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Dying Words is a brief encounter, or mini-adventure, that gamemasters can use in the middle of another adventure, or as break from their normal campaign. Dying Words confronts the characters with a new form of Horror, called Deceivers. These Horrors appear in Parlainth: The Forgotten City®, published by FASA Corporation. This encounter is presented in the same manner as are encounters in the Earthdawn® adventures Mists of Betrayal® and Terror in the Skies®, published by FASA Corporation.

Overview

The characters come across a ruined village, fires still smoldering after a raid by parties unknown. If they rush to help the last few anguished survivors, they discover that they've fallen prey to a trick by Deceivers, a vicious type of minor Horror.

Setting the Stage

Then you can hear the words in the wail; again and again, the distraught villager is repeating the word "Help!" in the dwarf tongue.

Themes and Images

Behind the Scenes

Few people know what deceivers really look like, for they almost always appear cloaked in illusion. Even in death they assume a false form. According to a few reports from powerful illusionists who have beheld deceivers with True Sight, they appear humanoid in shape, no more than four feet tall, covered from head to toe in gray, lumpy skin that resembles writhing brain matter. These illusionists saw no sensory organs or other visible features.

Deceivers usually roam in packs of 6 to 8. They delight in using trickery to lure victims to their destruction, either physical or mental. Deceivers use their Empathy Net power (see below) to mentally scan an unsuspecting victim from a distance and determine his or her most noble instincts. Then the deceivers use the Thought Mirror power (see below) to create a large-scale illusion meant to appeal to those instincts. Finally, they use their False Form power (see below) to fit themselves seamlessly into the illusion. When the victim comes to investigate, the deceivers reveal themselves and attack. This element of surprise makes for an effective ambush, but the deceivers seem to enjoy the victim's feelings of shock and betrayal as much as any physical damage they might inflict. Deceivers get their thrills from punishing those who act unselfishly. Given a choice, they prefer to leave their victims barely alive rather than killing them, most likely in hopes that the victim will refuse the next opportunity to act heroically once he or she recovers. Deceivers revel in the knowledge of having stained a shining soul with fear and self-doubt.

In combat, deceivers combine their Empathy Net and False Form powers to identify and mimic the appearance of their opponent's loved ones. This nasty trick unsettles the opponent by forcing him or her to hack away at those he or she cares for most in the world. If its opponent succeeds in killing a deceiver, the Horror plays one final trick: it shapeshifts into a precise copy of its slayer as a child between the ages of six and ten. More than one hero has been attacked in the act of disposing of a deceiver corpse by righteous assailants who believe they have caught a child-murderer.

Of all the Horrors, deceivers are among the easiest to kill despite the ferocity with which they defend themselves. They rarely flee from fights, and many scholars believe that they care more about inflicting mental trauma on others than for their own survival. To a deceiver, death at the hands of a Name-giver simply affords the Horror another opportunity to cause its killer harm.

Deceiver Powers

False Form:
The False Form power allows the deceiver to mimic anything it sees in an Empathy Net scan. This power works in three ways, depending on which of the victim's thoughts the deceiver is using to inspire the false form. The deceiver can, for example, become part of a complex illusion created by its Thought Mirror power (see below). As part of the thought mirror, the deceiver's false form shares the thought mirror's Sensing Difficulty (40) and Disbelief Difficulty (26).

The deceiver can also assume the form of an opponent's loved one by making a False Form Test against the victim's Spell Defense. If the test is successful, the victim suffers a reduction of 2 steps to all actions for a number of rounds equal to the difference between the test result and the victim's Spell Defense. When the effect wears off, the deceiver can attempt to adopt the form of yet another loved one. Because the deceiver changes its shape while its opponent watches, the victim knows he or she is fighting an illusion. In this case, however, disbelief does not negate the 2-step reduction. Even though a victim knows he is not really chopping up his mother, he still finds the act emotionally difficult to perform.

If mortally wounded in combat, the deceiver makes a final False Form Test against its killer's Spell Defense. On a successful result, the deceiver transforms into a replica of its opponent as a child. Oddly enough, this change is not an illusion. The deceiver actually becomes a dead child of the relevant Name-giver race, matching its opponent at that age down to the last freckle.

Thought Mirror:
The Thought Mirror power allows the deceiver to use images gleaned from an Empathy Net scan (see above) to create a complex illusion that appeals to the victim's sense of heroism. Examples include a mother and baby trapped in a burning building, a drowning child being swept down a river, or a kitten being stalked by a rabid dog. The illusion covers 5 square yards for every 1 of the deceiver's Spellcasting steps. The Step Number for most thought mirrors is 20, giving the illusion a Sensing Difficulty of 40 and Disbelief Difficulty of 26.

Approaching the Village

If they pay careful attention to the slain, the party members might note that something is slightly awry here. For one thing, the dead include windlings, t'skrang, trolls, and obsidimen, who aren't typically found in these mixed farming communities. Secondly, the corpses show a surprising range of injury - some have clearly been killed with conventional melee or missile weapons, while others show the marks of having been mangled by vicious animals and creatures. Others have literally been torn apart in a most gruesome fashion, with no way of telling how they were killed.

These inconsistencies are the result of the Deceivers having pulled these images from the minds of the player characters - since the party is used to dealing with all of the races back in the civilized areas, the Deceivers have included them all amongst the dead. They've also taken various images of death from different adventures and experiences, which explains why the illusionary corpses seem to have been killed in so many different ways.

