Map Close-up

Soundtrack for areas 13-18

Combat Music

Overview

Previous: Areas 1-6, Areas 7-12

13. Stairs

The door to this area can be unsealed using the Amber Keystone, currently in area 30. A successful Dexterity check with disadvantage can unseal the door, but a failure results in exposure to raw puissance, a jolt of which is enough to liquefy a would-be intruder instantly, flesh running like tallow, dealing 4d6 damage or producing one of the wild magic effects on the table below.

Beyond the door, a yawning emptiness opens, far too big for any torch or light spell to illuminate fully. Ancient stone bridges lead to a winding central stair here at the hub of the Apocalypse Archive. Six doors around the edges of the room open onto the six levels of the Archive.

• The doors to levels 2 and 5 are sealed. Depressions beside them take the Carnelian Keystone (found in area 90) and Chrysoprase Keystone (found in area 70).

• The bridge to level 5 is badly cracked; this is obvious to anyone looking at it closely. If more than one medium-sized creature attempts to cross it, it will collapse, requiring a Dexterity save to avoid 3d6 falling damage.

• Any loud sound in this area produces tremendous echoes, alerting creatures near to the Stairs on their respective levels of nearby intruders.

14. Collapse

This corridor has partially collapsed, a huge piece of rubble blocking almost all of the passage. A tiny space is evident near the floor, just big enough that someone small and slippery might be able to squeeze through. A curious smell redolent of loam and iron seeps through the crack, along with a few creeping crimson vines and the snaking tendrils of what might be roots.

• A Medium creature can squeeze through with a successful Dexterity check. On a failure, they make no progress; on a failure of 5 or more, they are stuck.

• A Small creature can get through without great difficulty.

• A Big creature has disadvantage on this Dexterity roll. Bloodwood Trees cannot follow through this aperture.

• Any pursuing hemadryads will typically stop at the collapse unless truly enraged.

15. Maw of the Bloodwood

The ancient stones of the Old City have been utterly obscured by a thick blanket of pulsing crimson moss. The entire passage has been clotted with trees, vines, and foliage, a twisted bone-white wood with vivid, blood-red leaves. A dim, reddish light suffuses the passage, shed by some bulbous growth near the ceiling.

• The light streams thinly through the membranous leaves of a curious bulb-like structure, one that twitches and rustles as if something within were trying to escape. Indeed, the bulb contains a Plasma Cherub, one of the Illumined of the Final Star (see area 11), which has been captured by the Bloodwood to serve as an energy source. The bulb blocks the harmful effects of the light and thus does not increase Radiation. However, if the bulb (5 Hit Points, Armour 1) were destroyed, the Cherub would be released, flooding the passage with the infectious glow of the Last Light. Further references to bulbs through the Bloodwood all indicate a similar imprisoned Cherub.

• If any part of the wood is harmed, 1d4 Hemadryads will emerge from the trees within one minute to investigate: eerie white figures with skin of bone-coloured bark who move with an eerie grace. They have long hair like trailing vines or creepers, thickly veined.
  
  Hemadryad: 2 HD (8 Hit Points), Armour 1, Lacerate (Dex, 1d6), Speed 30 ft., Plant (immune to mind-influencing effects, double damage from fire, slashing), Str 8, Dex 14, Con 12, Int 10, Wis 12, Cha 14.
  • Entangle: As an action, Hemadryads can use their long, vine-like hair to try and entangle foes so that trees or other Hamadryades may feed. This functions as an attack roll, but if it hits, the target is entangled and cannot move, and has disadvantage on defense rolls. They can attempt escape with a successful Strength check.
  • Feed: When a Hemadryad deals damage, she heals an equivalent number of hit points.
  • Treestride: As an action, Hemadryads can meld into a tree and reappear at any other anywhere within the Bloodwood.

• The trees of the Bloodwood are extremely dangerous. They can move, cutting off avenues of escape and attempting to split the party. They can also scent blood. Mostly the trees lie dormant, but one or more will attack given any of the following conditions: (1) the party is resting, (2) a party member is isolated, (3) more than three party members are below half of their Hit Points, (4) they are attacked, (5) or a nearby combat breaks out (1 in 6 chance of joining). Every round of combat in the Bloodwood, another tree has a 1 in 6 chance of joining the fray. There is a virtually inexhaustible number of trees in the Bloodwood. This makes prolonged combat in the Bloodwood effectively suicidal.
  
