awesome.

Next time we'll go through the very last chapter of Dead Gods.

Click here for the final chapter of Dead Gods.

Dungeons & Dragons - A Guide to Vampires

In this guide, I will attempt to give an overview on how vampires can be used in Dungeons & Dragons. I'll go over their stats and abilities in each edition, and then I'll discuss popular vampire movies that you can mine for more material.

There's so much stuff out there that I'm going to try to just go over the main books and dragon articles. I won't discuss the main vampire NPC in D&D, Strahd, as I've already written a guide for him. If you think I missed something major, let me know.

In my opinion, there are two things you should check out if you plan on using a vampire as a major villain in your campaign:

1. Van Richten's Guide to Vampires: This 2nd edition sourcebook is brimming over with useful ideas.
2. Bram Stoker's Dracula: This movie is, in my opinion, really under-rated. I watched it the other day and it blew my mind. If you are going to run Curse of Strahd, you should most definitely check this out.

The Essential Information

This is the basic stuff you should know when running a vampire:

• Those who have their blood drained by a vampire and drop to 0 hit points become a vampiric thrall.
• Vampires must rest in a coffin during the day.
• If they are dropped to 0 hit points, they aren't slain - they assume gaseous form and flee to their coffins. There, they rest and heal.
• Vampires have innate regeneration.
• Can turn into a bat at will.
• They can charm people as per the spell.
• Vampires have the ability to summon hordes of bats, rats, or wolves.
• They recoil from garlic, mirrors and holy symbols.
• Direct sunlight kills them, as does being immersed in running water.
• Holy water damages them.
• The most effective way to kill them is to drive a stake through their heart (which paralyzes them) and then cut off their head. 
• There are a ton of vampire variants with all sorts of different powers and abilities.

AD&D 1st Edition

The vampire is in the Monster Manual and he is the "...most dreaded of the chaotic evil undead..."

• Vampires live in two planes at once - the material and the negative material.
• Vampires have an 18/76 strength.
• If it hits an enemy, the enemy loses two levels. Yes, from each attack.
• There's also a note about vampires of the 'eastern world'. They're invisible!
• Creating a thrall involves draining their life energy and then burying them. The thrall rises up after a day. "If the vampire which slew the creature is itself killed, the vampires created by it become free-willed monsters."

Dragon Magazine 126

This issue has a few articles on undead and vampires.

Hearts of Darkness

We are given a rundown of all the ins and outs of being a vampire. There are a few interesting notes:

• At night, a vampire is invulnerable to most attacks.
• Ingesting food and drink causes them pain. They can only nibble on a few crumbs and sip wine.
• Vampires have no soul, and that is why they have no shadow or reflection.

We get an in-depth history of the real-life Vlad the Impaler and full-blown stats for Dracula. There's stats for a few other creatures:

• Vrykolakas: Greek vampires. The vrykolkas are corpses possessed by demons who like to spread fear.
• Baobhan Sith: Evil demons who appear as young women. They trick their victims into letting them drain all the blood from their victims' bodies.

A Touch of Evil

This article fleshes out undead creatures. It provides vague details on a demonic type of vampire:

Demon Vampire: Demon vampires are "...among the greatest and most evil servants of Orcus." These vampires rise up after being killed by the kiss of a succubus. They don't rest in coffins and they can walk during the day. At night they can summon demon-spawned vampires from the abyss. Sometimes they serve or marry the succubus that slew them.

AD&D 2nd Edition

There are a million variants of vampires in 2nd edition. First I'll go over the main (errata'd) entry, then I'll add in notes on other types.

• They cast no shadow or reflection. They move in complete silence.
• 2e vampires have the ability to spider climb to scale sheer surfaces.
• They recoil from lawful good holy symbols.
• When destroying a vampire, holy wafers must be stuffed in its severed head.
• Vampires can't enter a residence without being invited. Charmed victims can be used to invite the vampire in.

In Dragon Magazine 150, an updated version of the vampire appeared. Apparently there were some errors in the vampire that appeared in the compendium.

Ravenloft Vampires: There are three ways to become a Ravenloft vampire:

1. Deadly Desire: This person gives up a portion of their spirit to the Dark Powers of Ravenloft. They are stripped of their humanity and become vampires. Over centuries, they come to regret the decision and seek out their own destruction.
2. The Curse: The person becomes a vampire through a cursed item (like a ring) or someone curses them. Often this type of vampire hates who they have become.
3. The Victim: Those slain by a vampire become a vampire.

Cerebral Vampires: These vampires absorb mental energies of their victims. They sink their fangs into the back of a victim's skull. These victims become ghouls under the vampire's control.

Drow Vampires: Drow consider it an honor to become a vampire. Their touch drains hit points and their gaze can make enemies become awestruck. They can turn into spiders and assume the form of a poisonous cloud.

Dwarf Vampire: These guys can permanently drain points of constitution. They can walk through stone and are harmed by water from a natural spring.

