Dungeons and Dragons Lore: Astral Dreadnought

[Music] hey there everyone AJ back again for the mighty glue stick channel I make videos about Dungeons & Dragons law full-time and have a collection of hundreds of monster ecology and strategy videos on my channel if you like what I do please consider this backing me on patreon and subscribing to me here as I upload at least twice a week so make sure you hit that Bell icon i fear while ago i uploaded the video on the accursed undead known as the a lip there was some whispering of the cursed a lip passing on its dreadful secrets in the background noise of the video impossible to hear clearly but I made an exclusive video for patreon supporters not long after where I revealed just what the a lip was whispering and today in this video on the ecology of the Ashville dreadnought I'm going to reveal this information to everyone if Victor comes and transforms me into a gibbering one-eyed notic this would be why so to recap the astral sea the astral plane is a transitive plane of imagination and belief it is a vast limitless and spectacular realm that forms the pathway to the home of the gods and the Dismal domains of the worst infernal powers we are all fairly familiar with what traveled through the astral plane is like if you're familiar with Doctor Strange and his ability to shove someone's soul right out of their body or anyone who uses the power of astral projection they waft out of the Material Plane connected by a luminous silver cord to their organic body back on the plane they've left behind the astral plane is misty but fairly Pleasant it can have some frightening storms though not of rain and lightning but of emotion and energy roiling like a cyclone throwing astral travelers way off course navigation is difficult without some sort of special technique movement is accomplished through the mind in the will there are portals scattered around the plane they appear as amazing pools of color each representing the specific plane of existence there can back to and in these locations around these superconductors of mental power and spiritual energy there lurks some of the greatest monsters in the D&D multiverse the astral dreadnaughts if I can divert a moment and lay some mind-bending cosmology on you it's important to talk about the fact that in Dungeons and Dragons parallel dimensions are real planes of existence that are based on fable and belief are real time travel is real and super powerful beings that exist in more than one place dimension and time and are able to perceive and operate in all of these locations simultaneously and cohesively as one consciousness are also real we call them gods or primordial Zoar powers or elder evils or old ones the lines that separate them over vast goals of time and space and different realities become very very blurry indeed sure there is a Thor and an Osiris and a lithe and ER but we have no idea if they've always been called those names or where they came from or even what dimension and cosmic incarnation they operate in is Thor the main manifestation of this entity or just one of its Furious forms like as this dimension just an old myspace account does it actually have more presence in the facebook dimension did you ask this question randomly or did it actually direct you to this point because you came to its attention sometime in the future that may not Hall may come to pass because now the thing has acted at some point in the past and altered your entire timeline because it exists in a state of temporal awareness and movement that mortal minds can barely comprehend some entities are so fundamental to so many dimensions that they just a kind of a default form of super powerful being that simply can never be destroyed without the building blocks of that reality getting knocked out of alignment like you just pulled out the very lowest block of a wooden Jenga tower and the whole stack is now teetering on toppling over into complete chaos you could extend this metaphor and start naming these blocks we have the fundamental laws of physics time energy space causality mind dreams fear lies an increasingly trivial light stuff that could be moved around without upsetting too much else and then there are entities who depending on which of these blocks they're attached to can be extremely powerful elder evils tend to be hooked into these blocks pretty deeply Dende are the night serpent is tied to fear nightmares and the unknown darkness you can simply never killed ender you can only keep dendara sleep and in that slumber the minds of living creatures are occasionally disturbed by nightmares which is just basically zdenda very gently stacking on fear itself across the whole plane of existence when dinner is awake and active well the serpent once swallowed an entire star nearly snuffing out all life on the many worlds including a bear Tyrell we know the names of a few other the elder evils such as the possibly first stillborn God and cosmic destroyer called a trochus and undead head the size of a planetoid Zargon the returner was at one point the master of the nine hells before Asmodeus took over was also a demon lord of the abyss and its horrific abomination that seeks to drown all of reality within its wretched slime also the patron of quite a few warlocks father Lamech is some sort of entity that is trapped in an ice prison emerging whenever and wherever a world is doomed to completely freeze over with ice sheets and glaciers many miles thick last seen in action wind in Dyersville odor star much