Started with some cardboard cut to a 5" by 5" square and drew the outline on.


Then I used some milliput to make the edges of the pit and cover over the edges of the cardboard. Not 100% happy with the flagstone effect, it's a bit crude, but doing a better job is waaay too much effort for me!


I took some chaos spawn tentacles I had left over and stuck them in there. I wanted to give the effect that the pit was alive, like you get in some of the old black and white illustrations of the Warp. I also stuck an eyeball from that set in.


You can also see I slathered it in hot glue to give a sort of texture to it, and then to increase the disturbing organic nature I used the trick of putting some PVA on in blobs and then dribbling super glue onto it. The super glue reacts with the PVA to make a nice texture that looks quite weird and organic. I left it to set overnight.


Primed black, you can also see some pillars I picked up to go with the pit in the background.


Basecoated the flagstones - I think brown keeps the dirty stone look I want


Then basecoated the inside of the pit. I decided on purple - thought about adding green to it as well but thought it would be more visually clear if it was just purple. I've always imagined chaos energy as being purple in any case!


Warlock purple, genestealer purple and pink horror highlights, and eshin grey and dawnstone on the flagstones


Then I inked everything - earthshade for the floor, and violet for the pit.


I decided the green was a good idea after all, and painted the underside of the tentacles green (a nod to Day of the Tentacle) and picked out the eye in red-orange to make it look similar to the beholder's eye.

1. Gated to Pandemonium
2. Gated to the Plane of Fire
3. Gated to the Plane of Shadow
4. Alignment changed to Chaotic
5. Contract Leprosy
6. Contract Flesh-Eating Disease
7. Character mutates into a mongrelman
8. Character mutates into a mongrelman
9. Character mutates into a mongrelman
10. Contracts Lycanthropy
11. Portable Hole*
12. Contracts Vampirism
13. Javelin of Lightning*
14. Gauntlets of Ogre Power*
15. Gains a permanent madness (write a new flaw on character sheet)
16. Berserker Greatsword*
17. Possessed by a demon (does not tell others)
18. Grateful NPC pulled from pit
19. Periapt of Proof Against Mummy Rot**
20. Gain one level of experience

Here is the Marching Order for the huge party of PCs and Allies that the players brought with them. I think there are 22 people in the party. This is pretty old school. We did two marching orders - one for 10 foot wide corridors and another for 20 foot wide corridors. And we wrote down all the things involved on one of the battle mats to keep track of hp and initiative:








The picture there is of the final approach, when the corridor was 20 wide. A quick explanation of who's who in case anyone cares, spoler'd incase you don't (inception spoilers go!)
Left to right:
Vola, Half Orc Paladin of Vengeance, the main PC bruiser. She's got a really powerful axe she stole from a minotaur.
Trunk, shambling mound. The group has befriended this Shambling Mound by using Speak with Plants and feeding it. It's dumb and unpredictable, but they put it up front to hopefully tank some hits.
Loop Mottin, Gnome Frenzied Berserker, the main PC tank. She's wielding an earth elemental infused hammer.
Grimson, Dwarf from the Adventuring Company the Fearsome Fivesome. the group hired them to help with this mission. Grimson is a Level 2 fighter.
[Marek], - this blank space was Marek. However, he got petrified by the beholder on the approach to the final corridor.
Jamorel, a Manticore that the group found turned to stone. He was the Loremaster of Nergal, and the group broke the curse on him and he is now repaying the debt. He has Manticore stats and some cleric spells.
Vadania, Druid of the Circle of the Moon, the main PC spellcaster, carrying the Font of Law which is needed to close the Pit of Chaos.
Helmond of Greyfallow, Priest of Saint Ygg, a member of the Fearsome Fivesome, Cleric 2.
Kalli, a mercenary who was working for the Cult of Orcus, that the players hired after she surrendered. Monk 5.
Viking - this blank space was a viking who got hit by a fear ray on the approach and fled.
Olaf (behind Jamorel's wing) - this is the leader of a gang of Skandic vikings who were recruited with promises of treasure and glory by the party rogue. All vikings are Bandits.
Tai, the wolf of the party beastmaster.
Darmon, the Ranger Beastmaster, the PC's main ranged support.
Viking Valderman - the weather mage of the skandics
Findalu, Elf wizard, leader of the Fearsome Fivesome, Wizard 3.
4x Vikings - cannon fodder, I think 1 had been zapped already by now.
2 Golems - Clay Golems. The party rogue is obsessed with looting control rods of Golems. I use them as an expendable resource - they have a set number of HP and cannot be healed or repaired. Which means eventually they will be destroyed.
Riding the golem, Euphemia, Halfling Arcane Trickster, the party rogue. Also riding a golem is Dasdra, the rogue of the Fearsome Fivesome.
Back row - Draíocht, druid of the circle of the elements, an NPC the players rescued from the Barrowmaze.

