The Halls of Tizun Thane

This is a scenario from the early days of White Dwarf. It delineates a very large mansion that has fallen on bad times due to the demise of its owner; various groups are trying to take over the place. It is located on an island in the caldera of a (presumably) extinct volcano. I have integrated it into the campaign as the demesne of a missing senator from the Consortium of Ilmar, or rather what's left of it after all of the recent shenanigans. The party journeys northwards to find out why Thane hasn't been seen for several months. Bomilcar is now rested and back to normal, and the following narrative mostly follows his viewpoint. My comments as umpire are interspersed where appropriate. Jorthan leads the group due to his social status in Ilmiora.

Bomilcar's narrative
The five of us ride northwards to the lands of the scholar Tizun Thane, who many think is probably a sorceror. He has not been seen since around the time the raiding party landed in the area north of Ilmar before going on to destroy the Nikorn estate. We know that his manor is set in the cone of a volcano in the hills of northern Ilmiora, and have planned to arrive at the local village at evening time. After a suitably refreshing night's sleep, we can proceed to call on the senator the next morning. We know that there is an inn because there is a caravan trail of sorts leading further north towards the Sighing Desert, although why anyone would want to go there is a bit beyond me. Thane's lands are more or less the final outpost of Ilmioran influence.

The village is a very strange place. It would appear that a great deal of heavy building work has been undertaken very recently. All of the wooden buildings have been knocked down or cannibalised for parts, and a much smaller set of buildings entirely made of stone has been constructed. These look very secure indeed, with slate roofs and heavy doors and shutters that can all be barred from the inside with sturdy wooden beams. This is not the behaviour we would normally expect from the local peasantry.

The innkeeper explains all; he seems relieved to see travellers finally arriving at the place - it looks as though he needs all the coin he can get. This overcomes his natural reticence on seeing a Melnibonean. "Welcome, gentles. We don't get much passing trade nowadays. In fact, we don't see much of anything, including our lord, Tizun Thane." Jorthan introduces himself as a member of the Consortium, come to see Thane on official business. The innkeeper responds, "You may well be out of luck there, I'm afraid. Lord Thane has not been seen for more than three months. At around the same time, night things started prowling around and carried off an old woman and a couple of children. We had to rebuild everything from the ground up to stop them getting into our houses. We even sent one of the young men up the ravine towards the manor house to try to contact Lord Thane, but he didn't return. We don't know what to do."

He shows us his precautions against the night things, apologising all the while. "As you can see, all of the window spaces are as narrow as we can make them and still let in light during the day. We close off all possible entrances at night, and I'm afraid I'll have to lock you in from the hallway. This is a necessary precaution; if the night things come in and get you, there's a chance they won't make it any further. I've even installed extra internal doors in the corridors and stairwells with their own locks as well."

We decide to sleep as a group in one large room. Sir Blanque suggests that we deliberately leave a window unbarred in the small room next to ours, with a trap underneath the window entrance. Since I am a hunter as well as a warrior, I set up a tripwire dagger smeared with some of the lotus wine poison before we retire for the night.

Sure enough, once darkness has fallen, things can be heard moving around outside. There is the sound of large leathery wings as something (man-sized?) lands on the roof. We hear something else at the slightly open window in the next room, and then there is a clattering thud as whatever it is enters and encounters the trap. We decide to wait until the next morning before investigating any further.

We are pretty sure that the trap worked, but on opening the door to the other room the next morning nothing is there. I inspect my trap, and the dagger lies on its side, with a good proportion of the poison gone. There should be a dead body there. Marion frowns. "There are legends among my people from the western continent that might explain this. As you probably know, the winged men of Myrrhn live in great eyries in the mountains of the northwest. However, there are persistent myths about an enemy of theirs, perhaps Chaos-created. These are evil winged cannibal creatures that send out a physical projection of themselves at night to feed. These 'bodies' can be killed, but they always return the next night. The only way to kill the things for sure is to find the hiding place of their full and proper bodies, and destroy them there." She shudders. Whatever the truth, it looks as though the Halls of Tizun Thane are going to be an interesting if dangerous place.

Marion on foot and mounted. Matched figures by Bad Squiddo.

We ride out of the village towards the ravine that leads to the mansion. Part of the way through, we spy a body on the path ahead. Dismounting, we take a look. It appears to be the partially eaten and mouldering remains of the young peasant who tried to contact Thane; he seems to have been dead for at least a month. On closer inspection, it becomes apparent that he was killed by a rock thrown from above, which lies nearby. The body also bears quite a few marks, probably from some sort of large carrion bird. His hand still clutches a parchment that reads, in Common tongue, To gain entrance, say to the guard, "Take us to your master". Destiny and I both string our bows in case whatever killed the poor man is still lurking around the walls of the ravine.

Destiny spots a group of four very large birds preparing to dive upon us, and looses. The arrow sings true and rips a wing off one of them before it goes into its dive proper. It spins out of sight and we hear its body smack into the wall of the ravine. The others give up and flap off; obviously we are not as tasty as they first thought. [Cate as Destiny made a critical see roll, followed by a critical hit with her Melnibonean bone bow. Most impressive.]

