So one of the characters in an upcoming game (Serpent's Skull) comes from a family of drow sent on a suicide mission to clear the aboleths from the mid layers of the Drowning Stones in the darklands. To their credit they've been able to clear and secure a valuable arcane laboratory and claim a freaky powerful magic item/artifact (so powerful the family has sent their daughter back home via the surface world to avoid losing the artifact to other darklands factions in order to use the item to leverage the redemption of her house).
So I've been researching aboleths like crazy. I like the idea that their anatomy is different enough that their magic items would be difficult for a humanoid to interface with--basically you need to reverse engineer it or create some kind of adapter, but other than that and some description of aboleth runes I don't get much sense of what their magic items would be like. I looked at high end psionic items, but they're mostly "Venom-suit" style skins you can wear, psicrowns or forehead crystals with somewhat unimpressive powers. I want something big that's worthy of the absolution of a whole drow minor house.
I looked over the top end psionic spells for inspiration but mostly it's Wish or plane-hopping, or else things that aren't that impressive. I want this to be game-changing.
Mostly it just needs to sound cool and worthwhile because 1) anatomically the PC won't be able to use it anyway and 2) it will likely be lost (permanently or at least for a good while) as soon as the first events of the AP kick in. So balance isn't a thing. I just want something gonzo cool that isn't Wish or plane-hopping (because I tend to overuse those two in games)...
In and of itself, the artifact may be nothing special, however it may be part of the greater artifact that allowed the Aboleths to link their magic and summon Oblivion from the skies beyond.
One of the tricks, of course, being that it doesn't work on its own, but, in reality, it's the main piece. It'd be kind of like people from, say, pre-Industrial U.S.A finding a Jet Engine and realizing a) this things the most powerful machine they've ever seen, b) it's missing parts (and thus isn't functional on it's own), but, c) we could build the missing parts. That would have sparked international wars, if the existence of such powerful technology got out.
Another analogy would be, say, a space-rocket. Not the launch pad, not the control systems, just the rocket, with juuuuuuuust enough information material to let them know how to build the other stuff.
Alternatively, you could "spin" it (in your own mind) as if they'd suddenly found a modern-day tank (or perhaps a post-modern-day tank) with detailed information on how to make shells (that it lacks) and refine fuel (that is currently empty), or at least they believe they could figure it out (note: it doesn't matter if they can or even if they ever will - the belief is more than enough to spur them into such action).
In any of the cases above (much like for the drow scenario you're going for), if they finished their project, once they rebuild the thing, they'd literally just hit the "I Win" button for practically any war they'd want (either that, or accidentally increase technology far more rapidly than intended in general). That... is more than worth it, I think.
The artifact itself can be rather small - unlike the examples given above, it doesn't have to be a huge thing, physically, just as long as it holds the promise of real, ultimate power.
In any event, you'd definitely have gods going after the the thing - they're all reeeeeeeaaaaaaaally interested when something shakes up the entirety Golarion. After all, they don't really want Rovagug to escape now, do they? :)
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Heck the gods don't really need to go after it. They just need to deep six the ship off of Smuggler's Shiv. Gods are subtle like that. Heh.
That said, really what you're talking about is something like a psi storing crystal (called cognizance crystals in the books) with a huge unheard of resevoir of psionic energy inside...hundreds maybe even thousands of psi points worth that would represent a vast sum of raw power--equivalent to a rocket engine. It doesn't do anything itself but the power could boost a psionic power to crazy levels.
That's interesting.
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For an artifact, you need to go further afield.
Artifacts are game-breaking in some way. They go beyond the rules, they break the rules, they create new rules. Artifacts trump mortal magic, mortal logic, and mortal expectations.
Many of the artifacts presented are simply 'impossibly powerful magic items' -- they break the rules in fairly boring or staid ways. Ability bonuses beyond +6, total weapon bonuses beyond +10 (or at +10). For stuff like that, you can look up the 3.5 'Epic Level Handbook'. And, if all you want is sheer power -- then that might suffice for you.