  Bloodwood Tree: 3 HD (12 Hit Points), Armour 2, Lashing Boughs (Str, 1d8) or Feed (Str, 1d6), Speed 10 ft., Plant (immune to mind-influencing effects, double damage from fire, slashing), Str 14, Dex 4, Con 13, Int 2, Wis 12, Cha 4.
  • Big: Bloodwood Trees have a 10-foot reach.
  • Blood Drain: When a Bloodwood Tree deals damage with its Feed attack, it heals an equivalent number of hit points. It can only Feed on creatures it or a Hemadryad have entangled.
  • Engulf: When a Bloodwood Tree hits with its Lashing Boughs attack, in addition to dealing damage it automatically entangles its foes. An entangled creature cannot move and has disadvantage on defense rolls. They can attempt escape with a successful Strength check.

16. Overgrown Library

There is a 25% chance of encountering apatrol of 1d4 Hemadryads here.

Though this hall is filled with shelves, they have been utterly overwhelmed by the riotous growth of the albino forest with its blood-red leaves. A few scattered pages of Librarian texts are strewn about the sanguineous undergrowth. Mewling sounds fill the air – multiple creatures, clearly in pain.

• Following the whimpers leads to a kind of grotesque glade, lit by two more red bulbs. Here, three twisted goblins are being slowly devoured, ensnaring by strangling vines and branches. The trees are literally growing into their bodies, tendrils snaking into their mouths, ears, and noses, or plunging into their veins and arteries, spreading subcutaneously. The forest clutches the goblins close, lichen spreading across the limbs of their victims. The trees blush as they feed.

• One of the goblins, Shroomnose, is strong enough to cry out for aid in the High Goblin tongue, an archaic Goblin dialect. She knows enough Hexian Common to have a broken conversation, though she speaks in a style and manner reminiscent of the Dank Ages. She and her companions can be cut free, though doing so brings 2d4 Hemadryads within one minute to the glade, who will defend the feeding trees.

• Shroomnose can explain (in High Goblin) that she belongs to the Fodder Clan of goblins, as distinct from the Digger Clan and the Baggage Clan, three goblin clans descended from the servants of Xavier Soulswell, who undertook a great expedition into the Apocalypse Archive centuries ago, abandoned inside the Old City after the trapdoor entrance shifted. Each served a unique purpose. Those who now call themselves the Fodder Clan were intended as trap-finders and distractions for the Archive’s guardians; the Digger Clan were employed when mining or demolition was necessary; the Baggage Clan carried loot from the Archive back to the surface. The Fodder Clan frequently go foraging for heartfruit in the Bloodwood. Shroomnose and her companions were part of one such party before being captured by Hemadryads.

• Shroomnose possesses the Onyx Keystone, which opens the Night-Bomb Arsenal (area 9).

• Apart from this, the goblins have little beyond their leather armour, javelins, and bone daggers, save for a small sack containing 6 harvested heartfruit (see area 18).

• Should the goblins be rescued, they can provide introductions to the Fodder Clan, potentially converting the otherwise-hostile inhabitants of areas 25-36 to allies.
  
  Goblin: 1 HD (3 Hit Points), Armour 1, Javelin (Dex, 1d8) or Dagger (Dex, 1d4), Speed 30 ft., Infravision 120 ft., Fey (advantage on saves versus charm or magical sleep), Str 8, Dex 13, Con 10, Int 10, Wis 12, Cha 8.
  • Mutant Resilience: These goblins have advantage on saves against poison.
  • Nimble: Goblins may Run and Hide as a single action.
  • Small: Goblins have advantage on attack and defense rolls against Big creatures.
  • Sunlight Sensitivity: Goblins have disadvantage on attack and defense rolls and Wisdom checks relying on sight when in direct sunlight or its equivalent (including the light of the Final Star).

• Although the shelves are mostly overgrown, a handful of texts and other fragments can be scavenged, each worth 1d100 gp. There are about 100 of these texts and fragments in total, but each takes 1d10 minutes to find.

17. Broodtree

There is a 50% chance of encountering agroup of 1d4 Hemadryads here, feeding the Broodtree blood by kissing its knothole mouth, vomiting the blood into it like vampire bats.

At the centre of this chamber, illumined by no fewer than three crimson bulbs, a huge white oak is swollen with what appear to be something between acorns and embryos, their enormous, translucent shells veined with red. A large, vertical knothole, like a sideways mouth, gapes along the trunk of the tree. A console covered in Aklo glyphs sputters fitfully to one side, the conduits leading to the mechanism frayed and degraded.

• Inside the acorns, lithe forms are vaguely visible, coiled, slumbering, twitching occasionally and making the tree rustle. There are a dozen in total.

• Each acorn holds an immature Hemadryad with half the Hit Points of an adult. If one of the acorns is disturbed, the Hemadryad may emerge early, typically attacking out of ravenous hunger.

