Thalivar's Beacon

“Thalivar’s Beacon” is balanced for characters of 11th level. Players who’ve run the first part of this trilogy, Storm Lord’s Wrath{@i }, will be familiar with the tower and its inhabitants.

Location Overview

The wizard Thalivar built a tower at the heart of Leilon as a laboratory to study the monsters of the cosmos. Using a device called a planar beacon, Thalivar lured his prey into the tower and trapped them for his experiments. Disaster struck when Thalivar tried using the beacon to acquire a planar artifact called the ruinstone and accidentally unleashed the contents of his own menagerie. For years, the House of Thalivar stood abandoned, and those who dared to enter it were lost forever.

When the Spellplague wracked Toril, the cursed magic of the beacon was turned outwards on the town, and the monsters lurking within the tower were released. A local adventuring party, the Swords of Leilon, died trying to stop them from spilling out into the town below. Since then, the tower has been haunted by the ghosts of those who died within.

Led by the wizard Gallio Elibro, forces from Neverwinter have recently rebuilt the tower for use as a garrison building. Gallio has repaired the planar beacon and is continuing Thalivar’s research into the planes. With the town threatened by invasion, the wizard offers to aid the party by summoning a cadre of bound monsters to defend the walls. Secretly, he has other motives in mind….

Quest Goals

To complete the Thalivar’s Beacon quest (see “area The Quest Board"), the adventurers must defeat Gallio’s extraplanar monsters when they accidentally go on the rampage.

Travel to the Tower

The House of Thalivar perches on a rocky crag in the center of town. A recently paved trail winds up through shrubs to the foot of the tower.

Arrival

When the characters arrive at the tower, read the following boxed text aloud:

The House of Thalivar is a tall tower at the heart of the town. Recently rebuilt by soldiers, the structure now serves as a garrison for Neverwinter’s soldiery. Ravens circle the tower’s pointed roof and warm lantern light shines from its windows. At its foot, two arched doorways open into the interior.

A company of fifteen Guard inhabit the tower, led by the wizard Gallio Elibro and his guard captain Hazz Yarrum. Two halflings serve the household as cooks and porters. Refer to “Meeting Gallio Elibro” when the characters present themselves for their quest.

Meeting Gallio Elibro

Gallio Elibro is a short-tempered Rashemi human male mage (with the legend lore spell prepared instead of cone of cold). Characters who played the first part of this trilogy, Storm Lord’s Wrath, likely saved Gallio when Thalivar’s restless spirit possessed him. If Gallio died during that quest, replace him with one of his colleagues from the Order of the Many-Starred Cloak.

Gallio meets the party in the building’s entry hall and escorts them to his laboratory on the third floor, where he explains the mission:

• Gallio has recently repaired Thalivar’s planar beacon and is using it to trap and bind monsters from beyond this plane of existence.
• Once bound, such monsters could serve as useful tools if the town is invaded. However, Gallio needs the characters' help to trap more of them.
• Gallio wants the characters to travel with him into the Ethereal Plane and lure the monsters into the spectral light of the planar beacon.

Gallio can answer any questions the players have about the history of the tower or the mission at hand (see “area Into the Ethereal").

Gallio’s Hidden Agenda

Gallio has secret orders from his superiors in the Order of the Many-Starred Cloak to recover a magical artifact called the ruinstone from the Ethereal Plane. He intends to use the party to lure the Ruinstone guardians away, allowing him to seize it for his studies. Gallio doesn’t know that the artifact is protected by a field of wild magic. Touching it unleashes a magical backlash that overloads the planar beacon and frees any monsters held inside the tower: the same fate that befell Thalivar.

Tower Features

The House of Thalivar is an 80-foot-tall stone tower that serves as a garrison for Leilon’s soldiery. Its common features are described below.

Ceilings: Ceilings inside the tower are 20 feet high and vaulted.

Light: By day, sunlight floods the tower through its many high windows. Areas without natural light are well lit by wall lanterns.

Doors: Doors are made of wood and kept locked. A locked door can be opened with a successful DC 10 Dexterity check using thieves' tools. A locked door can be opened as an action with a successful DC 15 Strength (Athletics) check. All the guards carry keys for the doors, although only Gallio carries keys for the rooms on the third and fourth floors.

Thalivar’s Beacon Locations

The following locations are keyed to the map of the House of Thalivar.

B1. Tower Exterior

The tower rests on a rocky plateau. A grand portico once abutted the building to the west, but it fell long ago and only a few broken arches of masonry remain. Arched doorways lead into the entry hall.

B2. Entry Hall

A large banquet table rests on the floor in here. The guards use this chamber as a mess hall and meeting room. Guests are also entertained here.

