The Cepn Roost

         The shadow lamps are elegant monoliths, each nearly ten feet high, covered in layers of runes. They are shaped of a magically-formed crystal called shadowstone, which cancels out light much as a normal lamp would radiate it. This negative luminosity is projected directly from the plane of shadows, spilling darkness in an average radius of five hundred feet. Noctae is covered with hundreds of these monoliths, which join to create a much larger but less dense field of magical dimness that completely blankets the island. The field, known as the 'Shroud', allows only ultraviolet and infrared light through to the island's surface, creating an aura of permanent night. Even the sun itself seems to be little more than a dull silver coin when seen through the Shroud. Curiously enough, the shadow lamps are activated by exposure to sunlight, and thus shut down at night to recharge.

        Life on the island has adapted to life in the darkness - much of the vegetation has been altered by the magical radiation of the shadow lamps. Many plants seem to glow dimly in the gloom, emiting light rather that absorbing it. Some have become carnivorous in the absence of light, with beautiful phosphorescent flowers meant to attract prey. Huge fungal blooms take the place of ferns and bushes, and it is from these blooms that the cepn derive many of their poisons. The animals, too, have learned to live in the darkness, and many produce small measures of their own bio-luminescence much like deep-sea fish. Many species of giant spiders inhabit the shadowy canopies, and some regions of the rainforest are completely overrun with their colonies (these spiders are yet another source of cepn poison). The rainforest is a dark dream, a shadow-realm with its own sinistre beauty to rival that of any 'natural' setting.

The City of Noctae

        Noctae is ruled by a council of three, all masters of the first circle. It is said that these cepn masters were among those who infiltrated the Solinar cathedral before the siege of Savagnos, some five hundred years ago. They claim the gift of immortality, bestowed upon them by the Spiral for their role in the assassination of king Tamanthus. In truth, this 'gift' is little more than a type of vampirism, allowing them to remain young through blood sacrifice. Under the influence of these ageless leaders, the cepn culture has grown more violent and cruel over the centuries, effecting a change that has caused the second great division in Noctae, those who resist the change, and those who embrace it. The practice of blood-slavery - the use of live non-cepn slaves as a renewable source of food - has grown tenfold, and some cepn have begun using a refined type of the emotion-killing drug, chith, to detatch themselves from the growing violence. Of course, speaking out against the masters often results in execution or worse, and thus a great weight has been placed upon the hearts of those who do not understand or accept the growing brutality. Some suspect that they are still under the influence of the Spiral, even though the alliance ended with the death of the Solinar Order several centuries ago.

        Below the divided city lies an abyssal drop into the bowels of the earth. This rift, a yawning black gap into which bones, refuse, and cripples are thrown, is thousands of feet deep (some believe it to be infinitely deep), and only the most foolish venture below the last tier of the city. Even the lowest section of the city overlooks a seemingly-bottomless pit. The cepn believe the rift to be the domain of evil spirits and nightmarish things without eyes (they are correct on both counts), and thus they are conditioned to fear it, as both a place of monsters and as a place for those who fail the many tests of their society. Cepn executed in this way have their wings shattered before being dropped from stone piers that jut form the chasm walls. To the cepn culture, the pit is a nightmare made real, the final resting place of the Solinar Codex. Unable to bear its brilliance, the cepn encased the ancient tome in a massive stone sarcophagus and flung it into the rift, where, supposedly, it remains to this day.

The Pit

        The chasm does have a bottom, of course, situated roughly a mile below the lofty vertical city. It is here where all the garbage, the bones, and the dishonored dead end up. As many cepn fear, there are horrors down in the darkness, 'things without eyes'. The bottom of the chasm is buried under over a hundred feet of garbage, bones, and fallen stone debris. Its total size is approximately that of two football fields stretched end to end.

        Down here, the air is thick with methane, highly-explosive, and hard to breathe. It is also subject to perpetual, high-speed bombardment from high above. Immense spiders and centipedes feed on the refuse, and occasioanlly on the raw meat tossed down from high above. They compete with several varietites of semi-intelligent slimes, including the self-proclaimed king of this foul pit, Murg.

        Murg is a being totally alien to Rym, a sort of collective intelligence inhabiting the crawling slimes that infest the refuse. It devours the lost spirits who end up here in their shattered bodies, miring them in its melting embrace and making them a part of itself. Thus, it is what it eats, and over the centuries it has swallowed nothing but misery and anguish. It is a seething mass of resentment directed at the cepn high-above, a molten pool of souls unable to escape the darkness and refuse. As it took on more and more humanoid attributes, it began re-animating the shattered bodies of those who fell from above, and infusing them with patched-up souls. These slimy, decaying creatures could move and act independantly, but remained under the control of Murg's general intelligence. They were to build a tower out of the refuse, one that would reach to the city high above.