The group had navigated through the maze to the area where they believed the Pit of Chaos was, and as they got closer, they began to see it's effects. The walls became slimy and felt organic to the touch. The gaps between the stones swarmed with roaches or writhing maggots, and baleful red eyes began to open in the wall and fire eyebeams and the group, hitting random people each time. Trunk took a disintegrate ray and kept on going, although missing a chunk of his mass. A viking got disintegrated, another petrified, and a dwarven NPC adventurer also got petrified. Another viking fled in fear.

Finally, they got to the last stretch of corridor before the pit. Perspective warped and a feeling of vertigo engulfed the party as if they stood looking down a precipice rather than in a corridor. The Paladin removed an Iron Flask from her belt, inside it was an Efreeti who had betrayed the Sultan of the City of Brass. Compelled by the Flask's magic, the Efreet was forced to assault the pit alone and opened the doors.


What confronted the players drew gasps - they had expected to face only a beholder, but instead, a horde of undead and chaotic creatures stood against them.


An accounting of the foes:
[spoiler]
Front left: a horde of 10 zombies
benind them: 5 ghouls and a Ghast
To the left of the Ghouls: an Otyugh
Centre: the Beholder
To it's right: 5 Wights
In front of the Wights: 4 Sangron demons (a homebrew Bloodletter for Dungeons and Dragons)
Right of the demons: a horde of 10 skeletons
Behind them: an undead troll spellcaster (can cast fireballs)
and at the rear of the horde: The Pit of Chaos, the cause of the animation of the undead in the barrows, which also spews forth chaotic creatures.

The battle started with the Efreet charging into the battle and summoning a Fire Elemental to attack the Beholder.




However the attack was shortlived. On the beholder's turn, I rolled his two most powerful rays, and between disintegration and death, the Efreet was obliterated. (The Beholder got to fire 3 rays on his turn, randomly rolled, 1 at initiative count 20 at a random target, and also could fire three in between other turns as a legendary action. That's 7 per turn! I cannot remember every single eye ray that was fired, but many were charm, sleep or petrification rays. I will point out when something devastating like a disintegrate or death ray hits, and if one of the lesser rays did something dramatic)

The party all delayed to advance together in formation, apart from Darmon who fell back to allow him to snap off some shots with arrows at the Beholder. After they had advanced, the horde of mindless skeletons and zombies came pouring out of the defiled temple of Nergal and swarmed down the corridor. Racing through the horde and slamming them aside in their eagerness to engage with the heroes were the bloodthirsty sangron demons.


(I noticed while writing this that one player often had his hand in shot when I was trying to take photos He's very tactical and was very excited in this battle, so please forgive!)






The tanks and trunk engaged the horde as they hit, but behind them, the spellcasters looked at the tightly packed shamblers with greedy eyes. Vadania, the Druid, unleashed a blistering wall of Fire across the corridor, blocking the beholder's vision at the same time as she roasted the mindless undead. The Rogue Euphemia spent some of her precious magic items as she raced forward and threw a bead from her necklace of fireballs at the undead, dramatically thinning their numbers. The horde was finished off by a lightning bolt unleashed by the Bow of Winds carried by the party Ranger. Meanwhile, Vola and Loop Mottin went blade to blade with the demons.



The Beholder fired a disintegrate ray at Euphemia, and she managed to dodge it, luckily as she has Evasion! I think it also hit the monk on the far side of the Wall of Fire with a death ray and badly hurt her, and zapped I think the Paladin with a mind control ray, which she resisted.

It starts to get hectic here in turn 3 and 4. I'm sure I will miss some bits here.


At the start, the chaff have been cleared but the heavy hitters remain.
Early in the turn, the tiny owl riding Vadania's shoulder flew forward and shifted into a Giant Owl. This is her Druidic mentor, a hermit like elf who remains almost permanently in his Owl form. The group had earned his favour by freeing some trapped fey earlier in the campaign.