More interesting is some kind of game-breaking, world-breaking weird stuff. Consider the m*** f***** nullification annulus (I forget the exact name) -- it did some minor interesting things along the lines of dispel, break enchantment -- but eventually it built up enough charge to completely and utterly nullify anything. A star, for example. Or another artifact (which IIRC was actually its destruction method ...). Or a diety. Nullify the Eye of Abondigo? The Worldwound? Treerazor? Arazni? Geb? Nex's Refuge?
Who wouldn't be chasing that thing down?
Do you intend for the players to get their hands on this artifact?
What's the worst thing that could happen to the players? And what's the weirdest way it could happen? That's a good place to start designing yon artifact.
Good luck.
MI
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Do you intend for the players to get their hands on this artifact?
What's the worst thing that could happen to the players? And what's the weirdest way it could happen? That's a good place to start designing yon artifact.
Requirements for the artifact: 1) be the sort of thing whose effects are so impressive that to obtain it they are willing to absolve the PC's family and allow them back into drow society 2) powerful enough and broken enough and cool enough it makes the PC's go: "DUDE!" when I describe it.
But yeah all the stuff you've mentioned about artifacts is true. Most are pretty meh. I really want something crazy powerful.
Will the PCs get it? One of the PCs will start with it--and because they've Identified it, she will know what it does, but because it's designed to fit on a 30' eel monster she won't be able to wear it, and thus unable to use it. The shipwreck at the start of the game makes it pretty sure she'll lose track of it for a while--unless she can dupe the others into going to fetch it out of the wreckage for her.
That said, were they to get the artifact and reshape it to work with their anatomy, there's nothing I'd love more than to have a well earned giant scoop of Power Level 99999 get dropped on the game. My hope isn't to make getting it impossible--if it's in the game there's a chance they can figure it out. Let the chips fall where they may.
But my intent really only to have a really cool magic McGuffin to get her on the boat.
Just a couple of thoughts...
1) Time travel device/portal
2) Massive mind link - given enough time and effort could either enslave or gain access to millions of minds.
Good luck!
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I notice that Polymorph Any Object would allow a character to use this aboleth device for 12 hours. An animated aboleth effigy construct armor, or something similar, might also work depending on what you as GM want the players to succeed with.
In one of my own games, one of the artifacts was a pylon that supplied infinite psionic power (in point of fact, it was one of a set of one-hundred and seventeen pylons whose original function had been to euthanize all air-breathing creatures with an INT of 3 or higher to reset the experiment-space ...). The pylon the characters encountered was (deliberately, as it happens) damaged. The leakage empowered spells and conjurations as well, so the demon-enslaving gnolls (who broke it) built an interesting (to me, anyway) culture around enslaved demons. They were having a grand time until psionic humans landed and showed the gnolls that infinite psionic power trumped even a huge number of enslaved demons. Of course the pylon shattered completely a few centuries after that, destroying the human civilization that had been built around an infinite power resource :-|
But something designed as a suit suggests mobility or protection ...
Here's my very third thought (the first two didn't make it past my own 'good idea/bad idea' censors): Let us assume that, in the deeper depths of the negative material plane, spheres of annihilation are, if not common, not uncommon. The aboleth used this device to find and retrieve spheres of annihilation. So, the suit ...
- Provides artifact-level protection against negative-energy based attacks and effects (including spheres of annihilation)
- Provides an artifact-level bonus to control a sphere of annihilation
- Permits the wearer to bring a sphere of annihilation with her when she plane shifts
- Permits the wearer to plane shift to and from the deeper depths of the negative material plane.
The device could be made less player-friendly by removing the plane shift ability (after all, any aboleth worth its tentacles hardly needs a mere device to accomplish so plebeian a task).
The overall fearfulness factor of the device could be increased by changing
Permits the wearer to bring a sphere of annihilation with her when she plane shiftsto
Permits the wearer of the device to bring a sphere of annihilation with her when she shifts from the negative material plane
This means that using this power always ups the threat -- there's no correspondingly easy way to get rid of a sphere of annihilation. Maybe the aboleth had some other means of disposing of spheres of annihilation?
Your thoughts?
Cheers,
MI
edit: Clarify ambiguous reference: depths of such a place to deepest depths of the negative material plane.