• If attacked, or if the acorns growing from it are harmed, the Broodtree will attack as per an Bloodwood Tree with double the normal Hit Points and attacks. Any such assault will immediately bring 2d4 Hemadryads to defend the tree within 30 seconds.

• Another page of The Book of the Bloodwood (see area 16) can be spotted with a thorough search. The page describes the same island continent consumed utterly by the Bloodwood. The wood produces gruesome pens of thorns from which it periodically releases captives so that the Hemadryads can hunt them down. The captives are nourished with heartfruit, which grows from trees that recently fed. A successful Intelligence check suggests that this is a kind of perversion of the natural ecological order: plants, which should be producers, have become consumers, whereas those who would normally fill this niche have effectively become something more like producers, blood-bags for the predatory plants.

• The console requires an Intelligence check with disadvantage to operate successfully, and power to it is fitful; on a failure, the console shocks the operator for 2d6 damage and may cause unpredictable magical transformations as raw arcane energy is channelled into their body. If Mend or equivalent were applied, power would be restored, removing this risk. If, however, the correct Activation Code is input, the console releases herbicidal gas throughout this chamber and areas 15-24, requiring all creatures to make a Constitution save or take 1d6 poison damage per minute, double to plant creatures.

18. Overgrown Machine

There is a 25% chance of encountering a patrol of 1d4 Hemadryads here.

A grove of white trees, illumined by another crimson bulb, emerges from the shattered bulk of some enormous, overgrown machine, its purpose now inscrutable beneath layers of lichen, dark loam, and spreading roots. The trees’ branches dangle heavy with strange, pulsating fruit. The vegetation has grown so thick here that it’s almost as if you have left the Old City entirely and passed into some otherworldly forest.

• On closer inspection, these fruit resemble humanoid hearts, and seem connected to the trees by structures as comparable to veins as much as stems. Plucking one leads to a small spurt of blood from the tree. The fruit taste sweetly of meat. Each nourishes the eater for a full day, restores 1d8 Hit Points, and functions as per Heal Disease.

• There are twenty of these heartfruit currently “ripe” on the trees (1 Encumbrance slot each), and another 30 that are less ripe (1/2 a slot each), healing only 1 Hit Point and lacking the other attributes of the fruit.

• Picking unripe heartfruit summons 1d4 Hemadryads within 30 seconds.

• The machine is a gigantic security biomechanoid designed to destroy the Bloodwood in the event of containment failure. It is currently deactivated, but a close inspection of the machine reveals a septagonal depression into which something might be inserted – namely the Ruby Keystone (currently in area 42).
  
  Biomechanoid Sentinel: 20 HD (100 Hit Points), Armour 2d10, two Buzzsaws (Str, 2d6) and two Flamejets (Dex, 1d8 fire, range 60 feet), Speed 40 ft., Infravision 120 ft., Partial Construct (immune to mind-influencing effects, advantage on Constitution saving throws and half damage from poison and disease), Str 18, Dex 14, Con 18, Int 10, Wis 10, Cha 8.
  • Gigantic: The Biomechanoid is Gigantic. Attacks against it by smaller creatures hit automatically. It has a 20 foot reach.
  • Herbicidal Breath: As an action, the Biomechanoid can exhale a plume of virulent orange poison in a 60-ft. cone that deals 2d6 damage, and double to plant creatures, on a failed Constitution save to all those in the cone, opposed by its Constitution attack roll.
  • Regenerating: The Biomechanoidheals 1d20 Hit Points per round.

• If awakened, the machine will proceed to poison and incinerate the entire Bloodwood unless the Hemadryads and every tree in the forest manage to stop it; every Hemadryad in the wood (roughly 100 of them) will rally to try and bring it down. It ignores other organisms unless they attack it or attempt to enter the Heart of the Bloodwood (area 24).

Map Close-Up

Soundtrack for areas 7-12

Combat Music

Overview

Previous: Areas 1-6

7. Scripture of the Final Star

If anyone enters this room who does not bear the Shadow Glyph, magical sigils on the threshold – clearly visible – activate, and the shadow of everyone in the chamber not bearing the Glyph awakens to horrific unlife and attacks its owner. To receive the Glyph, one needs to input the correct program card (currently found in area 4) into the Fleshscribe (area 26).

Though far smaller than the adjoining hall, this chamber possesses a sense of sombre gravitas. Murals on the walls writhe with foreboding abstract shapes. At the very centre of the chamber upon a twisted lectern is a gigantic book with a golden cover, some four feet in height.

