Reliquary of Time

Area 2-5 – Reliquary of Time

Cautious PCs looking for an entrance rune will spy a tumbled arch cut with the sigil for Age.

The Abbot’s reliquary is buried beneath several tons of fallen stone. While there is no way to retrieve the relic, the lurking spirit is no less deadly. The chamber is saturated with the doom of Age; characters entering the place are immediately beset by its effects:

Round 1: Lungs sting and breathing is labored with chamber’s dead air. Characters’ upper epidermis and hair begins to flake and die, leaving an ashen coating on the skin. Food and drink spoil and are ruined.

Round 2: Organic materials begin to age. Cloth tears and frays, leather is quickly worn down, wood dries and splinters. Characters must make DC 5 Fort saves or age 1d5 years.

Round 3: Non-organic materials begin to age. Metal rusts, blades become nicked and dull, armor looses its sheen, chain links weaken and bend. Characters must make DC 10 Fort saves or age 1d10 years.

Round 4: Non-living, organic materials are reduced to dust. Metal objects grow weaker (weapons fail in combat on an attack roll of 1-5; armor fails when hit by an attack roll of 15+). Characters must make DC 16 Fort saves or age 1d16 years.

Round 5: Non-organic materials are reduced to dust. Characters must make DC 20 Fort saves or age 1d20 years.

Round 6+: Characters must make DC 25 Fort saves or be reduced to dust. Characters succeeding on the save age 1d30 years.

Stepping out of the chamber stops the progression but does not relieve any of the effects. Returning to the chamber starts the cycle anew at round 1.

It is a short distance across the chamber, but the fallen rubble complicates the traverse. Unimpeded, it takes 2 rounds to cross the chamber. However, each round a character must succeed on a DC 10 Agility check or slip amid the rubble, sliding towards one of a dozen crevices and pits. Immediately call for a DC 13 Ref save; on a failed check, the character scrambles free of danger, but loses a round.

If either the Agility check or the Reflex save are fumbled with a natural 1 through 3, the character slips, pinned beneath the rubble. To escape, the PC must succeed on a DC 20 Strength check or receive aid in the form of an ally lifting the stone free.

Trapped characters see a translucent blue crone creeping towards them on all fours, moving like a spider along the ceiling and walls.

The crone – the doom of Age – only exists to the trapped PC. Other PCs are unable to perceive or act against the doom. There is little chance of a lone character fighting off the doom, but characters are nothing if not miraculous. If a character does succeed in defeating the crone, the aging effects of the hall are immediately reversed, and the triumphant PC ceases forevermore to age. (The character is not immortal, and may even die of old age, but will look like his or her current age when the end comes.)

Spirit of Age (ghost crone): Init +3; Atk bite +0 melee (1d4) or claw +2 melee (1d3); AC 15; HD 6d8; hp 25; MV 30’ or climb 30’; Act 1d20; SV Fort +5, Ref +2, Will +6; AL C.