d20 E.N. Publishing War of the Burning Sky - Sleep, Ye Cursed Child.pdf - E.N. War of the Burning Sky - R5700

War of the Burning Sky

Sleep, Ye Cursed Child

An Adventure for 17th- to 20th-Level Characters

By Wolfgang Baur

Editing and

Added Material Ryan Nock

Cover Art Storn Cook

Interior Art Claudio Pozas

effervescence.co.uk

Cartography Sean MacDonald

Layout Eric Life-Putnam

Playtesters Jason Boss

Neil D’Cruze

Orinthol Jixiao

Zachary Lancaster

Hamid Raoof

the spirit of Tom Jones

Campaign Director Ryan Nock

Everything in this book, other than the covers,

the title and contents page, the illustrations and

maps, “EN Publishing,” the EN Publishing logo,

character and place names, story elements,

and EN Publishing product titles,

is designated Open Game Content.

EN PUBLISHING

7 Rutland Court

Balaclava Road

Southampton, Hampshire

England SO18 6RX

EN Publishing is an imprint of EN World.

Please visit http://www.enworld.org

Note on Rules Content: is adventure

uses Open Game Content as well as

material that is in the System Reference

Document but is not in the core rulebooks.

All the information you need to use this

material is presented in this adventure, but

if you are interested in learning more, search

for the System Reference Document online,

available through various sources.

Sleep, Ye Cursed Child – Illustration by Storn Cook

Table of Contents

Introduction ................................................

Background .....................................................................

Adapting the Adventure ....................................

Adventure Overview ......................................................

The Torch ..................................................................

The Burning Sky .....................................................

Act One: The Maw ........................................

Sea and Stone .................................................................

Preparation .......................................................................

e Elder Spirits..............................................................

The Nature of the Trillith ...............................

Elder Elemental Spirits......................................

Glass Wyrms’ Lair (EL ).............................................

Alternate Beginning: The Underdark...........

Into the Dreamworld .....................................................

Act Two: The Dreamworld ........................

Dreamworld Rules .........................................................

Knowledge (The Planes) .....................................

Exploring the Dreamworld ...........................................

undercloud Keep (EL ) ........................................

Sagramar, the Lord of the Castle (EL !)...................

Information Brokering ..................................................

Cloud Mural...................................................................

Going Around?.......................................................

Keep Away (EL ) .......................................................

e Path of Sorrows .....................................................

O Dread Trumpets ......................................................

Stalking Nightmares (EL ).......................................

Different Motivations......................................

Eight Strange ings I Saw on the Plane of Dreams

A Whirling Treasure Hoard (EL ) ..........................

Allying with the Trillith ................................

A Peeled Knight .............................................................!

An Eldritch Spring ........................................................!

A Human Swarm ...........................................................!

A Dream of Fire .............................................................!

Chains and Wails (EL ) ............................................!

An Enormous Ox...........................................................!

Sky Worms (EL ) ......................................................#

Abyssal Pillars...............................................................

Waking the Horde (EL ) ..........................................#

Act Three: Architects of

Annihilation ............................................

e Prison Palace ..........................................................

Palace Exterior ...............................................................

Scaling the Climax..............................................

Palace Interior ................................................................

Freedom .........................................................................

Negotiating .....................................................................

e Battle (EL ) .........................................................

e Mother of Dreams .................................................

Trilla’s Final Nightmare ................................................#

Facing Annihilation (EL ) ........................................

Fighting in the Real World ............................

No More Nightmares...................................................

Repairing or Destroying the Torch..............................

Flight’s Boon and

Annihilation’s Attacks..................................

e Final Dream ............................................................

Phoenix Symbology..............................................

Appendix One: Combat Stats ...................

Act One .........................................................................

Act Two ..........................................................................

Act ree........................................................................

New Feats ................................................................

Appendix Two: New Magic........................

e Torch of the Burning Sky.......................................

Open Game License Version .a ............

Sleep, Ye Cursed Child

I NTRODUCTION

Welcome to Sleep, Ye Cursed Child , the tenth

adventure and one of three possible conclusions of

the War of the Burning Sky campaign saga.

e war is hurtling toward its climax, and the scales

may just be ready to tip in the heroes’ favor. Having

united several nations against the overwhelming

power of the Ragesian Empire, the heroes recently

won the ﬁ rst great victory for the Resistance, liberating

the city-state of Gate Pass from an occupying army.

However, in the wake of their victory they learned of

three great threats, any of which has the potential to

spell defeat for them and their allies.

A former ally, the wind mage Pilus, has betrayed

the heroes and now carries an army aboard his

airship to sack the base of the Resistance. Meanwhile,

the force behind the whole war, Empress Leska, has

bound the world to a fate of war, and if she is not

slain the conﬂ ict will never end.

is adventure, however, focuses on the threat of

the monsters known as the trillith. ese dreamborn

beings have vexed the heroes throughout the war,

many of them serving as allies for Leska, though a

few have pledged themselves to saving their creator

Trilla, known as the Mother of Dreams, who is kept

prisoner by her own children. e trillith seek to

sunder the world, turning all reality to dreamstuﬀ ,

and now to stop them the heroes must enter the vast

dreamworld where Trilla is kept captive, face cruelly

wrought nightmares, and end the tormented dragon’s

suﬀ ering before the trillith succeed in crafting the

world’s annihilation.

A DAPTING THE A DVENTURE

Though intended as a climax for the

campaign, Sleep, Ye Cursed Child can easily

be adapted to an existing campaign, because

Trilla’s power can justify all manner of

unique magic, and because she is a source of

monsters.

