Kalandurren

Kalandurren is a dominion in the Astral Sea plane in the World Axis cosmology, native to the Nentir Vale setting of Dungeons & Dragons. Former residence of Amoth, God of Justice and Mercy, it is now a ruined, demon-haunted wasteland after Amoth was slain in battle against three Demon Princes. First touched upon in the 4e Manual of the Planes, it was further fleshed out in Secrets of the Astral Sea.

MotP Lore

A domain undone by a horde of demons, where few now venture

Planar Traits:

• Type: Astral dominion.
• Size and Shape: Island of stepped plateaus about 120 miles across that sports two mighty peaks; bounded.
• Gravity: Normal.
• Mutability: Normal.
• Alignment: Unaligned.
• Cold Affinity: Attacks with the cold keyword gain a +1 bonus to the attack roll, and attacks with the fire keyword deal half damage (ongoing fire damage is not affected).

Once a peaceful, well-ordered domain of shining castles and noble warriors, Kalandurren is now a ruined landscape where dark powers squabble over the choicest plunder. Kalandurren was the dominion of the god Amoth, a power of justice and mercy, but thousands of years ago the demon princes Orcus, Demogorgon, and Rimmon took advantage of a cosmic conjunction to storm Kalandurren and destroy it. Amoth destroyed Rimmon and nearly split Demogorgon in two, but Orcus struck down the deity, and the demons prevailed. Divine hosts from the dominions of other deities soon drove out the victorious demons, but Kalandurren was marred forever.

Kalandurren is a large island dominion surrounded by a sea that pours endlessly off the edge of its being. Ships that sail over the edge continue straight on, soaring gently upward through damp, billowing mist into the Astral Sea. Visitors approaching from the Astral Sea catch glimpses of its waterfalls and peaks through a flickering color veil of pale gray. The isle itself consists of overlapping stepped plateaus covered in rolling hills, rising up to two towering pillar-like mountains. The many lakes and streams at the edges of the plateaus that flow off the edge of the plateau endlessly give the island the appearance of a great white fountain.

Long ago, a great golden orb that shone like the sun capped the mountain Aurama, and the mountain Argeno supported a white orb that gave forth silvery moonlight. Now the great orbs are blackened and dark, leaving only a dim gray gloom that pervades the whole plane from its steel-colored sky. Kalandurren is cold and cheerless, its temperature hovering just above freezing, and light flurries of snow sometimes fall amid driving blasts of wind.

Powers of Kalandurren No deities reign over Kalandurren, and large portions of the dominion are completely abandoned. Its current denizens include stranded demons, a handful of ancient guardians still protecting treasure vaults and places of power, and the Doomguard — a plane-spanning warrior society dedicated to destroying anything that attempts to impose its order on the cosmos, be it deity, devil, domain, or natural law.

The demons present the most serious threat to visitors. Some of the old portals used in the long-ago demonic assault still function intermittently. These portals allow more Abyssal denizens to trickle into the dominion. Demons prowl many of the ruins, squabbling over territory. The Doomguard, on the other hand, jealously guards a handful of strong citadels near points of particular interest. Although the Doomguard claims all of Kalandurren as its hidden redoubt, the Doomguard leave most of the ruins to whatever demons or other monsters see fit to lair there.

Sites in Kalandurren Kalandurren was home to several large cities and scores of proud castles in its day. Most of these lie in ruin now. Bands of devils, githyanki, and mortal adventurers sometimes come to Kalandurren to search for a fabled artifact, to ferret out a long-lost piece of lore, or to see what they can unearth. Servants of Vecna are the most common of these ruin-delvers, and they often waylay others who unearth choice prizes.

Citadel Exalhus: The most important of the Doomguard strongholds is Citadel Exalhus. Here the doomlords — the secret masters of the society — take counsel. The high doomlord is Nariche, an evil and pitiless human female who sends powerful Doomguards to marshal hordes against bastions of civilization, whether tyrannical or benevolent. Nariche is intent on collecting the scattered pieces of an ancient artifact known as the Rod of Seven Parts, but what she intends to do with it, only she could say. The Doomguard has many powerful enemies, and so it slays any intruders its warriors detect by default.

Rimmon’s Cairn: The slain demon prince Rimmon is entombed in a great barrow in the shadows of Argeno. The divine hosts who drove Orcus and Demogorgon from the dominion wove great wards of power to contain Rimmon’s evil where the demon prince fell. From time to time, some maniac or minor demon seeks to destroy the wards, hoping to consume Rimmon’s essence and thereby acquire the power of an Abyssal lord.

SotAS Lore

Glimpsed through the pale gray of its surrounding color veil, Kalandurren’s waterfalls and peaks show little sign that the dominion’s deity is dead — Amoth, the former master of this realm, was slain centuries ago in a battle against the demon princes Orcus, Demogorgon, and Rimmon. Once a traveler pierces the veil, the truth becomes apparent. A forbidding black island floats on a dead-gray sea that flows endlessly toward the observer, falling off the edge of the dominion in an endless waterfall. Overlapping stepped plateaus, each ringed with waterfalls, rise toward two immense mountains that jut into the sky like pillars. Formerly, a miniature sun and moon capped the mountains, and the dominion knew both day and night. The orbs are dark now, snow falls from a perpetually steel-gray sky, and the wind blasting down from the steppes carries the hunting cries of demons.