Elf Vampire: They transform forests into places of death and decay. They drain Charisma and leave victims with permanent scars.  Their own faces are scarred and twisted, causing those seeing them to make a saving throw or be paralyzed with horror (and if you roll a natural one... you die!).

Gnome Vampire: Gnome vampires have a "painful arthritic attack." Yep, they drain Dexterity and cause stiffness to the joints and muscles. Seriously. They can laugh hideously and cause people to feel the effects of a Tasha's hideous laughter spell.

Halfling Vampire: Halfling vampires radiate an aura that fatigues enemies. They can't stand the odor of a smoking pipe, and burning hearths can destroy them.

Illithid Vampire: These are from the high-level Ravenloft adventure Thoughts of Darkness. Vampire mind flayers! They are utterly insane. Their mind blast causes victims to make a madness check.

Vampyre: These creatures are variants. They are not undead.

• They "...employ the wanton garb of a harlot to lure victims into their clutches."
• Vampyres lure some poor sap to their homes, and then they and their vampire friends pounce on him or her. They drink the victim's blood over the course of a few days.
• They travel in packs and are able to have children.

Van Richten's Guide to Vampires

This sourcebook is by the late, great Nigel Findley and it's pretty much the best source of vampire material for D&D that I know of. I am going to present some of the good stuff, but there's a lot more in the book that you should definitely check out if you're thinking of using a vampire as a major villain in your campaign. Vampires are categorized according to age. Vampires under 99 years old are known as "fledglings". Vampires over 1,000 years old are known as "patriarchs".

Vampire Blood: It actually does d6 damage if it touches bare skin. If the blood is in a vial and it is exposed to sunlight, it explodes!

Gaseous Form: Vampires can modify their gaseous form, changing it to a thick fog to a thin, almost invisible mist. The book suggests that some vampires may have their coffins in a building with no doors. The vampire enters and leaves simply by passing through a tiny crack in the wall while in gaseous form.

Blood Lust: Some vampires suffer from this curse. The mere sight of blood sends them into a frenzy which can be satisfied only by the ingestion of that source of blood, by any means. Once the vampire drinks the blood, it won't suffer from blood lust for 2d6 turns (1-2 hours).

Vampiric Curse: Some vampires can cast a special curse spell that slowly transforms someone into a vampire. They need to make a saving throw every time the sun rises. Fail means they lose a point of Strength. Once it's at 0, they die and rise up as a vampire under command of the vampire.

Using a Stake: The stake must be wood, and should be made from wood that relates to the vampire's personal history. If the stake is removed from the vampire's heart, the vampire will rise again. You have to cut off its head. Attacking with the stake means rolling to hit an AC of -1 (AC 21 in 5e terms). If the monster is immobile (ie, asleep in its coffin), no roll is required.

Sunlight: Fledglings can't use any powers in sunlight, and all they can do is try to get out of it. It dies in a minute and is completely destroyed. Each round, the vampire takes 3d6 damage and the exposed flesh will burst into flame. Ancient vampires might survive in sunlight for up to an hour. Patriarchs can actually walk in sunlight with no ill effects. 

Vampires That Don't Drink Blood: The book has a lot of cool ideas on other things a vampire might feed on, including spinal fluid, hearts, memories, or good old-fashioned hit points.

How Often do Vampires Feed?: Fledglings need to drink 12 hit points worth of blood every 24 hours. Patriarchs can live on 6 hit points worth per day.

Creating a Vampire Groom or Bride: The vampire can bestow a "Dark Kiss" on a mate. Hold on to your pants:

1. The vampire drains the blood of the mate three times, almost to death on each occasion.
2. This process causes no pain. In fact, it is "...the most euphoric, ecstatic experience, in comparison to which all other pleasures fade into insignificance."
3. Then the vampire lets the mate drink the vampire's own blood.
4. The mate goes into a blood frenzy! The vampire may actually have to struggle to survive this process. The mate can only feed for a short time, or they will be driven incurably insane and will die in agony within 24 hours.
5. The mate goes into a coma for an hour or two, and then rises as a vampiric bride or groom.
6. Usually the mate's sanity isn't completely intact.
7. The vampire and the mate share a telepathic bond.

Miscellaneous Stuff:

• If a vampire is blinded by a spell or effect, it can shift into its bat form and use sonar. Deafness would shut down the bat's echolocation ability. 
• Polymorph spells only last for a minute, and then the vampire resumes whatever form it was in previously.
• Those with evil holy symbols can "turn" a vampire - success means the vampire is under their control! The vampire will obey the letter of the commands, but not the spirit. 
• Blessed weapons harm vampires, but do minimal damage.
• 3/4ths of the vampire's body must be submerged in running water for an entire minute the water to kill it. The heart in particular must be under water.

Drinking Blood: This section is awesome. It gives a lot of fun details on how the process works.

