Throne of Szeth

[Tvtyrant]

I'm DMing a campaign where the world is divided into fuedal style allegiances which are subordianted by the power of the leader. The weaker groups pay tribute to stronger individuals, going up a pyramid scheme system. The top of the hierarchy are ancient dragons, a lich, an empyrion and a possessed Tarrasque.

The central arc is the party moving up (and back and forth between) these hierachies as they get stronger, aiming for when they become strong enough to create their own independent hierachy. All of the top individuals are looking for an artifact which produces 1,000 animated objects a day (from the animated objects near the front of the monster manual) out of nothing. I know that the party is going to be the ones that find the artifact, but I'm not sure what kind of protections it should have. Dungeons are fairly normal, but should it be in a weird place (like inside the moon) or a strange environment? Where would you hide an artifact which creates an endless army?

[Louro]

Where would you hide an artifact which creates an endless army?
Inside the tarrasque.
Seriously? 1000/day? Do that things remain forever?

Such "artifact" is...
Let's say it was created by Karsus as an attempt to gather enough power. Then he decided that an e class army won't do the trick and started researching the Karsus Avatar spell.
Many years after the abomination was found by the Netheril and Mordekainen used the mage's disjunction to destroy it but he failed and died (this happened centuries ago so it should be OK to use the AD&D disjunction version). After this the Netheril (the most powerful wizardry council) put all of their efforts on hiding the artifact.

Where could they hide it? Another plane seems like a very bad idea. Maybe one of them sacrificed himself to teleport from the highest mountain into the space to the full range of the spell and the thing is now orbiting the planet, or did exactly the same but from the deepest part into the planet heart.
They could also cast several illusions on it to make it seems like a mundane worthlesz item with a permanent "I'm not magic" aura and placed it on a random room of one of the latest levels of the "world largest dungeon".
But, to be fair, I guess they would had sent it to Mystra, and Mystra could keep it as a remind of Marsha.

Good luck trying to convince Mystra to hand you over that thing.

---
Insane dungeon with insane traps, guess or die riddles (this makes no sense, you also die if you guess it), mazes, thousands of illusions mixed with altered reality to drive anyone insane (sanity checks), a device who constantly infuses energy on hundres of undead creatures so they never die really, random portals bringing random creatures...

Slugfest dungeon designed to:
-Kill anyone who dares to enter, using the most nasty and dishonorable tricks ever know by mankind, elvenkind, dwarvenkind and even dragonkind.
-Drive ppl insane in case they refuse to die.
-In case someone gets to succeed, the final room in which the thing is, is actually a teleportation chamber with a ticket directly to the nine hells of baator.
-The thing was never there, it was just a false clue the Netherin set up to fool anyone crazy enough to attempt the search seriously.
-The artifact lies buried in the sacred place in which Torm defeated Bane. Since it is a death magic zone and no one alive knows this, divination is useless.

[Darksidebro]

It depends on why it was created in the first place. If say, a wizard created this artifact in order to produce an army of his own (the most likely scenario as it seems quite a few people know about it and are actively trying to find it.) then he probably had it entombed with himself, with tons of deathtraps and the such. And as soon as the players get to the end of the tomb, they find out that the wizard didn't entomb himself with it, he actually created an entirely separate, even more dangerous tomb for the artifact and gives no clues to that tomb's location.

If the artifact was hidden or otherwise kept away from evil
Doers by a previous group of Goody-Goods, then the artifact is either in a heavily defended maze/fortress that they established to ensure it didn't fall into the wrong hands. But then again, if they'd go through all that trouble, why not just get it to another plane that'll kill most anything that goes there? Like the Negative energy plane, or better yet, cast it into the Quasi Elemental plane of Vaccume. Or throw it into the Astral plane to float endlessly to nowhere? Or even give it to a powerful Solar?

[Feldarove]

Complete curiosity, as it doesn't change my reply, but does it create the 1000 at once, or like, it can create 10, 100, etc at a time, up to 1000 a day?


A very quirky, and possible let down, would be to send your party on a wild goose chase, trying to find it. They do a bunch of research, figure out its last location, which was like 500 years ago. They go to that spot which is an abandoned temple, they dungeon crawl. When they get to the end, they find out the tomb of the overlord that had the object has been robbed, but a clue is left behind, so they go in search of that...so on and so forth

All said and done

A kind old shop keeper has the wand. He can't even recall how he came into possession of it. He knows its magical, but doesn't understand its true powers. He creates little brooms to sweep up, this trinket or that for fun, kinda like fantasia. He really likes the the wand, and is completely powerless to keep it from the PCs, but he doesn't want to depart from it. If your PCs are good, he asks them a kind simple favor. His wife has long since dead and he hasn't seen his only child in many years. He would love to see him before he dies.

Turns out....his son has become one of the hierarchies. He goes by some crazy title, and not his birth name, so his father is unaware. Getting an audience, and especially convincing his son to take time out of his world dominating schedule to simply visit his dad should be difficult.

If your PCs are evil....you can still use this story arc. The old man's son knows that his dad has the wand, he secretly protects his father (under the premise of simply "He's my father, I want him protected, but don't want him to know). if the PCs try (or do) kill him, this Hierarchy is now out for them.



Just a thought.

[Shining Wrath]

An item which produces 1,000 soldiers per day should be IMMENSE. Think the House Cannith Creation Forges, only bigger.

And it needs raw materials upon which to operate. Unless it creates them fiat lux style, in which case the power rating goes up.

You don't really hide something that big and that magical. You disguise it.

The largest city on the planet *is* the machine; many of the inhabitants, cogs thereof. Turning the thing on involves the apparent "death" of many of these inhabitants as they become gist for the mill, but morally it's OK as they were never really real.

[Tvtyrant]

The Throne of Szeth was made by the Yuan-Ti empress Szeth in a bid to conquer the world in the distant past. It creates 1,000 animated suits of armor ex nihilo each day, 200 every 5 hours, with a short lag between cycles. It is in three parts, a crown, a throne and a cathedral like palace which the throne goes in. The soldiers appear kneeling before the individual, who must sit in the throne while wearing the crown.

I am assuming the palace and the crown have been found but everyone is looking for the throne. I like the idea of the palace being in a major metropolitan.

[eastmabl]

You hide it the same way you hide a phylactery - in some place where it's probably going to kill the person who is destroying it.

[unwise]

I think it should be the hat of a kindly old wizard who is out of town. His mouse familiar/apprentice has been using it to do his chores for him. He can't stop it though, so it has animated 1000 broomsticks that have swept the house to pieces and are now flooding the place by taking water in from the well. I think I am showing my age.

[Envyus]

The Throne of Szeth was made by the Yuan-Ti empress Szeth in a bid to conquer the world in the distant past.

Ironically the Yuan Ti have a god named Sseth. Would you say the Queen was named after him or was it pure coincidence with the only 1 letter difference.

[Tvtyrant]

Ironically the Yuan Ti have a god named Sseth. Would you say the Queen was named after him or was it pure coincidence with the only 1 letter difference.

Pure, tremendous coincidence. I picked the name Szeth before I actually made her Yuan-Ti. She was originally an Elf, but I decided I liked the Yuan-Ti as an ancient collapsed world empire better.

Haha the broomsticks would be fun.

What kind of trap could you make with a throne? Something like have it be load bearing for the whole dungeon, with an anti-teleportation spell on the room? I can't use that particular trap, I did that last campaign.