        And then, one day, a great metal box fell from high above, smashing the pitiful tower the fallen had built, and shedding an unearthly light upon a world that have known only darkness. Whatever lay within the black metal box glowed so brightly as to penetrate its walls with radiance. The fallen feared its light, shrinking into their crude huts and cowering in the artifact's unavoidable glow, but as it became clear that this was no ordinary cast-off, many lost their fear to Murg's curiosity. The artifact was warm, and its light seemed to call to the souls of the fallen. Murg determined from the shattered memories of his children the name of this 'undarkness' - heaven. Locked within an adamant cube of a hundred layered traps, this 'heaven' has become Murg's new obsession, and to this day the fallen have been unable to open it. It had become the center of their pitiful society, and their new hope for salvation.

        The Nightmare Box

        For centuries, the cepn kept the Solinar Codex in their dark city, hidden away from the dying order of knights it had once guided. As the Spiral hunted the Solinar to extinction, it is said that the stolen artifact's light became unbearable to the bat-folk, and no stone vault or steel chest could contain the radiance that flooded from the pages of the ancient text. And so the greatest and most devious cepn craftsmen, six of them in all, were assembled to construct a prison for the artifact, a metal cube of layered adamant infested with scores of deadly traps. No one designer would be able to open it. The construction became known as the 'Nightmare Box'. Beneath the layers of death, clockspring triggers, spikes, gas, venom, and finger-severing blades, the Solinar Codex was sealed within a block of solid adamant, fastened with six master locks, and flung into the abyss beneath the city of Noctae.

        The Nightmare Box does not actually open. It must be dismantled, piece by piece, to reveal the runed block in which the codex is sealed. Each piece of this deadly puzzle is trapped in some way, and the entire box acts like a machine. Some traps are linked to spring in deadly combination. Others are deadly enough on their own. The box's traps are, for the most part, powered by adamant clockwork, and the entire contraption must be wound with special keys to reset the traps once they've gone off. The Nightmare Box is aptly named - its deadly defenses are largely tamper-proof. Dart holes are sealed until release, or masterfully concealed. Blade slots, gas vents, poison needles, all blending into a clockwork jungle. Their adamant construction renders the entire device immune to magic, and even the finest prying tools known cannot force the box apart. Even worse, the interior lock tumblers are all heavily magnetized, making it nearly impossible to use metal lockpicks.

01-22: Poison Needle (class D) 23-32: Finger Blade (1d6 damage) 33-42: Fire Plume (2d6 damage) 43-52: Acid Mist (2d4 damage to 10' area) 53-62: Barbed Darts (4d4 damage) 63-66: Poison Needle (class M) 67-70: Finger Shear (2d4 damage + lose random digit) 71-74: Electrical Discharge (6d6 damage) 75-78: Yellow Gas (class F poison 10' area) 79-82: Poisoned Darts (4d6 + type C) 83-86: Mangler (4d6 damage + lose 1d4 digits) 87-89: Fireball (6d6 damage to 20' radius) 90-92: Impaling Foils (8d8 damage) 93-95: Red Gas (class E poison 10' area) 96-98: Ringed Darts (6d6 + class N poison) 99-00: Combination (roll twice)

        The Nightmare Box seems almost malevolent, as if the very gears were aware of the agony they are primed to cause. A save vs. death will reduce incidental damage by half, though effects such as dismemberment and poisoning are not reduced. As this is an enchanted item, the box's blades, darts, and spikes are considered to be +3 weapons for purposes of what they can hit. The box is 100% magic resistant, being made of adamant, and makes all saving throws at a +8. Attempts to pick the locks are all made at a -20% penalty, and attempts to locate and disarm traps are made at a -10% penalty.

        The Nightmare Box can be opened, but the process is as lengthly and deadly as any dungeon crawl. The first layer of the box, the outer casing, must be dismantled one face at a time, and each face contains three trap mechanisms built around a complex lock that binds the face itself. Three traps must be disarmed before each face lock is safe to pick, but if the lock-picking roll is unsuccessful, all three traps reset and must be disarmed again (ignoring the 10% penalty). Before the second layer can be reached, a total of six locks and eighteen traps must be disarmed.

        The second layer, which contains more bare clockwork and deadly bladed gears, is more insideous than the first. One must reach into a mass of spring-loaded machinery in order to access the next tier of locks, a total of six, each guarded by five trap mechanisms. As before, if the lock-picking roll at the end of the disarming process is failed, each of the traps re-arms itself. Another six locks, and a total of thirty traps, must be overcome to access the third and final layer; a veritable aresenal of nest of active machinery. These are the master locks, each housed in a solid adamant cylinder. Each master lock is inscribed with the glyph of the master craftsman who built it. Each is protected by a sequence of six lethal traps. These complex mechanisms incur a -25% penalty to detect or remove, and all random trap rolls are boosted by 30%. Any result of 99+ means two (or possibly more) traps have been triggered.

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