• The vampire uses its 'eye teeth' to open a major vessel, usually in the throat. "Sometimes vampires will choose another major blood vessel such as the femoral artery, on the inside of the thigh near the groin..." Egad.
• Vampires drink the blood like "..a babe drinks its mother's milk."
• Usually a vampire will open a small wound and drinks just a bit of blood. They don't want to kill their victim because they generally don't like creating subservient vampires (potential rivals).
• They can feed from freshly-slain victims, but the blood spoils rapidly. Once four hours have passed, the blood is no good.
• Drinking the blood of animals makes a vampire ill.
• No PC Vampires: This book repeatedly warns DMs not to let PCs become vampires. If they do become vampires, they should turn over their character sheet to the DM and let the DM run them as an NPC. The reason for this is because the character will simply be far too powerful.

D&D 3rd Edition

In 3e, vampires are a template - a set of stats you slap on to an existing creature.

They can now dominate a foe - completely controlling them for as long as the vampire spends a standard action.

They still drain 2 levels per hit, and now they gain 5 temporary hit points per level drained.

Dragon Magazine 348 - Bloodlines: Three Variant Vampires

This article gives us a few new types of vampires:

• Savage Vampire: Ogre vampires! Those they slay rise up as zombies under their command. They can turn into animals and can summon animals like bears or crocodiles.
• Shadow Vampire: These vampires can literally travel between shadows as if they were dimension door spells.
• Terror Vampire: These creatures feed on fear. They can suppress their vampiric traits for 7 rounds per day, appearing to be 'normal' living humanoids. Their gaze attack is identical to the eyebite spell which can sicken you, panic you or even put you into a coma. Terror vampires also have a suite of spells they use to mess with people.

D&D 4th Edition

Many of their resistances are gone. They're not harmed by garlic or even wooden stakes!

A vampire lord has a spiked chain and can use a nasty power when an enemy is bloodied - blood drain, which weakens the foe and heals the vampire for 46 points.

Heroes of Shadow

Get a load of this. In 4e, vampire is also a character class! It's in the Heroes of Shadow supplement.

• A vampire character can actually take healing surges from willing characters during a rest.
• When bloodied, vampires gain regeneration equal to their Charisma modifier.

Over the course of 30 levels, the character gains all of the powers of a vampire, including the ability to turn into a bat, dominate foes, and assume gaseous form.

Vryloka

Even weirder, this book also includes a vampiric race called the Vryloka. You could make a Vryloka Vampire. Vryloka are basically 2e Vampyres - living vampires. They keep their true nature a secret and live as nobles displaced from their ancestral homelands. It was a weird choice to make them have red hair.

• When they kill or bloody an enemy, a Vryloka can gain temporary hit points, move or gain a +2 to hit.
• They have eyes that turn red when angered or excited.
• Most of them have red hair and pale skin.
• Their origin involves a Red Witch who gave the original Vrylokas a blood-bonding ritual. It gave them the power of vampire without the taint of undeath. Some think the Red Witch and the Raven Queen are connected somehow.
• As they gain levels, Vrylokas gain the ability to turn into a "bloodwolf" (a shadow wolf with red eyes). They also eventually gain the ability to fly by assuming the form of a hazy red and black shadow.

D&D 5th Edition

I think they did a great job with vampires in the 5e monster manual.The 5e vampire is very powerful and has a lot of cool options. I also think that legendary actions are a fun way to give major monsters a big boost.

• 5e vampires have extremely strong regeneration. They train 20 hit points per round! Sunlight does 20 radiant damage per round.
• They take 20 acid damage per round in running water.
• 5e vampires get two attacks per round. Ideally, they grapple you as part of their unarmed strike, and then bite you. The bite reduces your hit point maximum and the vampire regains that amount of hit points.
• They get legendary actions, which take place at the end of other creature's turns. They can actually make another unarmed strike/grapple and a bite before their next turn.
• Their lair has a lot of regional effects, including a large population of bats, rats and wolves, withered plants, shadows that are gaunt and seem to move on their own, and creeping fog.

Movies

To gear up for Curse of Strahd, I watched a bunch of vampire movies. Many of them are Dracula films, as that's what the Strahd story is similar to.

Bram Stoker's Dracula

Gary Oldman as Dracula

This film really blew my mind. I think if there's one movie to watch before you run Curse of Strahd, this is it. The movie is just dripping with utter creativity.

I can't express just how dirty and zany this thing is but I'm going to try: Dracula's brides (one of which is a topless Monica Belluci) eat a baby! And then we get an extreme close-up of Keanu Reeves in full-on Bill and Ted mode screaming and gnashing his teeth in a truly comical fashion.

This movie is really fun. It's too long, but there's enough good parts to make it worth watching.

Van Helsing

Richard Roxburgh as Dracula

Hugh Jackman plays the vampire hunter in a movie that is absolutely overloaded with action scenes and horror movie monsters. I enjoy the spirit of the thing, but some of the concepts just don't work. The idea that Dracula's vampire brides gave birth to hundreds of stillborn bat-babies that need to be brought to life by Frankenstein's lightning contraption is just too stupid for me, even when I'm trying to cut the film some slack.

