To Where Have I Opened the Way?

In the magenta shadows of the Slumbering Dunes, the veil of reality is thin and easily torn. Here, the use of certain magics (summoning and spells affecting space and time, such as dimension door) risks tearing open a portal to elsewhere. The caster must immediately save vs. magic. If he succeeds, the spell goes off as normal. If he fails, then he has opened the way to one of the dimensions that presses against the dunes.

To Where Have I Opened the Way? (1d6)

1-2 Wishery
3-4 The Sightless Labyrinth
5-6 The Alkaline Wastes

The portal will remain open for 1d20 turns; during this time beings may pass freely in both direction. Creatures from beyond will be drawn to the strange energies of the portal. Check immediately and once every succeeding turn for a wandering monster.

Wishery

At the point where the spell was to take effect, a tear sized drop of mirrored liquid appears, expanding rapidly into a massive torus. As it grows, the air becomes humid with an overpowering aroma of nutmeg and earthy decay. In the rippling surface of the torus the characters can see a jungle, apparently upside down as in a funhouse mirror. The dense foliage of the trees is alien in appearance, consisting of chalky branches with trembling white fronds, and thick milky vines. Land is nowhere in sight.  The characters look upon the lush white bowers of the inverted jungle that grows from the bottom of infamous Zyan, the floating city of porcelain abattoirs in the dreamlands. Its fertile and unwholesome growths are fed by the sewage and offal from the gutters of Zyan's countless abattoirs.

Encounters from Wishery (the Inverted Jungle) (1d6):

1. Guildsmen

These beings have descended through the sewers and undercity of Zyan into the depths of the inverted jungle to gather the massive fleshy polyps that can be found clinging to trees in the jungle's middle region. The polyps are of use in the elaborate and gory rituals of their Fleisch Guild. The guildsmen wear serene copper masks and lacquered armor, as well as the harnesses with which they are rappelling into the depths of the jungle. They are curious to see the meats and organs of living beings.   

1 Master Carver HD6 (24) AC4 Att: 2 serrated swords 1d8+4. Anyone struck must save vs. paralysis or be hobbled -2 to hit and 1/2 move by his expert incisions.

2 Journeyman Flayers HD3 (10) (11) AC6 Att: 1 viciously hooked polearm 1d12+2

4 Apprentice Salters HD1 (6) (5) (4) AC6 Att: weighted net (ensnare) or spear 1d6

2. Leopard Pythons

In the glow of the setting sun, the sated forms of these mighty hunters can be seen languidly draped around the branches and trunks of the jungle's dangling trees. When stirred to action by hunger or boredom, their roars echo throughout the jungle. Their powerful sinuous bodies can crush multiple prey, while their heads delivers fierce bites. They usually travel in mated pairs, as does this couple. 

2 Leopard Pythons HD5 (25) (28) AC4 Att: Bite 1d10+2 + Constriction (ensare or squeeze 1d8). The first successful constriction hit snares the victim who will in subsequent rounds take automatic squeezing damage until released. The Leopard Python may snare multiple targets, encircling a new target each round. 

3. Hypnogic Miasma 

Its shimmering, multi-hued surface drips and oozes from branches, coalescing into a surging wave of pseudopods. Within its gelid form, brain like organs are suspended, connected by shifting ganglia, along which colors flash. The Hypnogogic Miasma is the intelligent spore of the Indigo Tyrant fungus that infests the base of jungle trees. It has floated into the depths of the jungle seeking sentient beings to colonize with parasitic growths. Such infected beings are transformed into single-minded defenders of its mother's tree. They touch of the Hypnogogic Miasma's pseudopods induces a state between waking and dreaming, in which the mind is susceptible to phantasms and influence.

Hypnogogic Miasma HD7 (35) AC9 Att 2 pseudo pods 1d8+hypnogia. On a successful hit, the victim must save vs spells or suffer one of the following effects for 4 rounds (1d6): 1. Phantasmal Force 2. Mirror Image (as though cast on the Miasma)  3. Sleep 4. Confusion 5. Blindness 6. Command (attack friends). 

