After Death

Hell is Hell, and if you're extremely unlucky you will be taken there when you die. Heaven is something else, poorly understood. Getting taken to Heaven is rare and it's not clear what it means for the soul - the church will tell you that they are rewarded with an eternal bliss, but the church says a lot of things.

People can be taken to Heaven and Hell in specific cases, but when you die you will always end up in the underworld, which is where you can then be found and taken by angels and demons. The vast, vast majority of people never leave the underworld after death. It is a dark, sad place; an endless succession of black clay rooms, where people eat earth (or birds, when they can catch them - birds roost in the underworld too, and it is known that birds alone can move freely between the two realms, which is why they are used for sky burial) and weep quietly, trying to forget their misery. They dress themselves in feathers for warmth. They are called shades, souls, spirits, intelligences... They are what remains of you after you move on. They forget themselves over time, and cease to be wholly corporeal. If their will is strong (or, so say the gnostics, their intelligence is properly arranged), they will keep a sense of themselves for a long time, maybe even thousands of years, but eventually people forget themselves and their forms begin to blur into the darkness and the cold wet clay. They don't disappear, but the thing that makes them an individual goes out like a light. Once this happens it can never be reversed. No magic, no religion, nothing, has every made a claim to the contrary - this is a universal constant.

One thing that both Heaven and Hell do is ensure that this fading never happens. A shade in service of either will have something to put their mind to, and will keep their sense of self. There are people who will tell you that an eternity of torture in the Material Hell is preferable to non-existence, although none of those people have never experienced an eternity of torture.

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There are various methods of retrieving people's shades from the underworld. The traditional one is to travel there yourself (there is a chasm that contains the gate downwards, hard to get to but a known thing), get past the various guardians and traps, and find them - remind them who they are, escort them back up to the sunshine, reunite them with their body. This has to be done quickly; shades outside the underworld are in danger of dissolving almost immediately into the wind and the light.

Another is to induce death to travel there as a shade, and then be resuscitated. If you travel into the underworld with a strong will and evidence of the beauty of life (good food, stories of friendship or sex, mementoes from loved ones), then there you will most likely be able to get out again - but this is risky, and the longer you stay down there the riskier it gets. If you start to forget your life you are doomed to stay yourself. The resuscitation is what makes the bridge back out - you can bring a soul with you if they remember themselves. The guardians will be unhappy about this. It gets harder the longer someone has been dead, and the further inside the underworld they have wandered.

Most cultures have traditional healers and necromancers that can induce body-death, travel into the underworld, find souls and talk with them (or in rare cases convince them back), and then be resuscitated. This is generally specialist work outside the scope of mere adventurers, although a character who made this their entire class might be interesting.

To bring a soul back it has to be in good shape, and it has to have a good home in its old body. This means the body must be more or less whole, and not decomposed. Traditional resuscitation rites involve making the body look and smell nice, sewing up any open wounds (and potentially replacing maimed bits with beautiful prosthetics - these are strictly for making the corpse 'look good' to the soul, and are generally removed after the resurrection) and surrounding it with incense, lively music, and good food. All of this helps the shade to remember how good life is.

A professional will not risk their own life for their clients, and they know very well how risky venturing into the underworld like this is. They will rarely work on anyone who has been dead for more than a day or so, since at that point they will be searching around in the underworld for a while and things get riskier very quickly. 

MECHANICS

When a character dies they wake up in the underworld. If they died fighting, or if they have been formally buried, they have on them everything they were holding and carrying in the battle, or everything they were buried with. If someone loots gear from their body, it vanishes in the underworld. Don't take your friends' equipment after they die! They might need it!

The underworld is a succession of pitch black clay rooms, filled with birds and weeping shades. Every now and then you will encounter someone who is sane and whole. They are all sorts of people - usually they will be calm, or trying to stay calm (although if you're trying to stay calm you're probably not far from a breakdown of self). You get hungry and thirsty, and people down here eat clay and birdflesh, and drink blood.

