A Tale of Two Illusions
Hello all, and welcome to another exciting Grave Plots, the place on the web where you can get free official Necromancers of the Northwest plot ideas and adventure hooks. This week we will be examining some adventure ideas involving a liberal application of illusion spells. Below are a couple of adventures featuring a variety of spells from the illusion school.
Valeance Castle
While the PCs are staying at an inn, they are told that a man at the front desk has asked to speak with them by name. When the PCs reach the desk, they meet a middle-aged man dressed in livery of shocking violet and black who introduces himself as Quentin Nenteir. Quentin represents a foreign lord who has taken an interest in the PCs’ career and would like to hire them to perform a task of great importance. He presents the PCs with a large gem on behalf of his lord as a token of goodwill and asks if they’re interested in hearing his lord’s offer. If the PCs say they aren’t interested, Quentin says that he is sorry to hear that, but that the gem is theirs to keep and, should they change their minds, they can find him here at the inn for the remainder of the week. And that’s that. However, if the PCs say that indeed they are interested, Quentin brightly smiles and says he knew they were the right sort. Nevertheless, before he takes them to see his lord, the PCs must prove themselves one last time. As it happens, his lordship is a superstitious man and won’t accept help from anyone who has not knelt before the throne at Valeance Castle, which belonged to his lordship’s family ages ago. If the PCs can bring proof of having been to the castle’s throne room, then will they have proven themselves worthy in the eyes of his lord. He warns the PCs that everyone to enter the castle since the departure of its last ruler has never returned, but he is confident that the PCs possess what is necessary to succeed where lesser men have failed. He tells the PCs they will have to go alone, and while he says he has no idea what they should expect inside, he assures them once more that they have what it takes to reach the throne room. Then, without further ado, he transports the PCs to Valeance Castle via a greater teleport spell.
The castle is large, and every inch of it is affected as though by a forbiddance effect. Winding hallways lead the PCs through room after room of deadly traps, often concealed by illusion spells. Hallucinatory terrain throughout the castle plays further tricks with the PCs, causing, for instance, normal floors to appear to be spiked pit traps over 100ft deep, and the like. To make matters worse, vicious monsters roam the various rooms and winding hallways. Some are illusions created with a major image, but others are real. These real monster have been effected as though by magic aura, so that if the PCs attempt to use detect magic to determine which creatures are just illusions, the real monsters will also register as magical, leaving no way to tell the illusions from the real monsters until it’s too late. Other areas possess unreasonably lethal features, like invisible bridges over pools of acid in an area of deeper darkness, while magically conjured, hurricane force winds threaten to send PCs, whether flying or on foot, to their dooms. Secret doors found in the halls and hidden in the back of closets are unpredictable, and will lead the PCs through poison gas-filled tunnels into pits filled with vicious cobras (sometimes illusory, sometimes not) as often as they will open into large, gem-filled treasure vaults. And no matter what the PCs do, they can’t seem to find the throne room, as every passage and hallway leads to a dead end of one kind or another. Occasionally the PCs encounter sphinxes, who calmly tell them they should have everything they need to reach the throne room and that, even if they lost it, they can find more here. (Feel free to add whatever other nastiness you can come up with; you can be as malicious as you want. If you get really, really mean, however, be sure to include more clues to the answer to this adventure, and remind the PCs that they can always just give up.)
The trick to finding their way to the throne room lies in the gem they were given by Quentin. The stone has a magical inscription that appears when the PCs first enter the castle. It says very simply, “Go straight from the door and do not stray. Let neither walls nor beasts prolong your stay.” The first time the PCs come to a T-junction in the halls, the wall in front of them is an illusion and can be passed through. It leads down a short hallway filled with illusory dire lions, and then directly to the throne room, which is empty save for a throne and a planter filled with exotic glowing flowers of a unique nature. If the PCs lose their gem for some reason, in any treasure gallery they can find 1d20 glass gems along with 1 gem of true seeing enchanted with a magic aura to make it appear mundane.
Once the PCs complete the adventure, Quentin congratulates them on their skill and says he will now take them to see his lord. Casting another teleport spell, he brings the PCs to the home of Lord Valeance, last master of the castle and perhaps the most gifted illusionist to have ever existed. Valeance is impressed with the PCs and needs them to complete a quest for him that will shake the very foundation of your campaign world. And from here it’s up to you, deciding what that quest will be, what Valeance’s motivations are, and how the PCs fit into his grand plans.
