Il Aluk: Pulling away the Shroud

[nothri]

Greetings!

Currently I am looking at writing an article that expands on the information in Gazetteer 2 on Necropolis. Currently, my article is a "Dante's Inferno" feel to the domain. Given the more extreme consequences of entering the realm and the simple fact that we do have other "Lands of the Dead" (ala Keening), I wanted to approach the domain more from the perspective of a sort of Ravenloft underworld. The barrier of the Shroud reminds me of the barrier surrounding the Shadow Rift, for example, which serves as the "Otherworld/Arcadia" of Ravenloft. I'm not trying to ignore or override the material in Gaz 2, simply expand on it and perhaps present it from another perspective (eg- how the dead see their city and the outside world).

One thing I want to do is give a few additional options for folks who want to enter the city without losing their lives. Amaranth is a great start, and I want to keep it as the most useful and potent option players have. But its a fairly tricky little flower to come by, especially since you'd already need to enter the shroud in order to find it. So, I've been coming up with a few ideas on how a character might enter the shroud, with a nod towards old stories and legend of how a mortal would enter the underworld in the old epics. The methods, ideally, are more dangerous than using the Necropolitan flower, last for shorter durations, and/or represent a major cost to the one that uses them.

I'm looking for any suggestions on additional methods, but in particular I'd like a little advice/help on spells and magic items that might help bypass the shroud. Start with the weakest spells and work your way up. One important thing to note is that a spell that allows entry into one part of Il Aluk does not necessarily provide protection in another. Like Inferno, and in particular like the city of Dis, I'm dividing Il Aluk into a series of "circles", each one a concentric layer. Essentially, you can think of these layers as the general strength of the shroud, along the lines of how the original Negative Energy wave moved out from Il Aluk and lost strength the farther it spread from the city. The edges of the domain can be accessed with fairly low level magics, but the center of the domain sweeps aside even the strongest enchantments. If you could share your thoughts on what spells would and would not work, along with some ideas of WHY, it would be very helpful to me on this section of the article.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Well, one idea comes straight out of DoD: catch a few carrionettes from Odaire, trick them into possessing the PCs' bodies, then lock up the PCs' original bodies while they sneak into Il Aluk as carrionettes. Constructs are immune to the Shroud's effects, and the transpossession between PC and carrionette lasts until they return.

Of course, they're stuck in the forms of little dolls, but with Hide bonuses for size it'd be a clever option for scouting, albeit an insanely-dangerous one. (Hey, it's Necropolis! If you wanna live to get old, stick with domains where breathing is socially acceptable. )

[HuManBing]

I was thinking of something very similar with a neutral or even just a lawful ghost. Perhaps a person could consume amaranth and then go into a staging area inside the shroud, then meet with a ghost who wants to experience the joys of the flesh for a brief while again.

The ghost gets to possess the body, while casting out the spirit of the original person. The ghost is chained to a body that is under close watch by the owner's friends. During this time, the body can eat, drink, and be merry, allowing the ghost some measure of respite from its hauntings.

Meanwhile, the dispossessed PC's spirit flits through Necropolis, at first attracting no attention. But this is fraught with danger, because the moment Death gets wind of this plan he can immediately take control of the ghostly PC.

This idea is purely house-rule, although you could work feasible game mechanics into it if you wanted (Trap the Soul or Magic Jar could work nicely as a McGuffin).

This is strictly non canonical, though, so may need some work.

[The Giamarga]

Aren't there several necromancer spells that allow an effect similar to magic jar but with undead hosts? Those should work.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Similar to that ghost idea, there's the Transubstancial Halo in the care of the Guardians of Mordent. There's a thread somewhere here elaborating Mangrum's plans for it, and I think someone there mentioned using it to penetrate the shroud.

[Alanik Ray]

Similar to that ghost idea, there's the Transubstancial Halo in the care of the Guardians of Mordent. There's a thread somewhere here elaborating Mangrum's plans for it, and I think someone there mentioned using it to penetrate the shroud.

Man, I was about to post that... you're quick.

[nothri]

So far, the two basic suggestions I've heard are "displace the soul" and "go through the ethereal plane". Not bad ideas. Are there any others?

[cure]

Remember the reversed Slay Living spell from the Grim Harvest?

