The Pentifex Order

Bastion of Souls Encounters d% Encounter Average EL

01–10 1d3 ravids 7 11–25 1d3 young incarnum dragons 9 26–50 1d6 4th-level skarn incarnates and 9 1 skarn fighter 5/spinemeld warrior 1 51–75 2d4 xag-yas 9 76–90 1 juvenile incarnum dragon 9 91–100 1 human paladin 6/incandescent champion 5 11

is only 60%. If the PCs fail to visit the location for more than a year, they must roll for encounters as if they had never visited the site.

Base Ability: You gain 1 point of essentia. (See the Planar Touchstone sidebar, which describes the feat needed to gain abilities from planar touchstones.)

Recharge Condition: Immerse yourself in the fl owing stream of soul-stuff.

Higher-Order Ability: When you activate this ability, you can bind one additional soulmeld or magic item to one of your available chakras, exceeding your normal limit of simultaneous chakra binds. This chakra bind lasts for 1 day.

Higher-Order Uses: 1.

Xag-Ya (Energon) CR 4

N Medium elemental (incorporeal) Init +3; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Listen +0, Spot +4 Languages None AC 17, touch 17, flat-footed 14 hp 27 (5 HD) Immune poison, sleep, paralysis, stunning, critical hits, flanking Resist incorporeal Fort +2, Ref +7, Will +1 Speed fly 20 ft. (good) (4 squares) Melee incorporeal touch +6 (1d6 plus positive energy) or Ranged positive energy ray +6 touch (1d8) Base Atk +5; Grp — Atk Options positive energy lash (undead take extra 2d8+5 damage from touch; can heal living creatures for 2d8+5) Special Actions turn undead 5/day (+4, 2d6+9, 5th) , explosion Abilities Str —, Dex 17, Con 12, Int 7, Wis 10, Cha 18 SQ cannot be raised or resurrected Feats Combat Reflexes, Extra Turning Skills Hide +7, Spot +4 Explosion (Su) When reduced to 0 hp, a xag-ya’s body is destroyed in an explosion of positive energy that deals 1d8+9 points of damage to everyone in a 20foot-radius burst (Fort DC 16 half).

“This is the tale that the caste mothers tell, in their camps under the star-shadows of the dolmens, when night is deep on the world and dawn is far away. “In the beginning, fourteen archmagi sacrificed seventeen eyes to bring incarnum to our world. With these precious drams of eternal soulstuff, they hedged in the encroaching Ravener, and so the Starved Age began. “The fi rst living creature of Incarnum was a duskling fey, born of a ewe and a shower of moonlight. This was Ilvit, called the Opener, and so the Fecund Age began. “The last living creature of Incarnum shall be the daughter of the encroaching Ravener, hedged and proud. She will gather all the lost and make of them a scourge to fl ay the land. And so the gyre turns, and so the stars dim. “Children, guard the ancient sites and hunt the lost, that the scourge falls lightly when it comes.”

—Meredythe Gorvabyn, Pentifex Monolith

Dedicated to policing the use and abuse of incarnum in the world, the Pentifex Order is an example of an incarnumrelated organization with potential appeal to characters of any race, class, and even alignment. The lost are their favored enemies, and necrocarnates their sworn foes. Under the banner of preventing the misuse of incarnum, the Pentifex Order draws incarnates, soulborn, and totemists alongside clerics, paladins, wizards, fi ghters, and rogues (to name but a few) to join in their vital mission.

JOINING THE PENTIFEX ORDER

The Pentifex Order stands ready to embrace anyone who will take up its cause and prove loyal to its goals. The only absolute prerequisite for joining the order is having an essentia pool. The order doesn’t care whether you have that pool by virtue of belonging to an incarnum race, taking levels in a meldshaping class, or taking incarnum feats.

Entry Requirements: Essentia pool 1. The Pentifex Order maintains a large force of loose affi liates and a much smaller core of initiates ranked in a strict hierarchy. Most of the highest-ranking members of the order are incarnates, with a few soulborn in the mix. The lower levels of the hierarchy include characters of all classes who aid the goals of the order simply by doing whatever they do best—putting their particular skills and talents to use in battling the lost and thwarting the schemes of necrocarnates. When a character is accepted as an affi liate member of the Pentifex Order, she receives basic training in the nature of the lost and effective means to recognize and combat them. Further training is not necessary unless the character requests it, until such time as she is ready to advance into the upper hierarchy of the order.

PENTIFEX ORDER BENEFITS

The primary concern of the Pentifex Order is controlling dangerous incarnum, and the order does everything it can, with its limited resources, to assist those who are engaged in that work. Goods: The Pentifex Order has few material resources to spare, especially for affi liate members. For initiates into the higher ranks of the order, however, they provide armor and weapons of a peculiar brushed-gold color that carries hints of red and brown. These serve as a badge of membership and authority within the order. These weapons and armor are made of a metal called pentifex, which is functionally equivalent to steel, distinguished only by its unique appearance. The order trades pentifex magic weapons and armor for otherwise identical steel ones at no cost to the initiate.