• Shadow: 2HD (11 Hit Points), Drain (Cha, 1d4 Strength), Speed 30 ft., Infravision 120 ft., Undead (immune to poison, disease, mind-influencing effects), Incorporeal (half damage from non-magical, non-anathemantine attacks), Str 6, Dex 14, Con 12, Int 8, Wis 10, Cha 12.
  • Strength Drain: Rather than dealing damage, Shadows drain the Strength of their victims. A creature reduced to 0 Strength is paralyzed. Strength replenishes with a successful rest.
  • Light Weakness: While in bright light, shadows have disadvantage on all ability checks and saves.

• Close inspection of the murals reveals that they depict a conflict of unfathomable scale involving what appear to be entire star systems, fleets of Librarian Voidcraft, interplanar portals, and inscrutable rituals.

• Those with a copy of the history of the Membrane Wars from the Voidskin Scroll Archive (area 6) will recognize the murals as a powerful artistic interpretation of that centuries-long struggle. Universes are filled with nothing but seething hyperintelligent plasma. The Librarians ruthlessly quarantine whole sectors of the galaxy and doom entire planets to endless night, bombing them with weaponized darkness to snuff out all trace of the Last Light, leaving them cold and lifeless husks that can be recolonized later. Light-devouring vortices cut off unthinkably large swathes of spacetime, prophylactic event horizons.

• The tome is the Scripture of the Final Star, a text which appears blank. To those with Radiation of at least 6, words in the Sidereal Speech are visible. The book takes the form of revelations given to various prophets on many worlds, delivered by the fiery Seraphim of the Final Star. Each revelation speaks of the glory of the Last Light – how, within its radiant bosom, all become one, souls mingling into the fiery infinitude of the deific sun in a blissful immolation. The Star charges its followers to spread its light – physical and spiritual – to every corner of their universe, promising eternal rewards and universal joy. Other gods, the Star maintains, are false idols, “Demiurges” of their respective universes who would seek to steal the souls of their adherents, depriving them of eternity in the atomic Heart Divine. To become one with the Final Star is to literally become God, to share in the dreams and raptures of every other soul that has been Illumined. The Scripture also contains a ritual for summoning a spark of the Final Star in the form of a tainted Sunlight spell. The Scripture is worth at least 500 gp to an academic library or private collector, but weighs 150 lbs.

8. Captured Beacon

A massive structure of grotesque glass like an immense lighthouse lens glistens in the middle of this room, set upon a low dais. It is the size of a small house. Its base is scorched and marred – it has obviously been transported from elsewhere. Close to its base, the blackened remains of two mutant goblins lie crumpled and empty. They appear to have burned from the inside out, with scorch-marks especially evident around their eye sockets.

• The star-spoor trail terminates at the goblin corpses.

• One goblin carries an anathemantine spear (1d8+1 damage, affects incorporeal creatures).

• An Intelligence check confirms that the Beacon is not of Librarian manufacture.

• Should a Cherub or Seraph enter the Beacon, the tainted light of the Final Star will completely flood the room as well as the Empty Darkness Bath (area 11).

• If this massive object could somehow be transported to the surface – it would have to be teleported or magically shrunk – it would be worth around 2,000 guineas to buyers like the Institute of Omens, the Museum of Magical Arts and Antiquities, or the Metamorphic Scholarium.

9. Night-Bomb Arsenal

The door to this arsenal is sealed. The Onyx Keystone (currently in area 16) is required, an octagonal stone placed into a depression to one side of the door. Picking the elaborate lock requires a Dexterity check with disadvantage; on a failure, the arcane mechanism deals 2d6 damage to the would-be intruder, jolting them with raw energy that can leave a thief’s hand a molten lump.

Like area 7, the arsenal is protected with wards requiring a Shadow Glyph to bypass without spawning shadows.

Within the chamber, numerous black orbs swirl with volatile eldritch energy in a series of carven niches.

• Should one be hurled with a range of up to 30 feet, it produces a 10-foot radius vortex of magical darkness. The area becomes difficult terrain, and any creature within must pass a Strength check simply to leave. The vortex deals 1d6 damage per round; Illumined also sustain an additional 2d6 damage. The vortex lasts for one minute.

• There are 30 night-bombs in total.

10. Shrine of the First Darkness

A gigantic idol of otherworldly stone looms at one end of this dim hall. Its exact anatomy is impossible to discern; its limbs are swathed in the folds of a vast stone cloak, including its head. There is something more to it than that – some perceptual slipperiness. The eye glances off the strange contours of the idol; it is impossible to take the whole thing in at once. Set at its base is a hexagonal altar stone with a smaller hexagonal depression at its centre.

