Okay. So a while back, I mentioned that I’d been doodling around the concept of a D&D adventure involving an eldritch lighthouse? And I have … I have a more comprehensive sketch of the idea now? I thought I might give a better sketch of the idea.
Note: This is not an actual adventure, with numbers and DCs and stuff, because I’m not there yet. Taken all numbers in here with a grain of salt, because they’re spitballed, not tested in the slightest. But this is the frame of an adventure. The concept, situation and set-up. The narrative, basically, mechanical details to be determined later? Heh.
But I just really wanted the idea? So here we are.
Adventure Concept: The Baleful Glare of Balon’s Light
Around three months ago, a cataclysmic twilight fell across a vast swathe of land and sea, nearly a hundred miles in radius. The result was neither night nor day, both sun and moon drowned and hidden behind roiling cloud, leaving only darkness illuminated by a strange, sourceless green glow.
This twilight has been broken only by the vast periodic sweep of a great beam of light, scything through the darkness with a persistent rhythm like a heartbeat across the sky.
Following the pulse of this light, the source, or at least centre, of this spell of sudden darkness has been tracked down to a single, remote lighthouse, the lonely tower of Balon’s Rock, some nine miles offshore from the busy but largely unimportant fishing port of Formoris.
As if a shroud of darkness so complete as to swallow the sun were not terrifying enough, other effects of whatever catastrophe has sprung from that remote island lighthouse have quickly become apparent. Hours or days after the fall of twilight, people began to notice the birds. Specifically, the birds dying. Those observant onlookers quickly realised that the birds died from flying too high. Too close to the light. That vast sweeping beam of light.
In Formoris, other effects became clear too. While the effect was confined to the sky, to the sweep of the beam high overhead, in those lands further from the lighthouse, closer to the light, as the port was, the effects appeared perilously close, leaving the upper floors of several of the taller townhouses to be quickly abandoned. And at sea …
At least two ships, sailing close to Balon’s Rock at the time the twilight fell, were discovered days later and miles distant, run aground against the cliffs some fifteen miles south of the island. Where, knowledgeable mariners whispered, the currents might carry them, if they suddenly drifted unmanned.
Everyone aboard both vessels was found dead, in much the same manner as the birds. Only one man was found alive, pulled from the bowels of one of the vessels, huddled in the bilge. Near catatonic with terror, all he could remember was the light. A harsh, actinic flare of vast and terrible light.
Desperate for answers, and with it clear that setting sail for the island might easily prove fatal, the townsfolk of Formoris turned to those who knew the lighthouse best. Three of her keepers were known to be on the island when the twilight fell, unreachable at best and likely dead at worst, but several of her relief keepers were still ashore. Or thought to be ashore. Balon’s Light tended to attract reclusive sorts, rarely seen by their neighbours even while on land. And none had been seen in quite a while.
The reason for this became apparent when a group of townsfolk ventured out to the closest cottage. The scene was … horrific, to say the least, and the keeper most brutally and assuredly dead.
Something has gone wrong. Something has gone cataclysmically wrong.
Not everything is lost, however. One of the relief keepers survived, travelling unexpectedly to visit relatives, and apparently evading, by luck more than judgement, the fate that befell her fellows. Through her, some of the … idiosyncrasies of Balon’s Rock have come to light. Pardoning the pun, of course.
None of her keepers know the reasons for it any longer. Balon’s Rock was built a long, long time ago, and the reasons for her building are somewhat obscure. She doesn’t sit along the worst stretch of coastline one might find, though it’s possible she was meant to guide ships home to Formoris. What is unquestionable is that she is strange.
The light at Balon’s Rock is no mundane product of fire and mirrors. Or even more mundane magic. Instead, a strange and intricate series of glass lenses hover and rotate around a vast greenish-white crystal, blazing with light. This crystal hangs freely and by magic in the centre of the great glass light room at the summit of the two hundred foot tower, with nothing but glass everywhere but directly beneath it.
This glass, too, is strange. One of the most important duties imparted upon the keepers once hired is the maintenance of this glass. It is magical, though she isn’t quite sure how, and bought at considerable expense from a sorcerous college deep inland.
This is a shock to the town, mind you, as they certainly haven’t been paying such an expense. Indeed, the people responsible for the building and maintenance of the light are, now that anyone is thinking about it, worryingly obscure.
