Alia:Lysander's Purpose
NOTE: This page is intended for DM eyes only! Leave it alone if you wish to enjoy your adventures in the tower.
Lysander's Purpose
Lysander looks for six traits in potential apprentices, and in fact is not especially interested in level or power, but rather is interested in these virtues:
Intelligence & Wisdom, (not necessarily the stat value, although these help), honour, bravery, loyalty, forethought. For each of these virtues there are tests. Tests will target a particular individual.
- Intelligence: puzzle solving, sometimes word puzzles, other times logic puzzles, or creativity puzzles.
- Wisdom: learning, recognizing danger
- Honor: truthfulness and being held by one's word.
- Bravery: There's a certain amount of bravery one must have just entering into the tower, but many who do do so from fool-hardiness rather than bravery. One demonstrates bravery only after comprehending the level of danger.
- Loyalty: Not abandoning friends, when doing so would be self advantageous.
- Forethought: Thinking about a challenge when given the opportunity to do so instead of impatiently going forward.
If two or three of the tests generated by the tower are passed, Lysander begins to take a passing interest in the individual, crafting further tests for them to face.
The labyrinth is not designed to kill although it certainly does on occasion. It always however demands a price for failure - the real treasure has to come from somewhere. Those who do not demonstrate worthyness who wish to leave, find it expensive to do so. Maybe a challenge will be presented leading to a window. In order to gain access to this, the adventurer must usually leave behind some item of magic. (This could be disguised as a Planar Ally spell). Sometimes this is achieved by defeating the adventuring party in combat. The adventurers will be stripped of the required price and upon regaining conciousness would discover the way out. In any case, Lysander does not wish to murder young adventuring parties. The dead are raised, permanent status effects are healed. This is accomplished by various means including the discovery of magic pools to cure the afflicted or by a "fellow adventurer" meeting with the group and providing the service, the cost of material components to cast these spells is always retreived from the adventurers before they leave.
Gaining Lysander as a patron would be a mixed affair. He chooses his apprentice, not the other way around. Who would appreciate a semi-mad ghost as a mentor, anyway? Regardless of his protege's willingness, Lysander will constantly meddle in thier affairs, providing them with advice and critisism in an attempt to mold them into the hero he sees as a worthy successor. If his new apprentice accepts the attention, Lysander can provide very good magical instruction, able to teach anyone with int/wis 11+ to be a wizard or cleric, and having a complete collection of all known wizard spells.
There are six levels of Lysanders tower, of varying challenge from EL3-5 for level 1, increasing by two each level to EL13-15 for level 6.
Treasure
Treasure within the dungeon comes from three sources. Sometimes monster encounters that move into the dungeon carry treasure with them. The second source of treasure within the dungeon is adventurers who carry the treasure in and never carry it out. The third are the undead crypts. And the last and more interesting are the "reward" treasure from Lysander.
Reward treasure is always magic geared towards casters. Lysander is in fact a multi-disciplinary spell caster, being a epic level cleric 5/wizard 5/mystic thuerge 20 (if using dual class rules, is a cleric-wizard 10, mystic theurge 20) and has access to all spells in the player's handbook, but has rewards suitable for any spell casting class including sorcerers, wizards, clerics, druids, bards, paladins, rangers. In order to earn a minor reward, a character must display worthyness in defeating an encounter. In order to earn a medium reward, a character must display several such worthy attempts. In order to achieve a major reward, the character must prove themselves to be a potential apprentice.
Minor rewards consist usually of expendable magic. Scrolls, potions, magic arrows, expendable wonderous items. Medium rewards are usually lasting magic items that encourage spell casting, such as pearls of power, rings of wizardry, magical instruments of bardic music, or ability enhancers. Major rewards are items from Lysander's personal collection from his adventuring days.
Much of the treasure (not reward treasure) is illusionary. Illusionary magic item rewards function as those magic items within the walls, but all illusionary trasure gained within the walls, disappears upon leaving the labyrinth. Piles of coins, gems, and jewelry are easier to fabricate with magic than to actually produce. What the dungeon effectively does is distribute magic items and treasure between adventuring parties and between typical dungeon dwellers based on lysander's evaluation of their worthiness. In addition to the re-distribution of wealth, Lysander adds his own magical item rewards to sweeten the pot for those he wishes to aid.
