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Tomb of Nyarlathotep
Adventure Description: Summoned from across the multiverse a small
group of heroes must enter an ancient pyramid and prevent the Elder God
Nyarlathotep's return to power.
An HP Lovecraft themed 5th Ed. D&D adventure for characters level 1-2
Written By: Brian Seligman; with many thanks to HP Lovecraft and all
others that have contributed to The Cthulhu Mythos.
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 US)
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/
There is no wepay or paypal associated with this work. If you feel that it gave you value, then please buy
some organic fruit or other healthy food and give it to a homeless person near you.
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Please read and familiarize yourself with
the adventure completely before running
it using the Dungeons and Dragons 5 th
Edition rules from Wizards of the Coast.
Tomb of Nyarlathotep was written as a
stand-alone first to second level
adventure for the CthulhuCon Film
Festival in San Pedro 2015.
Italics are meant to be read aloud or
paraphrased.
DM Background:
Ancient Egypt, 1700 BC
The Shoggoth Glp’Glp’whoEE (make a
shallow gulp-gulp-rising whistle), who
became a follower of The Elder God
Nyarlathotep after the Shoggoth
rebellion against the Elder Things, was
diminished after Pharaoh Khasekhemre
Neferhotep I crushed the last attempt to
bring about Nyarlathotep’s return by
Nophru-Ka. Glp’Glp’whoEE wandered
the farthest reaches of the desert before
discovering an isolated shrine dedicated
to Isis and containing The Shining
Trapezohedron.
Craving the warm and chaotic touch of
its former master Glp’Glp’whoEE ate the
former inhabitants, touched the
primordial energies and summoned its
master.
Nyarlathotep seeks souls to feed The
Shining Trapezohedron in order to
regain his power and has cast small
statuettes designed to summon victims
to his lair through the mirror, hopingsome will end up in the hands of future
victims upon the Prime Material Plane.
The Egyptian Goddess Isis has
witnessed the events in her defiled
temple with horror but dares not raise an
open hand against Nyarlathotep.
Instead Isis has directed the statuettes
into the hands of our heroes, in the
hopes that they can banish Nyarlathotep
and stop him from creating a future of
horrifying fear and destruction
throughout the multiverse.
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Players’ Introduction:
As you eagerly await an adventure
worthy of you a courier from the local
messenger service arrives and presents
you with a package.
Opening the package at your leisure you
find a small statuette. Jade and flecked
with gold it seems to shift continuously,
defying your senses to identify what it
could be a representation of. Glowing
golden runes adorn the base, upon
examining them you feel a twist in your
gut; the scene dissolves away and you
find yourself standing on a low hill in a
vast desert. The only feature in view is a
gold capped alabaster pyramid
stretching 200 feet on a side, its smooth
white sides sloping up 120’ above you.
Two continuously shifting statues, as
large as a tall man, flank steps leading
up several stairs to an alcove in the
otherwise smooth and unbroken wall. A
platform above the stairs contains a 3
foot tall lever on the ground next to an
indentation in the stone.
DM’s Notes:
The pyramid has 4 sides, each 200’
long. Attempts to climb the sides require
a DC 30 Athletics check per 20 feet, the
stone is polished smooth as glass with
small bits of slippery sand occasionally
blowing across the surface.
Doors are controlled by levers to the
side of them. When a real lever is pulledit will make clacking sounds as gears
turn and the stone slab door will slide
away. The doors are a foot thick.
False doors have levers which do not
click and stone slabs that are immobile.
Secret doors push in and then to the
side when found.
1 Entry Hall:
With a clacking and deep rumble the
stone door slides open to reveal a
passageway going down into the
darkness.
Allow the party to create light sources if
needed then continue.
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Finely worked alabaster stairs lead
down a passage which has oddness to
it, as if none of the corners are quite
right angles. Bizarre mosaics on the
perfectly clean and dust free walls
depict some sort of a conflict between
large blobs and giant winged flowers as
well as a tall dark man with hidden
features lurking in the shadows.
2 Pit:
Any character actively looking with the
“Detect Traps” ability may make a DC
13 Arcana check to notice the magical
illusion covering the pit. If spotted the pit
is easily bypassed by a ledge on the
edge of the corridor.
If they do not notice, the lead
character(s) fall into a narrowing oil
walled pit. Close to the bottom a
smacking will be felt and a clacking
sound heard as the character’s feet are
trapped in a series of slanted blades.
Victims may be pulled out with 20’ of
rope and appropriate strength for their
weight, but the blades will slice at their
feet.
Victims with any sort of footwear will
take 1d6 damage and their footwear will
be destroyed.
