Psyborg
2010-05-27, 03:26 PM
I'm currently DMing a 3.5 campaign in Eberron. We're at level 4, and some major events are about to take place in the world.
I'm drawing concepts and inspiration from the following sources:
Eberron Campaign Setting, pp.188-191 (The Mournland, formerly Cyre, nation utterly destroyed by an unexplained arcane holocaust)
Elder Evils, chapter 6: Pandorym
Untapped Potential [Dreamscarred Press], pg.2 (Rajrin)
Hyperconscious [Malhavoc Press], chapters 1, 2, & 8 (The Shallows and the Oraculus adventure, plus some bits and pieces)
About the party:
Swiftwing Shifter Ranger 4 (wolf animal companion progressed as a Druid's)
Changeling Favored Soul 4
Human Paladin 4
(Aerenal) Elf Gypsy 4 (homebrew, roughly bard-equivalent with more skills, dances instead of songs, Sneak Attack at 1d6/three levels, d8 hit die, good Ref save [only], and no spellcasting)
Background:
The Shallows are demiplanes of dream, fragments torn off of Dal Quor when the connection between Eberron and Dal Quor was severed by the giants a hundred thousand years ago. The quori cannot personally reach the Shallows; they can, however, influence them much more easily than Eberron.
In my game, Pandorym was summoned/conjured by wizards of Cyre and artificers of House Cannith for the purpose of extinguishing the Silver Flame. The summoning was carried out on two consecutive days. Pandorym's mind was successfully conjured and bound in a prison in the Shallows. The summoning of the body of Pandorym, however, was sabotaged by minions of the warforged now known as the Lord of Blades, resulting in the destruction of Cyre on the Day of Mourning. Pandorym's body still lies, inert but deadly, at the bottom of the glowing chasm in the Mournland.
The prison of Pandorym's mind was located in a large, fairly stable Shallow known as Rajrin, a dream-island with many similarities to the Material Plane. Rajrin is about to appear suddenly in the middle of the Thunder Sea, roughly equidistant from Khorvaire, Aerenal, and Xen'drik.
Geography:
Rajrin, the island newly appeared in the Thunder Sea, was a tesseract in Dream. Six of its composite cubes (for convenience, we'll refer to them as North, South, East, West, Inside, and Bottom) have appeared on the material plane. The cubes are about ten miles by ten.
The island is roughly T-shaped, the landmasses of the Inside, North, South, and East cubes being generally contiguous. The West cube contains a coral reef and a couple of atolls and sandy islands. The island has one large town, Neir, and two dromite city-hives under its surface. The town, surrounding farmland, and outlying villages are inhabited mostly by humans; the outer edges of the island are primarily inhabited by maenad fishing villages, if at all.
The Bottom cube contains a small underworld entirely distinct from Khyber; it is cut in half by a deep, lightless canyon that opens up to the sky near the edge of the Inside cube; the fertile soil lining the edges of the canyon holds forests of twilight wood (psionically energized darkwood that glows dimly in the dark). The xeph race lives here, in towns and cities cut into the limestone that forms the canyon's walls. About a mile from the narrow open space of the canyon, limestone gives way to hard granite. There is little if any contact between the xephs and the inhabitants of the granite regions, but tunnels do exist through the hard rock, inhabited by duergar nearer the top and unthinkable psionic aberrations in the depths.
Two of the eight cubes that formed Rajrin in Dream ("Top" and "Outside") are missing, having failed to translate to the Material plane.
Wrapping it all up:
The island is a broken tesseract. Six of its cubes exist side-by-side in the material plane, and an adventure planned for level 7 will bring one more ("Top") into the material plane. All, however, will be located in ways that are physically definable in three dimensions.
At the center of the island is a small, fully formed tesseract, however. The PCs will be able (after investigating) to find ways to enter it and explore the dungeons and villages that occupy its eight composite cubes.
By restoring certain correspondences between cubes of the small tesseract and regions of the larger, physically extant island of Rajrin, the players will eventually be able to cause Rajrin to "reassemble" itself, changing the way its regions relate to each other and bringing its last cube (the one known as "Outside") into existence again.
Pandorym's mind is imprisoned on "Outside", and the final combat against that evil will take place there.
Question: What are some quests that the PCs can undertake (either in the small central tesseract or in regions of the island) to restore correspondences between the tesser and the island, ultimately leading to the "reassembly" of the larger tesseract?
