Even as monuments of other ages crumble to ruin

and people of antiquity fade from history, their

achievements and failures disappearing from ~Credits~
memory, the relics of the past somehow survive. WRITING, Design,
A sword stands embedded in the stone into which and Art Direction:
it was thrust; a golden ring lies forgotten in some Robert J. Schwalb
dank cavern; while a cloak, as new as the day it editing: Jennifer Clarke Wilkes
was made, swaddles the moldering remains of an
infamous villain. The great magic residing inside Proofreading: Jay Spight
these treasures preserves them against time and LAYOUT: kara hamilton
violence, ensuring they can survive throughout the ILLUSTRATIONs: JAck Kaiser
ages to be found, used, and lost again. Relics are
The Vault Opens is ©2020 Schwalb Entertainment, LLC.
the most powerful items in existence, artifacts of
All rights reserved.
lasting power that can effect tremendous change. Shadow of the Demon Lord, The Vault Opens,
The Vault Opens kicks off a new line of Schwalb Entertainment, and their associated logos
are trademarks of Schwalb Entertainment, LLC.
supplements for Shadow of the Demon Lord Schwalb Entertainment, LLC
that describe a variety of new relics for player
characters to find, interact with, and perhaps
seek to destroy. This supplement reveals details
on four new relics: the Apotheosis Engine, the Sky
Maiden’s Mantle, the Journal of Doctor Festring, and PO Box #12548, Murfreesboro, TN 37129
info@schwalbentertainment.com www.schwalbentertainment.com
the legendary Staff of Ys. Whether the characters
use them or destroy them, their inclusion in your
campaign could change the world!
 Apotheosis Engine
Adelmar Crenk’s obsession with perfection began
with his younger brother, who was born with several
infirmities, so many that their father called him a
monster. Over the protests of the children’s mother,
their father sent the child to be raised in the Cult
of the New God, where his unseemly form would
not bring shame to their family. Fearing his father’s
wrath, the young Adelmar obsessed over his own
imperfections and spent the years since doing all he
could to remain in peak condition.
Neither the death of his father or the onset of
adulthood diminished Crenk’s preoccupation with
perfection. Once freed from responsibilities to
his family, he set out in search of beauty, strength,
intelligence, courage, and all the other great qualities
people could possess. The more he traveled, though,
the more he realized few such qualities were to be
found in a single person. Even exceptional individuals
did not possess all those traits. Other people might
hold that the distribution of such advantages would
encourage people to work together, but Crenk
believed his findings reflected a failure of nature. That
an ultimate specimen had not yet arisen was a flaw in
design, a flaw he would correct.
Crenk spent the next ten years building a device
that would take those qualities he deemed desirable
from one person and bestow them on another,
worthier recipient—and who better than himself to
receive those gifts? He called the device the Apotheosis
Engine, for he believed it would allow mortals to
become as gods, and set out to find his first victim.
Crenk was ever insecure about his appearance,
thinking himself too bland, too common, so he
located an attractive young man who would be willing
to participate in an experiment. The man agreed,
with the aid of strong drink, and followed Crenk into
his laboratory, where he was invited to sit in a chair
while Crenk made the preparations. The fool failed to
notice the leather straps attached to the chair’s arms
and legs, nor did he spot the metal skullcap that rose
up behind it. So he was completely surprised when
Crenk came up behind him, secured him to the chair,
and lowered the metal cap onto his head.
With his victim in place, Crenk stepped inside the
machine, set the controls, and flipped the switch.
Lightning crackled and the whole chamber around
the device shook, but the results were immediate. The
victim’s youth and vitality had vanished, leaving him
withered and whitened, while Crenk appeared in the
prime of his youth, and better looking than he had
ever before been. He murdered his test subject and
destroyed the body to cover up the evidence, but he
knew he had accomplished something magnificent.
Worse, he found he wanted more.
2
Relics in the Campaign
The magic within relics varies from one to the
next. Some contain vast and terrible power, while
others are mere curiosities, capable of performing
some useful action or offering an enhancement
of some kind or other. Their powers always
reflect the intention behind their creation and the
purpose they served before ultimately passing
from the hands of their creators. A relic’s purpose
might not be immediately evident, perhaps due
to safeguards the creator placed to ensure it did
not fall into the wrong hands, or the relic might
function only at a specific time or place, or under
a particular circumstance.
