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Author
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Comment
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 Infiniti2000
Verrik
(7/26/03 11:01 am)
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ezSupporter
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How Many Xorn in the Earth Temple?
The earth temple forces have been mostly defeated. Uskathoth, Greshta, Miikolak, Swordmaster, EE, 4 trog warriors, 2 trogs, and even Terrenygit are dead. Snearak, the manticore, some more trogs, and the mephits are alive. I plan on the following:
1. Snearak will pull the dead bodies (including some from the main entrance like the howler) to the temple area.
2. He will then cast desecrate and animate dead (+2hp/HD) on the howler and some bodies.
3. He can no longer afford a raise dead scroll due to the price hike in 3.5, but I plan on having him use sacrificial skill and some DM fiat to apply the ghoul template to Terrenygit, the party's currently Most Hated Enemy (MHE) (tm), even though he's dead. (new log update coming soon)
Meanwhile, he will have killed 1/3 prisoners and fed the heart to the xorn. How long does the xorn stay around? Can he build an army of xorn, summoning one each day? It seems like this would be overpowered, however no limit is provided in the module. Maybe the summoning is only permanent if a sacrifice is provided. I'm thinking that Snearak would use up all three prisoners (one/day) and get three xorn to help with the temple defenses.
What do you think?
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Trithereon
Verrik
(7/26/03 6:32 pm)
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Re: How Many Xorn in the Earth Temple?
There is no duration given to the "altar xorn" therefore I assume it is not a Summoned xorn, but Called. This allows a xorn to stay as long as it takes for them to fullfill the commands of the priest who called it. It has the ability to return to the elemental plane of Earth, but if the command is broad enough then it may stay indefinitely.
There is also no specified limit to the altar's special power, but if you have placed a limit on the Fire altar's powers then I'd use the same limit for the Earth altar. I think this board's suggested limit was once/month.
The question becomes for me, what command could be so broad as to keep a xorn around indefinetly? As Outsiders xorns don't need to sleep or eat and make great bodyguards. I don't think Outsider age, so protecting a mortal is not a particularly "long" assignment. Maybe the command is for the xorn to guard Snearak life?
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Zagig
Giant
(7/27/03 3:15 pm)
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Re: How Many Xorn in the Earth Temple?
I personally don't think that there should be a limit to how often Snearak could Call a Xorn, other than how many prisoners he has to sacrifice. If you are considering having him sacrifice some guards as well, I don't think that he would do that except as a last resort. The guard he tries to sacrifice might not agree either.
As Trithereon suggested, guarding Snearak's life would be the most logical option, but not neccessarily the most fun for the party. If they have to deal with Xorn attacks from under the earth as they advance on the Earth Temple, it could make for a tense situation.
Zag ig
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msherman
Faen
(7/27/03 3:26 pm)
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Re: How Many Xorn in the Earth Temple?
Huh. I read that completely differently from the rest of you. The module says that the drum only functions once per day, but for some reason I misread that as meaning that the xorn only stuck around for 24h. It does look like the Xorn will stick around for as long as necessary to complete the ordered task, which can be effectively infinite for a task like "guard Snearak's life". So, why did they not have any Xorn's already when first encountered by the party in the module as written? Did they just find out how the summoning works? They certainly had enough prisoners for long enough, according to the module, to have summoned the xorn earlier.
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Infiniti2000
Verrik
(7/27/03 3:29 pm)
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ezSupporter
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Re: How Many Xorn in the Earth Temple?
Thanks for the comments! It helped stimulate some more thought.
"The question becomes for me, what command could be so broad as to keep a xorn around indefinitely?"
I was thinking more along the lines of "protecting the earth temple". If given a heart on the first day and, say, one/week, they might sitck around. Of course, now Snearak needs to get some hearts. He would not use his own guards, so he'll have to either roam the countryside or attack the NBC. I like the idea of sending out the manticore for some prisoners; it will also help motivate the party when they hear about it back in Rastor.
"There is also no specified limit to the altar's special power, but if you have placed a limit on the Fire altar's powers then I'd use the same limit for the Earth altar. I think this board's suggested limit was once/month."
That limit was for the 50,000gp item creation ability, not the summoning of the salamanders (IMO anyway...I don't think anyone wanted to limit the number of salamanders). In fact, that lends more credence to the permanency of the summoning because there it specifically mentions that the salamanders become permanent residents of the fire temple.
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Roland the red
Faen
(7/27/03 7:13 pm)
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Summonin Xoern et. al.
