Ruby Talon Deeps: Locations 4

It doesn’t seem possible that it has been almost two years since the last time I posted something about Ruby Talon Deeps, or that I first drew it almost three and a half years ago. Time is weird and I don’t think I like it. For some reason this feels possible to write only now, when earlier today I finished the first draft of another adventure.

Eye of Desolation

A landing on the Great Spiral Stair has an adamantine-banded door, and the adamantine thrums with strange power. The door itself has a presence and a kind of gravity in the Ethereal Plane. Attempting to teleport past the door requires a spellcasting ability check against DC 20, with a variety of flaws possible on a failure—damage, magic drain, magic item malfunction, and drawing attention from Ethereal horrors are all possible.

Beyond the door, stairs descend to open the chamber up a bit. In the center of the room is the Eye of Desolation itself, a rip in the veil between the Material Plane and the Ethereal. At the start of each minute that the characters are in this room, they make a DC 15 Charisma saving throw. On a failure, they are pulled 30 feet closer to the Eye, and they can’t move farther from it until they succeed a Charisma saving throw. Within 15 feet, the saving throw has Disadvantage. If their distance becomes 0 feet, they are pulled into the Border Ethereal, which gives them a lot of freedom to explore the Ruby Talon Deeps, but no way to communicate with or return to the Material Plane.

In the Ethereal Plane, there is a strange, incredibly complicated machine scattered about the room. It could be reassembled with an Intelligence (Investigation) check using tinkering tools to send characters in the Ethereal Plane back to the Material Plane and reseal the Eye of Desolation.

The Deep-Seer, the Hall of Masques, and the Banisher’s Watch all have meaningful Ethereal presences. Donning the correct mask in the Hall destroys the mask, but brings you back to the Material Plane. An entity with burning eyes and a hulking shape kicks you back to the Material Plane in Banisher’s Watch if it reduces you to half of your Hit Point Maximum, or hits you while you are bloodied. The Deep-Seer can see across the planar veil, and attempts to Dominate any Ethereal creature it perceives.

Beyond the Eye is a door that leads up to the basement of the Stave Church. The door is much easier to open from this side than the other side, so this is a quick and safe path back to the surface.

Deep-Seer

The bottom of the Great Spiral Stair ends in water three feet deep, and the water level rises about as fast as the water drains under the rune-marked door here. The water stretches out over a large natural cavern to an underground waterfall. The underground lake is 50 feet across, 50 feet wide, and 30 feet deep for most of its depth, save for a rift in the center of the pool that is 200 feet deep.

An abomination known as a Deep-Seer dwells here, created when a Beholder dreamed that it was an Aboleth. It is an atavism from a long-distant age, but for the most part it is satisfied to explore the Ethereal Plane and the reaches of its own vile imagination, rather than expand its dominion here. It keeps a collection of Dominated creatures in the Ethereal Plane, and it explores and exploits their minds until they starve or otherwise die. A substantial amount of treasure is scattered around the lake floor, much of it right at the edge of the rift.

There is more treasure, and quite a lot more danger, at the bottom of the rift.

The waterfall comes from an underground river. A mighty steel door stands open; if it were closed (using the Operations Console), the water would be cut off and the Deep-Seer’s pool would slowly drain.

Operations Console

The passage to the Operations Console is concealed by the waterfall. The console has levers, dials, cranks, and readouts of obscure meaning for every chamber of the Ruby Talon Deeps, but the labels have worn away. Effects from changing the settings are explained in euphemistic terms by the readouts. Flooding the Dream-Tower with poisonous gas might be listed as “reassigned to tower: dangerous vapor storage.” Use Intelligence (Investigation) checks to govern better and worse outcomes, maybe.

Something to reduce the threat of the defenses guarding the Ruby Talon is the most important potential outcome here. The Operations Console can interfere with the defenses in a way that the Raven Queen did not foresee.

Immortal’s Reliquary

This room seems to hold a sarcophagus, though in actuality it is a container for holy relics of various sorts rather than a single body. (Some of the relics are bones taken from assorted dead bodies and decorated with precious metals and gemstones, however.) The Immortal in question is the elf that was seen in the Remembrances of the Raven Tree. She is now known to most as the Raven Queen, and the relics are sacred and imbued with her divine gifts. Not all of them do anything for a wielder—some simply carry unassigned divine power. She placed them here at the same time that she placed the Ruby Talon, because their strength reinforces Banisher’s Watch.

Taking a relic away from the reliquary without proving your spiritual strength and undergoing attunement with the relic results in the Raven Queen’s curse.

Banisher’s Watch

This is the final line of defense for the Ruby Talon, constructed by the woman who became the Raven Queen. Its presence on the Material Plane is mirrored in the Ethereal Plane, the Shadowfell, and the Feywild. Within the Material Plane, a trio of Constructs made from amber (all harvested from the Raven Tree) and silver attack any who approach that do not bear the sign or power of the Raven Queen. They focus their attacks (and gain Advantage on attacks) against those bearing the sign or power of Bahamut or Tiamat. The constructs administer distracting remembrances (Wisdom saving throw to resist) when they are hit with melee attacks. Their own attacks attempt to banish the target to one of the other adjoining planes at random, as a way to split up a team of attackers.

A creature slain here is thrown into one of the impossibly deep chasms that surround Banisher’s Watch. The body reappears in the Market of Nyrus, and the creature’s face becomes a new mask in the Hall of Masques.

Divine Intervention that invokes the Raven Queen is twice as powerful or likely to succeed here.

Ruby Talon

Above Banisher’s Watch is the Ruby Talon of Sardior. It is made of pure ruby, shaped like a claw. It is five feet long and weighs hundreds of pounds. It is undefended, except that it can’t be carried across planar boundaries (or placed in a Bag of Holding or Portable Hole) through any means without the express permission of the Raven Queen. Attempts to violate this ban return the Talon to its resting-place on a pedestal in this area.

That completes the locations of Ruby Talon Deeps. Next time I write something in this series, it will probably be encounter tables for travel between named locations, and maybe stats for the Silver Memory Constructs.

Brandes Stoddard

Harbinger of Doom