Owl first stood shielding the group from attack before engaging the ghouls and summoning bears to attack the Beholder. Jamorel, the manticore loremaster of Nergal cast a buff spell (Beacon of Hope) to keep the party up.




The group kept pressing forward, the Ranger keeping a hail of arrows landing on the beholder while others dispelled mind control, threw fireballs or slew demons in melee. The more powerful monsters such as the otyugh and undead spellcaster moved forward - the spellcaster hit the heroes with a fireball, causing them to freak out. (I kept rolling mind control rays for the beholder, and since they had been careful to cast Protection from Evil on themselves before entering the area, they were immune to these rays, so I had to target less important people like the VIking mage and the low level fighters once the Beholder realized this. They did do damage - the viking mage killed the leader of the vikings before being cut down himself). The Pit of Chaos vomited forth another shambling mound to attack the party (I had to use a Zombie Dragon mini to represent it).

By Turn 4 it's looking rough for the villains, but things were about the change:


The Otyguth moved forward and hit the fighters with it's tentacles, downing Kalli, the mercenary. The Spellcasting undead fired a fireball at the back of the party, killing nearly all the weaker characters and leaving only the PCs and a couple of their more powerful allies standing. The rogue ran forward and threw another bead from her necklace - she had 1 left. Owl continued to hold off the undead on the right flank, while the Wights engaged the Bears around their master. The fighters wounded the Otyguth, but it looked like it could keep fighting. Jamorel moved forward and used Banishment on it, sending it back to the Plane of Madness. In response, the Beholder disintegrated him (the group were quite upset about this, because he was their earliest powerful ally and had helped them retrieve the Font of Law, a powerful magical artefact.



The Beholder picked up the Halfling Rogue with his telekinesis ray and dangled her over the Pit of Chaos (I was so excited to finally roll that one!) She struggled in the air and used Floating Disk to hopefully protect herself from falling in.

Turn 5
The heroes are looking pretty ragged, having been hit by multiple eyebeams and fireballs. The Druid has had to shapeshift into her Winter Wolf form to regain hitpoints. The rogue is dangling over the pit of chaos. The Paladin and Berserker are beaten and battered by magic having held the front line against demons and chaos beasts and undead. The Beholder moved forward to finish them off...
(Actually I think he'd moved last turn to get range for his telekinesis attack)
He zapped the dangling rogue again with his disintegrate ray, and for a second it looked like she was doomed as she failed her save...but the Druid cried out and used the ability of her magical spear (the Spear Predestined) she can secretly roll a dice at the start of each day and keep the score. She can then substitute that score for any one dice roll, much like the divination wizard ability.) She swapped the 4 for a 9, exactly beating the DC and saving her friend.



The Golems rushed forward to aid their mistress, and the fighters engaged the spellcasting undead. Vola traded blows with it while Darmon the Archer kept up a hail of lightning empowered arrows. Rogue caught herself before she fell into the pit, and unleashed her last fireball on the beholder and his minions, unfortunately frying the bears at the same time. The beholder was looking badly wounded now, several eyestalks hanging limp. The Frenzied Berserker ran up the corpses in front of the beholder and succeeded on an athletics check to leap into the air and hammer it with her hammer. Under three elementally empowered blows, the Beholder ruptured and fell to the ground with a loud splat. The players cheered. However, the Pit began to write and spewed another monster, a Mummy, into the chamber, and they knew it was not yet over.


The Golems picked up the Winter Wolf Druid bodily and raced forward with her, as the Paladin chopped the huge undead mage to pieces. The rest of the group finished off the remaining undead as Vadania morphed back into her half-elven form and threw the stone font of law into the writhing pit of chaos. The resulting explosion floored everyone in the room, and wounded vadania nearly to the point of death, but as it cleared the writing organic matter of the Pit hardened into a swirl of gold, platinum and other precious metals, a plug over whatever realm of madness it was linked to.


A pretty huge battle. I was sad I didn't kill any PCs, but pretty much all of their NPC allies died, and they invested a lot of resources in getting these allies by doing quests and helping people, so it seemed like a fair trade. The group is pretty shell shocked by how brutal it was - they are mostly new to the game and this was the most difficult battle they'd ever had. I'm pretty happy with it, though I do wish I'd done a few things differently - always the way with really large complex battles, it's easy to forget something in the moment, especially with players bombarding you with rules questions and arguing.