The party was getting closer to the entrance to the underground Castle Rostak.
Mingling into the undead hordes heading to the Castle, had been relatively easy, but now they faced a Death Tyrant, whose Eye Beam was scanning the area in from of the entrance, lightning up anything living as if hit by Fairy Fire.
But the party had a plan…
DM note, at the end of this article I cover how I added distance and strategy to this encounter.
Observing
Rather than just rushing for the entrance, the party cooly observed the situation and spotted a group of visiting Drow that avoided detection by casting Shield when the Eye Beam hit them.
As they moved closer Thorga, the Dwarven Artificer, also noticed that the huge rocks also provided protection from the Eye Beam.
A plan was forming.
First the party moved up behind a near by rock. There was two Mechanithralls, the steam engined undead, but they were no match for the Hellbenders.
Then with a combination of Misty Step and Dimension Door and simply running, the party made it over to the taller rock.
Here they faced three Mechanithralls that put up a bit more fight but not enough.
But the party was stuck with the Eye Beam swooping back and forth.
Thorga sent his Homunculus Servant forward towards the Death Tyrant. Being a construct, it was not affected by the Eye Beam.
To make matters worse, a Bonejack attacked them from behind, followed by even more undead.
Time was running out for the party to get to the entrance.
Suddenly Pestilence, the Tabaxi Warlock, saw an opening and swiftly ran all the way to the entrance.
Thorga, having just smashed the Mechanithralls in front of him, saw Pestilence run past him, but he stuck to his plan.
With his Homunculus Servant in place near the Death Tyrant, Thorga cast Resilient Sphere on the Death Tyrant, but alas the undead aberration passed its DEX save and disintegrated the Homunculus Servant.
This was it!
Kaari and Thorga left the fight behind and ran to the entrance with the Death Tyrant firing beams at them, but luck on their side, they made it.
Welcome to Castle Rostak
Inside the castle, none of the undead seemed to care that the party had arrived. The assumption was, if you are in the castle, you are meant to be there.
Scouting the Funnel area, the realised another Death Tyrant was watching the main gate into the castle.
Tired, they noticed an oddly lively music and light coming from a fallen tower. As they closed in, they noticed a classic tavern sign saying “The Welcome“.
As they entered the tavern, they were met with a bizarre scene of undead acting out their past lives in the tavern. One undead was even entertaining on his accordion.
In the centre they were met by Adolfuns, a sentient possessed huge bronze cauldron that seemed to be hosintg many souls all acting as individuals and as a single entity.
Loud and welcoming, the party soon fell into several conversations with Adolfuns and learned that the area know as “The Softworks” was run by a mean Ghoul called “Bracken The Butcher” and that the area know as “The Hardworks” was run by some Dwarves.
Tired, and feeling relatively safe, the party withdrew upstairs for the night and while they all had some nightmares, they still woke up relatively refreshed for their first day in Castle Rostak.
DM notes
As we play online, there’s normally not really space for a larger terrain setup and it works fine for us. However, it is hard to simulate distance on a small gaming board.
So for this session, I made a board with big squares representing both the Death Tyrant’s Eye Beam and representing a full move towards the entrance (30 ft-ish).
Undead were also heading towards the entrance so at the end of each round, the Eye Beam swooped randomly by rolling a D10 for its new position and all the undead moved forward 1 square.
This worked really well to give the encounter a more strategic feeling. I will make a smaller board with a similar logic. The board I used was pushing the size limit of our setup.
