ZEITGEIST [Spoilers!] Questions from a first read

Hi all,

I've just finished my first readthrough of Zeitgeist, and it's awesome. I'm excited for my group to start playing it in a few weeks. However, my first read has left me with a few unresolved questions, especially surrounding some of the planar mechanics. I wonder if anyone here has thought about these questions, or has suggestions based on how they handled them in their game (or can just point me to where these are answered in the book, it's big, I probably missed some stuff).

In no particular order:

• What's the deal with the Golden Icons? I know you need one icon (not necessarily made of gold) in each pillar beneath the Axis seal to finish the ritual (without cheating). But then there's the icons in the mines around the island, such as the icon of Avilona that the party can find in Adventure 1. Little mention is made of what these icons are doing there, except one time when someone suggests they were used to spread the energy of the ritual to the rest of the world. If this is true, does the Ob replace them during their Ritual in Adventure 9? Why doesn't taking them during adventure 1 mess things up? Does the party need to replace them if they choose to perform the ritual of the axis seal during the climax?
• Why is flight limited? I feel like the adventure contradicts itself a little here. Early on, it's said that people used to be able to fly, but then that fell apart because the Ancients weren't aware of the watery cave beneath the pillar that holds the Icon of Avilona. But then later on in the adventure, it's suggested that people can't fly because Avilona's just kind of a naughty word plane (and there's a fun WotBS reference thrown in in Adventure 12 to this effect), indeed that plane's effect is that flight cannot last more than five minutes. But Pemberton and the other Dragon Tyrants used to be able to fly right? And their time is well after the Ancients completed the Axis Seal
• When Nic completes the ritual during Adventure 9, it seems like he implements the MAP proposal. He uses celestial machines and giant wayfarer's lanterns across the globe to help the transition. Presumably the machine in Risur is disrupted. Apart from some brief mentions in Adventure 4, I didn't find much about what those lanterns around the world actually did. It's implied that people around the world have come under the Ob's control, but nothing in the MAP proposal suggests that it should do that inherently. Indeed, the Watchmakers faction says that they found that controlling people's minds was all or nothing. So the question is, what are the lighthouses doing, and in what way is Risur protected by the failure of the local ritual (since the people there still have their magic affected, form hiveminds, and get the bonus/penalty to diplomacy and intimidate, it seems kinda like the ritual mostly worked in Risur too)
• During Adventure 10, the Ziggurat of Av becomes linked to Jiese. Why? Of all the planes, Jiese was the only one that didn't move. If the portal relinked to anything, why not Mojang, the new plane of Life that should be in Av's place?
• During Adventure 10, Toteth Topec (I love the WotBS references) suggests that before the Axis Seal, there was no sun. What? When the party gets split by the shattering of Av, the half of them that lands in the real world finds that it's freezing over from the lack of sunlight. How did the world of the Ancients not completely freeze over?
• Shijen returns as an antagonist late in the campaign. How does he survive? My reading of Adventure 3 suggested that he either dies at the hands of the PCs, or he's annihilated by Nem when he connects the portal to Gidim.
• In Adventure 9, Catherine Romana returns to Risur to participate in the attempt to assassinate the King. But she was the leader of the Colossus faction during the convocation, and Nic tries to murder her during the Schism. If she survived, why would she join back up with him? And if she died, why would Nic trust her enough to let her into the Ghost Council (the whole point of the Blue Banquet is to excise problematic elements from his conspiracy, surely he wouldn't do that and then bring her right back?)
• Late in the campaign, it's mentioned (in the materials about how to design a new world) that in the original configuration, travel between the planes within the system was limited by an interaction between the magic of Urim and the fact that the Axis Seal is made of gold. If this is true, how did the Gidim invade the world from Apet after the original Axis Seal Ritual (they should also have been stopped by the gold plate in the Ziggurat of Apet which originally severed this world from that one)? Also, what is the nature of the "special protection" that turns Apet into a prison plane?
• What is the nature of the double-pane glass effect that trapped Shijen in the pocket dimension in the first place? The book mentions that a small sliver of each plane got ballooned away, but I'm not really sure what it's talking about there.
• I'm a little confused about the nature of the Gyre. In particular, once Av slams into the gears and gets chewed up, why is there still leftover Av-stuff waiting in the queue-of-planets-to-chew
• Why does Reida + Voice of Rot falling into the Gyre destroy the world? I'm worried my players aren't going to understand the stakes of this fight, unless they're particularly attached to using Reida as their Plane of Time (which I think they might, if they have romantic notions about the Skyseers, which presumably die off without Reida)

I think that's all of them for now. I greatly appreciate your taking the time to read this, and I'd be thrilled to hear anybody's thoughts on any of these questions!

