Has anyone developed anything on the Order of the Silver Dream mentioned in LoO on page 53? Will their be any details on this in the hardback?
Has anyone developed anything on the Order of the Silver Dream mentioned in LoO on page 53? Will their be any details on this in the hardback?
Can you give us a bit of a description and maybe some of your own ideas?
Delvesdeep
Creative Director
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There isn't anything about the Order of the Silver Dream in the hardcover.
There IS some info about them in issue #112 of Dungeon; the Order of the Silver Dream had a cult cell in Maure Castle once upon a time. The short version of this cult is that they were a group who learned how to enter the Astral Plane in their dreams. They wern't good guys... the ones in Maure Castle transformed into devourers.
If there is no other information than Mauve Castle and the AP James would know so...Have a go yourself if you are keen. I know I for one would find the organisation interesting reading.
Have a look in the Manual of the Planes about the Astral Plane (actually I think the DMG has a brief write up too), such spells as Astral Projection and perhaps devise some abilities and motivations from the organisation from this reading. Even creatures such as the Myriad (the mirror travelling people found in the Demonskar Legacy) or the plane of Dreams could offer some ideas along these lines.
In any event go by the reasoning - 'if it hasn't been made yet... then I will make it'. Works for me ;)
Delvesdeep
Thanks for the encouragement Delve. I may develop it further, it depends on how the one monk I have in my party (already 7thlvl) feels about it. No sense putting all that work into it if no one is going to use it. It does seem to really fit in with some of the themes in the adventure path. Just brainstorming now, but you could have an evil (ie castle M)sect that is allied with the cagewrights who have several monks very high level monks amogest them. Somehthing to think about.
There IS some info about them in issue #112 of Dungeon; the Order of the Silver Dream had a cult cell in Maure Castle once upon a time. The short version of this cult is that they were a group who learned how to enter the Astral Plane in their dreams. They wern't good guys... the ones in Maure Castle transformed into devourers.
I skimmed Dungeon 112, but missed the reference. Anyone able to give me the page number?
I did some digging in Dungeon Issue #112. It appears that the Order of the Silver Dream (from SCAP) may not be the same as the group mentioned in the Maure Castle adventure. At any rate, here's what I found out about the "Cult of Silver Dreams," in case anyone is interested:
- After the Twin Cataclysms, thousands of Suel fled eastward.
- Of the Mages of Power, only Slerotin the Wily, The One Possessed, survived the Rain of Colorless Fire. He was responsible for creating a miles-long tunnel which allowed eleven Suel tribes to flee their devastated homeland for safety in the east. Sletotin died within weeks.
- The Disciples of Slerotin, his eight mighty apprentices formed House Maure and ruled from Maure Castle for decades before sealing themselves within their castle. They took their knowledge of Power Magic with them.
- In ancient days, the second level of Maure Castle served as the compound of four ancient Suel cults: the Cult of Silver Dreams, the Cult of Malcanthet (the Queen of Succubi), the Cult of Long Shadows and the Cult of the Purple Stone (which worshipped the ancient and unknowable Purple Stone).
- The cults came to a tragic end many decades ago when the Purple Stone tried to subvert them all, along with the nearby masters of Maure Castle. The Maures responded by sealing the Purple Stone and all the cultists within the dungeon and raising the Unopenable Doors to prevent anyone from coming to their rescue.
- In the "Cells of Silver Dreams," the Cult of Silver Dreams met and discussed their latest dream explorations and visions. The speaker sat atop some pillows while the other cultists listened raptly from their seat on nearby benches.
- The presence of the Cult of Silver Dreams can taint a location. Anyone sleeping in such a tainted area may have the misfortune of contacting the ancient insane spirits of the long-dead cultists in their dreams - catapulting them into the Astral Plane.
- The spirits of the cultists of the Silver Dream have been transformed into devourers.