Perhaps the temple summonings should be consider Lesser Planar Ally spells (or regular Planar Ally)...The calling being described in the module (drums in the earth temple etc.) and then the bargain being a Live Sacrifice 1/week...this is frequent enough to need a steady supply of sacrifices (other CRM denizens, bought from slavers, etc) yet not so frequent as to be debilitating. Should the Priests want more xorn (or salamanders, or whatever) they can call more to them every day...but the accumulation of the necessary sacrifices add up...but desperate times call for desperate measures...
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Infiniti2000
Verrik
(8/3/03 11:37 am)
Reply
ezSupporter
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Quick Battle Recount
Prior to the battle (last night in RL), the group left the mines to bury Xaod and Verilia "changed" her animal companion. She's writing this last log, so more on that there if you are interested. We switched to 3.5 last night, so she couldn't keep her awakened animal companion, and I was not going to run him as an NPC.
They couldn't figure out if they wanted to go back and mess with Vranthis, Marlgran, and Rusty, or go north to fight "Snearak" and the likely remainder of the ET. They had heard the Manticore speaking loudly before and falsely assumed that was Snearak. So, they go north.
They had planned to announce their arrival and then wait for 30 minutes, giving time for the ET's buff spells to wear off. Unfortunately, they started hearing a female elven voice crying out in fear and pain. They rushed in! 
I split the bad guys up a little. In the uneven room first:
2 trogs
manticore
xorn
earth mephit
The xorn was a little tough, but the group managed it well. The mephit was able to flee back to the temple, where it would bury itself a little to heal up. The group rushed on.
Earth Temple:
Snearak - still buffed from the previous night's sacrifice, using sacrificial skill and the BoVD: +5 magic vestment
4 trogs
4 trog warriors, each with 1 cure light wounds potion (from Miikolak's stuff and one from Snearak)
2 trog zombies (Terrenygit and Miikolak, why on earth are these only CR 1?)
huge howler skeleton - a fearsome beast, the nasty errata "proper" advancement of the howler only gets worse in 3.5
3 earth mephits
2 xorn
vs.
Drd7, Wiz7, Rgr2/Ftr6, Sor6/DD2, Clr7, Ftr7
The xorn remained hidden. One was told to remain hidden until an enemy touched the pyramid. The undead were instructed never to leave the room, though they could attack anyone in reach outside it.
The battle was very tough and we didn't finish till 5am. The party never entered the temple room proper, except for the Ftr7 (Aldoroc) who had greater invisibility. Unfortunately, the xorn can see him as long as he touches the ground, so he had a rough time of it. I made the mistake of allowing the cause fear to affect him (though no one caught it till later). It didn't really make a difference though, so I also made a mistake in his favor. However, he was damaged badly when he reentered the room and tried to get across it to "safety" when the howler mangled him up.
Snearak never managed to sacrifice the last victim (Tenaris) due to a combination of grease, hold person (on the Trog that managed to pick up the dropped curved knife), and call lightning (much improved over 3.0). Evard's black tentacles didn't affect much of anything as the howler could move over it with ease. Even with half movement, it can pretty much move across the whole chamber (10ft reach).
Outcome:
The entire earth temple was killed except for Snearak, who escaped into a secret door in the base of the pyramid at the back. I had decided this would be there prior to the fight and makes a lot of sense. It's a small room, only 10x10, and is used for private communication with the EEE. The group has plenty of clues to find it, but for some reason they are not thinking about it (maybe cause it was so late). Snearak is at 1 hit point (thanks to the cure minor), but is otherwise out of spells. He hopes the party leaves, and then he can try to rebuild...probably with kobolds.
Choices:
The extra xorn are tough, I know, but I spaced them out a little so as not to overwhelm the party. With the undead not leaving the temple area and the trogs relatively ineffective (except for one warrior amazingly who kept sticking the animal companion, very happy for him, until he got blasted by a called lightning bolt), it was very reasonable. Snearak never even got to use his amazing AC (32). He never got into melee, getting peppered by magic missiles and lightning bolts. He held the ftr/rgr for a while, and that is what probably lead to Aldoroc's death more than anything.
Now the group is planning on taking Aldoroc to Hommlet to Y'Dey for raising. Due to the fight which he survived against the manticore et al, he JUST reached 8th level. So, in the raising and subsequent restoration he will lose very little experience.
Interesting side note:
While going through Rastor, the group noticed the extra guards around Tal's place. Due to the drugging of Verilia's tea earlier, she REALLY wants Tal dead. They actually had to hold her back from just going over there in bear form and ripping all the guards apart, including Tal. The rest of the group almost joined in when they saw the additional guard standing around back, Wormspike. I am truly amazed they held back, but will be interested to see if they kill Tal, dooming many of the townspeople.
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