We continue towards the mansion, very alert now. There is a causeway across the substantial lake, leading straight towards the huge entrance to the place proper. There are no windows facing us at all, and we estimate that there must be at least two floors, as well as a large dome and a high tower to the left of the building as we look at  it. Standing in the doorway, which must be at least 20' tall, is a giant metal servitor. Sir Blanque follows the instructions on the scroll we found on the dead peasant, and the automaton goes inside, gesturing towards the stables to the right of the entrance. We hitch our horses and then follow it inside.

The giant metal man leads us through an impressive set of double doors into a grand hall with large tables and many seats, all covered in several months' worth of dust. Many smudged footprints criss-cross the room, which also contains a life-size portrait of a distinguished older gentleman dressed in a full set of purple robes. Tizun Thane, I presume.

We pass through another large set of double doors into a richly decorated (although now dusty) audience hall. To our left is a substantial throne with purple drapes behind it; to our front and right  are more double doors. Each of the doorways in this room is flanked by a full set of stuffed plate armour. This guy must have been worth a fortune.

The metal man leads us straight through into a now partially overgrown cloistered courtyard, with a naturally warm mineral spring in its centre. To the left and right are large statues of warriors with swords raised. The metal guardian pulls downwards on the sword arm of the one to our left, and a concealed doorway opens in the wall behind it. A corridor takes us into a hall of giant ornate mirrors, one of which is smashed with a mostly decayed skeleton lying in front of it. The giant doorman bows courteously and then returns to his post.

The skeleton is dressed in rags that correspond to the portrait in the entrance hall. His skull has been caved in from behind and the brain removed - scooped out, by the looks of it. Nasty. A quick search finds a scroll sewn into the clothing, which Destiny appropriates. Her eyes light up. "Levitation runes!" she says. Tizun Thane, for it is (or rather, was) he, is wearing a strange golden ring with a green zigzag running through it. The same pattern runs through the frames of the mirrors. We are not sure what to do about this, but Jorthan takes the lead and puts the ring on his finger. [As usual, I got bored with indecision and rolled Idea for Jorthan.] As he turns and looks at one of the intact mirrors, it shows an image of the three large hawk things we scared off earlier feeding on their wingless companion. He exclaims, "I was just thinking of that part of the ravine right now!" He passes the ring to Marion, who announces that she wants to see what is going on now in the capital city of Shazaar, where she grew up. Another mirror clears, and we see a busy street scene. We deduce that these must be scrying mirrors, showing an image of what is going on right at that moment in a place known to the person wearing the ring. Something like this would obviously be of great potential profit to someone with the right connections and ability to take advantage of them.

This place is huge!

Unfortunately, we find nothing to enlighten us as to how Thane met his fate. Sir Blanque suggests that we retrace our steps; "I want to take a look behind those drapes in the throne room" he says. And sure enough there is a door behind them. We emerge in the middle of a corridor. We follow it to our left, where it turns a corner. Immediately to our right there is now a door, and in front of us the corridor ends in double doors. We think these lead to the area of the dome we saw as we rode up to the mansion, and sure enough there is a strange temple of sorts inside, with beautiful large black statues of dancers spaced evenly in niches all around it. [Tizun Thane's art museum!]

There are no other exits, so we try the single other door in the corridor. It leads into an L-shaped room with two doors, one of which is guarded by two moving suits of plate mail; these are animated by living skeletons within. They flank us and more or less open the door ahead of us, ushering us into the presence of their master. A tall figure swathed in black robes, beneath which we see glimpses of black plate armour, rises to greet us. This is his home, and he wears plate as a matter of course? He introduces himself as Sega Thane, brother of Tizun, and proudly proclaims that, "I am, as you can see, also an accomplished necromancer." What a nice family. [The kids thought his name was hilarious, but this scenario predates their Sega games by decades...]

Jorthan does most of the talking, taking advantage of the fact that Sega Thane is distracted by the presence of a Melnibonean. It turns out that around the time of the arrival of Theleb K'aarna and his raiders, a demon assassin killed Tizun Tane by striking him from behind while he was consulting his scrying mirrors. "My brother had graduated from the pursuit of wealth to the attainment of rare scholarly items," he says. We wisely don't mention the Pan Tang connection. Sega Than continues, "This creature ate his brain after killing him, but the knowledge attained by his vast intellect seems to have driven it completely insane. I believe it now thinks it is my brother. It is far too powerful for either I or my other brother Diker. I am beginning to hope that you may be able to put an end to this nightmare so that I may take over my rightful inheritance." It looks as though there is a bit of a succession struggle going on now...

We leave him to his friendly skellies and move back into the other room to confer. The consensus is that Theleb K'aarna sent this thing to assassinate Tizun Thane, presumably because the death of another Ilmioran senator could only sow confusion and general chaos. Sir Blanque thinks we should hunt it down and destroy it before it causes any more mayhem, and we all agree to go and search for it as a group.