As the heroes come closer to the village, they see someone is still moving - an ork woman lying outside a hut at the village's south end. She's making the wailing noises they heard earlier. She lies on her back, pierced by several arrows. This is actually a Deceiver in False Form (see above), as are all of the "villagers" still "left alive."

If they approach the woman, she chokes as a trickle of blood runs from the side of her mouth, and then speaks: "Please, please, in Garlen's name, please be here to help us. Don't be more of them here to finish us off."

Assuming the adventurers make reassuring noises to her, she responds: "Oh! My prayers are answered! You've come to save us! You are sent by Garlen, you are - " Here she pauses to dramatically gasp for air. "You are heroes."

If the adventurers roll the "ork woman" over onto her back, the Deceiver makes a great show of crying out in pain as they move her. If asked who the "us" she's talking about is, the other three Deceivers, on cue, begin to stir and cry out. Two lie outside of huts, the other one in the midst of the corral. According to the illusion, the corral fencing is blazing away. Some illusionary slaughtered horses lie inside the fencing; one of them is lying on top of the Deceiver, whose False Form is that of a female obsidiman. The Deceiver to the west looks like a male troll; the one to the north is a male windling. The obsidiman lies several feet from her left arm, which seems slightly melted. The troll lies face up in a puddle of blood, his chest torn open by some unknown force. The windling is bleeding profusely from the head, as if bludgeoned repeatedly.

Should the adventurers offer them any healing aids, the Deceivers will be only too grateful to gulp them down, laughing inside at how completely they've fooled these pathetic Name-givers. They want to keep the adventurers fooled for as long as possible; the more completely they trust them, the more twisted pleasure the Deceivers get.

If anyone asks any of the "wounded" the name of their settlement, each gives the same answer, a small nearby village. This village should one of the gamemaster's choosing, preferably one known to the characters.

The Deceivers are waiting for the adventurers to figure out that something fishy is going on, at which time they'll commence their attack. It's possible, though, that the adventurers won't suspect the "dying villagers" even after hearing the four different accounts of the raid - they may chalk this up to some kind of magical mind-clouding on the part of the nonexistent raiders, or simply believe the first one they hear without asking for the others. If the adventurers don't seem like they're going to figure things out, the Deceivers get bored and start the fight.

Each of the Deceivers has a Cadaver Man stashed nearby, hiding in a hut, and orders it to attack when the combat begins. Another way the fight might break out is if the adventurers search the huts for some reason and come across the animated corpses. If there are four or fewer characters, the Deceivers withdraw, watching the fights with glee. If there are more party members to take care of, the Deceivers nearest to unengaged player characters take them on. Unoccupied Deceivers would still rather watch than dive right into the fight.

In case it matters, the Deceivers found these corpses in this abandoned village when they first came across it a couple of days ago. They were the remains of lost travelers who died of heatstroke just before the Deceivers came on the scene.
 

Cadaver Men (4)
DEX: 4 STR: 6 TOU: 7 PER: 3 WIL: 6 CHA: 4
Initiative: 5	Physical Defense: 5
Number of Attacks: 1 (4)	Spell Defense: 6
Attack: 7	Social Defense: 11
Damage: 9	Armor: 0
Number of Spells: N/A	Mystic Armor: 0
Spellcasting: N/A	Knockdown: 9
Effect: N/A	Recovery Tests: 2
Death Rating: 36	Combat Movement: 25
Wound Threshold: 9	Full Movement: 50
Unconsciousness Rating: 30	Legend Points: 110
Equipment: None
Loot: None

Cadaver Men go into a rage if wounded, getting four attacks per round until the character who wounded them is dead or 10 rounds have passed, whichever comes first. These particular Cadaver Men have been driven so insane by constant proximity to Horrors that they're incapable of social interaction of any kind - they're just mindless automatons of destruction.

When Cadaver Men go down, unengaged Deceivers replace them, activating the False Form power so as to appear as various loved ones of the adventurers. The Deceivers prefer to stay out of hand-to-hand range and fling Crushing Will and Mind Dagger spells for as long as possible before closing. They're not well-equipped to take damage, so they'll use Cursed Luck on opponents trying to hit them and Damage Shift when they do get hit.

When party members fall unconscious, the Deceivers stop attacking them, or command their Cadaver Men to stop. They want the party members to live to rue the day they stopped to aid some helpless people in trouble - and to report their experiences to others, spreading mistrust throughout the countryside. If a Deceiver knocks a combatant out, it steps back to enjoy the spectacle unless there's another unengaged opponent to fight.

These particular Deceivers have more of an instinct for self-preservation than most; if any of them take 25 or more points of accumulated damage, they run away, on foot. When one Deceiver flees, the rest follow. This counts as a defeat, entitling the group to Legend Points for the Deceivers. Still, the party may wish to pursue them to rid the countryside of this menace.

When the Deceivers die (turning into child replicas of the characters who strike the final blows) or leave the immediate area, the air shimmers and the scene changes. The corpses vanish - except for the Cadaver Men - and the fires and smoke disappear with them. The huts turn out to be old and crumbled - the village has obviously been abandoned for years, and the characters are able to discover moldering documents in one of the huts that identify the place as Verybright. They find a diary entry that explains that Verybright was abandoned when its well ran dry.

If captured, the Deceivers refuse to talk - being taken prisoner is an indignity they won't tolerate, and they'll use all of their magic and persuasive abilities to attempt an escape. It is unlikely that seasoned adventurers will let them live anyway.

Troubleshooting