Bastions and Bularks
"If I were to take every last piece of equipment I walk around with on a daily basis, and had it coined out, I'd have a lump of platinum roughly the size of the moon."
It's a fairly common cry amongst the more experienced of adventurers. Time spent delving into dungeons yields gold, treasure, and even esoteric knowledge. Connections are made, and in turn, time is spent, all while perpetuating a system of financial success for the lucky surviving adventurers, and a rather terminal sort of poverty for the dead.
However, not all adventurers fancy carrying around a third of their nation's gross national profit in scabbard, backpack, and pockets. Some adventurers - good or evil - prefer to take upon themselves strongholds, or bastions in which they may reside. A place, in the end, an adventurer may call 'Home'.
And, just as adventurers equip their mounts and steeds with magic items meet to their needs, these adventurers very frequently purchase items that are intended to reinforce or strengthen their strongholds.
Note: All of these items are appropriate for characters to purchase with the virtual money obtained from the Landlord feat, described in the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook.
Bed of Physical Prowess: This bed was created as a sort of sick bed for soldiers in dire situations. When a person lies on the bed and falls asleep (facilitated by the bed being quite comfortable), the bed casts Endurance, Cat's Grace and Bull's Strength on the person in it. These spell effects last for twenty-four hours.
Caster Level: 12th; Prerequisites: Craft Wondrous Item, Bull's Strength, Cat's Grace, Endurance. Market Price: 90,000 gp; Weight: 70 lb.
Corridor of Preparation: This long hallway has to be very carefully placed, or it will be as much a bane for its owner as a boon. Composed of thirteen arches inscribed with red and black runes of power, this 'corridor' is often used by dragons, placed as a vertical shaft, to ensure others capable of travelling through them are fewer than normal.
Anyone travelling through all thirteen arches of a Corridor of Preparation has the spells Empowered Bull's Strength, Empowered Cat's Grace, Empowered Eagle's Splendour, Empowered Endurance, Empowered Fox's Cunning, Empowered Owl's Wisdom, Protection from Elements (Fire, Cold, Acid, Electricity, and Sonic), Fly, and Improved Invisibility cast upon them.
Caster Level: 12th. Prerequisites: Craft Wondrous Item, Bull's Strength, Cat's Grace, Eagle's Splendour, Endurance, Fly, Fox's Cunning, Improved Invisibility, Owl's Wisdom, Protection from Elements, creator must have access to the Empower Spell metamagic feat; Market Price: 528,000 gp
The Grey's Honour: In the city of Delmara, few worshippers of a god are as observant and pious, in their own ways, as the Grey Clerics of Seit. Blessed by their god with the ability to anticipate when their services are needed, the Grey Clerics own a crematorium and graveyard near the outskirts of town. And sitting atop the peak of the church building is this large, stone cross.
The Grey's Honour is the constant center of a Hallow effect, which simultaneously casts Freedom of Movement and Negative Energy Protection on any non-undead within 200 feet. Further, anything undead within this radius of effect must make a Will saving throw (DC 14)each round or be affected by a slow spell.
Caster Level: 20th. Prerequisites: Craft Wondrous Item, Hallow, Negative Energy Protection, Slow, Freedom of Movement. Market Price: 42,000 gp; Weight: 75 lb.
Kheleb's Bier: Nobody lives forever, and adventurers almost universally understand the risks their professions entail. So, when Kheleb Cravat was slain by the Demon Prince Graz'zt, at his funeral, his friends shed tears and said kind words. However, Kheleb Cravat was not done yet. Even as his friends laid his corpse, his dead hand refusing to relinquish his heavy mace, upon a bier, he simply refused to remain dead. Through force of will alone, Kheleb sat up, restoring himself to life. The next day, Graz'zt's forces had a nasty shock.
Any person with unfinished business laid upon Kheleb's Bier, pending the permission of their god, is immediately brought back to life, as per the spell True Resurrection.
Caster Level: 17th. Prerequisites: Craft Wondrous Item, True Resurrection. Market Price: 76,500; Weight: 160 lb.
Lesser Chamber of True Contemplation: Another iconic tool of Meylar Bleakwinter, and his friend Celledyn Moon. The two spellcasters often found they required long periods of time in which to work. After entreating the Great Time Dragon El, they received permission to construct a chamber within their library - the Lesser Chamber of True Contemplation.
A large Durspine wood vault with a single double door, this large, two-storied chamber's lower story is taken up by a large, curving writing desk, multitudinous pens, a fine magical desklamp, a draftsman's table, a well-stocked snack larder, and a bookshelf containing fifty completely blank books. The bookshelf has a fairly mundane spell cast upon it that instantly transmutes any one of the fifty blank books within it into a perfect duplicate of any mundane book in the library, if the name of the book in question is said aloud in conjunction with a command word, the book cleaning itself once returned to the shelf. This allows for long-term research to take place without the researcher needing to leaving the chamber, which is roughly 20 feet cubed.
The second story of the room is accessed through a spiral staircase, decorated with vines, and has a fully-equipped magical and blacksmithing workshop. Also on this floor is a small bed, and a writing desk that features a system whereby messages can be posted to the outside world that appear on a bulletin board in the library outside.