• Upon entering this room, all light sources are extinguished. The Illumined cannot enter this space, and if forced here, they sustain 2d6 damage per round. Only those with Infravision can observe the contents of the chamber.

• A successful Intelligence check reveals that this idol represents the First Darkness, colloquially known in Hex as the “Shrouded Lord,” one of the Unspeakable Ones: primordial entities with whom the Librarians formed elaborate, quasi-religious pacts. The First Darkness rules over secrets and obscurity, a kind of elemental principle of anti-knowledge, absence, and lack. It reigned supreme before the universe existed in the primeval void, an eternity of limitless night and perfect nothingness which preceded time itself. As natives of Hex may know, the Shrouded Lord is worshipped in Hex above by certain hidden cults, and more generally by thieves, spies, and assassins.

• If someone offers a body part from someone they killed with their own hand in the hexagonal receptacle, they receive a blessing from the Shrouded Lord. Markings on the altar suggest the various body parts the First Darkness accepts. An Intelligence check with disadvantage reveals the details of one of the sacrifices. These are:

• Each character may perform precisely one sacrifice of each body part up to once a year. Attempting further sacrifices displeases the First Darkness, who confiscates a precious childhood memory, a name, a language, or a skill for one year as punishment for such avarice.

• A lectern stands empty here. It once held a copy of the The Rites of the First Darkness, but this has been plundered by the adventurer currently being digested by Bloodwood trees in area 21.

11. Empty Darkness Bath

An empty hexagonal depression is evident at the centre of this chamber. A hole lies at its centre, leading downwards. An enormous spout-like mechanism poised over the pit has been twisted and smashed. The entire chamber is bathed in the impossible colours of a shimmering, iridescent light emanating from two radiant whorls of unearthly plasma, crackling with electricity.

• Plasma Cherub: 3HD (12 Hit Points), Irradiate (Dex, 1d6 + 1d6 Radiation), Speed fly 30 ft., Incorporeal (half damage from non-magical, non-anathemantine attacks), Str 4, Dex 13, Con 12, Int 12, Wis 14, Cha 14.
  • Infected Light: A Plasma Cherub sheds light in a 60-foot radius sphere; anyone who can see who is exposed to the light must pass a Constitution save or gain Radiation equal to the amount by which they failed (see Radiation effects in area 4).
  • Snuff: All light sources brought within 10 feet of a Plasma Cherub are sucked into it eyes, fuelling the light within. Magical darkness damages the Cherub for 1d6 per round with no save.

• The Darkness Bath is emptied, but its passage can be followed down to area 60.

• The spout is non-functional, having been deliberately sabotaged by the Illumined – the Bath cannot be refilled unless the spout is repaired.

• Those with a Radiation of at least 16 can perceive the true form of the Plasma Cherubim: they appear as monstrous foetal things with wings of abwhite fire and the grotesque faces of those whose corpses nourished them. They speak the Sidereal Speech and will welcome those with Radiation of 26 or more as Brethren of the Illumined, urging them to bathe in their divine light, the better to nourish the spark of the Final Star nascent inside them, “to become as we are, discarding your fleshly bodies to experience the holy ecstasy of the Last Light.”

• The goals of the Cherubim are as follows:

1. Spread the light of the Final Star to other Vessels.
   
2. Feed on the light and life-force of those they encounter.
   
3. Free the captive Cherubim being kept throughout those parts of the Archive infested by the Bloodwood.
   
4. Merge with ten other Cherubim to form a Plasma Seraph. The Vessels currently incubating Cherubim of their own are nearly sufficient for this number. The process of forming a Seraph takes 24 hours, during which time the Cherubim combine together in a frenzied fusion of plasma and otherworldly light, shedding bright, tainted starlight for 120 feet. While in this form, they are otherwise vulnerable to attack, so ideally they will have further Vessels on hand to defend them. Those with Radiation of at least 16 can perceive a Seraph’s true form: a twisted amalgam of intertwined forms melting and fused together into a charnel mockery, writhing shapes twisted into the semblance of a grotesque, many-limbed angel with dozens of shimmering wings.
   
   Plasma Seraph: 8HD (32 Hit Points), Irradiate (Dex, 2d6 + 2d6 Radiation), Speed fly 60 ft., Incorporeal (half damage from non-magical, non-anathemantine attacks), Str 10, Dex 16, Int 14, Wis 16, Cha 16.
   
   Blinding: Anyone looking directly at a Plasma Seraph without eye protection must pass a Constitution save or become blinded for one round (blinded creatures fail all checks and saves involving sight, and their defense rolls have disadvantage). Attacking a Plasma Seraph without looking directly at it imposes disadvantage.
   