B3. Supply Room

This chamber contains supplies for the upkeep of the tower: mops, coils of rope, timber, boxes filled with nails, and cleaning supplies.

B4. Kitchen

The kitchen is in use most hours of the day, as halfling cook Tombil Breen prepares food for over a dozen residents. A large cooking pot of stew bubbles away over the hearth.

B5. Servant’s Quarters

These cozy quarters contain beds for the tower’s two servants, halfling cook Tombil Breen and his brother Tug. The adjoining storage closet houses a small shrine to Cyrrollalee, halfling god of home and friendship.

B6. Garrison

These rooms contain bunks for the tower’s soldiers. Foot lockers at the end of the bunks hold each soldier’s meager possessions: letters from Neverwinter, tobacco, hipflasks of rum, and other personal effects.

B7. Armory

The armory contains racks of longswords, spears, light crossbows, and crossbow bolts: enough to arm a levy army of a hundred warriors. Three suits of full plate armor rest on dummies by the western wall.

Weapons Locker

This locker is reinforced with a superior lock. To open this door, a character must succeed on a DC 16 Dexterity check using thieves' tools or force it open as an action with a successful DC 20 Strength (Athletics) check.Inside, a longsword of warning named Auspex is mounted to the wall.

B8. Guard Room

The soldiers relax in this chamber when they’re not on duty, wiling away their downtime by playing cards, drinking, or singing. There are 1d4 + 2 guards in here at any time of the day or night.

B9. Yurrum’s Office

This office belongs to Hazz Yurrum, the ineffective sergeant of the soldiers. Yurrum is a cowardly human guard. His desk contains maps of the region and reports to his superiors with inflated accounts of his own prowess. A portrait of Dagult Neverember, Lord Protector of Neverwinter, hangs on the wall, pockmarked with darts. Sergeant Yurrum flips the portrait to face the wall if he knows he has guests coming.

B10. Laboratory

The laboratory is crammed with tables bearing alchemical gear. Bottles of rare ingredients line the walls, alongside strange trinkets and stuffed oddities acquired from other worlds. If combat occurs here, any creature that misses with a melee weapon attack must roll a d20 on the Alchemical Mishaps table.

Alchemical Mishaps

B11. Gallio’s Study

Gallio sleeps in here, surrounded by books he acquired from Thalivar’s library. The room contains a bed, a closet, and many bookshelves. A letter on the desk contains Gallio’s orders from the Many-Starred Cloak, which instruct him to “recover the ruinstone from the tower’s ethereal spire.”

B12. Library

The library contains dozens of tomes covering a variety of esoteric subjects: magic, alchemy, religion, and the cosmos.

B13. Planar Beacon

This room is dominated by the planar beacon: a 5-foot-high, egg-shaped geode mounted on a rotating bronze pedestal and enclosed within a crystal cylinder. A large silver bell is mounted to a wall bracket near the room’s entrance.

Dimensional Cells

Eight barred cells line the chamber’s walls. While the beacon turns, creatures held inside these cells are prevented from taking any form of extradimensional movement, including teleportation or travel to another plane of existence.Bending the bars of a cell requires success on a DC 25 Strength check. The cell doors spring open automatically if the beacon is disabled. Two paralyzed Star Spawn Mangler (see appendix A) occupy the cells when the characters first enter the tower.

B14. Ethereal Spire

Thalivar built this spire long ago, but it collapsed when the town fell into ruin. Its lingering form remains on the Border Ethereal, where it appears as any other structure from the Material Plane: ghostly and immaterial. A group of four Star Spawn Mangler (see appendix A) lurk in the mists surrounding this chamber and attack anyone who enters.

The only object of interest here is the ruinstone a fiery red crystal the size of a human palm, which is clasped in the maw of a snake-shaped pedestal. The pedestal is enchanted and only releases its prize if a long-forgotten command word is spoken. Any creature that touches the ruinstone or strikes the pedestal with a melee weapon must make a DC 18 Constitution saving throw or fall unconscious for 1 hour. This magical backlash also disables the planar beacon.The pedestal has AC 10, 50 hit points, a damage threshold of 10, and immunity to poison and psychic damage.

The Ruinstone

This evil artifact was created by Netherese wizards long ago. Once per day, a creature holding the ruinstone can use it to undo one action they performed within the past 24 hours, altering reality so that any consequences of that action are erased. For example, a creature could undo the killing blow that they dealt to an enemy, causing that enemy to return to life in the position where it died. Each use of the artifact has a terrible side effect: one random person known to the user is also erased from reality. The villains in this adventure both want to acquire the ruinstone for their own evil ends. If your players decide to claim it themselves, it’s up to you to determine what calamities befall them!

