Okay, but we might get a little metaphysical, here. Please bear with me.
So we're finally in Hekellu, and I'm casually poking around the palace where we're supposed to be the Imperial Government - we're under siege by our loyal citizenry, actually - and (as might be expected) I find the proverbial stairway leading down. Being a PC, I gather up some other PCs and some troopers, and we go have a look. We find that while Hekellu does have an Underworld, but it's pretty waterlogged due to the high water table which in turn is due to us being right on the lake. It makes for a very soggy little dungeon crawl, and we're getting pretty cranky about it when we find a nice dry room with four entrances (leading off to four corridors) with a nice Tomb of Somebody in the middle of the room.
We're debating having a look in the thing when we manage to clean it up enough to read the inscriptions on the thing. We're already pretty suspicious, because this is the first and only dry room we've manage to find, and so far the place has been full of nasty wet things that have been trying to kill us. (Phil had some really nasty monsters, and we were getting both the Underworld, Swamp, and Water lists. All at once. We were Not Amused. Phil was. Anyway
So I'm looking over the inscriptions - always A Very Good Thing To Do, trust me on this - when one of the players starts fiddling around with the carven decoration. Sure enough, the guy finds The Secret Button, pushes it without telling the rest of us, and gets the lid to open up. We all think seriously about killing him on the spot for being unhelpful, but our attention is diverted by the arrival of the Designated Tomb Guardian, who materializes out of the nice decorative wall carvings. The decor is all Early Temple Of Vimuhla, which is good for me, as I am a card-carrying member of the Temple's not-so-secret Society, the Incandescent Blaze Society; thus, I am able to read the notes left on the walls and tomb, and figure out that we've disturbed the rest of Somebody Important - an ancient governor of the city, from the looks of the tomb.
This ancient VIP has paid the Temple of Vimuhla for the use of one of their super-secret and super-fanatic members; the deal is that when somebody in the Temple wants to become an Immortal Guardian, they trade their mortal bodies for immortal ones made up of the fifth state of matter, high-energy plasma. This is done by a very secret and very ancient process, left over from the Lords of Humanspace (who have a lot for answer for, if you want my opinion.) They live off of other-planar energy, and pretty much ignore things like gravity. They do not like being underwater, as they end to cause a lot of boiling and excitement, and they 'catch a chill' if they try it. They live in air, mostly, and are quite intelligent - their human intelligence is transferred over to their new bodies. They can and do manifest as humanoid, but the glowing flames and plasma are a real give-away. The occasional display of giant wings made of flaming plasma are also a hint, I think.
They also seem to retain any abilities that they had in mortal life, like spells and such, and can communicate with us if they work at it; telepathy is the usual way of talking to them, however. (They can apparently talk to each other, too.) They can fight in melees, and simply have to touch something to set it on fire or melt it. They can control their 'surface temperature', and can be touched; they can not be harmed by ordinary weapons of any sort. (We didn't use an Eye or anything, as we were Vimuhla people and it seemed like A Bad Idea to try.) From what we can tell, they can also do other-planar travel, but I would not care to make the trip with one.
They are very, very, very rare, and easily qualify as one of Phil's 'Saturday Night Specials'. These are very powerful beings, on the same order as the Undying Wizards or the high-level Undead of the Temple of Sarku, who are also still able to use sorcery. Phil did not provide stats - he never did, for his SNS creatures - and we didn't ask; it seemed rude. If you had one show up in a game, I'd treat them as a 'Fire Elemental' or something similar.
In this particular case, we happened to be Vimuhla worshippers, so everything was fine. The Dearly Departed, who was supposed to be in the tomb, had never been installed, so it all ended well for everyone. What happened after that is another tale - in Book Five, 'The Golden Seal', of "To Serve The Petal Throne", to be exact...
Does this help any?
Originally Posted by Greentongue
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