Derak's Darkness HeroQuest

This was a HeroQuest for Derak the Dark Troll when he wanted to tie himself closer to Darkness. I wrote the HeroQuest early on before I had completely formulated my ideas on HeroQuesting, so it does not conform to the standard HeroQuest format. It is more of a personal Quest in order to gain certain powers. It can still be used as a normal HeroQuest, treat it as though a Hero had performed the Quest before or even that the Questor is building the Quest from fragments.

Aims

1. To tie himself to the Darkness
2. To mate with Subere
3. To bind Darkness to him

Stations

• Enter GodTime [1]
• Entry to Hell
• Confront Guardians
• Seek the Goddess
• Prove your worth to the Goddess
• Ask for Boons
• Ascent to the Castle of Lead
• Return to Time

Enter GodTime

• Ritual takes place at the Castle of Lead during Dark Season on a Freezeday
• During the ceremony an elf is sacrificed and its blood is drunk
• The Questors must eat specially prepared Mushrooms
• All Questors must take part in the Dance of the Dark (succeed a Dance Roll)
• At the culmination of the Dance, they emerge in the Castle of Lead during the Lesser Darkness

Entry to Hell

• Descent is via a natural cave and tunnel - this is where the trolls emerged from Wonderhome
• The way will be guarded by a Dehori Spirit that must be passed either by stealth, persuasion, bribery or sacrifice. A POW sacrifice or the sacrifice of a living intelligent creature will suffice. Any creature sacrificed here is permanently killed and its soul is eaten by the Dehori. The Questors may fight the Dehori but this should not be necessary. If the Questors have a link to a particular Dehori Spirit, either through HeroQuesting or through blood ties, there is a 1% chance that the Dehori encountered will be the linked Dehori.
• The Questors will be attacked by troll-hating Chaos
• The Questors will be attacked by Demons who hate everything
• The Questors will be attacked by the Dead who hate the living
• The Questors will be attacked by their enemy HeroQuestors
• The Questors will be aided by Darkness Spirits
• The Questors will be aided by friendly trolls
• They must pass over a deep, wide, dark lake - The Styx
• Anyone drinking the water will receive a resusable Oath spell which must be cast over a still, dark pool. Drinking this water costs 1D10 POW
• The Ferryman demands 1D10 POW in order to cross, unless the Styx Shore spell has been cast, in which case the cost is 1 POW, 1 magic item or 1 ritual coin
• Anyone taking Styx Water must roll beneath their Bravery in order to take a drop. Each drop taken costs 1D10 POW, they can store one drop in a container made from Lead or Obsidian
• The Questors must pass through caves to a Demon who attacks those not of Darkness. Otherwise he directs the Questors along the Old Path, the Path of Darkness

Confront the Guardians

• There are three Guardians to be passed in the Cave of Deep Darkness
• The Guardians are A Dehori Spirit, A HellHound, A Hollri
• The Questors must give each a gift or defeat them in Darkness. The Dehori only accepts Darkness abilities or Heroic Magic. The HellHound only accepts Fire abilities or Heroic Magic. The Hollri only accepts Cold abilities or Heroic Magic.
• If the Guardians are not defeated the Questors must either return back the way they came or have died. In either case they cannot continue.
• Sneaking past the Guardians counts as defeating them
• If the Guardians have been defeated then the Questors may continue to the Inner Darkness

Seeking the Goddess

• The Questors must move through the Halls of Hell where no light has shone
• They will be confronted by Hags, Hellions, Ghouls, Zombies, Mummies, Shades, Wraiths and Dehori
• Occasionally a HellHound may attack
• Before each encounter the Questors must make a Bravery Roll or run back the way they came
• The Questors must roll a critical POWx5% in order to reach the Halls of Inner Darkness and meet the Goddess

Prove Your Worth to the Goddess

If Fire or Light Powers are used, the Goddess will not be convinced and the Quest has failed

The Questors must demonstrate:

(a) Powers of Darkness

(b) Power over Fire

(c) Willingness to Serve the Darkness

• The Questors must roll POWx1% + (a) + (b) + (c) where (a), (b) and (c) are numbers gained from the Three Proofs above.
• The Questors gain boons depending on the Roll made

1. Fumbled - No Boon
2. Failure - One Boon
3. Normal Success - Two Boons
4. Special Success - Three Boons
5. Critical Success - Four Boons
6. Special Critical - Five Boons

Asking for Boons [2]

• Boons must be taken immediately
• Boons must be Darkness Based
• Boons must be comensurate with the dificulty level of the HeroQuest
• All Boons have a price, either in terms of POW, abilities or Geases

Ascent to the Castle of Lead

• Questors must fight Creatures of Fire
• Questors must fight Enemy Trolls
• Questors must fight Chaos
• Questors must fight Demons of Darkness
• There will be 2D6 encounters here

Return to Time

• The Questors lose 1D10 POW per Boon taken. If POW is reduced to 0 or below they remain as Subere's Guardians.
• This Quest takes a number of days = 2D3 + Number of encounters + number of boons taken

Statistics [3]

Dehori Guardian of the Way

This Dehori Spirit is exactly that - a Spirit. It should be of immense POW, maybe 200 or 300 and also have the Fearshock powers of a Shade. If provoked to attack it will attack in Spirit Combat. Using my rules for Spirit Combat and Fearshock this becomes far more dangerous than the normal rules. Giving this a spiritual form prevents the HeroQuestors from attacking it physically.

