Karameikos - Vaults of Pandius

When the Great Rain of Fire struck, the colony wasshut down, the surviving inhabitants fleeing to thesurface, left in the care of the warforgedmaintenance crews. Twice in the first thousandyears of sleep, the colony was breached, first bygiants (who had no use for the puny Manlings’ pettymagics). The second time was by the Troll Queen ofGrondheim (not to be confused with her distantdescendant, Haa’k Hordar), intrigued by the giants’tales of the ‘corridors sheathed in steel’ and of vastcaverns full of black crystals. Her incursion awokethe colony’s master defense program, whichtriggered the collapse of the bulk of the facility. Onlythe secondary laboratories survived, mostly intact,to be rediscovered by the hutaaka settlers somethousands of years later. Their culture’sadvancement is thought to have been the result ofdiscovering the caches of dragonstones untouchedby the Troll Queen. Their culture would perish withthe coming of the Beast Man hordes. The remainingdefenses of the colony were overwhelmed, and itagain shut itself down, and its secrets slept beneaththe mountains until reawakened by a renegadedruid….The dragonstone caverns served as a magical falloutshelter for the ethereal demons. They survived theGreat Rain of Fire, hibernating in the imperfectprisons of uncut black dragonstones. From there,they seeped into the very bones of the land, to befreed accidentally, or by trickery, or, in the case ofAncient Taymora’s lycanthrope thralls, by design.Taymora’s breaking up and sinking into the Sea ofDread broke the stranglehold vampires andlycanthropes held over the land, and powerfulthough they were, their numbers dwindled whilethe human population only grew. The means andmethods of battling the monsters were passed downfrom family to family, generation after generation,and shaped the Traladaran culture into what seemsto outsiders as a superstitious and distrustful nation.MAGIC USERSMagic users do not ‘technically’exist as a class on Thorn’s Mystara.Typically, they are used as villains-- NPCs at best -- and many of theirspells are lost, wondrous things.Books and scrolls are extremelyrare, as the chaos of the Great Rainof Fire purged most originalmagical writings. This is not to saythat stray, mad wizards do not stillresearch That Which Should NotBe Known, or that the demonicpresences do not ‘help’ with thereconstruction of Old Magic. Forclarity, those practicing Old Magicwithout the ‘benefit’ of a demonicpresence, and thus at risk of goingmad, are referred to as “magicusers.” Those using Old Magicplaying host to a demonic essenceare referred to as “warlocks.” Bothare to be feared in equal measure.Anyone forming a pact with one ofthe demonic essences gains accessto “old magic,” multiclassing usingthe rules set forth in the HollowWorld Player’s Guide for Warrior-Elven learning magic later in life,p. 7)Decay, Insanity and CorruptionThe rules in the GlantriGazetteer’s section on use of theRadiance are expanded to allmagic user spells: there is a 1percent chance per spell level thatthe withering, rotting diseasetakes root, corrupting part of thewizard’s body beyond the ability of77THRESHOLD: The Mystara Magazine Issue #1