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View Full Version : looking for ideas, DM needs a hiding place...



martyrX
2012-03-29, 12:17 PM
Hi all,


i'm looking for some hiding place ideas for an artifact i am introducing into my campaign. the campaign is high level (just about epic).

The item itself is cataclysmic in nature...it has the power to rid the world of the current gods. the gods know it exists, but cannot see it, only can send their avatars/believers after those whom they think have it. the last great adventurers to use it were defeated by the last god that remained at the tim. (it rids the world of gods one by one), but the artifact itself was never found (or so the story goes). I have imagined until now that these great adventurers had a plan to hide it if they were defeated, and now my PCs are about to reveal that hiding place...

so, any ideas for a hiding place? i want something i can write a riddle about, so riddles are welcome as well.

one idea i haven't considered yet is that the gods DID find it, but since they cannot touch it, or come near it, they have ordered their followers to hide it and protect it for them. of course, said followers would have no idea as to its powers...

thanks all!

Grinner
2012-03-29, 12:39 PM
Beyond time and space, locked in place beyond our comprehension. Accessible only through an elaborate ritual known to very few. Knowledge of those few entities and their knowledge is known to fewer still

Bagelson
2012-03-29, 12:45 PM
Put it in plain sight. Like the massive obelisk in a littered square in some major city.

Or make it something more abstract; like a popular shepherds song.

Rorrik
2012-03-29, 12:48 PM
If you want to go the riddle route, maybe a hide in plain sight tactic would work, as long as no one would be able to casually detect its magic(maybe it has no aura). Maybe the scepter in the hand of a statue at the god's temple or part of the throne of a well established kingdom. This would make it easy to reveal its location through a riddle, but if in a place well guarded or considered holy enough may be hard to reach.

Edit: Berserkered :smallmad:

Ornithologist
2012-03-29, 01:25 PM
Oddly enough, I'm gong to redirect you too Mistborn.

For sake of spoilers, that's all I'm saying.:smallcool:

lt_murgen
2012-03-29, 02:10 PM
I love the variations of hiding something in plain sight:

- inside a hollowed out book in the largest library on the planet. Book has a minor charm that makes the title on the spine appear as the most boring subject the reader could imagine. No one has touched it in centuries- not since the former possessors donated some books to that library.

- inside a hollowed out brick placed into the foundation wall of a major temple. Buried under ground and surrounded by non-magical bricks, even the minor non-detection dweomer cannot be seen. Perhaps the cleric of the former possessors was a founder of the temple.

- It was tacked onto some tree in the middle of a forest. Over the decades, the tree bark grew over it. Perhaps the druid of the group made his grove there at one time.

Instead of a riddle, you have your current group delving into the history of the last group. The opposition is also interested, so it becomes a conflict to find their historical items- the bards journal of their travels, the pennant of the Knight when he founded his own stronghold which happens to show a tree with a certain star pattern behind it, etc.

Hey, you just gave me a great idea for a campaign....

Templarkommando
2012-03-30, 02:08 AM
At the very edge of universal space, where time hiccups occasionally and gives things 70 new birthdays all at once, there is a planet. On this planet there is a hill. On that hill there is a house. In that house there is a room. In that room there is a safe. In that safe there is a map to where the players are supposed to go to a desert. In that Desert, beneath the sands so that its entrance only appears one day out of the year, is a crypt. In that crypt, past hordes of undead skeletons and mummies, there is a Lich. That Lich has been plotting for 7,000 years on how he will one day take over the world, but he never has gotten around to it. So interspersed between the Lich's wife nagging him to get a job, the Lich tells you that you must go to a forest. For deep in that forest Is a castle - a mystical castle that appears only to those possessing a certain series of items carried in one sack dyed a particular dreary shade of purple. Underneath that castle is a subterranean lake. In the center of that subterranean lake is an island. Upon that lake a magic portal glows in the hope that one day a worthy adventurer will one day trek through and demand that the witch who lives on the other side surrender her mirror. It is a simple mirror from all appearances. Except that when a secret word is spoken the other side of the mirror reveals the location of an amulet belonging to the late Duke Rauncher. This necklace is truly the bane of the gods. For all but one of the gods have died and left this fel universe. And now the last shall fall by the might of the Locket of Rauncher.

Vauron
2012-03-30, 04:43 AM
Alternatively, the artifact could be lodged in the stomach of some massive oceanic abomination, which neither knows what it swallowed long ago, nor would it care. The adventurers would need to get the monster to swallow them to find the artifact. If you go that route, I suggest that you make the monster nigh invincible, both to explain why no one killed it yet, and to force your players to be clever and not just try to brute force the issue.

dsmiles
2012-03-30, 07:43 PM
Hide it in Amber. Everywhere else is just a shadow anyways.

DrewID
2012-03-30, 07:56 PM
I was getting a completely different vibe from "DM needs a hiding place".

Amusing, but very, very different.

DrewID

nedz
2012-03-30, 08:06 PM
In the heart of the sun.

Or, for a hide in plain sight idea :

I did something similar once where the artifact was disguised as part of the crown jewels of some medium sized country. Queue the party staging a high profile heist to save the world. Hilarious :smallbiggrin:

Slipperychicken
2012-03-30, 08:24 PM
An eccentric and paranoid Wizard keeps it in his heavily-protected Demiplanar realm filled with enslaved Angels, in which one can spend a thousand years and only a few seconds will seem to have passed on the Material. Lore says he made the plane himself, sleeps hanging upside down by his feet, and wears very tight gray clothing, with black spiked gloves, boots, codpiece, cape, pouched belt, and an oddly-shaped mask with tiny ears protruding from the top, which conceals his upper face and head, with a large black and yellow batlike symbol adorning his upper chest. It's said he spends all his time studying, plotting, crafting contingencies for some unknowable plan. He never leaves the plane, perhaps Astrally Projecting when called for. Some even say he made the weapon himself, and made it in egotistical madness, killing off the last diety to "...show those f***ing Gods who's boss around here".


tl;dr: The Batman Wizard has it, and actually made it himself.