later Pandorum was called to the dandy cosmos and the world of Torah by powerful Wizards of the ancient emissary Empire in order to create a doomsday weapon of mass destruction that even the alien pantheon of the slave people they captured from the world of earth would fear it was quite effective and never actually got used so dangerous that the wizard split its body and mind and kept them in different deme planes purpose-built to be the most secure weapons vault of all time the mo scary Emperor's Empire is no more but their entity is still within the DMV multiverse prepped and extremely dangerous Pandorum is capable of reaching forward in time and creating competing timelines so you do not even want to think about messing around with that one wolf once stated that the former member of the drow pantheon chin down dominates the super powerful entity known to the drow as ghana dow is so ancient that it was old even before AOS time which means that it predates the world of toil itself which if you include spell gemma in your cosmology means that ghana dour predates the formation of the crystal spheres themselves an era that no other existing being seems to know anything about as far as i'm aware at the moment speaking of ghana dows history always causes deep confusion to those who forget that time is quite fluid for an entity of this magnitude so events that could not have happened past said have no connection to the present events that have not could not come to pass entities gods racers world's nations that have simply been wiped from existence due to ghana dowsers activities all weave together and boggle the imagination only the most astounding and leagues can follow along with and fathom these anecdotes from beings such as the Spider Queen herself ghana dr moves freely through time and alternate dimensions to it alternate versions of itself have occasionally come into conflict with each other and they can move back and forth through the eternities will somewhat bored with their awareness of the entire multiverse they essentially have an argument with themselves and for the most meaningless whims snuff out galaxies reorder timelines and go to lurk insult in some tin-pot pantheon and the slightly amusing under dark of a single world for a few Yuans Guana dr thinks nothing of recreating itself winter but wants to and most maddening of all who is to say which incarnation of itself regardless of when it comes into existence is not the original form of their entity guan adele is the elder elemental i guan adele is thursday granada' may even be a box ab or pay and bite or the lady of pain or primus or the entity that AO answers to it is impossible to know for sure what we do know is that one aspect of this elder power was deemed so dangerous by every god of the world of torille in several others that they combined forces regardless of their affiliations or any enmity towards each other in order to dupe there's-- Doon and to trapping himself in the perfect prison that Ferriss tone doesn't know it exists there's-- dune is basically locked inside an immensely powerful crystal artifact somewhere at the deep ethereal formerly guarded by Asmodeus and within it is for lack of a better metaphor the matrix there's-- dune is contained to rule over a perfectly simulated multiverse created by his own power and belief reflected back at him he believes he won and remade the multiverse as he saw that if he ever has any outside communication at all this delicate house of cards will fall he will be released and the multiverse that currently exists will have never existed but although he has locked away the legacy of there's-- dune runs very very deep in the Dendy multiverse and in describing the ecology of the eshkol grid Nord I will reveal some stark and obvious connections that you will never be able to unsee so grab a beverage hold on to your dice bag we're about to get very deeply nerdy and this is I have to say gonna involve a red pill blue pill moment when the multiverse was in a state of flux and primal ancient powers were sorting out what shape everything would be in moving through the transit planes separating inner elemental planes having a fun time making worlds of crystal spheres and whatnot Farrah Stone decided that mortal creatures should never have free access to the plains of belief and manifest will that the powers used to reshape reality itself because mortal creatures did not possess sufficient awareness of the true scope and nature of the multiverse till they fear he was absolutely correct it was like dr. strange telling Tony Stark that there were a ridiculous number of possible futures where this freedom of access would result in complete destruction of all order and that had been established and collapse all the timelines and result in fundamental chaos and return to the madness of the far realm in the formless potentials of the phlogiston see within the astral plane among the Kal pools that were the openings to the divine beans bags of holding where the primal power is kept all of their freshly crafted artisanal planes of existence their manifold petri dish experiments and file folders where they kept all this stuff there is dune create guardians that were to keep watch on the color pools and patrol the astral plane snapping up anything that attempted to reach the higher realms of the prime material plan and prevent open mass transit by beings from the lower planes to upper plans and of the outer players owns of the cosmic wheel these massive and formidable creatures are the