The other door we have found in this part of the complex reveals a set of stairs going downwards, underneath the dome of the dancers. This turns out to be a large round cell block, with a central corridor connecting all of the cells, which face outwards. We also find a concealed door leading into an otherwise featureless central large circular column, for lack of a better term. The doorway opens onto a central interrogation room, and lying there are five leathery winged things, skinny parodies of humans. "It's those Berbalang things or whatever they're called!" shouts Marion.

Four of them are beginning to rouse themselves due to our arrival; one remains comatose, presumably because its spirit was the one 'killed' the previous evening by my trap. Destiny deliberately takes advantage of this and immediately kills it, while the rest of us finish off the others, but not before one of them gouges a nasty set of claw marks down my left leg. I'm not having much luck on these adventures.

This is the figure I'm using for Bomilcar, another neatly detailed Julie Guthrie miniature. I've just recently refreshed the highlights on what is by now a very old paint job.

Sir Blanque patches me up, stopping the bleeding. "I'll be fine," I say. "At least we have removed those night menaces," he says with quiet satisfaction. "If nothing else comes of this escapade, the villagers will be spared any more trouble."

Nothing else is to be found here, so we go back to the corridor behind the throne, this time following it in the other direction. As before, it takes a turn, but a couple of doors to the left reveal some zombified bodies that ignore us politely - more of Sega Thane's work. A door at the end of the corridor leads to a guard hall and more rooms, containing several other bodies, presumably for future use by the peculiar necromancer. We do, though, find a concealed panel that has two carefully placed arrows with red fletching, and etched with identical runes. Destiny identifies them as runes of rusting. Marion says, "Now that's a clever idea!" We appropriate these.

At the far end of the guard hall is a door that leads into a nice courtyard pool, somewhat overgrown. This in turn has another door into a large patio area overlooking the lake; we are now at the rear of the palace. Here we are greeted by three rather rough and ready brigand types, who demand to know what we are doing here. One of them fetches his leader, who turns out to be Diker Thane. He tells his side of the story, which is more or less the same as his brother's except he thinks he should be the one to inherit everything. He does, though, say that he knows where the demon assassin tends to live, in the main tower that used to be Tizun Thane's perennial quarters. He offers to join up with us; "Together, your forces and mine might be enough to slay this thing. At least, it's the best chance I've come across yet." We agree, and Destiny takes time out to summon a water elemental for help. Diker Thane then leads us into another part of the complex, a set of what used to be sumptuous two-storey guest rooms with doors leading to into a corridor on the top floor of the mansion; this takes us to the tower where the demon is waiting. "I'd advise you to avoid the rest of the palace," he says; "A colony of baboons led by a large bear creature has taken over large parts of the building."

Destiny's water elemental. She names it 'Aqua'.

The final confrontation is rather epic. The demon is an enormous white-furred monstrosity. It is wearing a purple cloak taken from Tizun Thane's dead body; Destiny and Sir Blanque both say it shimmers of magic. Our only chance is to use our superior numbers to overwhelm it. Despite its size, it is very fast, using a magic fire blast of some sort to neutralise Destiny's elemental, at least temporarily. We lay into it, but the cloak it is wearing causes us all sort of trouble. Some blows miss entirely when they shouldn't, while others go astray by a tiny margin. In addition the thing has very thick natural fur. Diker swears at it, cursing it in the name of Arioch of Chaos, which slows it down for a while, but it then returns the favour, slowing Destiny. She has been trying to dispell it to no avail. It then produces multiple mirror images of itself. Eventually, though, it collapses, and the elemental moves in to drown its supine body. Destiny calls off her pet and releases it; she then tries to bind the demon for herself, but only succeeds in sending it back to whichever hell it came from in the first place. "That Theleb K'aarna was powerful" she says; "It took me while to break his binding." [The demon tried to use its sleep ability on Destiny, but fumbled!]

In the aftermath, we decide to head for home, leaving the two remaining Thane brothers to slug it out over their inheritance, assuming they can get rid of the baboon infestation. Sir Blanque gets the weird cloak as booty; he tends to be in the forefront of any combat due to his high Dexterity, so he needs all the help he can get. Jorthan suggests that we report Thane's death to the Duke of Ilmar, and fill him in about the two brothers. "There's no way either of them should be allowed anywhere near a seat on the Consortium," he says. "One is a necromancer and the other worships Arioch!" We all agree wholeheartedly.

Final umpire comments

The demon is a special chaos assassin that absorbs the knowledge of a dead enemy by eating their brain; the combination of any special skills it attains this way plus its innate abilities can make one of these things really tough; see the page on demon types for further information. Tizun Thane was a skilled elementalist, which explains the fireblast it learned from him, as well as the mirror image spell he had researched for himself due to his mastery of the scrying devices. The cloak is actually the skin of a naturally magical creature; I'll fill in the details of that in a new page on magical items.