A relic might give up its secrets easily or could
challenge a potential user, forcing a character to
carry out one or more tasks before its functions
are revealed. Often, though, one merely has to
employ the device to discern its properties and
powers. A relic that happens to be a weapon
likely shows its potential when used in battle,
while a tome would demonstrate its functions
through the writings in its pages. A ring, cloak,
mantle, or some other wearable relic could reveal
its powers simply by being donned. The relic’s
description tells you how a wielder can learn to
use it, as well as any costs for doing so.
A great many relics bear curses. These
sometimes prevent others from using the item,
but they can also affect personality traits, bestow
vulnerabilities, or bind the user to carrying out a
quest related to the purpose the relic was created
to serve. If a relic includes a curse, it also reveals
the spell rank equivalence for the purpose of
lifting or ending the curse.
Relics are priceless. No amount of gold can
ever equal their worth. This said, player characters
looking to sell a relic might find a buyer, for the
right price, but such a price will always be far less
than the item’s true, incalculable value.
Over the following months, Crenk fought against
the impulse to use his device, but he couldn’t go
longer than a few days before he had to drain
someone else. As he approached closer and closer to
physical perfection, his dependence on the machine
grew. He became reckless and no longer bothered
to cover his tracks. His neighbors, friends, and loved
ones were drained of their best qualities and turned
loose to live as wretches, while Crenk grew more and
more powerful. Eventually, though, the afflicted and
unafflicted alike formed a mob to end the madman.
They stormed his laboratory, murdered him, and set
fire to everything.
The Apotheosis Engine was presumed destroyed, but
unknown to all, Crenk had built a second device as
insurance against the loss of the first. Wherever he
hid his second creation, someone’s bound to discover
it and be tempted to use it. Since even a single use
addicts a user to the process, growing numbers of
drained and weakened people might alert authorities
and adventurers to the danger the Engine poses.
The Apotheosis Engine is an enormous glass box with
a door on one side. Six copper bands wrap around
 the structure to brace the glass, while a metal coil
rises from the top. Flexible rubber hoses plug into the
sides of the box, running from it to four metal chairs,
each fitted with restraints. Each hose connects to a
hinged metal cap that can adjust to fit snugly on the
head of a creature in the chair. Using the relic requires
restraining one or more victims in these chairs and
fitting the cap on each one’s head.
Inside the box are a lever and a control panel with
Dreadful Addiction When you successfully use the
Apotheosis Engine, you must succeed on a Will
challenge roll or become addicted to using the relic.
While addicted in this way, each time you complete a
rest without having used the Engine, you must make a
Will challenge roll with a number of banes equal to the
number of rests you have taken since last using it. On a
failure, you gain 1 Insanity. If the Insanity gain causes you
to go mad, do not roll on the Madness table. Instead, the
GM takes control of your character, who then goes out,
gets a victim, and uses the relic on that victim. Once that
is done, you regain control of your character and reduce
your Insanity total by 1d6 + your Will modifier.

a set of adjustable dials to indicate what property is

to be stolen. Pulling the lever activates the coil above,
which gathers the magical energies needed to draw Journal of
essence from the seated “donors” and pumps it into
the box, where it flows into the user. The process
leaves the victim drained of whatever resource they
Doctor Festring
Few crimes still resonate as does the Great Northern
have in abundance. A beautiful person turns withered Massacre. This rash of brutal murders began in
and ugly, while a strong one becomes shriveled and Crossings, spread south into Caecras, and erupted
gaunt. The machine can steal almost anything from in several towns and villages across Old Edene. The
victims and give those assets to the recipient. scope of the killings led many to think a diabolical
The essence transfer is excruciating for the donors, cult was behind them. Others swore the culprit was
but the user experiences intense pleasure bordering a demon, pointing at the torn and twisted bodies left
on ecstasy. They become addicted to using the relic, behind. But when Inquisitor Xander and his cadre
becoming frustrated and distracted the longer they go of enforcers cornered the mad Doctor Festring in an
without another infusion of essence. This dependence alley in the Holy City and slew him, at the cost of each
drives them to use the Engine more and more, which man-at-arms and the inquisitor’s arm and jaw, the
continues to enhance their capabilities, at the cost of murders stopped and the Massacre became history.
creating more and more victims.
Occult Device The Apotheosis Engine is a Size 3 object
with Defense 5 and Health 100. A door opens to the
interior, which has capacity 2 and contains the controls
to operate it. If destroyed, the device explodes, dealing
20d6 damage to everything within long range of it. A
creature that would take this damage can make an Agility
challenge roll, taking half the damage on a success.
Donor Seats Four metal chairs fitted with restraints
connect to the Apotheosis Engine by thick tubes. Each
chair can hold a Size 1/2 or 1 creature. A creature seated
and restrained in one of the chairs is immobilized.