Into the Ethereal

Assuming the characters agree to the quest, Gallio leads them upstairs to the planar beacon on the fourth floor (area B13), where he performs a ten-minute ritual to transport the party to the Ethereal Plane.

Before beginning his ritual, Gallio shows the characters the monsters held in his dimensional cells. He reveals that the planar beacon freezes any extraplanar beings caught in its beam: to bring the monsters home, the characters must grab hold of them, then return to this world and imprison the monster inside one of his dimensional cells.

The Ritual

To perform the ritual, Gallio paints a magic rune on each character’s forehead and chants an incantation to draw upon the power of the planar beacon. When the ritual is complete, Gallio asks each character to ring the silver bell mounted on the wall. As they do so, they fade from sight and are transported into the Ethereal Plane. Read the following boxed text aloud when a character first rings the bell.

As the silver bell is struck, the world fades away. Grey mist swirls into view and the temperature drops to a soul-chilling cold. Your companions and the tower you just stood in remain visible, but appear translucent and oddly distant. In this strange world, a beam of blue light spills from the planar beacon and sweeps around it in a circle, like a spectral lighthouse. Most mysterious of all, a spiral staircase rises from an archway in the wall that wasn’t present before.

Anyone who rings the bell enters the Border Ethereal as though affected by an etherealness spell. The effect lasts for 24 hours, during which time a character can pass back and forth between worlds by ringing the silver bell, which exists in both planes simultaneously. When all the characters have passed through, Gallio rings the bell to join them.

Hunting for Star Spawn

Gallio leads the characters upstairs to the mysterious chamber at the top of the ethereal spire (area B14). As they approach the chamber, Gallio casts a greater invisibility spell on himself and instructs the characters to lure the monsters within into the planar beacon. When the characters enter the room, the monsters emerge from the mists to attack them. Any interplanar creature that starts its turn inside the planar beacon room (area B13) is paralyzed for one minute. If a character grabs a paralyzed monster and then rings the silver bell, they can drag the creature back to the Material Plane and imprison it inside one of the dimensional cells.

While the characters are dealing with the monsters, Gallio tries to unlock the ruinstone from its pedestal. After 5 rounds, he grabs hold of the stone and tries to remove it by force. Read the following boxed text aloud when this occurs:

Gallio screams from the top of the astral spire. A shockwave washes through the mists, and the spectral light of the planar beacon flickers and dies. Looking back into your own world, you see the trapped monsters awaken and break free from their cells!

Touching the ruinstone triggers a magical backlash that disables the planar beacon and frees any creatures trapped in its spell. Back on the Material Plane, any captured monsters break free from their cells and rampage through the tower, including the two that Gallio captured previously. To complete their quest, the characters must hunt down and kill the monsters. If they succeed, proceed to “Conclusion.”

Conclusion

If the characters defeat the star spawn, they discover Gallio’s unconscious body sprawled before the ruinstone. When they approach the body, the ghosts of the Swords of Leilon appear to issue a warning. Read the following boxed text aloud:

A pair of ghostly figures emerge from the mists: a dark-skinned warrior woman dressed in chainmail, and a red-bearded dwarf carrying a lute. The woman holds up her hand in a sign of peace and speaks in an echoing voice.

“This is what happens to those who meddle with the ruinstone. Leave it here, lest the people of Leilon suffer its wrath once more!”

The Ghost can reveal the following information:

• In life, the ghosts belonged to an adventuring company called the Swords of Leilon. The woman was once called Augusta Krul and the dwarf was known as Ogri Ninebeards.
• When the wizard Thalivar accidentally released the monsters trapped in his tower, the Swords of Leilon fought and died to hold them back.
• Thalivar spent all his life searching for an artifact called the ruinstone. When he finally touched it, its magic broke his planar beacon and released his monsters.
• The ghosts have sensed that evil powers have recently learned of the stone and are conspiring to claim it. It must not fall into evil hands!

The ghosts urge the characters to help them protect the stone. If a living humanoid willingly binds their soul to the ruinstone, the artifact will be destroyed when it’s next used—but doing so erases the soul from existence. Any creature that binds its soul to the artifact suffers no ill effects until the artifact is used, at which point the creature disappears from reality and can only be brought back with a wish spell, or similar magic. If no characters are willing to volunteer their souls, the ghosts ask them to stay clear of the tower and leave them to guard it.

When Gallio awakens, he admits to his deception and swears never to seek the ruinstone again. The wizard resigns from his post at once and returns to Neverwinter to face his order.