Special Idea Request!

I think it would be very interesting to see Morgus appear on the scene once again... There are many factions vying for the Soul Cage, and I think it could be interesting if the struggle between Morgus and Devona back from Season 1 could be tied into the whole thing.

Steven Vande Vyvere

I think it's a ships lantern from the Crimson Viper. The captain of that ship long ago played around with powerful magics (another deal with Devona gone wrong?) and created an item that would capture the soul of one it was pointed at and grant the holder one wish. The wish (if it is an ongoing effect) will remain in effect as long as the soul remains in the lantern. The soul of the captain was the original soul placed within it - and he wished for the Viper to be the most powerful ship in the area. This came true, but at a terrible price, his soul locked in the lantern and his ship and its crew are bound to the seas forever. It is possible to point the lantern at someone new and make a new wish, but it will be destroying a person in order to get what you want.

Jeanne Frenken

(description: "Transform Reality") The reality has they know it, they are on two islands in the sea, to transform this, there must be some kind of mirage involved, in which nothing is as it seems, there maybe a rift in the waters edge that when stepped into, they are not swimming down, but climbing up two great pillars into some kind of structure in the sky.Maybe its a construction of Ures rath(the mad wizard). Im not going into much more details, thats for the dice to say. The Dead mans rift would, in theory be in the altered sky. Good luck with interpreting this idea!!

Steven Benham

My take, the soul cage is the corpse of a long dead God Of Death. The reef and the islands around it are the millennia-old bones of this dead deity, where new life has sprung up on it. However, the power of the old god remains, twisting the region and infusing it with necrotic energy from the God Of Death's long neglected dimension. Some of the souls trapped in that plane have seeped through the cracks in reality that the dead god's remains have wedged open. Their twisted spirits infuse the local fish life, the only kind of life these damned souls can currently enjoy. This means the reef is guarded by possessed great white sharks, twisted and mutated with evil energy, their eyes glowing ghostly green. The spirits seek to protect the Soul Cage, because if anyone were to harness its power, what little opening to the mortal world it affords them would be closed and they would be trapped again in the darkness.

Tana Pigeon

Yes, more people for extra dimensional adventuring.

Lots of good ideas above. First I think the visual is a ghostly structure overgrown with coral, glowing with a spectral light (cue organ music). It's been here a longggg time for the coral has grown up around and over it - one obstacle is actually finding a way into the structure through the maze of coral growth around it. Another is encountering a sea creature that lairs in it (a random encounter in essence). Inside the structure is a realm in which mortals and ghosts can coexist/interact - a cross-over zone between the realms of the living and the dead. A hero of epic stature first found/conjured this place long ago, in an epic quest when this part of the world was above water (ask Devona why it's not anymore - probably because she didn't like such easy traffic between realms) - seeking to bring their lost love back from the dead (because this is not DandD and a stack of gold and diamond dust is not going to do the trick at your nearest temple). Encounters would be "your dead" - the dead who think of you or blame you. For Edbert that could be quite a list - Carlos might pop up yet again! Thus the name, it's Dead Man's Reef because here you can meet the dead. Sherilyn would manifest enough to communicate more rationally. The real test for Edbert and Veil would be convincing her to return to the land of the living rather than move on to her afterlife. The biggest question would be if "rational Sherilyn" still blames Edbert or not. In terms of controlling undead generally, if a 'ghost' can be met here and defeated it can be enslaved for a period of 1 year - so you could meet the ghost ship's captain and defeat them to gain control over it (Captain Nickula's goal, which should have some room to be met).

Rob Harper

I feel like the since the Soul Cage has been sitting in the Reef for so long, it's latent magics have likely been leaking out of it and affecting the local area over the years. The Cage's ability to "Transform Reality" is actually misunderstood by those whom have witnessed its workings, as they only see half of what's actually going on! The Soul Cage is more of a metaphorical bridge than a cage: Instead of it trapping and holding something inside of it, it sends the Soul of the user elsewhere. Those who activate the Soul Cage effectively reach -through- the cage and via mental command, are able to manipulate a single soul of their choosing, regardless of space or familiarity, letting them resurrect a dead family member on the other side of the planet, influence a ghost ship, banish a haunting spirit, etc. Alas, upon doing this, their own soul enters the Cage itself and is forced to traverse the bridge, ending up in another realm entirely! (There could be a gauntlet they may have to overcome if you like the idea of offering the ability to resist the second effect) Not only would this be an awesome way to tease the next adventure you would run (both the world AND the characters involved) but it also allows you to play with continuity a bit: Alternate realities, change of genre, portals, etc.! With all that in mind, the area surrounding the Soul Cage has since been affected by the Soul Cage's magic and it has now leaked the bodies or souls of creatures from other worlds/planes/dimensions into this world! This may explain how Ur-Osvathe (the particularly otherworldly-looking being) got here, and how he knows his only way back is via the Soul Cage! To those whom have only looked at the Soul Cage's work, it may seem like it's warping their own reality, but it is actually swapping things between a multiverse of realities. Now, whatever guards the Cage in the depths could be anything horrifying and wicked (if our beloved host wants to touch on some Eldritch Horror for a hot minute) or something altogether different, like a group of wise sea creature-type folk that are trying to keep it locked away from the rest of the world in attempts to stem the incoming tide of "Things That Don't Belong Here" so as to not upset the natural balance of this world! From an underwater kingdom to the many-eyed murder maws from the Void, this Soul Cage could lead to SO many wonderful and climactic possibilities!

