Rappan Athuk #122+123: To Challenge a God

This writeup is only two years late! It tops off the EPIC campaign of the legendary megadungeon Rappan Athuk! (MASSIVE SPOILERS for Rappan Athuk and The Slumbering Tsar.)

The party cleft through a complex of mages of considerable power who threatened to dispel their magic items. They would soon stumble upon the ingenious plan that Orcus had to return to Golarion. Grom-gil-Gorm, their stalwart viking fighter, tells the party’s final chapter.

(-GM)

12th day of Sarenith, 4722 AR

Grom-gil-Gorm

The mages turned their heads toward us, their faces obscured by masks of twisted metal. As one they lifted their arms and called forth their fiercest warriors to fight us. And these warriors were not the simple grunts we fought before. Every one of them wore the cold aura of the antipaladin, and every one of them wielded their double-axes as effortlessly as one might hold a knife and fork.

Our only hope against such martial prowess was to overwhelm them with force before they could orient themselves. I charged forth without hesitation, barreling toward the nearest of the unholy champions with a scream that was at once a taunt and a prayer. Perhaps the taunt made him hesitate, for my ever-hungry mace found his skull and brought him down. Perhaps the prayer guided my hand, for as I swung the mace around me it connected with the skull of a second warrior.

I had no time to marvel at my luck, no time to shout in defiance, for the leader of the warriors pushed past the two corpses and began a ruthless frenzy of attacks. One would expect him to be a lumbering brute given his inhuman bulk, yet he was as swift and precise as a master swordsman. I might have had a chance against him in single combat, but with the other warriors surrounding me I was overwhelmed. Their axes bit into my flesh, their cold auras burned into my soul. The leader stepped forward as I fell to the ground, cutting open my throat to make sure I was dead.

Nothing. An empty void, stretching to infinity.

Then, slowly, an awareness of self. Am I floating, or am I falling? It’s impossible to tell because I have nothing to judge my position except this endless sea of black.

I am there for a second, a day, a year, forever.

Light.

Just a pinpoint, yet enough to see what surrounds me. I am not in an endless void, but a tunnel. The light glimmers at one end, only darkness awaits at the other.

The light calls to me, beckons me.

I swim forward, eager to leave the darkness behind. The light comes into focus, slowly, too slowly. I need it now. I need to shed the cloying waters of this cold, dark, empty tunnel. I need warmth. I need light.

The light is so close now. Just a little farther and I will be free. Free…

Something catches my eye. Standing next to the light is an old woman, impossibly old. She holds open a door, the door that separates the light from the darkness. The woman is Death, and the door she holds is the Last Door. She motions me forward, and smiles.

If I go through the Door, I can never go back. The memories, the hopes, the dreams of the living will be forever gone. I think about all that would be lost, and I hesitate. But now the current is pulling me into the Door, and I must actively fight it to stay where I am. Fighting is hard because I am so tired and the light is so close.

Orcus. Remembering the name ignites a fire within me. If I surrender to the light it is he who will hold sway over the land of the living. He will throw a dark shroud over the Door, so that every soul who departs after I do will never find peace. He will usher in an age of ghosts and monsters. I cannot let that happen. I cannot let Orcus win without a fight.

I turn around, and swim back towards the darkness. I leave the warmth behind me, for it is a luxury humanity cannot afford. It becomes colder and darker, but it is a darkness I have seen before, a coldness I have felt before. I must accept these curses, for they are the blessings of life.

I must embrace the darkness so that others may have light.

Awake.

I found myself in a cavern filled with moss and fungus. The others were nearby, surprised that I was alive but preoccupied by the task at hand. Through the scrying pool we could see the mages and warriors preparing for our arrival at the entrance to the level below. It was clear that we would be crushed if we simply attacked them from the front. So while Orcus’s champions readied their spells and sharpened their axes, we devised a plan.

Deckard Cain and Susurrus of the Wind stepped into the entrance, alone. The warriors hesitated, confused as to why we would send our spellcasters into battle unprotected. In that moment of hesitation, Deckard summoned a storm of divine fire, engulfing the warriors in searing heat. Before they could escape, Susurrus ensnared them with a wave of black tentacles, then separated them from the mages with a wall of lava.

