Luxon beacon

The |Luxon beacons are sacred relics of the Kryn Dynasty, which they believe to be fragments of the the Luxon's physical form. These relics are critical to the Dynasty's study of dunamancy and the practice of consecution.

Description
The cannonball-sized dodecahedron has golden handles on two sides, and emits a dull undulating grey glow.

When Caleb cast Identify on the object, he found the magic contained within was alien and of a level of understanding outside of what the spell could provide. As he focused deeper on it, his brain began to open up into another space of what seemed to be an expanse of an endless infinity of nothingness. When he delved further, he gained a "fragment of possibility" that functioned similar to a single luck point.

Consecution
The Luxon beacons are at the center of the Kryn Dynasty ritual known as "consecution". When a follower of The Luxon has proven their faith through word or deed, that person is claimed by one of the ruling Dens of the Xhorhas Empire. That individual is then "soul-bound" to the Luxon through consecution. When a consecuted's body dies within range of a Luxon beacon, its soul does not pass on to the Outer Planes and whichever gods would vie for that soul's dominion. The range of a beacon is 100 miles.

The beacon draws the soul back and into the body of a humanoid child that has been born within range of that same beacon, not replacing an existing soul but becoming the original soul of that body. When that child enters adolescence, they begin to recall memories of their past lives through visions or dreams, in a transitional stage of Kryn life known as "anamnesis", and are strongly drawn toward Xhorhas to find the answers. The Dynasty helps these children return to their respective Dens and unlock their past through guided meditation. Through each rebirth, the soul grows closer to becoming an "umavi": a perfect soul.

The ritual of consecution takes about one day. The state of consecution carries through subsequent lifetimes and the ritual does not need to be repeated. Dying outside the radius of a beacon (100 miles) means the soul cannot be reborn. There is no ritual to de-consecute a soul, so when the Dynasty decides to permanently execute someone, they take that person comfortably beyond the range of any beacon and kill them in certain marked locations; a high-profile individual convicted of an especially high crime might be marched the whole distance.

Dunamancy
Mages of the Kryn Dynasty discovered a branch of magic called dunamancy from studying the Luxon beacons. Dunamancy focuses on manipulation of entropy, gravity, and time. The Dynasty closely guards its dunamancy spells.

The Cerberus Assembly experimented with Luxon beacons to create "dunamis fields" that had far reaching effects of slowing and speeding up people and animals around the laboratory. Working for the Assembly, Yeza Brenatto distilled one vial of dunamis using a beacon. The Assembly was working on a way to produce large amounts of the vials of dunamis to be used as weapons of war.

The Mighty Nein learned that the ancient mages of Aeor had discovered a beacon that they called "The Relic" or the "Primal Artifact." They had learned to channel the seemingly limitless source of temporal transmutation it contained, using it to develop a method of temporarily shunting to a point in one's own history (leaving an anchoring echo behind), and speculated that it might even be possible to go beyond one's own timeline.

Fragment of Possibility
Focusing on a Luxon beacon for one minute grants a Fragment of Possibility.

Prevents the Curse of Strife
Any goblinkin (goblin, hobgoblin, and bugbear) born within 100 miles of a Luxon beacon does not inherit Bane's curse, which otherwise compels them to do evil.

History
The first Luxon beacon to be found by the Kryn Dynasty was deep in the Underdark beneath Ghor Dranas. The Dynasty has discovered four beacons in various locations, including the Blightshore side of the Penumbra Range, and believe that there are many more scattered across all of Exandria. The Empire has also discovered one in the ruins of Shattengrod outside of Pride's Call.

Essek Thelyss gave two beacons to the Cerberus Assembly to research, though the Dynasty believed that they had been stolen by wizards from the Empire. At the time of the Harvest Close Festival in 835 PD, they were being kept by the Assembly in Zadash. One was eventually returned to the Dynasty by the Mighty Nein, and the other by the Empire following the successful peace negotiations ending the War of Ash and Light.

Acting under the orders of the Empress of the Kryn Dynasty, Leylas Kryn, the echo knight Thuron and another drow attacked the Zauber Spire, part of the Hall of Erudition in Zadash, and stole the beacon there. The beacon was taken from him when he was killed by the Crownsguard in the Sewers.

While the Crownsguard were carrying it off towards the King's Hall, Caleb, disguised as a crownsguard, lied and used the Friends spell to carry the beacon off on his own. Nott aided his efforts by creating an illusory version of it further off, which she made appear to disintegrate in midair. With their efforts combined, they managed to steal the beacon.

