Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
Playing the Game
Story Hour
Consequences of the Quill (Restored 5/13/06)
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="LordVyreth" data-source="post: 2037361" data-attributes="member: 9626"><p><strong>The Semiplanar Rift.</strong></p><p></p><p>A week passed, and still The Blade of Minds didn’t flee from her temple. Of course, they still weren’t certain her regular location was the temple, but they knew that their quarry would never visit Bas as long as she knew she was being tracked. Finally, she began to show signs of motion again. She suddenly disappeared from her current location to appear in a valley hundreds of miles away, which indicated a likely teleport. From there, however, she just stopped, and didn’t move for over an hour.</p><p></p><p> “This has trap written all over it,” Tal grumbled, as the party decided what to do with this sudden change.</p><p></p><p> “Maybe, but what choice do we have,” Danae sighed. “We have no other way to find Bas, and we can’t lead Methosilang’s armies until we know where to lead them.”</p><p></p><p> “Well, what if I went ahead to scout?” Bath asked. “I can turn invisible easily enough, and I should figure out the situation before they can stop me?”</p><p></p><p> After remembering how even Bas’ most powerful servants couldn’t hurt Bas before, the group agreed, and Bath used her Plane Shifting ability to repeatedly jump towards The Blade’s location until by sheer luck she arrived close enough to her target to fly there. As she used her powers, she noticed that there was some sort of strange interference every time she tried to leave the plane, but it wasn’t anything she had trouble with.</p><p></p><p> Finally, she reached the Blade’s location, only to notice things were…unusual. Though the device to track the Blade was certain she was right in front of her, Bath couldn’t see anything. Realizing they might be invisible, Bath used her magic to gain the sight of truth, and saw strange, blurry lights in the vague shape of The Blade and her many servants. Bath was afraid this was part of the ambush, but the lights seemed frozen, as their target and her servants were held here. Bath investigated the area further, and found a message carved into the ground nearby. It read:</p><p></p><p>To the “heroes” of Methosilang:</p><p></p><p> I am well aware of your intentions at this point. Obviously, you need the location of Bas’ body if you hope to change destiny. Of course, there is a location I want from you as well. But I’m not interested in massive casualties on both sides of this war. Sure, you could try another ambush, but we both know that I won’t be surprised again, and the battle would likely cause massive casualties on both sides. Or, you could simply lose patience and launch a siege on my home, which would obviously be a brutal fight, with deaths on both sides. Therefore, I have decided to end this simply. As you can see, I went to the Rift. I’m sure you know the way there, and the way out. Our intelligence indicates that you left the plane, after all, so it’s the only logical conclusion. I will be waiting in the gateway out of the Rift. There can be no escape there, so only one of us will walk out free. Both I and the other Strife Masters have an obligation to keep the Rift guarded, but if you Jump past the puzzle foyer and the final room before the gateway, you can bypass them quickly enough. I expect you to be there as soon as possible. If not, we could continue this little chase, but we both know that it would likely be futile. </p><p>Tesserill Requien.</p><p></p><p> Finding this curious, Bath returned to the party.</p><p></p><p> “Well, is it safe?” Danae asked.</p><p></p><p> Bath looked confused. “They’re gone, and went to some place called the Rift or something. I don’t know what that is, though.”</p><p></p><p> Danae thought for a moment, and then looked shocked. “She’s in the Semiplanar Rift!”</p><p></p><p> After noticing how confused everyone looked as they stared at her, she sighed and explained. “The Rift is a sub plane that exists around the entirety of our plane. It blocks all attempts to leave the plane, at least for extended periods of times. Planes connected to ours like the Shadow and Ethereal plane are allowed, and even quick jumps to the Astral plane like those used for teleport spells are fine, but anything more than that will cause you to get sucked into the Rift.”</p><p></p><p> “But that makes no sense, we’ve been off-plane to buy and sell magic items all the time!” Robin complained. </p><p></p><p> “Yes, but we’ve been given special treatment, I believe. Remember what happened the first time we tried leaving the plane, not counting all those weird tests TIE put you through before I joined you?”</p><p></p><p> Robin thought for a second, and then replied, “We ended up in some bar in a place called Sigil, right? I never understood why that happened. You were trying to take us to Union, right?”</p><p></p><p> “Right, but I felt the resistance of the Rift as I left. I was worried about this, which is why I was so reluctant to leave. But instead of getting pulled in, something saved us, and we got redirected into the bar.”</p><p></p><p> “Then what happened,” Xalem, who never heard this story before, asked.