With all of the monsters dispatched of the party moved into the mansion thought the large oak doors. As Eligos pushes open the solid doors she revealed a large entrance hall. Red carpets lead the adventures eyes to two more double doors and up a lavish staircase. Towering in the far corner of the room has a 10 feet tall granite statue of a female warrior. Above her head she held a stone longsword. After quickly scanning the area the party moved though a set of double doors to their left in to a banquet hall. They saw a wooden table with eight chairs around it, on the table were two candelabras, and there is a tall stone fireplace on the south wall. The flickering flames of the fire and the dim candles are the only light sources in the room as the windows have been boarded over. Sat around the table were four zombies with huge wings they all turned to look straight at the party with dead eyes.
Eligos, stood at the front as usually, bursts thought the door to attack the nearest zombie and sliced one of its arm off with her Khopesh. Vicrael not so hastily followed her into the room past Rodney and Glen. The bard took aim at the zombie at the far end of the table with an arcane arrow and jinked his foe. Minron, following up on Eligos’ example, charged into the room at sunk his horns into a zombie to knock it flat on the floor. Rodney’s wand then fired out two icy rays, one connecting and the other not, this held the jinked zombie in place. Therefore only one zombie was free to move, which he used to full effect as he flew straight at Glen smashing him backwards. Not deterred by this great shove, Glen promptly returned the favour by hurling himself back towards the zombie also knocking it prone. Minron capitalised on the zombie’s position, and like an executioner took the fiends head clean off.
Then out of the wall floated a shadowy cloak, everyone could heard infectious whispering in their head making them feel disorientated, this only got worst for Glen as when the Wraith’s hand touched him he had an overwhelming urge to attack Vicrael. Undeterred by the inner voices Hogar released two arrows bound for the winged undead, one of which shot straight though an eye socket leaving the zombie motionless for a split second before it dropped to the floor.
Over the other side of the room Minron’s sword kept swinging. Outside of the Wraith’s reach he arced his blade full circle before decapitating another winged zombie. Before advancing on the last zombie and driving the point of his blade straight through it’s chest and out the other aside.
With only the Wraith left to deal with Glen and Vicrael used axe and arrow on try and stop the evil whispering, but found that their weapons were not proving so effective as usually as they seems to slip though the cloak. Rodney attempted to knock it out with a sleep spell; this only seemed to slow the Wraith who then drifted though a wall into the entrance hall. Rodney and Glen followed and dealt it a couple more blows before Glen was against consumed with internal wrath. He surged toward Rodney and split the mage’s blood with his axe edge. The wraith again moved thought the wall to approach Vicrael. The half elf tried to move away from the hooded figure only he find himself clawed by a deathly hand. This damage left the Bard struggling to remain conscious. Thankfully Rodney returned from the hall to deal a final blow to the Wraith with a well-placed magic missile.
DM Points
Monsters: 4 x Skullborn Rotwing Zombies (L4 Skirmishers) 1 x Mad Wraith (L6 Controller) 950 xp Level 3 Encounter
Map "Banquet Hall" Created map, see picture below.
I created this map before I really knew what monsters were going into the area. I had decided that the mansion would have a few set rooms and dining room was one of them. I wanted to create a feeling of grandeur, and the image of swashbuckling on a table seems to adhere itself to me. The encounter, as you can see below, is split into two distinctive areas Kitchen Area and Dining Area. One of the reasons I picked the Wraith to go into this encounter was so he could phase between the areas and ghost though the table. Neither of these things happened. He did ghost in from the kitchen and drift in and out of the hall but the kitchen areas didn’t feature didn’t really feature at all, at no point was a miniature from either side in the kitchen area.
The monster temple I used for this encounter was Battlefield control. Every monster I have used in these encounters originally was a monster from Monster Manual 1 due to creating most of it in a car on the way to
The Wraith stayed in mainly because he looked difficult to deal with and had a power we had not yet come up against, phasing. I was defiantly right about being difficult to deal with. His auras gave the party a big decision on their turns, either move out of the aura and take no action that turn or attack the Wraith and have good chance of taking 5 damage and remaining dazed on their next turn. As the Wraith had 2 or 3 player in his aura at all times this was quite annoying for the party. D and D is about playing a heroic character, with our large party it takes us about 10 minutes per round, so it was understandable that no one really wanted to miss their heroic moment by just moving their miniature to the other side of the room and then watch everyone else roll dice for ten minutes.
I think the Wraith will be used again but introducing it while the party were two levels lower than him proved tricky.
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