Hey, everyone! This is a question to all of you DMs running the Age of Worms adventure path: What exactly (if anything) is behind all of the rubble in the basement of the mining office that your PCs may have adopted as their base? In the description in the corresponding issue of Dragon, there's a large amount of rubble listed as being against one wall, with the environs beyond being completely up to the DM. What, if anything, have you all decided is behind it?
In my campaign, I knew I wanted to do something cool and interesting. So, naturally, when the PCs tried to clean up, and they moved aside all of the rubble, they found a door. Not just an ordinary door- a large, stone and metal door, with incredibly complex machinery-looking parts just barely visible behind the strong plates making up its face. Emblazoned large on the front of the door was a symbol- a symbol of a sun inside a crescent moon.
There appeared to be a handle and a lock, but upon trying to open it, the PCs noticed that they couldn't seem to actually touch it. Whatever it was, there seemed to be some kind of a wall of force blocking them. Even after that, there would definitely be all kinds of machinery to disable before it could open. When detected by magic, it gave off strong abjuration, conjuration, and transmutation- as well as all four alignment auras (good, evil, chaos, and law), and they seemed to be bound to the abjuration effect. So far, no knowledge checks have determined anything about the door or symbol, and it doesn't seem like anybody in Diamond Lake knew about it (or kept record if they did).
At first, I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted behind that door- I knew I wanted it to be hard to get into, though. It's got a wall of force in front of it, and if anyone tries to disintegrate the Wall of Force, there's an enchantmeant with a readied Disintegrate to counterspell it once per round. And if they tried to dispel that, there's another enchantment readied to counterspell the dispel. :-P If they did manage to get past those, by either casting the corresponding spells (disintegrate and dispel magic) more than once in a round, or by casting Antimagic Field (which is the easier option to figure out, in my opinion- although it goes off of the fact that in my campaigns, Antimagic Fields DO get past walls of force), then behind the Wall of Force is a lock with a DC 40 open lock DC- and if they get that open, the door still has to be forced open, requiring a DC 30 strength check (remember, of course, that this may be without any magic items). If they aren't able to get it open in 10 rounds after unlocking it, clockwork devices re-lock it. It's meant to be difficult to figure out, and frustrating, but ultimately possible. There is, however, one way that I plan on it being openable with minimal ease (if you don't count what's required to get the key).
If you've read Into the Wormcrawl Fissure, one of the items in Dragotha's horde is a shard of stone that can be used as a key of some sort in Maure Castle. As much as I'd like to refer to a now-somewhat-obscure 2e adventure that I'm sure none of my PCs have heard of more than twice, I'm instead going to be switching this out with a key- a key with the symbol of a sun inside a crescent moon. This key, when brought within 5 feet of the door in the mining office's basement, dispels all magical protections on it, and can be used to unlock the door, as well as negating the need for a strength check (this is a magical effect of the key).
The door itself doesn't open into a room- the door itself isn't actually a door. It's a portal to a pocket demiplane, created by the first set of gods before the current ones, and all but forgotten. The mining office was once a shrine to these gods, but over centuries was destroyed along with that pantheon, and was only discovered when miners came to Diamond Lake and unearthed the passage to it. The leader of that group then built an office over it, but because of his greed told very few people about it, and since he was never able to get it open convinced himself it was just a decoration. As he left, it was forgotten once more.
The demiplane conforms itself to look like something from the memories of those entering it- they're first met with a blindling light, but once they step through it, it changes to some location that has significance to all of the viewers- if no common significant place is available, it changes to a nondescript, 30 x 30 room with a swirling pool of colors in the center. No matter what form the room takes, it may look to be of any size- but really doesn't extend farther than 30 feet in any direction. If it becomes a forest glade, for instance, any attempt to go off into the forest simply returns the inhabitant to the center again. If it becomes a room with hallways branching off, they do the same. Even if it becomes a room without branching hallways, but it appears to be larger than 30 fet in any direction, as the inhabitant walks away from the center, the room appears to get smaller, or the inhabitant appears to get bigger- in any case, he meets the nearest wall after 30 feet of walking. No known method can transport someone beyond the confines of this room. Regardless of the form the room takes, the swirling vortex is always present, although it may appear as a pool, a fountain, a TV screen, or whatever.
This pool of color is a font of reality, placed by the gods that built the demiplane. It allows one minor change to be made to reality- either altering one misfortune, creating something that wasn't normally there, bringing back a soul that has been destroyed, and so on. In game mechanics, it's effectively a Wish spell- except that it requires no XP to use, and extra-powerful wishes can be made without a chance of dangerous repurcussions. Basically, it can't screw over the PCs in any way- if they ask for something more powerful than should be allowed, then the closest thing happens, as long as that is still beneficial and in line with the original request. This could be used to restore any damage done by the Age of Worms (such as rebuilding destroyed cities), bring multiple people back from the dead (such as the thousands that may have been killed by the Ulgurstasta in the Champion's Belt), or even erase the whole ordeal from the memories of the people. The PCs can do with it what they choose, as a small reward for saving the world.
Any thoughts?
Wow. That was actually really long. Sorry. As it turns out, though, I forgot to mention a couple things. :-P
First, this font of reality is only usable once- after that, it and the demplane fade out of existence, shunting the PCs back into the basement of the mining office. The reason I'm putting this in my campaign (although my players may use it otherwise) is that when we started our campaign, we had four players- one of them, we knew, was going to have to leave after a few weeks. By the time we were getting to the end of the Three Faces of Evil, she was with us for her last session- and so, with her permission, I used the Ebon Aspect to kill her character, and she was thrown into the pool from which he came. Afterwards, when the group's paladin tried to swim after her, they found that she was gone. They aren't yet at the point where any kind of resurrection is possible, but once they are, if they try to bring her back, they'll find that she can't be- her body and soul, when thrown into the pit of absolute evil, are gone.
My hope, once they find this, is that they'll use this to bring her back- or, at least, to set some sort of peace to her and the rest of the world. If they use it for that, then good- if not, no problem. It's their campaign.
That's pretty awesome. Makes me wish my PC's had chose to live in the mining office, but once they cleared out Filge they just took up room at the Observatory. It's always an interesting thing in this game, having a magic item of a sorts but having no idea what it does, how it works, or how to unlock it's potential. Especially when you've had it since the beginning of the game and you've been wondering for 20+ levels when or even if your going to use it, or whats behind a very sophisticated door in your shanty house in Diamond Lake.
I imagine the feeling your players get is something like the one I would get when wondering what was at the top of The Dark Tower in the Stephen King books. Goodluck with that thing.
I used the basement door to run a "horror" adventure.
It's in a thread called Campaign Seed: The Cellar Door. I posted the adventure that I used as well.
If they dig away all the rubble, they find a blank wall with the default texture, with a message written on in small text:
"You shouldn't be able to get to here - Levelord"
Personally, I had nothing behind it, but that was because the kobold monk in the party had already envisioned an underground complex spreading out from under the building to serve as a sanctuary and training ground. He's going to be pissed when the town gets destroyed
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I used the basement door to run a "horror" adventure.
It's in a thread called Campaign Seed: The Cellar Door. I posted the adventure that I used as well.
Awesome adventure Big Jake! Why aren't any of yours published in Dungeon? You got chops!
FH