Perhaps a foe of the heroes has allied

with the trillith, and freeing or killing Trilla is

the only way to remove these powerful foes.

Maybe a villain seeks to use Trilla’s dreams to

recreate a lost empire or awaken a long dead

god. Trilla’s ability to create creatures could

drive the heroes to seek her in order to conjure

an entity capable of harming some otherwise

impervious foe, or perhaps the trillith have

been attacking a kingdom, and the heroes are

called upon to end the threat, unaware of the

nature of the “Mother of Dreams.”

trillith Freedom once represented what Trilla most

desired in the early days after she became cursed, but

in the century since then, selﬁ shness and self-delusion

gripped this most powerful of the trillith, and now

Freedom has become her mother’s jailer.

A century ago, Trilla was just a young gold dragon

with latent psionic powers, the daughter of Syana, a

powerful defender of the elvish people. Occasionally

her dreams would manifest as incorporeal creatures,

but they would always fade at the dawn.

During the wars of conquest that led to the rise

of the Ragesian Empire, the half-orc warlord Drakus

Coaltongue captured Trilla and used her as bait to

draw out and slay Syana. During her captivity she

was tortured by the bone devil Hagenar, and this

trauma, combined with witnessing her mother’s

death, was enough for Trilla’s power to go wild and

take on a life of its own.

Trilla was rescued, but thereafter whenever she

dreamed the creatures born in her sleep endured

past the dawn and took on a life of their own. Most

of these entities were little more than poltergeists,

Background

Born of the nightmares of the gold dragon Trilla,

the trillith are trapped between the worlds of the

intangible and the corporeal. Should their “mother”

ever die, these living dreams fear they will perish,

so they keep Trilla trapped in an eternal slumber,

crafting ever more powerful horrors for her sleeping

mind in an attempt to create new trillith strong

enough to save them.

eir current leader, however, is no nightmare, but

one of Trilla’s earliest and most hopeful dreams.

Sleep, Ye Cursed Child Introduction

but the most traumatic or moving of her dreams

gave birth to creatures possessing intelligence and

will. Fearful of Trilla’s sanity and her safety, a group

of elves helped her hide in the underdark, beyond

the reach of Coaltongue or any other who could try

to exploit her power.

Her dreams, however, soon grew so great

in number that they formed a society, naming

themselves the Trillith, for they viewed Trilla as

both their mother and their god. Despairing from

being trapped in the sunless depths of the world,

and uncomfortable with the often horriﬁ c nature of

the trillith, Trilla eventually grew to see her children

as abominations. Unable to kill her own oﬀ spring,

she tried to kill herself, but the trillith stopped her.

Fearful of what would happen to them if Trilla died,

the trillith called upon Freedom, the most powerful

of their kind and Trilla’s most beloved daughter.

To ensure that her kindred would be free from

the fear of death, Freedom agreed to be bound

to physical form, and by so doing make freedom

unattainable by their mother. Trilla’s physical body

was trapped in an endless sleep, though her dreams

continue to manifest in the real world, and over the

years an entire dreamlike world has grown around

her, the domain of the trillith. In this world, even

the walls and air are fragments of Trilla’s dreams

and nightmares, brought to life.

Now Freedom directs the aﬀ airs of the trillith

from within this vast, semi-real dreamworld. Under

her command, nightmare architects manipulate

Trilla’s dreams to provoke particular dreams and craft

new trillith with speciﬁ c powers. No longer is Trilla

allowed to have dreams of hope or kindness, for the

trillith born from such dreams might oppose Freedom.

Now the majority of trillith in the dreamworld are

unsubtle terrors fervently loyal to Freedom.

In this way the trillith created the horriﬁ c

army that recently attacked the city of Gate Pass

(in adventure nine, e Festival of Dreams ). eir

ultimate goal, however, is to impregnate Trilla’s

dreams with the nightmare of Annihilation, a beast

capable of destroying the immortal Aquiline Heart.

If they succeed, the balance of elements in the

world will be undone, and the world (or at least the

T HE T ORCH

Trilla’s connection to the events of the war

runs deep, for her power created the Torch of

the Burning Sky. In the battle between her

mother and Coaltongue, the warlord used

the thigh bone of the slain devil Hagenar as a

makeshift club, caving in the skull of Jesepha,

a trumpet archon sent to help free Trilla. The

celestial, infernal, and psionic energies were

absorbed into the thigh bone, which became

the Torch of the Burning Sky.

The Torch combined the teleportation

powers of the devil and the archon, and the

ability of Trilla to create souls from her dreams,

and thus the Torch could devour those souls

for a limitless supply of power.

If you are running this as the second- or

third-to-last adventure in the saga, the heroes

will likely want to use Trilla’s essence to repair

the Torch, which is currently at less than full

power. A fully repaired Torch will let them

teleport their armies for the ﬁ nal conﬂ icts

against Pilus and Leska. If you are using this

as the ﬁ nal adventure, the heroes will have

the chance to destroy the Torch when they

reach Trilla.

nearby region, if you prefer a less global cataclysm)

will turn to dreams. ey believe that in such a world

they would be able to survive even if Trilla died, and

for most of the trillith, concern for their mother has

long since paled against their own desire to live.

Adventure Overview

e heroes must stop the trillith from destroying

the Heart, but doing so directly is an unlikely

proposition: how, after all, to ﬁ nd and destroy

thousands of incorporeal creatures? e best way to

stop the trillith is to destroy their mother, the source

of their life and energy. Hence, the party must head

into the deep caverns of the earth to ﬁ ght the trillith

and the Mother of Dreams.

Getting there won’t be easy, as Trilla is kept

captive in a living cavern formed of countless minor

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