The Temple of Nine

The body of Gaia shall hold the nine; the nine shall protect the five; the five shall save the body of Gaia.

The temple of nine is the focal temple for spiritual elemental energy. This energy was gathered here to form a weapon against the evil Sorceress Queen. This Ultimate Weapon fires a terrifying beam of energy composed of the elements fire, air, earth, water and spirit. The temple is named after it’s nine guardians and the strange floor pattern in the entrance chamber. On the floor of this large circular room is a curving path that criss-crosses the floor, but connects each of the nine passages. (see map)

The Ultimate Weapon: This immensely powerful weapon used the elemental energies of Fire, Air, Earth, Water and Spirit (or Holy) to create a destructive beam of pure energy. The elements were summoned in five elemental pillars that are still situated on fixed locations in the physical world. The elemental Air-pillar is in Shady Sands. The Water-pillar is between the tribe Vades settlement and Oasis. The Earth-pillar used to be near the Downward Spiral dungeon but was destroyed. The Fire-pillar is supposed to be somewhere in the Rock Desert, east of Shady Sands.(See the world map) The last pillar is in the Temple of Nine. The five pillars harness the energy of their element and store it until it can be released.
When the Ultimate Weapon was activated, each elemental pillar send its elemental energy to the other pillars and to the temple of nine, forming a huge pentacle. (The real focus of power of a pentacle lies not in its center, but in one of its points, in this case the "spirit point".) So, the four elements empowered the spirit element to create a beam of pure energy. This beam was then directed at the Forbidden Tower to destroy it, the Queen, and her evil reign.

Time: When the weapon was fired, it caused a spiritual backlash that wrinkled the time continuum behind the weapon. It also damaged the time continuum in front of the weapon. Because of this, time goes slower inside the temple (about 30 times). Because of this effect, one day in the temple is approximately the same as one month outside of the temple. As the heroes enter the temple, they see the person in front of them stop suddenly and then move on. This is the slowing effect of the temple on that person in front of them. Mind that this assumes that the hind character doesn’t stop himself, but moves on and is then also subjected to the slow-motion effect, thus moving at the same speed as the character in front of him. If he stops he will notice that the person in front of him also stopped. A spot check (DC 25) reveals that the person hasn’t really stopped but is moving really slowly. Optionally, the heroes might feel a bit woozy.

The Book: There is a manual for the weapon. To activate the weapon, you apparently need to activate the four pillars of Fire, Air, Water and Earth. But to activate these pillars, you first need to collect their keys. These keys were locked away somewhere in the temple to prevent abuse of the weapon. To make matters worse, you first need to collect four talisman to get to these keys. Not an easy task, especially not if you consider that the talisman are spread out somewhere over AranoX. Once you have a talisman, you can open the gate to the corresponding elemental challenge, a test to prove your worth. The fifth element, Spirit, is in the temple itself and is protected by the Fallen and an intricate combination lock. The combination lock is a circle with nine smaller circles around it. To open the lock, you need to press the nine circles in the correct order... or suffer dire consquences. (9! is more than 350.000 combinations)

The Fallen: These are enhanced humans that never grew to maturity because of the end of magic. Their bodies are unstable as are their minds. They were born in an in vitro tube were they were ‘assembled’ as ultimate soldiers that combine the best of man and beast. The process first creates the body of the ‘enhanced’, afterwards the spirit is added. Before the spirit is added, the body only has a rudimentary intelligence and behaves much as a beast. Normally a spell called ‘awaken’ is then cast and then the human intelligence and divine wisdom awake inside the body. It was said that the love of the Goddess tempered the beast within and awoke all of man’s virtue. The fallen never got to this final treatment and are now nothing much more than savages, that is, savages with a perfect body. (strength of the panther, sight of the blackbird, reflexes of the snake)
  • The T-Rex (a huge Giant), The Skullcollector/Guardian of Poems (a large humanoid that attaches skulls to its back, has a huge mantis claw), Hiroi, The Fallen Angel (a neurotic human with strange batlike wings and oversized hands). The Flayer (a giant with two heads and three arms), The Green Slime(ooze), The Dark Knight (a winged centaur).


See the maps:
level one and two, level three, level four