As long as you don't try to escape, create light, or start fights, that's the whole thing. You will be there for eternity, until your sanity erodes and you become a mindless shade. Adventurers have strong minds and strong appetites for life, and fade more slowly than common folk. You lose 1 CHAR per week you spend in the underworld. Once it hits 5, this changes to 1 CHAR per year.  When it hits 0 you are gone forever - nothing will ever bring you back. This CHAR drain regenerates art a rate of one/week if you are revived into your body, but every death you suffer gives you a permanent -1 to CHAR. 

Once you hit level 12, you are assumed to be of strong enough mind to keep yourself together in the underworld indefinitely. You still take the -1 CHAR for dying, but you no longer lose CHAR over time and are not in danger of losing yourself permanently. Great heroes of old have entire sections of the underworld given over to them, where they attract similarly hardy shades and do business/hold court with the guardians. 

The first time you die you will be close to the border of life. Someone trying to find you will have an easy time of it, as long as you don't wander further in. Each subsequent death means that you appear further from the border, as death begins to stake its claim on you. Finding the shade becomes much harder, and may require days or even weeks of journeying through the black halls.

If you have acted against the Hating Machines, then there is a chance that demons will come to find you and take your soul to the Material Hell. If you have lead a holy life, and have died in good standing with the church, then Angels may try to find you and bring you to Heaven instead, but this is quite rare. 

There are also various underworld guardians who police the halls and enforce the laws. No light is a big one, and the thing that mostly trips up adventurers travelling through the underworld. It reminds the shades of the sun, and it is not tolerated. It goes without saying that trying to bring shades back to the world of the living is grounds for immediate violence. This will go for you as well, if you have killed yourself to get down there looking for someone else. You are also not allowed to mark the walls, or try to produce maps of the halls. 

The guardians are not evil or cruel, and they can be spoken and bargained with. They like art and veneration, and they really like stories and music. They may look the other way if bribed. Traditional ressurectionists know this, and most are musicians and carry things that might be of interest in case they do come across the guardians. This is always risky though, like trying to bribe a cop - if you get one on a bad day, or one with a particularly zealous outlook, it can backfire badly.

Encountering these creatures is rare - the underworld is vast and most of it is echoingly empty. It gets more common as you travel further in, and a lot more common if you have light with you.

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If you go really far in, you may encounter the great spirits of the underworld. They call themselves gods and goddesses (which is heretical; they often find themselves in conflict with angels because of this), and are the ones who administer and lord over this strange territory. There are many, many tales of their interrelations and petty squabbles. It is popularly said that the guardians are their thousands of (inbred) children. There are also many stories of their fantastic wealth, their magical treasure, and tales of brave heroes challenging them to battles of wits, or feasting with them in their halls.

Once you are this far into the underworld you are going to have a very difficult time getting out. Hope you bought a ball of string, a piece of chalk, or something similarly clever to mark your passage. 

Ereshkigal, from the collection of the Imperial British Museum.

Mag's Needle Part 2

The following are the notes from actually running Magda's Needle. Quite different to the preliminary notes (here)! Thrak is, of course, an expy for Thak, from the superlative Rogues in the House - apparently Howard's favourite Conan story, and truly excellent. The proto-dnd flavour is noticeably strong in this one.

The party of three were level 1-2. Could have died easily, but managed well enough.



Magda’s Needle

This tall, square stone tower stands at the edge of the forest of lights, on a cliff edge overlooking the ocean. It is entirely constructed of large blocks of white stone. There are no visible windows. The top of the tower is encased in a strange iron dome. There is a single doorway with heavy, ten foot tall iron doors. These are ajar. A short stone stair leads to a landing in front of the doors.

Around this entrance are signs of violent struggle. There is a lot of blood, and some scattered pieces of armour and gear, but no bodies. Bloody drag marks lead into the store room and up one of the flights of stairs. The antechamber of the tower is a large stone room: the Store Room.

Above



Store Room

A large, open, white stone room. It takes up the entire floor area of the tower. Dominated by the circular shaft at its centre, which drops into darkness. There are two large stone staircases at the back end of the room, and a broad half crescent of white light on the floor.

The central shaft leads down into the flooded Iron Prison. It is covered with an iron grate with a locked trapdoor in its centre. The bars are thick, and close enough together that you can walk over the grate. There is an open section where the bars have been forced outwards from the inside (it looks like they were melted with something, and then bent outwards after weakening). Beneath the grill the entire shaft is flooded with stagnant, foul smelling water. An iron ladder leads from the central trapdoor down into nebulous depths.