The primary duty of the keepers on Balon’s Rock is not to fuel the light, as it doesn’t require any, and only partly to watch for ships and sound the great fog horns on the island. It’s to maintain the glass. Both the glass of the lenses, and the glass of the light room itself. To make sure that there are no cracks nor panels lost, to keep it cleaned and clear of staining. And curiously, and perhaps importantly in hindsight, they were always told to perform this maintenance, at least in the light room, exclusively during daylight. The light room was never to be entered at night.
Possibly because, they now realise, the light of that crystal, with nothing to contest it, is clearly fatal.
Something has to be done. There is magic in Balon’s Rock, clearly, and that magic has gone spectacularly wrong. Something has pulled down a pall of night across hundreds of miles, and unleashed the beam of the great light to spell death just as far. Someone, clearly, has to go out there and see what can be done about it. Hopefully without dying in the process.
Quest Set-Up
The town of Formoris needs a group of people to venture out to the island of Balon’s Rock and find out what has happened at the lighthouse, and ideally to fix it.
They have a means, if somewhat risky and rudimentary, of getting the party to the island. It clearly isn’t safe to be anywhere light can reach while attempting to sail to the island, but that one sailor did survive in the bowels of his ship. The plan, more or less, is to tow a light-sealed, uncontrolled ship the long way out, miles out to sea, and then, with the aid of one of the oldest fishermen in port, a master mariner, to let the ship go where the local currents will likely carry it to the island. There is a particularly nasty current known to run around the back of the Rock. If they catch it just right, the ship should, hopefully, run aground back there. At which point the party can, well. Emerge and try their luck with whatever’s out there? Assuming this master mariner knows his stuff.
This current is, naturally, on the far side of the island from the dock, behind the cliffs. Because of course it is.
The surviving relief keeper is willing to go with them, if only to avoid getting brutally murdered on shore like all the other relief keepers. She has knowledge of the layout of the island and the lighthouse itself, though no more idea than them what happened or what the magic of the lighthouse is for.
She does have one interesting little item. An opaque vial of what looks like black glass that was given to every keeper as an unspecified ‘emergency measure’ if anything ever happened while they were in the light room, and supplied by the same sorcerer’s college as the lighthouse glass. They were supposed to smash it on the ground and hope. She only has one, and doesn’t know what it does, although there apparently might be more either on the three keepers still on the island, or stored in the maintenance gallery directly beneath the light room.
The downside of that is, the maintenance gallery is fully exposed to the light of the crystal, essentially a lower extension of the light room. So getting to them might be fun.
What They Find On The Island
The island of Balon’s Rock is roughly a mile in diameter (around 5000ft), with the lighthouse sitting more or less in the centre. The dock is on the southern side of the island, facing out to open sea, while the party’s ship is intended to run aground at the base of the 80ft tall rocky cliffs at the north end of the island.
The island, and indeed the sea for roughly five miles around it, is bathed in the baleful glare of the Balon’s Rock light, stark and harsh against the darkness.
The beam of light from the lighthouse sweeps across the sky some 200ft above sea level. Judging from the birds of the mainland, anyone who flew up into its path would surely perish.
The grey stone spear of Balon’s Rock lighthouse itself towers some 200ft into the air, a dark, slender needle beneath the blazing green sun that is the light room. Attached to the lighthouse tower is the blocky, two-storey shape of the keepers house.
No light shines from either the house or the tower, save from the light room itself. All the lower windows of the lighthouse are dark. Blackly, ominously dark.
No living thing moves across the light-drenched rock and tufted grass of Balon’s Rock. No sea birds circle the tower. No boat sits at the southern dock. The magical foghorn at the top of the cliffs stands unattended. Nothing moves. The entire island is deathly, eerily still.
Secrets of Balon’s Light
The light on Balon’s Rock functions as essentially a permanent Sickening Radiance spell across the entire island that cannot be dispelled.
Two things can protect someone from the effects of this light. The first is magical darkness, such as from the Darkness spell, and the second is magical daylight, such as from the Daylight spell. The light of the island reacts significantly more aggressively towards darkness, however, and a concentration save is required every round to maintain such a spell.
Anyone flying more than 200ft in the air above the island or the sea within 5 miles of it must make a DC 25 Constitution save every second round as the lighthouse beam sweeps across them, taking 8d10 radiant damage on a failed save, or half as much on a successful one. Darkness spells automatically fail on contact with the beam.
Anyone within a 150ft radius sphere of the magical crystal in the light room at the top of the tower must make this save at the start of each of their turns. Darkness cannot shield against the direct proximity of the crystal, only pure sunlight.