I'm very excited!

Heyo. Welcome to Zeit, it's the best AP ever written.

You might find my Zeitvice useful.

• The Ancients used TWO sets of icons to execute their Axis ritual. Some of them were looted, some of them stayed in place in the pillars. It's hard to notice this because you never directly see any duplicates in the adventure. Plus I think they're not that hard to make copies of.
• Avilona's poor flight properties are the result of a confluence of three factors: the watery pillar cave, Kasvarina Varal messing with the ziggurat, and the giant eagle on Avilona dying (War of the Burning Sky AP reference). Up to you whether you feel this is a cohesive answer or some retconning.
• Nic implements the MAP proposal. You are confused because Book 9 was written with an incorrect understanding of what the lighthouses actually do; Book 9 says that cause mass mental domination, but various newspaper clippings and events in Book 10 onwards make it clear that the lighthouses have not had that effect. The best answer I could find is that the lighthouses prevent the meteor shower that is a byproduct of the Axis Ritual, and which led to the downfall of the Ancient civilization. MAP is making people more 'rational', finger-quotes. The destruction of Stanfield's lighthouse means that Flint is not protected from the meteor shower.
• I think Jiese got switched from the Fire slot to the Life slot, which is why the Av ziggurat linked to it. Jiese is Life/Fire.
• Welcome to 'Zeitgeist physics', where you can breathe in space and Lanjyr generates its own heat. The sun is actually not a source of heat, it is only a source of light, which Toteth implemented because he thought it would be cool. In Act 3 when Lanjyr loses its sun, it does not begin to freeze for months, and that is mostly because of the Gyre messing with it rather than from the lack of sun.
• The only way Sijhen can escape to Gidim requires the PCs to naughty word up and the RHC to be nuked by the portal connection effect. Obviously, that is not an outcome most GMs would encourage. I suggest you have Sijhen die screaming about how his older brother Cijhen will return and wreak vengeance.
• Book 9 states that Catherine Romana was indeed about to be executed by the Ob, but they gave her one last chance when she came up with the 'great' idea of the Torfeld Palace assassination.
• I don't remember anything about Urim stopping inter-system travel, sorry. As for 'special protection', Apet's planar trait per Book 12 is "Planar travel beyond star system is impossible, and between worlds is limited to five minutes."
• It's basically just a small byproduct from the Axis Ritual; Sijhen (and the Mavisha merfolk) got trapped 'beneath' the Ziggurat seals in a slice of space, ready to be freed during the events of Book 3. Weirdly, Sijhen experienced no time passing, while the merfolk were driven insane from centuries of time passing.
• Basically, Gyre has 'inner' and 'outer' gears. The 'outer' gears shred planets into tiny, hundred-mile-across chunks, and then they travel through to the 'inner' gears which completely destroy the chunks.
• I believe it is stated that the Voice has done titan-magic such that Reida is now inextricably bound to the 'history' of Lanjyr, and destroying Reida means destroying Lanjyr's history means retroactively destroying Lanjyr. Got any Doctor Who fans in your party?

You've found problems on your first read that took me literal years to identify, I'm very impressed. Hit me up if you have further questions.

EDIT: A friend has provided me a few corrections; Jiese does not change slot, the Ziggurat just 'relinks' to it for an unknown reason. The planet freezing is also more complicated, given this:


After months without sun, even the supernatural temperate climate provided
by the planet itself has waned. Global temperatures are at or below freezing,
and snow or ice coats the ground wherever the party goes, with the exception
of Axis Island, where otherworldly energy provides a pittance of warmth. From
the moment the party arrives in the forest near the ziggurat of Av, it should be
clear that the world is freezing to death.

• The icons aquired on Axis Island and earlier are duplicates of the ones used in the ritual and if your players still have them in book 13 they can be used. I have gone with the Ancients ritual being more complicated than the modern one, possibly they did it in stages so the tree/pillars may have been a redundant part of an earlier version of the ritual
• All of them are why flight is limited. I put it down to Avilona being broken the dying bird from part 12. However that could have either lead to the other problems or the other problems could have lead to Avilona being broken. If my players had pushed hard enough my explanation was that the Avilona Bird was dead or dying but the ritual locked the amount of energy received so flight was still possible but the strain lead to the broken pillar and then when Kasavarina went into the Ziggurat that reset the configuration and less air energy came through and no flight
• For me the presence of the Lanterns is one of the main things that smooths the changes and makes the Ob's take over of the other countries so easy (along with their inplace agents) so the lighthouses spread not just the planar energies but push the ob's ideaology/agenda. This makes the speed of the goverment change make more sense and if you link the resistance of the monarch of Risur to the Ob ideaology helps explain why Risur is the one nation that is not converted to the Ob way. I presume that discussion of the mind control aspects was missed from the convocation as Nic did not want all the delagates to know about it
• Salamanders were wanted for the adventure, so Jiesse was linked and noone really thought about it. My explanation is that the Ziggurats are a left over earlier stage of the process that lead to the axis island ritual and as such their correspondance is not perfect to the planar alignment as previosuly they were created before the Axis Island ritual and so when the planar reconfiguration occurred it effectively randomised the Ziggurat connections
• I have logn explantions for this one. The world before the Axis Island ritual was not a planet in a solar system it was an isolated magical world I use the Lozenge symbology from Glorantha. A magical construct so no sun was it's deafult and hence its climate was fine the magical energies of creation kept it going until the Ancients changes its nature as part of their ritual to save the world from the legion etc. So when the sun is not restored during the second axis island ritual its absence leads to the slow cooling, of course that cooling may have another explantion perhaps the new fire plane is weak at heating the world, certainly if you actually turned off the sun in a real solar system the cooling would be faster and more dramtic (freezin the atmosphere dramatic) also no real sun, no gravity so no solar system, clearly this sun is more of a mythic construct than an astronomical body. I think if my players completed the ritual with Illocus I may have the sun come back but the world still get colder.
• If the pc's kill him with no convenient portal nearby let him stay dead and use a different Gidhim later. I think New which naturally strengthens spiritual undead is weak on the annihlation of spirits so Sijhen being largely a spirit survives the blast of Nem and badly injured makes it home, this highlights a possible flaw in the ancients protection that spiritual beings could inflitrate the system and complicates choices when they rebuild the system
• She is a scheming politician with few principles so se survives the massacre for some reason(she is protected against ghosts, she talks fast, she has an escape teleportation set up etc) and then convinces Nic she will support him AND he needs her. She is his best shot at getting rid of the king and undermining Risuri resistance, entirely possible that the other Ob agents have orders to kill her once Aodhan is dead, and they expect the kingship not to matter post ritual. In fact her treacherous murder of the King could be useful the loyall Governor Stasnfield avanges the king and kills her becomes king and allies with the Ob.
• On the other side of each Ziggurat is a small pocket of the plane it links to this is where the Gidhim hid their invasion force which attacked the Ancients after the ritual , the Ancients sealed off these pockets with the tablets in the Ziggurats and this is why Sijhen is trapped there. Once in the Gyre there are more trapped gidhim but I think these were lesser Gidhin and also Apet makes planar travel very hard so it is likely that they just got stuck with no way out, they could not return home and the route to the main world was blocjed
• Once a world is pulled into the Gyre , a remenant of it forms inside the Gyre (all the worlds in the gyre) and they are slowly drawn into the inner Gyre funnel which destroys them. Until this final destruction the potentiality of the world still exists and if it is somehow extracted from the Gyre it returns to its full nature. So rescue the Flint analog Av in the Gyre and all of Av comes back , same for all the other worlds. I added several worlds with the remains of civilisations so that the players could be guilted into restoring them like Iretha Ket.
• I agree that is is the work of the Voice of Rot that destroys the world when Reida is destroyed another possibility is that it does not destroy the world just it's history so you get a dead world which may suit the Voice more. However when the Voice is killed his ritual magic link is destroyed and Reida's destruction no longer hurts the world. Note that the Voice destroys Reida not the Gyre so perhaps he is using Mini-Reida in the Gyre to amplify and spread his necrotic effects across the time and space of the world. My players did not ask they just took the Voice of Rot at his word to destroy the world and so planned on killing him, Anyway one of them wants his swamp