Another creature can use an action to remove the
restraints, or a creature immobilized by the restraints can
use an action to make a Strength or Agility challenge roll
with 2 banes. The creature removes the restraints and
the immobilized affliction from itself on a success.
Steal Essence If you are inside the Engine and there is at
least one creature restrained in a donor seat, you can use
an action to set the controls and flip the switch to steal
the essence from creatures restrained in this way. For
each creature, choose one of the following effects, which
take effect 1 round later:
• Reduce one of the donor creature’s attributes by 1
and increase the same attribute of yours by 1, to a
maximum of 15.
• Reduce the donor creature’s Health by 3 and increase
your Health by 3.
• Transfer the donor creature’s youth and beauty to
you. The target makes rolls in social situations with
1 bane, while you make such rolls with 1 boon. You can
choose this option multiple times to gain a maximum
of 3 boons.
• Transfer one profession or language from the donor
creature to you.
• Transfer one discovered tradition, though not any
learned spells, from the donor creature to you.
Once the transfer is complete, you gain 1 Corruption
for each donor creature, though Corruption gained in
this way is never at risk of giving you a mark of darkness.
In addition, you and each donor creature must succeed
on a Will challenge roll with 2 banes or gain 1d6 Insanity.

3
 The investigation following the Inquisitor’s
confrontation revealed Doctor Festring to be an
accomplished alchemist, physician, and philosopher
who had made a career of trying to find a cure for
madness. Most spoke highly of the doctor, lauding
him for his selfless commitment to curing those who
most believed to be incurable. He had many friends, a
small family, and an unimpeachable career.
Festring was a doctor in residence at Mercy Hill
in Crossings and there conducted a great many
experiments on the criminally insane to unearth the
origins of their disorders. After he had exhausted
all the chemicals he had at his disposal, his research
took an alarming turn. He began harvesting cranial
fluids from the sane and blending them with exotic
substances to produce a cure. He experimented with
this cocktail on a few of his patients, but in all cases his
subjects died and suspicion fell upon him. Unable to
test his remedy on others, he injected his final dose into
himself in a desperate bid to see if the cure worked.
It didn’t. Instead, it unlocked the madness that had
been growing in the doctor’s mind and made him a
slave to it. The surge of insanity transformed him into
in murderous monster, causing him to grow larger, his
features warped into a chilling mask. In the grip of his
elixir, he carved a bloody path through the asylum,
butchering inmates and staff members in his frantic
desire to escape. By the time he broke free, the madness
had passed and he had returned to his normal form.
The doctor fled to Sixton, but the transformation
struck him again there and more died as a result. He
then escaped to Caecras, hoping to find a cure, but the
beast would not stay caged. Wherever he went, the
killing continued until he was finally put down in the
Holy City.
At the time, his notes and elixirs had disappeared,
but over the years, alchemists and others have
claimed to have located them. Recently, a rare book
dealer in Gateway has been making quiet inquiries
with potential buyers to gauge interest in the doctor’s
materials. He won’t part with the items for anything
less than a small fortune.
Festring kept his notes in an overlarge manual with
a leather cover and nearly five hundred onionskin
pages. A brass bar runs along the spine and holds
the pages in place. The book’s contents show page
after page of tight script with diagrams and arcane
mathematical formulas that gradually become more
frantic and crazed.
Maddening Text If you read the Journal and have the
magic, medicine, occult, or science area of scholarship,
you discover the Alchemy tradition if you have not
discovered it already, and you must make a Will
challenge roll with 3 banes. On a failure, you gain 1d6 + 3
Insanity. If the Insanity gain would cause you to go mad,
do not roll on the Madness table. Instead, you become
compelled to follow the instructions in the manual to
manufacture a dose of the elixir and then consume or
inject yourself with it.
4
Elixir of Dread Transformation The Journal includes a
recipe to brew the elixir of dread transformation. To
create the elixir, you must have an alchemist’s kit and 5
gc of special ingredients, which count as exotic items.
It takes 1 hour of work to brew the elixir and place it in
a bottle or syringe. When you consume the elixir, you
gain 1d6 + 3 Insanity at the end of the round in which
you consumed it. You do not become frightened from
gaining Insanity in this way; instead, you transform into
a monstrous brute, remaining in this form for a number
of rounds equal to your Insanity total. While in this form,
you have the following benefits and drawbacks:
• You gain the frightening trait.
• You have a +20 bonus to Health.
• You make Strength attack rolls and challenge rolls
with 2 boons.
• Your melee attacks deal 2d6 extra damage.