4. Plumed Reavers

Flocks of these winged humanoids may be seen flitting from tree to tree in the sparse and airy lowest levels of the jungle where they dwell. Their originally bright and colorful plumage is stained and mangy from constant exposure to the jungle's offal rains. Curious and cruel by turns, they delight in barter and inflicting suffering. This group has made its way up through the jungle to trade with the hanging merchants of Zyan in their dangling wicker pagodas. They are laden with rare specimens and herbs that they hope to exchange for baubles and slaves to torment.

6 Plumed Reavers HD2 (3) (3) (4) (5) (6) (8) AC6 Dam spear 1d6 or blowgun 1d4 sv. poison 

5. Vothak 

These pale, leathery horrors are the offspring of Martian nightmares. These eyeless hunters are well suited to their inverted home. Their sucker covered feat allow them to climb any surface, and they are comfortable in any orientation. They move with a brutal speed, and attack with four razor sharp claws. Most terrible of all is the bite of their massive maw, filled with needle like teeth. They appetite is limitless and they strike without mercy. Only a superior show of force can turn them aside from chosen prey.

Vothak HD11 (45) AC1 Att 4 claws 1d8 1 bite 1d12 + swallow. If the bite hits by 4 more than needed, the Vothak will swallow his target and immediately retreat through the portal. Anyone ingested takes 3d12 damage per round, but may attack and does not need to roll to hit.

6. Chittering Masons

These intelligent arachnids are subtle builders. Their services are valued in Zyan above, where they serve many of the Guildhouses on lucrative terms. In the inverted jungle, they produce vast multi-level warrens integrated with the trees across swathes of the jungle. The finished products are flowing, inverted towers ending in sharp spires, interconnected by tubular passageways that extend in every direction. Their wants and moods are hard for humans to understand. They have an overwhelming urge to fondle with their long small hands anything beautiful or finely crafted. It is impossible for a human to master their horrible chittering language, but a few of them do speak a giddy and broken common tongue. In combat they use their many arms to grapple and immobilize their foes, so they can deliver a bite containing a paralysis inducing poison.

4 Chittering Masons HD3 (7) (11) (16) AC4 Dam: 1 Grapple + 1 Bite 1d6+poison. A successful grapple can disarm, immbolize, or choke 1d4.

The Sightless Labyrinth

The area immediately darkens to a dim twilight. Towards the point where the spell was to take effect, everything becomes white on black as in the negative of a photograph. At the center of the darkness, a cramped corridor of elaborately worked stone, thick with grotesques and geometrical shapes, stretches into the distance. Looking down the corridor, one can see that it opens onto a set of stairs leading down into an unimaginably vast space filled with terraces and arcades, and enormous screaming statues. This is the Sightless Labyrinth. It endless dark twisting corridors, cramped apartments, ante-chambers, dizzying staircases, and porticoes open onto architectures too vast for the human mind to comprehend. It fills the entire space between worlds. Although it is used by a few powerful wizards as a medium of transportation, for most stranded here it is a hell from which they cannot escape.

The Sightless Labyrinth is in a state of endless religious war. The numerous factions divide along theological lines in their shared byzantine alien faith. The sects fight an endless guerilla war, chamber by chamber, staircase by staircase. For each point of orthodoxy there are dozens of heresies. Strangers who find themselves stranded in the Sightless Labyrinth must quickly acquire theological scruples and facility with the texts, for all sides agree on this alone: there is open season on neutrals for whom are reserved the most gruesome sacrifices to their demon lords.

