Saturday, June 6, 2020

The Banewarrens in post-production

Fix it in post, as MacRettin put it in Monty Python - unofficial motto of app-support everywhere. Now Ptolus is going to 5e, let's peek at this part of it.

We're looking at (now) 8000 years of a dungeon full of magic treasures. Several parties - Ghul, dwarves, dark-elves, Pactlords - have lived around it over the span. The doors in and out the outer 'Warrens are passable by wish; people find that out by legend lore. We need to explain how come nobody's yet looted what the party finds. Technically - what the Pactlords find, who've burrowed into the outermost vault first and kicked off the adventure.

How about we propose that some DID get here first. Start with the fifth chapter: outer vault, but not outermost.

One retcon, which isn't even a retcon really, allows that some of the undead in here like #5.17, got in here when still alive through their own curiosity and cupidity - by wish - and then couldn't get out in time. They will have brought their own magic items, likely already evil. And #5's got a warden: Geristranomos in #5.16, albeit crippled. When Geristranomos was whole, it could have stuffed any minor new weapons into #.11; and some of the worst, as new banes, in their own niches. And it could reset traps. We just have to retcon when Geristranomos gets crippled, that is later. For chapter five, this explains why the traps all still work. It allows some turnover through the millennia: some few got out with ancient banes, and others left new banes - which process helps memory of the 'Warrens in the outside.

Ghul will have been the greatest of the Banerobbers. It wasn't in his interest to erase the outermost wards; where he'd figured out how to bypass them, he now had his very own premade treasure-vault. Once he'd taken what he wanted, he simply left behind whatever wasn't worth his bother to keep on his person or to hand off to his boys. Hence the osyluth pods, the vampiric mist et al.. Ghul did have to play cat-and-mouse with the lawful warden. Geristranomos likely was crippled after all that, in an accident. Maybe when Ghul finally bit it.

We must then rule that Ghul couldn't enter the inner vaults even by wish. So Ghul didn't own Danar's key.

As for why #3's outermost stuff is wide open, with no wards: by the above, this was Ghul's way in. The banes here are those which Ghul and his henchmen put in, themselves - and finally, whatever his conquerors put in. Here we explain Tavan Zith being "only" maybe 800 years old instead of 8000. In the process of running down Ghul, the heroes of eld also did some research into Danar's ancient binding-spells (aided, ironically, by Ghul's own research in this field). The heroes didn't finish #3.6/.9 because they couldn't finish.

I could see the dwarves etching a few ad-hoc 'warrens into the Spire over the Dalenguard centuries, up to 400ish IA. These won't have the best wards.

Moving to chapter 8, #8.12 presents a backdoor into the inner 'Warrens. ... from some other plane, at random. This was Sokalahn's doing, trying to get in here by brute magical force. He "failed", as the text points out. So how did the ogre and two orcs in #.32 ever get in? The answer I can come up with is: they didn't, and this description is wrong. Bad Monte, bad!

Then there's the Banemight, if a party member uses it, turning her "evil". That's ... not enough. The key is, what sort of evil. I say that the Banemight makes the caster an immediate servant of the Banemight. She's now morally like a banebrute, or like the dragon Darkstar in her own plane - or like Navanna back at the Vladaam compound. The 'Warrens are her home now; the banes left in it, her property. She might still help the PCs - for the short term - if they are protecting (say) the black grail from the Pactlords. No way is she letting Lothian's crew make off with the sword of lies though. And I'm not sure she'd let the party remove the sealing rod or the staff of shards, either.

We do have to ponder the disjunction in #9.25 - and then the whole of chapter 10. I concede the whole point of this adventure is that even Danar couldn't (or wouldn't) punt banes into some other plane, nor allow someone else to do it for him. As Malkith, I am less sure. Perhaps planar travel became Malkith's sole privilege on Praemal. In which case: here's the way off this rock.

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