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IRON DM 2023 Tournament Thread
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<blockquote data-quote="Whizbang Dustyboots" data-source="post: 9204130" data-attributes="member: 11760"><p><em>Long ago, in a time impossible to now remember, gods or some other entities unknown in the present day created a means to destroy the multiverse and reforge it anew, for reasons now unknown.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>It has happened at least four times.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>It is about to happen again.</em></p><p></p><p>[SPOILER="The Dungeon at the End of the Multiverse"]</p><p style="text-align: center"><strong><span style="font-size: 26px">The Dungeon at the End of the Multiverse</span></strong></p> <p style="text-align: center"><strong><span style="font-size: 22px">5E tier four adventure</span></strong></p><p></p><p>Ingredients:</p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Guardian Goose</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Flooded Cavern</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Hollow Peg-Leg</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Elemental Orchestra</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Legendary Door</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Cured Orc</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Time and Space Bomb</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Captivating Toy</li> </ul><p>The heroes sail into the remotest reaches the Astral Sea, pursuing Malĝojo the Destroyer. Once, he was a former wizard’s apprentice or junior cultist who slipped away, unnoticed during the heroes’ victory during one of their earliest adventures. Now, 20 levels later, drawn by whispers from the void, Malĝojo is taking drastic steps to undo everything the heroes — and all heroes, everywhere — have accomplished.</p><p></p><p>Their ship encounters a legendary spelljammers graveyard, a great hollow dome of destroyed ships, marking the border of a mythical Wildspace system. Within the system, there is only a single dim star, orbited by ravaged worlds, each stripped of life. The realm’s only inhabitant is Ansero, the great star goose. Ansero is whispered of in bullywug myths: It is the apocalyptic creature that will one day appear in the sky to devour all things. (Succeed on a DC 20 Wisdom (Religion) check to know this myth.)</p><p></p><p>Ansero has ravaged these worlds, which are covered in ruined temple cities to ancient gods unknown in the present day. The goose now serves as the accidental guardian of the object Malĝojo seeks: the Apocalypse Tree.</p><p></p><p>Few gods even know the tree exists and have stricken all record of its existence from the current multiverse. Those few who know of it have caused the great beast Ansero to unknowingly guard its entrance.</p><p></p><p><em>NOTE: This adventure is intended for level 20 characters, who will have vast resources at their disposal, by definition. This adventure cannot lay out every possible solution for the challenges set before the heroes. Even “impossible” problems may well get solved with ease. And that’s fine: The players have earned their godlike status and the fate of the multiverse is on the line, after all.</em></p><p></p><p><strong><span style="font-size: 18px">Ansero</span></strong></p><p></p><p>Malĝojo’s ship floats in space, within sight of Ansero, but apparently abandoned. A search of the ship finds no one aboard.</p><p></p><p>Ansero is a gargantuan swan apparently made of starry void, with a 100-meter wingspan and 50 meters in length. It attempts to attack and consume any living beings it encounters, but ignores inanimate objects like abandoned ships.</p><p></p><p>But not all of Ansero is made of star-stuff: Its right leg and foot has been replaced by wood salvaged from ruined spelljamming ships. Careful observation shows an opening in the base of its foot, leading up inside its foot.</p><p></p><p>Inside is a narrow chamber, only five feet in diameter inside, with rungs leading to closed hatch. Opening the hatch and crawling through leads into the demiplane of Alyanabie Almajida.</p><p></p><p>Ansero has the statistics of a tarrasque with a flying speed of 120 ft.</p><p></p><p><strong><span style="font-size: 18px">Alyanabie Almajida</span></strong></p><p></p><p>The demiplane of Alyanabie Almajida is a vast series of flooded tunnels and caverns, with only occasional pockets of air in places where visitors are expected or permitted, including the entrance, throne room, pleasure grotto and prison cells.</p><p></p><p>The plane is ruled over by Sultan Alhawt Aleazim, Sovereign of the Infinite Depths, a CR 20 marid would-be-god-slayer in exile, serving as one of the guardians of the Apocalypse Tree as part of a bargain struck with a number of greater gods in return for sparing his life.