Encounters from the Sightless Labyrinth (1d6):

 1. Still Prelates

Traditional Still Prelate

Still Prelates are gaunt figures. In the place of a face, a manuscript is set, supported by an elaborate iron cage drilled into their skull. They are silent and malicious figures, who revel in pain and suffering. When they cast spells, their manuscript flips open to the relevant page, and the runes inscribed thereupon glow green. Should they be slain, the manuscript may be extracted from their head. To master the spells one must risk ones sanity, for they are interwoven with a dense and alien theological treatise. The Still Prelates' theology hold that the Ebon Ziggurat was never desecrated. Thus, alone among the sects of the Labyrinth, their worship still focuses on the portion of the Puzzle Scrolls that describe the blood sacrifices performed within its blackened chambers. There is a splinter faction that goes further and rejects as well the authority of the Scribes who later interpreted the Puzzle Scrolls. This faction has been exiled from the Ebon Ziggurat and seeks to regain it at all costs. 

Member of the Splinter Faction

1 Still Prelate HD7 (36) AC2 Att: by spell. Spells memorized: Darkness 15' radius (x2), Cause Fear, Silence 15' Radius, Hold Person, Blindness (x2), Dispel Magic, Insect Plague, Monster Summoning II (summons 1d6 Compass Worms--see below).

2. Vorpal Swine

These entities are summoned for use as siege weapons to break the barricades and seals of enemies, and reap slaughter behind their lines. Often they are imprisoned as tightly curled balls within glass globes that can be thrown up to 60', uncurling on impact into a screaming farrago of limbs and pure hatred. As often as not, the Swine Toads succeed only too well, nesting in halls and apartments that they were supposed to clear, and hunting any who encroach on their territory. The Vorpal Swine moves with a ferocious speed, and can travel across and up any surface, using its suckered limbs. 

1 Vorpal Swine HD8 (45) AC5 Att 4 smash 2d6

3. Charnel Paladins

The Charnel Paladins are colonies of worm like creatures, bound together and raised to consciousness by the occult armor that serves as their shell. They feed on the flesh of their fallen foes by opening hinged apertures in their armor, allowing the surging worms within to lap at putrefying flesh. They are feared in battle for their relentless courage and the power of their alchemical suits. They are servants of the Lambent Lords who manufacture their armor and are responsible for uniting them into consciousness. They follow the tenets of their masters who rigorously interpret all of the laws of the Puzzle Scrolls through the byzantine tractates that concern property and possession. (Their contracts are legendary.) There is, however, a small group of heretical Paladins who have forsaken the Lambent Lords. Through orgiastic sabbaths they seek to recreate the experience in the garden before the Priapic Mother disgorged the Sightless Labyrinth from her star maw, when everything was one and the division between mine and yours was unknown. Travelers sometimes stumble upon their alchemical shells, standing empty in a ring, as their occupants mingle, forsaking consciousness and individuality to couple and feast in a huge surging mass of worm flesh in the ring's center.  

4 Charnel Paladins HD6 AC-2 Att Alchemical Blade 1d10+2 Special: Whenever the suit is damaged in melee, the worms within surge from the crack striking at the attacker as HD2 creatures doing 1d6. 

4. Compass Worms

Compass Worms are five feet in length. Their otherwise featureless head ends in a maw ringed by sharp teeth. They are filled with a hatred of sapient life and an uncontrollable lust for blood. Native to the Sightless Labyrinth, they have an unerring sense of direction, and potent alien senses that allow the worm to “see” in darkness, and detect invisible or hidden creatures. Compass Worms are valued for their frightful force as guardians, and also by all those sorcerers who have reason to tread in twisting labyrinths or the dark places beneath the earth. 

1d8 Compass Worms HD3+1 AC6 Att 1 bite 2d4+1 + blood frenzy. As soon as any of the worms tastes blood (does damage), all worms in a 30' radius enter a wild, thrashing frenzy, receiving an additional attack per round.

5. Hidden Acolytes

The Hidden Acolytes hold that the Prism Messiah of the Fourth Puzzle Scroll has returned and that the Sightless Labyrinth has already been transformed into the Kingdom of the Spectrum promised to the faithful. For this reason, the laws of the Puzzle Scrolls are void, pertaining as they do to the past epoch. To demonstrate this profound truth, they gather in secret to systematically break each and every of the Scroll's innumerable laws. As it turns out, their broken and crooked rituals have opened the way for another sphere of demons to enter the Labyrinth. These powerful and horrific entities aid the Hidden Acolytes in their cause. In order to spread their secret faith, they have conferred on the acolytes a living death that makes their flesh malleable, able to assume the face and appearance of any humanoid. They use this power to insinuate themselves into other factions and slowly win converts to their antinomian creed. 

