Effect of an Evil legendary item upon the region

[HoboKnight]

Hey guys,
my party has finally found an ancient Netheril Pool Of Scrying. It is an old tool, exceptionally powerful and reliable, but with a price. There are several things knowledge seekers may sacrifice to gain an insight regarding their questions and my party decided on sacrificing a legendary item. If it was a normal legendary item, there would be no problem, but they are in possession of the Tapestry.

Tapestry is a legendary item of exceptionally strong Evil, not unlike Talisman of Ultimate Evil or Book of Vile Darkness. In a way, Tapestry is similar to The One Ring from Lotr - it has corrupting effect upon all in their surrounding and results can be quite... horrific. It was created by a trio of demigod-tier hags with a purpose of Tapestry slowly destroying entire settlements, driving inhabitants completely mad.

Smarty, so far, my party has placed the Tapestry into a Bag of Holding. It it thus physically separated from Material plane and can not harm creatures this way. It is also indestructible.

Pool, being an Epic-tier item too, can drain the Tapestry of its power, yet, as party was warned, there may be "Unforseen consequences" (not unlike those in Half Life).

After being consumed, Tapestry will not destroy the Pool itself, Pool is impervious to its effects, but something should eventually happen.

Perhaps someone has an idea what that would be? It might be connected to hags or corruption, related to insanity? Perhaps something hag-ish? Dozens of teleports opening into the most negative planes of Feywild might be an option, but this is not very innovative.

All ideas appreciated!

[Vahnavoi]

Don't overcomplicate this: make it so the Tapestry's effects will now fall on anyone who wants to use the Pool. The party made the world a bit worse for everyone, including themselves, who might want to benefit from the Pool's effects.

[Kol Korran]

An epic pool of scrying, consuming and unraveling an epic evil item made by hags, who's purpose is to drive people and entire settlements mad...

Hmmmm...

How about this- "Night of maddening visions!"

As the tapestry's power is consumed, it resists, trying to revolt, survive, and though it's power is drained, it does succeed in a subtle, sinister and disturbing way.

On the night the tapestry is destroyed by the pool, a multitude of people, many miles away with no discernible patters, have horrific nightmare, possibly prophetic, yet obscure, disturbing and unsettling... In some of the dreams there are whispers, in some half understood visages of the hags, in some echoes and visions of the hags influence through the tapestry in the past, but in other portents of possible schemes and plans for the future...

All of these nightmares are disjointed fragments, like the dying incoherent screams of a horrible alien incomprehensible beast... Some mat require therapy, but all in all, the maddening dreams seem to not leave any long term effects.

But some dreamers do retain more of their dreams, and they continue to do so... The guiding voices in their dreams warn to keep them secret, the insights, hidden truth, hidden power must not be known to the so called "heroes". We are patient. We have time. And we will guide you.

Slowly these dreamers starts working in secret to restore the power of the hags, to weave a new tapestry, and perhaps set into motion forbidden and horrible ritual pregnancies, who's offsprings are the reincarnation ofbthe hags.

The cult of the weaving whispers is born out of those echoes of dreams and it will grow in darkness. Should they succeed, the hags (or their successors) will return stronger and more sinister than before!

[HoboKnight]

Damn, this is beyond good!

[Kol Korran]

Damn, this is beyond good!

Glad you liked it!

[Vogie]

The pool of scrying is something that can look effectively anywhere. The Tapestry, on the other hand, has been limited to corrupting the regions in which it is being used.

I think the ultimate thing that the PCs would find is that using the indestructible object on the sacrificial pool does... seemingly nothing. It seems completely free of issues. They're not impacted whatsoever. It seems like they hacked the world, and found a 'cheat code' to get around the sacrifice of legendary items. All upside, woo!

Except... it turns out that the Tapestry is actively masking any corruption from the PCs. They pull it out of the extradimensional space, and there's no downside. What happens instead is that those locations or people that are being scryed on are being seeded with the Tapestry's corruption. As soon as the scrying ceases, those seeds germinate, spreading the corruption into the world as though that Tapestry was hanging out in that area, without the obvious downside of having the evil artifact actually nearby.

The best way for this to happen is that that PCs don't notice at all - they just scry around, then go do things in that area, then leave. The people who figure this out is instead a completely different adventuring party who stumbles across one corrupted area, then finds another, then starts actively investigating which areas are being corrupted. They eventually realize, talking to surrounding people and whatnot, that the common factor is the PC's party.

Now, this whole time, the party has been doing their original mission, whatever that was. At this point, they figure out that they're being hunted. No idea how, it just needs to feel natural for the existing mission. They don't have the context that they're spreading corruption and this other party is hunting corruption - instead, the PCs just find out that they, specifically, are being hunted by a group. What do they do next? They scry these people hunting them, of course.

You see where this is going.

They scry the hunters. The hunters are, themselves, now seeded with corruption. The more they are scryed (scried? scry'd? scriven?), the more corrupted they are, and when the party eventually meets these hunters... now empowered by the Tapestry corruption. They don't know it's the Tapestry corruption - that's been safely hidden in their extradimensional space when not being actively used, after all.

There's a nice circular shenanigans of them being both heroes and villains.

[Misereor]

You are what you eat.
As the pool consumes the tapestry, it also consumes a bit of it's nature.
So it's scryings are corrupted, showing events slightly different from how they actually took place, and always maliciously so. The scryings are false, but sufficiently true to be extremely tempting. Hence the consequences of acting upon what one sees in the pool may indeed be unforeseen.

The tapestry is gone, but a new powerful evil has entered the world.

[Cikomyr2]

I should point out that a Bag of Holding should not be the get-out-of-reality-for-free card players often assume it is.

A malevolent artifact of such magnitude of power would shine like a lighthouse in the Astral Plane. Drawing opportunistic pillagers, demons and artifact-consuming behemots to the raw power the Tapestry represents.

In fact, anytime an artifact of such power crosses the threshold between planes of reality, there should be rippled felt across the multiverse as the balance of good and evil shifted perceptibly on the material plane and the new location. Most people wouldn't notice...

..except those listening for it.