Showing posts with label prophesy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label prophesy. Show all posts

Friday, April 19, 2024

Magic Item: Mirror of Dire Portent

Brahl screamed in terror and pain as he stared into the mirror. "It has me! It has me!" 

The mirror had shown him a possible future in which he would suffer a horrible outcome. In this instance an unseen creature, obscured by mists or smoke, lashed onto him with barbed tentacles and began squeezing the life from him. The image was just an image, but the pain was very real.

Stenodus had placed the mirror here on purpose, surmising that his enemies would be vain and conceited, pausing to gaze into the dire device. His own earlier perusal had warned him of the flames that would consume much of his flesh when their sorcerer attacked. 


Mirror of Portent

The tall mirror is framed in a polished brass stand and bears the word Prophesy embossed above the glass.  Looking into the mirror results in the viewer receiving a full sensory experience of a possible future event. The vision requires the viewer to make a DC14 Wisdom saving throw. Failure results in 2d6 psychic damage and when the possible future comes about, suffering the frightened condition for up to one minute, and making a DC14 Wisdom saving throw to recover from the frightened condition at the beginning of each turn after the first turn. Success on the initial saving throw results in 1d6 psychic damage and no fear condition being imposed during the encounter or event depicted. All depictions are vague and uncertain, though very real to the person gazing into the mirror.



Tuesday, February 17, 2015

New Monster - Graven Tongue

"Three miles deep, by seventeen northeast, by two miles west. That's where Tharsella said we would find her alleged oracle." Fiddry remarked.

"This cavern alone could be a mile or more across, and a hundred feet floor to ceiling. It could be anywhere in here Fiddry." Loren remarked, peering as far into the darkness as her vision would permit.

Murnon moved ahead, trying to portray confidence while shuddering slightly beneath his heavy armor. "Hope we find this thing and get what we want soon. I feel mighty uncomfortable, like something is watching."

That's when Rejjet screamed and their gnome guide Underfoot fell unconscious.

A great, moist thing, dark and warty brushed among the group physically, and something worse. Their minds reeled as if assaulted by the unknowable intruding on each person's sense of being.

Fiddry couldn't move as if frozen, paralyzed in his tracks. "RUN!" his mind yelled, nearly drowned out by the babbling cascading within his head in eons of lost languages. Ideas, flashed in warped, unreal imagery, through Loren's eyes. She cried tears of blood and covered them with her hands as if pleading for the agony of sight to end. And end it did as her vision left her. Murnon, writhing about upon the floor of the cavern was screaming about the worms he felt sure were devouring him from within.

It seemed like hours before their nausea passed, and they could make even the slightest sense of what had transpired. All felt as if some part of their essence had been taken from them or violated horribly. None of them dared speak of the things lingering in their minds. It would be a week before they began to guess at what the oracle meant, and longer before they gained an inkling about their role in the prophesy.

New Monster: The Graven Tongue
The Graven Tongue is thought to be an ancient flesh construct left behind by foul beings beyond understanding, though it may in truth really be a tasting organ protruding into this reality from a being beyond the world.

The tongue is a flesh construct 135 feet long and varies in thickness from 1 foot at the tip to 90 feet at the base with tendrils like veins stretching further from the base and into the cavern ceiling.  It has a mottled coloration including tones of purple, black, ochre, blood red, and flesh, with indecipherable runes carved into the slimy surface. A spell that allows understanding some of the runes will cause those reading them to suffer additional damage (half with save) and a level of fatigue.

The Graven Tongue hangs down from ceiling, reaching out to "taste" creatures passing within its sensory range, detecting them by their life or mental essence. Anyone touched directly by the appendage suffers a level of fatigue in addition to the other affects. In the process of tasting creatures, they are slammed with incredible volumes of information, most of which they cannot possibly comprehend initially, but gradually some information may become clear enough to be acted upon, rightly or wrongly.

Encountering the Graven Tongue causes a one time amount of physical damage appropriate for a moderate challenge to the party.  Creatures are also afflicted with at least one condition determined randomly. For one hour after encountering the Graven Tongue, all creatures have the poisoned condition.

Random Condition Table (roll a D20)

1 - Blinded
2 - Charmed (DM should determine the meaning of this for their plot)
3 - Deafened
4 - Frightened
5 - Grappled (the tongue spends a round enjoying some flavor, creature suffers extra damage)
6 - Incapacitated
7 - Invisible - (creature is straddling the line between worlds for one round)
8 - Paralyzed
9 - Petrified (creature is merged with the nature of another plane, turned to an element or combination useful for the plot)
10 - Poisoned
11 - Prone
12 - Restrained (the beyond holds fast to the creature, as if studying it, for one round)
13 - Stunned
14 - Unconscious
15 - Roll twice combining conditions if possible
16 - Roll twice combining conditions if possible
17 - Roll until determining a condition, creature takes extra 2d6 mental damage
18 - Roll until determining a condition, creature takes extra 2d8 mental damage
19 - Roll until determining two conditions, combining them if possible, and creature takes extra 2d4 mental damage
20 - Roll three times for conditions, combine them if possible, conditions persist until magically cured (restoration?)

The Graven Tongue does not engage in actual combat. If damaged by attacks causing a total of 25 points, it withdraws from the world on the following round.