SteelTheWarrior

I think that given the themes of the show so far, with Ur-Osvathe making extra-dimensional creatures while being trapped in a certain form, the undead ghosts and spirits with Cherilyn, the Order and the Flame, I think it would be interesting if the Soul Cage itself was actually in some kind of pocket dimension of some kind with trials and whatever within.

GDF

A potential setpiece environment for this could be swirling ships sailing through the ether. You must climb and jump from ship to ship amidst whirling debris going higher and higher until you reach the soul cage at the top of the ethereal mountain.

The soul cage is within a shimmering lighthouse that appears on the island only at night (the island was called Dead Man’s Reef because of the ships that were lured to the shoal and capsized). The inside of the lighthouse is a garish clockwork labyrinth that is impossibly large compared to the outside and spirals upwards to the soul cage at the top. In addition to clockwork automatons prowling the complex, the soul cage itself attempts to draw in all souls nearby, separating them from their physical bodies if needed.

Mustafa Khan

Long ago, a powerful wizard had a tower on an island of dead man's reef, where he created a powerful orb that could transform reality and even return the dead to life. While performing a spell, he had a terrible cataclysm, and the orb fell into the sea. Parts of the tower fell around it, caging this magical relic. Over the years, the magical power of the relic has transformed and tainted the local flat fish (Sole). Edbert must somehow swim/search through the ruined tower that is caging the monstrous Sole in with the relic!

Ben Waters

So this brings up a LOT of interesting tidbits of imagining the tidbits. I sort of want to trail back to pick at themes that have sort of 'surrounded' the soul cage throughout the season. So there has been a lot of misdirection and ancient power/history surrounding this artifact. It was pointed out on ancient ruins of a lost civilization and inscribed into the very side of an active volcano for goodness sake. So my idea goes like this. The soul cage is very much an item that holds real power. It can very much 'transform reality' as so desired by the one that wields it. So the Dead man's reef is very much a part of that transformation. It would take a great deal of searching, but I would posit that the 'reef' is actually an artificial creation. It is very lifelike when examined, but there is enough subtle giveaways that a weathered eye of these islands would be able to tell that they are in fact fake. The fake reef, after solving some sort of puzzle like from the final puzzle, are able to swim their way into a what seems to be a strange almost other world. The water disappears, seemingly held back by an unseen force, and all around there appears to be some kind of other world, ala hollow earth if you will. There is a strange haze surrounding everything, and the air itself feels like it's been charged with some kind of energy. I won't go too crazy into detail to avoid boxing any decisions in, but Edbert and any others realize they must 'trek' a ways to reach the soul cage. Along the way they run into various anomalies that seem to impede their path. It can be any number of random things, but the MAIN point of all of them is that it is trying to force the group to turn back. IE: A random appearance by Simon trying to convince Edbert it's not worth it, a wind storm that literally tries to physically push the group away, hallucinogenic affects, etc. As the group is approaching the location of the soul cage, they come across an area that is very much covered in symbols and evidence of dead people and death in general. Skeletons mostly of all shapes and sizes, weapons, perhaps even ghostly apparitions that all appear to be fighting one another endlessly in their ghostly forms. All of this surrounds a single focal point: the point where the Soul cage lies. The soul cage itself is an item that cannot be physical descried. Almost like a quantum effect where it literally defies description. Every time you try to assign a shape to it, it seems to morph or shift into something else. When one grabs the soul cage, they are instantly shown their heart's desire. Whatever that may be. However, they soon come to learn the price of that desire. The Soul Cage can do what so ever you wish, but it cannot create something out of nothing as the Universe rules. Thus it must TAKE energy, to CREATE or DESTROY energy... also known as, a Soul caged, for a Soul freed... In Edbert's case specifically, I envision a moment where he see's himself finally rid of Cherilyn, but that he must sacrifice the life of someone else to do so. Or if Veil looks in, that she could in-fact raise Cherilyn from death, but would need a sacrifice to do so, and knows that she could not just sacrifice Edbert, because as Cherilyn is tied to Edbert, her fate becomes his. If he dies, so too does Cherilyn, well and truly this time. Ultimately, the greater the 'ask,' the greater the payment must be. This whole idea being tied into that the 'Soul Cage' was intentionally very hard to track down, and that whoever did so understood just how much chaos and danger the world could plunge into if the Soul Cage fell into the wrong hands. Thus the ancient's efforts to hide it away in a very unassuming place, and hide traces in either very well hidden or very dangerous areas so that only they would know of it's true hiding spot.

C.T.Mac

I'm picturing a rib cage, with perhaps a gem in the center. The rest of the skeleton is jutting out of the reef like a ship's figurehead--strong HR Giger vibes here. What is the skeleton? I don't know... shark man, deep one, merman? Also, perhaps the rough coral texture is made out of countless tiny skulls on much closer inspection.