Athonu’s Task
⚠️ PROTOCOL: BOUNDARY RESTRICTION
Halt, Player.
Your cursor has drifted beyond your character’s current perception. You are attempting to survey a record that has not been yielded to your party. This digital perimeter is monitored, and your credentials do not grant access to the parameters below.
Return your focus to the active campaign. Your Game Master will grant you the requisite knowledge at the appropriate time.
Adventure Hook
Modern scholars who have studied the records and accounts from the days of the Stellar Rupture teach that the event itself was peaceful, where the physical world remained undisturbed while the sky burned. To creatures with innate magical senses however, it was a sensory nightmare. When the astral wave hit Kemet’s core, it created what would amount to an earthquake on the arcane layer. Celestial essence that had been bottled up inside the planet since its birth was violently forced into the atmosphere.
- The Trigger: Triggers immediately upon completing a telepathic conversation with Athonu regarding the environment of the Rupture. If the party should be granted the ability to speak with Athonu via Vurnvazir’s telepathic link and ask about what he knows of the past, the dragon will remark about their magic use and how he recalls the event that remade the world which granted them that power.
- The Objective: Athonu will talk about the terror he felt as a hatchling and that the stress upon the foundation of the world was strongest near fissures and faults. He tasks the party with traveling to a location within the Spires Basin where a highly concentrated Wild Magic zone can be found directly over a ruptured fault. The party is asked to venture in and use a Soporic Fragment, a shard created from the dreamscape into the material plane, to capture the residual frequency of the ambient magic. This will prove the Stellar Rupture’s energy surged from deep below the earth rather than descending from above and help scholars of the world understand the truth of the event.
Adventure Progression
Time Limit: 14 days after leaving the Somnium Archivum after which the Soporic Fragment becomes saturated with surface level magical noise, causing the structure of the shard to crumble.
- If Investigating the Wild Magic site: If the party successfully braves the Wild Magic zone and records the residual frequency, they return with undeniable empirical proof that shatters centuries of academic consensus. Athonu rewards them with a flawless gemstone from his hoard worth 1,500 gp and instructs Vurnvazir to share an ancient research log from the vault which supports their findings. While holding this data and interacting with academics, mages, librarians, and antiquarians, the party gains a permanent +2 bonus to all Charisma (Persuasion and Deception) checks. However, local religious sects brand the party as heretics for denying their beliefs, imposing a −2 penalty to all Charisma checks when interacting with priests, temple guards, or deeply pious citizens who view their scientific truth as a direct assault on their faith.