Castle Amber: A D&D Adventure

Now Voulton's impressed! ...but he feels in the way too. "I really don't need a room, I can just sleep standin up or something, a lot of the men in my family do it. Make myself useful somewhere?"

"Ah yes, the Colossus. Nathaire has always had the power to create huge undead. This seems a lot bigger than before. I guess he found some new way to boost his power." Assuming the party wanted more info, Helena continues, "Nathaire was the original ruler of Vyones. Once they found him making those monsters of his though, he was chased out of town."
"Nathaire was also the original keeper of the mirror." Helena gives the group a sly look as she mentions the mirror.

"Ah, the mirror. Gaspard told us that the sword we're after could be used to slay undead. I am curious though, as to what sort of power the mirror holds? It seems to me that it's a possibility that Nathaire is attempting to retrieve it, and if that's the case, knowing what it does could be helpful in stopping this necromancer."

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Being from the third world, I reserve the right to speak in the third person.

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"Gaspard seemed to think that Lady Sephora might just lend us the sword for the good cause of saving the city. Do you think there is any chance of that?"

"That is a very good question, and one that I had been wondering about myself."

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Being from the third world, I reserve the right to speak in the third person.

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"My question is, is that who is this Sephora woman exactly? Gaspard said you scouted, but only you returned from the expedition. How dangerous is she?" Lynda says.

"I don't know what the mirror does past calling for the tomb. We never really experimented with it much when we had it. As for the sword, no. I don't think she will just give it to you. When we got it, we killed the original owner. So, I don't know how you plan to separate Sephora from her sword, but I suspect it will need to be something more than just good intentions and gold. Don't send the men here in there either. Thankfully there are a good number of females in your party, I was the only one in the group I was scouting with a decade ago."
Feeling the questions coming Helena added, "Yes, I am an adventurer from Castle Amber. My group was able to gather all the items and we called the tomb. We had a parasite in our group though. One of us was harboring a direct conduit to the lord of the seventh level of hell. It changed into a powerful avatar and began slaughtering the tomb guardians. The plan seemed to be to break the curse and restore the connection to the material plane. Our cleric was able to trap it though, by destroying the lid and erasing the answer to the curse. This was all over two hundred years ago."
Helena relaxed a bit, "So you see, even if you gather all the items and bring forth the tomb, there's no way to break the curse."

Rather than responding to those very important revelations, Tammytharn asks, somewhat breathlessly, "Do you know someone named Dan Rottlerwit?"

Helena thinks for a bit, "Hmm, no. I don't think I've ever met someone with that name. Then again, I've met more people than I'd care to."

Lynda is slightly disheartened, but nevertheless remains resolved to continue.

"You haven't been the first to tell us that this quest is hopeless. The fellow that Tammytharn mentioned, Dan, told us he too had a group quest to break the curse. He now can hop dimensions, saying he prefers the ethereal realm where things can't bother him...but...he implied there was something that could, but did not want to say."

"I apologize for boring you with questions, but there's so much that can be asked, and many people we've met are just plain tired of parroting the same stories."

"Did your parasite party member know they were a conduit to the hellish lord? I'm just curious...on a more relevant topic, what does Sephora do to men? Is she some sort of seductress and charms men in to her bidding? Or does she simply hate men and kill them?"

Rachelle, having kept mostly to herself the past day, was stuck on something Helena had mentioned.

"Excuse me if I'm missing something important, but did you just say you went to the tower a decade ago... and then say you dealt with the crypt two hundred years ago? Did you have no way to get straight back to..." Rachelle stopped, having no good way to say what she wanted to say. Chronological syntax wasn't something she could say she was well-versed in.
"And what was preventing you from gathering the items a second time and giving it another shot, anyway?" she added, preferring to jump to a new question than to try and finish up the old one in a satisfying way.

"Ah, yes she enthralls them. I'm sure the men I went there with are either still there or have died in her service," says Helena. "As for the little parasite, I don't know. He didn't talk much. Honestly, we all should have seen something like that coming. He was more than a little odd. I guess it doesn't matter now, he ceased to exist as far as I know. The only thing left is the avatar of the Baalzebul."
Helena thought about the other part of the question for a minute. "I think the thing the person, Dan, might have been speaking of is the Beast of Averoigne. It's been known to travel between parallel planes at will. It appears near Ximes from time to time. I've never seen it myself."

Helena then turns to Rachelle. "Why did I never went back to the tomb? My friends were powerful. The dragon, the giant, and the cleric were all stronger then I was in my prime. We did search for some way to defeat Baalzebul. But, around that same time more and more adventuring groups started to pour in. They began fighting for the items. When I lost my arrowhawk and the giant died we just split up. The cleric died several years later I heard. Only I and the dragon remain. He doesn't seem very interested in battling Baalzebul and I never even dreamed of fighting Baalzebul myself. So, to answer your question, we never tried again because we didn't think we could win."

"Hold on, we learned that the Amber curse was brought about by a lord of the nine hells. Are you saying it was Baalzebul specifically who was behind the curse?"

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Being from the third world, I reserve the right to speak in the third person.

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"Hmm," thinks Helena, "No. I don't know who actually started the curse other than Stephan Amber. In fact, it wouldn't make much sense if it was he who curse this place, as he is stuck here as well. Thinking about that, it would need to be a truly powerful curse if the lord of the seventh can't break it. I guess one would need to go a little deeper to find the cause."

"From what we've learned, Stephen made some sort of deal with a devil in order to bring the curse about.

"Hmm... So that's two parties we have who say that the curse cannot be broken. And that's also two parties who have completed the ritual but have not been able to break the curse. That leads to only one conclusion.

"Your groups did something wrong. Or rather, you didn't do enough right. The ritual with the four items must certainly be a part of the entire procedure to break the curse, but by the looks of things, there must be something more to it then.

"Right lads, new quest in addition to gathering all four items. We need to track down as many former adventurers as we can, specifically those who have completed this ritual before. We need to know what they did and what they did not do, in order to figure out just what it is we're missing. If we go blindly into this, just getting the four items and performing the ritual, then we're just going to repeat the same mistakes. Right now, knowledge is our friend, and we're going to need many more friends if we want any hope of beating this curse."

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Being from the third world, I reserve the right to speak in the third person.

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