</p><p></p><p>Alhawt Aleazim’s court are essentially prisoners and are a mix of aquatic beings and elementals, all of whom are terribly bored after millennia spent in Alyanabie Almajida. They seek to draw visitors into their various schemes and plots against one another. The sultan is served by more than a hundred powerful elementals and jinn.</p><p></p><p>The sultan himself wants nothing more than to be entertained, which means keeping visitors here indefinitely if possible and not revealing the existence of or the way to reach the demiplane of Stronghold, which is hidden in a pitch-black flooded cave, hidden miles below his audience chamber.</p><p></p><p>Stronghold is accessed through a locked door (DC 20 Dexterity (thieves tools) check) set in the rock wall. </p><p></p><p>Malĝojo was given access to Stronghold by promising the sultan that, in the multiverse to come, the sultan would survive and rule the realms of water. (In fact, Alyanabie Almajida will be destroyed along with the rest of the multiverse, should Malĝojo succeed.)</p><p></p><p>Alhawt Aleazim will seek to endlessly entertain visitors in the pleasure grotto, where an elemental orchestra endlessly performs for his pleasure. Alhawt Aleazim can be cruel and the orchestra is missing another members whom he killed for poor play or perceived bad attitudes. If he discovers any visitors are musicians, he will insist they play for him beyond the point of exhaustion or, better yet, join the orchestra themselves.</p><p></p><p><strong><span style="font-size: 18px">Stronghold and the Last Door</span></strong></p><p></p><p>In contrast to Alyanabie Almajida, the plane of Stronghold is warm and dry, and lit by a dim radiance that seems to come from everywhere and nowhere.</p><p></p><p>The demiplane appears to be a nearly empty ancient fortress, although there are no windows to the outside — and no “outside” at all. The entire demiplane is under the effect of a permanent forbiddance spell.</p><p></p><p>The plane’s lone inhabitant waits in the chamber before the Last Door, a door older than the multiverse. Although knowledge of the tree is almost unknown in the current multiverse, thieves sometimes dream of the impossible Last Door, although where it is or what it signifies, none know.</p><p></p><p>The Last Door’s lock does not correspond to how locks in the current multiverse work and whatever key it might have had is long lost. The door has three great seashells embedded in it and the fossilized skeleton of an unknown beast. The door is immune to damage from anything native to the current multiverse.</p><p></p><p>The figure by the Last Door calls themself the First Orc and claims, over thousands of years of life and countless reincarnations across multiple multiverses, to have reached a state of enlightenment and oneness with all things, lacking all anger, all resentment and all inclinations toward violence. </p><p></p><p>The First Orc wants a multiverse where all beings are equally enlightened, beginning with orcs. They will argue their case with the heroes, saying that the multiverse should be replaced with something better. They know how to unlock the Last Door and helped Malĝojo through it, knowing that Stronghold, unlike Alyanabie Almajida, will survive the destruction of the multiverse, as it has survived the destruction of the previous ones. (The Last Orc does not want to pay the price they know Malĝojo must in order to restart the multiverse.)</p><p></p><p>To sway them, the First Orc offers the heroes an intricate brass sphere made up of eternally moving discs. This is the Eye of Revoj. Those who touch the device find their minds transported into a detailed possible alternate future. In this case, they see a multiverse like the First Orc describes, a utopia filled with beings living in peace and harmony with one another. Should the user wish, the Eye can also create detailed visions of whatever else the user may desire. The visions are so seductive that those using it must succeed at a a DC 25 Wisdom check to return to reality without help.</p><p></p><p>They urge the heroes to allow the multiverse to be overwritten once more, as it has been at least four times in the past, in an attempt to realize the vision shown by the Eye of Revoj. They explain that a single seed can be planted in the soil of a material world and it will cause the entire plane to explosively restart, with changes based on what the planter desires at the time of planting, and the previous world will never have existed. But slamming two such seeds together — and the Apocalypse Tree always produces exactly two seeds — will do the same for the entire multiverse.