Dracula Untold

Luke Evans as Dracula

This film creates a backstory for Dracula. Most of the movie is set in the 1400's, and tells a story of how Dracula decided to become a vampire to save his people. This is a very, very D&D vampire movie. Vlad is ridiculously powerful once he gains vampiric abilities. He literally fights 1,000 soldiers and kills them all. Then, later, he summons a swarm of thousands of bats to create a cyclone and.. well, it's ridiculous. I think the best way to describe this movie is "a bad idea done well". It never should have been made, but they did the best they could with it.

Nosferatu Phantom Der Nacht

Klaus Kinski as Dracula

This one's in german and is directed by the great Werner Herzog. The Dracula in this movie is the Nosferatu version, and he is really creepy. The film moves real slow, but it's very good for the first hour or so before it starts to drag. Compared to the panicky explosion-per-minute feel of Van Helsing, this feels refreshing. This movie is good if you want to run a really creepy, more monster-ish type of vampire that is in no way sexy at all.

Interview With The Vampire

Kirsten Dunst as Claudia

This film is based on the extremely popular "Vampire Chronicles" novels by Anne Rice. In the '90's, the Vampire: The Masquerade RPG was a very big deal and there were lots and lots of people really into this stuff.

If you haven't seen this movie, the idea of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt as vampires may not seem like something worth seeing, but this movie is really awesome. It gives you a very viable alternate view on vampires, particularly on how and why they make other vampires and the rules in which they govern themselves.

This movie also has a truly great vampire NPC - a little girl vampire named Claudia. Her mind is old, but her body is eternally young.

Let the Right One In

This one doesn't really have many D&D implications, it's just a great movie and I feel like I should point it out in case some of you haven't seen it. This movie also involves a child vampire and how it survives. In Interview with the Vampire, the vampires are killing a few people per day, and nobody seems to notice. In this film, the vampire has to go to great lengths to pull off such a feat.

This film has a really cool take on what happens to a vampire when they enter a residence uninvited. This is one that will stick with you after you see it, especially if you read up on it a bit. I haven't seen the American remake of this, but if you can handle subtitles you should definitely check this version out. Here's the trailer. As of this writing, it is on Netflix.

Mina Murray from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Mr. Hyde is fond of Mina

I want to talk about one "NPC" in particular in the Dracula movies. The female victims, Mina and Lucy, are used in different ways in each film. Mina, wife of John Harker, is usually the object of Dracula's "affection."

In Alan Moore's comic, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Mina is the main character. Mina was bitten by Dracula, but Dracula is slain and thus the vampiric curse is lifted from her (in the movie version, she is a vampire).

Alan's take on vampirism is very amusing. As a result of Dracula's feeding, Mina has these burn scars on her neck. His take seems to be that vampirism is similar to a sexually transmitted disease - an idea that I find hilarious.

Also, there's this underpinning notion that since Mina's fleeting encounter with a vampire, her husband just doesn't do it for her (although in the comic, he has rejected her because of her scars). You get the feeling that if given the choice, she'd pick the vampire over her husband despite all the baggage that comes with it. Now she's out in the world searching for similar thrills from other adventurers and monsters.

Further Reading

Vampire Name Generator
Hack and Slash: Ecology of the Vampire
3rd Edition Vampire Template
Dice of Doom Vampire Overview
Types of Vampires Wiki

Dead Gods - Deepest Pandemonium

Tonight we played through what I think is the most important chapter in all of Dead Gods. This is the session in which the heroes find the Wand of Orcus.

I upped the ante a bit by changing the adventure slightly - I decided to have Orcus show up to try to stop them from destroying his wand! If Orcus can get his wand back, he will become a full-fledged demon lord again.

I was counting on a couple things going into this chapter. There's a good chance that a PC will die while destroying the wand. I placed a clue in an earlier part of the session to try to help the heroes avoid that fate.

I knew also that the heroes could break the Orcusword. Doing so staggers Orcus for 1-3 hours. He can't do anything. So, as long as they remembered that, they could survive.

In Dead Gods, Orcus is a lich-thing - a weaker version of himself. He obtained this power called The Last Word. With it, he can kill anyone, even a god, just by speaking it. I added in a detail:  Once spoken, the Last Word takes days to recharge. That's how I explained away why Orcus wouldn't just speak the word and kill the heroes instantly.

I basically used Orcus stats from Out of the Abyss. I added in the madness checks and the Orcus custom madness chart.

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Drow Wizard

Greyhawk

The heroes had helped the drow in Erelhei-Cinlu. They returned the favor by bringing the group and the two slaves they freed to a merchant house. A drow mage used the teleport circle there to send the heroes to Greyhawk.