It was reinvented in 3rd edition as Reanimate. You are dead and you are brought back to consciousness, but not life, as a construct.

Now of course you have an excellent chance of coming back as an insane chaotic evil construct, but isn't that better than being dead?

I have Azalin currently testing the competence of a group of reanimates with the eventual intention of sending them into Il-Aluk as a strike force, whether to steal something or perhaps even make an attempt on the 'life' of Death, although probably through some what esoteric means.

Below I enclose some of my snippets on a visit to, life within, and life near Necropolis:

"We did not have time to prepare an appropriate construct and involving outsiders was unthinkable. The unliving would not do and the living, even with the amarnath, were too likely to become their opposite. That left elementals and a test demonstrated that they could withstand the Shroud. Covered by a storm, we entered the city with two bound elementals of the air, eventually setting them upon the natives as a distraction. An earth elemental bore the prize to the Vulchar where a bound water elemental lay in wait with a barge. But its exposure to the veil of death had been too long and a century upon the salt flats of Har'Akir could not have been less kind. What had been a force of nature was now a calcified, inexplicably quadrupedal form, distinguished by a yawning maw and a strength perfectly insufficient to bear us away. Fatally, attention turned from the useless thing to the summoning of a substitute, leaving unmarked, in our very midst, a newly minted minion of Death, with a breath more withering than the wind of the Ashen Wastes.

-Extract from an unsigned and poorly encrypted letter penned in dubious Balok and found by the Kargat in a bottle beached at the mouth of the Musarde River"

"It is a prejudice of you the living that the Requiem was a disaster for the living alone. When in truth the suffering of many of the undead was far greater. Once the funeral homes and the surrounding villages had been emptied and after every zombie unworthy of its flesh had been run down and torn apart, the ghoul packs could do nothing but devour themselves. And the situation was bleaker still for the bloodsuckers. The surrounding countryside was soon bled dry. Further afield, a spirited resistance, secretly led by your beloved Kargat, resulted in frightful rates of attrition. Half-starved, the vampire set to eliminating one another. The survivors, many of who had lived in Il Aluk for a century or more, in the end embraced emigration. But this was not an option for the Wrethfetin, who would rise each night and, driven mad by their unsatiated hunger, would attack anything that moved, until they were themselves sent back to their graves, from which they would invariably return, save for when it rained. Mercifully, Death had the damned halflings staked where they lay.

-Vice-Chancellor August Montalva of the University of Il Aluk, in correspondence with Doctor Abelhous Nicholis, Professor of Biology at the University of Il Aluk in Exile at Karg"

"When I arrived with the buckets of water from the Vuchar river, he sat hunched at work before a prodigious pile of dead rats, separating flesh from bone with a knife. When I returned with more water the prodigious pile of dead rats sat hunched at work upon him, separating flesh from bone with tooth and claw.

-Falkovian military report detailing the death on December 23, 750 of company cook Timvad Nayor"

“The words that summoned me to the dusty anatomy lab were assuredly those of the renowned biologist Latimus Rienis. I unlocked the sample room door, which swung open effortlessly, and stepped eagerly into the place for I was impatient to be reunited with my long departed mentor. But there was no one there, only row upon row of body parts, of every imaginable sort and size, suspended in preservative-filled glass jars. The door shut softly behind me. It was unlocked but I could not budge it. No sooner had I abandoned the attempt than I heard, not so much with my ears as inside my head, ‘You see my esteemed colleagues, the fool has come.’”

-Doctor Abelhous Nicholis, Professor of Biology at the University of Il Aluk in Exile at Karg, describing to his therapist a recurring nightmare"

[HuManBing]

I love the quotes! They're really good, especially the one about the rats...

Just one tiny question - do you mean the "Vuchar" river? You have spelled it with an "L".

[cure]

I love the quotes! They're really good, especially the one about the rats...

Just one tiny question - do you mean the "Vuchar" river? You have spelled it with an "L".

They should be appearing, with the probable exception of the rats, in Mangrum's eventual expanded gloss or remake of Denizens of Dread.

Corrected. Standardised spelling and pronounciation are so 20th century!

[cure]

A little more Necropolitian flavour:

Outside the Shroud there are brothers, whisperers of mortifying secrets, who have thrown off the yoke of Azalin. Would they obey or defy our lord? Are they our avant-garde or that of some even more ineluctable end to all life that readies in the Grey Realm its ascension?