The mages attempted to dispel these conjurings, but they were interrupted by me, Doomfist, Shia LaBeouf, and the mysterious archer who called himself Death, attacking them from behind. With no warrior minions to block our path, we easily cut down the wicked spell-weavers. As the last of them defiantly held up the sign of Orcus as he died, we heard the cries of the doomed warriors from beyond the wall:

“Master, where do we go?”

“Master, what do we do?”

“Master, help us!”

But Orcus did not tolerate failure, and so none of them were helped. All of the warriors perished in Deckard’s fire. All of them, except one.

The wall of lava burst open, liquid fire flowing out of the seam. The leader, his skin charred and blackened, his armor glowing with heat, his double-axe melted to a pulp, walked forward and slammed me against the wall. My throat burned, not just from the lava dripping from his fingers but from a thousand years of abyssal rage channeled into the final expression of his fury. An arrow went through him, then another, but it took a third arrow piercing his skull for the unholy champion to finally collapse.

The dust settled, the lava cooled, and all was silent. No traps were sprung, no curses were inflicted, no monsters were waiting for us as we walked through the gates of hell. Down and down we went, through vast caverns of unworked stone. What could lie beneath, I wondered, that even the most elite followers of Orcus would distance themselves from?

At last we arrived at a chamber lined on all sides by black metal. A maze of alchemical pipes and devices surrounded a sleeping dragon at the far end of the room. At first glance it appeared to be a gold dragon, one of the great champions of good. But something was wrong. Its scales did not shine from the light of our torches but rather seemed to make the room darker. Its breath was not smoke but a black, noxious gas that none of us had ever before encountered.

Between us and the dragon stood two obelisks engraved with ancient runes, and between the obelisks shimmered a strange gray wall of magic, uniform except for a small tear in one corner. A thin tendril of mist rose from that tear, and with it a chorus of faint whispers. A ring of statues kneeled at the wall, their bodies partially sunken into the floor and their faces frozen in horror.

As we stepped into the chamber, our surroundings seemed to disappear. The machines, the dragon, the obelisks – all of it. We found ourselves on an arid plain, a slight wind rustling the endless fields of dry grass. The sun was setting, and we could see that the stars were in patterns we weren’t familiar with. Was this a vision from another world, or from our own world eons in the past?

Behind us stood a caravan of colorful tents and wagons. A group of nobles and scholars emerged from this tent city and walked forward, past us and into the field in front of us. They gathered in a half circle, chanting an odd melody in a strange and archaic language. Slowly, a pinprick of light emerged before them. The pinprick became a glowing disk, and then a gate of swirling color. At the other side of the gate stood a man – no, a god. The chanters kneeled before him, perhaps in anticipation of their god’s blessing, perhaps in awe of his stunning beauty. He looked at his followers, smirked, and with a snap of his fingers destroyed them.

Where there was once a city of tents, there was now only a curtain of fire spreading across the plain. Where there was once a crowd of eager followers, there were now only statues fused into the ground. The god moved toward the gate, but before he could step through it and unleash armageddon, three figures appeared on our side of the gate to block his path.

There was a woman carrying a sword, a woman carrying a shield, and a man carrying nothing, all clad in shining golden armor. The woman with the shield handed her shield to the man and stepped forward to face the god. The god gathered his power in order to slay her, but before he could do so, the woman with the sword struck a mighty blow that cut the other woman in half. The two bloodied halves of the woman flew towards each end of the gate, transforming into stone obelisks. An opaque gray field appeared over the gate, settling into place with an iron clang, blocking the god from entering.

The remaining two heroes lifted their arms and caused the landscape to transform. The plain became tall mountains, and the gate was enveloped by caverns. We found ourselves in a different vision, in the aftermath of a great battle between the forces of good and evil. The god was brought forward in chains, and the two heroes laid their hands upon him, causing his muscles and bones to contort and fuse into unnatural, horrifying shapes. The result was a bloated man with the head of a ram and twisted, goatlike feet. The creature, who we now recognized as Orcus, was tossed into a deep, dark hole.

The vision ended. We readjusted to our surroundings: the obelisks, the gray barrier, the alchemical devices, the dragon. Everything appeared to be as it was before the vision, until we realized that the dragon was awake.

