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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9063446" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon Issue 81: Jul/Aug 2000part 3/5Divisions of the Mind: Our cover story takes itself somewhat more seriously, but still manages to have some quirky elements in it. A beholder has indeed been rampaging at a nearby village, but although it caused a fair amount of property damage, there were no casualties, which should definitely arouse suspicion from anyone who knows how deadly they are when they go all-out with their eye rays. Nevertheless, this definitely deserves investigation by some high level adventurers. The nearby entrance to the underdark is easy enough to find, but to reach him you have to go through a whole load of twisting mazy natural caverns with plenty of minor challenges, plus the petrified behir from the cover, which hopefully you won’t be dumb enough to depetrify. When you do catch up with the beholder, you’ll find out that fighting you isn’t his objective. He’s found a magic-proof floating citadel in a massive cavern a little deeper in and wants you to investigate. In return, you & the villagers get to live and you can keep 50% of the stuff you find in there. Unless you think you can take him in a fight, you probably ought to take the deal and hope he does not decide to change the terms later. The contents turn out to be a lot more than yet another wizard doing research in seclusion. It’s owned by an Ulitharid who’s been taken over by the personality of the body of the person it was implanted in due to a unique accident while experimenting with psionic circuitry. Now she’s doing her best to keep that a secret while doing as much harm to the other illithids in revenge and keep the other personality from taking control of their body again. If the PC’s don’t blunder in attacking everything she’ll be quite willing to talk and point them in the direction of further adversaries while supplying them with the products of her research. Of course, there’s still plenty of lesser minions who will not be so inclined to talk, plus said research is pretty creepy looking illithid biotechnology so the PC’s might not take her at face value either, which means you may well wind up hack & slashing through this section as well. If you don’t, the beholder will not be pleased about you coming back without treasure even if you give him a good explanation, so you’re probably going to face a big stand-up battle against magically powerful opponents either way. The kind of adventure where in theory you could kill everything, but it’s both easier and more interesting if you talk to the monsters and engage in a little politics, figuring out who you want to side with to defeat the other one. With plenty of moral ambiguity and weird elements that draw upon the monstrous arcana books for both creatures, this is all pleasingly advanced in design and doesn’t feel like a retread of something else. One of those instances I can definitely see why they picked it out to make the cover star.</blockquote>

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