• You are hostile to all creatures, even other members
of your group, and you must make free attacks when
triggered.
• You must use an action each turn to attack a creature
you can reach or charge the nearest creature. If you
cannot see a creature, you can act normally.
If gaining Insanity from taking the elixir would cause
you to go mad, you do not roll on the Madness table.
Instead, when the effects of the elixir wear off, you
reduce your Insanity total by 1d6 + your Will modifier.
The elixir, however, has a permanent effect on you.
Whenever you become injured or gain Insanity, you
must get a success on a Will challenge roll with 3 banes
or become subject to the elixir’s effects as if you had
consumed it.
Sky Maiden's
Mantle
There was once a mortal man who gave up
everything for love. A shepherd, he spent most of
his days tending his flocks where they grazed in the
Tumbledowns, north of Old Edene. One day, he
looked up at the mountains and spied a beautiful
maiden dancing among the peaks. A sylph, her
graceful movements and her unsurpassed beauty
enchanted the young shepherd, making him feverish
with desire. He knew, though, he would never win her
heart so long as he remained bound to the earth. He
watched her each day for weeks, and his adoration of
her grew into obsession. He found he could no longer
sleep, had no appetite, and had let much of his flock
wander away.
It was in this tormented state that a tiny devil found
the young man and whispered in his ear of a way that
the shepherd might fly. He need only make his case
to the Faerie Queen. Surely she would recognize his
ardor and grant him the boon of flight that he needed.
After all, she had bestowed the gift of flight on her
love, the Robin Prince. The foolish shepherd listened
to the cunning trickster, fetched his walking stick, and
left his family, sheep, and life behind.
Northward the shepherd traveled, crossing the high
mountains, picking his way through the gloom of the
enchanted forests, over hills and across the plains,
until he found fabled Alfheim. With his prize so close,
he slipped into the queen’s throne room and watched
 her from the shadows, waiting to gather the courage
he needed to make his case. But before he could, a
guard discovered him and brought the young man
before the immortal queen.
A smarter person might have never dared make
the journey in the first place, but the shepherd’s
desire was as strong as ever, fueled as it was by the
devil’s hope. He fell to his knees as Titania gazed
down, explained his love for the sylph, and begged
for the Faerie Queen’s blessing so he could win the
elemental’s hand.
The Faerie Queen found the shepherd’s audacity
amusing, though she also felt the young man needed
to learn a lesson about blundering into her court and
making demands. So she called, and a multitude of
birds flew down from the trees to whirl around the
shepherd, faster and faster, until they became a blur
and the young man had disappeared. A moment later,
the movement stopped, and there stood the shepherd
wearing a cloak of brilliant feathers of all the colors in
the rainbow.
As the boy marveled at the cloak, Titania leaned
forward in her throne and whispered to him that his
wish was granted. So long as he wore the cloak, he
could fly as a bird. What she did not tell the shepherd
was that the birds who made up the cloak would
decide where and how fast he would fly. Without a
word of thanks, the shepherd raced from the queen’s
hall and, once outside, spreading the cloak wide, he
leapt into the air. The constituent birds began to beat
their wings, lifting him up to never be seen again in
the lands of faerie.
Many believe the birds who formed the cloak
returned to Alfheim after the shepherd’s death, but
for years people have claimed to see a murmuration
of multicolored birds twisting and turning in the air,
sometimes revealing in their midst the writhing figure
of a man. The stories stopped a few years later, after
a tailor in Gateway was awakened by a loud crash in
his attic. He raced upstairs to investigate the noise and
found a large hole in his roof, along with the withered,
broken remains of an old man lying on the attic floor.
The Sky Maiden’s Mantle appears as a gaudy thing
made of multicolored feathers with a frilly collar.
Faerie Curse When you don the Mantle, you must make a
Will challenge roll with 2 banes or become cursed (as if
by a rank 6 spell). While cursed in this way, you cannot
remove the cloak.
Flying Feathers Whenever you take damage while wearing
the Mantle, feathers burst into the air, partially obscuring
a 2-yard-radius sphere centered on a point in your space
for 1 round.
Seek the Sky While wearing the Mantle, you can use an
action to gain a +6 bonus to Speed and move by flying.
If you are cursed by the Mantle, the garment causes you
to move up to your Speed each round on your turn in a
direction and distance the GM chooses. If you are not so
cursed, you can move freely. The effect lasts until you
land on solid ground. While you are under the effect of
this property, the Mantle appears to be made of living
birds that flap their wings.