Inhabitants and Culture

The demons that slew Amoth are gone, but lesser demons roam the land at will, challenged only by the Doomguard, a magically potent army of nihilists that share the demons’ taste for chaos. The demons and the Doomguard fight an ongoing low-intensity war over the battered ruins of the realm, but the conflict has one bizarre zone of truce. What was originally a temple to the ideals of law inside the ruin of Amoth’s palace has been turned into a gladiatorial arena where demons, Doomguard, and all other visitors are compelled to sit side by side as spectators, focusing all their attention on the bloodshed in the arena. Adventurers can visit this area safely, provided they have the strength and speed to get to it and get away.

Major Locations

Kalandurren used to be filled with fortified castles and homes of the exalted and angels of Amoth. The ruins of those structures are everywhere, and they haven’t necessarily been picked clean, since demons or Doomguard cut short outsiders’ foraging attempts. Two of the dominion’s most well-known locations are described below.

God's Dice Arena

In Exalhus, the city at the heart of Kalandurren, there once stood a golden temple dedicated to law and justice, gleaming in the light of the sun atop the mountains. Its light went out when Amoth was slain. The site languished for centuries, untouched by the demons, until the Doomguard burned and razed it.

As soon as the fires started to lick the temple walls, however, a strange energy flowed from the ruins, filling the surrounding Doomguard with hope, certainty, honor, and — above all — a sense of purpose. That feeling was abhorrent to the nihilists, and many of those that felt the first stirrings of Amoth’s sleeping power went mad on the spot. Those that survived found themselves intrigued by the traces of law and goodness that surrounded the temple. They discovered that by exposing themselves to the positive feelings for a short time, it made the excitement of committing destructive acts more intense.

Becoming addicted to the sinful rush of the vestiges of lawful thought, the Doomguard built their fortress in the ruins of Exalhus. The temple had contained an arena-like amphitheater for settling trials by combat. When they cleared the arena, the Doomguard discovered that not all of its magic had been destroyed—the wards that prevented spectators from fighting one another were still intact. In this environment, the Doomguard could lounge for a few minutes or hours in peace, without worrying about each other’s plotting — as long as a gladiator was shedding blood and smashing bones in the arena below them.

Fights in the arena are most entertaining when one or more of the combatants have lawful demeanors. Lawful combatants feel compelled to fight to the death, a situation the Doomguard find delicious, particularly when such captives are pitted against their own allies. Player character combatants might be able to shake off the compulsion, but lesser warriors have no chance.

When the demons came to understand what was occurring in the arena, many of them found ways to sneak or teleport into the stands. Once in the stands, the demons are equally helpless against the arena’s immense anti-violence auras. Over the decades, the Doomguard and the demons have come to an understanding for sharing spectatorship in the arena, although they frequently fight each other on its bloody sands. They also compete to see who can bring in the best gladiator slaves and most entertaining victims.

The arena is an amphitheater set around a semicircular pit with a 60-foot radius. Below the sands dyed red with blood lie the remains of Amoth’s high altar, which is the focal point of Kalandurren’s law-aligned energy.

Group combats (with equal numbers of foes on both sides) are as common as individual duels, and the outcome of a duel—death or mercy—is determined by a pair of six-sided bone dice carried by High Lord Nariche, the current leader of the Doomguard. Enterprising and semisuicidal gamblers from across the worlds venture into God’s Dice Arena. Gambling with demons and Doomguard on the outcome of a fight, or whether the throw of the dice will dispense death or mercy, provides some visitors with a rush that can’t be matched.

There is an element of danger for the audience, however. If at the end of the match Nariche rolls a total of seven on the God’s Dice, as they’re known, the victorious gladiator has won the right to challenge anyone in the amphitheater to an immediate death match in the arena.

The winner is entitled to all that belonged to the loser (including freedom, equipment, coin, and slaves), and the loser is made a slave, if he or she survives. Any spectator can be challenged in this way, strong or weak, and this fact is not always made clear to new visitors.

Rimmon's Cairn

Before he was struck down, Amoth slew Rimmon. The demon prince’s body is entombed in a magically warded cairn in the shadow of one of the dominion’s great mountains. Despite Kalandurren’s population of insane nihilists and demons, no one has succeeded in penetrating the cairn.

Environmental Features

One feature common to Kalandurren is areas of land that have been imprinted by violence. Scattered patches of the arena floor, and some areas of Kalandurren’s ruins, have become soulshocked ground.

Effect: When a creature leaves a square of soulshocked ground, it grants combat advantage until it reenters the square. Once a creature is affected by a square of soulshocked ground, it is immune to further instances of the effect from that square until the end of the encounter. Soulshocked squares cannot be recognized until the effect occurs.

Usage: This effect keeps the arena fights bloody, and both demons and the Doomguard know how to take advantage of soulshocked ground; they will occupy the soulshocked square, keeping their enemy granting combat advantage.

Encounter Groups

A war-torn place unclaimed by any deity, Kalandurren is full of dangers. Roving bands of Doomguard and demons are common, and characters can encounter any of the monsters presented in this book or Manual of the Planes, particularly in God’s Dice Arena.