When Caleb slept in the proximity of the beacon, he had a peaceful dream of a welcoming soft hum and grayish, familiar light pulling him forward through stars of a distant night sky. He saw beacons of light coast by, and a dark sphere before him. After a flash of light, he stood holding the beacon in his hands. Looking into it for a moment, he then looked up and saw himself in endless rows, each slightly different than the next. They each began walking in different directions. Looking down again at the object and back up, they were all gone, though he saw a distant flame flickering. The more he tried to understand the beacon's ancient power and scale, being both too large and too small, the more he felt himself walking different paths all at once, in a way both scary and comforting to him. He looked up at the stars and saw that they had stopped moving. In that place, for the first time in a long time, he felt at peace as the dream ended.

The Mighty Nein later bought a lead-lined box to hide the beacon within. They stashed it inside Jester's haversack.

With the supervision of Nott and Jester, Caleb spent time gazing into the depths of the beacon he attempted to reveal the beacon's true nature and if it had any potential uses to the party.

As he focused and concentrated on the strange artifact his vision was drawn towards it until, although he'd not physically moved, he felt as though his body was leaning forward until suddenly he felt his consciousness within the dodecahedron.

Similarly to when he had previously entered the item's depths, he saw darkness, and then starlight around him. He watched amorphous, cloud-like shapes and forms of purples and blues that drifted by on a scale that he he could not comprehend. He saw darkened spheres and objects passing him as he drifted into nothing, into a void with distant dots of light and sparkles. Reaching this void threshold, his heart racing, he chose to go further than where he had stopped previously.

Continuing deeper, the speed increased, the back of his neck grew warm, and his hair begin to stand up. While he could not see, he felt his own body's presence-- unmoving, though also moving quickly in a conflict of sensation that caused his heart to race and his breathing to increase. Seeing a faint gray glow approach and stop before him as his speed came to a slow crawl, he halted. There before him was a tiny little mote of gray, pulsing light; a similar undulating heartbeat-like pulse as the dodecahedron itself but a foot before him. Calling out, Caleb asked it "Do you know if it's achievable?"

He sensed nothing familiar in this alien object of both immediacy and eternity; it was an ancient concept of possibility. As he asked these questions and began to contemplate, the loop of his thought process began to cycle on itself, and he had to shake his head not to be lost in an infinity that threatened to suddenly disperse him. Still, there was a tiny, gray thing before him, and "it" seemed to want his contact.

Saying, "Father and mother-- I hope I do not let you down", he reached out and touched the mote of light, and feeling it come into his hand, pulled it into his chest where he felt a warmth and a sense that for a second, probability had become slightly malleable. In that moment from the outside of the vision, Jester and Nott could see a faint mote of gray drift out of the dodecahedron, and then float, enter and vanish into the his chest, at which point, wide-eyed, he awakened out of his trance-like state.

He was unable to ascertain the full truth and power of the object, it being inscrutable on such a scale that his puny, mortal knowledge could not fully achieve verstehen, true existential understanding. However, he had discovered that by reaching out to this device he could pull within himself a "Fragment of Possibility."

Jester showed Twiggy the dodecahedron and invited her to look at it. Twiggy felt a gravitational pull and was drawn towards it, her peripheral vision blurring and darkening. It felt as if it were no longer an object; it was like a pool of warm water. In the darkness, she saw an endless sea of stars drifting past, and little ghosted versions of herself going in different directions: some fading and some created. Two of them joined, creating a new light and going in a separate path. There was a single, glowing, warm light that as she reached out towards it, it merged with her hand, the warmth carrying through her wrist and forearm giving a warm interior hug-type sensation. As she closed her eyes and opened them again, she was back on the Squall Eater.

While meeting with the Mighty Nein in his tower, Yussa Errenis (a powerful elven wizard) asked to see the dodecahedron. He cast a spell which Caleb recognized as Identify on the beacon, then cast another unknown spell on it. He then spent a few moments staring at the dodecahedron and got a Fragment of Possibility.

To his own surprise, Yussa knew nothing about the beacon and did not even recognize its school of magic. Whatever magic was in the beacon blended arcane and divine. He advised taking it out of Jester's haversack only for short periods of time and when absolutely necessary.

While searching the basement of Yeza Brenatto's apothecary in Felderwin, the Mighty Nein found notes of an unknown Cerberus Assembly researcher. The notes talked about using the beacon to weaponize Dunamancy for battle. The Kryn Empire of Xhorhas had the ability to use Dunamancy to manipulate gravity, entropy, and time. The Kryn had been researching its use for centuries in Ghor Dranas. It had been difficult for the Cerberus Assembly to create an object that could sustain the energy of a dunamis field. Yeza had been working with the Cerberus Assembly and managed to distill one vial of dunamis. They had plans to make more once they could remove the beacon from the process.

