EDAMMERA’S FOLLY Ancient Laboratory Straddling the Planes Location western Nidal, northwest of the Usk River’s fork Master Kaidalous (LE agender interlocutor kytonB3 investigatorACG [forensic physician] 6; Pathfinder RPG Ultimate Intrigue 33) Inhabitants augur kytonsB3, interlocutor kytonsB3, shadow lordB4 brain oozesB3, various shadows and greater shadows Features mysteriously mobile portals to the Shadow Plane, roving shadow horrors, surgical laboratory
The mysterious archmage Mesandroth Fiendlorn is well known among Nidalese scholars of the arcane; the ancient wizard’s lifelong quest for immortality produced a wealth of knowledge on various outsiders, necromantic arts, abjurations, and more—if not the desired outcome. Like many great minds, Fiendlorn was paranoid and secretive, and he segmented his various areas of research into separate laboratories across the land, each in the care of one of his many apprentices. No one knows how many such lairs exist, as only a few have been discovered and explored, and all proved destroyed from within.
Edammera’s Folly is one such location. The titular wizard, an apprentice of Fiendlorn, maintained this pristine research facility—a sterile tower of steel and glass etched with meticulous columns of precise arcane runes. Its protections were near absolute, save that this tower, like all of Fiendlorn’s facilities, remained accessible to the archmage. The damage he wrought within its halls during his research is nearly imperceptible from without; most who see flickering shadows crawling along the sides of the tower simply attribute the shifting pattern to the perpetual Nidalese gloom.
If an explorer were to gain access to the facility—no small feat, given the layered arcane protections atop the reinforced steel doors—she would find that the interior likewise shows few signs of its downfall. Permanent light spells gently illuminate the halls, while the laboratories and surgical theaters are enchanted such that much brighter lights flare into near daylight when a humanoid creature enters the space.
Of course, this illumination is limited to those spaces that exist on the Material Plane—a fact that becomes clear upon stepping through nearly any doorway in the facility. Here, the treachery Fiendlorn unleashed becomes evident: every interior doorway in the entire facility has been replaced with a portal to a twisted replica of the tower on the Plane of Shadow. These portals are permanent, but they are not fixed. Each connects with a doorway in the counterpart tower at random, and the destination changes from use to use, even between two creatures passing through only moments apart. Savvy explorers might realize they can at least ensure they pass through together by joining hands, although this leaves them rather disadvantaged against whatever might await them on the other side of the portal.
The Shadow Plane version of Edammera’s tower is forged of blackened, rusting iron and blood-spattered obsidian in place of the Material Plane’s sterile steel and glass, and the eerie silence is replaced by screams and gasps of torment. A cabal of interlocutor kytons and the augur kytons who act as their sentinels use the laboratories here as an ideal location for them to work their arts upon one another and upon pitiable souls captured from the Shadow Plane or who have crept through the portals. The kytons navigate their portion of the tower courtesy of their innate plane shift spell-like ability, though they find the plentiful illumination of Edammera’s tower distasteful and typically avoid it. The greatest of these kytons, Kaidalous, is rumored to once have been Edammera herself.
The residents of Edammera’s tower on the Material Plane are far more subtle but no less dangerous than their Shadow Plane counterparts. Edammera’s research focused on harnessing the innate abilities of oozes to withstand the ravages of time, and while she quickly dismissed the mindless varieties as an unviable option for her efforts, the peculiar and intelligent brain ooze (Bestiary 3 43) came to the fore as a candidate for her experiments, its reputation bolstered by the rumors that these creatures themselves were the result of another race’s efforts to achieve immortality. Of the dozens of specimens Edammera kept here at the facility’s height, only a handful remain, the rest having fallen into Fiendlorn’s hands, wasted away in captivity once their handlers had perished, or fallen prey to guests from the Plane of Shadow.
These few remaining brain oozes have been thoroughly infused by the shadow essences seeping through the portals, and now all of them bear the shadow lord template. Since their non-humanoid presence doesn’t activate the tower’s lights, the creatures can slink along the shadows throughout the facility without passing through the portals. Of course, the tower is also home to shadows and greater shadows, who consistently slide from their home plane to the Material Plane and back, looking for victims along the way.
A few opportunists aware of Edammera’s Folly have considered whether the facility’s semistable portals to the Plane of Shadow could be used as a means of transit between the two planes. The challenges facing such an endeavor are manifold: not only would a traveler need to avoid or appease the denizens of each planar tower, but she would also need to find some way to stabilize the portals enough to secure a route that lets her exit the Shadow Plane’s tower rather than shifting randomly between the two for what could become eternity. Of course, some explorers are willing to risk that fate in the hope of gaining access to the wealth of research material and magical items that are no doubt abandoned within the shady facility.
