The Lake of Tears
Location: Mount Celestia / Lunia
No one who actively seeks this place has ever found it. It seems the only way to reach it is to arrive by chance. From a distance, the Lake of Tears looks like a beautiful, silvery mountain lake. Most often, it’s found on the top of a smaller mountain, like a volcanic caldera, though this obviously shifting place has also been observed near the shore of the Silver Sea.
Description: Approaching the lake, a strange feeling enters the mind. Not only is the area surrounding the place barren of all life, the lake itself is as calm as if it were carved from stone. Those approaching the lake feel overwhelming emotions—lost love, broken friendships, unfulfilled yearning and shattered hopes. They also feel a strange sensation of frozen warmth, like a broken heart, which does not want to be healed. This sensation has been described as very repulsive, and most of those who have felt it have left the site without further hesitation, feeling they were not welcome. Those who have ignored the feeling and approached further tell that the lake is as empty of life as the surrounding land, and so deep that its bottom cannot be seen. The perfectly clear water can be touched, and appears physically just like normal water, but it sends overwhelming emotions through the soul of the being who touches it.
Special Features: One drop of this lake’s water is enough as a substitute for the material components of any spell creating depressed or melancholy feelings, but only if that spell is used with lawful and good intentions. Surprisingly, the water’s effects are so strong that such spells work as intended on any plane, even without a spell key. Whoever touches the water with their bare skin becomes subject to both the sadness and despair effects of the emotion spell [no saving throw]. This effect lasts as long as the Lake of Tears is within sight. It does not keep the influenced character from acting at all, though, nor does it force him to “retreat”. Someone who swallows even a drop of water from the Lake of Tears feels as if their own heart will utterly break and shatter, and such beings fall unconscious for many hours [4d12]. When they awaken, they remember countless dreams of broken hearts, scenes from the lives of people who have lost all hope. One of these dreams always becomes especially strong, and a character who wants to find out more about this vision can “sense” where this broken-hearted being now is. More often than not, this has led visitors to the Lake of Tears to undertake quests in which they tried to find the desperate souls, and tried their best to help them regain the spark of faith. Without exception, such quests were among the hardest these individuals ever undertook.
The Chant: Even the archons know little about the Lake of Tears. It seems one of the powers of Mount Celestia created it, but no one knows who. The archons do not speak of the “water” or “teardrops” of the lake, but instead of the “Lost Faith” or “Shattered Souls”. The mage Ulhluan the Reformed mentioned that, when casting a detect alignment spell on the lake (just to see what would happen), he was overwhelmed by the goodness, perfect mercy and absolute agony of this place. At the same time, he felt a weird mixture of all alignments as the result of his spell. His theory is that the lake holds the lost faith of beings of all alignments, maybe even of all the beings in the multiverse who have ever lost all hope. Considering this, Ulhluan was quite frightened by the size and depth of the Lake.
Source: Planewalker.com by Heiner de Wendt. This location is homebrew.