Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Transmigrating Multiplanar Temples



Once, I worked out a rather weird crossover scenario to bring a party of adventurers from one of my settings to another without too much difficulty, while still keeping the plot intact. The end result was rather...weird....here then is the outline for this odd extraplanar temple that jumps realities:

The Dream Temple of Skaeddrath Aka’ll


This temple transmigrates through time and space; its core is rooted in Lingusia, but its dream shadows stretch throughout the dimensions. It has been used (when found abandoned) by many agencies in the past….most recently it was uncovered in Espanea, in the Realms of Chirak, where it had lain dormant for centuries. The temple traps people, who become encased in a strange ice, which keeps them locked in dreamy slumber for untold eons. Sometimes these people are able to move about in a lucid astral state, reliving their time and experience from when they first entered the temple.

The temple’s history is buried in the unfathomable eons, created from the dreaming imagery out of the dreamlands of Ethenur, as imposed by the ancient titanic mind of the Skaeddrath Aka’ll, one of the twelve primordial chaos lords imprisoned in Lingusia. The initial dream of the temple was to seek out unknown dimensions, to lure prospective followers to the temple, and through them to siphon the divine energy channeled through their worship in to the temple as a vessel of power. Once an eon it returns to Lingusia, over the tomb-prison of Aka’ll, where the energy is released, to sate the slumbering entity’s endless hunger.

The temple had been on Chirak for a very long time, but it eventually was uncovered and transmigrated back to Lingusia, where it appeared deep in the Mountains of Madness, in the Era of the Warlords. Unexpectedly, for the first time in untold eons members of those who had entered and become trapped are awakened before their souls were fully siphoned off by the slumbering Skaeddrath. The awakening began with the adventurers dreaming in slumber of the time of their entry, but suddenly becoming lucidly aware of their own presence….finding the chamber with their encapsulated bodies…and the discovery of the ancient artifact, the Hand of Vecna, which disrupted the stasis in which all were held as a result of the dreamers’ interactions with the hand. These daring souls find themselves deep in the Slithotendan Mountains, free at last after a thousand years, but with the realization that there is a terrible entity below the earth, to which dark servants even now are carrying a vast crystalline latticework, called the Nether-Gate, these servants call it, which contains the vast energies absorbed by the Dream Temple, that they may feed it to the dreaded Aka’ll, and at last cause the chaos titan to awaken.

The agents of this dark act are dedicated servants to the dread Aka’ll, and include the mind flayer Skath and the gorgon Zeshtra. They are guarded by a dozen chaos cultists, all servants of the Abyssal realms. The adventurers may have to dare seeking the aid of old enemies, also trapped within the temple, to strike against the new…

Within the temple, after the Nether-Gate has been removed, the hundred trapped sleepers begin to awaken….some are too weak, drained of all lif energy and perish, but a handful are once more free…..their dreams are a confused, strange menagerie for they have shared the visions of the centuries, experienced the lives of many, but all in a curious dream state. Now, freed, they are once more to brave the mortal world, and to perhaps seek out and stop the worshippers of Aka’ll.



I generally try not to make plots to complicated these days (I mean...Hand of Vecna, Cthonic mythosesque deity, planar temple.....seriously!), but sometimes they get away from me! This was one of those (about two and a half years ago) that ended after a short run, but led into the much longer Pathfinder campaign in the Warlords of Lingusia setting that I've been running every Saturday since. 

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