Naia

Naia is a very ancient nature goddess, what in some cultures is called "Gaia" or "Mother Earth". Some time after Einhasad and Gran Kain had created the various aspects of nature, as personified in their children Maphr (Earth), Pa'agrio (Fire), Shilen (Water) and Sayha (Wind), those Elements had coagulated into a unified goddess of Nature. While the various races had their own protective deities, Orcs praying to Pa'agrio, Dwarves to Maphr etc., some tribes in outlying regions took to worshiping Nature as a whole. Especially on the island at present known as Hellbound, where due to particular geological conditions Naia is living very close under the surface of the earth, the worship of Mother Nature was very popular among the native population. In the western part of the island, Naia's crystalline "tendrils", the Naia Failan, are even growing above ground - a goddess that can be observed on a daily basis.

But seeing a goddess and communicating with a goddess are two different things. For the latter purposes the natives of Hellbound had soothsayers and seers, a better form of shamans, who could via an inherited third eye get directly in contact with Naia. The last in that long line of shamans was Hannibal, who was killed by Beleth when he first arrived on the island. This cruel deed served two purposes - first of all the native population was now bereft of their spiritual leadership and became an easy prey for Beleth and his minions, and on the other hand Beleth had thus obtained a monopoly over Naia. What Beleth was after was the enormous energy, the energy of raw life, that was contained and manifested in Naia. In the western part of the island, the Naia Failan offered easy access to that energy. Therefore Beleth's assistant and chief engineer Tully built a magical array, called "Enchanted Megaliths", around those outgrowths, which captured Naia's energy and sent it on to the Steel Citadel.

This energy was sufficient to maintain the day-to-day operations of Beleth's military headquarter. But Beleth wanted more. When he had Tully build the Steel Citadel, he told the Dwarf to design the Tower of Naia, the main tower of the fortress, with a deep basement from where he could tap directly into Mother Earth herself. Chief Engineer Tully solved the problem in a brilliant way. From the cellar floor he drilled into the ground and installed above the hole a huge "cauldron" which he equipped with a magical force field to keep the barely aware goddess under control.

Tully could only achieve a very fragile equilibrium though. All that stands between order and chaos is one Mutated Elpy, a small creature brought forth by Naia, which lives in the basement. When adventurers succeed in fighting their way through the Tower down to the bottommost room and recklessly kill the Elpy, the containment field collapses and all hell breaks loose. The pressure which has built up under the surface gets suddenly released and Naia falls apart into the various components that originally made her up. An unending stream of Naia Spores comes welling up out of the cauldron, Fire Salamanders, Earth Golems, Wind Sylphs and Water Naiads, the spirits of Nature itself.

Being but minuscule parts of Mother Naia, the Spores themselves are not very strong or dangerous; well-armored fighters can easily withstand their assault, and killing them is no problem at all. The real challenge is to bring order into the chaos that was unleashed. This can be done. Naia herself consists to equal parts of the essences of Fire, Earth, Water and Wind, something that no mortal can deal with. But by creating a disequilibrium among the various Elements, giving one of them a greater weight than all the others, the stream of Spores can be stopped. When that point is reached, most of the remaining Naia Spores coagulate into a feral creature, a so-called "Epidos", which embodies one of the four Elements, the Element which is at that moment strongest in the room.

The Epidos is certainly not weak, but also not especially strong. Although it uses fierce, Element-backed attacks, small groups of ten or twenty adventurers have been known to kill it. And once the Epidos is down, Beleth has lost a major part of the energy that fuels his magic. Being left to his own devices, unable to tap into the earth itself, the ruler of Hellbound has become vulnerable. Now it is possible for intrepid heroes to challenge Beleth in his throne room.

Sources:

[1] GM Beleth's Walkthrough

[2] Horuswar's Video

See also:

[3] English Language Walkthrough for the Tower of Naia