Go to Dream Pacts (Part 1)

FACE OF STARS, GREATER

Those who peer deep into the sky of the Dreaming can discover higher orders of understanding and hidden constellations hidden amongst its stars.

Spirit Circle: 7^th

Pact Check DC: 30

Physical Sign: In darkness you glow as if illuminated with faint starlight (providing dim illumination within 5 feet).

Influence:

• Dislike going indoors.
• Linger in old and historic locales.

Granted Powers:

• Detect Scrying: At all times while bound to the Greater Face of Stars, you immediately become aware of any attempt to observe you by means of a divination (scrying) spell or effect, as per a detect scrying spell.
• Lore of the Stars: At will you can attempt to consult the Greater Face of the Stars through its cryptic whispers (see below) to discern legends about an important person, place, or thing. This ability works as per a legend lore spell. If it would normally take more than 1 day to complete the casting of legend lore, you must form a pact with the Greater Facer of the Stars each day in order to continue your consultation of the lore of the stars.
• Reflected Starsight: As a standard action, if you become aware that you are being scried you can immediately begin scrying the scrier as if you had successfully used your starsight ability. You can do so even if you know nothing about the scrier, and you can continue to scry him even if he ends his own scry. This reversal does not end the original scry.
• Resist Scrying: Your connection with the Faces of Stars places part of you above the normal constraints of reality. At all times while bound to the Face of Stars, you gain a +5 bonus on saving throws to resist scrying attempts.
• Starsight: At will you can see and hear a creature at any distance, as per a scrying spell.
• Starsight Blast: As a standard action you can channel a blast of destructive energy through your starsight at its subject. The energy inflicts 1d4 points of damage per two effective binding levels (maximum 10d4). If the target succeeds on a Reflex save, however, the blast reflects back through the scry link and strikes you (you may attempt a Reflex save to negate the damage). In either case, the starsight blast ends the starsight.
• Whisper of the Stars: While bound to it, the Greater Face of Stars murmurs constantly into your ears, allowing you at will as a free action to make a bardic knowledge check with a bonus equal to your effective binding level + Intelligence modifier.
• Window to Elsewhere: Using your connection to the Face of Stars you can spend one hour creating a window-like aperture through which you can view another location, as per the window to elsewhere spell.

WINDOW TO ELSEWHERE
Divination
Level: Sor/Wiz 7
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: One hour
Range: See text
Effect: A one-way windowlike aperture
Duration: Permanent
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No

This spell creates a windowlike aperture through which you view another location. Unlike scrying, the window allows you to view a specific location, not a specific person. Thus, it uses a different means to determine success, more like teleporting than scrying.

The window is a vertical oval 4 feet tall. This one-way magical hole allows you to look into the desired location and observe all that transpires there, but not interact with or affect it normally. You cannot choose or change the position, orientation, or angle of the window, but if you successfully create the window to view the desired locale, it always provides a good view of the place (unless new obstructions arise in the locale).

You can use any spell that affects scrying through a window to elsewhere just as if it were a scrying spell. Any creature in the viewed location with an Intelligence of 12 or higher can notice the window by making an Intelligence check (DC 20). Even if the creature notices the window, however, it remains a one-way view, so the creature cannot look back in—he merely knows someone might be viewing him.

When creating the window, choose a place known to you for the window to look into — somewhere you have been or had described to you. To determine whether the window looks out upon the place you want it to, roll on the table on the next page.

Familiarity: “Very familiar” refers to a place where you have been very often and where you feel at home. “Studied carefully” is a place you know well, either because you’ve been there often or because you have used other means (such as scrying) to study the place. “Seen casually” is a place you have seen more than once but with which you are not very familiar. “Viewed once” is a place you have seen once, possibly using magic. “Description” is a place whose location and appearance you know through someone else’s description, perhaps even from a precise map.

“False destination” is a place that doesn’t exist, such as if you have mistranslated an ancient tome and tried to look into a nonexistent treasure vault that you believe you read about, or if a traitorous guide has carefully described an enemy’s sanctum to you wholly inaccurately. When looking into a false destination, roll 1d20+80 to obtain results on the table, rather than rolling percentile dice, since there is no real location for you to hope to see or even be off target from.

On Target: The window looks into the place you want.

Off Target: The window looks into a location a random distance away from the desired location in a random direction. Distance off target measures 1d10 × 1d10 percent of the distance between you and the original location. If the door goes to another plane, the off-target location is another plane.

Similar Area: The window looks into a location that’s visually or thematically similar to the target area. Generally, you look into the closest similar place, but since the spell has no range limit, you could conceivably look into somewhere else across the globe.