Victims with no footwear will take 2d6
damage and suffer the effects of “Lose a
Foot” on the Lingering Injuries table,
Dungeon Master’s Guide (DMG) pg. 272
3 Central Chamber
The heavy door rumbles to the side,
revealing a circular chamber with a
domed roof and mosaics of Humans
being sacrificed by huge blobs on a
snowy landscape before a gibbering…
thing… that seems to be sucking
shadows of them into a series of
strangely shaped putrescent maws.
Two doors lead out to your Right and
Left but the way is blocked by a nest of
asps that slither towards you with a hiss.
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The four asps are “poisonous snakes”
per page 334 of the Monster Manual
The Secret Door to the North at one of
the maws can be spotted with a DC 12
perception check.
The false door to the East contains a
magical trap that can be detected with
the Detect Traps ability and a DC 14
Arcana check. A Dispel Magic or similar
spell will disarm the trap for 10 minutes.
If the lever is moved while the trap is
active all characters in the Central
Room must succeed at a DC 15
Wisdom check or be stricken by Short
Term Madness. Roll on the table found
in the DMG pg. 259.
The door to the West is a standard door.
4 Stairs to Tomb
As you delve deeper into the Earth two
long flights of stairs lead past twisted
mosaics of blobs fawning over a
featureless black Human man in an
Arctic scene with offerings of strange
beings that look like winged flowers
having their violet fluids spilled on the
white snow and frozen tundra as they
are torn apart and broken bits flung
before the dark man.
The false door at the end of the hall is
merely a distraction.
The secret door can be found with a DC
13 perception check.
5 Nyarlathotep’s Tomb
As you peer into this chamber you see it
is dominated by a stone sarcophagus in
the center of a richly furnished and
sandalwood scented room. You also
notice dozens of cats hissing at you.
The two Swarms of Cats will defend this
chamber to the death. Use the statistics
for Swarm of Rats on Monster Manual
pg. 339 but any character that is
scratched must succeed at a DC 12
Constitution save or come down with a
fever in 24 hours that gives them the
Incapacitated condition for 72 hours
following onset.
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Since the adventure is unlikely to last
that long it is suggested that the DM just
grin evilly and/or snicker while noting the
affected victims’ names.
The small 2’ diameter “cat tunnel” leads
to area 8.
The furnishings include 2 teak tables
worth 15 gp each, 4 jade cat statues
worth 5 gp each and a silken ‘bedroll’
with a feather pillow worth 20gp.
6 Stairs to Intersection
The mosaics on the walls as you ascend
up the stuffy stairwell depict scenes of
ever shifting entropy, confusing and
sickening to your mortal being.
7 Intersection
Four twenty foot deep passages lead
from a four way intersection to four
doors, including the one you entered by.
The mosaics on the walls show four
civilizations being destroyed and sinking
beneath the oceans. Two are of
advanced frozen cities inhabited by
strange tentacled creatures falling into
the waves, below one a titanic form of a
winged humanoid with tentacles coming
from its sleeping face. The other two
corridors are filled with jungle
landscapes sinking and what appear to
be flying ships manned by beautiful but
terrified Humans fleeing from once
towering but now crumbling cities oncontinents sinking into the oceans.
8 Litterbox
The door rumbles open to reveal a
trapezoidal room with and oily floor and
3 doors leading out from each wall. An
overpowering scent of cat droppings
emanates into your nostrils.
The floor of The Litterbox is covered by
a Grey Ooze, Monster Manual pg. 243.
Nyarlathotep and Glp’Glp’whoEE do not
need to defecate, but the cats do. The
Grey Ooze is here so nobody else has
to clean up after them. It will attack
anyone that enters the room.
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Once the Ooze is defeated the
characters may examine the 2’ tunnel
leading from a grated platform in the
corner to the Tomb in area 5 or examine
and try the false doors at will. There are
no mosaics in here; the ooze ate them
for the small metal content in the tiles.
9 Log Trap
A DC 14 Detect Traps – Perception
check will reveal this door is a spring
loaded trap.
If the lever is pulled:
Instead of rumbling to the side the door
falls into the floor and releases a spring
loaded log!
The log is +2 to hit anyone in the
corridor between locations 9 and 10; if it
hits the log will do 1d10 to each target.
10 Stairs to Foyer
As you climb the stairs leading higher
into the pyramid the mosaics show a
bulbous translucent blob murdering the
inhabitants of a temple devoted to a
brown skinned female Human of
extreme beauty. The priests, mostly
female, seem to have been dissolved by
the blob’s shifting form as it carried out
its slaughter.
11 Foyer
The walls of this room glisten and shine.
Mosaics show a group of adventuring
heroes with unfinished features but
resembling YOU incapacitated on slabs
of stone while shadowy copies of
yourselves feed the gibbering beast you
saw pictured in the domed chamber
below.
A shimmering bronze pillar stretches
from floor to ceiling in the far Right
corner of the room.
