#vimagotri

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Monsterhunt: Lixivioth, that which Bleeds from Beyond

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It starts as a ripple in the air, a churning beneath the skin of reality, then a silvery limb breaks the boundary before melting back into unexistance. Like a drowning soul thrashing in the sea, a body breaches the 'surface' full of a wild and desperate impulse to survive, a willingness to drag anything down if it meant keeping their head above water a little longer.

This is Lixivioth, a celestial who's time in the outer void has so deeply warped it that nothing remains but a cataclysmic desire to return no matter the cost. Once an explorer and collector of knowledge, Lixivioth's curiosity tragically drew it not just to the unknown but past the boundary of what could be known, beyond which laid nothing but dissolution.

Adventure Hooks:

Seeking forbidden knowledge, a devotee of Vecna has summoned and bound Lixivioth to a magic mirror, tormenting the spirit with glimpses of a reality it cannot touch. While infiltrating the villain's lair, the party come across the mirror and have the opportunity to ask it questions that might give them an edge against their foe. There is a magical procedure they must follow though, as every question that does not ascribe to the proper magical formalities puts a hairline crack in the glass, weakening the celestial bindings and giving it a chance to break free.

Days before needing to perform an important spell for the safety/prosperity of the realm, a great wizard was found dead in his study bleeding mercury form every hole in his skull, a tome of celestial learning in his hands. His body cannot be moved and the flow has yet to cease, slowly flooding his tower as his apprentices (and local authorities) scramble for answers. Lixivioth is using the wizard's body and magic to manifest in the material plane, and by the time the party are called to help it will be a matter of hours before the eldritch angel crawls it's way up his throat. To win the day they'll need to piece together the components of a binding spell from the mage's libraries while fending off quicksilver elementals and the tower's malfunctioning defences.

Beyond the borders of the party's homeland, an order of elven oracles were once rumored to seek wisdom of the distant future and past in the ripples of a silver spring, at least until a marauding band of centaurs overran their glade acting on their mystic's visions. Generations of ensuing seers, all mad as haters through imbibing magical mercury, have led the herd to become stronger and more violent all while unwittingly doing Lixivioth's bidding. A renegade has broken free, seeking aid from the people her herd has spent lifetimes raiding in the hopes of stopping an upcoming ritual.

[dailyadventureprompts]

Hey, I wanted to take a moment and say that I really enjoy the blog! Thanks for all the time and effort that you put in it!

I was also wondering if you might be able to provide some help? One of my players has been trying to make a patron that has a strong theme of sorrow and woe; without dipping into Fae territory. They’ve reached out to me to help and I’ve got absolutely nothing! Any ideas or concepts you might be able to make?

Monsterhunt: Thousandfold Sorrows

The hardest part of moving on is finding the way forward

A spirit of the plane of mirrors, Thousandfold Sorrows hunts those riven by great grief and loss, harrowing them with visions of a moment from their past from which they are unable to move on. Pain, shame, false hope, as the victim's mind is fractured by a multitude of emotions reality starts to go with it: different versions of their life playing out the possibility of what could've been.

Adventure Hooks:

A tragic cart accident goes even more awry as an out of control wagon runs into a girl walking down a busy market street who proceeds to shatter into thousands of mirrored shards infront of all the onlookers, horrifying the boy she was out on the town with. Stranger yet, the girl's description matches that of a young woman who went missing from her job at an antique store some weeks ago, as well as numerous other incidents all around the city. As it turns out, the shopgirl has fallen victim to Thousandfold Sorrows while she was lamenting wasting her youth in the dusty old shop instead of out there living life. Now she wanders the labyrinth of the mirror dimension, and the only way to get her back is to convince one of the impulsive duplicates that've slipped free in the previous days to take her place.