Mishap: The window’s energy explodes around you, inflicting 3d6 points of damage to you and all within 10 feet of you.

Material Component: An oval pane of quality glass with a silver frame, worth at least 500 gp

JELADORA, THE PRISMED WITCH

Jeladora dances through the Dreaming, wearing a flowing gown of jagged, ever-shifting light. She rules over the dappled forest light; the icy glare of the frozen snow; the umber beams of sunset; the soft glow of the campfire. She is quick and subtle; rarely seen save for a glimpse at a time.

Spirit Circle: 8^th

Pact Check DC: 35

Physical Sign:A prismatic vortex which swirls around the body.

Influence

• Laugh at inappropriate times.
• Cannot willingly enter areas of darkness or shadow.

Granted Powers:

• Blindsight: At all times while bound to Jeladora, out to 30 feet.
• Displacement: At will, you can bend the light around you, creating an effect identical to a displacement spell.
• Prismatic Spray: As a standard action, emitted from the eyes as per the spell.
• Prismatic Sending: As a standard action, you can send either a single image, a message of no more than twenty-five words, or a single burst of colored light which appears in the air at a spot you designate within 1 mile per effective binding level. The message is refracted into many different beams of light until it is refocused at its destination, and cannot be perceived in its passage. You can cause the message to move as slowly as 1 mile per hour or as quickly as 1 mile per round.

MURMAUTH, THE MAELSTROM

A primordial storm cloud of roiling elemental forces. Murmauth is a rageful, destructive force within the Dreaming. A destroyer of imagined worlds, endlessly seeking to unmake a realm without substance.

Spirit Circle: 7^th

Pact Check DC: 30

Physical Sign: Veins glow brightly through the skin in a cascade of colors according to the most recent element invoked (green for acid; blue for cold; purple for electricity; red for fire). If elemental strikes are rapidly invoked in succession, a roiling storm cloud will begin to gather around the binder’s head.

Influence:

• Quick to anger. Tempestuous.
• Must seek revenge for any perceived slight or insult.

Granted Powers:

• Elemental Cascade: If you use your elemental strike to charge two separate weapons with different energy types and strike a single opponent with both attacks in the same round, the target must succeed at a Fortitude save or become shaken by the elemental cascade for 1 round for every two effective binding levels.
• Elemental Strike: As a free action, you can infuse a melee weapon (or melee touch attack) with acid, cold, electricity, or fire. Your next melee attack deals an extra 1d6 points of the chosen energy type.
• Maelstrom’s Might: At all times while bound to Murmauth, you gain a +4 bonus to Strength.
• Shield of Earth: At all times while bound to Murmauth, you gain a +3 enhancement bonus to natural armor. This bonus improves to +4 at 16th level and +5 at 20^th level.

URAGOG, THE KNIGHT OF SCYTHES

The skeletal, undead Knight of the Dreaming is marked by the midnight-black armor he wears and the grim, cackling laugh which echoes through the night behind him. He is the personification of broken honor.

Spirit Circle: 7^th

Pact Check DC: 30

Physical Sign: Those who look closely at your eyes seem to see empty, skeletal eyesockets.

Influence:

• Cannot make any promise or oath.
• Must kill those who beg for mercy.

Granted Powers:

• Aura of Fear: At all times while bound to Uragog, living creatures within 5 feet must succeed at a Will save or become frightened. Creatures that make their saving throw are shaken for 1d6 rounds.
• Death Attack: At all times while bound to Uragog, you can perform a death attack by studying a target for 3 rounds and then making a sneak attack with a melee weapon. (Once you have completed the 3 rounds of study, you must make the death attack within the next 3 rounds. If you do not possess the ability to make sneak attacks, you can still make a death attack as long as you meet the normal criteria for sneak attacks.) If the attack deals damage, the victim must succeed at a Fortitude saving throw or suffer the additional effect of either paralysis or death (your choice). The victim of a paralysis effect is paralyzed for 1d6 rounds plus 1 round per effective binding level. The victim of a death effect dies.
• Death Knight’s Grace: At all times while bound to Uragog, you gain a +16 competence bonus to Hide and Move Silently checks.
• Smoke Form: As a standard action, per the gaseous form spell. (You do not lose your ability to assume smoke form even though you lose all other supernatural abilities while in gaseous form.)
• Summon Nightmare: As a standard action, you can a summon a nightmare as per a summon monster spell to serve as your mount.
• Warrior’s Proficiencies: At all times while bound to Terrior, you are considered proficient with all simple and martial weapons, all armor (heavy, medium, and light), and all shields (including tower shields).