Thus, a character who becomes an initiate in the order can freely trade her +2 full plate for pentifex +2 full plate, but she could replace an adamantine +1 greatsword only with a pentifex +1 greatsword, which would be neither as valuable nor as powerful. Naturally, an initiate of the order is under no compulsion to use pentifex items—they simply serve as an emblem of the order. Services: The Pentifex Order includes a large number of spellcasters willing and able to cast spells and make magic items on behalf of their fellow members. With a successful level check (DC 10 + double the spell level), a member of the order can locate another member willing to cast one of the new spells presented in Chapter 5 at 75% of the normal cost. With a successful level check (DC 10 + item’s caster level), a member of the order can likewise find a fellow member willing to craft one of the new magic items presented in Chapter 5 and charge only 75% of the item’s market price. Information: The Pentifex Order is a font of knowledge about incarnum, and particularly about the lost and necrocarnates. If you are an affi liate member, you have contacts within the organization who can make one of the following skill checks on your behalf, using the indicated bonus, as long as the subject matter is related to one of these topics: Knowledge (history) +15, Knowledge (arcana) +18, Knowledge (the planes) +18, Knowledge (religion) +15. If you are a member of the upper hierarchy of the order, add twice your monolith rank to the Knowledge skill modifi er indicated above.

Status: While the affi liate members of the Pentifex Order are a large confederacy of equals, the initiates, called monoliths, are ranked in a strict hierarchy. Any affi liate member who performs a great service for the benefi t of the order—not simply ridding the world of a powerful necrocarnate or a plague of lost, but actually advancing the standing of the order itself—can apply for recognition as a monolith. Before this status is granted, the character must undergo a month of intensive training, learning more of the ways of the lost and the corruption of necrocarnum from several other monoliths. Once that training is complete, the character becomes a monolith with the rank of Dolmen Novice. Monoliths carry titles, from Dolmen Novice (the lowest) to Wellspring Monolith (the highest). The numbers below are useful when adding ranks to Knowledge skill modifi ers (as described above).

Monolith Rank Monolith Title

1 Dolmen Novice 2 Dolmen Initiate 3 Dolmen Master 4 Monolith Ward 5 Monolith Keeper 6 Monolith Founder 7 Pentifex Monolith 8 High Monolith 9 Wellspring Monolith

PLAYING A MEMBER OF THE PENTIFEX ORDER

You know something other people do not know, or choose not to know—stray incarnum poses a threat to the world. For centuries, uncontrolled incarnum has escaped careless meldshapers’ hands, fl oating as it will, bonding with whatever it encounters. Usually, these random bonds are harmless, but occasionally, wild incarnum encounters a life force and binds it to twisted and evil thoughts. These creatures, perhaps caught by incarnum in a moment of hate and forever bound to that thought, must be struck down wherever they are found.

Combat: Your class, not your membership in the Pentifex Order, is the primary determinant of your role in and approach to combat. Your membership in the order should determine your priorities—fi ghting the use of necrocarnum and eliminating the lost—and, to a lesser extent, your methods, since you must have some knowledge of using incarnum to join the order in the first place. The Pentifex Order encourages even its nonmeldshaping members to learn and use incarnum feats and spells, and to acquire and employ incarnum magic items. Beyond these guidelines, you are free to enter combat in the ways and using the means that suit you best.

Advancement: The Pentifex Order offers extensive opportunities for advancement. Once you advance from affi liate membership to the ranks of the monoliths, you can expect regular promotions through the ranks (every 6 to 12 months) as long as you continue to complete important missions successfully. Signifi cant failures slow down your advancement, but nothing short of becoming lost or employing necrocarnum earns you expulsion from the order. As you advance, you also will be expected to demonstrate an increasing mastery of incarnum. Even if you were a fighter who dabbled in incarnum feats as an affiliate member and earned your way into the monoliths with no more extensive use of incarnum than that, you will not progress past the rank of Dolmen Master without some more advanced ability, such as you would gain by taking levels in a meldshaping class or adopting a prestige class such as incandescent champion.

Missions: In general, the Pentifex Order relies on its affi liate members to seek out their own missions. Whenever an affi liate member comes across a clutch of lost or a vile necrocarnate, that member can call on the resources of the order to deal with the problem—or simply deal with it independently. Monoliths function in much the same way, but they can expect occasional assignments to specifi c missions as well—perhaps once a year. These missions typically arise when an affi liate member comes across a problem too big to handle alone. When this occurs, the leaders of the order fi nd and dispatch monoliths who are available and able to address the problem.