Jester noticed that Gluzzo wore a symbol of a beacon. He told her it was the symbol of The Luxon. Lady Olios's audience chamber in Asarius had an altar with an art piece of a beacon.

The Mighty Nein were granted an audience with Leylas Kryn, Empress of the Kryn Dynasty. When Lythir VaSuun identified them as the group that attacked him in the Ashkeeper Peaks, the Queen ordered them arrested. Caleb called out that they had brought something for the Dynasty. He reached into Jester's haversack and showed the beacon. Shocked, Leylas Kryn ordered the Mighty Nein released. She proclaimed them heroes of the Dynasty for returning the beacon to them.

Empress Leylas Kryn revealed that the Luxon beacons are actually the physical remains of The Luxon's body. According to the Kryn Dynasty's religious beliefs, before the Founding of Exandria (when the gods came to the Creation Primordial), the Luxon (known as the "First Light") came to Exandria while it was still cold and dark. Alone and not fully understanding his/her/their own divinity (still trying to discover what it was), the Luxon discovered this lifeless rock as lonely as the Luxon was and embraced it. In doing so, the Luxon scattered itself across the world to bring it fire and life. The many parts of the Luxon - the Luxon beacons - remain buried within Exandria. Since the founding of the Xhorhas Empire, the Kryn have recovered four beacons. Empress Kryn was convinced that there are many more out there that have yet to be discovered.

Empress Kryn revealed that two beacons were lost when they were stolen by the Dwendalian Empire. Thanks to Caleb returning the Mighty Nein's beacon, the Kryn Dynasty now has three beacons in their possession. Skysybil Abrianna Mirimm emphasized that the loss of a beacon is a loss of a source of the Kryn cycle of rebirth.

Yudala Fon confirmed to Beauregard Lionett that in an excavation of Shattengrod the Cerberus Assembly had only three weeks earlier discovered and acquired a Luxon beacon.

After being taken onto the ship by the Mighty Nein, Essek revealed that he was the traitor who had given the two stolen beacons to the Cerberus Assembly for research purposes. One of them had fallen into the hands of the Mighty Nein in and was returned by them to the Dynasty in. The Assembly would keep the beacon it had discovered in Shattengrod for research and those who had collaborated with Essek would continue corresponding with him.

After completing the negotiations successfully, the second beacon given to the Empire by Essek was returned to the Kryn Dynasty.

Essek revealed to the Mighty Nein that in some of the early Aeorian excavations, the Dynasty had found iconography and notations that resembled a Luxon beacon, indicating the Aeorians had been toying with dunamis before the Dynasty had even been established. The excavators had uncovered writings about a beacon's design, as well as discussions of dunamantic magic. Essek believed it was possible that there might be one or more beacons that the Aeorians uncovered long before the Dynasty did, bringing the Dynasty that much closer to bringing the Luxon together.

Essek found that the rejuvenation machine found in Aeor was powered by something that appeared to be a small replica of a Luxon beacon. He took the beacon from the machine, which destroyed the machine.

Caleb and Essek used the smaller beacon they had taken from the rejuvenation machine to grant the party the effects of a long rest within an instant. The beacon was destroyed in the process.

The Tales of Exandria: The Bright Queen
As the framing device of the story, Abrianna Mirimm tells an unnamed ward the history of the Luxon and its beacons, as well as a recounting of Leylas and Quana Kryn's attempt to recover a beacon found in the Ghostlands.

Trivia

 * CritRole Stats has a page dedicated to gazes into the dodecahedron and uses of Fragments of Possibility.
 * The Xhorhasian concept of an "umavi" is very similar to a "bodhisattva": a perfected soul who has reached "nirvana," and yet remains to help other souls along the path. Nirvana is the religious goal of Buddhism and Jainism. In Buddhism, nirvana is the state of perfect enlightened peace when cravings and ignorance have been eliminated from a person's life...freeing their soul from "samsara," the cycle of rebirth (though freedom from the cycle per se doesn't seem to be a goal of the Xhorhasians).
 * It is possible that the dodecahedron's shape recalls the fifth Platonic solid, also known as ether, used by the gods "for arranging the constellations on the whole heaven." This substance was believed by alchemists to be the key element to achieve the Philosopher's Stone.
 * The beacon's dodecahedral shape possibly also references the proposal that the shape of the universe is a finite dodecahedron, specifically a Poincaré homology sphere.
 * There is a 4-dimensional geometric shape known as a dodecaplex, which is made from 120 dodecahedra. Given that each beacon is thought to be a fragment of the Luxon's physical form, it is entirely possible that this original form was one such dodecaplex. If this is true, it would seem to suggest that there are exactly 120 beacons in existence.