   Infected Light: A Plasma Seraph sheds light in a 120-foot radius sphere; anyone who can see who is exposed to the light must pass a Constitution save or gain Radiation equal to the amount by which they failed (see Radiation effects in area 4).
   
   Snuff: All light sources brought within 30 feet of a Plasma Seraph are sucked into it eyes, fuelling the light within. Magical darkness damages the Seraph for 1d6 per round with no save.

5. Disable the miniature black hole containing the Ember of the Final Star.
   
6. Breach the surface; spread the Word of the Final Star far and wide and extend the holy mission of the Last Light to every corner of this world, using Vessels to construct Beacons to spread the Last Light.
   
7. Consume this world utterly.
   
8. Spread to other worlds in this universe, converting all matter and energy in this reality into a version of the Final Star, an eternal conflagration of sentient alien luminescence.
   
9. Breach the boundaries between dimensions so that the original Final Star itself may be joined with the one in this universe and the membranes between worlds can be burned away.
   
10. Repeat this process in new realities to keep the Final Star from burning out.

12. Ember of the Final Star (Containment Chamber)

Bizarre machines that seem to be equal parts ancient organism sputter and wheeze throughout a chamber the size of the Cathedral of Saint Monstrum far above. At the very centre of the room, contained within a transparent dome as big as a church dome, swirls a ferocious black vortex, a terrible void of darkness. The biomechanoid apparatus seems to be sustaining this vortex; a console covered in glyphic letters operates the machine. Four shambolic revenants – two mutant goblins, two human, in the rotting remnants of expeditionary garb – are chewing on the fleshly components of the machine. Light blazes from their eyes.

• Every 1d10 minutes, the vortex partially loses power as the machine overheats. For one round, the miniature black hole being generated inside of the dome collapses, and the entire room is bathed in the iridescent horror of the Ember of the Final Star within. This is the result of the four Illumined Vessels slowly destroying the machine.

• Apart from destroying the containment mechanism, the only way to disarm it is to feed in the correct Deactivation Code into the console of Aklo glyphs. Should the Ember be released, it can be treated as a Plasma Seraph (see area 11) with twice the Hit Points which regenerates 12 Hit Points per round.

• Those with Radiation of at least 31 find that the Ember can speak to them, even while contained. Its voice is magisterial and soothing, at once sublime in its dreadful power and curiously comforting, reminiscent of the voice of a parent or trusted friend or mentor, a voice which crackles and flares as if the words were being formed from livid flames. When it speaks, the mind glows and warms; after a moment of excruciating agony, all pain is, for a moment, banished. It speaks in what will be apprehended as an archaic fashion and refers to itself in the majestic first person: “Warmest welcome, child of flesh and bone, Illumined by Our most divine and holy light. What has brought ye to this oubliette wherein We are most unjustly imprisoned?”

• The Final Star makes its case to one of the Illumined, pleading that they assist in its release. It claims only to want to spread its beneficence in the wider world, and that those touched by its light become one with each other, united in love for one another and the world. It promises an end to all war, strife, conflict, poverty, and pain, to all want and deprivation. It will overturn all hierarchy, end all oppression, and bring everything and everyone together, to embrace the Godhead within them and join in a universal Hypostasis, a mystic union of souls.

• One of the goblins has an anathemantine dagger.

• The human Vessels are former adventurers. Between them they carry 42 guineas, 86 silver pennies, a wheellock pistol, 20 bullets and shot, a Bag of Holding stuffed with 20 scrolls from the Voidskin Archive (area 6), 2 Potions of Healing, a set of thieves’ tools, an incomplete map of this level of the Archive sketching out areas 1-36, and a copy of the Lamentation Glyph Program Card.

Map Close-up

Soundtrack for areas 4-6

Combat Music

Overview

Next: Areas 7-12

Level 1

Stonephasing Doors

The first level of the Apocalypse Archive contains a series of doors which exhibit the phenomenon known as “Stonephase,” moving from location to location frequently. It is unclear precisely what purpose these doors served. They might be shortcuts, but some feel more like traps. Scholars believe they are the result of spatiotemporal decay, the gradual unraveling of the laws of physics within the First Library.

Phasing doors should appear (and disappear) whenever the Referee feels like throwing one in, according to the whims of the Archive. However, if you would like to randomize their occurrence, roll 1d20 every time the party enters an area; on a 20, one of the doors is present. Choose or roll on the following table to discover which door appears. Doors typically open upon being touched, unless otherwise noted, and typically only phase when unobserved.

Walls

Although the metropolis possesses a range of architectural styles and features, most of the walls of the Old City are formed from archaeolith, the so-called “First Stone.” They typically have a curiously organic appearance, as if the entire city were a gigantic fossil. Some believe that this is evidence that the Old City was “grown” rather than constructed by traditional means, and that the city may once have been a living organism. As evidence for this view, many xenoarchaeologists point to the still-extant biomechanoid structures throughout the First Library, which evince a similar design as the walls. The colour and hue of archaeolith varies, typically ranging from obsidian-black to sickly green. Damaging archaeolith is near-impossible with ordinary weapons, but sustained excavation is possible with the right tools.

1. Trapdoor Entrance

This six-sided trapdoor is caked with dust, a layer of grime concealing a series of impossibly intricate bas-relief carvings. Though abstract in design, the carvings seem to portray some nebulous disaster, presenting a stylized cityscape disintegrating before multifarious catastrophes. Earthquakes rend sinuously curving streets; massive tendrils extend from the sky to wrench spires from their foundations; twisting flames flicker across alien palaces.

• The edges of the trapdoor are strangely scorched and melted, and the carvings are gouged from the prybars of previous explorers. Sections of the carvings seem to once have been moveable but are now locked in place.

• The trapdoor requires a successful Strength check to open.

• Looking upon the carvings for too long inevitably produces a stinging headache and lingering nosebleed.

• If one listens carefully, the distant, muffled echo of what might be a scream resounds briefly against the inside of the door.

• Like many structures of the First Library and some of the doors within the Archive, the entrance to the Apocalypse Archive is afflicted with Stonephase. Unstuck from conventional spacetime, the trapdoor entrance to the Archive “roams” the city unpredictably, lingering for as little as a few minutes to as long as days. The door seems to be shy – possibly photophobic – and shows a preference for narrow alleyways, dank storage rooms, and other shadowy spaces, with a particular predilection for the labyrinthine rookeries of Corvid Commons, the wheezing side-streets of Catch-All, the dimmer corners of Gloomway, and the catacombs below the Gilded Graveyard. It is sometimes mistaken for a manhole cover or cellar-entrance.

• Should it be desired, the trapdoor’s Stonephase can be randomized. It has a 1% chance of shifting per day, including while the party is inside the Archive. They might emerge not where they started but in the cellar of a Fanghill mansion, a leprous alleyway in quarantined Catch-All, a thieves’ rookery in the Commons, a haunted crypt in the depths of Grey Hook, some other section of the Old City, and many other such locations.

2. Staircase

The carvings evident on the trapdoor entrance continue along the walls of the spiralling staircase, which extends deep into the earth, depicting ever stranger and more horrific catastrophes. The oozing monstrosity known as the Plasmic Woe, now contained in the Warded Ward, can be glimpsed flooding a continent with its amorphous bulk, expanding as it dissolves everything within its gelatinous, ever-growing body; a terrifying blankness pocks reality with bizarre lacunae; vortices open, pouring out otherworldly oceans that flood whole planets; carnivorous forests reclaim cities and devour all they find. The primeval steps are intermittently spattered with old bloodstains.

• Gazing too long at these carvings is hazardous and begins to corrode the mind. For every round the carvings are studied, a Wisdom save is required to avoid 1 damage and extensive bleeding from the eyes, nose, and ears. A success yields some hint as to the contents of the Archive – skim to one of the chambers marked as a Containment Chamber and briefly describe what its contents would do to the world were it unleashed.

• The exact length of the staircase varies with each expedition; traversing it requires 1d100 minutes, no matter the speed of those descending or ascending. Make a new roll each time the staircase is entered.

3. Dead Guardian

The thing that once guarded this vast, six-sided chamber of primeval stone is long dead, the mechanical components of its body still dangling from the ceiling like empty hooks in a colossal slaughterhouse, ancient metal malformed by fire and spellcraft. What might have been a skull swivels slowly to and fro, its many sockets now empty. It is difficult to picture what manner of alien flesh was once grafted to this anathemantine skeleton, but what little is visible of the floor beneath mysterious drifts of ash is stained from the slain guardian’s decomposition. Occasionally a spasm runs through the broken machinery, and the spindly appendages twitch like the legs of a dying spider. The whole thing brings to mind a monstrous chandelier, or a mobile for some gigantic child.

• Six doors are arrayed on the various walls of the chamber, five open, one firmly shut; simply discovering their number and location may take some time, given the sheer size of the anteroom.

• Adjacent to each of the doors are glyphs in the High Goblin language, daubed in blood. These read: “Evil Light,” “Woods,” “Nasty Music,” “Home,” “Up,” and “Down.” “Up” is adjacent to the staircase entrance, and “Down” is sealed. A nonagonal depression is evident beside “Down,” which fits the Amber Keystone (currently in area 30).

