yea. i'm back babyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy lemme do a quick desc of this goober: "Legends tell of a petrified body of a once-renowned swordsman and diviner, deep in the woods, reanimating every night simply to kill himself again. Occasionally, at the glint of a red moon, and at the face of a challenger, head and neck reunite to bring forth citizens for Yonder." anyways I think cranked the cr a bit too high. thoughts?
dm notes for play: made for the generic DND fantasy setting. -make the party find a magic item, lost many years ago, giving them a map to the approximate last known location. -"as you enter the town gates, you note that there are many statues of a particular individual, a face often missing from the erosion of many years. He wields a large sword with a short handle, clad in knights armor. engraved symbols on the greatsword catch your eye. *ask them to make history and arcana checks, then combine the total score for each skill*" history: dc10: they know he was a folkloric hero native to this region. dc15: this village was his birthplace and hometown. dc20: he was both a mage and a warrior, leading to almost continental renown. dc25: he was known for preaching of a realm above the Great Wheel, as a sort of "afterlife," and how he was denied from the realm, leading to his eternal wandering of the mortal plane, teaching the masses of the world beyond. dc35: the last records of his existence were from 50 years ago, when he was at the age of 233. Arcana: dc20: the scripted spell on the greatsword does not correlate with any known spell dc30: the runes on the greatsword are recognized to be complex forcefield-creation scripts, and glow faintly when touched. dc40: the written runes slightly differ from standard diction and calligraphy. dc45: some runes seem to incorporate or fuse together base radicals into a new character, and multiple accents and notations from different languages are added into each syllable. -"moving on, you note that there are no people in the streets, Matt curtains block out all light, hiding windows. One singular Inn in the outskirts of the town catches your eye, the only building with open windows and no curtains. knocking on the door, a male halfling answers through the mail slot of the door. "slide 10 silver for lodging." a sunken, deep, yet smooth voice answers. collecting the silver, the halfling lets you in, showing you to a room, passing by the bar with a rambling lunatic. "I SWEAR I SAW HIM! SAME ARMOR, SAME SWORD BUT HIS SKIN WAS GREY. IT WAS LIKE HE WAS SOME SORT OF ZOMBIE, ZACH, YA GOTTA BELIEVE ME!!!!" questioning the halfling about the lunatic once you arrive at your lodging reveals that he was talking about the hero of old, and how he had "seen" him for the first time in half a century. Late at night though, you hear a rustling in your room. you see a black silhouette dashing with heavy footsteps out of your room. as you regear, you see that the wizard's grimoire and the cleric's holy item is missing. chasing after the thief, you see the lunatic deep in the forest, chanting an unknown incantation. as the entire party confronts them in the midst of midnight, he slowly explains. while walking one day, he found bones. fresh bones, still producing blood. seeing a greatsword on the ground next to it, he eventually deduced that the skeleton was of the great sorcerer, Balaam. in an attempt to revive him, which was met with success. desperately, he tried to tell the innkeepers, but he was presumed crazy. that was three weeks ago. the daily disappearances of children though has prompted him to take action, trying to banish the soul yet again to stop the lives being lost. mid sentence, he stops, having been cut in half, the bottom part of his abdomen reduced to a fine red mist. the spellbook and holy relic tumble to the feet of the party. as the body falls to the ground, bleeding, a skeleton, now actively being reincorporated into a body of rotten flesh stands behind, armored and greatsword drawn. commence the battle. repeatedly note the color of the ichor. as Balaam takes more damage, it becomes more and more the color of : instead of green it becomes a pale light brown, into pale brown, into brown, into orange, into red. as Balaam takes more damage, he also begins to look more human. fingers barely held on by nerves and magic turn into strong sturdy appendages, movements once rattly transform into proper form and technique. once the final blow hits, tell them that with that, head and neck part ways. once Ichor with vitriol becomes regular mortal blood. it seems like he is liberated from his suffering. the magical item the party went to get rolls down his severed esophagus onto the forest floor. -allow the wizard and/or cleric to copy down on a scroll one "wish" and/or one "true resurrection" from the greatsword.
