Dungeons & Delvers: Age of Worms, Episode 705

Cast

• Humal (level 11 wrathful cambion wizard)
• Corzale (level 11 dwarf war cleric/druid)
• Sumia (level 11 elf rogue/ranger/wizard)

Session Highlights

As the icy mist and darkness encroaches upon them, Corzale draws upon the might of her god, summoning a floating hammer of pure divine energy. Its light pushes back the darkness, revealing a thin, barely-there shadowy horned skeleton: Bozal.

Combining a bit of enchantment and necromantic magic, Humal tries to dominate him: as expected he fails, but the attempt still stuns Bozal momentarily, giving Corzale enough time to blast him with divine energy and send her light hammer over to attack.

Sumia hangs back and looses arrows, while her owlbear runs over and does its best to gnaw on an only partially substantial shadow-entity. She makes a mental note to purchase silver arrows in the event that they survive this; for now she settles with dipping them in holy water.

Enraged, Bozal gathers up all the remains from the well, forming them into an enormous, swirling cloud of bone that he then directs against the party in a clattering wave.

Now literally thigh-deep in bones, the entire party calls upon their own unique flying abilities to avoid damaging their feet and make it easier to maneuver. Corzale crashes into Bozal, pummeling him with both of her hammers. This causes most of Bozal's body to disspiate, reducing him to a mere skull.

Skull-Bozal bites into Corzale's leg. As she feels her life sapping away a shadowy spinal column begins growing from the base of Bozal's skull, following by a spindly arm, but Sumia puts a stop to it with a few holy arrows to his skull. The mist fades, and the four passages are again illuminated by torchlight: from the looks of things they're back on the Material Plane, but the necrotar is still there.

They run through several options, but Humal concludes that it would be very risky to try moving it. Not only could it harm or kill more townsfolk, but if it destabilizes it could release a massive pulse of necrotic energy that would wipe out most of the city. Corzale of course wants to release the souls, but Humal explains that they aren't souls anymore: it's simply a condensed sphere of raw necromantic energy.

Corzale ultimately resigns herself to letting Humal use it; they'll need all the help they can get, and if nothing else over time Humal will gradually siphon the energy safely away. Over the course of the next few days, Humal, Eligos, and Allustan construct a device that encloses the necrotar, preventing it from harming anyone else and, eventually, will allow them to draw upon its energy as needed.

Sumia returns to Raknian's house and slowly relieves it of valuables that she then fences off (keeping a few choice articles of clothing for herself). Corzale visits each of the temples again, and informs them that the plague is now gone. She leaves out a few key details, only telling them that the cause was a sphere of necromantic energy created by Orcus.

Now that they'd finally put an end to the murders and plague, it was time to head out to Magepoint.

Announcements

You can now get a physical copy of Dungeons & Delvers: Black Book in whatever format you want!

It look a lot longer than expected, but we finally released The Jinni. As with our other monstrous classes, this one is more faithful to the mythology (so don't go in expecting elemental-themed jinn).

After putting it to a vote, the next couple of classes on the docket are the warden (think 4E D&D warden) and apothecary (gotta go see what they're all about).

Dwarven Vault is our sixth 10+ Treasures volume. If you're interested in thirty dwarven magic items (including an eye that lets you shoot lasers) and nearly a dozen new bits of dungeon gear, check it out!

Just released our second adventure for A Sundered World, The Golden Spiral. If a snail-themed dungeon crawl is your oddly-specific thing, check it out!

By fan demand, we've mashed all of our 10+ Treasure volumes into one big magic item book, making it cheaper and more convenient to buy in print (which you can now do).