astral treatments modern cannons Thoma foes does a good job of describing these creatures they are classified as titans which means they can go toe-to-toe with pretty much anything the prime material plane can spawn they exist an unknown numbers but as far as anyone knows there's--in created a finite number of them and they do not reproduce themselves they do not eat or sleep unless they want to which is at first glance in innocent enough little statement if it's so desires it can eat or sleep their physical form is that of a massive creature as large as an ancient red dragon covered from head to tail and layers of thick spiked plates a dreadnought has two nailed limbs that end and razor sharp pencil claws of enormous size constellations appear to swirl in the depths of its single eye sit under a heavy brow on a head crowned with at least eight horns below the eye is a massive more bristling with thousands of things and it's serpentine armored tail trails off into the silvery void the single I constantly projects an area of anti-magic as in the anti-magic field spell in a hundred and fifty foot tone at the start of each of its turns the Dreadnought decides which way the current faces basically glances the net duration the current doesn't function while the dreadknots eye is closed of course all while the Dreadnought is blinded it typically comes at any target of all group of targets with that anti magic cone positioned to encompass as many other entities as possible and like a shark it moves into simply tear others apart and swallows up any other creature encounters even other astral dreadnoughts are on the menu but fights between them always end in a stalemate and they're simply too powerful for each other to destroy and they grow bored with the fight after a while and go their separate ways astral dreadnoughts are linked fundamentally to the astral plane they can never leave it willingly or otherwise nor do they entertain the notion that there are trapped there for them the astral plane is pure perfection though they do often linger near the color pools not just to catch unwary travelers as they exit these portals but also because with their impressive psychic powers they're able to somehow gaze beyond these portals into the many realms they're connected to no doubt the dreadnaughts would have countless tales to tell of their observations but the mysterious monsters never talk to anyone unless going by one theory the psychic assault they blast other beings with is actually their form of telepathy so powerful it simply pulverizes the minds of lesser creatures the psychic projection is one of the dreadnoughts legendary abilities it has three legendary actions that can take during the round at the end of the other creatures turns using the psychic projection counts as all three actions used in one go but each creature within sixty feet of the Dreadnought must make a DC 19 wisdom saving through taking 2d ten plus four damage and a failed save or half if they make the saving throw they can instead ought to make three additional core attacks or one claw attack and you make you one use of this special power called dungeon visit normally this would automatically be triggered on a successful bite attack but the Dreadnought can actually target one creature within sixty feet of it and that creature must make a DC 19 charisma saving throw or being magically teleported to an unoccupied space on the floor of the astral dreadnaughts demi planar dungeon this is literally like getting swallowed by some Disneyland concept of a whale or sea serpent that has a stomach so large it's like a wrecked wreckage filled Kevin a stone Kevin a thousand feet wide at the end of this transported targets next turn they will appear in the same space they teleported from or so right next to it if something is now occupying that space so this teleported form of swallowing is only temporary all merely attacks by the dreadnought count as magical of course as well as anything that happens to grab and use as a weapon this would be for example if it decided to grip Genki spell jamming vessel and one massive pencil and slapping into the fortified walls of one of their astral pirate ports built on the petrified corpse of an asteroid sighs did God how the Keith Yackey managed to survive on this plane with these gargantuan monsters flying around as a mystery for greater Minds than mine dreadnoughts take half damage from any physical attacks that are not magical they're also immune to being charmed frightened exhausted paralyzed petrified poisoned stunned and of course being knocked prone they have 120 foot dark vision and a passive perception of score of 19 as well as plus 9 to act of perception cheeks they are perfectly adapted to hunting through the astral plane able to glide over a solid surface at 15 feet per round which is ponderous but still impressive considering their massive bulk this is thanks to having a strength of 28 which given their size means that they can shove a vessel weighing over three tons with relative ease the normal mode of movement for the Dreadnought though is flight of course at a speed of 80 feet they can also - by spending one of their attack actions increasing their speed to 160 feet - around and as they never tire this would probably be how fast they move outside of combat all the time stands to reason the melee attacks are - claws and one bite any attack that scores a critical hit and targets a creature using the astral projection spell will instantly sever the targets silver cord since