• A glimmer of sickly light can be glimpsed through the door labelled “Evil Light,” while eerie, discordant music can distantly be heard from the door labelled “Nasty Music.”

• Investigation reveals that mixed in amongst the ash are a number of fused, blackened bones. A successful Intelligence check suggests that these belonged to goblins.

4. Empty Shelves

The enormous shelves in this immense hall have been stripped bare, divested of every book, tablet, scroll-tube, and memory-crystal. Cobwebs and dust are all that remain. Something glimmers in the darkness deeper into the chamber. There is a faint smell of burnt hair and meat.

• Following the source of this light reveals that it radiates from the eye sockets of a twisted, pale corpse, that of a small, hunched creature with five eyes and too many digits on its hands. It looks like a goblin, but a horrendously mutated one; it wears leather garments and still clasps a bone spear. The creature’s skin is sizzling slightly, its veins scorched and black; a thin trickle of smoke seeps from its mouth, ears, and nostrils. The light that bleeds from the eyes of the goblin corpse is indescribable – a sickly, eldritch effulgence that should not be. As one approaches, the eyes twitch with a life of their own and begin to roam towards whoever nears.

• Apart from its armour and spear, the goblin carries a copy of the Shadow Glyph Program Card, which can be used with the Fleshscribe (area 26). This looks like a thin disc of iridescent metal inscribed with a peculiar sigil in Aklo, meaning “Shadow.”

• Cutting the goblin open reveals that its internal organs have all been hideously burned. If left untouched, the goblin rises as an Illumined Vessel within 1 hour.
  
  Illumined Vessel: 2 HD (8 Hit Points), Armour 1, Bite (Str, 1d6), Speed 20 ft., Undead (immune to poison, disease, mind-influencing effects), Str 12, Dex 6, Con 14, Int 2, Wis 6, Cha 4.
  
  • Infected Light: A Vessel sheds light in a 60-foot cone; anyone who can see who is exposed to the light must pass a Constitution save or gain Radiation equal to the amount by which they failed (see Radiation effects below).
  • Iridescent Blood: A Vessel hit with a melee attack sheds gouts of glowing blood. Its attacker must pass a Constitution save or gain Radiation equal to the amount by which they failed.
  • Snuff: All light sources brought within 10 feet of a Vessel are sucked into its eyes, fuelling the light within. Magical darkness damages the Vessel for 1d6 per round with no save.

• Anyone with eyes caught in the beams of the light must pass a Constitution save or become contaminated by it, gaining Radiation equal to the amount by which they failed (20 on a critical failure). A successful rest reduces a character’s Radiation by 1d10. Heal Disease reduces it by 1d100. Spells like Heal Wounds may provide brief respite from individual symptoms but do not lower Radiation. Anyone who dies while irradiated rises as a Vessel similar to the goblin after 1d6 hours, possessed by the light inside them.

• Those with Radiation of 6 or more can perceive trails of star-spoor leading from this chamber to area 6 and area 8, like a kind of glowing immaterial mucus imperceptible to those who have not been Illumined.

5. Darkness Bath

At the centre of this chamber, a hexagonal pool brims with darkness. No light can pass beneath the surface of this absolute blackness. Although the darkness looks liquid, it is immaterial, though deathly cold. A curious mechanism like a gigantic spout is evident to one side.

• Infravision cannot penetrate the magical Darkness.

• Anyone who enters the Darkness Bath sustains 1d6 damage each turn. For every point of damage sustained, they lose 1 point of Radiation. Any light source immersed in the darkness is snuffed.

• The bath is quite shallow, with sloping sides, but deep enough that quite a large creature could become fully immersed – 20 feet deep at its lowest point.

• At the very centre of the Bath is a plug which some groping hand might find. If pulled, the Darkness Bath drains, and a passage to Level 2 leads to the Atramental Tank (area 60). The spout mechanism refills the Bath.

6. Voidskin Scroll Archive

Spiralling shelves twist around themselves throughout this domed chamber. They contain a series of carefully rolled scrolls of black vellum, the substance scholars call Voidskin, thought to be tanned from the hides of the astral leviathans which drift in the gaps between planes. Something glows amidst the shelves.

• Wandering the whorl of the Scroll Archive are two more Vessels: sparks of the Final Star that have inhabited the corpses of mutant goblins similar to the one found amongst the Empty Shelves (area 4).

• The trail of star-spoor leads inside the stacks.

• Each scroll is worth 1d100 gp to collectors; though most have been looted, some 250 remain, often in hard-to-reach corners. Roll on the following table to determine the contents: