#46 The Guardian Pools

Age: Forgotten Millenia Past

Hidden or Lost?: Hidden

History: The world was once governed by 13 powerful Guardian Beings that were born into the universe to help guard balance, each watching over their given domain.

When forces such as greed, hunger, love, even life and death would become too pronounced in the world, the Guardians would be summoned to restore the balance. Whether that meant melting a banker’s coffers, feeding a dying populace, or murdering a generation of children. They were forces of unfeeling balance, as destructive as they were kind. But a movement calling itself the Free Peoples arose and brought together their most powerful mages and theologians to cage the Guardian powers. In their reasoning, the Guardians were taking free will from their lives.

Despite the protest of many kingdoms, The Free Peoples succeeded in containing the Guardians, tethering them for eternity to 13 stygian gems. Rather than allowing these terrible powers to remain in the fallible, ever-tempted hands of other people, they instead placed them within a field of deep pools hidden in an underground cavern. Each gem dropped to the bottom of its own pond.

The cavern of the Guardian Pools is accessible only via a narrow underwater tunnel that empties out into The Drowning Pool, the first of The Guardian Pools. The influence of the primal powers contained in every pool has turned each one into a uniquely deadly trap. For instance, The Drowning Pool allows you to breathe water, but not air. Unfortunately most don't figure that out until it's too late. There is the Fecund Pit, a pool surrounded by verdant overgrowth which causes any who enter to begin producing skin, teeth, and organs all over their body; or The Bath of Salt, a quicksand pool that sucks all the moisture from anyone who enters, until they crumble into just more sand for the pit.

The subterranean field of Guardian Pools is watched over by a crooked wretch who calls himself The Last Free Man. Anyone who survives the pools, or otherwise tries to free the Guardians from their gems would do well to watch out for his rusted knife in your back.

1. The Watchtower

2. The Devil’s Whirlpool

3. Drowning Pool

4. Fecund Pit

5. Greed’s Repose

6. Hunger’s Abyss

7. Poised Depth

8. Waters of Replication

9. Flowing Metals

10. The Gnashing River

11. The Black Sea

12. The Judgement Puddle

13. The Bath of Salt

14. Power’s Glut

15. Lake of the Pure

16. Last Free Man’s Hut