</p><p></p><p> “Well, first of all, we were cheered by the bar attendees. Apparently almost nobody has made it out of the Rift and therefore escaped our plane lately. The last ones to do so were, well, Phellis and the other Strife Masters according to the descriptions the Bar Patrons gave us. We asked them about why our plane is so hard to leave from, but they immediately shut up. If we can trust their story, eons ago, a being calling herself The Indigo Entity appeared and ordered the entirety of Sigil into a vow of secrecy about this plane. Nothing about it can be discussed under any circumstances. Now, a place like Sigil isn’t exactly good at following rules like that, so there was a protest. The Lady of Pain, who is a godlike super-entity that rules Sigil, even intervened. However, this Indigo Entity privately showed The Lady something that absolutely terrified her. The Lady of Pain was so universally feared and respected on Sigil that when they saw her scared, the population became far more interested in following the rule, and that’s how things have been ever since. I believe that The Indigo Entity is our friend TIE, and that she was responsible for the Rift as well. If so, then that explains why we’ve been given an exemption from the Rift. We’re too important or amusing or something to TIE, so we get to leave. I assume the same exemption was passed onto Bath and Xalem when they joined us.”</p><p></p><p> “So THAT’s why this place is called the Forbidden Plane!” Bath exclaimed.</p><p> </p><p> “But you said that the Strife Masters left before you did?” Xalem asked.</p><p></p><p> “Yes, which likely means they’ve already been into the Rift, and they managed to survive it. Since they probably weren’t aiming at that same bar that we turned up in, I think everyone ends up at that Sigil bar the first time they survive the Rift. We’ve been able to travel the planes normally ever since, so it probably only happened to them the first time as well. That means that The Blade will have an advantage over us; she knows the environment, and no longer has to fear the tests.”</p><p></p><p> “But how can we even enter the Rift if we automatically bypass it?” Tal inquired.</p><p></p><p> “Oh, we still feel the resistance of the Rift when we leave; we just can get through it easily enough. To enter the Rift, all we have to do is not fight the resistance, and let it pull us into the Rift. However, once we’re there, I suspect that we will be forced to follow the rules of the Rift. We won’t be able to leave until we pass the test as normal.”</p><p></p><p> “As we though, it is a trap then,” Tal growled. “Well, let’s go in and get this over with.”</p><p></p><p> After a day or so of preparation, the party was ready to see if this Rift was really as bad as it sounded. “Are you sure you don’t know anything about the test itself?” Tal asked.</p><p></p><p> Danae shook her head. “It’s been years since the last person who entered the Rift returned, so they were either killed in the Rift or on the planes beyond it. And the Rift’s test apparently changes over time, so any information I have would be unreliable anyway.”</p><p></p><p> With that, she and Bath prepared to take the party off-plane, and as the resistance of the Rift closed around them, they relaxed their focus, letting the Rift take them in. They found themselves in a massive room with walls covered completely with large mirrors. Immediately, they began to investigate the room. They found what looked like a door easily enough, but the mirrors were just too intriguing to ignore entirely. For one thing, a couple of them weren’t showing their reflections! Instead, a group of people that looked like humanoids made out of mirrors were watching the party from those mirrors, and occasionally were scribbling notes about them in little books. </p><p></p><p> This last effect seemed to irritate Wong in particular, who has been quiet ever since the start of this mission. “What are you doing” he yelled at the mirrors, which only made the mirror creatures scribble in their books fasters. “Stop writing about me!” he continued. He finally got so frustrated that he punched one of the mirrors, causing it to shatter. However, as he stood over it, panting with anger, the pieces slowly floated back onto the wall, forming the mirror again. Soon, it was good as new, and the mirror creatures were back inside the mirror, same as always.</p><p></p><p> “Wong, we can figure this out later. We have to get going,” Tal said with exasperation, as he investigated the door, but that was proving to be harder than expected. It didn’t seem to have any handle or knob, so he had now obvious way of even opening it. However, when he touched the surface of the door, it rippled as if it was liquid. Realizing that this was the way in, he called out to the rest of the party, “Over here!” Carefully, each one stepped through the door and further into the rift.</p><p></p><p> Beyond the portal door, the party found themselves in another large room, though the walls seemed to be a more solid blue color here. More troubling was the group of creatures waiting for them. The note that The Blade of Minds left (or Tesserill, as the note named her) suggested that they just teleport to her location at the end of the Rift, but she never knew that the party had previously used a system to bypass the Rift, and now had to fight their way through it as normal. And because Bath never told the party at large what the note said, just the general information, they didn’t know that Tesserill expected them to bypass the guards in the first place. Therefore, when they saw the Cerebrilith demon, the golden creature (called a Rilmani,) a giant bird with strange eyes that looked like insect hives, and a floating, slug-like creature of massive proportions, they assumed that Tesserill set her guards up here to kill or weaken the party before their fight, and responded accordingly. In other words, with violence.