(Advice): Activating the Leng Device Endgame

[Askar Avari]

So, back since Book 3, my players have been pretty much on the side of the villains, especially Lucretia (covered in detail here. As such, they ultimately sided with Mokmurian, slaughtered Mokmurian's branded forces as part of a farce of a siege, and now stand at Runeforge's entrance hoping to find the tools they need to kill any rival Runelord force that might appear. They don't know that Karzoug is alive, but they suspect it.

My players may or may not decide to kill Karzoug once they are certain how he plans to return, but they are dead-set on activating the Leng Device. It's the one goal every member of the party has personally shared and is preparing actively for. They've even all undergone the sihedron ritual in order to send their soul's greed to the runewell upon death because they believe in what they're doing.

Given the party's committed efforts to fill the Runewell, I absolutely plan to have that happen. However, I'd still like to give my players a climactic final conflict, and I think the obvious source of it comes from the Denizens of Leng and the Leng Device itself.

Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition pg. 354 wrote:

Anyone who attempts to damage or manipulate the Leng Device has a 30% chance of creating a small explosion affecting all within 5 feet and dealing 6d6 points of force damage (no save). This causes no noticeable damage to the device and has no effect on the portal—the device itself is a major artifact and cannot be destroyed without traveling to Leng, where its unknowable foundations lie shrouded in secret monasteries.

Before the runewell is entirely filled (and thus the Leng Device is activated, according to the Continuing the Campaign Appendix on pg. 368), I plan on giving my PCs the opportunity to visit the Leng Device to learn more about it - and learn that it has been calibrated to a totally different time, if they study it carefully). If they slay or banish the Denizens of Leng, instead of temporarily creating a hole in spacetime that a Hound enters through, they instead create a portal to one such "secret monastery" where the "foundations" of the device lie.

Assuming this is for a level 17 (if the party is fully aligning themselves with Karzoug) or 18 (if the party fought and defeated Karzoug without killing him), what could be suitable for cultists intent on bringing back Mhar, capable and willing to manipulate even a Runelord? I know the Denizens of Leng serve the Moon Beasts of Leng (and I've even build Moon Beast Cultist stat blocks), but I have no idea what sort of creature or set pieces to have at the center of all of this. I've read Book 5 of Shattered Star for inspiration, and while it gave me some ideas, the encounters and environmental details won't really do for a Monastery of Mhar.

I think my other option is to make re-calibrating the Leng Device to its intended target (Xin-Shalast 10,000 years ago) relatively simple, but taking enough time that another Runelord or their servants could make a play (Krune and the Cult of Lissala, or Thulos's army of giants). In those cases, I feel much more confident about filling out the forces and such, but less of a clear picture as to how to make a scenario out of it.

I plan to run Return of the Runelords in the future, so I don't plan on involving

Return of the Runelords spoilers:

Sorshen, Xanderghul, or Belimarius in this regardless of what route I take, although the Cult of the Peacock Spirit seems like a fine addition.

TL;DR My players are dedicated to activating the Leng Device and are working with Karzoug's forces to do so. How do I make a climactic conflict that stands between them and success? Ideally level 17 or 18.

[BishopMcQ]

Leng is inherently linked to the Great Old Ones and the Outer Gods. This could lead to other forces sensing the Leng device activating and reaching out across time and space.

Similarly, defeating inevitables and agents of Pharasma who are trying to maintain this reality against the outer forces.

It could be that as they do battle, they become locked away in time and you tie them back in when you do the Return campaign.

[Tinalles]

Into the Nightmare Rift has a gazetteer of Leng, which may be relevant. For more on the source material, I recommend reading The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H.P. Lovecraft. It's got a bunch of info about Leng and its Denizens. Be prepared for page after page after page of description, and very little dialogue.

[Askar Avari]

I unfortunately think I've already read all Pathfinder-canonical information about Leng (from the Into the Nightmare Rift article, RotR, and Shattered Star). I may end up reading the Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath if it comes to that; I'd like any sort of final dungeon my party does there to be rewarding.

Here's sort of what I'm working with:

- If the party travels to Leng, they ought to be able to find the 'foundation' of the Leng Device somewhere within a monastery.

- Given that the Denizens of Leng's goals ultimately serve Mhar, and they are typically servants of the Moon Beasts, I can say these will be the main inhabitants of the monastery. The Denizens are Advanced Denizens of Leng Rogues (Template), CR 11, and the Moon Beasts are 16 HD Moonbeast Clerics (Template), CR 15.

