The Ethereal Contrivance of the Unholy Wizard sat in a natural mountain amphitheater in the Demonskull Range: an enormous stone effigy of a roc, two hundred feet wingtip to wingtip, hovering thirty feet above a permanent portal to the Elemental Plane of Air. The wind pouring through the portal held it aloft. Standing on its back was like standing on a ship in heavy weather: continuous wind, but stable underfoot.
The party visited the Contrivance in Sessions 28 and 31. It was destroyed in Session 31.
Getting There
Approach was by air. The updrafts from the portal were strong enough to carry any creature with a fly speed directly to the Roc’s back. The amphitheater had open sky above it and sheer basalt walls on three sides, with the portal itself visible only as a shimmering distortion in the air when approached closely.
The Stone Roc
Carved from dark basalt in resting posture, wings fully extended, head raised. The stone was no longer purely inert. A thousand years of saturation from the portal and the energy leaking out of the facility above had changed it in ways that were difficult to describe. It responded to what happened inside.
Three massive iron chains anchored the Roc to the amphitheater walls, one at the base of each wing and one at the tail. Old and dark with age, but maintained by the Order until they stopped.
The Temple
A low stone structure built across the Roc’s shoulders, at the base of its neck. Single entrance: iron doors, no longer locked. The interior was one large circular chamber, forty feet across, thirty-foot domed ceiling.
The air inside was wrong. Colder than it should have been. A smell of ozone and something else that made the back of the teeth ache. The sound the structure made had changed from something below hearing to something audible: a low continuous tone that shifted pitch without pattern.
At the center of the chamber: the Vessel. A crystalline icosahedron approximately twelve feet across, rotating faster than it used to. Some faces dark, others almost painfully bright. A silver cord extended from its base and pulsed visibly with each shift in tone, irregular, too fast. The air around it crackled. The party viewed it during their visit.
The Castle
Four centuries of fortification built from the Roc’s own stone. It looked the same from the outside as it always had. Inside, it was a dead place. The Order’s belongings were where they had left them. Meals were abandoned mid-preparation in the kitchen. A card game was left unfinished in the barracks. Whatever happened to the Order that guarded this place happened quickly.
The corridors were not empty. The animated remains of the Order still walked their old patrol routes: strix and harpy-kin skeletons, wings intact, following routes they had walked in life with imperfect fidelity. Some paths terminated at posts that no longer needed guarding; they stood there for minutes before turning back. They responded to intrusion with force. They did not speak.
The energy animating them did not behave like conventional necromancy. It was the Vessel’s overflow, bleeding through the complex from years of instability. Effects that targeted undead may or may not have worked normally on them.
The party cleared the castle interior, including two wraiths and a phantom beast in the corridor approaching Keloras’s quarters.
Keloras, the Unbroken King
Keloras was at the castle’s lowest level. His quarters were unguarded. The silver cord from the Vessel ran through the ceiling above him and down through the floor. He was the living anchor that kept the entire structure from consuming itself.
He was a strix, ancient, his body fragile as old wood, feathers dull, talons brittle. He could not stand. His eyes were entirely the wrong color. He radiated a warmth that had nothing to do with body heat. He had been in this position for over a thousand years, and he was extraordinarily calm about it.
He met with the party in Session 28 and explained the situation clearly: the Vessel held a nascent spark of divinity. He was bound to it as its living anchor, which was the only thing keeping him alive and the only thing keeping the Vessel from destroying itself. Two paths existed. Either the Vessel was destroyed, an act that would kill him and release everything it had been holding, or a portable anchor vessel, designed to replace him, was used correctly. Either way, he would die. He had known this for a long time. He wanted it to end.
The portable anchor vessel was built in the Fractured Workshops beneath Firebell. He told the party this. Chiezzem visited the Contrivance before the party arrived and had already departed by the time they reached Keloras.
The Order of the Vaulted Wing
A military-religious order of strix and winged kin that formed around the Contrivance within a generation of its construction. They devoted themselves to keeping the Vessel sealed and its location hidden, and they guarded it for four centuries.
They were all dead by the time the party arrived. Their animated remains walked their posts until the Contrivance was destroyed.
The Symbol
The same symbol carved into the temple walls appeared at the Fractured Workshops beneath Firebell. The party members who recognized it at the Contrivance were able to use that knowledge to locate the Workshops entrance.
What Happened
The party returned to the Contrivance with the portable anchor. Keloras was killed before the anchor could be installed. The energy that had been sustaining him and the Vessel for over a thousand years ruptured outward all at once.
The stone Roc is gone. The Vessel is gone. The castle is gone. The portal to the Plane of Air is still there — the Contrivance was built on top of it, not the other way around. The party was ejected into the Plane of Air in the detonation. Captain Tomsley and the airship did not survive.