Without a Trace
The Order of Noth, a reclusive society of mages and magical researchers, has, after great deliberation, decided to contact the PCs for help in dealing with a most troublesome situation. Leo Salazar, one of their members, has recently passed away, apparently committing suicide in his quarters. The following day, some of the younger members of the order reported being accosted by Salazar’s ghost on the upper floors of the order’s tower-like academy. A zone of truth spell revealed that the young mages indeed saw the ghost of Salazar lurking about the tower, and shortly thereafter a wave of panic struck the tower. If a ghost with Salazar’s not unexceptional magical talent was haunting the tower, then the order would find themselves facing a most dangerous threat to their quiet study. However, an investigation secretly launched by the order’s senior leadership determined that the ghostly apparition haunting the upper floors of the tower was only an illusion; further investigation quickly revealed that an older acolyte was responsible for the illusory ghost, believing it to have been a rather humorous prank. A few days after the scare, once the senior members managed to calm the rest of the order down a bit, an inventory was made of all of Salazar’s belongings and an odd discovery was made: one of the order’s most powerful and dangerous magical artifacts, supposedly in Salazar’s possession, could not be located. A search of the tower was ordered but also turned out negative. Divination spells were employed to locate the missing item, but all such attempts have failed, blocked by some protective magic (a mind blank spell). The order, at a loss for what to do, has reached out to the PCs to help them find the missing artifact before it’s too late.
Once the PCs arrive at the tower, they are greeted by the order’s senior staffers, who explain the situation to the PCs, giving them the case’s specifics. They relate the details of the artifact that was stolen, the time frame of the events in questions, and that a head count has determined the entire order is present and accounted for, so that the theft must have been committed by an outsider. Once the PCs are familiarized with the events leading up to their arrival they are taken to see Salazar’s quarters, the last place the artifact was seen. One of the senior members suggests that the PCs might be able to gain some information from Salazar’s suicide note (which is also produced as evidence that Salazar in fact took his own life, if the PCs ask). When the PCs try to read the note, however, they find that the note is unintelligible. In fact, they have triggered an illusory effect from an illusory script spell; you can decide what suggestion effect to use, but it should be something like “Burn this note and forget it ever existed.” PCs savvy to illusion magic will likely figure out that the note is fake. Revealing this information to the senior membership distresses them greatly; they exchange dark looks and mutter that perhaps there is murder afoot as well as treachery. Salazar, as it happens, died from ingesting a lethal dose of poison, which they had believed he consumed of his own free will as the note had claimed. However, with the note revealed as a fake, it seems more likely that it was administered without Salazar’s knowledge. From here your PCs will need to find a series of clues unveiling what really has been going on.
Ulrich von Wizen is a gifted sorcerer and initiate of the Order of Noth with a talent for illusions and a great love for spending coin faster than he can earn it. So when a shadowy figure offered Ulrich a truly generous sum of gold to retrieve a magical artifact from one of the order’s senior membership, he leaped at the opportunity. Using his magic to disguise his appearance as one of Salazar’s personal servants, he brought the older man drink poisoned with arsenic, which killed him. He then forged a false suicide note using illusory script set to reveal its text to the entire order, but to no outsider. He then stole the artifact and bolted from the tower before anyone knew of Salazar’s death. Having hired a desperate villager to disguise himself as Ulrich some time before, Ulrich got away clean. Before he left, he had also convinced (that is to say, charmed and bribed) one of the acolytes to cause a ghostly distraction to keep the heat off him while he met with his mysterious buyer. He exchanged the artifact for an obscene sum of gold, and the shadowy client then disappeared into the night without a trace. This mysterious figure does a very good job of disappearing and is not likely to be found without extremely great effort. Location spells automatically fail, as he casts mind blank each and every morning, as well as pass without trace, preventing tracking from both magical and mundane means. What the mysterious figure wants to do with the artifact, and indeed who he really is, is entirely up to your discretion, as is how he fits into the greater scheme of things. As for Ulrich, the PCs can eventually track him down (he uses false vision to appear to be doing the same tasks as his double while he spends his cash, but if his double gives him up, he doesn’t expect mundane tracking and the PCs can find him spending his new fortune). The PCs can “persuade” him to admit to the murder and theft, though he isn’t about to be taken alive. He doesn’t really have any information on his employer to give, even if the PCs manage to capture him and convince him to talk.