Just wanted to drop a line about something that happened recently in the group I run.
The party had traveled to the Valley of the Damned on an island outside the Empire. This was where savages take there corrupt dead, thieves and murderers and traitors. But the dead there don’t stay dead. A devil was hiding in the island that was raising the dead to gather an army for whatever reason devils do such evil things.
In their adventures there, the party, a cleric, shapeshifter and dwarf, met a cursed tinker gnome and an enslaved ogre magi. They tricked the ogre magic into giving them a weapon that could slay the devil and the gnome gave them a whatsit flower that would wearing the devil’s hold on the undead.
Through bravery and luck, the party slew the devil only for the ogre magi, now freed from the devil’s control, to take up the devil’s scepter to command the undead on his own—until the party slew him too and took the scepter for themselves.
The cleric took up the scepter, the power of an army of thousands of undead at his fingertips. And what did he did this this power, you ask? Why, he commanded the horde of undead to turn on each other and slay their brethren. And the mindless dead did just that.
After what seemed like hours of senseless and gory slaughter, undead after undead fell at the hands of their former allies, until one last, broken zombie stood alone atop a pile of the again-dead, looking up at his new master as if for approval for this great deed. And what was the reward for this champion of the undead?
The cleric cast Fury of the Lords of Life and Death and turned the champion to a pillar of salt.