The Conquest of Death (3.5e Environment)

This article is part of Under the Burning Moon.

The Conquest of Death

This is the home plane of Utiolth, Ashana, and Atolnar, known respectively as the Dark Trinity. It has four layers - the Bone Wasteland, the Dead City, the Garden of Decay and the Conquest of Death proper. The Conquest of Death is a gray wasteland under a lifeless, ever-clouded sky.

Plane Traits

Physical Traits

• Gravity: Gravity is objective here, and is only controlled at Utiolth's whim. The gravity is mostly normal, as Utiolth decrees from the Black Spire.

• Time: Time runs normally here, and Utiolth has the power to slow or speed it up at his leisure

• Size: The Conquest of Death proper is infinite, however, the other three layers are large but not infinite. They can be reached by finding a crossroads and going one of three ways - straight ahead to the Bone Wasteland, right to the Dead City, and left to the Garden of Decay.

• Morphic: Divinely morphic.

Magic, Alignment, and Energy/Elemental Traits

• Elemental Dominance: No elements dominate here, but Earth and Water are fouled. Wood is rare compared to the Prime Material, but where it is found it is far stronger than normal.

• Energy Dominance: Negative energy dominates here.

• Alignment Trait: Strongly evil-aligned. Good characters take a -2 penalty to charisma based skill checks while they are in the Conquest of Death

• Magic Trait: All spells with the Good descriptor are cast as if the caster were 5 levels lower. If this were impossible the spell simply fails. All spells with the Evil descriptor are cast as if the caster were 5 levels higher.

Plane Links

The plane links to the Covenant Plane and to the Prime in some places, most often graveyards and cemetaries.

Plane Inhabitants

Pretty much every known Undead type, as well as the Reapers of Utiolth and a few Undead types that aren't known.

Movement and Combat

As normal.

Features of the Plane

The most well-known features are the black-paved roads, the dead towns, and the Black Spire. But there are other places where hardly anybody goes, both out of terror and the urge to survive the horrors that must surely lurk there.

The Garden of Decay: This garden is overflowing with plague, rot, and decay. Broken trees spill black corrupted sap as foul mushrooms rise from their rotting remains. The ground is a thick cloying mud, dangerous to walk in as many have sunk beneath its sickening depths, to what horrible fate only Ashana knows. She lives here, having no fixed home, walking amongst the plants and spreading her sickening poisons to each and every one. Within time they're bloated, with fat black leaves that disintegrate into pulp at the merest touch. This entire place is a parody of nature, where the dead walk and travellers soon die in one of a thousand excrutiating ways.

The Dead City: This place is not filled with undead like everywhere else - no, it's worse than that. The place is silent, the city abandoned, yet everything is in perfect condition. People who go here soon go insane, feeling that somebody is watching them from behind and quickly turning into raving maniacs. (Will check at -10, if you fail, you become an NPC controlled by the DM). This place is ruled by Atolnar, the Lawful Evil Lesser God of Necromancers and Assassins, who dwells in a palace at the center. Many adventurers have come to depose him. None have ever returned.

Plane Links

Info

Plane Encounters

Undead: A small group of zombies and other undead ambling aimlessly through the wasteland.

Lost Adventurers: A group of living people trapped here. They are looking for a way home and wouldn't like distractions, but would appreciate help. They may have magical and/or epic weapons.

Reaper: A Reaper of Utiolth, hunting for intruders. They are hostile to living beings, and are usually protected by a few undead thralls.

Reaper Group: 2-10 Reapers of Utiolth, hunting for living prey. Very dangerous. Usually surrounded by a small army of undead. If you have only a small group and no powerful characters, run.

River: A black river that breaks the monotony the Conquest of Death. Any bridges it has are dangerous and in disrepair, and the water is deadly poison.

Undead Town: A ruined town filled with undead. Unless you think you can take on a whole town's worth of them, try and leave as quickly as possible. There may be Reapers and/or Liches.

Portal: One of the many portals that exist on the Conquest of Death. It probably leads to the Prime or the Covenant plane, you can see which it is by looking through it.

Alternate Variances

A few living things exist in the Conquest of Death, although these are regularly killed by the Reapers in order to further Utiolth's desire for silence and quence his paranoia of assaassination.

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