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 or 5e for your games, but they can easily be converted over into any fantasy system. This week we head to the end of the world and all things.
Cavern of Souls
The Cavern of Souls lies several miles beneath the surface, with no entrances or exits – not to the surface, and not to the underworld. The only way to get here is to know that it exists and then use magic to go here. There are 5 black portals spread around the center of the cavern, surrounding a seemingly bottomless hole in the ground, from which a green and white fog continually seep. Each of the portals disgorges screaming spirits on occasion, that swirl around the cavern before disappearing (forever?) into the hole in the ground.
Lay of the Land
The Cave of Souls is a cavern some 300 feet in diameter, and seemingly natural as it looks organic to the casual observer. Close observation reveals that “someone” excavated it, but the markings are so small that they’re almost microscopic. Simply put, someone made it, but their technology is so far beyond anything currently known that it might as well be magical.
And the reason for this is simple: The Cavern of Souls originated at an unknown point in the future, so far out that even the gods can’t tell what has happened. What they have discovered seems to have disturbed them greatly, as it seems to be some form of escape mechanism. Something happened in the future that was bad enough that the people of the time turned to a form of time travel to head back into the safety of the ancient past. Something went badly wrong, and while the cavern traveled back in time, the people it was created to protect did not. Instead, the black portal pulls through souls from the Armageddon that ended the world, and sends them into the hole in the middle of the cavern. What happens there, even the god of the dead cannot see. But they do not end up in the normal afterlife or even the various hells. And as more souls enter it, the glow of the mist grows slightly brighter, and the pull on the souls grows slightly stronger. Will it, given time, become a black hole of souls that draw them in from across all of time, space, and reality?
Dangers
No one lives in the Cavern of Souls. And those few who have tried to interfere with the flow or souls from portals to the hole in the ground have all instantly perished, including undead, fiends, and even a demi-god. As such, the gods have declared it to be prohibited ground from ALL of reality until they figure out what the hole and cavern really is, and perhaps how to stop it.
And that concludes this week. Do you feel brave enough to try to stop the flow of souls?
Kim Frandsen
Latest posts by Kim Frandsen (see all)
- Finder’s Archive – Crypt of the Eternals - June 2, 2023
Thanks for this!
Added to the Blog Database.
https://jonbupp.wordpress.com/blog-database/for-dungeon-masters/chapter-5-adventure-environments/dungeons/cave/