I used the 2e "Greyhawk: Gem of the Flanaess" book to flesh out the city. This book is hard to use, as every single page reference just says "see chapter 3, FFF." No page numbers!

The group appeared in a circle in the Sage's Guild, made friends with the shocked sages (who trade the drow merchants for herbs and mushrooms on occasion), and headed out into the city.

Their pifwafwis (magic drow cloaks) immediately disintegrated. Theran instantly figured it was due to the sunlight (George was really sharp tonight).

They returned the slaves to their grandfather, a locksmith, and asked around about finding a way home. They were told that a great wizard spent a lot of time at The Green Dragon Inn.

This inn was founded by Lord Robilar, one of the first real-life D&D characters. Gary Gygax's character Mordenkainen hangs out there.

Mordenkainen

Bidam and Theran entered the inn and spotted Mordenkainen sitting alone at a table studying a three-level chessboard. They had a tense discussion (Theran was heavily disguised, being an elf who looks like a drow and all...).

Mordenkainen took an interest in the Orcusword, and decided to play Theran in a game of dragonchess. Dragonchess is an actual game invented by Gary Gygax, printed in Dragon issue #100 and #400.

Dragon Chess

Theran actually almost won (we played it out with a few arcana rolls). Mordenkainen was impressed with Theran's intellect and he wanted to study the heroes' items, so he took them on his flying carpet to the Wizards Guildhall.

The Wizards Guilhall is a building shaped like a pyramid where wizards study magic. The more advanced the magic student, the higher up in the pyramid they live. The very top is said to hold a treasure vault with a pile of magic items. Mordenkainen has a laboratory on the level just below that.

Mordenkainen studied the Orcusword and told the heroes that, if shattered, it would stagger Orcus. He taught them some of his spells:

• Bidam learned Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion
• Theran learned Mordenkainen's Lucubration (lets you recall a spell you already cast).

In Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure, Mordenkainen has a magic item: The Silver Key. It can open portals four times a day! He found it in a temple of "Dalt, God of Portals and Enclosures." How perfect is that?

Mordenkainen knew of a portal to Sigil in Greyhawk, so he brought the heroes to it and activated it with the silver key. He wished them well in their battle against Orcus.

Sigil

We blew through a bunch of side-plots real quick:

• The magic door in their festhall is now making noises. You can hear a heartbeat coming from it if you press your ear to it.
• Fall-From-Grace, the succubus paladin, had researched the Last Word on her own and told the heroes about it. The now knew how Orcus had been killing gods.

Bidam also finished creating his artifact - The Heart of the Lady of Pain. He had to fill three sensory stones with memories relating to the three building blocks of love:

1. Acceptance: Giving the nascent demon lord Bazuuma love despite her 20 hideous eyes.
2. Understanding: Learning at last that the drow Erehe had hid the Wand of Orcus in Pandemonium.
3. Appreciation: The twin experiences of sleeping in the goblin pile in the drow city, and appreciating the aid of the great wizard Mordenkainen

I guess Bidam will give the heart to the Lady of Pain next session, which will be fun.

Fall From Grace by Sir Tiefling

Fall From Grace joined the party. I like her and I wanted the group to have a healer NPC, as things were likely to get rough in the final area of this session.

I gave her an item from Planescape Torment: The Chastity Bodice. It magically keeps itself clean and mends any tears on its own. A few times in this session, Bidam told Fall From Grace to kiss enemies. Fall from Grace's kiss kills. She refused to do it, fearing that it would lead her down a dark path.

Pandemonium

The group used a portal to enter the plane of Pandemonium. It's a plane of tunnels, filled with strong winds and the sound of both maddening laughter and screams in the distance. When traveling, the gravity works in a way where you can walk on the walls or ceiling.

The heroes start on the first layer of Pandemonium. They need to get to the 4th. The way the heroes are intended to get there involves interacting a traveling circus called the Cynosure.

The Cynosure

In this adventure, the heroes are meant to stumble on The Cynosure (which is a collective of carts and a floating fortress that wanders the plane). The group can watch a show, meet some NPCs, and learn how to get to other levels of the plane. The heroes can sit in the fortress and observe a circus show and see all sorts of stuff, including a clue as to how to safely destroy the wand. There's even an encounter where the adventurers fight an owlbear.

But this is D&D, and you never know what's going to happen. Here's what the group did: They let the Cynosure pass them by! They thought it was suspicious and decided to just leave the whole thing alone.

I thought that the group would keep wandering, slowly succumb to the madness of the plane and eventually turn back to seek out The Cynosure. But Theran remembered his planar compass, which directs you to the nearest portal. He also had the warp sense spell, which identifies portals and their keys.

So basically, the heroes found where they needed to go while skipping a huge section of the adventure.

They ended up in a tavern in a keep on another layer of Pandemonium, with a whole bunch of shady customers. The point here is for the heroes to find out about a way to get to the 4th layer - a creature called The Ingress can take them there. But there's all these bad guys here, and they don't want anyone else knowing about the Ingress. There's a cool piece of art depicting these weird bad guys.