The emergency vials the keepers of Balon’s Rock carry are vials of sunlight. Once smashed, they create a 30ft radius sphere of pure sunlight that lasts for 3 rounds and provides complete protection from the baleful radiance of Balon’s Light.
At least one more vial can be found in the maintenance gallery underneath the light room, and potentially one more on the body of one of the island’s three keepers.
The interior of the lighthouse tower and the keeper’s house are shielded from the light of the island. All the windows of the structure are made of that magical glass, and every window below the light room is still intact, protecting the interior from the baleful glare of the light.
Which is why the forces that attacked the lighthouse, and caused this whole catastrophe, are still holed up in there.
Balon’s Light was not built to guide ships at sea, although that was a happy side benefit. Balon’s Light was built to guard against a darkness. A vast, primordial threat with the power to call down night across the whole world.
But darkness is old and subtle, and whispers in many an ear. Slowly it gathered forces to itself, what some might call a cult. It waited until knowledge of the purpose of the Light had faded, until maintenance was only being done by habit and rote, until the sorcerers who had built the Light had long moved on to other powers and dreams, until contracts for magical glass became a background duty, something done for so long and so often that it ceased to have meaning. And then, when all the world had forgotten the true purpose of Balon’s Rock, the servants of darkness had attacked. Sent mortal servants to murder keepers on the shore, to take their place, to infiltrate the tower. To shatter that hideous gem at the summit, and open once more the gate of darkness unto the world.
Unfortunately for just about everyone, they failed to account for certain failsafes those ancient sorcerers had built into the tower and the crystal. The glass was not to strengthen the Light at all, but to tone it back, for the sake of all life. When the glass of the light room was shattered during the cultists’ assault, and more particularly the glass of the lenses surrounding the crystal, the full power of Balon’s Light was unleashed across the immediate vicinity, even as eldritch darkness fell across the land from the partially opened gate. With both powers driven to lethal stalemate, the result was the green twilight that has fallen across the land. The gate cannot open any further, nor any creature of darkness brave the annihilating glare of the lighthouse beam. But the light is fatal to more than just creatures of darkness, and as the two powers vie for dominance against each other, the twilight engulfing the world may slowly grow larger and larger.
The interior of the lighthouse and keeper’s house are full of magical darkness, and the remnants of the force of mortal cultists and shadow creatures who assaulted the light. Cut off from retreat, they have been under siege inside the building for three months. While Balon’s Rock often ran that long before resupply, or even longer, the mortal cultists at least are likely not in very good shape by this point.
It is distantly, remotely possible, if vanishingly unlikely, that one of the two non-cultist keepers may have also survived, but more than likely the party will be finding two bodies strewn somewhere inside the house.
The keepers’ house has two storeys and a basement. The ground floor, containing the kitchen and living areas, the upper floor, containing bedrooms and storage, and the basement, containing the cellar and more storage.
And, now, a lesser gateway to darkness, one hastily rigged by the mortal cultists once the backlash of the attempt on the light room became obvious. It sits in a hastily cleared storage room in the basement, and is the source of the shadow creatures occupying the lighthouse.
The lighthouse tower itself contains nothing but a wrought iron staircase spiralling upwards for 200ft to the black metal grate beneath the maintenance gallery and light room. This grate is also magical, and is sealed against the light of the crystal, but opening it will send a beam of light through the tower akin to the great beam outside. Neither cultists nor shadow creatures dare to go near it, but they do intend to make sure no one else does either.
Should any of the exterior windows of the keepers’ house or tower be smashed open at any point, that entire floor of the house or the entire tower will be opened up to the killing light outside. As most of the tower is inside the 150ft radius of the crystal, this is especially deadly here. Should this happen, though, it will almost instantly kill all but the most powerful of the shadow creatures.
The light from the keeper’s emergency vial will also do serious damage to any shadow creatures in its radius.
The trapdoor leads up into the maintenance gallery, a lower level of the light room where tools, cleaning and repair supplies, and spare panes and lenses, are all stored.
Above this, some 15ft above the floor of the maintenance gallery, accessed via a short spiral staircase, is the circular catwalk of the lightroom itself.
In the centre of this space floats the glaring, green-white star of the light crystal itself, surrounded by a rotating sphere of interlocked glass lenses (picture something like a huge Fresnel lens). Four of the interlocking panels of these lenses, all on one side of the crystal assembly, have been shattered, blinding light spilling from the gaps.