Thanks in advance to anybody who actually reads this. :smallamused:
I'm drawing concepts and inspiration from the following sources:
Eberron Campaign Setting, pp.188-191 (The Mournland, formerly Cyre, nation utterly destroyed by an unexplained arcane holocaust)
Elder Evils, chapter 6: Pandorym
Untapped Potential [Dreamscarred Press], pg.2 (Rajrin)
Hyperconscious [Malhavoc Press], chapters 1, 2, & 8 (The Shallows and the Oraculus adventure, plus some bits and pieces)
About the party:
Swiftwing Shifter Ranger 4 (wolf animal companion progressed as a Druid's)
Changeling Favored Soul 4
Human Paladin 4
(Aerenal) Elf Gypsy 4 (homebrew, roughly bard-equivalent with more skills, dances instead of songs, Sneak Attack at 1d6/three levels, d8 hit die, good Ref save [only], and no spellcasting)
Background:
The Shallows are demiplanes of dream, fragments torn off of Dal Quor when the connection between Eberron and Dal Quor was severed by the giants a hundred thousand years ago. The quori cannot personally reach the Shallows; they can, however, influence them much more easily than Eberron.
In my game, Pandorym was summoned/conjured by wizards of Cyre and artificers of House Cannith for the purpose of extinguishing the Silver Flame. The summoning was carried out on two consecutive days. Pandorym's mind was successfully conjured and bound in a prison in the Shallows. The summoning of the body of Pandorym, however, was sabotaged by minions of the warforged now known as the Lord of Blades, resulting in the destruction of Cyre on the Day of Mourning. Pandorym's body still lies, inert but deadly, at the bottom of the glowing chasm in the Mournland.
The prison of Pandorym's mind was located in a large, fairly stable Shallow known as Rajrin, a dream-island with many similarities to the Material Plane. Rajrin is about to appear suddenly in the middle of the Thunder Sea, roughly equidistant from Khorvaire, Aerenal, and Xen'drik.
Geography:
Rajrin, the island newly appeared in the Thunder Sea, was a tesseract in Dream. Six of its composite cubes (for convenience, we'll refer to them as North, South, East, West, Inside, and Bottom) have appeared on the material plane. The cubes are about ten miles by ten.
The island is roughly T-shaped, the landmasses of the Inside, North, South, and East cubes being generally contiguous. The West cube contains a coral reef and a couple of atolls and sandy islands. The island has one large town, Neir, and two dromite city-hives under its surface. The town, surrounding farmland, and outlying villages are inhabited mostly by humans; the outer edges of the island are primarily inhabited by maenad fishing villages, if at all.
The Bottom cube contains a small underworld entirely distinct from Khyber; it is cut in half by a deep, lightless canyon that opens up to the sky near the edge of the Inside cube; the fertile soil lining the edges of the canyon holds forests of twilight wood (psionically energized darkwood that glows dimly in the dark). The xeph race lives here, in towns and cities cut into the limestone that forms the canyon's walls. About a mile from the narrow open space of the canyon, limestone gives way to hard granite. There is little if any contact between the xephs and the inhabitants of the granite regions, but tunnels do exist through the hard rock, inhabited by duergar nearer the top and unthinkable psionic aberrations in the depths.
Two of the eight cubes that formed Rajrin in Dream ("Top" and "Outside") are missing, having failed to translate to the Material plane.
Wrapping it all up:
The island is a broken tesseract. Six of its cubes exist side-by-side in the material plane, and an adventure planned for level 7 will bring one more ("Top") into the material plane. All, however, will be located in ways that are physically definable in three dimensions.
At the center of the island is a small, fully formed tesseract, however. The PCs will be able (after investigating) to find ways to enter it and explore the dungeons and villages that occupy its eight composite cubes.
By restoring certain correspondences between cubes of the small tesseract and regions of the larger, physically extant island of Rajrin, the players will eventually be able to cause Rajrin to "reassemble" itself, changing the way its regions relate to each other and bringing its last cube (the one known as "Outside") into existence again.
Pandorym's mind is imprisoned on "Outside", and the final combat against that evil will take place there.
Question: What are some quests that the PCs can undertake (either in the small central tesseract or in regions of the island) to restore correspondences between the tesser and the island, ultimately leading to the "reassembly" of the larger tesseract?
Thanks in advance to anybody who actually reads this. :smallamused: