Item
Netherese Spell-Lens
Charge-hungry arcane focusing device
A faceted Netherese focusing crystal that magnifies magic in its existing direction. It can amplify Mordas's conjuration but can never invert a fiend's planar resonance into a prison vessel.
General description
The lens is an elongated violet crystal held in an adjustable bronze-and-blackened-steel collar. Its socket fits over the tip of a wand, but the collar can also lock into a larger focusing frame. Cyan geometry appears inside the crystal when magic passes through it.
Reference details
- Origin
- Netherese
- Category
- Wondrous item
- Rarity
- Very rare
- Attunement
- Not required
Key facts
- When attached to a charged wand, the lens can increase the level, area, or force of one spell at the cost of additional charges determined by the specific wand.
- A lens mounted in a stable frame can amplify a continuous magical process rather than a single wand effect, but its phase remains one-way.
- Mordas's use of the lens in Demonshield construction is wrong. Hilather's prison-work required a separate prison-key that inverted planar resonance and sealed a vessel from within.
- At full planar load, the lens phase-rejects Mordas's attempted transfer. The shield remains inert while the amplified summoning can still release a glabrezu.
- Breaking the crystal ends any amplification immediately but releases stored resonance into the surrounding apparatus.
- Quentin ends Adventure 007 with the lens in every outcome. He takes it intact, gathers every recoverable fragment if it breaks, or intercepts whoever carried it from the site.
- Quentin considers destruction and mortal casualties acceptable consequences of recovering the Netherese device.
Adventure use
In Adventure 007, the lens stays in a waist-high frame in the focusing chamber immediately east of the three-story ritual hall. The rooms share a floor level and a 15-foot connecting passage. The lens is not moved into the hall after an alarm or rest. A character adjacent to the mounted lens can use an action to attempt a DC 15 Intelligence (Arcana) check with appropriate tools or a DC 17 Dexterity check using thieves' tools. On a success, the character removes or disables the lens without breaking it. On a failure, the ritual clock advances by 1 and that character cannot try the same method again. The lens can instead be destroyed automatically by dealing 15 damage to it; it has AC 15 and immunity to poison and psychic damage.
Scholarly dispute
Thalantyr argues that the lens's placement within reconstructed binding geometry makes it part of the archaeological record. Quentin treats that dispute as academic because he has already decided to take it. After phase rejection, Quentin can identify the lens's one-way response while Thalantyr can identify Mordas's mistranslated inversion mark.
Adventure appearances
Adventure 007
Mordas uses the lens to magnify the conjuration feeding his impossible Demonshield experiment. At full load it phase-rejects the transfer. Quentin then takes the intact device or every surviving fragment regardless of the party's choices.
- Ritual component
- One-way phase
- Quentin's fixed prize
- Can be disabled or destroyed
Also known as
- Netherese spell-lens
- spell-lens
- spell lens
- Mordas's lens