- Inside or at the rim of Mhar's Fossa is where I would place the monastery - most likely inside to be closer to where Mhar is trapped in the Storval Thinning. This also places the two locations geographically close, albeit in different dimensions, so the prep work the party used to get up to the Spires of Xin-Shalast come in handy.

Mhar's Fossa, Into the Nightmare Rift pg. 68:

This tunnel of gargantuan proportions opens at the end of a furrow descending from Kadath high above. It marks the route taken by the Great Old One Mhar when he attempted to bore directly into the Material Plane near the Storval Thinning before becoming trapped in a stony gestation. Numerous side passages branch off from this central tunnel, leading to various pocket dimensions and vaults. No one has dared plumb the farthest depths of this excavation for fear that Mhar still restlessly waits somewhere within.

- Given that this monastery will most likely be underground, I feel like a bhole or shoggoth is a reasonable enemy.

- My main thought for a major antagonist puppeteering events on Leng's side is a Conquerer Worm, the result of the former Runelord of Greed (Haphrama) and his apprentice Vhage's soul being cast into "the void between planes." I would prefer some sort of CR 20-21 creature similar to a revenant, but a Conquerer Worm could easily explain the many denizens aiding the work, and would make a formidable threat in a straightforward combat. A CR 20 Devourer or Dybbuk also feels appropriate, but would require me to rebuild them.

Summary Ask: Does anyone have any ideas for A) a powerful, but fightable entity that could be behind Mhar's resurrection? All of the Old Ones are so powerful I can't use them as a simple enemy, and Mhar doesn't appear to have any allies, and B) anyone have any architectural ideas for a subterranean monastery? I'm thinking basalt and obsidian, and may just need to read some Lovecraft for this sort of thing, but have little idea beyond that.

More Discussion on the Leng Device:

Ultimately, the PCs' objective here would be to calibrate the Leng Device to the correct date - which means they essentially get to pick what date they'd like to bring through time. I'm essentially treating this as a use of the Scepter of Ages, except it affects all of Xin-Shalast, has a Kn: History DC of 50, and takes 1 month to complete. The check is made secret, and I consult the Scepter of Ages "Accidental Time Travel" chart in the result of a failure.

Additionally, by investigating the Foundation of the Leng Device, the party could learn that the Leng Device functions via siphoning from the Runewell of Greed, and there is no activating it without first freeing Karzoug (but NOT that killing Karzoug first will destroy the runewell.) If my party kills Karzoug without realizing this, I think they'll be immensely frustrated, but I'll certainly keep that possibility in mind.

I also don't have a good idea of what the Leng Device's destruction requirements ought to be.

One of my players has recently asked if it would be possible for them to become a Runesage Wizard via retraining, under the conditions that they retrieve spellbooks and magical artifacts from every Thassilonian school in Runeforge. They mentioned that, if so, they'd be interested in trying to become a new Runelord of Greed and ruler of New Shalast. I'm thinking that will almost certainly not work, but if my players are interested in after-level-18 play, I may entertain it for a final conflict with Thulos.

Thulos Ideas:

After the enlistment and slaughter of the Storval Plateau's stone giants, hill giants, and ogres, the more powerful giants in the area began to prepare themselves for war against Mokmurian and the PCs. While many fire giants will pulled into serving Cadrilkasta, the Taiga giants turned to the art of Indarugant creation to create warriors who could stand against and defeat Mokmurian. However, Mokmurian's forces were decimated, and for a while, the Taiga giants convinced themselves they had overreacted.

But when the party's enemies warn them that Mokmurian's forces were never the real threat, but that armies will soon march from the Kodar Mountains all over Varisia (including rune giants), even the powerful Taiga Giants and Indarugants turn to Thulos, the detestable lich, to put this threat to rest at last. With their help, Thulos accelerates his plans to bring Runelord Zutha into the world, so they might do what must be done in time.

Of course, they can't make it to Xin-Shalast in time, even if Thulos somehow brought Zutha back - instead, they turn to conquering Varisia, to cut Xin-Shalast off from any and all resources in the event of its return. Then must the PCs turn their attention to Thulos's tower-fortress (devoid of air, as a defense for its undead and construct inhabitants) to defeat the last true threat standing between them and the restoration of Shalast - either as Karzoug's champions, or perhaps as Shalast's leaders.

