Tovag Baragu
Tovag%20Baragu-1.jpg

Tovag Baragu is an outwardly and deceptively simple structure. The site resembles a circle of stone obelisks and crude archways, but many of the arches contain portals to other times and places.


Centuries ago, the Stone Circles began to manifest even stranger properties. Tovag Baragu ("Navel of the Oerth," translated from the ancient Elvish tongue), also known as the Stone Circles, is found on the salty shore of Dead Lake, deep in the heart of the Barrens. It is a mysterious structure of massive stone blocks.

Known legends of the site:

• Tovag Baragu is ancient, although its precise origins-are unknown. Most scholars believe it is the only surviving structure of an old human kingdom. An event known as the Invoked Devastation destroyed that empire.
• Steppe nomads who inhabit the locale hold the Stone Circles to be holy ground. They could take a dim view of strangers poking around the pillars.
• People attribute strange magical powers to Tovag Baragu. Explorers' journals describe how distant scenes were magnified when viewed through the stone arches, while some scenes may have been scryed magically.
Tovag Baragu may also affect the local weather.
• Some believe that Tovag Baragu can scry distant times and planes, and that it might even provide a gate to these locations.
• Tovag Baragu is very important to a cult of Vecna worshipers. According to the lore of some record-keepers, the cult enjoyed a resurgence almost 100 years ago, although it was stifled. About twenty years ago, the faithful congregated once more, and those who answered the call supposedly convened at Tovag Baragu.

Tovag%20baragu-2.jpg

Claims that the Stone Circles can open portals to distant planes and, more importantly, distant times, seem true. Up until recently, the portals opened in a random and uncontrollable manner. However, Vecna cultists who returned to Tovag Baragu twenty years ago seemed to discover the secret of opening new portals, though the location that each portal opened to remained random. In truth, the "secret" of manipulation of the portals ties more directly to a cosmological shift instead of the discovery of an arcane ritual. In fact, Tovag Baragu's original ability of allowing access to the future is partly to blame for the proliferation of parallels.

Prophecy says that in the future, an event so catastrophic occur that all the planes of existence are shaken. The repercussions of this event propagated into the past and altered Tovag Baragu in the present. Now, Tovag Baragu accesses dozens of dimensional separated, parallel versions of itself. These parallels are fractures in reality, though each location is set in its own half-world.

These half-worlds are not small demi-planes that share metaphysical real estate with the Ethereal Plane. They are distinct planes, but they remain unfinished, or at least not completely realized. Though the event remains mysterious, lack of understanding hasn't slowed the Vecna cultists. Most of the half-worlds extend only a few dozen miles from the parallel version of Tovag Baragu they encompass.

At their edges, these planes give way to an echoing void, which proves lethal for any hero that makes this final plunge. The cultists have moved into the fractured Tovag Baragu, and over the past decade, they have created a trans-dimensional fortress. There, many "rooms" are accessed through archway portals, and each such passage burrows ever deeper into a nested series of half-worlds within half-worlds. Still, the portals do not waver, and it is easy to map an analog of the trans-dimensional structure claimed by the cultists

Vecna-1.jpg