The white light looks like what we would recognise as fluorescent light, and will immediately read as magical to adventurers. This is Lamp Light. Anything invisible that enters into it is made visible. Any illusions that enter it can be seen through, though they are not dispelled. Lamp Light is basically light of true seeing.

The light comes from the very top of the tower, through a series of round openings in the centres of each of the floors. If someone looks up into it they will see something what looks like a partial eclipse - a bright white disk, partially obscured by a black shadow.

There is an iron mannikin standing stiffly in the foyer, in a butler’s pose. Its metal body has been painted with a tuxedo, but this has worn away with time. It is inanimate.

The far wall is dominated by two huge, grandiose marbles stairways, both leading up to the Control Room.

The remaining wall space is lined with storage racks, which contain various casks and barrels. Most of this is spoiled food, desiccated past the point of smelling bad, but two of the smaller casks are filled with black crude oil, worth 2000 gold to a (wealthy) alchemist but not man-portable. There is also a small barrel of excellent wine, worth 40 gold, alongside three more that have spoiled to vinegar.

There are four invisible DIMENSIONAL VERMIN in this room. They will remain still or stealthily follow anyone who enters through the tower, avoiding the white light. If anyone becomes separated they will attack. They are murderously hostile and cannot speak.



Control Room

This room is dominated by the bank of iron machinery that covers one wall, and the control panel in front of it. There is an iron ladder leading up into the stone ceiling (it is covered, like a NYC fire escape), and another crescent of Lamp Light. The large circular hole in the centre of the floor looks down into the Store Room, and is ringed with iron railings.

There is a pile of corpses dumped by the crescent light. The VERMIN have gathered them hoping to lure THRAK down from above (they think he might get hungry). The corpses are in various stages of decomposition. Most of the gear is ruined but you can loot a short sword, a battleaxe, two daggers, a fine silver locket (no picture inside, worth 8 gold), and 4 gold, 12 silver, 8 copper if you search them. Their blood pools across the floor.

The controls are labelled in archaic common:

IRIS - a binary toggle, OPEN or CLOSED, controls the iris. Set to CLOSED. The iris is currently wedged open, forming the crescent shape of light. If opened then the semi circle will become a full circle of light, and the wedge (a book on gardening) will fall down onto the grill that covers the Iron Prison. If closed after this, the iris will close completely, and the Lamp Light will be cut off. This will plunge the lower levels of the tower into complete darkness, save for any daylight entering through the doors.

FLOOD - a four step switch, numbered 1 - 4, currently at 4. changing this will cause the drainage level of the prison to change. There are four levels to the prison beneath the tower, and the bottom level is always flooded. The flooding or draining takes five minutes per ‘level’, and is quite loud.

DOOR - a binary toggle, OPEN or CLOSED, controls the front doors. Currently set to OPEN.

HOOD - a binary toggle which opens and closes the lamp hood; the iron dome that encloses the lamp. Settings are OPEN and CLOSED. Current setting is CLOSED. Opening and closing the hood has no effect inside the tower, but opening the hood will make the tower to be very visible to the outside world within a large distance, like a lighthouse.

The controls still function but the machinery is rusted by time. Every time the players use the controls, roll a d4. On a 1, the mechanisms cease functioning and all settings are ‘frozen’.

There are also three large and portable (though cumbersome) mirrors propped against the wall by the controls. They are well made and worth 60 gold each, but would be difficult to travel with owing to their bulk and fragility.

The side of the room opposite to the stairs contains a false wall, which is hidden by an illusion to look like stone. Lamp Light will reveal the hollow section as a fitted timber panel, easy to lift away, which will reveal a hidden corridor running along the south side of the room. Savvy adventurers may realise that the room is slightly too small for its floor, seen from the room below.

The secret corridor contains a small hoard of treasure. 250 gold, 20 platinum, two rose diamonds worth 150 gold each. The hoard is a nest to two large CENTIPEDES, who will attack if it is disturbed.