</p><p></p><p>The First Orc will not voluntarily disclose that they can open the Last Door and will only use violence in response to being attacked first. They have the statistics of a solar.</p><p></p><p><strong><span style="font-size: 18px">The Apocalypse Tree</span></strong></p><p></p><p>Beyond the Last Door is one more demiplane, known as Renaskiĝo. Like Stronghold, it is under the effect of a permanent forbiddance spell.</p><p></p><p>Renaskiĝo is a small forest surrounding a hill. Travel in any direction by land for half a mile and you will find yourself walking back to where you started. Similarly, the sky has an invisible “ceiling” a half mile up.</p><p></p><p>Ordinary forest animals live in Renaskiĝo and seasons pass as they would in the mundane world. It is currently autumn — harvest time.</p><p></p><p>Atop the otherwise clear hill, beneath a bruise-colored sky, is the black-barked Apocalypse Tree. The tree is now barren of leaves and seeds. Waiting at its base is Malĝojo, bleeding from wounds suffered in slaying the tree’s final guardian, Angkasa, an ancient solar dragon.</p><p></p><p>Malĝojo clutches one of the tree’s fist-sized seeds in his left hand. When the heroes spot him, he’s struggling to pick up the other seed with his now-ruined right hand, which was mangled in his battle with Angkasa.</p><p></p><p>Malĝojo has been possessed by an ancient spirit from a previous multiverse and speaks with a strange echo of two voices speaking almost simultaneously.</p><p></p><p>The Shade of Garloth cannot remember much of its past, although it believes it was responsible for destroying a previous multiverse and seeks to do so again, setting itself up as ruler. (Why its previous attempt failed, it cannot recall and insists does not matter.) But it could not physically touch the seeds in its current state and lured Malĝojo to Renaskiĝo so it could possess him and destroy the multiverse.</p><p></p><p>Although Malĝojo is a medium-sized human, while possessed by the shade, has the stats of a death knight. Once defeated, Malĝojo’s corpse immediately floats up, now fully under the control of Garloth. It now fights with the stats of a demilich.</p><p></p><p>Once defeated, the shade appears to dissipate harmlessly, gone at last.</p><p></p><p><strong><span style="font-size: 18px">Saving the multiverse -- for now</span></strong></p><p></p><p>While it is possible to destroy the Apocalypse Tree or even burn down the entire forest of Renaskiĝo, within 100 years, both will be growing again. Within 1,000 years, the tree will next produce a pair of seeds.</p><p></p><p>As for the Shade of Garloth, it is not yet truly destroyed. When defeated, it will attempt to hide its essence, unseen, inside the Apocalypse Tree, a player character’s animal companion, an unintelligent magical weapon possessed by one of them, or even a PC. Hiding inside the PC is dangerous, as they will begin to have dreams of previous multiverses and will likely realize Garloth is inside them, regathering its strength before attempting to possess them. It will take the shade a year and a day to rebuild the strength necessary to do so.</p><p>[/SPOILER]</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Whizbang Dustyboots, post: 9204130, member: 11760"] [I]Long ago, in a time impossible to now remember, gods or some other entities unknown in the present day created a means to destroy the multiverse and reforge it anew, for reasons now unknown. It has happened at least four times. It is about to happen again.[/I] [SPOILER="The Dungeon at the End of the Multiverse"] [CENTER][B][SIZE=7]The Dungeon at the End of the Multiverse[/SIZE] [SIZE=6]5E tier four adventure[/SIZE][/B][/CENTER] Ingredients: [LIST] [*]Guardian Goose [*]Flooded Cavern [*]Hollow Peg-Leg [*]Elemental Orchestra [*]Legendary Door [*]Cured Orc [*]Time and Space Bomb [*]Captivating Toy [/LIST] The heroes sail into the remotest reaches the Astral Sea, pursuing Malĝojo the Destroyer. Once, he was a former wizard’s apprentice or junior cultist who slipped away, unnoticed during the heroes’ victory during one of their earliest adventures. Now, 20 levels later, drawn by whispers from the void, Malĝojo is taking drastic steps to undo everything the heroes — and all heroes, everywhere — have accomplished. Their ship encounters a legendary spelljammers graveyard, a great hollow dome of destroyed ships, marking the border of a mythical Wildspace system. Within the system, there is only a single dim star, orbited by ravaged worlds, each stripped of life. The realm’s only inhabitant is Ansero, the great star goose. Ansero is whispered of in bullywug myths: It is the apocalyptic creature that will one day appear in the sky to devour all things. (Succeed on a DC 20 Wisdom (Religion) check to know this myth.) Ansero has ravaged these worlds, which are