Additional Signs

action, we instead wasted time on pointless wrangling. Only now can we see the hideous truth.”

This sign first manifests with accelerated healing. Soon, though, living creatures and inanimate objects become covered with festering boils, which burst to expel swarms of pests. As the sign strengthens, wounds close almost instantly, but flesh grows pustulent and bones distend as life becomes corrupted. At its peak, all undead but the most powerful and hidden are obliterated. The dead rise as gibbering aberrations, and the living mutate into twisted progeny. Effect: This sign manifests as a surge of corrupt positive energy that resculpts life on an entire world.

Details: Ragnorra (Chapter 7) is associated with this sign. See page 97 for more information.

When creating your own elder evil, use the following signs as inspiration. Alter the effects to fi t the theme of your elder evil when necessary.

Alien Skies

“I peered into the heavens, searching for familiar sights, but found nothing I knew. All was strange and disquieting, as though we were adrift in alien seas.”

After the sun sets, the stars twinkle in the heavens as always—but they are strange. They glow luridly with weird colors, spreading fear and wonder in all who behold them. Familiar constellations vanish, re-form, or shift to new locations. As the sign reaches its peak, distorting the arcane energies of the world, unsettling auroras and intense meteor showers illuminate the night skies.

Effect: This sign interferes with arcane magic, making spells harder to cast successfully. When a spell is cast, the sign warps its effects, often with disastrous results.

Faint: The DCs of all Concentration checks related to casting arcane spells increase by 5.

Moderate: Arcane spells are cast at –2 caster level. A character whose effective caster level drops to 0 or lower cannot cast arcane spells at all.

Strong: Arcane spells and spell-like abilities are impeded, meaning that a caster must succeed on a Spellcraft check (DC 20 + the level of the spell) or lose the spell or spell slot without effect.

Overwhelming: In addition to impeding arcane magic, the sign distorts its effects. A caster who succeeds on the Spellcraft check to cast a spell or use a spell-like ability must then make a second Spellcraft check with the same DC. On a success, the spell takes effect normally; otherwise, something unusual occurs, as if casting in an area of wild magic (see DMG 149 and the associated table).

Variants: If your campaign includes psionics or variant forms of magic (such as soulmelds or truenaming from the Tome of Magic supplement), this sign might interfere with them instead. Use the effects described above or tailor them to suit the type of magic involved. Alternatively, you might have this sign disrupt the deities’ connection to the world, twisting divine magic instead of arcane. Appalling Fecundity

“The peasants believed they had been blessed: Their crops grew quickly, women bore healthy children in weeks rather than months, and the harvest was the best ever. At first, life was good. But the growth never slowed. Everything birthed and died with such speed that we could hear Nature suffering. Disease was rampant, and vermin spread it everywhere; there was no end to the screams of the affl icted.”

Growth and healing are accelerated. At fi rst crops and animals grow and reproduce with unnatural swiftness, and injuries vanish overnight. As the sign intensifi es, these early benefi ts run out of control. Fruit bursts and rots on the vine before it can be harvested. Weeds crack pavement and damage buildings. Clouds of vermin boil up from the earth, laying eggs that hatch and spawn new life in moments, and with them come equally virulent disease.

Effects: This sign forces living things to grow, ripen, and die at an alarming rate.

Faint: Ordinary plants are enhanced as if by the plant growth spell (PH 262; CL 20th). Crops benefi t from the enrichment effect, while other vegetation suffers from overgrowth and chokes open spaces.

Moderate: All areas of natural growth are affected as if by the entangle spell (PH 227; CL 20th). Each week, living creatures must succeed on a DC 10 Fortitude save or acquire the pseudonatural template (Complete Arcane 160).

Strong: Living creatures that require sleep lose the ability to do so, as their bodies fi dget and their thoughts race. Physical exhaustion sets in, and eventually minds break. A living creature can go without sleep for a number of days equal to its Constitution modifier (minimum one). Thereafter it is fatigued, remaining in this state for a number of days equal to its Constitution modifi er (again, minimum one); if it would become fatigued during that time, it is exhausted instead. Each day after that period, the creature takes 1 point of Wisdom damage. If the total Wisdom damage exceeds its Hit Dice, the creature is affected as if by an insanity spell. Once its Wisdom score drops to 0, the creature becomes unconscious but cannot recover lost Wisdom naturally. Only a sleep or deep slumber spell or equivalent effect can grant rest for a time, after which the effects of the sign begin anew.

Overwhelming: Flesh grows and heals with terrible speed. Each hour, all living creatures gain 1d6 temporary hit points. For each hour that a creature’s temporary hit point total exceeds its full normal total, it must succeed on a DC 20 Fortitude save or explode in a shower of gore.

Dry Winds

“From the north came a hot wind, scouring the clouds from the skies. It leached the water from our rivers and lakes, and the mighty oceans receded with each gust.”

Unnaturally warm winds blow from an atypical direction, growing hotter as the sign intensifi es and carrying away all moisture.

Effects: The dry winds destroy water as they whip across the land. Eventually the winds grow so hot they ignite whatever they touch, transforming the world into a fl aming ball of death.