CENTIPEDES: 1 hp, +2 to hit, 1 piercing damage, CON save or be poisoned for 1d8.



Herbarium/Iris

This room is bathed entirely in white lamp light. The outer walls are stone, but the ceiling is toughened glass. The Lamp shines over everything. Characters looking up can see through the glass ceiling into the rooms above, and easily make out what’s going on in them.

The iron ladder comes in through the floor and continues up into the next floor. At floor level, where the ladder comes up, there is an iron hatch connected to iron machinery. This is the Iris, controlled from the Control Room. It will be wedged open with a book unless the players have changed the setting.

The walls are taken up by garden beds that are crowded with large, exotic plants. None of them look like anything that grows regionally, the characters never have seen anything like them. They resemble pale white fruit and vegetables for the most part, and their leaves are all dark purple. They are growing vigorously. There is a complicated series of thin lead tubing on the walls that irrigates the garden. A wicker basket on the floor is full of the strange produce.

The fruit and veg is safely edible. There are powerful medicinal herbs and the makings for exotic poisons growing here too, but the characters will not have any way of knowing which is which. The produce will fetch high prices with nobles or other people interested in culinary curiosities. If they are removed from lamp light, the plants will die over three or four days.

If the party have been making enough noise to be heard from above, then THRAK will be here to greet them, armed with the Black Sword and Mirror Shield.



Library/Lab/War Room

This floor is made up of three rooms. The walls are glass, and the contents of all three are clearly visible.

The ladder emerges into the Library, which contains about fifty books arranged on glass shelving. There is also a glass table and chair. Most of the books are largely destroyed with mildew and rot, but reading through the fragments will reveal many history books about the Empire, practical manuals dealing with optics and fluid dynamics, and demon summoning best practices. There are two scrolls here, one of featherfall and one of fireball.

There are also empty inkwells and parchment storage, and a stack of poems and sketches made by Thrak. The poetry is pretty good (I used Rilke in my game). 

The puppet lab contains four glass beds. There are four puppets in this room, human scale, articulated, and made from stuffed fabric, like shop mannikins. The stuffed heads are red fabric. Two are lying on beds and two are standing, propped against the back wall. One of the standing puppets is holding a pair of long bone shears. They are inanimate until a character enters the room, after which they will turn to the character and beckon them towards the empty beds. They are non-hostile and will allow themselves to be destroyed. If anyone lies on one of the beds they will begin to turn them into a puppet using bone shears, fabric, stuffing, and string.

Also on one of the beds is the Sluppet. The Sluppet still has a recognisably human torso, but has had its limbs and head replaced with puppetry. If the players enter the room it will begin to make slurping noises (it still has a digestive tract and tongue hidden inside the stuffed head). It cannot move. This is what remains of King Mag. A key ring with keys for the invisible chest and the prison cells and grill are still clutched in its' manikin hands, not visible without searching.

The War Room has large charts and maps pinned to the walls, and a central glass table with a dark mirror. The charts plot a complicated series of events across a linear timeline, and appear to be working documents, with scribbles, crossed-out sections, notes in several hands, etc. The mirror is a communication device that links to the consciousness of a traitorous hating engine from the future. This engine wishes for the defeat of the other engines. It can be used to cast the guidance cantrip d4+1 times before it runs out of power, as long as the user is acting in accordance with its wishes. If an attempt to mind read the mirror is made the caster immediately takes 2d8 psychic damage as they open a direct channel to the mind of a hating engine.

If the players have not made enough noise to be noticed, THRAK will be in the library, reading. 50/50 whether he notices them coming up into the herbarium, or is too enthralled with his book.



Chambers

The next floor up is much smaller. It is a single room. The ladder continues upwards through its centre and into the Lamp Room.

The Chambers have a bed and mattress - this is the only furniture that the characters have seen that is not made of glass, and it blocks the lamp light; a glass side table with a small mirror; and a glass wardrobe with rotting fine clothing inside. On a glass rack fastened to one wall is a black broadsword, a mirror shield, and a set of fine white metal half plate +1.