covered in ruined temple cities to ancient gods unknown in the present day. The goose now serves as the accidental guardian of the object Malĝojo seeks: the Apocalypse Tree. Few gods even know the tree exists and have stricken all record of its existence from the current multiverse. Those few who know of it have caused the great beast Ansero to unknowingly guard its entrance. [I]NOTE: This adventure is intended for level 20 characters, who will have vast resources at their disposal, by definition. This adventure cannot lay out every possible solution for the challenges set before the heroes. Even “impossible” problems may well get solved with ease. And that’s fine: The players have earned their godlike status and the fate of the multiverse is on the line, after all.[/I] [B][SIZE=5]Ansero[/SIZE][/B] Malĝojo’s ship floats in space, within sight of Ansero, but apparently abandoned. A search of the ship finds no one aboard. Ansero is a gargantuan swan apparently made of starry void, with a 100-meter wingspan and 50 meters in length. It attempts to attack and consume any living beings it encounters, but ignores inanimate objects like abandoned ships. But not all of Ansero is made of star-stuff: Its right leg and foot has been replaced by wood salvaged from ruined spelljamming ships. Careful observation shows an opening in the base of its foot, leading up inside its foot. Inside is a narrow chamber, only five feet in diameter inside, with rungs leading to closed hatch. Opening the hatch and crawling through leads into the demiplane of Alyanabie Almajida. Ansero has the statistics of a tarrasque with a flying speed of 120 ft. [B][SIZE=5]Alyanabie Almajida[/SIZE][/B] The demiplane of Alyanabie Almajida is a vast series of flooded tunnels and caverns, with only occasional pockets of air in places where visitors are expected or permitted, including the entrance, throne room, pleasure grotto and prison cells. The plane is ruled over by Sultan Alhawt Aleazim, Sovereign of the Infinite Depths, a CR 20 marid would-be-god-slayer in exile, serving as one of the guardians of the Apocalypse Tree as part of a bargain struck with a number of greater gods in return for sparing his life. Alhawt Aleazim’s court are essentially prisoners and are a mix of aquatic beings and elementals, all of whom are terribly bored after millennia spent in Alyanabie Almajida. They seek to draw visitors into their various schemes and plots against one another. The sultan is served by more than a hundred powerful elementals and jinn. The sultan himself wants nothing more than to be entertained, which means keeping visitors here indefinitely if possible and not revealing the existence of or the way to reach the demiplane of Stronghold, which is hidden in a pitch-black flooded cave, hidden miles below his audience chamber. Stronghold is accessed through a locked door (DC 20 Dexterity (thieves tools) check) set in the rock wall. Malĝojo was given access to Stronghold by promising the sultan that, in the multiverse to come, the sultan would survive and rule the realms of water. (In fact, Alyanabie Almajida will be destroyed along with the rest of the multiverse, should Malĝojo succeed.) Alhawt Aleazim will seek to endlessly entertain visitors in the pleasure grotto, where an elemental orchestra endlessly performs for his pleasure. Alhawt Aleazim can be cruel and the orchestra is missing another members whom he killed for poor play or perceived bad attitudes. If he discovers any visitors are musicians, he will insist they play for him beyond the point of exhaustion or, better yet, join the orchestra themselves. [B][SIZE=5]Stronghold and the Last Door[/SIZE][/B] In contrast to Alyanabie Almajida, the plane of Stronghold is warm and dry, and lit by a dim radiance that seems to come from everywhere and nowhere. The demiplane appears to be a nearly empty ancient fortress, although there are no windows to the outside — and no “outside” at all. The entire demiplane is under the effect of a permanent forbiddance spell. The plane’s lone inhabitant waits in the chamber before the Last Door, a door older than the multiverse. Although knowledge of the tree is almost unknown in the current multiverse, thieves sometimes dream of the impossible Last Door, although where it is or what it signifies, none know. The Last Door’s lock does not correspond to how locks in the current multiverse work and whatever key it might have had is long lost. The door has three great seashells embedded in it and the fossilized skeleton of an unknown beast. The door is immune to damage from anything native to the current multiverse. The figure by the Last Door calls themself the First Orc and claims, over thousands of years of life and countless reincarnations across multiple multiverses, to have reached a