HD3 AC7 Att Longsword 1d8 Special: ESP, Alter Self, only harmed by magic or silver weapons. The Hidden Acolytes will assume the form of people known to the party and attempt to join them in order to persuade to the cause.  

6. Sacrifice Chattel

The Sacrifice Chattel once belonged to a race of great starfarers, traveling between the many suns in colossal organic ships with spiraled shells. The ship of this group was lost to the labyrinth in a cataclysmic engineering failure. Captured by the Lambent Lords, the crew was bred and trained into submission over countless generations. In the possessive parlance of their masters, the Sacrifice Chattel are those for whom nothing is mine and everything is yours. They thus do not refer to themselves with the first person nominative, but rather the third person possessive. Among them a passive faith has spread. According to this creed, the desecration of the Black Ziggurat was a predestined and holy event. By destroying its physical form the Desecrator liberated its spiritual essence, which now exists in the form of the Inner Ziggurat carried within each and every sentient being. Unlike the body that houses it, the Inner Ziggurat cannot be harmed, and by its possession everyone, no matter their lot in life, is now spiritually speaking, a member of the caste of Ziggurat Born. 

2d6 Sacrifice Chattel HD2+1 AC8 Att will not attack. The chattel will immediately attempt to enslave themselves to the party.  

The Alkaline Wastes

A thin glowing vertical line appears in the air, running from the ground to about ten feet in height. Reality folds back, bunching up on either side, as though the world was a curtain being whisked aside. A gust of cold wind blows, accompanied by an unpleasant metallic taste at the back of the mouth. In the opening, a bleak snowy landscape sits beneath a lavender sky in which hang six black moons. In the distance, the plain ends in what appear to be cyclopean cliffs of a metallic hue, streaked by brown rust. Strange growths spring from rocky outcroppings, a mix of impossible forms, the organic blending with the mechanical. These are the Alkaline Wastes.

The environment of the Alkaline Wastes is difficult for man, a constant chemical winter of acid snows, and corrosive winds. The wastes are the forlorn home of the inimical Archivists who broke great Ghinor and ruled the sons of men for more than two centuries. The wastes all but forgotten in Ruined Ghinor, except to the few Waywatchers who keep dedicated watch over the sealed portals, the locations of which they hide at all costs. While the empire of the Archivists exercises nominal dominion over the entirety of these dreary wastes, in truth they shelter in their cities, sinking ever deeper into their quixotic and obsessive inquires. Beyond their walls, strange things shuffle among the ruins of past empires and abandoned projects.

Encounters from the Alkaline Wastes (1d6):

1. Tube Lich

In the vast battlefields of the long forgotten wars of the Alkaline Wastes, strange weapons and fortifications lie corroding, buried along with the dead in drifts of chemical snow. The leakage and mingling of degraded materials and bio-occult effluvia sometimes give rise to necromechanical sumps out of which shamble the war dead. Tube Liches are pilot entities that have managed to free themselves from the apparatuses in which they were lodged, pulling with them the tubing and circuitry that is embedded in their flesh. Depending on how much hardware they manage to take with them, they can be quite a potent force. Often they are deranged, continuing to fight a war centuries old against enemies long perished.

3 Tube Liches HD4 (17) (21) AC2 Att: Ancient Blade 1d8+1 Special: Flickering shield barrier absorbs the first 2 points of damage from every attack.

1 Tube Lich HD4 (20) AC2 Att: Ancient Blade 1d8+1 Special: electrified, anyone striking the Tube Lich with a metal weapon must save vs. breath weapon or take 1d10 damage.

