The Palace of Ivory and Flame

The Palace of Ivory & Flame
Near the Palace of Judgement, towards the wisdom of the Norns and just leeward of the winds of Curst, lies a realm of a most peculiar and, some would say, perverse nature. The approaching traveller will first see upon the horizon a bright, white palace, low to the ground and somewhat out of place in the wilds of the Outlands. Approaching near, the shimmering mists part and, if the sun is out, the palace is revealed to be a three-story puff of creamy sandstone and lucent marble nestled amidst a geometric grid of French gardens, radiant as a sunbeam and yet unsettlingly empty. It is always winter in the snow-wrapped gardens of this place.

The interior of the palace is a series of comfortable apartments with tall ceilings and spatious hallways in rich rococo and baroque designs, all curling fronds and streaming draperies. What is most peculiar is that everything inside the palace, from the silverware to the frescoes to the furniture, is painted completely white, or rather, seems to be made of white materials, as if some intimate essence had been drained from the object. The metal that forms the silverware tinkles just like silver, but is clearly not silver in colour. The furniture resembles oak, rosewood and teak, but has the pigmentation of blanchwood. It is as if everything had been bleached of its soul.

Everything except the exotic songbirds that sit in cages throughout the grounds and whistle enigmatic tunes to no-one in particular. The songbirds twitter from inside silver cages, soothing the hearts of visitors, but some say that listening to the birds will eventually drive you insane or reveal a mystic loophole in the universe (akin to the ability that some Guvners possess). The palace is enormous and filled with white bedrooms, halls, dining rooms, parlours and cellars....all bleached white, with white furnishings of ivory, lace and pearl. While inside the palace, all the baroque crystal windows open onto a vista of sheer white nothingness, as if the palace was within a pocket plane or on the Positive Energy Plane (without any effects). Stepping through the windows places one back into the gardens, however.

Wanderers within these empty but song-filled halls will eventually encounter two things. The first is a bright tree of flame in a courtyard open to the air, a blaze of fiery leaves burning forever amidst blackened branches. Each branch burns warmly, and a pleasant sussuration, much like that of a comfortable fireplace in midwinter, fills the quadrangle. A hundred different shades of yellow, orange, red and violet roam brazenly across the foliage of this mighty arbor. The magic of the tree is almost hypnotic, and one has to concentrate to resist an urge to plunge their hands into the flames to grasp a mote of fire. Such an act is painful indeed (d6 damage, no save), but if the burning leaf is pulled out of the inferno, it transforms into a red-breasted bird, which promptly flies aloft to find itself a home in one of the empty cages in the palace.

The palace is practically endless, with room after room of white dining halls, libraries full of ivory-coloured books with blank pages, empty pantries, unused bedrooms with every type of white-laced linen imaginable, and drawing rooms with shelf after shelf of empty crystal bottles.

After wandering for several hours, visitors may encounter the master of this place, the Prince of Former Darkness, the Faded Shadow. According to the chant (or is it white ink, cutter?), this once-cruel demon king experienced such a soul-shattering event that he repented all his evil, and was bled white in the process. Did he pass through the flames of the Court of Judgement and survive? He never speaks of it.

With anguish in his newly-found conscience, he tried to expurge the bloody stains from his hands and his lands, but only managed to turn everything white…except for the single burning tree of souls, each leaf a former victim trapped in the fires of perdition. The Faded Shadow tries to free as many as he can, but the task is a hundred times more painful for him than anyone else, for each plunge into the branches forces him to feel the suffering that he once inflicted on that soul. This lonely, inverted prince of darkness has managed to release half of the souls from their torment, and these are the songbirds found throughout the palace. It is said that when he has finished his painful task, he will finally rise to a better place and sing with the hosts of heaven he so dearly wishes to join.

Now he flits from room to room, looking for the many things he misplaced in his former ways. Those who have encountered him say that a tragic love emanates from him, and that he will commits acts of painful kindness for those in need. Some speculate that when all his evil is completely purged, nothing but a tiny spark will remain, for that will be the net total of his goodness. In the meantime, the Faded Shadow takes comfort from his monotonous surroundings and the delicate chitter of his songbirds helps him to forget past events, for a time.

But be careful berk, for some say the Faded Shadow's old comrades occasionally visit the palace to convince their risen demon-king to return to his evil ways, and they don't like curious berks. A small cadre (2d4) of Palrethee (MM2, page 59) roam the ivory halls in secrecy, trying to turn the arrival of any visitors to their advantage. To them, the Faded Shadow is known as Adnarel the Resiler. It is possible to return a freed songbird back into fiery tree, but only a mortal can do it, and the Palrethee are desperately trying to shift the balance of conscience towards evil.

The Faded Shadow appears a beautiful albino man, strong of figure and with burning white eyes, wrapped in the thick folds of a dozen elaborately-scribed samite robes. Both the robes and his body are somewhat translucent, and if one peers closely one can see the skeletal structure. What one notices immediately is that the edges of the robes fade to a blood-crimson colour, as do the Faded Shadow’s hands, which incongruously end in blackened claws. The Faded Shadow will attempt to conceal his hands, but will be truthful in telling his tale. Not prone to extended conversation, he will aid visitors, but his help will be physically painful to him (d6 to 10d6 hit point loss, depending on extent of help).

The Faded Shadow is a risen Shadow Demon of great antiquity. Use the 3E stats for shadow demons in ENWorld’s Creature Catalogue, but double his power. Also, replace the Malevolence ability with Benevolence: once per day can retrieve and free a bound soul, unless the soul is under the jurisdiction of a power. Replace darkness with daylight, and fear with courage. Replace shadow blend with Bleach: at will, can remove the colour essence from an object. This effectively removes the aura of anything, making magical items temporarily unreadable by spells or special abilities, and makes mundane items generic. For example, unique scratch marks, emblems and any good/evil aura (say, that of a knife that was used in a murder) associated with an item all disappear.

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If you have any comments about the mechanics, or if some part of the story seems inconsistent, let me know. I'm not great with rules. What I'm trying to do here is create a "mirror dungeon" where there's no real danger and the monsters help the characters (most of them, anyway), but the character's altruism directly affects the outcome of the hidden quest. Boring, or something new?