#vimagotri

Monsterhunt: Lixivioth, that which Bleeds from Beyond

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It starts as a ripple in the air, a churning beneath the skin of reality, then a silvery limb breaks the boundary before melting back into unexistance. Like a drowning soul thrashing in the sea, a body breaches the 'surface' full of a wild and desperate impulse to survive, a willingness to drag anything down if it meant keeping their head above water a little longer.

This is Lixivioth, a celestial who's time in the outer void has so deeply warped it that nothing remains but a cataclysmic desire to return no matter the cost. Once an explorer and collector of knowledge, Lixivioth's curiosity tragically drew it not just to the unknown but past the boundary of what could be known, beyond which laid nothing but dissolution.

Adventure Hooks:

Seeking forbidden knowledge, a devotee of Vecna has summoned and bound Lixivioth to a magic mirror, tormenting the spirit with glimpses of a reality it cannot touch. While infiltrating the villain's lair, the party come across the mirror and have the opportunity to ask it questions that might give them an edge against their foe. There is a magical procedure they must follow though, as every question that does not ascribe to the proper magical formalities puts a hairline crack in the glass, weakening the celestial bindings and giving it a chance to break free.

Days before needing to perform an important spell for the safety/prosperity of the realm, a great wizard was found dead in his study bleeding mercury form every hole in his skull, a tome of celestial learning in his hands. His body cannot be moved and the flow has yet to cease, slowly flooding his tower as his apprentices (and local authorities) scramble for answers. Lixivioth is using the wizard's body and magic to manifest in the material plane, and by the time the party are called to help it will be a matter of hours before the eldritch angel crawls it's way up his throat. To win the day they'll need to piece together the components of a binding spell from the mage's libraries while fending off quicksilver elementals and the tower's malfunctioning defences.

I was also wondering if you might be able to provide some help? One of my players has been trying to make a patron that has a strong theme of sorrow and woe; without dipping into Fae territory. They’ve reached out to me to help and I’ve got absolutely nothing! Any ideas or concepts you might be able to make?

Monsterhunt: Thousandfold Sorrows

The hardest part of moving on is finding the way forward

A spirit of the plane of mirrors, Thousandfold Sorrows hunts those riven by great grief and loss, harrowing them with visions of a moment from their past from which they are unable to move on. Pain, shame, false hope, as the victim's mind is fractured by a multitude of emotions reality starts to go with it: different versions of their life playing out the possibility of what could've been.

Adventure Hooks:

A tragic cart accident goes even more awry as an out of control wagon runs into a girl walking down a busy market street who proceeds to shatter into thousands of mirrored shards infront of all the onlookers, horrifying the boy she was out on the town with. Stranger yet, the girl's description matches that of a young woman who went missing from her job at an antique store some weeks ago, as well as numerous other incidents all around the city. As it turns out, the shopgirl has fallen victim to Thousandfold Sorrows while she was lamenting wasting her youth in the dusty old shop instead of out there living life. Now she wanders the labyrinth of the mirror dimension, and the only way to get her back is to convince one of the impulsive duplicates that've slipped free in the previous days to take her place.

Seeking to undo the mistakes of the past, an aging mage has summoned Thousandfold Sorrows to ruminate on a tragedy from his youth, where the lives of his closest friends were sacrificed in the process of averting a magical disaster that would have ravaged the countryside. Increasingly desperate to know if he really did make the right choice, the mage has had Thousandfold sorrows run through endless permutations of events, eventually causing a chain-reaction of mirror magic that's split the local area (and nearby village) into three time lines: The present, the idealistic past, and an alternate version of events ravaged by wild magic. Caught in the middle, the party must discern the boundaries between truth and illusion and overcome paradoxical hazards in order to set the land right once again.

Planescape: The Introspective Abyss of Vimagotri

For as long as people have been able to see and understand their reflections, they have known the inescapable urge to press past the gleaming surface and make contact with the intangable space beyond. Vimagotri is that desire made manifest by magic, a land beyond the placid water and silvered glass, where reality and identity splinter as one shifts through the mist or falls down the increasingly fractal paths. Known as “the silverlands” or “The plane of mirrors” to some, the nature and landscape of this world are a far cry from the inverted geometries one might expect from idly gazing into a reflective surface. 

Much like a mundane mirror reflects back an intangible version of the physical self, those traveling through Vimagotri must contend with physical reflections of their intangible selves, whether they be idealized archetypes, social roles, or iterative versions of who the traveler was and who they could be.  While these fragments begin as mere glimpses or omens, traveling into the depths of this mist shrouded land cause these manifestations to grow in strenght in power, gaining the ability to speak, and finally interact with the one casting them. At the very deepest depths, it’s said that the psychic pressure is enough to shatter both mind and body, and those who climb back from such depths do so irrevocably changed or not at all. 

A party could  encounter the Silverlands in any number of ways: 

While dabblers have theorized that Vimagotri lurks behind every mirror and reflective surface, it’s more accurate to say that these objects only risk becoming portals should they be used for mirror-walking, or bear witness to some great event of psychic anguish. Such occurrences open tiny planear fissures between the material and mirror worlds, allowing things to slip through with the right amount of magic or force applied. 

That said, mages will often travel through the plane of mirrors as an alternate method of teleportation, walking its labyrinthian paths to discover routes between mirrors across the planes. Such expeditions are often more circuitous than bamphing point to point, but have more tangible dangers than teleportation mishaps and have the advantage of adaptability: the same route always leads to the same mirrors, allowing a mirrorwalker to cultivate a network of dimensional shortcuts.    

Other things lurk in the silverlands besides the echoes of those who have come before, creatures of thought or identity stripped of form, sages lost to centuries long meditation, and horrors of alien logic and hostile geometry that dwell at the edge of where reality dissolves. These entities prey on travlers throghout the plane of mirrors and extend their influence out through every available means. 

Anything but a casual stroll through Vimagotri is an excersize in forced self reflection, meaning it’s a great backdrop for poinent moments of character reflection or “cave of trials” sort of examinations of self. Confrontation with past mistakes, clashes with the idealized self, or cathartic moments of reconciliation are all on the table whenever one looks deeper into the mirror.