Have fun.
I am nearly finished and this will be one of only 2 published adventure campaigns I may rerun in the future (the other being the Enemy Within) so I think this is a great adventure and you will have a lot of fun

Thanks for the responses! I'll address them in the same order:

• Yeah, I get that there's two sets of icons. But what I'm wondering is, what's the point of the second set, if you only need one to conduct the ritual. I think the answer I'll probably go with is that the icons below the Axis Seal link a world to Lanjyr so that energy can flow from that world to Lanjyr. The other set the Ancients put in to allow energy to flow from Lanjyr to the other worlds. They did this maybe as a contingency because they were worried what would happen if they didn't. This reverse link allowed damage to the pillar of Avilona from the sea cave to weaken the defenses of Avilona, making it vulnerable to attack and leading to the death of the eagle, which caused flight magic to crap out. The Ob figured this out, collected all the icons from these lesser pillars (except possibly Avilona which it seems like the PCs get to first) in case they need them, and never replace them as they figure that this reverse-connection is a liability if someone were to say use it to damage Mojang or Ratios.
• My thoughts above pretty well cover this. I like the idea that the damage to the pillar caused the damage to Avilona, and now Avilona is naughty word and you have to replace it if you want to fly.
• I'm not sure I like the idea that the lighthouses prevent the stars from falling. After all, stopping the lighthouse in Risur is supposed to be a small but significant victory, and if the only outcome of it is that the city gets nuked, I don't think my players will be pleased. I like the idea that the lighthouses spread the Ob's ideology. They're basically psychic propaganda that takes advantage of the fact that everyone's super receptive to new ideas and don't know it yet. It makes sense that Nic would set this up if he knew the Watchmakers wouldn't win, and he probably figured they wouldn't. I also like the idea that they may have smoothed the edges of the transition (like preventing stars from falling and making sure everyone keeps their spellcasting) so that nobody gets the idea that the Ob totally ruined things.
• Jiese definitely remains the plane of Fire. But since the Ziggurats kinda have nothing to do with the ritual of the Axis Seal anyway (as far as I can tell, they were just temporary barriers the Ancients put in before they had the idea for the Axis Seal ritual), I can probably just handwave this away as "a planar event of unprecedented proportions has occurred, some weird naughty word happened, deal with it"
• Yeah, I guess just DnD physics. I like the idea that Lanjyr produces its own heat, and I like the idea that the Gyre fucks with it. The Gyre already appears to sit in its own little extra-universal pocket of space (hence why no stars can be seen there) that's reserved for dead and dying worlds. It makes sense that some of the inherent properties of Lanjyr would cease to function there.
• I guess I would believe that Nem can't destroy a thoughtform. This leads to the interesting thought that, if Apet weren't making it hard for them to find Lanjyr, the Gidim could invade in spite of the Axis Seal. I'll keep Shijen if he manages to link to Gidim during Adventure 3, and replace him otherwise.
• Ah yeah, I would believe that if she survives she can convince Nic that he still needs her. I think if she dies, Nic probably doesn't give her that chance to explain, and I'll modify the assassination plot to not include her.
• Regarding Urim, I'm referring to this text: "Do note, in the original planar set-up, the plane of earth Urim caused gold to block planar travel, so the seal made interplanar travel within the system limited; and Apet made planar travel from worlds outside the system difficult; while Nem attempted to destroy intruders from other worlds. Almost any other arrangement of planes will result in a world that can be more easily reached by travelers from other planes.". That aside, I like your version better. Urim has nothing to do with planar travel, and Apet is responsible for both the inner and outer bans. This still leaves the question How did the Gidim attack Lanjyr from Apet after the Axis Seal? And what did the Ancients do to make Apet a "prison plane"?
• I see. Basically adding Apet to the Axis Seal did what the Ziggurats were already doing, and banned travel from the 8 worlds to/from Lanjyr. These two barriers have a little space between them, and that's where the pocket happens. I can believe that. I'll probably diagram it at some point.
• Oh, two layers to the Gyre. Yeah, sure, that'd do it.
• Yeah, I like the idea that the Voice of Rot has fey-magicked this. And I feel fairly certain that my party will be itching for a chance to kill his ass by this point anyway. But I think the battle will have more Gravitas if they already knew that Reida falling in would doom their world, especially if they knew this without VoR telling them. I'll probably say that the Voice of Rot has linked the past of Lanjyr to Reida using fey magic (this doesn't make sense otherwise, as Reida is no longer the plane of time), and I'll add symptoms of that to the real world, weaker willed people after the Great Eclipse start forgetting parts of history, things they knew from before. Some force is siphoning away the past.