state of enlightenment and oneness with all things, lacking all anger, all resentment and all inclinations toward violence. The First Orc wants a multiverse where all beings are equally enlightened, beginning with orcs. They will argue their case with the heroes, saying that the multiverse should be replaced with something better. They know how to unlock the Last Door and helped Malĝojo through it, knowing that Stronghold, unlike Alyanabie Almajida, will survive the destruction of the multiverse, as it has survived the destruction of the previous ones. (The Last Orc does not want to pay the price they know Malĝojo must in order to restart the multiverse.) To sway them, the First Orc offers the heroes an intricate brass sphere made up of eternally moving discs. This is the Eye of Revoj. Those who touch the device find their minds transported into a detailed possible alternate future. In this case, they see a multiverse like the First Orc describes, a utopia filled with beings living in peace and harmony with one another. Should the user wish, the Eye can also create detailed visions of whatever else the user may desire. The visions are so seductive that those using it must succeed at a a DC 25 Wisdom check to return to reality without help. They urge the heroes to allow the multiverse to be overwritten once more, as it has been at least four times in the past, in an attempt to realize the vision shown by the Eye of Revoj. They explain that a single seed can be planted in the soil of a material world and it will cause the entire plane to explosively restart, with changes based on what the planter desires at the time of planting, and the previous world will never have existed. But slamming two such seeds together — and the Apocalypse Tree always produces exactly two seeds — will do the same for the entire multiverse. The First Orc will not voluntarily disclose that they can open the Last Door and will only use violence in response to being attacked first. They have the statistics of a solar. [B][SIZE=5]The Apocalypse Tree[/SIZE][/B] Beyond the Last Door is one more demiplane, known as Renaskiĝo. Like Stronghold, it is under the effect of a permanent forbiddance spell. Renaskiĝo is a small forest surrounding a hill. Travel in any direction by land for half a mile and you will find yourself walking back to where you started. Similarly, the sky has an invisible “ceiling” a half mile up. Ordinary forest animals live in Renaskiĝo and seasons pass as they would in the mundane world. It is currently autumn — harvest time. Atop the otherwise clear hill, beneath a bruise-colored sky, is the black-barked Apocalypse Tree. The tree is now barren of leaves and seeds. Waiting at its base is Malĝojo, bleeding from wounds suffered in slaying the tree’s final guardian, Angkasa, an ancient solar dragon. Malĝojo clutches one of the tree’s fist-sized seeds in his left hand. When the heroes spot him, he’s struggling to pick up the other seed with his now-ruined right hand, which was mangled in his battle with Angkasa. Malĝojo has been possessed by an ancient spirit from a previous multiverse and speaks with a strange echo of two voices speaking almost simultaneously. The Shade of Garloth cannot remember much of its past, although it believes it was responsible for destroying a previous multiverse and seeks to do so again, setting itself up as ruler. (Why its previous attempt failed, it cannot recall and insists does not matter.) But it could not physically touch the seeds in its current state and lured Malĝojo to Renaskiĝo so it could possess him and destroy the multiverse. Although Malĝojo is a medium-sized human, while possessed by the shade, has the stats of a death knight. Once defeated, Malĝojo’s corpse immediately floats up, now fully under the control of Garloth. It now fights with the stats of a demilich. Once defeated, the shade appears to dissipate harmlessly, gone at last. [B][SIZE=5]Saving the multiverse -- for now[/SIZE][/B] While it is possible to destroy the Apocalypse Tree or even burn down the entire forest of Renaskiĝo, within 100 years, both will be growing again. Within 1,000 years, the tree will next produce a pair of seeds. As for the Shade of Garloth, it is not yet truly destroyed. When defeated, it will attempt to hide its essence, unseen, inside the Apocalypse Tree, a player character’s animal companion, an unintelligent magical weapon possessed by one of them, or even a PC. Hiding inside the PC is dangerous, as they will begin to have dreams of previous multiverses and will likely realize Garloth is inside them, regathering its strength before attempting to possess them. It will take the shade a year and a day to rebuild the strength necessary to do so. [/SPOILER] [/QUOTE]
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