Five-handed game - Prologue

General description: lvl. 15-18+ campaign with multi planar dungeons. They are suppose to be VERY challenging even for "monty hall" player characters.

Such characters aren't supposed to die (whereas they may "die" frequently) or be destroyed. Player will simply be so challenged by multi layer plots and unforgiving extra powerful foes that they may want to gave up. But they will simply be unable to withdraw their characters.

On another hand, no god, whatever powerful or mad he is, may dare intervene, because every other gods will intervene if he does.

Adventure hook :

good guys ; honor, avenge, obey, wow
Bad guys ; riches, power, obey, wow
Nature guys ; to keep thing as they should be
Neutral smart ass ; riches, power

Players hook :

For power player: This is a god secret, maybe HE can be in, as a god ?
For role-player: This is a god secret
For enigma solver: This is a god secret whose HE doesn't know anything ?

Place :

pocket plane, the eternal jail, opens once a year in one way. No one can get out, except Gorth.

Synopsis:

A nice bard, Gorth, a creature of Melwonth, is asking for help to enter the eternal jail. This jail was built by several gods to punish and hold the Librarian, a former servant of Yull'Beth. This name is unknown even by the most learned of sages, because his memory was severed from memories of any mortal. Tree books keeps hints of this, they have to be found in later parts.
Gorth wants people to secure him during the time he will spent in search for Yull'Beth texts inside. Whatever the characters do, it will takes three days for him to find what he is searching. Then he will gets out, anyone caught inside will be lost forever. This is the first open step of Melwonth, an arch mage, to locate the Iron Ring, a powerful artifact. This quest is a blasphemy. The same that drove the Librarian in his jail.

Intro: 

An good and expensive inn during a stormy evening. Gorth is offering a drink to any adventurer who wants to listen to his job proposal. 50 000 po to follow him inside the dimensional jail. He is a simple bard who describe himself as very powerful, since he can cast fireball and other spells of the third circle. (This will makes players to think he is a fool, that's the point).

He gives the following explanations:
-The jail was created by the gods, don't know which. To punish a man, the librarian for blasphemy. The man could not die, so the prison is eternal.
-No one knows what's inside, no one never came back from it.
-You can enter inside only once a year or less, depending on astrological events.
-Gorth guarantee he knows how to get out, that's why he goes in himself -logical, isn't it ?-
-People who entered the jail seek the secrete of eternal life.
-The place to enter the jail is somewhere nearby, but can be somewhere else too, if you find a way to summon it. When players agree with Gorth to go with him, he will summon the gate in the inn basement or somewhere difficult to go. (if you like, make a dramatic classic RKO movie scene with lightning and mystery)

Gorth: 

A good looking bearded bard with red hairs and amber eyes in his mid 30's. He is , in fact, a kind of golem, build by Melwonth as a key to enter the dimensional jail and to get out. When seeing with true vision he looks like a grey faceless figure of clay-like matter. His aura is neutral in alignment and he is strongly enchanted as an artifact. No need to gave him stats as he is un destroyable. Even if he is disintegrated he will reform from scratch in few hours and go on with his mission. He is not aggressive himself, play him nice and dull. He will avoid confrontation with player characters at any cost, since destroying his body is a time consuming nuisance. In game term, a very powerful an angry badass player character could see the "undestroyable" nature of Gorth as a personal challenge. Don't let yourself involved in such situation. If someone ask funny questions, tell him that Gorth is a kind of golem where a time elemental has been put on his gears. Well, you don't see gears. It's because you're beotien.

Eternal jail: 

It's a pocket plan, built by several gods. It is out of time, but time inside lapse normally. That mean that you can spent an entire life inside, outside a minute or less will have past. For that reason it's been strongly connected to time plan, in the deepest of deeper ethereal. If someone asking funny questions, tell him it is locked in reverse loops with time plan, and figure. Since you cannot reverse the arrow of time it create micro loops. Time isn't reversed, so it passes veeeeeery slowly. Only gods can observe such a phenomenon. But it gave them headache.

As a mater of fact, there is no "outside". It is the reason why it is so secure.
A mass of land has been inserted inside. If you walk outward, you will be facing inward as soon as you stop. Depending on your speed, the fastest you are the closer you are from the edge. The more close you are from the edge the more time accelerate for you. Second turn to years, minutes turn to centuries.
At a certain time, anyone would stop.

Random dungeon 2

Second dungeon adventure, this time with a maze twice as large. This one what to be the technical level, so I thought I had to let more empty rooms. That was my first mistake. It made the dungeon twice more boring. Players were hoping to kill the lich at this stage. Witch I had no idea. So we spent a lot of time play hide and seek. In particular as players stated to avoid other monsters as much as possible to catch over Headhunter. Random generated monsters were beholders, vampires, ghosts, mummies, wraiths, and shadows. Actually, only beholders and vampires were checked on the table but as I had so much room to fill, I thought to use a area encounter system, instead of the classic DMT (door, monster, treasure).

Duergars were supposed to live here too. yes, I know, that's a problem.

To prevent undeads to attack duergars they had to be under the command of an arch-undead, different from the lich. This second-in-command could have been a vampire-mage. So say hello to my new villain.

Random dungeon 1

First level of Pit of the Headhunter was randomly generated on internet. Random Dungeon
Then I had to change or add some rooms. Corridors in black are used by duergars to jump into.
All this level is suppose to be build with mobile rooms on wheels.

The pentacle rooms on the left corner where planned before the dungeon take shape so I had to draw it by myself.

Rooms were created one after another according the kind of monsters I checked on random encounter table VII. There was sixteen rooms, so I should have planned on six to eight different kinds of monsters. As the difficulty level of this part of the dungeon raised, I decided to keep six kinds only, knowing that there had to be duergars. It has given flesh golems, retriever, mimics, hooked horrors and tentamort. Since the two last are far underpowered for a dungeon at this level, I had to embed them into traps.This drove the dungeon to have more empty rooms. Fine balancing is hard to find.

Half of the empty rooms had to be trapped. Mimics are traps by themself. This designed the level as very traps oriented. So I decided the lich had to test the player characters in order to know what to do with them. Some features in corridor where added to let the player think that they were engage in tests. Fascinating masks and patterns to reveal their general alignment. Those who might resist fire, cold and lightning. The maze became a kind of rat's race.