Steal Power from the Autarch

An optional deal offered by the GM (2026-07-26). Not a quest, not a hook — a standing
choice the party may take or ignore. Terms below are the DM's own, recorded verbatim in
substance.

The object: the refined green "panache" on the gemologist Anita's desk in
The Foredweller Research Facility beneath the Middle Tor
(Session 52) — "one source of the Autarch's power in an ancient subterranean ruin."
Steal it and mainline it into your veins.

(Not the under-prison: the Prison of Seven Cells's
Ambrosia is also ancient, subterranean and immortality-granting, but the party found
that in Session 26–Session 30 and it is neither guarded as a power-source nor tied
to The Autarch. The panache is the one the DM means.)

What it costs

A coin flip on your body. 50% chance the panache melts your flesh and organs and you
become "some kind of skeletal horror."

This is not a new rule — it is the one the party has already documented. The under-prison
immortals drank this same substance and the outcome tracked purity: Viana drank
source-grade and looks like a woman; Malifax persists as bare bone; Gerald
came out tentacled; the Ruined One is worm-like. The party has met both sides of this coin
already, walking around and talking.

Two powers come looking for you.

• The Autarch becomes hostile. She knows. At the end of each long rest, roll d100 —
  on a 1, she comes to reclaim it in person. She has killed a god, a tyrant dragon,
  and a sea-beast.
• The Aelders / Elders / Ancients / Foredwellers and their
  constructions become hostile. They know.

That second clause has teeth the party can already name. Their constructions are not
hypothetical: the Watchers patrolling the under-prison (currently pacified only by a
stolen "you work here" badge), the digging golem, the [[Blue Crystal Creature|crystal
golem]] of Session 52 — and the party is standing inside a Foredweller ruin with
seventeen of its scientists. There is no worse venue to drink it in.

It is also, precisely, the crime the under-prison exists to punish. Every inmate in the
Prison of Seven Cells is jailed for exactly one offence:
stealing and drinking unauthorised Ambrosia — "you stole someone else's life."
Taking this deal re-enacts that crime against the people who wrote the law.

What it grants

• Maximum level increased.
• Maximum lifespan × 100 your species' usual expectancy.
• Maximum HP increased by a value equal to your age in years.
• Read alignment at a glance — current, previous, and potential future — plus
  advantage on attacks, checks and saves against evil creatures, effects and objects.
• Ignore all attunement prerequisites and requirements, and carry unlimited trinkets
  instead of two, gaining their full benefit from inventory.

Notes for the table

• The HP clause quietly rewards age. Among the party that favours Silithane (138) over
  everyone else by an order of magnitude; it is near-worthless to the short-lived.
• The lifespan clause reads as a gift and functions as a leash — it makes you the kind of
  being the Foredwellers built prisons for, on a timescale where they will find you.
• Magra has ~35 years left (Session 07). This is the only offer in the campaign
  that changes that.
• Nobody has taken the deal. Recorded here so the choice is made with the vault's own
  evidence in view.

Offered and declined (Session 53)

The DM put the offer on the table formally, standing at the green pool itself rather
than at Anita's desk — the object is the reservoir, hundreds of gallons of it, not a
sample. He framed the mechanic openly first: deals can come from gods, demigods, patrons,
or a whole domain of magic ("it can even just be with like a really fancy special tree");
a character may take up to two; "everybody should probably take one eventually," but
never this one specifically. Magra's old blood curse was one such deal. The other
group has already found three, plus two domain shrines.

He also added the argument that makes it tempting: taking it proves The Autarch took
the same gamble and survived it — "if it's her power you're stealing, then it implies
that this is her power that she currently has."

Every player declined. Fenric refused on the record before the terms were even
posted; Magra refused flatly; Silithane called it too risky for his character;
Jex did the arithmetic on a hundred-day expected lifespan and passed; Lash
judged it not worthwhile. Two clarifications came out of the discussion:

• Jex has no blood and no skeleton. Failing the 50/50 doesn't make them a skeletal
  horror — "you simply cease to exist."
• The symbiote route is closed. Lash proposed sending a grafting-gland
  symbiote in to take the coin flip instead, or to absorb the entire pool the way the
  under-prison woman absorbed ten thousand hands. The DM allowed that it might work; both
  Malaika and Dr. Xiao Li refused to let it happen, and drinking the reservoir dry
  runs straight into the kill-the-Autarch problem above.

Re-offered and declined again (Session 54)

With Magra back with the party, Lash asked whether she had actually been in
the room for the offer. She had, and her answer had not moved: "it's a big no on Magra taking
a deal." This matters more for her than anyone — she is the one character with a stated
expiry date (~35 years) and the one whose old blood curse is the DM's own cited precedent
for how deals work.

• There are other deals, and Magra's sister knows about them. The DM offered that
  Magra "could discuss some things that her sister knows about other deals that are
  available." Magra shut the door on that too — "I never tell her anything" — leaving an
  open, unexplored lead: a whole set of bargains the party has never been shown, held by a
  character they have not met.
• Lash is holding out for a different one entirely: "all the good deals are in
  the Veilwood anyway. I'm just waiting to become the vampire axolotl."

The offer still stands. Nobody has taken it, the reservoir is still filling one drop at a
time, and the party is now walking out of the mountain and leaving it behind them.

Open

• Does the flat 50% override the established purity rule, or is the panache on Anita's
  desk simply not pure enough to be safe? The vault's prior canon says grade decides the
  outcome; the DM's terms say coin flip. Logged in Discrepancies.
• Would the facility's seventeen scientists count as "the Aelders" for hostility purposes,
  or only genuine Foredweller constructs?
• Does the Autarch's arrival end the deal, or merely the thief?