Spreading out my goals in this new blog should make for a more interesting read for you and, hopefully, more fun for me to write. Not that I didn't have fun writing the first five levels of the minotaur rogue! It just didn't seem like a sustainable idea.
(And, hey, maybe it'll be a bit easier to attract readers if the blog's focus is a bit more general!)
Anyway, on to business. Monday is the day of the week when I really buckle down and put together content for my 4E game, which meets on Tuesday nights. It seemed like the perfect day of the week to offer up a bit of custom content to other DMs out there who might need a last-minute NPC, zone, etc. Tonight I'm kicking things off with a solo monster: Thhxyj'jjk. It's really not as hard to pronounce as it looks...
Warning: there are mild SPOILERS for Thunderspire Labyrinth and Pyramid of Shadows after the jump. If you're a player and your DM is planning on running either of these, especially Thunderspire Labyrinth, don't click!
Thhxyj'jjk, Lord of the Far Realm
Level 6 Solo Controller; Suggested Mini: Thoon Hulk (Demonweb)
In my game, I didn't need to come up with much background for this guy, so I'm afraid the lore is a bit fast and loose; I'm hoping to put more thought into it down the line but I've gotta get back to polishing my encounters for tomorrow at some point!
Anyway...I used Thhxyj'jjk as the unwitting guardian for a huge underground complex constructed by the Saarun...yep, the same Saarun from Thunderspire Labyrinth. I didn't use them exactly as they were written in the adventure; in my campaign they had vanished from the world by the time the heroes came upon the Seven-Pillared Hall. The Hall itself was occupied by demons, and one of their goals was to breach this complex and recover...something. The players don't know yet so I ain't tellin'...sorry, guys.
The how/why of Thhxyj'jjk was all pretty simple: as the Saarun started to delve into darker magic for reasons I don't care to go into here, they grew mad with power, and began to explore the Far Realm itself. At one point they were able to capture poor Thhxy, after which they set him in a pocket dimension between the Hall and the Reliquary...a place intruders would be sent to if the "Gate" of the Reliquary, which possesses mild sentience, did not recognize them as Saarun. There, Thhxyj'jjk would spend decades, if not centuries, entertaining himself by having a bit of "fun" with his captives, all while helping himself to their brains whenever he felt a bit nibbly. Bleh. Gross.
When the heroes reached the entrance to this place, known as the Reliquary, this group of demons and cultists were already well ahead of them (as these things tend to go). They had done their homework and knew how to bypass the pocket dimension. The player characters, of course, were not so lucky.
I started out by just using a slightly modified version of the "Howls from Beyond" fight from Pyramid of Shadows (encounter T5). I liked the encounter concept and I thought it would be an appropriate encounter for the pocket dimension/enslaved monster scenario I had in mind. Over time, however, I started fidgeting with it, changing this, changing that, and as so often happens, I decided I'd rather just take the time to build the darn thing from scratch. (Note: I'm only pointing this out because you may spot a couple "leftovers" from the Far Realm Abomination monster here, and I didn't want anyone to get the impression that I'm ripping off creative material in my very first post!)
A couple of encounter details before the stat block: I just used the big tower map from the Scepter Tower of Spellgard adventure, which is turning out to be pretty handy. Before the heroes could fight Thhxyj'jjk, they had to finish a skill challenge while staving off a group of minions who would disappear in a cloud of vapor when killed, only to reappear moments later. The big twist (and one of the things that made it a fun fight) was that each of the minions was a "shadow" version of a dead PC from earlier in the campaign. I definitely drew from WoW's Old Kingdom dungeon for inspiration here - the Lovecraftian monster hidden from the heroes while they fight off shadow versions of themselves - but I thought it would be more fun to throw old characters at them (made a bit more sense miniature-wise, too).
Everyone really enjoyed the skill challenge/combat and the solo fight that followed was easily my most successful solo encounter so far. I don't know how true this is for other DMs, but for me the new solo rules Wizards is getting out to DMs via MM2, DMG2 and the last Adventure Tools update have completely restored my faith in this kind of fight. It was awfully fun and I don't think anyone thought it ran too long...in fact it felt much faster than our normal fights!
That's enough blabbering from me. I might post the skill challenge/shadow combat next week. It would take a bit of doing to get that into a blog-compatible format, and I really must get back to populating the depths of the Reliquary with nasties! Here he is:
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