[Tinalles]

In this excerpt, the protagonist Randolph Carter has been taken prisoner by denizen of Leng, and flown to the heart of the Plateau of Leng on the back of a shantak. It may give you some ideas what a "monastery" is like in Leng.

Excerpt from the Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath:

But the shantak flew on past the fires and the stone huts and the less than human dancers, and soared over sterile hills of grey granite and dim wastes of rock and ice and snow. Day came, and the phosphorescence of low clouds gave place to the misty twilight of that northern world, and still the vile bird winged meaningly through the cold and silence. At times the slant-eyed man talked with his steed in a hateful and guttural language, and the shantak would answer with tittering tones that rasped like the scratching of ground glass. All this while the land was getting higher, and finally they came to a windswept table-land which seemed the very roof of a blasted and tenantless world. There, all alone in the hush and the dusk and the cold, rose the uncouth stones of a squat windowless building, around which a circle of crude monoliths stood. In all this arrangement there was nothing human, and Carter surmised from old tales that he was indeed come to that most dreadful and legendary of all places, the remote and prehistoric monastery wherein dwells uncompanioned the high-priest not to be described, which wears a yellow silken mask over its face and prays to the Other Gods and their crawling chaos Nyarlathotep.

The loathsome bird now settled to the ground, and the slant-eyed man hopped down and helped his captive alight. Of the purpose of his seizure Carter now felt very sure; for clearly the slant-eyed merchant was an agent of the darker powers, eager to drag before his masters a mortal whose presumption had aimed at the finding of unknown Kadath and the saying of a prayer before the faces of the Great Ones in their onyx castle. It seemed likely that this merchant had caused his former capture by the slaves of the moon-things in Dylath-Leen, and that he now meant to do what the rescuing cats had baffled; taking the victim to some dread rendezvous with monstrous Nyarlathotep and telling with what boldness the seeking of unknown Kadath had been tried. Leng and the cold waste north of Inganok must be close to the Other Gods, and there the passes to Kadath are well guarded.

The slant-eyed man was small, but the great hippocephalic bird was there to see he was obeyed; so Carter followed where he led, and passed within the circle of standing rocks and into the low arched doorway of that windowless stone monastery. There were no lights inside, but the evil merchant lit a small clay lamp bearing morbid bas-reliefs and prodded his prisoner on through mazes of narrow winding corridors. On the walls of the corridors were painted frightful scenes older than history, and in a style unknown to the archaeologists of earth. After countless aeons their pigments were brilliant still, for the cold and dryness of hideous Leng keep alive many primal things. Carter saw them fleetingly in the rays of that dim and moving lamp, and shuddered at the tale they told.

Through those archaic frescoes Leng’s annals stalked; and the horned, hooved, and wide-mouthed almost-humans danced evilly amidst forgotten cities. There were scenes of old wars, wherein Leng’s almost-humans fought with the bloated purple spiders of the neighbouring vales; and there were scenes also of the coming of the black galleys from the moon, and of the submission of Leng’s people to the polypous and amorphous blasphemies that hopped and floundered and wriggled out of them. Those slippery greyish-white blasphemies they worshipped as gods, nor ever complained when scores of their best and fatted males were taken away in the black galleys. The monstrous moon-beasts made their camp on a jagged isle in the sea, and Carter could tell from the frescoes that this was none other than the lone nameless rock he had seen when sailing to Inganok; that grey accursed rock which Inganok’s seamen shun, and from which vile howlings reverberate all through the night.

And in those frescoes was shewn the great seaport and capital of the almost-humans; proud and pillared betwixt the cliffs and the basalt wharves, and wondrous with high fanes and carven places. Great gardens and columned streets led from the cliffs and from each of the six sphinx-crowned gates to a vast central plaza, and in that plaza was a pair of winged colossal lions guarding the top of a subterrene staircase. Again and again were those huge winged lions shewn, their mighty flanks of diorite glistening in the grey twilight of the day and the cloudy phosphorescence of the night. And as Carter stumbled past their frequent and repeated pictures it came to him at last what indeed they were, and what city it was that the almost-humans had ruled so anciently before the coming of the black galleys. There could be no mistake, for the legends of dreamland are generous and profuse. Indubitably that primal city was no less a place than storied Sarkomand, whose ruins had bleached for a million years before the first true human saw the light, and whose twin titan lions guard eternally the steps that lead down from dreamland to the Great Abyss.