Open Query from Twitter: What social system makes sense in a magical world where monsters are very real? Because feudalism doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Nor do castles.

If monsters that cannot be defeated by non-magical means are so prevalent, feudalism arguably makes more sense, but it will be based on the strength of magic, not the ability to afford armor / horses.

If wizards are rare, expect lots of Wizard Kings. If they’re common, perhaps magical oligarchies or you end up with Merlin’s Pentagrammic Table instead of Arthur’s Round as foundational myth.

If magical puissance is not inherited, expect lines of succession through Apprentices to become common and then heavily formalized to prevent constant succession crises. If the gift of magic is randomly bestowed, this will also create more social mobility than was true in historical feudalism, but it will be largely driven by chance.

Castles can also make sense in this setting of constant dragon-scale threats. But expect the walls to be magically warded and the construction of vast underground vaults to which people can flee from aerial assaults.

Oh! Hey! We just got dungeons under the castle!

As population centers grow beyond the point where everyone can run into the castle protection, expect the city walls to be larger and more elaborate. The distinction between “inside the walls” and “outside the walls” will be more sharply defined.

Cities will be protected by powerful artifacts or ancient protective rites like the Dragonstaff of Ahghairon, which keeps dragons out of Waterdeep, will also be common if they are possible in this cosmology. Warfare may almost require sending in small strike teams (i.e. PCs) to sabotage these wards.

In the absence of such wards — or perhaps to accent them — expect the construction of “fallout shelters” in various places around the city. One can easily imagine these excavations breaking through into natural caverns, abandoned mineworks, or even ancient tunnels of similar purpose left by some elder civilization, and thus ultimately ending up tangled together into a maze which most likely also connects to the dungeons beneath the castle. (More disturbing would be the possibility of running into something digging up from the other direction.)

Despite all these preparations, expect that humans will fail to maintain sovereignty in many places. Dragon Kings and Abolethic Collectives and Demonic Hegemonies provide alternatives, not all of them necessarily dark lords.

City-states ruled over by demigods may also be common, or were common before the gods withdrew from this world in accordance with the terms of the Godspeace.

Speaking of which, expect the balance of power between Church and State to look very different, with divine magic the only counterbalancing power to the Wizard Kings. The result, though, would be heavily dependent on the nature of the contract between spellcasting clerics and their gods.

SESSION 17D: SHILUKAR’S SECRETS

March 9th, 2008
The 7th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

Once they were satisfied that they had explored the entire complex, the group turned its attention to a more thorough search in the hope of turning up the antidote for Lord Abbercombe.

Unfortunately, the antidote was not to be found. But scattered throughout the laboratory, the warren of the spider-things, and Shilukar’s bedchamber they found a large number of notes and other papers. Many of these were written in strange characters resembling those they had found upon the obsidian statues within Ghul’s Labyrinth, and these required Ranthir’s arcane arts to decipher.

In addition to the works described in full below, they also discovered The Book of Lesser Chaos, which described in detail a technomantic art known as “chaositech”.

Read more »

Go to Part 1

Moving beyond the major villains, the Grand Game also features the participation of any number of other factions (including the PCs).

GRALHUNDS

The Gralhunds are a minor faction (at least compared to the four main villains) involved in the Grand Game. They simply hope to obtain the Vault for themselves, and use its riches to elevate their position in Waterdeep’s high society. (As described on p. 213, the Gralhunds believe that Lady Yalah should have been elevated to the Masked Lords years ago following the events in the novel Death Masks.)

Many dismiss the Gralhunds as petty schemers, but the truth is that they have had to be clever and conniving in order to punch above their weight-class in Waterdeep’s labyrinthine politics. Even now, as they play the Grand Game, they are struggling to compete with organizations that are far larger and have far more resources.

Thinking outside of the box, they embedded agents in Renaer Neverember’s household months ago. Because Renaer was estranged from his father, they knew it was a long-shot, but it paid off: The agents spotted Dalakhar’s surveillance of Renaer and identified him as an agent of Lord Neverember. When Dalakhar was abruptly pulled off of that assignment, the agents followed a hunch, followed up, and discovered he had ended up in Xanathar’s organization (presumably still on orders from Lord Neverember). The Gralhunds didn’t know that Xanathar held the Stone of Golorr, but when it was stolen they were among the first to suspect (and then know) that Dalakhar was responsible.

