Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6059654" data-attributes="member: 6696971">I don't have a ton of time so I'll try to give you some inspiration for this one.  Housed within the Ritual foci chamber is an immensely powerful Arcane Engine.  This is the conduit through which the plane-shifting occurs.  Fueling this conduit is the essence of a bound fiend, fallen celestial, ghost, etc (something that otherwise could not be wholly in the Prime Material World).  Infyrana bargained with this creature and promised it eternal wholeness, access to the Prime World...but deceived it, of course.  It has eternal access to the Prime World but only as a vestige to the host of the Arcane Engine.  However, it does perceive and its perception is that of the madness of ages trapped in the engine (serving as battery) married to fleeting moments of lucidity.  It suffers the duality of mind of:- Perceiving the Arcane Engine as its body and any attack on it as an attack on itself.and- Moments of respite from that conflict where it understands its pathetic existence and just wants freedom (through destruction or otherwise).So.  Perhaps the Arcane Engine itself is some sort of amazing looking glyph/rune-covered machine, replete with massive, encrusted, varying colored focusing crystals.  The different patterns of colored crystal activation dictate the Plane shifted to.  However, Infyrana instilled within the the Arcane Engine/bound entity protective At-Will summoning powers whereby it can summon creatures (guardians under its command) from each of the outer planes it can shift to (perhaps Far, Fey, Shadow, Astral, the Abyss and the 9 Hells)...and the pattern is the same as when Infyrana activates its <whatever time frame> Plane-shifting power.  The bound creature will defend itself (with its summoning powers) but will also cry out in anguish or outright provide a clue or direction to the PCs on how to undo itself/the Arcane Engine.   Discerning and using each pattern in conjunction with a check of some kind (either an Arcana skill or a check knowledge check relative to the lore of the plane or a Thievery check - for the coordination difficulty - or Athletics check for the required strength) disables the summoning/shifting power.  Once all are disabled, the Engine is vulnerable and can be destroyed.  If the Skill Challenge fails in the course of this effort, each disabled summoning/shifting power is re-activated and the Skill Challenge starts anew.Conversely, if you want to make things really wonky, you could have it be a Plane Shift of the Chamber itself (rather than a summoning) until a predetermined duration (perhaps until the PCs successfully defeat that step of the Skill Challenge).  Therefore the terrain would be changing every few rounds along with the enemies fought.  The PCs would have to survive this gauntlet and have ultimate success in the Skill Challenge (destroy the Arcane Engine) to end the plane-shifting (and potentially face the entity as a friend or foe).Either way:- Bound fiend, fallen celestial, or ghost in the Arcane Engine with a duality of consciousness but both the construct of madness earned over millennia trapped in the machine, feeding it with its life-force.  One side of its consciousness ruthlessly defends to the death while the other side pleas for help/provides clues to end its misery.- Engine/entity has protective At-Wills; either summoned creatures from the various realms or the chamber plane-shifts to the various realms.- Skill Challenge to destroy the Arcane Engine (and release the imprisoned creature) by discerning the glyphs on the machine itself, each of the colored-gem activation patterns during the summons/shifting, coupled with hints or directions from the bound creature and using that to temporarily disable the summoning/shifting power (with a plane-relevant check, Athletics, Arcana, Dungeoneering, Nature, Religion, Thievery).  If the Skill Challenge fails in the course of this effort, each disabled  summoning/shifting power is re-activated and the Skill Challenge starts  anew.- Once the Engine is destroyed, the creature is released and depending on the number of failures of the Skill Challenge (or some specific step taken in the Skill Challenge as a success), (i) the PCs have destroyed the entity or (ii) they have to fight the entity to the death, or (iii) the entity will become an ally in the final battle against Infyrana.</blockquote>

Verification