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This is what I did with the Order (burrowing from and expanding on ideas in the Shackled City Hardcover and in the Age of Worms Adventure Path):
The Order of the Silver Dream
The Order of the Silver Dream was founded 2200 years ago by an elf who experienced a mysterious dream about a terrible undead threat growing in the jungles near Cauldron. At that time, Kyuss's dread empire of Kuluth-Mar was rising. The elves did not have the power to directly challenge Kyuss’s empire at that time, but they began to train warriors in mystic and marshal training, developing elite warriors (monks and psychic warriors, arcane archers and bladedancers) The elf who had this first dream of warning is remembered now by the Order only as The First Dreamer (his true name is perhaps known to the eldest of the Order, or perhaps has been lost to time and forgotten). That dream of warning was actually a message sent by the angel Nidrama, who perceived the great threat to the elves of the region posed by Kyuss and his undead.
After Kyuss’s living cultists perished en masse 2000 years ago, and the remaining undead inhabitants of Kuluth-Mar began to spread, the Order was the only thing containing the rampant spread of these undead hordes to the rest of the world. But the containment seemed doomed to fail, so the Dreaming Council was convened, and the most powerful elven wizards and priestesses came together to cast a massive spell to summon a celestial army to aid the elves. Together, the celestial host and the elven armies, lead by the Order’s elite warriors, laid siege to the Spire of Long Shadows, and created the Obsidian Circle that surrounds the Spire to this day. But this required the sacrifice of the celestials and the leaders of the Order.
Then, 690 years ago, Surabar Spellmason’s friend and competitor, Kozomagon Lidu, the leader of Liduton near Redgorge, tried to use the power of a nearby kopru necropolis to help defeat Nabthatoron’s demon army. This backfired, turning all the inhabitants of the town of Liduton into undead of various sorts. Kozomagon herself became a lich, while the town elders became spectres and ghosts, and the populace became ghouls, wraiths, shadows and other lesser undead. While most of these undead seem bound to the now haunted, ruined town, and never leave it, some (newcomers that have taken refuge there) use it as a base from which to strike at the land of the living. A coven of vampires now dwells there, and has members throughout the region.
The Order eventually moved in to try to wipe out the undead of Liduton (now called the Haunted Village). They failed. While some in the Order survived and fled, they've been hunted ever since by the vampires they encountered there (including Mhad, the vampire that is now allied to the Cagewrights).
In turn, the Order has tried to kill the vampires, looking for their hidden coffins and destroying them. This has been a kind of secret guerrilla warfare that few know about. Unfortunately, it is much easier to make new vampires and vampire spawn than to train new mystic warriors, so perhaps the balance has favored the undead.
Now the Necrocants have moved into the Haunted Village and allied with the undead, and have forged an alliance with Thifirane of the Cagewrights as well. This does not bode well for the Order of the Silver Dream.
Values of the Order
The Order values all life, and is against killing unless necessary. However, they generally don't believe in interfering with others killing each other unless it is the helpless and innocent that are being killed. (For example, if a member of the Order captured a living prisoner, he would favor not killing the prisoner, but he would not enter combat with an ally to save an evil prisoner from death if words failed to convince the companion to spare the prisoner's life.)
The Order teaches that all life is one and all life is precious, and that there are forces of death and undeath, evil and destructive beyond mortal comprehension, which are hungry to destroy all that is good in the world. The Order teaches that all living beings should unite to fight this overpowering evil, which according to prophesy is fated to most likely win some day against the living world.
The Order reveres celestial beings as guardians of life against the dark forces.
Headquarters
The headquarters of the Order is the hidden Monastery of the Silver Dream, about one day’s travel from Cauldron. The location is kept hidden to prevent attack from the undead foes of the Order. Even members of the Order are not shown the way to the Monastery until they are deemed powerful enough to resist easy capture or domination by vampires.
Symbols and Dress
The symbol of the Order is a silver representation of an elf sleeping on a quarter-moon. Members of the Order sometimes carry an amulet or ring with this symbol or have the symbol tattoed discretely somewhere on their bodies.