This was great and helpful! Though I do have two more questions I've thought up:

• In adventure 3, I'm pretty sure Xambria finds a Golden Icon in the Ziggurat of Apet. This is the only time anyone mentions finding a Golden Icon in a Ziggurat. What was it doing there? Could this be related to the prison-plane effect the Ancients put on Apet?
• It seems like the Ziggurats have nothing to do with the ritual of the axis seal. The Ancients built them to protect the minor seals that they put on natural planes to other worlds, so that people would stop coming from those worlds, and those worlds would eventually empty out. If this is the case, why are there only 8 ziggurats? It seems awfully convenient for Ancient Lanjyr to have already only been directly portaled to 8 worlds, and for those worlds to just happen to have all the energy types you need, and for one of them to conveniently have a trait that lets you seal off all other planar travel. There must have been others right, so that the Ancients could pick out a set that would protect them (such as including Urim, Apet, and Nem)? Why are there no other Ziggurats?

Something the author of the AP posted in another thread may help with some of these questions
Ancient History
1. A world gets created in a sort of planar nursery, and it's highly malleable with easy connection to other planes. Maybe a god creates it. Maybe it's spontaneously generated. I know the answer but I won't say in case I decide to change it. Over centuries different beings gradually stumble across it from other worlds, and eventually word makes its way to several powerful extraplanar entities that there is a lush world that is undefended. Three extraplanar forces create portal from some of their interdimensional beachheads to vie for control of the planet (which really ought to have a name).

2. The Ancient orcs have some big damn heroes who fight these beings. They collect a lot of gold trophies from the legions of Egal the Shimmering, who are sailing through Mavisha. They come to understand the flow of energy between worlds from the Gidim. There are also other nasties, like a bunch of demons coming through Nem, but they're not narratively that prominent.

3. The orc druid Toteth devises a ritual to seal the world off from a specific plane (and another secret ritual). The big damn heroes go fight the forces at the portals of three different planes (Apet, Mavisha, and Nem). They perform the ritual, which blocks the portal (though technically it's still there), and then they get a bunch of stone age mofos to build ziggurats full of traps to protect the portals.

3a. They also inexplicably build ziggurats around sealed portals to five other planes (Jiese, Avilona, Av, Urim, and Reida).

4. The devils, demons, and gidim shrug, find other beachhead planes, and then from those planes they open new portals to this (frikkin' unnamed) planet. They laugh at the dumb orcs, whom they assume did not understand they could do this.

5. Toteth performs his big secret ritual, which uses the power of those ziggurats and of a big multi-ringed ritual circle in the middle of orc territory, and links this world to the eight planes the orcs had previously sealed off. The specific planes the orcs had chosen provide some useful perks. Apet moves the whole system somewhere else, and Urim (combined with the tons of gold the orcs had collected) suppressed new portals in from outside the system, though short-term summoning still worked. Nem destroyed anyone who somehow managed to bypass the seal. Reida pre-ordained that the seal would open again in, um, let's say 2012 years, to ensure that the world wouldn't be locked in stagnation in case people changed their mind.

There were unforeseen consequences, though. Mavisha (which makes islands mysterious) cracked the region around the ritual into an archipelago. Av created a whole pair of crazy parallel planes.

(Avilona and Jiese were actually pretty mellow. There were civilizations there that the orcs were friendly with.)

6. Amidst the immense disruption of their civilization caused by the whole continent cracking, the orcs decided it was safe to open up the sealed portals in the ziggurats. The rest of the multiverse was sealed off, but they had great aspirations of having a multiplanetary society.

7. But the Gidim had figured out the orc's scheme. They had hidden an invasion force on Apet, and when the portal opened, they began to pour through that ziggurat, confident that they'd be able to secure the whole system before reconnecting to the homeworld. The orcs contacted Toteth, architect of the Axis Seal ritual, and he did a quick and dirty change to the ritual. Basically he intensified the power of Apet and Urim, and prevented portals between worlds even in the same system.