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Given how aboleths in Golarion seem to enjoy evolutionary biology, a powerful artifact of theirs might play with evolution (in the Lovecraftian/comic book/pulp sense, rather than the modern scientific one)...something with the power to "evolve" creatures right out of their bodies into beings of pure thought or star travelers, or knock them "back" into apes or a puddle of prokaryotic cells.
Heck the gods don't really need to go after it. They just need to deep six the ship off of Smuggler's Shiv. Gods are subtle like that. Heh.
That said, really what you're talking about is something like a psi storing crystal (called cognizance crystals in the books) with a huge unheard of resevoir of psionic energy inside...hundreds maybe even thousands of psi points worth that would represent a vast sum of raw power--equivalent to a rocket engine. It doesn't do anything itself but the power could boost a psionic power to crazy levels.
That's interesting.
Oh, actually I know all about Cognizance Crystals (been a huge fan of psionics since 3.5, preferring it to magic by a fair margin), but that's... not exactly what I mean (though you could feel free to take it that way).
Rather, what I'm talking about is more like an orange prism ioun stone (to use an in-game equivalence) more than anything else - capable of amplifying stuff that's already there, but requiring some sort of chassis (in this case, the caster(s)) to work properly... but in any event, I mean on a much, much larger scale than any cognizance crystal (which I'd kind of euivilate to 'fuel'), ioun stone, or any other normal device.
But really, that's just quibbling over the perfect intent of my vague analogy (and it can work just as well as defining it as a metamagic/metapsionic rod or something similar, if applied to, say, a powerful variant of Meteor Swarm... or maybe it's more like a wand of Meteor Swarm to be augmented by other things).
I entirely agree with your point about the deities, though, and really that's kind of what I was hinting at: the gods would find it important enough to interfere, even if indirectly (or, alternatively, it could give you a good reason to use the CR 15 creatures that appear in the bestiaries of (if I remember correctly) books 2, 4, and 5, if you know which ones I mean*).
Also worth noting, they'd not long leave it in the water off the coast of the Shiv. Aboleths live there, you know.
And speaking of... it would be interesting if they managed to get that puppy all the way to the forgotten city.**
Roadblocks, of course, could range from it having a mind of its own (either being a sentient item like the rules normally have, or more of a willfully-intentioned item without a specific mind of its own, more like the One Ring from my reading of Tolkien), to being actually alive (it would be exceedingly interesting if it was a symbiont made specifically to work with Aboleths, like in 3.5 rules mixed with cursed item rules - it wouldn't need to be sentient, either, here, or even have a mind, as it could be like an ooze), or something similar (which would explain why it's so hard to get back after the events on the Shiv.
It may be interesting to 'convince' the item (whatever that may mean, if given a level of sentience or even lacking it altogether) to work for the drow. Also, you're probably thinking of this already, but it could lead to some very interesting connections later in the campaign.
You may want to check the Serpent Skull subforums before starting this AP as, when I ran it (as with many others), it was rough (if fun).
And, of course, if they have it, a certain demon-lord's protoge they'll meet later on who already has a record of stealing and sitting on super-weapons (most notably the whatever-number-it-was Army of Exploration from Taldor) is going to have some interesting urgings, as might a certain something that's trying to get... *ahem*... a-head of the game, if you will. ()***
Anyway, you may also wish to check out the Second Darkness AP, if you can. I've not delved too deeply into it myself, but it's tied pretty directly to this one, I understand.
Also note the fact that the PCs are expected to (potentially) have more than one artifact on-hand later, already.
Anyway, I'd suggest that my suggested artifact/device would be more akin to one-of-several (a component, of sorts), that links up with others to amplify the over-all effect. With, say, cognizance-crystal-like fuel, a large number of similar devices that cast a variant of Meteor Swarm (that actually calls the meteors instead of creating them), and a set of amplifiers (such as super-metamagic rods, and/or an excessive amount of orange prism ioun stones) you've got the recipe for an Earthfall-like effect right there (and maybe with a hint of Primal magic events, you can explain something like the Starstone).
Anyhoo, just throwing that kind of stuff out there. :)
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