While in the Monastery of the Silver Dream, members of the Order dress in simple white or silver robes. The elders often tattoo themselves with elven and celestial runes on their faces and bodies. However, when traveling, members of the Order often dress like commoners or adopt other disguises as needed. They especially need to be discreet when traveling through areas where their enemy may try to assassinate them. Members of the Order need to avoid giving themselves away too easily to dominated servants of the vampires that hunt for the Order.
I'm still around. I'm glad this was useful to you.
In my campaign, the players just recently finally faced Mhad for the first time. My Order of the Silver Dream monk/figther enjoyed fighting her, though he was not able to hit her too often. The arcane trickster in the party had to step in to blast her with some magic missiles in order to drive her away from the fight with the rest of the villains in Thifirane's house.
A couple of weeks before the players had to take on Thifirane, they found out through the monk's Order contacts that the Order of the Silver Dream had launched an attack on a whorehouse in Sasserine that turned out to be a den of vampires headed by Mhad as the matron of the house. The vampire spawn were killed but Mhad got away. Then they heard rumors that a pale female elf was in Cauldron visiting Thifirane, and they guessed it was Mhad.
I look forward to the party's next encounter with her in Shatterhorn. I think for that encounter I'll give her a few vampire helpers (especially since the PCs killed her dread wraith pet in Thifirane's house).
I'm thinking of trying to stat out an Affiliation per the Player's Handbook 2 rules for the Order.
zoroaster100, I hope you're still about, as I want to say thanks for your fluff of the Order. I've got a character who's just started an exalted monk, and the stuff you've written is really helpful for me writing his introductory background. And, of course, working out ways to mess with him later...
Here is what I wrote to the player of the monk when his character stopped at the Order's monastery for news about the war with the vampires after they returned from Occipitus, a couple of weeks before the "Party at House Rhiavadi":
You can visit the monastery while others are scribing scrolls, etc. The monastery is bustling with excitement when you arrive. The monks welcome you gladly, and listen to your stories of the Abyss with interest. They are greatly saddened by the news about the massacre at Redgorge. The monks share with you they have had an exciting success against their enemy vampires. In fact, their victory was particularly sweet because it struck against the interests of one of the most hated enemy of the Order of Silver Dreams.
In ancient times, there was a female elf who betrayed the Order to a pack of vampires in exchange for promises of wealth and power. She led the vampires to a hideout of the Order, where the vampires fed on the elven warriors, catching them by surprise. The vampires turned on the elf woman, however. Instead of wealth, they instead gave her undeath, and turned her into one of them. Since then, the Order has especially marked her for destruction. But always she has escaped. She likes to set up entire networks of charmed servants and vampire spawn wherever she goes, and rarely shows herself.
Over the centuries she had acquired much wealth on her own from her victims. Her true name is not used by the Order, and instead she is called Mhad, which in Elvish means something like "Accursed."
Recently (a couple of decades ago), the Order discovered where she had most recently settled. She had established herself in Sasserine itself, posing as a reclusive Madame of a prestigious whorehouse on the docks. Many of the prostitutes were in fact vampire spawn, and many of the clientelle left the whorehouse enslaved to the vampire mistress's will. The Order sent in an elite team to attack the vampire den. They pretended to be "clients" and struck all at once, staking the many vampire spawn before they could escape. They even
killed a couple of full-fledged vampires. The Order discovered a big pile of wealth in the whorehouse, and believe that this
repesented Mhad's own treasure trove, the wealth she so prized. The only disappointment was that the elf vampire mistress escaped.
Just when the Order had her, an incorporeal undead of great power emerged from a nearby wall and attacked the Order members long enough for Mhad to escape. Still, her entire network of spies and agents in Sasserine, which she built up over the last century, has been disrupted. It is believed that Mhad fled Sasserine. But it is not known to the Order if she fled into the wilderness or to a nearby town such as Cauldron or Kingfisher Hollow.