Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Karth_GoblinKnight Aug 15, 2015 18:04:59	WARNING! POTA SPOILERS!   Did your party find the phylactery of Renwick Caradoon before meeting the man in his withered flesh? If so, how?   The group in which I play as a PC is still working throug the early chapters of PotA. We've cleared Feathergale Spire, discovred the Temple of Howling Hatred, and determined that the water and earth cults are within their respective keeps (and strongly suspect that the fire cult is at Scarlet Moon Hall). After taking out Shoalar Quanderil in Womford, we decided to take a circuituous route to Summit Hall via the two confirmed Haunted Keeps. jowever, the random encounter table for our journey jad us intercept a patrol of the Knights of Samular, whom offered to escort us directly to Summit Hall. We accepted the offer of safety in numbers.   After powwowing and sharing intel with Ushien Stomrmbanner, our two Order of the Gauntlet members and our paladin of Tyr asked if we could visit Samular Caradoon's tomb to pay. our respects. We were given permission, and the three of us went down there alone. Our paladin used his Divine Sense on the tomb out of habit (since he uses it whenever he can). He immediately detected a dark presence within Samular's sarcophogus.   (I don't know if Divine Sense can normally catch phylacteries, but my DM decided to let it happen just to see what we'd do.)   Fearing that the Knights of Samular would protest opening the tomb or, worse, be involved, we collected the others quietly, checked the sarcophogus for traps or binding magic, and opened the lid ourselves. My druid used Wild Shape to become a spider and explored beneath Samular's corpse; our Arcane Trickster Rogue extracted the item I found within (according to our roll on the Random Trinket table, a dwarven brooch). Detect Magic determined that the brooch radiated tremendous quantities of necrotic magic.   We didn't trust the Knights at this point. They were incompetant or compromised, and we hadn't ruled out them being a front for the fire cult. (Most of our party had a lengthy history with the cults in Mulmaster even before coming to this cult-infested valley.) We made excuses, mounted our horses, and ran. When two wights (randomly) appeared before us on the road, we assumed they were there for the brooch and mowed them down. When we finally felt it safe to stop and identify the brooch, we quickly determined (throug good rolls and speculation) that we held the phylactery of an unknown lixh in our hands.   We were ready to ride off to Waterdeep at this point. This item of obvious evil far outweighed the threat of cults and a missing delegatin. However, after heated debated we calmed down. We all agreed that we meeded to destory the phylactery. but since the lich could probably make another, we first needed to find the lich. We also needed to be sure that whatever we used to destroy the phylactery did the job right.   To this end, we decided to go back to hounding the cults. Perhaps they would have the lore or weapons we needed to destory this unknown lich. For the time being, the brooch is hidden in a Bag of Holding. It is far from a perfect hiding place, but we hope that hiding it n a pocket dimension will keep undead from being drawn to us.   Such is our tale. What was yours?
#2 Sorsohka Aug 17, 2015 5:21:57	Renwick is not a Lich, it's an ArchLich (Yes the author screwed up calling it a Lich, but I'm guessing it was to simplify, since calling it a Arch Lich woud have require the DM to explain the difference, and he would have require his own stat block. His phylactery do not radiate evil, it radiate good, Arch Lich do not consume souls and there phylactery was not create with forbidden evil magic.   So yes you are holding a power of great good necrotic power (I know for 90% of the people this is contradictory, but the Arch Lich is the exception)
(Reply to #2) zingbobco000	Sorsohka wrote:
#4 Karth_GoblinKnight Aug 20, 2015 4:22:01	Huh. Yeah my DM may have missed that, though given how we've been richocheting all over this sandbox adventure, it's likely we just didn't give him time to prep for this scenario. Given my table's penchant for excessive scheming and overplanning, he might have just said it was evil just so we could have an excuse to freak out and derail the plot.
#5 Ravix Aug 20, 2015 21:01:31	That being said, I'm surprised your group decided to mess with the Phylactery of a Lich at such a low level. If it was a real Lich, I'd have killed you off.  Haha.