Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Finder’s Archives.
In this column, we take some of the lands from Magic: The Gathering and turn them into something you can use for your fantasy games.
The stats given in each entry assumes that you’re using Pathfinder for your games, but they can easily be converted over into any fantasy system. This week we sail into harbor near the Arcane Lighthouse.
Arcane Lighthouse
The arcane lighthouse sits on a floating rock (more like a small mountain). Beyond that, the arcane lighthouse has no known pattern, as it either floats off during the night or disappears in some other manner. It is rarely ever reported in the same place twice. What is known is that it is 60 feet tall, and has a powerful light beacon at the top, much brighter than any other normal lighthouse, leading ships to follow it, rather than any weaker signals.
Lay of the Land
The Arcane Lighthouse is 60 feet tall and has a magical beacon at the top, one that reaches up to 12 miles out to sea – some 2-3 miles longer than is normal for lighthouses of this size. Not only that, but the beacon is visibly stronger to the naked eye than any other light source nearby, something accomplished through powerful illusion magic.
That illusion magic is exactly what the lighthouse is all about. It appears during the worst weather possible, and leads ships astray, causing them to miscalculate where they are, and in many cases capsize or run aground. The lighthouse, therefore, has a rather ugly reputation, as an ill-omen. It is believed that should the lighthouse appear before the night starts, then the local area is in for some terrible storms.
Dangers
The Arcane Lighthouse is the domain of a rather insidious group of pirates, led by a man called Darvin Stormseeker (NE elf male wizard (diviner) 12), who uses his divination magics to see where the most valuable ship cargoes are, and then either finds one that’s about to experience bad weather (or summons it himself) – after which he moves the Arcane Lighthouse there. His crew of pirates (50 CE and NE male and female humans and elves warrior 2) then kill any surviving crews and plunder the vessels.
The ill-gotten gains of the pirates are then moved on to a separate trading vessel (one that the pirates run as being totally legitimate, and which is normally halfway across the world from their latest sinking) and use it to pawn off the booty. Due to the distances involved, and the speed with which they can bring the goods from one end of the world to the other, this has led them to become extremely successful and wealthy.
While the Arcane Lighthouse is under Darvin’s control, he has no idea of who created it, and that does worry him. All his divination magics surrounding the lighthouse itself has come up blank. What manner of creature or spellcaster could be more powerful than him?
Kim Frandsen
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