Other views shewed the gaunt grey peaks dividing Leng from Inganok, and the monstrous shantak-birds that build nests on the ledges half way up. And they shewed likewise the curious caves near the very topmost pinnacles, and how even the boldest of the shantaks fly screaming away from them. Carter had seen those caves when he passed over them, and had noticed their likeness to the caves on Ngranek. Now he knew that the likeness was more than a chance one, for in these pictures were shewn their fearsome denizens; and those bat-wings, curving horns, barbed tails, prehensile paws, and rubbery bodies were not strange to him. He had met those silent, flitting, and clutching creatures before; those mindless guardians of the Great Abyss whom even the Great Ones fear, and who own not Nyarlathotep but hoary Nodens as their lord. For they were the dreaded night-gaunts, who never laugh or smile because they have no faces, and who flop unendingly in the dark betwixt the Vale of Pnath and the passes to the outer world.

The slant-eyed merchant had now prodded Carter into a great domed space whose walls were carved in shocking bas-reliefs, and whose centre held a gaping circular pit surrounded by six malignly stained stone altars in a ring. There was no light in this vast and evil-smelling crypt, and the small lamp of the sinister merchant shone so feebly that one could grasp details only little by little. At the farther end was a high stone dais reached by five steps; and there on a golden throne sat a lumpish figure robed in yellow silk figured with red and having a yellow silken mask over its face. To this being the slant-eyed man made certain signs with his hands, and the lurker in the dark replied by raising a disgustingly carven flute of ivory in silk-covered paws and blowing certain loathsome sounds from beneath its flowing yellow mask. This colloquy went on for some time, and to Carter there was something sickeningly familiar in the sound of that flute and the stench of the malodorous place. It made him think of a frightful red-litten city and of the revolting procession that once filed through it; of that, and of an awful climb through lunar countryside beyond, before the rescuing rush of earth’s friendly cats. He knew that the creature on the dais was without doubt the high-priest not to be described, of which legend whispers such fiendish and abnormal possibilities, but he feared to think just what that abhorred high-priest might be.

Then the figured silk slipped a trifle from one of the greyish-white paws, and Carter knew what the noisome high-priest was. And in that hideous second stark fear drove him to something his reason would never have dared to attempt, for in all his shaken consciousness there was room only for one frantic will to escape from what squatted on that golden throne. He knew that hopeless labyrinths of stone lay betwixt him and the cold table-land outside, and that even on that table-land the noxious shantak still waited; yet in spite of all this there was in his mind only the instant need to get away from that wriggling, silk-robed monstrosity.

Obviously the high-priest not to be described is Hastur, and that would likely be a bit too much for your players even at high level. However, a high level worm-that-walks might work.

[Askar Avari]

Oh, that is helpful, thank you. Narrow, labyrinthine corridors, windowless stone structures, bas relief sculptures and frescoes. I may have to up the scale to better accommodate the Moon Beasts, but being stuck in 5' wide corridors as a level 17 party would be miserable anyway.

My current thought of how to handle the Leng stuff is that Hastur is the ultimate puppeteer steering Golarion towards ruin, but he's not seeing to these things personally. Instead, this 'cult' toils on his orders to free Mhar, though whether from sympathy or malice no one truly knows.

Monsters include::

- Denizen of Leng Rogues (the custodians of the monastery) [CR 11 Goons]

- Moon Beast Clerics (the priests who genuinely sympathize with Mhar's endless suffering) [CR 15 support mooks, obviously dangerous in large numbers]

- A Hooded Harbinger acting as the direct line to Hastur (similar to Lucretia in Book 3) [CR 12-15, there for narrative cohesion more than a fight]

- Runelord Haphrama and Vhage, whose souls were retrieved by Hastur and turned into some kind of monstrosity (Worm that Walks? Child of Yog-Sothoth [re-skinned?]) [Big Encounter #1]

- Murdered and re-animated Bythos Aeons [More there for narrative cohesion than a big fight, but could be annoying as re-inforcements]

- A Bhole? [To muddy the waters if I need to]

- A re-skinned Star-Spawn of Cthulhu acting as the guardian of the Leng Device's foundation. [Final barrier, and where the Haphrama/Vhage would retreat to if not initially killed].

My only hesitation with this whole route is that my party's runeforged gear likely won't come into play. Then again, they're not planning to just create dominant weapons, so I may tweak the endgame to better suit whatever they've prepared themselves to fight.