So, with the summer holidays coming in close and people having real lives and so on, I try to get the group together for one last game before "summer break" if you will. It's for a 5E game. I'm looking for suggestions that would make it a bit more entertaining than "you're exploring a cave and oh no enemies!" and done. What would you all put into it?
A bit of background... The party is haunted / hounded by an undead creature that becomes stronger with every incarnation, because its soul flees everytime they slay it. It started out as a strong zombie or something, now it's a wight, and so on and so forth, until it eventually ends up as either a Mummy or a Lich or such.
To kill it definitely, the characters need a Silver Sword of Gith - that is, they need the sword and the ability to use it, as I think you must be psionic to use it (although I'm not sure anymore, any research into that is for during and after summer). Through searches here and there they have found out that the defining piece of information is to be found in the "shadow library", a library which is mostly underground in a desert setting (yes, based on ATLA, there, it's out). I'm looking for things to do inside that library that would make obtaining that last bit of information a bit challenging.
The party is level 8 and consists of (depending on how many players will come, of course):
- Warforged Echo Knight
- Half-Elf Cleric of War
- Halfling Monk Drunken Master
- Reborn (ex Vedalken) Wizard (necromancer)
- Dragonborn Sorcerer (EDIT: of draconic origin)
What would be really cool is putting them against Githyanki or Githzerai, but that would be too unbalanced. I do however plan on reskinning bandits and such, but I still need some more challenging monsters and it's the first time the party got to level 8 ever. Any suggestions?
Githyanki & Githzeri are planar creatures.
Books (in a not literal way) allow people to travel to different worlds, but maybe this library needs planar travel? Or, reading the "right" book opens whatever portal to something?
A Mind Flayer boss? (again, the Githyanki/Githzeri connection)
The ol' mirror universe enemy (Boss Fight: the exact duplicates of the Player Characters) might also be useful/appropriate here, especially if you want to have a Neutral arbiter as the guardian spirit/Spirit of Knowledge for the library. i.e. you have to defeat your ignorant selves to advance.
I vaguely remember a smug annoying owl from the Avatar TV show...