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Summary:
The PCs must confront incarnum-wielding devils in the Bastion of Souls
Assumptions:
None
Location:
Eixtenizti Stronghold in Aladur
Historical Date:
710 A.C. winter.
DM's Introduction:
An ancient duskling has mysteriously encamped in the center of the PCs' stronghold, spouting strange, quasi-prophetic statements from time to time. Now, he hears a strange song thrumming through the incarnum, and he will summon the PCs and request that they investigate.
Part One - The Song and the Soul
The Song:
The duskling elder is the same one the PCs met in the scenario "The Staff of Power"
His name is Gorottomoroggo which translates from Duskling as "He whose eyes reflect the sea", and he is a wizened old duskling who wears the trinkets and gew gaws of a totemist shaman (he is a CG totemist 16/cleric 3). Incarnum soulmelds can be seen rippling around the chakra points of his body, and anyone with even a passing familiarity with incarnum magic can tell that he is a powerful totemist.
Gorottomoroggo will call to the PCs when they are in their stronghold, asking them if they can hear the song.
Should the PCs express interest in the latest ramblings of the duskling, he will gather them together and once again ask them if they can hear the song thrumming through the threads of incarnum. None of the PCs (even incarnum wielders) can hear any sort of song, and should they express this fact to the shaman, he will then describe what he hears:
I hear it. It is a song that reverberates through the incarnum threads that bind the universe. It is the song of the unborn...the potential of all things. And the song they sing includes your names. All of you. I cannot fathom from where this song comes, or who originated it, but it is strong to come even to me from so far away. It is a song of dualities. Of things spoken and not spoken. Of things hidden and in plain sight. But I cannot grasp the words, only the emotions. Except for your names...and a place. The Bastion of Souls. The song is urgent. It calls to you to make all haste to the Bastion of Souls. There your destiny lies.
The elder can offer no more insight into his aural "vision". He will emphasize that the song urges haste, and that he strongly believes the PCs should travel to the Bastion of Souls as quickly as possible...within the hour if not immediately! If the PCs express inability to travel to the Bastion of Souls (e.g. they do not have any plane travel magic prepared or available), the elder will offer to take care of it and he will engage in an hour long ritual, at which time a vertical gate of incarnum will spring open (similar to a gate spell). The elder will announce that he cannot hold the way open for more than a minute or so and that he cannot perform such a feat again for many months at least. The gateway will stay open for 6 hours.
The Bastion of Souls:
The PCs have likely already visited the Bastion of Souls, which is a planar touchstone. They encountered a strange map to the Bastion in the cleft of those who held Karsus' staff of power. The map was in the form of a massive stone tablet 8 ft tall and 5 ft wide and nearly 6 inches thick. Inscribed onto the face of the tablet were a series of very complicated lines, circles, and other geometric patterns along with small figures that did not seem to be runes as much as symbols.
The Bastion of Souls is fully described in Magic of Incarnum on page 207. It lies in the Positive Energy Plane, whose traits in Therra are as follows:
The major positive-dominant trait bears some explanation:
Creatures on a major positive-dominant plane must make a DC 15 Fortitude saving throw to avoid being blinded for 10 rounds by the brilliance of the surroundings. Simply being on the plance grants feast healing 5 as an extraordinary ability. In addition, those at full hit points gain 5 additional temporary hit points per round. These temporary hit points fade 1d20 rounds after the creature leaves the major positive-dominant plane. However a creature must make a DC 20 Fortitude save each round that its temporary hit points (only the ones gained from this trait) exceed its normal hit point total. Failing the saving throw results in the creature exploding in a riot of energy, killing it.
The positive energy protection spell prevents its target from receiving the fast healing extraordinary ability, risking blindness, or receiving the temporary hit points while on a positive-dominant plane.
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| Faceted crystal surfaces glow with emerald, sapphire, and other hues of precious gems. Clear crystalline trees sprout thickly from the floor, laden with brilliant points of white light. The sound of thousands of crystal leaves constantly chiming like bells fills the air. A blaze of brilliant light shines in the center of this area. |
The Bastion is made of solidified positive energy - unbreakable, impenetrable to magical entry, and unresponsive to magical methods to learn about the interior. Creatures inside it cannot summon aid with calling or summoning spells. While teleportation magic will function within the Bastion, such magic will not allow teleportation from the outside to within or vice versa. Inside the Bastion, the visual brilliance of the Positive Energy Plane is absent and gravity becomes objective (rather than subjective), but it otherwise conforms to the traits of the Positive Energy Plane.
Inside the Bastion of Souls, crystalline trees sprout preincarnate souls, which appear like brilliant points of light. When “ripe,” a soul falls from the tree in a flash of brighter light and the preincarnate soul flies off, soon to incarnate somewhere in the multiverse. If picked before it is ripe, the preincarnate soul withers and dies within 10 rounds, dooming a creature somewhere in the multiverse to a soulless birth.
At the center of the Bastion is the Node, where soulstuff coalesces from the very fabric of the Positive Energy Plane. From the Node, it is drawn to nurture the crystal trees where the souls grow, but soul energy also flows from the Node directly to the Material Plane in the form of incarnum.
Part Two - The Good and the Bad (EL 22)
Marrshiva:
As the PCs arrive at the Bastion of Souls and enter its confined, they will see a figure hovering above the Node. The figure appears much like a marilith demon, except that its skin is entirely blue (including its scales), and it bears a rather peaceful countenance upon its face. The creature hovers in a relaxed position, its tail coiled tightly with its torso resting atop the coils and two of its hands clasp together before its chest in a prayerful position.