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="LordVyreth, post: 2037361, member: 9626"] [b]The Semiplanar Rift.[/b] A week passed, and still The Blade of Minds didn’t flee from her temple. Of course, they still weren’t certain her regular location was the temple, but they knew that their quarry would never visit Bas as long as she knew she was being tracked. Finally, she began to show signs of motion again. She suddenly disappeared from her current location to appear in a valley hundreds of miles away, which indicated a likely teleport. From there, however, she just stopped, and didn’t move for over an hour. “This has trap written all over it,” Tal grumbled, as the party decided what to do with this sudden change. “Maybe, but what choice do we have,” Danae sighed. “We have no other way to find Bas, and we can’t lead Methosilang’s armies until we know where to lead them.” “Well, what if I went ahead to scout?” Bath asked. “I can turn invisible easily enough, and I should figure out the situation before they can stop me?” After remembering how even Bas’ most powerful servants couldn’t hurt Bas before, the group agreed, and Bath used her Plane Shifting ability to repeatedly jump towards The Blade’s location until by sheer luck she arrived close enough to her target to fly there. As she used her powers, she noticed that there was some sort of strange interference every time she tried to leave the plane, but it wasn’t anything she had trouble with. Finally, she reached the Blade’s location, only to notice things were…unusual. Though the device to track the Blade was certain she was right in front of her, Bath couldn’t see anything. Realizing they might be invisible, Bath used her magic to gain the sight of truth, and saw strange, blurry lights in the vague shape of The Blade and her many servants. Bath was afraid this was part of the ambush, but the lights seemed frozen, as their target and her servants were held here. Bath investigated the area further, and found a message carved into the ground nearby. It read: To the “heroes” of Methosilang: I am well aware of your intentions at this point. Obviously, you need the location of Bas’ body if you hope to change destiny. Of course, there is a location I want from you as well. But I’m not interested in massive casualties on both sides of this war. Sure, you could try another ambush, but we both know that I won’t be surprised again, and the battle would likely cause massive casualties on both sides. Or, you could simply lose patience and launch a siege on my home, which would obviously be a brutal fight, with deaths on both sides. Therefore, I have decided to end this simply. As you can see, I went to the Rift. I’m sure you know the way there, and the way out. Our intelligence indicates that you left the plane, after all, so it’s the only logical conclusion. I will be waiting in the gateway out of the Rift. There can be no escape there, so only one of us will walk out free. Both I and the other Strife Masters have an obligation to keep the Rift guarded, but if you Jump past the puzzle foyer and the final room before the gateway, you can bypass them quickly enough. I expect you to be there as soon as possible. If not, we could continue this little chase, but we both know that it would likely be futile. Tesserill Requien. Finding this curious, Bath returned to the party. “Well, is it safe?” Danae asked. Bath looked confused. “They’re gone, and went to some place called the Rift or something. I don’t know what that is, though.” Danae thought for a moment, and then looked shocked. “She’s in the Semiplanar Rift!” After noticing how confused everyone looked as they stared at her, she sighed and explained. “The Rift is a sub plane that exists around the entirety of our plane. It blocks all attempts to leave the plane, at least for extended periods of times. Planes connected to ours like the Shadow and Ethereal plane are allowed, and even quick jumps to the Astral plane like those used for teleport spells are fine, but anything more than that will cause you to get sucked into the Rift.” “But that makes no sense, we’ve been off-plane to buy and sell magic items all the time!” Robin complained. “Yes, but we’ve been given special treatment, I believe. Remember what happened the first time we tried leaving the plane, not counting all those weird tests TIE put you through before I joined you?” Robin thought for a second, and then replied, “We ended up in some bar in a place called Sigil, right? I never understood why that happened. You were trying to take us to Union, right?” “Right, but I felt the resistance of the Rift as I left. I was worried about this, which is why I was so reluctant to leave. But instead of getting pulled in, something saved us, and we got redirected into the bar.” “Then what happened,” Xalem, who never heard this story before, asked. “Well, first of all, we were cheered by the bar attendees. Apparently almost nobody has made it out of the Rift and therefore escaped our plane lately. The last ones to do so were, well, Phellis and the other Strife Masters according to the descriptions the Bar Patrons gave us. We asked them about why our plane is so hard to leave from, but they immediately shut up. If we can trust their story, eons