The Ormyrr is the Jabba the Hut guy with four arms

A huge fight broke out. The heroes pummeled these guys with some creative and goofy attacks:

• Theran stuck his wand of magic missiles in an Ormyrr's anus and opened fire.
• Bidam farted into his mage hand and gave the leader what he calls a "cup of cheese."
• Then Bidam finished the leader off by crushing his balls with a mage hand of his own.

The heroes then made their way to the Ingress, a big blobby monster with little helper-spawns. The creatures ate all the food the heroes had (including potions!) and then turned the heroes to liquid and brought them to the fourth layer - where the Wand of Orcus was waiting.

The Wand of Orcus

The group appeared in a dark, silent cavern. Bones and skulls littered the floor throughout the complex. An agent of Orcus was lurking here - his name was Quah-Nomag. The agent did his best to confuse and delay the group, knowing that the visages and Orcus himself were on the way.

Theran noticed that the golden circlet he'd taken from Tcian Sumere was pulsing. He knew that meant that the wand was near.

Quah-Nomag was invisible and flying, and ultimately he attacked the group with a cone of cold spell. He tried to flee, but Bidam stopped him cold with a Tasha's hideous laughter spell. The group took him out. It turned out this was Quah's astral form - his mortal body was on some prime material world.

During the battle, Theran used his wand of darkness to animate the bones on the floor into a skeletal servant.

The group wanted to take a short rest. But 5 minutes into it, visages appeared and attacked. The visages used their lucidity control to make the heroes think a huge modron march was trampling through the area.

The battle was difficult, but the heroes prevailed.

They wandered the caves, eventually coming upon the main area. The wand of Orcus was in a room protected by a wall of force. The heroes didn't know this, but the wall could only be destroyed by one of three things:

1. A disintegrate spell.
2. A follower of the drow goddess Kiaransalee.
3. 50 points of damage from the bones on the floor.

Theran immediately had his skeleton attack the wall, just to test it. Since the skeleton was made up of bones from the floor, Theran was shocked to see the skeleton actually tearing through the wall!

The skeleton started to bash through, when the group heard a roar and smelled the stench of decaying flesh. Orcus had arrived!

Black mist seeped in from the tunnel they'd come from. The hideous remains of the demon lord rose up before them and roared! The group made madness checks, which they all failed. Each gained a permanent form of madness.

Initiative was rolled. Bidam won! And he immediately shattered the Orcusword! Orcus howled in pain. His wings folded around him and he fell back into the darkness. The adventurers had bought themselves some time. Orcus would be reeling for at least an hour.

The skeleton bashed through the wall of force and Theran's golden circlet pulsed stronger. The group knew from a previous casting of an identify spell that if the circlet was touched to the wand, the wand would be destroyed.

Here is where I got worried. If Theran touched the circlet to the wand, he'd die in the explosion!

Here's what it says in the text:

"But if a PC who wears (or simply possesses) the circlet grabs the wand, he suddenly feels compelled to touch the skull to the golden band. This action destroys the circlet, the skull, and the character - instantly."

It goes on to say that the only safe way to destroy the Wand of Orcus is to place the circlet on the ground (or some other surface) and then touch the skull to it. I wanted to have a circus performer demonstrate this, but the group skipped The Cynosure.

So guess what Theran did? He handed the circlet to his skeleton minion, and had it touch the circlet to the wand! The wand, circlet and skeleton were all destroyed.

They heard Orcus howl and heard a magical whooshing sound, then silence. They had visions of the stone corpse of Orcus forming in the astral plane, floating among all the other dead gods.

The heroes had succeeded! They'd have to find a way home and deal with their madness. There's still two chapters to go....

Click here for the next chapter of Dead Gods.

Tyranny of Dragons - Frozen Castle

You can buy Frozen Castle here.

You may or may not have heard about the Dungeon Master's Guild. It is an official D&D site where you can buy 5e adventures. You can make 5e stuff, put it up on there, and make some money. You are even allowed to set your adventures in the Forgotten Realms. Pretty cool, right?

Kobold Press, the makers of Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat, have put out an adventure on the DM's Guild site that is linked to Hoard. It's only 3 bucks, so I figured I'd buy it and review it. Let's check it out.

The Plot: The plot goes like this:

• The heroes go to try to loot and possibly repair the crashed flying castle from Hoard chapter 8.
• They explore the glacier that it crashed in, and see that the cult of the dragon is there.
• The heroes might make friends with residents of the glacier, which include dwarves, orcs and frost giants (you should definitely have them befriend the giants).
• The group and their new NPC friends begin repairing the castle.
• The cult sends hundreds of enemies to kill the heroes and take the castle back.

The Art: First off, it has art by Bryan Syme and Marcel Mercado, people who did a lot of the art in the actual Tyranny books. So that's awesome. This really feels like an "official" addition to Tyranny.