We charged forth and attacked the corrupted creature. The dragon reared its metallic head and spewed its noxious breath in a wide cone. The gas burned our skin and drained our souls, but what it did to the gray barrier was far worse. As the dragon’s breath touched the wall of magic, it erupted in a flash of light and disintegrated. The noises emanating from the gate were revealed to be not a chorus of whispers but a cacophony of screams. We continued to fight the dragon, dodging its vicious attacks and plunging our weapons into its hide. It soon took one last, tortured breath before dying, finally free of Orcus’s corruption.

The gate was open. Orcus was free to emerge into our world and usher in the apocalypse. There was only one thing we could do to stop him: go through the gate and slay him in his own realm.

Deckard and Susurrus prepared a complex weaving of magic that would protect us in the coming battle. Concealment was of the utmost importance; Orcus and his minions must never know our exact location. I donned the amulet of my ancestors, which would protect my spirit should the worst come to pass. Shia LaBeouf drew upon all of his bardic knowledge to compose a fiery speech, one that made us believe we could overcome any adversity. I felt more powerful than ever. Now was not a time for hesitation. We could not let our dreams of a better world remain dreams. We needed to look the Demon Prince in the eye and spit in it. All it took was for us to just do it!

We walked through the gate. The screams became louder, the air became hotter, the aura of overwhelming evil became stronger. Orcus’s realm was a vast expanse of volcanic wasteland. The sky was no sky but a maze, the other side of the same maze in which we barely escaped with our lives. We sensed that Orcus was traveling far above us, and so we too rose up and flew across the hellish expanse.

We saw a flock of demons and cultists in the distance, and we knew it to be Orcus and his minions. As we flew closer, we scanned their auras in the hopes of detecting and eliminating any spellcaster who could dispel our wards. It seemed there was only one who was versed in the particular magical traditions required, a powerful sorcerer of abjuration magic. It was of the utmost importance that he be killed before he could react to us.

The archer called Death drew two arrows at once, aimed at a distance that most mortals could never hit, and fired. The arrows pierced the sorcerer’s magical protections and slew him. With that, the Final Battle began.

Demons swarmed upon us from all directions. To them, our figures were blurry and indistinct, but that did not mean they were incapable of hitting us. With a mix of fury and desperation, I dodged their claws, parried their swords, and struck them, again and again. One by one the demons and cultists fell, until I found myself face to face with Orcus himself.

Orcus’s skull-tipped wand meant certain death for anyone it touched. He attacked with reflexes that should have been impossible for a being of his size. Yet still I avoided his blows, and even managed to score hits of my own. We struck him with metal, riddled him with arrows, seared him with spells, and still he fought. Slowly, Orcus began to falter, while we did not relent. Eventually, he let go of his wand, and fell to the ground below.

I had to make sure he was dead. I flew down and perched upon his plummeting body. There was still a glimmer in his unconscious eyes, a speck of pure chaos within a pool of infinite black. Those eyes saw the weapon I held: Vox, the mace which belonged to the demonic servant that Orcus had betrayed. He looked at that mace, and knew that it would make him forever dead. I swung the weapon, and it reached where it was always meant to be: into the skull of the Demon Prince of the Undead.

And Orcus exploded!

I found myself in the center of a massive crater, the others standing next to me. Why wasn’t I dead? I looked down at the amulet of my ancestors, and saw that it had shattered into pieces. The amulet had extended my life long enough for Deckard to cast a healing spell. We were all alive, and Orcus was dead.

The screams had stopped. Now, all around us, we heard cries of joy. The souls which had been trapped here for so long had finally been released.

I am free…

We are free at last…

Free…

I took a deep breath, and walked back toward the gate. It was time to go home.

Signing off,
Grom-gil-Gorm

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Death from Somewhere Irrelevantly Far Away, tiefling slayer 20 / fighter 1 / wizard 1 / alchemist 1
Deckard Cain, aasimar oracle 22
Doomfist, oread monk 20
Grom-gil-Gorm, half-orc viking fighter 20 / brawler 5
Shia Labeouf, human bard 20
Susurrus, sylph wind-listener wizard 22

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