ago, a being calling herself The Indigo Entity appeared and ordered the entirety of Sigil into a vow of secrecy about this plane. Nothing about it can be discussed under any circumstances. Now, a place like Sigil isn’t exactly good at following rules like that, so there was a protest. The Lady of Pain, who is a godlike super-entity that rules Sigil, even intervened. However, this Indigo Entity privately showed The Lady something that absolutely terrified her. The Lady of Pain was so universally feared and respected on Sigil that when they saw her scared, the population became far more interested in following the rule, and that’s how things have been ever since. I believe that The Indigo Entity is our friend TIE, and that she was responsible for the Rift as well. If so, then that explains why we’ve been given an exemption from the Rift. We’re too important or amusing or something to TIE, so we get to leave. I assume the same exemption was passed onto Bath and Xalem when they joined us.” “So THAT’s why this place is called the Forbidden Plane!” Bath exclaimed. “But you said that the Strife Masters left before you did?” Xalem asked. “Yes, which likely means they’ve already been into the Rift, and they managed to survive it. Since they probably weren’t aiming at that same bar that we turned up in, I think everyone ends up at that Sigil bar the first time they survive the Rift. We’ve been able to travel the planes normally ever since, so it probably only happened to them the first time as well. That means that The Blade will have an advantage over us; she knows the environment, and no longer has to fear the tests.” “But how can we even enter the Rift if we automatically bypass it?” Tal inquired. “Oh, we still feel the resistance of the Rift when we leave; we just can get through it easily enough. To enter the Rift, all we have to do is not fight the resistance, and let it pull us into the Rift. However, once we’re there, I suspect that we will be forced to follow the rules of the Rift. We won’t be able to leave until we pass the test as normal.” “As we though, it is a trap then,” Tal growled. “Well, let’s go in and get this over with.” After a day or so of preparation, the party was ready to see if this Rift was really as bad as it sounded. “Are you sure you don’t know anything about the test itself?” Tal asked. Danae shook her head. “It’s been years since the last person who entered the Rift returned, so they were either killed in the Rift or on the planes beyond it. And the Rift’s test apparently changes over time, so any information I have would be unreliable anyway.” With that, she and Bath prepared to take the party off-plane, and as the resistance of the Rift closed around them, they relaxed their focus, letting the Rift take them in. They found themselves in a massive room with walls covered completely with large mirrors. Immediately, they began to investigate the room. They found what looked like a door easily enough, but the mirrors were just too intriguing to ignore entirely. For one thing, a couple of them weren’t showing their reflections! Instead, a group of people that looked like humanoids made out of mirrors were watching the party from those mirrors, and occasionally were scribbling notes about them in little books. This last effect seemed to irritate Wong in particular, who has been quiet ever since the start of this mission. “What are you doing” he yelled at the mirrors, which only made the mirror creatures scribble in their books fasters. “Stop writing about me!” he continued. He finally got so frustrated that he punched one of the mirrors, causing it to shatter. However, as he stood over it, panting with anger, the pieces slowly floated back onto the wall, forming the mirror again. Soon, it was good as new, and the mirror creatures were back inside the mirror, same as always. “Wong, we can figure this out later. We have to get going,” Tal said with exasperation, as he investigated the door, but that was proving to be harder than expected. It didn’t seem to have any handle or knob, so he had now obvious way of even opening it. However, when he touched the surface of the door, it rippled as if it was liquid. Realizing that this was the way in, he called out to the rest of the party, “Over here!” Carefully, each one stepped through the door and further into the rift. Beyond the portal door, the party found themselves in another large room, though the walls seemed to be a more solid blue color here. More troubling was the group of creatures waiting for them. The note that The Blade of Minds left (or Tesserill, as the note named her) suggested that they just teleport to her location at the end of the Rift, but she never knew that the party had previously used a system to bypass the Rift, and now had to fight their way through it as normal. And because Bath never told the party at large what the note said, just the general information, they didn’t know that Tesserill expected them to bypass the guards in the first place. Therefore, when they saw the Cerebrilith demon, the golden creature (called a Rilmani,) a giant bird with strange eyes that looked like insect hives, and a floating, slug-like creature of massive proportions, they assumed that Tesserill set her guards up here to kill or weaken the party before their fight, and responded accordingly. In other words, with violence. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
Playing the Game
Story Hour
Consequences of the Quill (Restored 5/13/06)
Top