The Three Guardians

Minor Opponents

I have not given stats for these minor opponents as I dislike pages and pages of meaningless stats. However, I have given guidelines as to what the stats should be based on. It should only take 5 minutes or so to knock up stats for each encounter here, especially if the same stats are resused for diferent types of Demon. The important things to remeber is that if this is a Solo HeroQuest the HeroQuestor should stand a chance in combat, make these almost as powerful as he is; if, on the other hand, this is a group HeroQuest, make these more powerful than individuals as this forces the group to act together and to co-operate.

Chaos

This Chaos is normally Darkness based. It can include Vivamorti (rarely Vampires unless before the Styx), Scorpion Men, Thanatari and Demons. These are normally Rune Level parties either on HeroQuest or passing through. Sometimes the Chaos will be denizens of this realm and will be naturally powerful.

The Dead

These take the form of Undead or Spirits. Undead will grab the HeroQuestors and try to drag them down with them. They should not be a threat. Spirits may be more of a threat as they can attack in Spirit Combat and wear down the HeroQuestors.

Demons

These hate everything and are part of the Underworld or Hell. Use the stats of Sembraki if you have them or maybe use Fiend statistics with a few modifications.

Hell Hounds

These are basically copies of the Guardian but with lesser characteristics. Normally a SIZ, CON and STR of 40 or 50 suffices, especially when they attack in packs. If you want to be really mean, give them the Howl of a Barguest to demoralise the HeroQuestors as they attack, especially when in packs.

Demons of Darkness

For these, use the stats of Spirit Warriors, but make sure their POW is high enough that a single blow will penertrate a parrying weapon, armour and take a limb negative. This means that they will be very dangerous in combat. It also means that the HeroQuestor will have to change his combat techniques to fight it and will have to rely on a good dodge and scoring critical hits or attacking it in Spirit Combat.

Demons of Fire

Use the statistics of Angels for these. Angels may be Spirit Warriors, the equivalent of Sembraki or use Agimori with Heatshock and long, pointy spears. There are statistics for an Angelic Lord from White Dwarf that are quite good, he uses Heroic Casting of spells and has a permanent Damage Resistance and Spell Resistsance effect = POW.

Enemy Trolls

These will be of cults opposed to the HeroQuestor's cult. Quite often they will be trolls known to the HeroQuestor and the GM will already have stats for them. If not, use the troll Rune Levels from the Sazdorf Clan or even the trolls from the Lord of Terror or Dorastor Packs as they are quite high level.

Enemy HeroQuestors

Once again, these will be known to the HeroQuestors and the GM will have stats for them. These will be the HeroQuestors that the PCs have faced before but have not completely defeated. It may even include those HeroQuestors that the PCs have defeated but have come back in Death to attack them.

Darkness Minions

These include Hags, Hellions, Ghouls, Zombies, Mummies, Shades, Wraiths and Dehori.

All spirit based foes should be of sufficient POW or MPs to absolutely terrify the HeroQuestors. Wraiths in particular should be powerful enough that the PCs must pepper them with magic and missiles to avoid being toasted. Use Giant Mummies or Great Troll Mummies, especially reanimated Death Lords. Zombies should be really strong and mean. Dehori should be similar to the two examples. Hags should have Divine Magic to liberally cast at the HeroQuestors and the POW to easily overcome the HeroQuestors. Make these as tough as you can. After all, this is a dangerous HeroQuest.

Notes

1. Since I set this in GodTime, all skills were divided by 5. This meant that the more powerful HeroQuestors and foes are numbed slightly in combat. It also meant that any skills ticked gained 5D6% not 1D6%. If you don't want to set this in GodTime then feel free to use the full statistics. I would actually prefer to have this an Other Place not an Other Side Quest as in my new rules an Other Side Quest actually sets up a new Myth or HeroPath which is not what I originally intended.

2. These Boons can be pretty anything the Questor wants, within reason. I think that Derak had two bons and asked to increase his Darkness Ties (we were using the Runic Ties at the time) and to mate with Subere (he had a belief that the more goddesses he mated with the more powerful he would become). Basically, this can give the ability to sacrifice for extra Divine Magic, Heroic Casting of certain spells, the gaining of Darkness Powers (Animate Shadow, Hide in Darkness, Fear Shock, Command Shade, Resistance to Cold and so on).

3. Statistics? Yes, for this HeroQuest I have included the statistics I used when I ran the HeroQuest. This breaks my normal rules on statless HeroQuests so the HeroQuest may be used at all levels. However, this HeroQuest was a one-off intended to be run at a certain level. The stats are for a High Level HeroQuest where the HeroQuestor is at what some might call Super Rune Level, i.e. very high percentages and a good deal of magic, armour points and hit points.

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