THE NIMBLEWRIGHT: Two days after Dalakhar stole the Stone, the Gralhunds located him and dispatched their newly acquired nimblewright to find him. In Trollskull Alley, the nimblewright uses a fireball spell to kill Dalakhar and the Zhentarim agents trailing him. The nimblewright then grabs the Stone of Golorr from Dalakhar’s corpse and flees the scene, returning to the Gralhund Villa with his prize (see Part 2).

DESIGN NOTE

The key decision here was to simplify the Gralhund back story. This quickly eliminates a whole slew of continuity errors from the campaign and simplifies a rather convoluted intrigue that the players are unlikely to ever fully fathom. But we’ve also simultaneously increased the scope of the Grand Game (by establishing that there are numerous minor factions all wrapped up in the intrigue) and given ourselves the opportunity to dynamically increase the number of factions involved in the Gralhund Villa sequence (see Part 2).

OTHER MINOR FACTIONS

OPEN LORD: The Open Lord of Waterdeep isn’t exactly a “minor” faction, but Laeral Silverhand is considerably behind the curve in the current Grand Game. She knows that Lord Neverember embezzled 500,000 dragons from the city, but as Dragon Heist begins she is under the belief that he already has the money in Neverwinter. She has agents working to recover it there, but little hope of succeeding (as she believes it has likely already been laundered into Neverember’s expansive plans for rebuilding and expanding Neverwinter). She has heard rumors of Neverember’s Enigma, but has yet to connect that with the missing dragons, and is also unaware of the Stone of Golorr (although she knows that a powerful artifact was stolen from the palace during the confused time period when Neverember was being ousted from power).

The most likely avenue for that to change — and potentially change rapidly — is through information blabbed to the City Watch. This could happen as early as Scenario 1 (depending on exactly what Renaer and/or the PCs report to the watch), but it’s quite possible for the Open Lord to never fully twig to what’s happening.

THE UNSEEN: James Introcaso, one of the original designers for Dragon Heist, wrote a supplement for the campaign called Unseen Waterdeep. It includes a new villain for the campaign — a half-doppelganger, half-illithid hybrid running a small gang of shapechangers who wants the gold in order to fund bribes to discover the identities of the Masked Lords (who he intends to assassinate and replace with his shapechangers).

If you want to crank up the byzantine complexities of the Grand Game by adding in more villainous factions, the Unseen are a great plug-and-play option for that. I’m not going to discuss them at great length, but:

• Consider introducing the Unseen by having them send a doppelganger disguised as a friend or ally of the PCs to politely pump them for information. (They may also be targeting other factions with the same tactic. Their goal is to quickly play catch-up in the Grand Game.)
• I would avoid adding the Unseen to the Gralhund Villa sequence (see Part 2). Partly to keep that complexity of the sequence under control, but mostly because adding them a little later will create the feeling that the Grand Game is attracting more attention and the stakes are ratcheting up.
• However, if the PCs have staged a successful heist on Jarlaxle’s ship without tipping him off about Neverember’s Enigma, then the Unseen can very easily slip in and fill that vacuum in any sequence where I discuss Bregan D’Aerthe’s involvement.

DESIGN NOTES

The Unseen also make a convenient exemplar for how other factions of your own design can be added to the campaign. Note that their method of introduction to the campaign is via a unique vector: The Zhentarim have kidnapped people. Cassalanters ask the PCs for help (perhaps in exchange for a percentage). The PCs have to ask Jarlaxle for help. The Gralhunds launched a violent assault. The Unseen’s introduction comes via social subterfuge and deceit. Similarly, the Unseen are also capable of deploying tactics that the other factions can’t. If you’re adding a new faction, try to make sure they’re bringing something new to the table, and not just rehashing what the current factions already provide.

BONNIE’S DOPPELGANGERS / THE BLACK VIPER: These aren’t really factions. They’re small, independent operators who almost certainly lack the resources to go up against the big players. (Of course, the same thing could be said of the PCs.)

Whatever the case may be, Bonnie’s Doppelgangers and the Black Viper are good examples of small-time players who can get swept up in the Grand Game.

• They might interfere with heists. (Either pursuing the same objective or just coincidentally breaking into the same establishment in pursuit of some other item of value.)
• They might be hired by NPCs to accomplish any number of ends. But, in particular, they might seek to steal the Stone and/or the Eyes from the PCs.
• They might also offer their services to the PCs (or be found by the PCs if they go looking for such services).

(Bonnie’s doppelgangers are described on p. 20 and are part of faction missions on p. 35 and 37. The Black Viper is described on p. 196 and is part of faction missions on p. 39 and 40. She also appears at the Cassalanter Estate, as described on p. 118.)

Go to Part 1C: Player Character Factions