1 Tube Lich HD4 (14) AC2 Att: Cannon 3d6 save vs. breath weapon for half.    

2. Rust Mantis

The ruins of the Alchemical Wastes sustain many scavengers. The foul Rust Mantis are intelligent insect men who feed on feed on a mixture of rusting metal and flesh. Their chitin is streaked with brown and verdigris, dusted with frost. Their bite is quite painful, for their saliva carries a corrosive acid that eats through metal. (They are also bearers of many diseases, especially acute tetnis.) If a party appears weak, they will advance covetously towards any of them wearing metal. On a strong showing of force, they are likely to scatter and search for easier prey. 

2d6 Rust Mantis' HD2 AC4 Attk 2 claws 1d6 + 1 bite 2d6

3. Jade Hounds

Two humans, their bodies covered in chemical burns and frost bite, shamble desperately forward. They are the descendants of the slave population of humans imported in great numbers to the Alkaline Wastes during the Arhcivists' terrestrial dominion. Having extricated themselves from their bulb-headed conditioning units and planned a daring escape, they are being hunted by the Archivist's terrible Jade Hounds. The Hounds hunt by tracing the psycho-emotional imprint of their prey. (They can literally smell fear.) The Archivists are watching through the eyes of the hounds and will learn about the rift (and PCs) through the ensuing altercation. 

Davos (human) HD3 AC8 Att: Vibro Whip 1d6+2

Mirval (human) HD1 AC9 Att: Sword 1d8

6 Jade Hounds HD4 AC3 Att: Bite 1d8+2 or Psychic Howl (once per day) everyone within 60' must save vs. spells or be stunned for 1d10 rounds

4. Rime Slug

The Spatter Lakes are frozen bodies of water that dot their Alkaline Wastes, their crystalized surfaces shiny in refractory and oily hues. They are fed underneath by deep chemical cenotaphs filled with strange life. The Rime Slugs travel from these depths to the surface of the wastes during the stages of development where they are filled with a deep mewling hunger. They are capable of boring through snow and ice, and constricting their great bodies to fit through small fissures in rocks. 

1 Rime Slug HD8 (48) AC7 Att: Bite 1d12 or breath weapon. Special: twice per day can breath a 60' cone of acidic frost 4d6 save vs. breath weapon for half.

5. Vaxian Rebels

Former slaves of the Archivists, the Vaxians are the greatest mapmakers in the many worlds. For their masters they composed wondrous and diverse maps: familiar but masterfully executed: spherical projections, isometric maps, strings of absolute coordinates; others charted wholly new regions: the lozenge maps of neuro-emotional states, or the rhizomatic displays of the transworld manifestations of organisms; and some were fascinating novelties, such as the four dimensional colored light maps representing the movement of teeming insects within a hive. Through subtle mapping errors, introduced over decades, the Vaxians precipitated a dimensional catastrophy for their masters. During the ensuing mayhem, most Vaxians escaped through carefully planned routes into other planes. A small fanatical group has remained behind to conduct a doomed guerrilla war against their former masters. Hailing from a conquered jungle world, their bodies have been altered to survive in the endless chemical winter of the Alkaline Wastes. They are skilled warriors, and relentless in their struggle. 

1 Commander HD4 (15) AC2 Att: Stun rod (10 charges) save vs. paralysis

6 Troops HD2 (7) AC4 Att: Blaster (6 charges) 1d8 or Vibro Knife 1d8

6. Hermit Beasts

The Alkaline Wastes is home to a variety of organism that have adopted the method of the terrestrial hermit crab, integrating themselves into armored shells composed of the detritus of the waste. In many cases, their nervous systems are able to breathe a second life into the machinery of their shell, nerve fibers connecting with circuit boards, the bio-electrical current providing a new power sources. 

1 Turbine Lobster HD6 (30) AC2 Att 2 Claws 1d8+4 Special: 2 times a day can activate its turbine shell. This either pushes everyone back, save vs. breath weapon or go tumbling 60' backwards (1d6 damage), or draws them into the blades, save vs. breath weapon or take 3d6 damage.