More on the Demi-Lich Story

In my last post, I told the story of how Dwayne of Gamer Closet,  and Tim of Gothridge Manor literally bagged the Demi-Lich in the Tomb of Horror. To recap they manage to get into the final treasure room and saw the Demi-Lich skull, Dwayne emptied his bag of holding and the two crept into the room without disturbing anything. Dwayne then turned the bag upside down and held above the Demi-Lich, Tim then proceed to pick up some of the treasure. The Demi-Lich rose into the air right into the bag! At which Dwayne closed and tied it shut.

Dwayne was playing Lord Divolic a Lawful Evil Myrmidon of Set, pretty much an evil paladin. Tim was playing Count Travlin a Neutral Evil fighter. Among their many schemes was sponsoring slaving raids. 

Where it interesting is that I was running another group at college and they messed with one of Divolic's slaving operations.  With a Demi-Lich in the Bag of Holding, Divolic had his means of revenge. So he sent it to the characters of the college group. When they got they identified as a Bag of Holding, a particularly valuable magic item. They were mystified as to who sent it, the messenger didn't know either as Dwayne sent it anonymously.

Where it gets funny was one of the players said,

I bet there is a Demi-Lich in there. 

Now understand that at this time there was absolutely no connection between the two groups aside from me. And I played everything close to the vest as I prided myself on being a fair referee. I nearly let the cat out of the bag on hearing this.  However I remained calm and kept my poker face. The remark was laughed at and then the party moved on to checking out the bag. The paladin strongly felt it was too good to be true and while they were not aware of Divolic in particular they had made several powerful enemies including various run ins with the Red Box Bargle*. So the Paladin did a Detect Evil on the bag. Which showed him that there was a powerful evil entity associated with the bag.** Sadden and not willing to take the chance, the party then had the Bag dispelled.

Next year, Dwayne came to my college and joined the group. When he heard about the Bag of Holding everybody laughed and had a good time telling the entire story. The guy who uttered "I bet there is a Demi-Lich in there" laughed the hardest.


*I used the dungeon in the Red Box to start off the college campaign which of course have Bargle in it. Bargle manage to escape the party then two adventure later made a reappearance and escape again. The party's conflict with Bargle soon became an epic struggle in of itself. Including personal attacks on individual characters of the party. Bargle demise was the first major accomplishment of the campaign.

**I ruled that the bag is connected to the outer world through the bag opening even when closed. Thus detection spells including Detect Evil would work. Note the Demi-Lich doesn't have any physical or magical abilities that would allow to escape from the bag. And the Tomb of Horrors gave specific conditions on when it was activated which allow the opportunity to use the bag in the first place.