This entity is known as Marrshiva, and she is an ancient handmaiden of the Mishtai Klashkaln. Although her appearance is similar to a marilith, she is neither a demon nor evil. However, her pedigree is so ancient that it would require a DC 40 History check to recognize her nature (+5 circumstance bonus for members of incarnum-using classes or races).
Marrshiva will welcome the PCs and inform them in Slith that she has been singing for them and awaiting their arrival. She will tell the PCs that she is the servant of a long lost power and that she has summoned the PCs because she has been told that the PCs will one day need to find the dark behind the light, and at this place at this time is the proper time to do so. She will advise the PCs to remain here and await the arrival of "travellers".
Marrshiva is not really present. She is merely a programmed image (CL 16) cast by her previously before leaving the Bastion. As a peaceful creature, she is not able to fight those who are coming and so the song she has been heeding has warned her to summon the PCs and then leave the illusion behind before fleeing the Bastion. Once the image has activated (i.e. once the PCs arrive inside the Bastion), the image will persist for 16 rounds before disappearing.
Arrival of the Travellers:
After about a half an hour of waiting (such that most or all 1 minute/level or shorter spells and effects have expired), the travellers will arrive. They are a group of ice devils with incarnum ability, sent by the pit fiend Aggashotha, to determine the location of a sphere of annihiliation.
Creatures: There are 4 devils, all under guise of their persistent image abilities and appear as humanoid beings composed of silvery light.
The ice devils will appear at each of the entrances into the Bastion, one group at each compass point.
They will then, unless opposed, head toward the Node, where they will hold a 3 ft square thin tablet of lead into the Node for a minute or so. Pulling the tablet out, glowing cerulean pictographs will appear on the tablet. The devils will then seek to leave the Bastion and return to their master.
Of course, the PCs will likely wish to stop the devils. The fiends will initially be unfriendly to the PCs, but will assume they have come to use the planar touchstone. As such, they will order the PCs to leave at once or be destroyed by the ritual they are about to perform. If the PCs do not comply immediately, they will be attacked.
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Tactics: The devils always have unholy aura and fly spell-like abilities active at all times. They fear and are loyal to their pit fiend master and so will fight to the death. They will use their wall of ice ability prodigiously in order to isolate and trap foes.
A favoured tactic is to have one devil use wall of ice to entrap one foe in a hemisphere of ice and then have one or more of the other devils greater teleport inside the ice dome and maul the isolated victim.
Developments: Once the devils have activated the tablet, they will leave the Bastion (since they cannot teleport outside from within). If the devils are allowed to complete their ritual and return to their master, then the PCs will have failed the scenario and the DM will have to determine the ramifications. If playing the later scenario, "Dying of the Light", the DM will have to alter the beginning of the scenario as indicated therein.
Part Three - The Tablet Conundrum
Once the PCs have the tablet, they may wish to attempt to make sense of it. The tablet is written in a special mode of pictographic writing that was developed by the Mishtai themselves. The code is only partially complete on the tablet. In order to activate the code and allow it to be deciphered, the tablet must be saturated with a massive amount of incarnum from a single source. The amount required is beyond the ability of any mortal incarnum user existant upon Sazhansiir. This is because the tablet's code was only meant to be understood by the Mishtai.
Nevertheless, a DC 40 Knowledge (arcana) check can determine that the tablet symbols are somehow tied to incarnum and that investing essentia into the tablet may have some effect. Incarnum users have a +10 circumstance bonus to this check.
No known magic can decipher the tablet, since the pictograms making up the code are entirely incomplete. At best divinatory magic might reveal the same facts as a successful Knowledge (arcana) check as set forth above.
Should the PCs show the tablet to Gorottomoroggo, he will examine it with intense curiousity for a few minutes and then proclaim that the tablet contains strange and powerful sigils relating to incarnum (i.e. he will have made his knowledge check). He will ask to examine the tablet for a long period of time and then sit down and begin to invest essentia into it.
If the DM intends to run "Dying of the Light", then Gorottomoroggo will take literally as long as the DM needs for the PCs to advance in levels enough to undertake that scenario. This could be years. If questioned during his investigation, Gorottomoroggo will say that when he invests essentia into the tablet, it seems to accept it and he begins to see the pictograms refine their shapes...sometimes to forms that are on the edge of meaning to him. Nevertheless, he will be unsuccessful.
If the DM does not intend to run the next scenario, then he can have Gorottomoroggo eventually decipher the tablet and it can lead to whatever the DM desires.
There is a chance that the devils will have activated the tablet, or the PCs will have done so, and in that case when the tablet is brought to Gorottomoroggo he will exclaim, after several hours of examination, that the tablet has ancient, sacred writings from the hands of the Mishtai itself. He will say that the tablet is replete with incarnum and that he might be able to decipher the writing.
Even once activated, the tablet
is written in a semi-divine code and cannot be deciphered without
the key (even by magical means). Nevertheless, Gorottomoroggo
will attempt to decipher the writings, sending years and even
decades on it unsuccessfully.
Experience Points:
In addition to normal experience (which in Therra is half of that recommended in the DMG), each party member should be rewarded as follows:
The PCs retrieve the tablet from the Bastion: +750 XP.