The Drow War Book Two. The Dying Of - RoseRed

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Inside, the cathedral is desolate and empty as a hollow
ribcage. The bare stone floor is bereft of pews and
hassocks, and there is neither a pulpit nor any altar.
Only a single wooden ladder at the end of the empty
space, leading up into the spire, offers any kind of
furnishing. The whispering continues all around you.
If the Player Characters have brought lights into the
cathedral, rather than using darkvision or something
similar to see their way around, the Games Master
should add the following:
Your lights show a vast throng of shadowy figures
squirming against the walls. You are not sure if they
are fighting to get out or fighting to get in. The shadow
people scream and beat their fists against the stonework
but no sound comes forth other than the whispering.
Unlike other parts of the city, no dread wraiths emerge.
These are the shadows of the victims, not the murderers,
begging for sanctuary. As there is so little of them left,
all they can produce are faint whispers.
7. The Midnight Lantern
At the top of the spire is a small room like a bell tower.
There are no walls, just iron rods supporting the tip of the
spire. A wrought iron object like a large street lantern
hangs from a thick chain, rotating slowly around on a
pivot, creaking as it moves. A beam of pure darkness
lances from it and out across the city.
A small iron plaque has been hung from one of the
support rods. The message that it bears is badly
corroded.
A character attempting to decipher this message must
make a Decipher Script check (DC 30). Failure on the
check means that only the words in italics are legible:
Above the streets the rancid steeples soar
To keep the worms of darkness from the door
Where shadows walk in stone forever more
The effect of the darkness beam is to placate the
nightcrawlers that burrow under the surface of the
City of Memories. The nightcrawlers find even the
preserved memories of living creatures intolerable and
yearn to destroy them. So long as the beam sweeps by
repeatedly, they are lulled into inertia. Should the beam
ever stop rotating, the nightcrawlers will rise in fury and
destroy the place.
The Midnight Lantern: When active, the lantern
projects a beam of darkness ten feet wide and 500 feet
long, fading into shadowy illumination (if used in light)
for a further 500 feet. It can be shuttered to shut the
beam off. The lantern has an aura of strong evocation
magic; the tenebrium is merely the raw material,
amplified by the lantern’s enchantments. The lantern
clearly has a core of tenebrium, so the Player Characters
will undoubtedly take it somehow.
The merest touch stops the lantern’s rotation. Once this
happens, the Games Master should read the following:
There is an ominous rumbling sound, like great stone
doors opening somewhere beneath. Below, one of the
buildings seems to shift slightly, as if it had tilted. The
next moment a gigantic black body breaks upwards
through the building’s roof, rearing as if in pain, then
comes crashing down, sending stone fragments flying.
It is a worm, a pitch-black worm wide enough to fill
a city street. From the other side of the city comes a
groaning crash and you see another worm flexing above
the skyline, then slamming down into the houses.
If the Player Characters head down into the cathedral, a
nightcrawler smashes up through the floor before they
can reach the exit. If the party is 18 th level on average,
the Games Master should increase the number of
nightcrawlers to two for a major challenge. Whichever
way the Player Characters go to escape the city, they
should confront a nightcrawler. Even if they escape by
means of teleportation, the black worms are loose now
and on the hunt.
The amount of tenebrium in the Midnight Lantern is
not quite enough for full testing purposes, but it will
benefit the Conclave to have more of it to experiment
with, so the Player Characters have not wasted their
time fetching it.
Nightcrawler: CR 18; Gargantuan undead (extraplanar);
HD 25d12+50; hp 212; Init +4; Spd 30 ft., burrow 60
ft.; AC 35, touch 6, flat-footed 35; Base Atk +12; Grp
+45; Atk +29 melee (4d6+21, bite); Full Atk +29 melee
(4d6+21/19–20, bite) and +24 melee (2d8+11/19–20
plus poison, sting); Space/Reach 20 ft./15 ft.; SA
desecrating aura, energy drain, poison, spell-like
abilities, summon undead, swallow whole; SQ aversion
to daylight, damage reduction 15/silver and magic,
darkvision 60 ft., immunity to cold, spell resistance 31,
telepathy 100 ft, tremorsense 60 ft., undead traits; AL
CE; SV Fort +12, Ref +10, Will +23; Str 48, Dex 10,
Con —, Int 20, Wis 20, Cha 18.
Ibon Presno Gonzalez (order #73006) 8