- Booked passage on the Sellen Starling
- Captain Skywin Freeling
- Gossa Kelkin and Wreben Malliver, professors returning to Cassomir
- Gossa - expert on Architecture of the Age of Enthronement
- Wreben - historian of the Shining Crusade
- 12 Shipmates
- 5 River Drakes
- Pursuing pirates
- 4 Vooniths
- By researching Count Lowl's Journals you have found out:
- His journeys occurred in the Dreamlands, a vast and relatively stable section of the Dimension of Dreams. You learn the fundamentals of travel in the Dreamlands: most types of damage experienced in the Dreamlands vanish upon waking except for mental ability score damage or drain; spells and items used in the Dreamlands are not expended upon waking; items found in the Dreamlands cannot be brought into the waking world, but persist from dream to dream; and death in the Dreamlands results in immediate traumatic awakening and permanent madness.
- Lowls planned to reach a mysterious hermit in the Dreamlands known as the Mad Poet. This Mad Poet was dangerous unless appeased, and Lowls focused his investigation on how to best approach this inscrutable—and certainly sinister—figure.
- Lowls selected a caravanserai in a vast Dreamlands desert as his initial destination. Here, he planned to talk with other dream travelers to gain information about how to locate and appease the Mad Poet.
- You piece together the Dreamlands excursion occult ritual (see below) and can use it to travel to the Forsaken Caravanserai.
DREAMLANDS EXCURSION RITUAL
School conjuration (creation); Level 5
Casting Time 50 minutes
Components V, S, F (a miniature staircase made of polished
horn and ivory worth 25,000 gp), SC (at least 2 and up
to 8)
Skill Checks Knowledge (arcana) DC 25, 2 successes;
Knowledge (planes) DC 25, 3 successes
Range touch
Duration instantaneous; see text
Saving Throw none; SR no
Backlash All casters take 2d6 points of damage.
Failure An animate dream (Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 2 29)
appears at the site of the ritual and attacks the casters.
EFFECT
This ritual must be cast at night on the Material Plane. The casters begin chanting the incantation while they pass around the miniature staircase, feeling each of its 70 steps. With each passing, the staircase appears a bit heavier and a bit larger. The primary caster drops the miniature staircase on the ground as the incantation is completed.
Success opens a portal where the staircase lands, revealing steps leading downward from wherever the ritual was performed (even if performed upon a rooftop or the deck of a ship). The casters can step forward to descend this staircase together; doing so puts the Material Plane bodies of the casters to sleep and thrusts their psyches into the Dreamlands. Before the completion of the ritual, the primary caster can utter a specific string of words that allows the portal to open in a specific area of the Dreamlands. Otherwise, the portal opens at the Forsaken Caravanserai. In the Dreamlands, the casters manifest lucid bodies identical to their Material Plane bodies, but take the ritual’s backlash damage.
Any caster wishing to wake from the Dreamlands and return to her body on the Material Plane must succeed at a DC 25 concentration check to do so. This is a full-round action that doesn’t provoke attacks of opportunity. The DC of this check is reduced by 1 for every 2d6 points of damage the traveler willingly takes to her physical body as part of the full-round action (this damage can’t be reduced in any way). If successful, the caster awakens. The caster can try again if she fails her concentration check. A caster can use her character level + her Charisma modifier as her bonus on the concentration check if she isn’t a spellcaster or if that value is higher than her usual concentration bonus.
