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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 6197098" data-attributes="member: 6750502">Elysium <img src="http://i.*****.com/Hj7V3.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> You’ll Understand When You Join Us    Elysium is a low-key realm of satisfaction and contentment.  The petitioners here are mostly happy with their lot in the afterlife and overall get along with each other.  They also lack visible levels of anger, resentment, and many of the more negative qualities prevalent in sapient life across the Multiverse.  These feelings still exist; they’re just so muted that they almost never come to the surface.    Elysium’s ideal of Good is not just the absence of Evil, but the absence of sorrow, vengeance, and other emotions which give rise to suffering and further acts of Evil.  Additionally, the ideal includes the fostering of peace, love, and goodwill towards others on a universal level.  But Elysium’s means of achieving this is altering the nature of petitioners and visitors to this mentality.  Allowing people the choice to do Evil is a net loss for Good.  Thus it is a moral imperative on the part of Elysium to reduce the numbers of people who do Evil and increase the numbers of people who do Good.  Killing the minions of Evil is not enough; petitioners are eternal and can continue to do Evil or Good in the Multiverse.  This is a major reason for the widespread transformation of visitors into Elysium petitioners.Although the other Upper Planes have similar ends and encourage the proliferation of altruistic works, their means put them at odds with the Elysians: Arborea believes in individual choice (provided those choices don’t oppress others); Celestia believes that genuine Goodness comes through voluntary self-sacrifice; Ysgard believes that lack of conflict causes people’s skills and nature to atrophy.  Elysium’s nature is a very controversial issue due to the issues it raises regarding free will and genuine Goodness on the part of the individual.The Trackers      In addition to moral and philosophical arguments, the “entrapment” of visitors on the Plane has given rise to another controversy.  The Elysium Trackers are a guild based in the city of Sigil, whose sole duty is to find entrapped people and remove them from the Plane.  The organization disagrees with Elysium’s ideals, insisting that the heartache and sorrow caused by friends and loved ones of the entrapped outweighs any personal happiness engendered by the Plane’s nature.  Many Trackers also object to the involuntary nature of the entrapment, arguing that it violates the rights of people to choose where they live and free control over their own minds.  Since most entrapped people and petitioners regard forced removal as a form of kidnapping, the Trackers are treated as a criminal order on the Plane and attacked by angels and guardinals if their presence is discovered.    The Trackers possess a secret means of changing petitioners back into their former selves; it involves powerful planar magic akin to the Miracle spell, and the time and resources necessary cause the Trackers to carefully plan out their incursions into Elysium.  The reception former petitioners have to the Trackers is mixed: many of them, especially those from unhappy backgrounds, resent the Trackers for “robbing” them of happiness.  Others are grateful to the Trackers and try to go back to their old lives.Belierin’s Secret    The third layer of Elysium is perhaps the most isolated and well-defended.  The guardinals are on a constant war footing, and the layer’s not accessible to the general public or travelers.  Even though it’s far away from the Lower Planes, many demons, devils, and yugoloths continually infiltrate the layer.  They’re all searching for something, the specifics of which are unknown to them and the angelic guardians of the layer.  Many people theorized that some evil entity or artifact of great power is imprisoned on the layer.  Others theorize that the guardinals are building a magical ritual to spread their Plane’s influence across the entire Multiverse.    The fiends aren’t the only folks interested in the guardinal’s secret.  Organizations and deities devoted to knowledge, secrets, and information have a vested interest in this layer and often hire adventurers to infiltrate the Plane and report back any unusual activity.  Even other good-aligned factions, fearful of the possibility of the Plane’s entrapment spreading, have a stake in the espionage game.    The true nature of Belierin is deliberately left up to the Dungeon Master for the needs of his campaign.  Regardless of the choice, it should be something that the guardinals don’t want others to know about and something the fiends are desperate to possess or destroy.Adventure Hooks for Elysium:•    A famous Paladin got stranded on Eronia through a freak windstorm.  He’s now transitioned into a petitioner and lost knowledge of most of his abilities and Paladin powers.  An archon from Celestia is currently in Talisid’s Court, arguing for the return of the Paladin.  The PCs need the Paladin to help stop a great evil on another plane, and the Guardinals are unwilling to return him.  Even if they take him off the plane, they’ll need a Wish or Miracle spell or the help of the Trackers to restore the holy warrior to his former self.•    A Druid successfully grew a type of plant which can hold off the entrapment of Elysium.  Grown in the soil of Hades and infused with negative emotions, the flora has the side-effect of causing nearby people to grow bitter and hateful.  Many factions are now hunting the Druid and her herbal secrets: the fiends want to use it to spread the cause of Evil, the Elysians want to destroy the plants to maintain the status quo and minimize the damage they’ll cause, and planar merchants want to gain control of the herbal supply and make major inroads on Elysium.•    While in an open town on the layer of Belierin, a strike force of Devils pours through a portal and starts ravaging the town.  While searching for the source, the PCs will find a red jewel in the boathouse of a local petitioner.  It is an extraplanar scrying beacon in disguise, and the petitioner insists that he had no knowledge of the jewel’s true properties.  The guardinals place the town under lockdown until they find out the cause of the problem.  The process will take more than a week, and the PCs will become wanted fugitives if they try to escape.  If they don’t want to become entrapped by the plane or live on the lam, the PCs will need to solve the mystery and find the spy.</blockquote>

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