5
Staff of Ys
Ages ago, darkness found and consumed the island of
Ys, a place of ancient magic and advanced technology
populated by the mysterious Ysien. Yet the evil did not
come without warning, for wise Ygledius had a vision
of the end that would consume his people. Through
his efforts, he was able to spare most of his fellows
from ruin and seal off the island from its enemies. It
was also Ygledius who led the survivors of Ys to Rûl,
where they bargained with the emperor for refuge,
offering their counsel in return. The Ysien raised
up the Tower Arcane and set it in the skies above
Caecras, where it remains to this day, a silent sentinel
of which few have ever seen the interior.
Ygledius became the first archmage, and his efforts
to save and rehome his people earned his place in the
annals of the Empire, yet the tales told of him account
for but a portion of his work. Prior to the Ysien’s
exodus from their homeland, Ygledius had flown west
across the Nyxian Ocean in search of fabled Cada-
mah, the land known to occultists as the Grave of the
Gods. It is here that Tarterus sometimes draws near
Urth, so close that it sets the seas boiling, and where
things sometimes leap from the cloud-covered world
to escape its horrors.
On Cada-mah, Ygledius scoured the broken,
pitted landscape, navigating the geysers of blood
that erupted from the shattered earth and sheltering
against the corrosive rains that dissolved the flesh
of the dead titans littering the landscape to reduce
them to naked bones. Somewhere in this horrid
place, Ygledius found Graueng the Elder, an ancient
being from whom it is thought all leshies sprang. The
two fought for three days and nights until Graueng
was laid low by the power of the archmage’s magic.
Ygledius pulled free the heartwood from Graueng’s
body and used his prize to fashion the fabled Staff of
Ys, the relic that has been passed down from Ygledius
to each archmage who followed him and has come to
be known as a sign of the office.
The powers and properties ascribed to this fabled
relic have been close-held secrets of the Tower Arcane
and were only ever revealed to the trio of great
wizards who stood to claim the white mantle. The
long years of the tower floating above Caecras, along
with the infrequent appearances of the white wizard
in the city below, have only heightened the mystery
surrounding the Staff. Some claim the archmage
derives all his or her power from the implement,
while others suggest that the Staff is what holds the
Tower Arcane in the sky.
Since silence has descended over the Tower Arcane
following the emperor’s murder and the rise of King
Drudge to the Alabaster Throne, none have seen the
archmage or the Staff the master bears. With no way
 to reach it from the ground, people in Caecras have
come to believe the tower has been abandoned or, if
not, has fallen victim to some disaster that prevents its
denizens from putting the city right. If something did
defeat the wizards, there must be treasures beyond
imagining in its vaults, magic and riches that might
be worth risking one’s life to find. If the Staff of Ys still
exists, it must be with the last to wield it, somewhere
in the Tower Arcane.
The Staff of Ys is a 6-foot length of gray wood with
silver ferrules on either end. Its simple appearance
belies the power it contains.
Enchanted Weapon When you make a weapon attack with
the Staff of Ys, you make the attack roll with 3 boons
and the attack deals 3d6 extra damage.
Enchanted Implement If you make the Staff of Ys your
implement, whenever you cast an attack spell while
wielding it, you make the attack roll with 3 boons, you
impose 3 banes on rolls made to resist the spell, and the
spell deals 3d6 extra damage.
Staff Strike You can use an action to slam the butt of the
Staff on a solid surface you can reach. A shockwave
spreads through the ground in a 10-yard-long cone to
create an area of difficult terrain and deals 5d6 damage
to each creature and object on the ground in the area. A
creature on the ground must make an Agility challenge
roll with 3 banes, falling prone on a failure or taking half
the damage on a success. Once you use Staff Strike, you
must wait 3 rounds before you can use it again.
Impenetrable Barrier You can use an action to spin the
Staff, which causes energy to crackle from both ends to
create an impenetrable barrier around you that lasts for 1
minute. The barrier has a Defense equal to your Defense
and Health 50. If the barrier takes damage equal to its
Health, it collapses and the effect ends. Once you use
Impenetrable Barrier, you must wait 1 hour before you
can use it again.
Imbued Charges The Staff has 30 charges. If you are
attuned to the Staff, you can use the charges from it to
cast your spells. Whenever you would cast a spell while
you are wielding the Staff, you can spend a number of
charges equal to the spell’s rank (minimum 1 charge) to
cast that spell instead of expending a casting. The staff
regains expended charges when you complete a rest or
24 hours later, whichever occurs first.
Command the Tower If you are attuned to the Staff and
can see the Tower Arcane, you can use an action to
move the Tower in any direction you choose at a speed
of 10 miles per hour. The Tower moves for as long as you
concentrate.