This Thing Runs Slow: This is a 14 page .pdf, and for some reason it runs incredibly slow on Adobe Reader. My laptop practically melts every time I try to go to the next page. Maybe it's a problem on my end? It runs much more smoothly on my tablet.

Running This As Part of Tyranny of Dragons: If you're going to run this in conjunction with Hoard of the Dragon Queen, then you should make sure that the the flying castle crashes in chapter 8. The best way to do this is to kill Blagothkus. I know there were a good number of groups who kept the castle or did something else with it, so as a DM you'll need to make Blagothkus more aggressive.

When to Run This: This adventure is meant for 10th to 11th level adventurers. I am thinking that when you run Rise of Tiamat, you could have the heroes go through episode 3 (the yuan-ti dungeon) and then do episode 2, which is set near the Spine of the World. Once the heroes deal with the dragon in episode 2, you can place clues that direct the group to the crashed castle. The group could even sail to the Miklos Glacier on Frostskimmer.

On page 6 of this .pdf, there is a note that the remains of a frost giant named Storvild is in Arauthator's iceberg in The Sea of Moving Ice. The corpse has a bracelet which matches the one on a beard of Brunvild, a giant in the frozen castle adventure.

This adventure also assumes that Glazhael, the white dragon from Hoard chapter 8, got away by "..simply flying away in the face of danger and the castle's crash". As far as I can tell, most groups that played through Hoard killed this dragon. In this, Glazhael has rescued some cultists and they are hanging out near a fissure. If Glazhael died in your game, I think you could replace him with Arveiaturace, the mate of Arauthator, which I discuss in my Guide to Tyranny of Dragons.

Exploring: The heroes will need to traverse the Miklos Glacier, partaking in some sandbox-y exploring. There's a pile of random encounters (which I always recommend that you pre-roll in advance). The encounters are just a sentence long, like "2d6 winter wolves". I wish they would have given a little more detail.

There are a bunch of factions here, including dwarves and orcs. The heroes are going to need their help if they are to dig out the castle and get it running.

My Favorite Part of This Adventure: There's an awesome section detailing three ways that the heroes can win over the frost giants that live in the area. I don't want to spoil too much, but I really get a kick out of the second option. The heroes go on a 'vision quest', drinking spirit brew and wandering into the frozen waste. They proceed to have surreal encounters with a 20 foot tall reindeer and a frost giant god jumping around, chopping chasms into the ice with a massive axe.

The Castle: My other favorite thing in this adventure is the expanded list of commands that you can use in the flying castle. You can have the castle drift in the wind, form a cloud veil around it, or even create a storm that allows the person flying the castle to shoot lightning bolts at a target within 1,000 feet!

The whole thing ends with a hoard of enemies coming to the castle while the heroes are fixing it up. They'll have to defend the castle in a mass combat with over 200 enemies.

The adventure gives some notes on how to handle this without endless dice rolling, but it is very vague. You'll definitely need to do some serious preparation to make this run smoothly.

Overall

For $3, this is worth owning. Good art, nice map, great layout, decent material. I kind of hope they put out more supplements for the under-detailed chapters in the Tyranny storyline. I am thinking specifically of the metallic dragons chapter and the Thay section in Rise of Tiamat.

I love how the adventure gives details on how to win over the giants. I wish they had made material like that for the other factions as well.

This .pdf offers a broad overview of the glacier area and leaves the specifics up to the DM. The adventure could have used a lot more detailed encounters, particularly when exploring the glacier. Out of the Abyss did a great job in this regard, while taking up very little space in the book. All we needed here was a single page of developed random encounters, each with some kind of gimmick or twist.

I also don't like the vague nature of the final siege. That scene deserves a couple of pages with detailed rules on how to handle the combat. This would be a case where the old "encounters" format from the 3rd edition expeditions books and 4th edition could have been used to great effect.

All in all, this is a decent supplement. I hope more like it are created.

Dead Gods - The Battle of the Great Gate

Tonight's game was a bit fetch-questy. That's something I try to avoid as it feels too much like a video game, but tonight I made an exception. This chapter is heavy on setting material but almost completely devoid of actual plot specifics. 

We had a pile of twizzler bites, which is a superior D&D food in my humble opinion. I told a story about how french bread pizza tore up the roof of my mouth that made Jessie laugh so much she almost died. Later, I tried to do a British accent for a slave NPC but I couldn't get it right. Jessie then did one for me, which kills me every time.

It looks like we are going to skip the next chapter of this book, which is optional. The heroes found a map of a place called "Pelion" in Tcian Sumere. If they investigate it, they end up in this weird flashback adventure that requires the heroes to actually make different characters to go through. I had thought about changing it, but I think we are just going to skip it.

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Drow Wizard

The Goblins

Last time, the heroes had traveled to a drow city in the Greyhawk setting to find a drow named Erehe whose memory had been erased. Tonight we finished it and are about to head into the endgame of the adventure.