THE PENTIFEX ORDER IN THE WORLD

“Without the Pentifex Order, the world might even now be suffering a plague of soulless births. They are the custodians, not of our souls’ fate—that would be the clerics—but of all souls’ destiny.” —Thiera Donassik, azurin soulborn

The Pentifex Order provides a structure for a party of player characters who all use incarnum to some extent. If every character in the party is at least an affi liate member of the order,

then all the characters share at least one goal in common, allowing them to pursue missions that are important to all of them and report back to a single organization.

Organization: The upper hierarchy of the Pentifex Order’s initiates has already been described. Many of the monoliths have given their entire lives over to the mission of the Pentifex Order. They live in nomadic caravans and travel constantly between dolmen circles, cleansing these sacred sites from the plague of lost that typically infests each one. Sometimes, monoliths establish camps at dolmen circles— tent villages and small wooden buildings that cluster around the ancient stones. The monoliths believe that dolmen circles attract incarnum that would otherwise wander loose and uncontrolled and treat them as sacred sites. A monolith of one of the three highest ranks— Pentifex Monolith, High Monolith, or Wellspring Monolith—leads each caravan and dolmen camp. All who carry these ranks are collectively known as Phoenix Stewards and together form the governing council of the Pentifex Order. The entire worldwide council has never been known to meet in remembered history, but local councils convene regularly. Any time an incarnum-related threat arises, all Phoenix Stewards within the threatened area meet together to address the problem. Wellspring Monoliths naturally have the most prominent voices in these conclaves, but every member can speak freely, and lower-ranking members can outvote higher-ranking ones.

DC 10: “The Pentifex Order—they’re the ones with the weird golden armor, right?”

DC 15: “The Pentifex Order is a group of people who use incarnum and are dedicated to preventing its abuse.”

DC 20: “Their particular enemies are crazed necromancers who use incarnum to power their fell magic. The order also hunts the lost—people bound to a negative emotion by passing wisps of incarnum. They’re found in caravans traveling between strange circles of standing stones.”

THE PENTIFEX ORDER IN THE GAME

NPC Reactions

Few people know of the existence of the

Pentifex Order unless they are also familiar with incarnum and those who use it. Most people are bewildered by the strange-looking pentifex armor worn by some monoliths, but that has little or no impact on their reaction to the monolith. In general, most NPCs allow factors other than the character’s membership in the Pentifex

Order to determine how they respond to him. The main exceptions are NPCs who wield necrocarnum, whether they have adopted the necrocarnate prestige class or not. All necrocarnates know (or quickly learn) that the members of the Pentifex Order are their sworn foes, and they grow to hate the order with a commensurate degree of loathing. Anyone who uses necrocarnum always has an initial reaction of hostile to someone he can identify as a member of the Pentifex Order. PENTIFEX ORDER LORE

Characters with Knowledge (arcana) can research the Pentifex Order to learn more about them.

Like incarnum itself, the Pentifex Order might be a new arrival in your campaign world, recently established to provide a support structure to people who are learning to plumb the secrets of this new source of magic. It might have been around for centuries, simply hidden from view. Perhaps incarnum was used in ancient times and then forgotten, while the Pentifex Order was the only repository of knowledge of this lost art. In any event, the Pentifex Order provides a useful means of organizing player characters around the use of incarnum. Similar to a church, a knightly order, or an explorer’s society, the Pentifex Order can provide a home base and common ground for a PC party. Adaptation: If your campaign includes specific villains or organizations that use incarnum for fell purposes or oppose the use of incarnum at all, they are natural enemies for the Pentifex Order, and you might want to build the order specifi cally around this opposition. In some campaign settings, the Pentifex Order might be a branch of a church hierarchy or an arcane institution. They could be monastic in nature, housed in monasteries spread throughout the countryside rather than The banner of the camped at dolmen circles. Pentifex Order If you use the material in Draconomicon in your campaign, the Pentifex Order could loathe the disciples of Ashardalon fully as much as they despise necrocarnates, because of that ancient dragon’s invasion of the Bastion of Souls. Encounters: Members of the Pentifex Order are most likely to be encountered in the context of their opposition to the lost and the use of necrocarnum. In this role, they might frequently serve as allies to the PCs when their work leads them to similar goals. If the PCs dabble in the use of necrocarnum, however, or fi nd one of their friends transformed into a lost, they might fi nd themselves in opposition to the order. However you use an encounter with members, it’s best to highlight their role as stewards of incarnum, fi ercely opposing any abuse of this powerful substance. Moonlight on Glass (EL 7): This encounter is best used at night while the PCs camp under the stars. Gilles Veprain

Illus. by W. England