For every minute that passes outside of the Lesser Chamber, half an hour passes within the chamber. For every day that passes outside, a month passes inside. Understandably, this can be enormously disorienting and straining, and only once has an individual stayed within its walls for more than a week - and that was the iron-willed Kheleb Cravat.
Caster level: 17th; Prerequisites: Craft Wondrous Item, Haste, Message, Time Stop, caster must have the Empower Spell feat; Market Price: 230,000 gp (includes the cost of an Arcane Library and workshop).
Purgeway: These doorways are crafted by spellcasters of a paranoid bend of mine. Any magical item that passes through the doorway is automatically suppressed for 1d4 rounds, as if the subject of a targeted dispel magic or greater dispelling.
Caster Level: 17th. Prerequisites: Craft Wondrous Item, Mordenkainen's Disjunction, Dispel Magic. Market Price: 76,500 gp; Weight: -
Shrine of Arcus: Arcus of Soloria, worshipper of Juiblex, the faceless lord and pseudodeity, was the first to craft this foul altar. The design was later duplicated by other worshippers, and its overall effect could not be denied by even worshippers of good gods. As such, Shrines of Arcus are common sites in any major temples.
The original Shrine of Arcus combined a sacrificial altar with a small shrine. The shrine could be keyed to an individual through a sacrifice of some material thing (such as blood, food, or money) suitable to the god in question. When the Shrine has been so keyed, the keyed individual receives a +5 luck bonus to hit and to damage rolls, and a +10 sacred bonus on Knowledge (Religion) checks, as well as being constantly affected as if by an Alarm spell, keyed to send a mental alert to the keyed individual. These bonuses end if the character travels more than a mile away from his shrine.
However, Shrines of Arcus must be constructed on ground hallowed to the god in question. The magic that courses through the shrines, for the sake of cost, tends to be particularly susceptible to Dispellings - the shrine suffers a -5 penalty to Dispel Magic checks to resist being suppressed.
Caster Level: 15th. Prerequisites: Craft Wondrous Item, Divine Favour, Alarm, Sacrifical Skill. Market Price: 45,500 gp; Weight: 65 lb.
Skull of The Defenders: This bejewelled skull has thirty-two flawed diamonds as teeth and two flawed sapphires as eyes. The skull is the constant center of a 50-foot radius Unhallow effect, but only when placed on an altar pre-prepared for the purpose (such preparations take a day and 450 gold pieces, and involve the sacrifice of at least one living creature). Once placed, however, the skull's magic awakens.
The Skull of the Defenders grants any evil creature in range of its Unhallow effect Blindsight with a 30' radius of effect. Further, it can be told to mentally alert any specific individual within a mile of whatever creatures are in its Unhallowed area. Finally, once a day, the individual so keyed can prompt the Skull to summon forth its Defenders with a command word. The Defenders are thirty-two medium-sized Zombies and two Allips.
Caster Level: 8th; Prerequisites: Craft Wondrous Item, Unhallow, Create Greater Undead, Alarm; Market Price: 60,352; Weight: 3 lb.
Tapers of Faith: Often, churches find a need to sanction a particular zone as a base camp. While hallowing spells and consecration are popular methods, roaming clerics of particular import often find that a more hastily-constructed form of fortification is necessary. For this reason, Tapers of Faith are constructed.
Tapers of Faith are all keyed to a deity, and must be arrayed in a circle, with the holy symbol of the god inscribed beneath it. Many deities have individual ways they demand this symbol be inscribed (many nature deities request an array of natural sticks, many deities of law prefer a cloth to be laid underneath with the symbol inscribed, and so on). Regardless, once the tapers are laid out, and a cleric of the deity's faith prepares spells sitting in the center of this circle, the tapers activate. After this point, the tapers light, burning in a fashion appropriate to their deity and never running down, and the circle may be used in a variety of ways. Any cleric who prepares spells within this circle has a brand appear on their skin in some way that indicates they are keyed to that particular circle. Anyone who has seen both the mark and the circle can discern this with a Spellcraft check (DC 18).
Once a day, a cleric may utter a command word that immediately teleports him or her to the center of the circle, as the spell Word of Recall, except that none of the character's equipment is transported. If the character keyed to the circle dies, this teleportation effect also takes place, and the circle immediately casts Raise Dead on the character. Every time this Raise Dead effect takes place, a single taper is snuffed out forever, and the caster level boost provided by the circle is reduced by 1. When the final taper is snuffed out, the magic of the circle is destroyed. Also, once a day, a cleric keyed to the circle can prepare spells within the circle, and all their spells are treated as if by the Maximise Spell metamagic feat, but without any adjustment to the spells' levels. Further, when the cleric prepares spells in the center of the circle, they may, once that day, receive a +12 bonus to their caster level for ten minutes.
Caster Level: 12th; Prerequisites: Craft Wondrous Item, Word of Recall, Raise Dead, Bless, Commune; Market Price: 112,240 for a bundle of twelve tapers; Weight: 6 lb. for twelve.