-Vice-Chancellor August Montalva of the University of Il Aluk pondering his allegiance in the gathering Time of Unparalleled Darkness

Menu in Celebration of New Years Eve 750 BC
-Gnome liver terraine soaked in Kartakan port
-Elf tongue stuffed with thigh bone marrow
-Leg of Halfling preserved in its own juices
-Blackend Dwarf ribs
-Jellied Lamordian Brains

L’École d’Haute Cuisine, Il Aluk

The thing that did this was for a century confined within sewers and charged with the gathering of bone. The night that birthed Necropolis undid its chain and its life, bequeathing freedom and undeath upon what had been a corrupted elemental of water. It fled the power that arose to command the slain and made the Musarde and its tributaries, save for the Vulchar to which it does not return, its abode. Its passions are strong currents, rushing waters, and living bone. The ivory of its victims it dons as you or I might a fine cloak. The cloak does not make the man, but the man makes much of the cloak. Listen for a soft chattering. Listen for a rattling roar. And where man, woman and child are flood caught, their screams cut short are its sign.

-Count Strahd von Zarovich XI, instructions for the hunt of Old Bones

[Brandi]

the yolk of Azalin

Look, we all know Azalin's a bad egg but that may be taking it a bit too literally.

[HuManBing]

the yolk of Azalin

Look, we all know Azalin's a bad egg but that may be taking it a bit too literally.

He's really not that bad a person - you just have to get past his shell.

[cure]

the yolk of Azalin

Look, we all know Azalin's a bad egg but that may be taking it a bit too literally.

Thanx. Corrected.

(Must have been all the talk about cloning.)

[nothri]

If a chick cannot break out of its shell,
It will die without ever truly being born,
We are the chick, the world is our shell,
- La Fille Revoltionaire Utena

Somehow managed to be rather appropriate for Azalin Rex...

Anyway, I thought I'd share one of my own ideas, to be elaborated on in the article proper.

Ferryman's Toll

The Vuchar river suffers considerably along the journey through Il Aluk down to the Jagged Coast. The river enters Il Aluk already heavy with the vile miasma gurgled forth from the Great Swamp. As it rounds its way through the ruins of the city, the refuse of the sewers systems empties itself into the putrid waters. Upon this loathsome concoction the Shroud works its corruptive magics. The river that moves through the heart of Necropolis becomes a deformed, repugnant thing. Often, the river ebbs and flows in a range of colors from browns to greens to dark purples. At times of low ebb the river vanishes altogether, to be replaced with what amounts to a slow moving ooze of mud and something more grotesque. At others, the river overflows and loses all trace of color, becoming a black mirror of the dark city. Sometime in the dead of night a fouled mist often rises off the depths of the river and covers the city in a chilled vapor that the sun will take much of the morning to burn through. There are numerous rumors of strange and unknowable things that hide beneath the waters, things that survived the transition of Il Aluk and grown more terrible. And there are other whispers, of things from beyond this place, forces pulling at the river that Death itself does not understand.

That last rumor is true, at least in part. For whatever reason, this stretch of the Vuchar has become a sort of conduit for the Mists. When the vapors rise off the river, not all of them come from the waters. For reasons of their own, the Mist Ferrymen have begun to ply these waters, seemingly in search of something. Many of the dead mistake the cloaked figure that moves along the water as Death, and hence tend to avoid the river while the Mists have arisen.

It is rumored that the Mist Ferrymen are willing to offer passage into Il Aluk, even foresaking their normal hunger in favor of granting mortals entrance to the Slain city. Perhaps they bear Death some sort of malice? Or perhaps they wish to add to the city's population? Either way, those that journey with the ferrymen will find their way unobstructed by the Shroud. The Ferrymen seem to offer some protection against the Negative Energies of the place, perhaps relating to the Mists they ride in. For as long as the Mists enshroud the city, the mortal passengers are free to walk the streets. However, the Mists remain only a few hours, and never extend to the borders. Those that walk this path must leave by the same way they entered if they should desire to keep their flesh whole. The trouble is, the ferrymen do not always wait, and are in any case likely to ask for far more compensation to leave the city than they did for the right to enter.