If the characters use the mirror to angle the lamp light under the bed (or move the mattress out of the way so that the Lamp can shine onto this occluded spot), they will reveal an invisible chest. This chest is locked, and the lock is trapped with a poison needle (lock is DC15 to pick, trap will be revealed if the character checks, and can be disarmed on DC10. Needle triggers if lock is picked without disarming, 1d6 poison damage, CON check for an additional 1d6). If opened, it contains a hand-portable lamp, a duelling rod, two potions of water breathing, and four rubies worth 50GP each.

The Mirror Shield is a normal shield, but will reflect light perfectly. It can be used in all the fun mythical ways (Medusas etc).

The Black Sword is a normal longsword with a switch in its handle. If switched on, the blade will heat up until it glows dull red. This takes one round, after which strikes will do an additional 1D4 fire damage.

The Hand Lamp is a small, hand sized version of the Lamp, with light that has identical properties. It is too small to cause any adverse effects on its carrier, and will shine indefinitely.

The Duelling Rod is a thin steel wand with a button at its base. If the button is depressed, it shoots a thin, invisible beam that does 4d6 force damage. This must be aimed like a ranged attack, but is so intuitive to use that all characters are proficient with it. It has d4+1 charges left.



Lamp Room

The Lamp room contains the lamp at its centre, and the iron dome that encloses it, which can be closed and opened, like the hood of a lighthouse. The Lamp is a perfect, blinding, bright white sphere. Being this close to source of the Lamp light will make characters nauseous. If they force themselves to look directly into it for more than ten seconds or so they can go blind (CON save). If they spend ten minutes in this room, they will take a level of exhaustion for each additional minute they stay there. There is nothing else here.



Below



The Iron Prison

The prison is built in four levels, which can each be flooded from the control room.

If the iris is open, then the lamp light will illuminate the entire prison and all invisible beings will be revealed. The prison is flooded when the characters arrive, full of brackish, dark water. There is a rusted iron grill fastened over this, which has been forced outwards to form an opening big enough for a human. The grill also has a lock, which is trapped with a poisoned needle (lock is DC15 to pick, trap will be revealed if the character checks, and can be disarmed on DC10. Needle triggers if lock is picked without disarming, but only does 1 piercing damage - the poison has already been 'used' on previous adventuring parties). Someone has scratched 'FUCKING TRAPPED', and an arrow pointing to the lock, into the stonework.

All walls, floors, and ceilings are iron bars, which makes the entire space a single volume. The central ladder drops down through the centre of the prison, and is ringed by its own shaft of iron bars. The prison is essentially four large donut-shaped cages, stacked on top of one another, with a central ladder leading down through the middle.

The cells are arranged around a central shaft. Their walls are iron bars and a fine iron mesh stretched between them. The bottom cell is a single room with no shaft.

The topmost cells have been breached - the bars and mesh have been forced outwards - this is where the four Dimensional Vermin in the Storeroom where originally housed. All other cells are locked. There are three VERMIN in the second floor cells, and six in the third floor. They do not need air or food, and are mindlessly hostile.

The bottom cell contains a single DIMENSIONAL KILLING MACHINE. It will not activate unless touched. The NPC section below details its capabilities, character, and priorities. 

There are also a series of strange honeycomb holes in one stone wall of the prison, each about the size of a football. A family of five large silver SALAMANDERS lives in these holes. King Mag once bred them for their organs and blood, which have magical properties. The two adults will attack anyone who comes near the holes, and retreat back inside if they are damaged or threatened.

The corpses of the salamanders will be valuable to an alchemist who knows their properties. The blood can be drunk raw to heal 1 HP - only possible once per corpse, and makes you feel extremely sick. Make a CON save to avoid throwing up, and you only get the 1 HP back if you can keep it down.

SALAMANDERS: 1 hp, +2 to hit, 1d4 damage



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NPCs



THRAK

HP 40
AC 13 (thick fur, pain tolerance, natural agility), 15 with mirror shield.
Attacks: claws +4 to hit, 1d6+4 slashing; black sword +4 to hit, 1d8+4 slashing, 1d4 fire damage.

STR +6
DEX +2
CON +3
INT +4
WIS +1
CHAR +2

 

Thrak is a White Ape, the old assistant and protege of King Mag. He is nine feet tall, extremely strong, and quite intelligent. He looks like an extremely large albino gorilla, dressed in a rumpled tuxedo jacket and bowtie (which fit him) and a deep red cloak (which is too small). His eyes are obviously intelligent, and he can speak common.

