Twinned Hands of Fate [60x45]

Two massive stone cupped hands tower over the road. From your position you can make out under the shadowed undersides. They have somehow been carved out of two separate massive clefts of rock that have erupted from the ground. A winding set of narrow stone steps have been cut into the side that lead up to palms a hundred feet above you. The wind bring snatches of rhythmic chanting from up above. The cultists have already begun the ritual. 

There is a lot of versatility in this map pack. 

The presumed flow of play is that the players arrive on the ground level. The lighting has been kept neutral for you to choose the time of day in your VTT, however for best effect, when the ritual starts the map shows a darkening of the air surrounding the ritual. So if your group arrives during the day, this light to dark change of atmosphere is maintained. 

They then climb the stairs up of one or both of the hands and arrive after whatever height you want to put the hands to face off against the cultists. I haven't got a separate map of the stairs, but you certainly could do some theatre of mind combat against guards/cultists as the heroes race to the top. 

You now have stylistic choice of 3 different levels of fog: none, half (only fog under the hands), full (and all the various assets that fit that style). Add more fog the higher you want the hands to be above the ground is my advice.

The hands themselves have 4 phases each for the ritual and both hands can track their progression separately. The phases are 1: Nothing yet; 2: Start; 3: Mid; 4: Completed and can be recognised by the intensity of the light show. 

I also have a folder of "separates" – which consist of the background blurred, each hand as its own transparent png and the summoning pentacle. The intention here is if you wanted to animate a fog effect behind the hands in your VTT, or wanted my control with the lighting effects... you can essentially build your own.

As to what these hands are? What are they attached to? How to visualise them? I've used them in two different ways, but I'm sure there could be more. I've used them in the Underdark, as the hands of hundreds of feet tall statues that have been carved out of the cavern wall. Obviously this is a grand cavern, the kind that can hold a city. The cupped hands are simply an extension of the statue and jut out from its body. Think Tomb Raider statue scale. 

I've also used them in Avernus, as just some weird hands that are either of a dead god, eroded with time, jutting from the ground. Leaning into the spectacle of organic architecture that is unsettling or doesn't immediately make sense. 

Tips on running the encounter

It's a ticking clock... in two locations. Perhaps if they take out one summoning circle — the other just doesn't work, no worries. Or perhaps it works partially — actually summoning a devil, but without any control. It'll take time to run back down the statue/structure to then mount the stairs of the one opposite... so if you don't want that to happen with your players and your plan is to make it necessary for both sides to be disrupted at the same time... then give them that hint right at the start.

Of course, your ritual can be about anything: summoning an extraplanar entity or devil, opening a portal or rift to another plane, creating a magical barrier around a city, cause a month's long eclipse for the sun-haters to reap havoc on the surface dwellers. Up to you. :)

I put a charged cultist on each of the nodes of the pentacle, gave them high AC from the protective magics, immunity to charms and sleep and a bunch of hit points. Essentially turning them into magical pylons. In the game we ran, there was a macguffin -  a device that could disrupt these energies slightly easier than hacking away at the cultist with a battle axe... so choose to flavour the "how you stop this" to fit your game. 

I recommend downloading the separates, even if you don't want to build your own map from parts, as it contains the ground level the players arrive at. 

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