The heroes had killed two drow in the city and took their cloaks. They fled to the secret tunnel where the goblins were hiding out. The group had also hidden two slaves there that they had rescued.

I had detailed the goblins a bit. I decided they looked similar to the goblins in Labyrinth, and that they mispronounced words. I got this idea from a reddit thread. Here's some examples:

• Library = "Lyeberry"
• Supposedly = "Supposably"
• Especially = "Eckspecially"

So the wounded heroes go in the goblin tunnel and I proceed to try to roleplay the goblins, loading up their sentences with mispronunciations. I burned through them so fast that I actually ran out in no time at all. Their names included "Warsh," "Moot," "Excedra" and "Boss Ungyun."

The goblins all sleep in a pile in the tunnel. I was wondering if the heroes would be grossed out by this or what. The heroes just climbed right into the sweaty pile and went to sleep.

The next day, Bidam noticed that his Orcusword was cracked. A goblin showed him to a weapon smith shop that could help. While there, some kuo toa showed up and demanded that the smith stop everything and repair a kuo toa whip's pincer staff, which had an ornate carving of Blibdoolpoolp on it.

A fight broke out, and the heroes killed the kuo toa. They took the pincer staff, thinking it was cool.

Assassinating A Kilsek Guard

Bidam had to use his backup sword while the Orcusword was at the shop. The group had a task to complete - they had to kill the captain of the Kilsek guard. They were going through the city killing anyone sympathetic to House Tormtor.

The group found her at a "torture shop". I really don't want graphic torture scenes in my games, so I had previously wracked my brain to think of a type torture shop that was almost pleasant. What I came up with was a slave-grooming shop. In this place:

• A bugbear slave was having his fur shaved.
• A dwarf slave was having his beard braided.
• A human slave was getting tattoos.

Nieriv, the captain of the guard, was watching the groomers shave her bugbear.

The heroes cooked up a plan. They bought some drow poison and coated Bidam's blade with it. Then they waited for Nieriv to leave the shop. The heroes pretended to get in a fight with each other. They both made deception rolls and pulled it off.

Then they set it up so that Bidam would make like he was trying to stab Theran, but Theran would move and the blade would strike Nieriv.

This worked! But... Nieriv made her save against the poison! She flexed her magic adamantine arm and threw Theran 15 feet! Then she grabbed Bidam by the throat with her magic arm. Fingertip claws popped out and injected Bidam with drow poison!

The heroes rallied, killed Nieriv and fled the scene.

They met up with Terrigen, the scarred rebel drow. He held up his end of the bargain, and told the group they could find Erehe outside the city walls. He was on a hill watching a huge battle...

The Battle of the Great Gate

There's two paragraphs of flavor text describing this scene. Drow armies are doing battle as fireballs explode and demons are summoned.

Erehe is on a hill with Verdaeth, the leader of Tormtor, along with three more drow and six displacer beasts. Verdaeth is riding a nightmare (an evil horse with flaming hooves).

Bidam really wanted the nightmare. I kept mum on this, because I had anticipated that and had planned accordingly.

Another fetch-quest deal was cut. Verdaeth knew what the heroes wanted to know (while Erehe's memory had been wiped, Verdaeth knew more than anyone suspected). She'd tell them if they would go assassinate Liminis, who was guarding the wall to the Great Gate.

And so we had a big battle on a 30 foot high wall. 4 drow archers opened fire on the heroes. As the heroes tore into them, Liminis pulled out a black wand (a wand of darkness - a magic item I think I got from the 2e Drow of the Underdark book). He used the wand to summon a nightmare. He climbed on it, and flew above the wall, ready to drop spells on the heroes.

Theran used a thunderwave spell to send the archers flying over the side of the wall. Then he and Bidam starting shooting chromatic orb spells up at Liminis.

Liminis responded by casting cloudkill on them, which I had to look up, as I wasn't sure if it blocks line of sight (it doesn't).

The heroes reeled from the spell. Theran got out of the cloud and cast Tasha's hideous laughter, which is quite a nasty spell. Liminis rolled a 2 on his save, and laughed so hard he fell prone. He plummeted off of his mount and down to the battlefield below.

As fate would have it, his wand of darkness flew from his hand and landed right at the feet of the heroes.

The Wand of Darkness has some cool properties:

• It does 1d2 damage to good creatures who touch it.
• It can cast darkness.
• It can summon a nightmare who "..knows and serves the wielder."

The group made their way back to Verdaeth and she held up her end of the deal. She explained that Erehe and Kestod had been tasked by their god, Kiaransalee, to hide the Wand of Orcus. They stashed it on the 4th layer of Pandemonium.

Orcus was on the trail of the wand. If he got the wand, he would assume his demon lord form once more! The heroes realized they needed to get to the wand before Orcus did.

Next time, the group will head to the city of Greyhawk and then go back to Sigil to begin the final chapter of Dead Gods.

Click here to proceed to the next chapter of Dead Gods.