This manifested by sort of creating a pocket plane on the other side of each of the sealed portals. So at the point of the AP, if you go to any ziggurat and open the portal, you only get a few hundred feet worth of that plane, rather than the whole place.

8. Over time, the civilizations in Jiese and Avilona shifted and collapsed, and we never really get a glimpse of them.

• I think one set of icons was used on Axis Island, and one set was used for all the Ziggurats. Of course you can rule whatever you like as a GM.
• Do look at Book 12 when the PCs visit the actual plane of Avilona. Also consider the possibility of letting the PCs 'repair' Avilona somehow.
• My advice is to make it that Roland Stanfield is executing a special lighthouse ritual that will mentally dominate all Risuri. This could be because, say, he wants an Ob-backed King who has the full belief of the people behind him, so he can take on the Titans if they get rowdy. This will make destroying the lighthouse a necessary victory. I would advise against lighthouses spreading ideology as that might side-track the players into taking down lighthouses, and make them question times when people agree with Ob ideology outside of lighthouses.
• I believe the Ziggurats were established pre-Ritual as part of their defences against extraplanar invaders; later they used the Ritual with the planes they had blocked, IE that they knew were safe.
• I always took it that 'no stars could be seen' because of the massive light pollution of the Gyre, but yes it probably is also because the Gyre sits a billion miles away from anything.
• Again, if Sijhen manages to link, then per the book Apet activates and the RHC gets nuked. Also that's the only way for a Skyseer to get a special Gidim vision, which seems like a waste.
• Up to you with Romana.
• I would put this down to Zeitgeist's trademark inconsistency between Acts. Act 3 states directly that Apet does all the planar-blocking, but you have text saying that Urim also plays a role. I hadn't noticed the issue with 'how did they invade despite Apet'. My best answer would be that they (somehow) changed Apet's properties; initially it just prevented extrasystem invaders, but after the Gidim attack they rigged it that Apet also restricted intrasystem travel. This left them stuck on Apet.
• Might not be worth diagramming, it really isn't like some 'natural' property of the Ziggurat system, just the equivalent of gunk trapped in the plug of your sink.
• Yep, two layers. This does raise some concerning questions of what happens to all the people on the 99% of the plane which gets mulched...
• I think it would be fine to have the Voice tell them; maybe during the Book 9 battle. I wouldn't say you need a special reason that Lanjyr and Reida is linked; link of Reida like a CD, with Lanjyr's history imprinted on it. Detached from Lanjyr it retains the history, and would only rewrite new history if placed into a new system. 'Force is siphoning away the past' works.

• I think there is one set of icons on Axis Island and one set used for the Ziggurats.
• I would presume that the Ancients only 'capped' the 8 worlds they needed, and just stationed guards at the ones they didn't need. Perhaps only capping a few encouraged the enemies on those 8 worlds to leave and focus on the entrances that weren't capped. I think that works fine.

There's at least two sets of icons on Axis island, one in the ritual, and one in the mines.

I don't love the idea of having Stanfield's ritual be special... it feels weirdly shoehorned in to give the PCs something to stop. If my players want to knock over a light house, they can, and then be sad when nothing changes.

I think Andrew's intel provides a good explanation for how the Gidim were able to attack despite Apet.


I think I have solutions I like for most everything now, thanks everybody!

I think having Stanfield's ritual be special works, it is a reflection of the fact that the Ob regard Risur and the PCs to be their greatest threat.

Side note, the book says that your PCs will expect that Stanfield's lighthouse is the main ritual site. They are not going to believe that, because Borne is nowhere to be found.

Glad you got what you needed.

Happy to be of help.
Indeed there was no way my players would believe that the ritual Stansfield was performing was the main one, they had enough info to pin that to Axis Island and Bourne. But they did not have time to reach Axis Island and clearly the traitor was up to no good so they went there to kill him and stop whatever he was doing

arkwright said:

I think having Stanfield's ritual be special works, it is a reflection of the fact that the Ob regard Risur and the PCs to be their greatest threat.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I think this is how I will run it.

"Yes, the modifications have been made; once lit, it will project a suggestion that will greatly weaken support for Aodhan and his knights. Unfortunately, the alterations we've made to it will compromise the degree to which the lighthouse will shield Risur from the ritual's fallout, but the death toll should be... well, it's an acceptable trade-off."