Seeking to undo the mistakes of the past, an aging mage has summoned Thousandfold Sorrows to ruminate on a tragedy from his youth, where the lives of his closest friends were sacrificed in the process of averting a magical disaster that would have ravaged the countryside. Increasingly desperate to know if he really did make the right choice, the mage has had Thousandfold sorrows run through endless permutations of events, eventually causing a chain-reaction of mirror magic that's split the local area (and nearby village) into three time lines: The present, the idealistic past, and an alternate version of events ravaged by wild magic. Caught in the middle, the party must discern the boundaries between truth and illusion and overcome paradoxical hazards in order to set the land right once again.

Like many creatures of the mirror dimension, Thousandfold Sorrows does not bear explicit ill towards those it haunts, instead existing in a state of perpetual reflection from a very limited viewpoint. It can communicate only through flawed reccolection, asking questions (sometimes radically inappropriate ones) about what its quarry WANTS as it desires to understand. One could perhaps say that it is hyperempathic but when that empathy is focused on something the quarry would really rather be left alone, conflict and tragedy will invariably ensue.

For the asker: Using Thousandfold Sorrows as a warlock patron will require your character to create a rough outline of their character and something tragic in their past, then have the mirror spirit relfect it back at them over and over and over as it tries to empathise. As for actual stats, I'd recommend searching 3rd party mirror magic and the unearthed arcana subreddit.

If you're not feeling particularly mirror focused, I could also recommend a number of possible patrons:

An engine of doom, pushed beyond its appointed rest

The Demon queen of despair and decay

A corrupted pagan god of being trapped in pain

A number of patrons in the "Compendium of forgotten secrets: awakening" one of the best and most thematically interesting warlock books out there, give it a google.

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[dailyadventureprompts]

Planescape: The Introspective Abyss of Vimagotri

For as long as people have been able to see and understand their reflections, they have known the inescapable urge to press past the gleaming surface and make contact with the intangable space beyond. Vimagotri is that desire made manifest by magic, a land beyond the placid water and silvered glass, where reality and identity splinter as one shifts through the mist or falls down the increasingly fractal paths. Known as “the silverlands” or “The plane of mirrors” to some, the nature and landscape of this world are a far cry from the inverted geometries one might expect from idly gazing into a reflective surface. 

Much like a mundane mirror reflects back an intangible version of the physical self, those traveling through Vimagotri must contend with physical reflections of their intangible selves, whether they be idealized archetypes, social roles, or iterative versions of who the traveler was and who they could be.  While these fragments begin as mere glimpses or omens, traveling into the depths of this mist shrouded land cause these manifestations to grow in strenght in power, gaining the ability to speak, and finally interact with the one casting them. At the very deepest depths, it’s said that the psychic pressure is enough to shatter both mind and body, and those who climb back from such depths do so irrevocably changed or not at all. 

A party could  encounter the Silverlands in any number of ways: 

While dabblers have theorized that Vimagotri lurks behind every mirror and reflective surface, it’s more accurate to say that these objects only risk becoming portals should they be used for mirror-walking, or bear witness to some great event of psychic anguish. Such occurrences open tiny planear fissures between the material and mirror worlds, allowing things to slip through with the right amount of magic or force applied. 

That said, mages will often travel through the plane of mirrors as an alternate method of teleportation, walking its labyrinthian paths to discover routes between mirrors across the planes. Such expeditions are often more circuitous than bamphing point to point, but have more tangible dangers than teleportation mishaps and have the advantage of adaptability: the same route always leads to the same mirrors, allowing a mirrorwalker to cultivate a network of dimensional shortcuts.    

Other things lurk in the silverlands besides the echoes of those who have come before, creatures of thought or identity stripped of form, sages lost to centuries long meditation, and horrors of alien logic and hostile geometry that dwell at the edge of where reality dissolves. These entities prey on travlers throghout the plane of mirrors and extend their influence out through every available means. 

Anything but a casual stroll through Vimagotri is an excersize in forced self reflection, meaning it’s a great backdrop for poinent moments of character reflection or “cave of trials” sort of examinations of self. Confrontation with past mistakes, clashes with the idealized self, or cathartic moments of reconciliation are all on the table whenever one looks deeper into the mirror. 

