Bess Carita (4e Creature)

Bess Carita is the goddess of trickery and seduction. As an evil deity that exploits her worshippers and consumes their souls, a party of powerful adventurers may deign to kill her. This is truly an epic task, requiring a method to ascend to the Endless Night, exploring her palace filled with deadly tricks and enticing diversions, then finding the true throne room among many fakes.

Bess Carita is immense, some 80 squares long, and her body regenerates instantly from any wound. The encounter presented below occurs at her mouth, the only known vulnerable point. A Religion DC 42 check is required to know that the only way to truly hurt her is to enter her maw, locate her heart, and transmit to it a disease. She immediately suffers the final state of the disease.

Bess Carita

Bess Carita Level 30 Solo Controller Gargantuan Immortal Magical Beast XP 95,000 HP 1076; Bloodied 538 Initiative +19 AC 44; Fortitude 42, Reflex 38, Will 44 Perception +28 Speed 0 Low-light vision, Blindsight 20 Immune prone, slowed, forced movement Resist Psychic 20 Saving Throws +5; Action Points 2 Traits Perfumes of Desire ♦ Aura 3 Any enemy that ends its turn in the aura takes 15 psychic damage. Creatures in the aura have concealment against ranged attacks. While Bess Carita is bloodied, the aura's size increases to 10, and enemies in the aura take a -2 penalty to Will. Colossal Whenever Bess Carita's ends her turn, dominated, stunned or dazed conditions on her end. Standard Actions Loving Hand ♦ At-Will Attack: Melee 4 (one creature); +33 vs. Fortitude Hit: 3d10 + 10 damage and Bess Carita grabs the target. Tongue ♦ At-Will Attack: Melee 2 (one creature); +35 vs. AC Hit: 4d8 + 20 damage. Embrace ♦ At-Will Effect: Bess Carita makes two loving hands attacks. If both attacks hit the same target, the target takes a -5 penalty to escape checks until it is no longer grabbed. Move Actions Black Lotus ♦ At-Will Effect: Close burst 10; Bess Carita summons a medium black lotus bud in one empty square in the burst that is not adjacent to another black lotus. The square containing a black lotus bud is difficult terrain. A black lotus can be attacked and shares the same defenses, immunities and resistances as Bess Carita, and has 132 hit points. Minor Actions Tempting Words (Charm)♦ At-Will Attack: Close burst 10 (one creature); +33 vs. Will Hit: At the start of the target's next turn, Bess Carita slides it a number of squares equal to its speed. It then makes a basic attack against a creature of Bess Carita's choice. Triggered Actions Lashing Tongue ♦ At-Will Trigger: A creature makes a melee attack against Bess Carita Effect: Bess Carita makes a tongue attack against the triggering creature. Garden of Desire (Charm)♦ Encounter Trigger: Bess Carita becomes bloodied. Effect: Black lotus buds in the burst, blossom. Creatures adjacent to a blossoming black lotus are slowed. Attack: Close burst 10 (each creature adjacent to a black lotus bud); +33 vs. Will Hit: 4d8 + 20 psychic damage and Bess Carita slides the target 2 squares. Skills Bluff Str 28 (+24) Dex 18 (+19) Wis 36 (+28) Con 38 (+29) Int 32 (+26) Cha 46 (+33) Alignment Evil Languages Common, Telepathy (20) Equipment —

Godddess' symbol Bess Carita's physical body presides over her palace in the Endless Night. She is a fleshy quadrupedal thing, between 300 and 400 feet long. Giant aromatic flowers resembling aquatic lotuses bud and open across her flanks, with near-black petals. Her four legs are smooth and long, and branch out into multiple feet at the ankle. Minions constantly manicure and paint her hundreds of toenails. At her head she has a large mouth with several pairs of thick, nested lips which consumes the souls she deems the most decadant. This maw is framed by a giant pair of slender humanoid arms; like the legs the skin is immaculate with the fingernails groomed and painted. Her throne room is thick with the sensual aromas she exudes. The rare mortals that have found their way to this chamber have all succumbed to this immediately, collapsing into a coma of eternal longing. Throne Room Bess Carita's throne room is designed such that ranged attacks cannot be made on her from further than 10 squares away. There are side-corridors and alcoves that provide squares further than 10 squares, but line-of-sight to Bess Carita is blocked with pillars. Bess Carita herself is represented by a 4x4 token situated at one end of the encounter map and does not move. It represents merely her head, with her body (immune to attacks) extending off the edge of the map. Tactics Every turn, Bess Carita will summon a black lotus. If the PCs are succeeding at destroying black lotuses at the same rate she is spawning them, and she is not yet bloodied, she will use action points to create more. She will use tempting words to move enemies good at melee further away, and to bring more fragile enemies closer. She will embrace most enemies with loving hands, particularly to grab warriors and keep them out of melee range. She only uses tongue as a result of a lashing tongue interrupt. When she is bloodied, and her lotuses blossom, remember the penalty to Will that targets will suffer as a result of the extended perfumes of desire. Once bloodied, she will stop using black lotus, instead using tempting words twice per turn. Aftermath Once Bess Carita drops to 0 hit points, she enters a dormant state in which she appears to be dead. Her heart still beats, but a DC 42 Perception or Heal check is required to determine this. Her servants will eventually begin to flood into the throne room to prepare for her regeneration, so the god-killers will either need to travel through her maw (if they have aquired that knowledge), return to whence they came, or become eventually overwhelmed. To truly slay her, the party must find her heart by traveling through her maw (a skill challenge). The heart is a sphere of tangled vessels, pulsing with divine blood, 20' in diameter. It regenerates all damage every round. One must introduce a disease by letting fresh blood from a living humanoid inflicted with the desired disease. The blood must fall into a cut vessel from Bess Carita's heart before it regenerates. Bess Carita then immediately suffers the final stage of that disease. If the final stage is death, then she is truly slain. Otherwise she recovers from the disease normally. If she is not slain, her head blackens and decays over the period of one day, finally falling away like petals to reveal a fresh head. At this point she recovers all her hit points. Repercussions The death of Bess Carita will have many implications. It will soon become apparent that her clerics, avengers and other servants below no longer can use their divine powers. Rebel factions and neighboring countries may take this opportunity to topple her theocracies. This may liberate a people who have suffered under a cruel regime - but perhaps not so popular with the chosen with hedonistic lifestyles. The godkillers will aquire new enemies: Bess Carita's lover, Agistono; her children, the Succubi; and her remaining clergy. There will be a power vacuum in her domains of seduction, greed and bureaucracy. Unless a new deity is formed, these concepts will fade away in the mortal world. A PC with an appropriate epic destiny could claim this mantle. If they are of good alignment, they could put a benevolent spin on these domains, becoming a deity of compassionate love, finance, organization.

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