this connects the soul to the mortal body having this cut will instantly kill the target the claws are +16 to hit and have a massive reach of 20 feet each swipe or jab targets one thing and does 3 d6 + 9 slashing damage the creatures massive more is also + 16 - head and has a reach of 10 feet and inflicts 5 D 10 plus 9 piercing damage however if the target is a creature of huge size or smaller and this damage reduces it to zero hit points or it is incapacitated the astral grid mod is actually swallowed at hole the smaller target along with everything that is wearing and carrying appears in an unoccupied space on the floor of the astral dreadnaughts demi-plié dungeon this is a lot worse than being temporarily trapped there by the dragon was teleported in legendary ation any creature or object that astral dreadnought has swallowed is transported to a demi plane that can be entered by no other means except a wish spell or this creatures dungeon visitability and the creature can leave the deme plane only by using magic that enables planner travel so they're gone such as the plane ships spell this deme plane resembles a stone cave roughly a thousand feet of diameter with the ceiling 100 feet high like a stomach it contains the remains of the dreadnoughts past meals the Dreadnought can't be harmed from within the plant demi plane it's not actually physically inside it it's somewhere else if the Dreadnought dies the demi plane disappears and everything inside it just appears around the corpse the deme plane is otherwise indestructible needless to say who knows what legendary treasures artifacts and extremely bored victims reside in these dungeons why have a simple cavern full of junk when you can create a bizarre environment full of displaced ragtag entities from across the multiverse and a grab bag of SCP mysteries for the player characters to contend with so that covers the basic of the basics of the dress astral dreadnought now be warned what I'm about to tell you is kind of a red pill blue pill situation once I reveal the snick stuff there is no going back you will be on Victor's naughty list and we all know what he does to those he punishes for knowing too much or do we you may have noticed that the symbol of Tara's doom the elder elemental I and Grenada are all just a single baleful eye you may have also noticed the astral grid board has a single baleful eye you can also see that the notic the cursed and mutated form of vecna's victims also has a single PI and here is the mind bender when the astral dreadnaughts choose to slumber near the color pools their potent minds cast their dreams through the portal and enter other planes of existence and there they manifest as truly bizarre entities possessing the ultimate arrogance and paranoia of the chain to go the aggression of his astral Guardians and the single baleful eye and anti-magic projection as well as a physical manifestation of the many color pools taking the form of multiple eyestalks that each project a different form of his ocular energy when astral dreadnaughts dream they give birth to beholders who also reproduced this way and to ever more bizarre forms vikner keeps the secret from falling into mortal hands just as he ensures that no mortal ever gains the means to communicate in any way with feresten himself as the moment the so-called chained God ever realizes that he's trapped within a massive crystal artifact deep in the ethereal plane which sustains and matrix like simulated multiverse that feresten believes is real well that's it for the multiverse as we know it Farrah's doom breaks free the astral dreadnought swallow up all the colour pools transport between the different planes of existence has shut down the will and awareness of feresten blazes from the eye of every beholder and he resumes complete dominance of the multiverse not if not tearing it apart or simply ensuring that this timeline never happened in the first place if you'd reached out to some of the more obscure fourth edition law Asmodeus was originally tasked with guarding the crystal prison of sarah stone and he is one of the few beings outside of the Eldar powers and the upper echelons of Silesia and mechanists that know the true extent of how peacefully close to utter ruin the multiverse teeters every moment of every day that is one of those secrets that impossible to ignore once Internet the actual knowledge of is something that most mortals would rather in hindsight remain completely ignorant of but Victor has no time for i-told-you-so's please hit the like button if you made it this far subscribe if you like what I do comment down below if I just blew your mind a little bit check out my patreon for some exclusive content and all the full scripts for these videos via some merchandise where your geek was prior to nears always thanks for listening and I'll be back with more for you very soon you

Channel: AJ Pickett

Views: 65,749

Rating: 4.963203 out of 5

Keywords: aj pickett, dungeons and dragons, the mighty gluestick, astral dreadnought, critical role, vecna, nothic, astral plane, astral sea, astral travel, monster ecology, creature, roleplaying game, ttrpg, beholder, secrets, 5th edition, 5E, 3.5 edition, tharizdun, the chained god, ghuanadaur, elemental eye, elder evils, primordials, titans, color pools, dungeons & dragons, d&d lore, d&d multiverse, d&d creatures, dungeons and dragons secrets, d&d secrets, d&d monsters, tough monsters

Id: 6OAE2JDsPaM

Length: 22min 14sec (1334 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 30 2019