DreamheartParagon Level

This oblong chunk of stone usually appears unimpressive to the eye. But on the plane of the mind, the Dreamheart is a scintillating font of color, dreams, and endless possibilities. It is a beacon of power and a literal promise of incredible knowledge and dominance to any willing to listen. When the relic's most potent power is channeled, a seam along the stone splits and an eye blinks open. Through it, the Eldest aboleth looks out.

The Dreamheart is a +5 magic orb implement with the following properties and powers.

Implement: Orb

Enhancement: Attack rolls and damage rolls

Critical: +5d10 damage

Properties

• Clerics and warlocks can use the Dreamheart as an implement for cleric and warlock powers, and cleric and warlock paragon path powers, respectively.
• You gain a +5 item bonus to Athletics and Endurance checks.

Power (Arcane, Charm, Implement, Psychic) ✦ Encounter (Standard Action)

You can use mesmeric hold (wizard 13). Use your highest ability modifier from Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma for the attack. If every target of the attack is an aberration, this power is not expended for the encounter.

Power (Arcane) ✦ Encounter (Standard Action)

You can use eye of the warlock (warlock 16).

Power (Arcane, Charm, Implement, Psychic) ✦ Daily (Standard Action)

You can use confusion (wizard 27). Use your highest ability modifier from Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma for the attack. If the target of the attack is an aberration, this power is not expended for the day.

Power (Arcane) ✦ Daily (Minor Action)

You throw caution to the wind and compel the eye to open! See "Eye of the Eldest" below to resolve the effect. The Dreamheart then vanishes and is lost (see "Moving On").

The Eldest is the first and oldest aboleth of Faerûn who seeped into the world before the war between the gods and primordials was concluded. The Eldest remained quiescent so long that its flesh became as stone and its mind slowed to the speed of a glacier. The Dreamheart is literally one of the Eldest's many eyes, carved from its petrified flesh.Despite physical separation, the Dreamheart remains psionically linked to its progenitor. Anyone who wields the Dreamheart is influenced by it. The wielder sees phantasms of glory that are sometimes terrifying, sometimes unearthly in their beauty. Visions of antediluvian events, words of primeval malice, and swirling images of a churning void and atonal vibrations invade the wielder's sleeping and sometimes waking mind.The more the Dreamheart is used, the more likely something untoward happens to the wielder. Simultaneously, the dreams of the Eldest are jostled whenever power is channeled from the artifact, which risks briefly rousing the creature from its eonslong sleep.A creature of the Far Realm sent to colonize reality, the Eldest broods over a city of its abolethic children. Should it finally wake fully, it will take it as a sign that the time is finally right. It will set about tearing wide the walls of the world so that the madness of the Far Realm can drown everything in a tide of unceasing madness.

Goals of the Dreamheart

• Suborn wielders to take up the star pact to serve the Eldest
• Wake the Eldest aboleth
• Shatter the walls of the world and so leave it naked to the influence of the Far Realm

Roleplaying the Dreamheart

The Dreamheart communicates through dreams. It projects the barest hints of eldritch secrets into the wielder's mind, as well as images of the wielder enjoying the fruits of vast power after learning further forbidden lore. The Dreamheart tempts its wielder solely through the great power it offers, apparently free for the asking. The evil of the Dreamheart is not active but rather a slow, seeping influence of corruption. Its agency replies upon the greed and suggestibility of someone already foolish enough to take up and wield a petrified piece of an evil proto-deity.Warlocks who use the Dreamheart are compelled to shift to the star pact if that is not already their pact. Clerics who use the Dreamheart are compelled over a period of weeks to revere the Eldest as if it was their deity.

Concordance

Unlike most artifacts, the Dreamheart functions at full power, as if with full concordance, for any creature that can use it as an implement. Using the artifact's encounter and daily powers does involve some risk. At the end of a turn when the wielder used any of the Dreamheart's encounter or daily powers, roll a d20. If a 1 is rolled, the eye in the stone opens of its own accord; see "Eye of the Eldest" below to resolve the effect. The Dreamheart then vanishes and is lost (see "Moving On" below).

Moving On

"The darkness in the pupil's center rushes out. The Dreamheart falls into that darkness, and is gone."The Dreamheart was only recently plucked from the Eldest's body. As such, the artifact has no storied past; it has only passed through a handful of wielders. Each time a wielder consciously or accidentally causes the eye to shutter open, the Eldest aboleth wakes to a light doze and makes some change to the world, before slipping back into deeper slumber. However, one day the Eldest's eye will not shut. On that day, the Eldest will fully rouse, and the Abolethic Sovereignty will come into its own.

Published in Dungeon Magazine 182.