The Shoggoth Glp’Glp’whoEE has
surrounded the pillar and will attack
anyone that comes close by engulfing
them.
Use the statistics for the Gelatinous
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Cube on page 242 of the Monster
Manual. Glp’Glp’whoEE is not confined
to a cubic shape, it may take any form
as a bonus action but may not change
size and changes do not affect its
statistics including its hit points, which
remain the same in all forms including
damage taken.
The Secret Door can be discovered with
a DC 14 perception check. When it is
slid aside a hollow passage and a
ladder leading to the trap door at area
12 will be revealed.
12 Nyarlathotep’s Chapel
Raising the lid of the shaft a swirling
chartreuse and puce light fills the air.
Reflecting off the golden interior walls of
the capstone, the sickly light reveals a
featureless dark man wearing an ornate
golden silk loincloth and a golden
headdress hanging down the sides of
his head, where a face ought to be but
isn’t.
The swirling light is emanating from a
Shining Trapezohedron backlighting the
dark man with its diseased and
nauseating swirls of color as it spins on
end.
A voice in your head says “Ah, my
sacrifices have arrived”.
Nyarlathotep has recently arrived back
on this plane. He is weakened but still a
god and can not be beaten by force of
arms. The key to his banishment is the
destruction of The Shining
Trapezohedron.
When the first character enters the room
Nyarlathotep will use his Dominate
Person ability to turn them on their
fellows. It is the most fun for him to
watch them knock each other out
chaotically; then he can feed The
Shining Trapezohedron their souls in
peace at his leisure with the proper
rituals.
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Nyarlathotep
AC: 15
Hit Points: Infinite while The Shining
Trapezohedron remains, see below
Speed: 40
STR: 20 DEX: 20 CON: 20 INT: 20 WIS: 20 CHR: 20
Telepathy
Dominate Person: As an action
Nyarlathotep may Dominate Person, as
the spell, except he does not need to
concentrate and so may have more than
one person dominated at a time.
Wisdom DC 14
Trapezohedral Healing: At the beginning
of his turn a puce and chartreuse beam
of light will pass from The Shining
Trapezohedron into Nyarlathotep
healing all his wounds. It is very
important to describe this clearly so the
characters can make the connection.
If Nyarlathotep takes more than 40 hp in
one round then he will be forced from
his Dark Man form into a shapeless blob
with pseudopods and sickly maws for
the remainder of the encounter. Nothing
else changes.
The Shining Trapezohedron
The key to stopping Nyarlathotep, the
Trapezohedron is the link between him
and the primordial chaos where his main
power currently resides.
As a large enchanted crystal object The
Shining Trapezohedron has:
AC: 13
Hit Points: 30
If the Shining Trapezohedron is broken
read or paraphrase the following:
As The Shining Trapezohedron shatters
a blast of puce and chartreuse light
bursts out and then implodes, pulling
Nyarlathotep, his raiment and the
remains of The Shining Trapezohedron
through itself into the entropic realms of
primordial chaos.
As the sickly glow fades, a golden light
emanates from the capstone of the
pyramid filling the chamber. A beautiful
tan skinned woman appears before you
wearing a golden circlet and a slinky
gown of translucent silk.
Looking kindly upon you she says in a
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captivating voice that echoes around the
chamber “I am Isis. You have my
gratitude for cleansing my temple and
ending the threat of Nyarlathotep. His
plan called for sacrifices to release his
fellow Old Ones upon the multiverse. I
redirected his invitations to you in the
hope that he would not consider young
mortals a real threat. You have done as
well as I had hoped.If you wish to return home simply tap the
statuettes that brought you here three
times. You shall carry my blessing from
this day forward.” Isis then smiles at you
and fades back into golden light before
vanishing. The statues you carry have
stopped shifting and now look like each
of you, the shifting runes at the bottom
now read “[PC name], Isis thanks you”.
Isis’ Blessing is a “Blessing of Magic
Resistance”, see DMG pg 228
The statuettes will return the characters
home from Isis’ Temple as advertised
but will not function in that way again,
though they will remain as described
otherwise.
If the characters examine the pyramid
after Isis’ return they will find the
mosaics have transformed to show
mighty wizards and priests performing
miraculous feats of magic.
If the characters try to tear apart the
gold capstone they will first feel guilty,
as a warning. If they persist in damaging
it the heretic(s) involved will suffer Isis’
wrath and be struck dead, no save, no
resurrection possible. The treasure from
area 5 is theirs to keep.
If the characters kill each other while
Dominated read or paraphrase the
following:
After the failure of the heroes sent by
Isis to cleanse her temple Nyarlathotep
fed their tortured souls to The Shining
Trapezohedron and summoned his
fellow Great Old Ones, unleashing Eons
of terror and chaos upon the multiverse.
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