A glass dome surrounds the light room, or rather did surround the light room, but huge portions of it have been shattered. Not necessarily on purpose. The damage appears to scythe outwards in an arc, as if an explosive force tracked upwards from the lower southern portion of the room, and cut a curving crescent from the glass as it rotated upwards and sideways. An astute observer might guess that the damage was caused when the lenses around the crystal were shattered and the initial directional burst of raw light from the gap was unleashed, following the path of the lenses’ rotation.
If, of course, the astute observer has time, given that every round in this space is a minimum of 5d10 radiant damage. There is, however, one emergency vial of sunlight stored in a nondescript wooden box on one of the worktables of the maintenance gallery.
How The Situation Resolves
The quest the party has been given is to find a solution to the eldritch twilight that has fallen across the land, as well as the lethal beam of Balon’s Rock lighthouse.
No lore remains in written format to explain the purpose of the lighthouse or the origins of the current situation. The cult of darkness was very slow and subtle and thorough in destroying it. The party will need to piece things together from evidence of the murders of the keepers on the mainland and/or from piecing together the situation at the lighthouse.
While the lesser shadow gate in the basement of the lighthouse does not need to be closed or even discovered, leaving it open, depending on actions in the tower, could result in a repeat of events at a later date.
Once in the light room of the tower itself, there are two obvious avenues to dealing with the problem of the crystal and the light beam: repair the lenses, or destroy the crystal.
The magical lenses surrounding the crystal form the basis of the seal on the gate of darkness. Unlike what both the cult and possibly the party may think, the crystal itself is only the failsafe should the gate begin to open, not the seal itself. Repairing the lens array is the only way to both seal the gate and destroy the twilight while also bringing the light of Balon’s Rock back to survivable levels. There are thirteen spare lenses in the maintenance gallery below the light room, seven damaged and six intact. Only four are needed to repair the gap in the array. Installing each lens correctly involves a successful intelligence or arcana check. Failing may result in damage to that lens.
If the party doesn’t realise that the lenses are the key component of the seal, or haven’t realise that destroying the crystal was the goal of the shadowy invaders, they may, particularly under the time pressure of the incredibly damaging environment in the light room, decide to destroy the crystal instead. The crystal has 200 hit points remaining, is vulnerable to bludgeoning and thunder damage, and is immune to nearly all other forms of damage. Any attack that deals damage to the crystal but does not destroy it will result in a actinic flare of vengeful light, dealing 55 radiant damage to everyone within 150ft of the crystal.
Almost any attack on the crystal will also damage or destroy the glass lenses surrounding it.
Should the crystal and its surrounding lenses be destroyed, the baleful light of Balon Rock will die out immediately. The vast killing beam of light will vanish. Slightly more gradually, the green glow of twilight will begin to fade.
And anyone who looks outwards and upwards, through the shattered glass of the dome, into the last gasps of that green twilight …
Will see a vast tentacled darkness reaching down from the sky through those roiling clouds, as the light, all the light, at least within a hundred miles, winks out.
Notes:
Again, as I said, all mechanical numbers and details are spitballed. Is this too lethal? Not lethal enough? The light, particularly the beam, has to be strong enough to hold off all the forces of darkness. But also, player characters have to have at least a chance of lasting enough time in it to potentially fix the situation (or make it so much worse). So, you know. Fixing may be required there. The sun vials ought to help?
But. Mechanical issues aside. I just really wanted a lethal baleful power of light facing down a titanic darkness, with all the world within 100 miles caught in the crossfire. Heh.
All that the eye can see,
Sees not what it once observed
All that the ear can hear
Hears not what it previously heard
All of the works once done
Act not as they formerly completed
All that the soul does touch
Feels not as the prior sense
Witness the will of the betrayer of life
That great maligner and shrouded one
Where the Church overtaken
By the spurious tolerance
And the Authority overtaken
By…
Photo by Yihan Wang on Unsplash
Proverbs 13:22 (KJV) A GOOD man leaveth an inheritance to his children’s children: and the wealth of the SINNER is laid up for the just.
Leave Your Children A Godly Example
The Bible uses the word “GOOD” in a relative way. When humans are compared in the eyes of God, there are:
“Children of God” (Matthew 5:9) or“Children of the Devil” (John 8:44)
Fruit bearing…
Preached at Riverview Sunday morning September 24, 2023
Photo by Karolina Grabowska: https://www.pexels.com/photo/lonely-woman-crying-with-closed-eyes-4471316/
1 Peter 3:12-17 For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers: but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil. 13 And who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good? 14 But and if ye suffer for righteousness’ sake,…
