Café de Nuit

Having gotten so much mileage out of "Yakov Ormoff," I'd love to see him in a compendium, along with Nightblood, whose return was the center of a campaign that never took off the ground. I agree with many of the others I'm hearing about here. Here's my personal picks:


1) Nightblood (lich-as-magic-item)
2) Yakov Ormoff (vassalich)
3) Andres Duvall (bardic, good)
4) Nature's Sorrow (druidic)
5) Master Ulathar (psionic)
6) Worm that Walks (failed attempt)
7) Marcos Vedarrek (trying to become lich; warrior type)
Moonbane (generic, but still cool)
9) Eternal Order Leader (cleric, neutral)
10) Demilich (sleeping, philosopher-type)
11) Alchemical Lich (using VRA's high alchemy, appears mortal)
12) Baelnorn (maybe corrupt, maybe not)
13) One more generic (still plenty of ways to differentiate)

....I say we do this as a netbook. Who's with me?

I'm down. I still think it would be cool to include Erik Van Rijn, to see what he's really been up to ever since his betrayal of the fraternity.

Erik van Rijn, huh?

Yeah, we might do something with that, after all these years.

An Alhoon in Immol could be fun.

Before the Grand Conjunction, they left the God-Brain's hive under orders to scout Barovia. When Bluetspur was moved during the Grand Conjunction, the illithid was trapped in Barovia. It became an alhoon in the intervening years and has stayed in Immol, feeding on the populace, desperate to find a way to bring Bluetspur back (it has no idea that it is an Island of Terror).

Good old Wandering Crow Archibald Everlast detailed in Qtr 25 does fit the bill.

If you do go through with this, I have a vassalich Azalin references in the Zytia Gazetteer. Otherwise, I'll just drop her.

Art Lesson I: The Color of Flowers

Harrumphing and cries of “whose spider is this?” called my attention to Cybele’s absence. Micromanaging the emerald-green chemist grinding his pigments and medicated lung tobacco was a thri-kreen artist. He wore a top hat and a formal black tailcoat with a matching black breechclout, which made for an interesting cultural crossover. His face was a bit gaunt, his pale pine color muted, and his voice wheezed, so I assumed he was older. The gentleman’s milky-eyed and skeletally-patterned black and white pocket spider was clinging to his hat brim batting grumpily at my blue-faced one perched on the hat’s crown.

<greybox>Thri-kreen rarely approach foreigners first because many find their insectoid appearance intolerable.</greybox>

I collected Cybele, apologized, and expressed interest in his clothing and pigments. Introducing himself as NAME, he launched into a lecture about how humans paint flowers all wrong. He claimed human paints have yet to mimic the full range of color that insects can see because we flesh-folk are less perceptive on the purple end.

NAME had paid exorbitantly to import a still life by a famous Dementlieuse artist known as “the master of flowers”. Extremely disappointed with the work he received, the thri-kreen painted a postcard nastygram to the Counsel of Brilliance itself. He declared in strong and unmistakable terms their artist was a fraud and their accolades amateur as can be determined by the simplest experiment: the thri-kreen’s postcard or the so-called-master’s paintings, which do the garden bees visit more? He never received a reply back which he took to be a sign of humiliated resignation.

NAME asked me what I thought of these scoff-offs, and I made the right agreeing noises, so out from his Zytian leather haversack satchel came a small exhibition’s worth of paintings. This imposition on my time would have been obnoxious had he not been extraordinarily talented. Everyone in the store took a break to gather around. There were flowers, misty waterfalls with subtle rainbows, iridescent greenbottle flies crawling over a skull, crimson blood flying in a violent arena clash, a rope bridge over the abyssal basin, and cranes silhouetted against the sunrise. No portraits though.

NAME smugly sold me an oil of blue daisies for less than he ought. He told me to stand outside with it. And, no joke, bees and butterflies came!

<azalin>One of my vassaliches with an artistic bent took an interest in your daisies and asked me to gift it to her once I explained the backstory. Mortal figure artists can’t recreate the “colors of life” a lich sees, so she has been experimenting with pigments made from rendered soulstuff. She’s a sneaky one like you and moved her studio without my permission. I wonder what she is up to now?</azalin>

Surprise Attack: Hoverfly

I also learned a very important Zytian lesson. Insects of all sizes are curious about delicious flowers. A five-foot hoverfly appeared from nowhere like a meteor strike, and the typhoon from its wings was enough knock me sprawling into the grass and blow away my painting to location unknown. It yawed back and forth, confused about where its lunch went, so I made a break for it. Mistake. Giant hoverflies adore chasing running humans just as much as their tiny garden brethren. And with their speed and agility, there is no escape. I fired a round over my shoulder, thinking to scare the nectar-sipping creature off with the sound. The next thing I remember is a roar of wind and cartwheeling through the air and watching a boot and my spider pouch go flying. My attacker was gone before I hit the ground, vanished in a wink skyward.

