NIVEL PROVINCIAL Y/O DE ÁREA

This passage brought them at long last to Dreta Phantas—the Dreaming City, the Stolen City, and the Soul of the World. This elven creation of graceful spires and golden domes, built thousands of years ago, was the seat of power of the Dream King, the Warden of the

Worldsoul. When the Elder Gods and the ancient heroes who served them long ago stopped the Galchutt from destroying the Seven Chains that held the world together, they cast the Vallis moon (which held the Seven Chains) far into the stars and gave the Soul of the World to the first of the Dream Kings. But through sorcery unimagined today, the dark elves stole Dreta Phantas and hid it away deep under the earth.

Now the line of the Dream Kings was gone. The Elder Elves within the city held off the dark elves for generations, using the magic of the Hexamon : a group of elves who had committed their own spirits into the very substance of the city, taking the form of a giant six-sided obelisk. Dreta Phantas was held in a state of eternal magical siege.

And even as the heroes arrived, the dark elves prepared for a final assault. With the help of someone called the "Architect," the dark elves of House Urganth were using the energy of a dead god (an elvish god of light named Ardaen) to power something they called the Dayslayer, a freshly forged lance of artifact-level power. The Dayslayer would kill the sun and plunge the world into eternal night. Then, with the power it absorbed from the sun's soul, the dark elves could break through the protections around Dreta Phantas. The Urthon Aedar were about to launch a counterassault on Sinistar, the dark elf fortress where the Architect put the finishing touches on the Dayslayer. After speaking with the Hexamon, the Runewardens offered to go as well.

Serai suggested that, to help them in their quest, they get the Eye of Ardaen, a relic of the dead god that he used with the Company of the Black Lantern against dark elves once before (plus, there was the appeal of the irony that they would use the might of Ardaen against those who would misuse the might of Ardaen). The Eye was in the possession of the Clerics of Gaen in the city. Baenarum said getting it would be no problem and left, returning shortly thereafter with the Eye. The group then realized why the Urthon Aedar had such mysterious and fearful reputations—they imagined what the people in the Temple District must have thought when an enigmatic armored figure showed up, broke into the temple, ignored any wards or safeguards, and took the artifact without a word of explanation or a bit of subterfuge.

Sinistar

Sinistar was a vast subterranean citadel built suspended over a huge natural lava flow. The Urthon Aedar and the heroes teleported to it and immediately began fighting dark elves and demons. The Dayslayer itself was guarded by a half-fiendish deep dragon that the PCs managed to best in a titanic struggle. The Architect, it turns out, was a Galchutt agent (a mind flayer) who had been manipulating the dark elves. Canabulum turned him to stone. The heroes destroyed the Dayslayer and returned to Dreta Phantas carrying the petrified Architect.

After much celebration, the Hexamon told the heroes that the only way to restore the city to the surface—which certainly would stave off the Night of Dissolution, at least for a time—would be to recover the stolen Dreaming Stone and the Cask of Frozen Dreams. This cask held every dream ever dreamed, both waking and not; the stone represented every dream still to be dreamt. Moreover, the cask and stone, they learned, could restore

the memories of Aliya's cousin Calista, who seemed to possess important but unattainable knowledge—at least that's what the group learned in the Seventh Jewel of Parnaith. The cask and stone were stolen when the city itself was wrenched into the underworld by a demonic creature who seemed to be behind the event in the first place. This figure was not unknown to the Runewardens—it was the arcanaloth Savan. All was coming to pass just as Mara had seen in a dream long before. Savan was the Dreamer, she was the Dreamspeaker, and Sokalahn the half-fiend lich was somehow the Dreamwalker.

But there were schemes within schemes afoot. An object in the possession of the petrified Architect activated when it was brought into Dreta Phantas, calling upon carefully structured contingencies. It opened a portal through the city's defenses straight into the heart of Dreta Phantas, where the statuelike mind flayer stood. Kython came through first, and then a traitorous Urthon Aedar named Kohath the Betrayer, who had turned against his people long ago. Kohath called through the gate to usher in a creature called a shoggoth. Finally, an entity known only as the Crawling Chaos stepped through,

announcing that the stars were right, the dark prophecies had come to pass, and that he— the harbinger of the awakening Galchutt—was there to bring about the Night of

Dissolution.