This item brings full of interesting possibilities and hooks. What would you do with it as a DM?Mangrum sept 04 FoS Board
I tinkered with the concept of the Transubstantial Halo quite a bit back in the day. Initially, my idea for the Halo bubbled up along with a concept for a full-length adventure set in Mordent, dealing very much with Godefroy and the House on Gryphon Hill. Later, when Arthaus came along I intended to include it in Gaz III, before fate took a left turn there. After that, for about a year I (unsuccessfully) pushed the idea of publishing a book on the Order of the Guardians (detailing numerous strongholds, NPCs, prestige classes, feats, adventure hooks, etc., and -- of course -- cursed artifacts), in which I was still hoping to get around to putting it in print.
Most of my Godefroy/Gryphon Hill ideas made it to print, but my ideas for the Transubstanial Halo never quite made it to the finish line. They're somewhere in Conceptual Limbo along with Pharaoh Rottentop, I reckon.
Anyway, the short version of the Transubstantial Halo is that it's a flattened ring of silvery metal about a yard across. About the same size as a hula hoop, basically. What it does is very simple: It converts flesh to spirit and spirit to flesh. In other words, any corporeal being that passes through the ring emerges on the other side as an incorporeal, ghostlike entity. Any incorporeal being that passes through emerges on the other side as a living, corporeal being.
In short, living creatures could use it to become incorporeal and enter the Near Ethereal at will, and the incorporeal undead could use it to become flesh-and-blood living creatures again.
Of course, one must expect side effects when literally converting your soul into meat, or vice versa.
The adventure was to begin in Mordentshire's open marketplace, as a young widow's second wedding is rudely interrupted by a desperate leper(?) in monk's robes... who quickly dissolves into blood and ichor.
It would have ended with a significant new wrinkle in Godefroy's accursed existence. (No, he stayed a ghost.)
Joël