Saturday, July 5, 2025

Arik of the Hundred Eyes

Arik of the Hundred Eyes is an Immortal who shows up in a passing reference in the adventure B3: Palace of the Silver Princess.  The Vaults of Pandius write-up hits the highlights, which are not many.

Official information:

Arik - Celestial, sphere of Entropy, imprisoned for unspecified crimes heinous enough to get him locked away from the multiverse for eternity. Banished to a prison dimension, he seeks ways to return to the multiverse. (B3, WotI)

Arik uses giant rubies the size of a large man's fist as his eyes - the Hundred Eyes in his tile. These are detachable at will, and function as conduits for the Immortal's power. This conduit functions across dimensions and allows Arik to wield Immortal-level power in a location without being actually present.

His clerics customarily wear blood-red robes with hoods hiding their faces, decorated with a hundred eyes - wearing plate mail underneath. All carry shields with his symbol - a single large red eye.

Kobolds and orcs are attracted to his service, and he has some influence over minor undead like skeletons.

And that's it.

There are other versions of Arik, such as those here, here, and here on page 23 of the Codex Immortalis.

(As an aside, The Vaults of Pandius have - and continue to provide - an excellent overview of all things Mystara-related.  If you are curious about what a proper fan-base supported game world looks like, look no further than the Vaults of Pandius.  Adventures, resources, the Threshold e-zine, and more make for a richer game world.)

Presuming that all of Arik's Eyes appear as large rubies, it becomes simple to find and place them elsewhere, like in the Shrine of Evil Chaos in B2: Keep on the Borderlands.  Specifically, in room 58. 

At the western end of the temple area is a dais of black stone, with four lesser chairs on its lower tier and a great throne above.  The chairs are of bone; the ivory throne is set with gold and adorned with gems of red and black (10 black stones each worth 100 gold pieces, 10 red stones each worth 500 gold pieces, and one large red stone worth 1,000 g.p.).

In my games, that large red stone is an Eye of Arik, and is what draws the monsters to the Caves of Chaos, just like in B3.  Just describe it as pulsing with light - a red strobe light that pulses faster or slower depending on circumstances.

Furthermore, I extrapolated that while officially his eye attracts orcs and kobolds, other Eyes may do other things, or many other things, in addition to or instead of attracting orcs and kobolds.

But rather than list out the 100 Eyes, a random table seems more fitting, so I present 12 powers an Eye of Arik might provide its wielder.

The ruby-red forcefield that features in B3 is powered by DM-fiat, so is not included in this list.


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1 - summons giants (hill, frost, fire, stone - storm hear but can ignore the summons) and giant-kin (ogres, trolls, cyclops); their collective appetite soon strips the land.  (note that Against the Giants: The Liberation of Geoff might provide solid inspiration regarding what this looks like).

2 - summons corporeal undead who move towards the location regardless of time of day and weather; all that die in its glow reanimate as 1-3: zombies, 4-5: ghouls, 6: wights; wielder becomes an incorporeal undead when slain, bound to the gem. 1-2 wraith, 3-4 ghost, 5-6 spectre.

3 - this eye pulses raw arcane power, tinting everything in shades of red and transforming normal creatures into monstrous beasts and abominations that rage and feast darkly in the area.

4 - plant life grows riotous and verdant, becoming alive, sentient, malicious, and hungry.  The various plant monsters begin sprouting; the wielder quickly turns into a black hag that can control it all.

5 - troglodytes creep and tunnel towards the gem, worshipping the wielder (who in turn transforms into a giant frog-thing).

6 - summons beastmen (pig-head orcs, kobolds, gnolls, minotaurs, etc) to serve; the wielder becomes a beast-king (hill giant stats with the head of a lion).

7 - summons goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears and wolves (wargs); thouls often slip in with the hobgoblins and act as enforcers; the wielder's skin peels away to reveal a hobgoblin underneath and reigns as a potent goblin king.

8 - pulses after specific rituals (Arik winks the eye) and humans in the light transform into 1-4: wererats, 5-6 werewolves; orcs become wereboars.  Clerics of Arik become Devil Swine.

9 - magic warps the area, granting spell-like abilities to creatures normally without, spawning living spells that drift about wanting to be cast, awakening the spells of spellcasters in the area (these spells demand to be cast and on a failed save by the caster, will be cast), and clouds of wild magic that drift on the wind, changing (and infecting) magic used and encountered.  (DM Note: this could be an excuse to change rulesets in a campaign).

10 - raw magic permeates the area, animating objects and twisting insects and animals into giant and mutant versions of themselves.  As might be imagined, they are ravenous.

11 - inspires dragonlust for gold and hoarding; gold sickness; transforms beings of sufficient greed and power into red dragons

12 - calls Chaotic dragons to it, but mostly reds (but also black and green); dragons that sleep and bask in its glow grow more powerful in time (maxing out HP and other die rolls).

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The various monsters all come from the Rules Cyclopedia - originals are a fortune, but pdfs and POD hardbacks are quite affordable - and is a great example of what a one-book game should look like.

Anyhow, since so many of these options attract some type of nasty to it, it stands to reason that dungeon-building magic-users would be interested in acquiring one (or more) Eyes of Arik.  Given the potential power of magic-users in Mystara (level 36!), Arik doesn't mind his Eyes being used in this way and might even send his clerics as emissaries to magic-users with domains in order to "gift" them with an Eye for their dungeon.  

Maybe this time, the cultists will succeed in recruiting someone capable and willing to free Arik from the prison dimension! 

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Given the trouble that Eyes of Arik cause, destroying or containing one is a noble quest for heroic (or at least pragmatic) adventurers.

By way of example, the Eye of Arik in B3 (green cover) provides several specific methods:

The ruby can only be destroyed in three ways: (1) Three particular notes played on the Ice Harp will shatter the ruby.  (2) If the party brings two (or more) statuettes of the silver dragon into the room, the dragon Ariksbane will be freed from the Dimension of Ice.  The dragon's breath will disintegrate the ruby (without harming anything else in the room). (3) If some character touches the ruby Sword of Arik to the ruby Eye of Arik, both will crumble into worthless powder.  

Following the example of B3 suggests that each Eye's destruction requires significant effort, even if Ariksbane and the Ice Harp exist in your world, because they would still need finding. 

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