Chapter Six
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Tomb of Frozen Dreams Deep within frozen glaciers lies a series of ice caves long inhabited by a reclusive sect of arcanists. These sorcerers and wizards have sequestered themselves in order to study magic more fully and expand the range of their capabilities for wielding its power. They have also tapped into the natural essence of ice and found a way to freeze dreams within its chilled soul.
ar to the south, in the uncharted wastes beyond Talesh-Mhor, lies a series of caves within the nevermelting ice of eternal glaciers. Visitors describe the caves as mazelike. Most of them are filled with frigid seawater, so one must navigate by boat.
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making it extremely difficult for a conventional ship to undertake the journey. The arcanists who live here prefer to transport themselves and their supplies magically. They do not even own a ship capable of making the journey away from their frozen home.
Background
Frozen Dreams
The vast, cathedral-like caverns feature majestic pillars of ice rising up to the 100-foot domed roof, while narrow passages with tight, nearly impassable turns and deceptive drop-offs send water cascading down into deep, dark chasms. Rumor has it that some of these chasms contain magical portals that lead to other realms or planes, since the water pours down into them, but they never fill up—and those who explore them are almost never seen again. At the center of the ice caves lies a cavern of immense size and particular grandeur. The ice here glistens like crystal, with scintillating colors playing about the walls, cast from the light of a column of energy that falls from the apex of the roof down into the cold, clear water. The energy, it is said, flows from the subconscious minds of all the intelligent beings in the world. These thoughts, dreams, images, and memories fill the cavern and freeze, trapped here forever. This is the Tomb of Frozen Dreams. The tomb is the creation of the Hedrudal, a small group of arcanists who live within the ice caves, sequestered by their own volition to spend all their time studying the intricacies of the arcane. As a grand experiment, the Hedrudal long ago used natural magic bound within the caves themselves to create a place where they could store dreams, thoughts, and emotions—frozen within the ice. So many centuries have gone by that the Tomb of Frozen Dreams has become filled with these stored visions and thoughts.
Also known as “dead dreams,” frozen dreams are thoughts and emotions stored within the ice of the Tomb of Frozen Dreams. Frozen dreams are difficult to distinguish from normal ice. A searcher must look carefully for the tell-tale sign: tiny, almost imperceptible images within the facets of the crystalline ice itself. If you melt a frozen dream using your own breath, you unleash the dream and it flows into you. Most of the time, you then experience the dream, memory, or thought as if it were Placing the Portal your own. These frozen dreams can You can place the portal from the Nexus in any of the caves in this cavern maze (see map, contain important page 72). Keep it away from the central tomb lore, knowledge lost proper, however, allowing the player characters to discover this vast chamber on their own. to all but the one who can loose it from the tomb. Sometimes, however, special frozen dreams grant powerful abilities to those who thaw them: • Frozen Dream of Combat: You gain a +2 competence bonus to attack rolls for 1d4 days. • Frozen Dream of Knowledge: You gain a +10 competence bonus to a random Knowledge skill for one day. • Frozen Dream of Life: You can create any creature that you have ever seen that has up to your Hit Dice. The creature is not a specific individual—it is a brand-new, average specimen of its species not under your control. • Frozen Dream of Love: You feel rejuvenated and filled with warmth. The dream heals you of any damage you have sustained to your mental ability scores and restores your lost levels or negative levels as a greater restoration spell. • Frozen Dream of Power: You gain the ability to cast a random spell 1d4 times, as if you were a sorcerer of the minimum level needed to cast the spell. • Frozen Dream of Rest: You feel rejuvenated and refreshed. The dream heals you of any damage you have sustained to your physical ability scores and restores your lost levels or negative levels as a greater restoration spell.
Using This Location in Your Campaign Player characters may attempt to find the Tomb of Frozen Dreams to uncover some secret lost to all living beings but left frozen within the ice. They may wish to tap into the powers locked within some of the frozen dreams. Or they may need to contact the Hedrudal to learn arcane secrets from them. Of course, getting to the place might prove difficult (except through the Nexus, perhaps) since it lies within the ice caves of a distant, frozen land. Characters can reach the caves only by crossing a frigid and sometimes frozen sea,
