And so he hands them a box. Slim, carved from a single piece of wood, without any visible seams or hinges. The box is carved into a leering fiendish shape like an infant fiend or something similar. Occasionally tapping noises or the clink of gears are heard inside the object, it gives no visible glow under a detect magic spell, and good aligned characters feel disturbed in its presence, like a sheen of grease on their skin or an odor on the air that they can't get rid of.
"I want you to take this to a specific person and give it them, unasked and unwanted, but they will accept it nonetheless. Give it to them and leave, nothing more."
So they bring this box to a wizard on Toril, fairly deep within a secluded section of the rotting depths of the Rawlinswood. The wizard seems bothered by the intrusion, but not hostile. Then he sees the box and goes deathly quiet, and he visibly pales. His hands are shaking as he accepts the box. He asks them to leave and he retreats into his study with the box; distantly they can hear him begin to weep. They're halfway down the steps of his tower when they hear him begin to scream, something rocks the tower from within that room, and in tiny visible tracings of cracks and lines, the stone begins to weather, crumble, disintigrate, and be devoured around them as they flee from the tower. They condemned him to death, or worse.
On to their next task. Enter the deep ethereal and progress to the ethereal border with a specific prime material world. Enter a specific dreamscape of a specific man, smile at him and tell him that it is time. He will know what to do, and from there you are to leave when he awakens.
They step into the dreamscape of a man, a high priest and theocrat. He is clearly mad, zealous beyond belief, and he believes them to be a sign from the gods that the time is right for his people to claim what is their divine right. The pyres will be lit, the faithless will die by the sword, those not of his nation, his species, his race... they will die as well. He had been waiting for a sign from the gods who had whispered to him in his dreams, a sign for him to begin.
His sign had arrived. He smiles and his mind awakens.
The dreamscape evaporates and they are there in the ethereal once more, their hearts heavy with what they are allowing to happen, what they are helping along with a push and a nudge. They turn to leave and there is something there floating in the void with them.
A box. That box. Drops of blood are spontaneously precipitating upon its surface.
"Take it. Progress on to your third task."
And so they do, drifting across the deep ethereal to another prime material world. The world is odd. Bizarre. Surrounded by a glistening border of darkness: The Black and the Gray. Athas. They enter the world through a single breach in the border, one that seems to have opened precisely when they arrived, timed for their presence, or opened by someone expecting them.
"Give the box to Dregoth. He is expecting you. He is expecting his box, my gift to him, and he is foolishly expecting his dreams to come true."
And they do. Standing before Dregoth, the undead sorcerer king of Athas, one of the champions of Rajat, they hand to him the object that he has purchased for some unknown price. "The walls of Raam will run red with the blood of its populace, sacrificed in the name of your master. Genocide is his price, and it will be given a dozen times over." They are forced to bow before Dregoth, and while the briefly considered attacking him, they did not.
And so, awash in shame, they return to fetch their information from the Baernaloth, sickened by the experience.
"Dregoth will never become a god. Not on Athas. Not ever. But I saw no need to tell him that..."
