Kalti's Guide To Closing Dimensional Seals, For Dummies!

Dear friends,

I, Kalti Lemuir, have written a short guide to closing the dimensional seals created by the Gatekeepers based on your experiences and arcane research. The good Professor Yanger has provided his expertise as well, although he hastens to add that his notes have been dictated and not read. Finally, much of this is conjecture and theorizing based upon ancient texts and half-baked supposition. The great General Marius of Karrnath is said to have once said, "No plan survives contact with the enemy"; in a similar vein, we will revisit these hypotheses as we (you) accumulate more evidence in the field. With that out of the way, let us begin.

The Seven Dimensional Seals
As far as we know, there are seven dimensional seals that were originally created by the Gatekeepers. Although their function of the seals is quite obvious to any arcane expert (they polarize the eternal miasma of the Ethereal Plane in such a way to interfere with extradimensional contact), their fundamental purpose and reason for their construction is not. We may, however, make some educated guesses.


 * First, each seal was placed in a Manifest Zone - a place in Khorvaire where the natural boundaries between this plane of existence and others is weaker. You yourselves have experienced this effect before, when you traveled to Thelanis, the Faerie Court in the Eldeen Reaches. Luckily, as the sympathetic effects of the Manifest Zones reflect the planes they are connected to, we can make some educated guesses about what plane each dimensional seal is blocking based on historical records of the location.


 * Second, based upon what Jana told you and what you experienced when you opened the dimensional seal atop Sharn - there are some magical guardians that defend each of the seals when opened. Jana referred to them as Sentinels - a term that has also appeared the rare times I have had a chance to examine writings of the ancient Gatekeepers. From your trip to Atrus Island and the description of the creature you fought, that Sentinel appeared to be some corrupted form of the ancient giant king, Samri III. It's not clear to me whether the other seals are also guarded by ancient giants; however, I scoured the literature and managed to find the names of two other ancient kings from the Age of Giants who I found cross-referenced in legends local to the areas around two of the seals. I must emphasize that I have no idea if the other seals are guarded by some other form of creature.


 * Thirdly, although it appears the Stargazers also need to defeat or bypass these Sentinels as we do in order to interact with the dimensional seal, it is here that our prospective paths diverge. When you "captured" the giant in that sphere and threw it into the dimensional seal, it appeared to close the planar breach. While the Skyway was affected when the Tower of Boldrei was destroyed by Cornerio, there is no evidence of planar disruption since then. Conversely, the seal that the Stargazers got to before you did, in the Starpeaks Observatory, was left open with major disruptions of the planar energies. I suspect that our actions in sealing the breaches will frustrate the Stargazers ultimate purpose of creating a link between our world and Xoriat, the Plane of Madness.

Thus, I present Table 1, below, which I have compiled using the list of seals you originally discovered:

Closing A Dimensional Seal
This section is almost entirely hypothetical, as we have only the one example of successfully "closing" a dimensional seal. Nevertheless, there are some things we can extrapolate from that experience. It appears that defeating the Sentinel that guards the seal will be required in form or another. I do not know if it will always be as simple as using a magical artifact; we hired a team (at great expense) to comb over Atrus Island but found nothing similar. I suspect that each of these seals has a linked artifact - a key to a door if you will - and it is a question of whether you turn the lock or leave it open.

What these artifacts look like, where they could be kept, who would know more about them - all these remain open questions.

The Professor and I will continue to revise our notes as we learn more, but I believe we will need more better sources than the thin gruel of oblique references in ancient tomes that we have been subsisting on as to this point.

Yours Faithfully and in The Name of the Host,

Kalti Lemuir