He lives in the upper sections of the tower and fears the dimensional vermin below. He will not venture down under any circumstances.

He spends his time writing poems and drawing (these are quite good, he has a lot of time to practice), and planning his master’s war. He won’t talk much about this, but wants more ink and parchment quite desperately and will trade things for it, starting with money and gems and making his way up to magic items.

Mostly though he wants to be left alone, and will try to trick the characters down into the prison and seal them in there if he can. If they kill the four vermin in the upper section of the tower he will be very relieved, but will try not to show it. If he is sure that they are dead he will no longer be scared of going down into the control room, and will use this to trap the players in the iron prison and drown them.

If they players attack him he will defend himself, and is perfectly capable of killing people with his bare hands, but will grab the black sword and mirror shield from the bedroom and use these by preference. He is fairly dapper and polite, and won’t assume the worst of people unless they show themselves to be violent or unreasonable. He is afraid of death and will beg and bargain if he thinks he is in serious danger.

He hates the puppets and does his best never to think about them. He doesn’t know about Mag’s key chain, or about the invisible chest. He does know quite a lot about the future, and time travel.



DIMENSIONAL VERMIN

HP 10
AC 12
Attacks: hands and teeth +2 to hit, 1d4+2. If they are still invisible and there are more than one dimensional vermin attacking the same creature their natural attacks go from 1d4+2 to 1d6+2.

STR +0
DEX +1
CON +0
INT +0
WIS -2
CHAR -2

These are drone terror troops sent to our reality from the future. They are invisible humanoids, and do not need to eat, breathe or sleep. After a set amount of energy expenditure they simply expire (they basically have an internal battery supply), but they are not aware of this. They are mindless and extremely aggressive, but also cunning enough to use their invisibility to hunt people. They attack with their bare hands and teeth (which they sharpen), and are extremely frightening to fight against, but they are not particularly strong or dangerous if you can see them.

Most people assume when fighting them that they are simply invisible humans (or ghosts), but if you are somehow able to see them they look quite inhuman. Their skin is blood red and shiny (not wet, shiny like oil or latex), and their eyes are huge, mad, and staring.



DIMENSIONAL KILLING MACHINE

HP 25
AC 21
Attacks: x2 Ram Spike: +4 to hit, 1d10+4 piercing.

STR +4
DEX+1
CON+4
INT +2
WIS -2
CHAR +2

These are soldiers and assassins sent from the future. They have permanent invisibility, and look like iron mannikins. This one has been trapped by King Mag and has powered down - it will only attack if it is reactivated by someone touching it. It holds two three-foot-long iron spikes and uses these in combat like it’s punching rivets into people.

If you can see it, you will see that the iron head (which is featureless) and the two hands are bright red. The actual parasitic intelligence is in these extremities, not the iron body itself - that’s just a puppet.

This one is damaged from its long submersion in the iron prison. Once it hits 10 HP it starts spasming and dying, suffering -2 to hit. It will expire and die the turn after this, no matter what HP it has remaining.

The Killing Machine is what most people would call a demon - unlike the Dimensional Vermin it is intelligent, and can communicate by scratching messages into the wall with its iron needles. It believes that its mission is to kill a series of specific individuals who have been identified as dangerous for the future timeline that it is trying to protect. Roll a D20 for major NPCs in your campaign, and also for each of the player characters. Each 1 rolled means that that character is on the Killing Machine's list (or has a name close enough that it might be confused with a genuine target). If allowed to escape, it will begin to track these people down and murder them. Its first question will always be 'What is your name?' - if it recognises the name it will try to kill you.

If you are not on its list then it can be spoken to. It is confused and scared (like most time travellers - the process is horrible for the mind that undertakes it), and only cares about escaping to fulfil its mission. It will tell you anything that it thinks you want to hear to achieve this aim. It refers to itself as Garamond.



CENTIPEDES

1 hp, +2 to hit, 1 damage, con save or be poisoned for 1d8

SALAMANDERS

1 hp, +2 to hit, 1d4 damage