I was bruised everywhere, clothes ripped, face and nose bleeding, but my painting and spider were okay, the former by sheer luck, the later because many Zytian bugs have just a little psionics or sorcery running in their hemolymph to expend as a panic button. Pocket spiders can momentarily harden their exoskeletons to prevent their masters’ bulk from squashing them during maneuvers. The hoverfly has a little air element to augment its whirlwind knock back and speed its escape.

My clobbering was a stark reminder attacks often come as a bolt from the blue in Zytia, and I was lucky my hungry visitor was not a flesh-eating cannibal fly, or a beaky beefly known to smash people’s heads open by flicking cobbles like a trebuchet, or a hormonal rutting male carder bee that crushes anything offending its hair-trigger masculine sensibilities with its spiked-mace butt.

1) The Legacy of Crimson Arcanus detailing the books collected by Marcos Vedarrak including the Tome of Lich Creation from the adventure "Spellbook Masquerade" (Dungeon
Magazine #53 I set this adventure in Dementlieu) it is the book that Marcos gave to the traitorous Erik van Rijn.
2) Erik van Rijn and a hunt by the Fraternity of Shadows
3) The return of Moonbane
4) Yako Vormoff and his search for his phylactery or his derranged theater of puppets
5) A spellcaster determined to give his servitude to a lich and becoming a vassalich, a story similar to Shauten's
6) Balipur and the construction of a life giving ritual to restore him to mortal form
7) Foedus and his quest for Azalin's iron crown
Vort from "Chilling Tales" hunting members of The Unholy Order of the Grave
9) Grandmother Nichia searching for her rod of resurrection (lost in Necropolis) to restore herself and Goya (her lost Broken One Zombie son) back to life.
10) Andres Duvall and his investigation of Antonio Lofgren's Traveling Orchestra
11) Nightblood of Liffe
12) Ejrik Spellbender (not a lich but has a phylactery)
13) The search for a liches real name

I notice that there's no mention of a demilich in all this jazz - sorry, I don't have 5e yet, so I dunno, are demiliches not a thing in the new D&D? Or perhaps not Ravenlofty enough?

Demiliches in 5e have been severely reduced in stature. Instead of being an evolved form of the lich, they are the result of a lich that neglects to regularly feed souls to its phylactery. The binding magic starts to fail, and the body and mind decay until it is nothing but a violent skull. Supposedly, if it could think to feed a soul to its phylactery, it could return to full strength.

As I understand it, some interpret Azalin's Doomsday Device as an attempt to evolve into something like a demilich (old-school version), allowing him to astrally project out of Ravenloft. From this, it could be interpreted that demiliches are not permitted to form by the Dark Powers, because they would be too free within the realm.

Wolfglide wrote:Supposedly, if it could think to feed a soul to its phylactery, it could return to full strength.

Then methinks a very appropriate COTN adventure would be the classic tale of "bring back the boss" - a cabal/cult/secret society built around a discovered demilich skull. After [insert ridiculous amount of time here], they've learned that 1) they need to feed Chuckles a soul to bring him/her/it back, and 2) the specifics of the ritual that will do so.

The entry, then, is the society itself: goals, organization, major members, etc etc, and the PCs are brought into the action at the early stages of the ritual.

Agreements? Disagreements?

For the record, if COTN:L happens and submissions are open, I claim dibs on this idea....unless someone beats me to it.....Nine-tenths and all that......

Hanbaoge wrote:I notice that there's no mention of a demilich in all this jazz - sorry, I don't have 5e yet, so I dunno, are demiliches not a thing in the new D&D? Or perhaps not Ravenlofty enough?

Demiliches are mentioned in Van Richten's Guide to the Lich. Hero's Bane is said to be one such example.

Hanbaoge wrote:I notice that there's no mention of a demilich in all this jazz - sorry, I don't have 5e yet, so I dunno, are demiliches not a thing in the new D&D? Or perhaps not Ravenlofty enough?

I mentioned a demilich. I think there's certainly a line to walk between the "beyond lich" version and the "failed lich" version, and the cult idea has merit. Van Richten was wrong about so many other things, we could leave it up to DM's as to whether the ritual would actually work.

If you aqre interested I introduced the Booksworn Lich in Qtr 27.