 Landscape: Planear travelers report a landscape much resembling the bottom of an ocean: a flat and eroded place of cliffs and silt deserts and deep crevasses, with beams of light diffusing down from a translucent and roiling sky. Mist here takes the place of water, and the environment is almost universally placid and cool.   Reflective surfaces are of course omnipresent, ranging from actual mirrors of every make size scattered about, to quicksilver springs, to great floating constructions of  glass that bend sight and reality around them.

Warped and often incomplete structures dot this landscape like shipwrecks, reproductions of spaces in the material plane usually only the size of a single structure or room, but occasionally encompassing entire settlements. These edifices are created when someone crosses over into into Vimagotri from another world, as even though the silverlands can be said to overlay and reflect aspects of the material plane, it more often reflects the subjective experience and expectations of the traveler than any particular landmark like the feywild or shadowfell. Innumerable would be mirrorwalkers have lost themselves expecting to cross over into 1:1 approximations of their own world and instead find themselves in a funhouse version of their own memories, vying with fragments of their own personality for a chance to return back.

Inhabitants: Though Vimagotri is full of strange creatures (and things that straddle the live between existence and illusion), the most numerous and organized of these entites are the Nerra, native inhabitants of the silverlands from before a time where reflections were cast. 

What was the plane of mirrors like before mirrors, ponds, or even shiny stones were a thing? None can say, not even the Nerra, as their waking history began the first time someone stumbled through the glass and Vimagotri took shape around them. This relationship between the reflectors and the reflected has defined the culture and nature of the Nerra ever since, as they peer through the mirrors at a multitude of worlds, observing an learning all the while. 

Physically, Nerra resemble nothing so much as abstract reflections, angles and distortions in a reflective surface that may take the vauge shape of a person. Even on their home plane they hop from image to image the way a frog swims through water, moving from hidden plae to hidden place and occasionally surfacing to take a shortcut. When out in physical space they resemble beings made of semi-cohesive quicksilver, but may give themselves shapes and angles as a form of stylish flair. 

Some Nerra avoid the world beyond the glass, seeing the fragments of memories and identities left behind by those reflected as a form of pollution and detritus that has irrevocably changed their world. Others are fascinated with mortals ( sapient or otherwise), riding along with their reflection and even going so far as to style themselves after their favorites. The identities of such Nerra are permiable, and often they will begin to think and act alike to their subject, in doing so gaining access to echoes of that mortals emotions. Without a subject, The Nerra’s feeling slowly drains away, leaving them with a cold and hardedged spirit that even they find alien and strange. 

While most of these quicksilver beings are solitary, flowing from place to place without any true attachment beyond their current fascinations, others gather together in the warped villages and towns that appear at crossing points , playing at being mortal and entreating visitors to stay with them for a while to add definition to their endlessly recursive lives. 

Adventures on the Plane of Mirrors: 

An Estate sale for a famed but long vanished world traveler ends with an attractive (possibly magical)  mirror in the possession of the party or one of their allies. The mirror seems perfect in every regard, save for the appearance of a leatherbound journal in the background of the reflected image. If the mirror is moved, the reflection changes appropriately, but the journal always shows up within a day or so. Careful vigil around the mirror shows an elderly figure popping in and out ofo the room every couple of days to explore the room and  make notes in the journal, before slipping back out the way they came. 

A mournful bard, famed throughout the courts of the kingdom has become convinced that her lost love is trapped behind a particular mirror, and is seeking a means of releasing her. Said lost love happens to be the heiress of a high up noble family, so opinions are split on whether the bard should be aided, has gone mad, or is working to undermine the now ascendant heir. The lover is truly passed, but the Nerra that was shadowing them hasn’t quite got the message, and keeps popping in at all their usual peepholes trying to find them. 

Having pinpointed a manageable route through the silverlands between a series of mirrors all created by the same glazier, a gang of thieves uses their fence contact to get mirrors into the possession of wealthy marks and then slip into their house to do a bit of untraceable larceny. Called in to investigate this rash of burglaries, the party eventually discovers one of the theives dead as a beast from behind the glass slaughters one of the robbers after following him out on a job. 

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