Adventure, Stronghold of the Ten Thousand Condemned

Location:

The Stronghold is located beneath the Citadel, occupying seven levels carved out of the onyx of the Seat of Powers. It is not an official prison, but more serves as more like a palace dungeon instead.

Walls and Doors:

How did the PCs get here?

Captured:

Many minions have the power to teleport people to this prison.

A typical scenario:

After being captured, the PCs will be taken below, to one of the levels of the Stronghold of the Ten Thousand Condemned, where they will be restrained, typically with their hands chained to the wall separately to await questioning.

If you look closely, you can see tiny writing on those links.

The words are 'unbreakable' in a different language on every link.

The silvery chain has considerable slack, and its links hold under far greater strain than its materials should have allowed. Whether it is truly unbreakable or simply far stronger than the PCs matter very little.

The silver links, twist and catch, slide up to your bicep before your full weight hits the chain. Blood sprays from your arm where the unforgiving chain bit deeply into his flesh.

It doesn’t matter. The chain, they are unbreakable. You are not. You crouch down, put your back to the pillar and lace your hands behind your head, and wait, unmoving. The length of the shimmering chain draped over your shoulder and chest, its links jangling together in time to the slow rise and fall of your chest.

If the specific capacity of the PCs are known, then they will be separated into different cell blocks.

Assume that the PCs have an hour to attempt any escape. Characters with the escape artist skill can try to pop out of their chains. Shape-shifters or contortionists may easily slip free of their bonds by changing forms. Getting out of their chains and their cell is only the first part. There is still a Paladin in specifically designed Crimson Guard Armor stationed at every intersection of the level of the Stronghold. Each one will have to be subdued or sidestepped for the prisoners to escape. They will also have to avoid or destroy the mainlined cameras as well. Attacking them outright won't be easy, since the heroes probably won't be very well armed (save for whatever items they were able to palm or otherwise conceal when they were first captured) and the guard will raise an alarm if combat goes for more than a full melee round. Any alarm or loud commotion will bring 1D6 more Paladins, and almost certainly result in the PCs' recapture. If the heroes manage to defeat the Paladins, the Juggernaut stationed on each level will activate. The Juggernaut should be treated like a walking tank and handles most problems violently and will leave prisoners shaken or battered whenever it does spring into action.

In the event that the player characters are not able to break free in the first hour they are left alone, or if they are recaptured,

Scenario 1: The first PC will be taken from their cell to a new room shaped like an amphitheater, with curved black walls, the hallway forming a well below. This was where the PCs are led one at a time and the two guards stand, waiting for some kind of audience. Three figures in white robes stand in attention.

Encounters:

01% One of the cells is empty and the chain manacle inside still holds a human arm. The PCs will need to stomp on the hand repeatedly until they can force the chain’s cuff over what remain. The remarkable chain is smeared with blood and shreds of flesh hang on many of its links, but it is still whole and intact.

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The Upper Levels:

Immediately you see that you are in a graveyard. Not just any cemetery, you realize, but a city of the dead, with white grave markers and marble stones stretching away on either side of you for seems like miles.

Your gaze flits about the intricately cut stones, the craftsmanship and variety of the carved names and dates gracing the smooth polished surfaces. You find yourself marveling at the greens and rosy reds and browns of the marble and the simple beauty of the dark granite. You become distracted by the symmetry of the even, aligned rows and at the variety and architectural elegance of the mausoleums, realizing that no two are alike. You become fascinated by the statuary, the cherubs and angels, which look as if they would spring into life at any moment.

Who had they been, all those people tossed out of the living world and now turning to dust under their massive monuments? What kind of people had they been, what had they accomplished in their lives? Had their lives been filled with the same joys and pains and triumphs and tragedies that others experienced? Had they been good or bad?

The Lower Levels:

The Labyrinth

The Temple of the Shadowed Mirror

Only a narrow spiraling staircase of labyrinthine coils, and whose steps are bone-white slabs mottled with symbols, and a railing made from linked sculpted hands, leads down to this ellipse-shaped room. This throne room at the bottom-most level of the Citadel resembles an insanely decorated temple with a huge central dome reaching up 300 feet upward, surrounded by a circle of flying buttresses. The dome is constructed of red-mottled stone of evident igneous origin and each flying buttress is adorned with a tiger’s head carving. Below the heads are a circle of round windows, ornately bordered with swirls and spirals, which look out to a bank of pinkish-orange clouds, though colors change in an instant and pastels give way to deep blues, purples, lavenders, and traces of a fast-fading burnt orange. Between the windows are pillars shaped into life-sized figures holding up braziers and possessing glowing eyes of sullen white and hellish red. The curving inwardly walls are made from a purple metal mottled with polished black onyx. The floor made of polished veined bloodstone. Flanking the columns to the left and right are a pair of giant pendulums, that hang from the ceiling and rise from the floor, swosh back-and-forth softly.

There is no altar just a black mirror tall as the gate of a fortress; pale shapes move with in its depths, stirring endlessly, like ghosts trapped forever in a dim world of two dimensions only.

50-foot tall oval mirror with a twelve-angled rim supported by two pairs of thin splayed limbs that might be the legs of monstrous insects. Or perhaps they resembled bones, because they and the frame are covered in leathery tatters of material unpleasantly reminiscent of human skin.

The black surface of the mirror boils and stirs with swift movements beneath its dark, rippling water-like surface, and undulating shadows can be glimpsed from time to time. Sometimes a black shape will lift itself above the rim of the mirror, then resubmerge faster than the eye can form a distinct image. Occasionally an extremity will poke out of the surface, to represent those trapped within.

A large burnished brass plaque before it reads: “I am the mouth of the Dungeon. Through me do you pass though the Nightmare Places. Through me do you enter the Wastelands. Through me do you traverse the Endless Sea. Through me do you explore the Wild Places. Through me do you fight on the last Field of Battle. Through me are you defiled in Tartarus. Through me are you cast into Pandemonium. Through me you wander though the City of Woe. Through me you die in the Cube Maze. I have authority by the God-King over the wicked. My fate is given to run you though the crucible the Great have devised, while they abide in their places and wager on your head.”

Should an intruder attempt to look too deeply into the mirror will cause a monstrous, scaly, demonic claw and arm to leap from the swirling surface (Horror Factor of 16), grasp the one who dared seek his reflection with a P.S of 30 and draw him into a random level of the Dungeon. The arm will grab the person in one melee, needing only a dodge of 17 or higher to avoid it, that is if the Horror Factor isn’t rolled against.