Mile High Lullaby, Episode 1: Loveland Ski Area
We meet our intrepid heroes for this campaign at 11,000 feet, on a sparkling winter day at Loveland Ski Area. While all are there for different reasons, love of adventure is hardly one of them...most are reluctant visitors, and the peak’s rugged beauty is less of a draw than the warm fire place and activities happening at the Lodge.
We meet Alvin Redding, paladin, devoted son, Juggalo, scion of the vaunted Redding family and heir to the Red Rocks Environmental Development corporation (RRED). He is here with his best friend, former Juggalo/sell-out/RRED Head of PR, Danny McGee, and Alvin’s beloved mother, RRED CEO Elizabeth Redding (a Gucci devotee even in the face of single digit temperatures). Ever the good son, Alvin channels his fire genasi power to conjure flames and warm his mother, strange looks be damned. Elizabeth and Danny are slightly more concerned about the looks.
We meet Io Morrow, blue-haired air genasi astronomer, as distant as her objects of study. A druid with a connection to the cosmos as strong as any other’s connection to the land, she feels the pull of the stars and a simmering disdain for the light pollution that robs Denver and surrounds of their sky. She is here holding an educational lock-in for teens about light pollution activism with her fellow professor Evelyn Schneider. Evelyn prefers to be called Cassiopeia. Io refuses.
We meet Cedy Doun, a longstrider shifter of unicorn heritage that gives him unmistakable features that turn the heads of even cosmopolitan Denverites: the powerful haunches and hooves of a palomino horse and the upper body of a man, with a horn in his forehead that serves as the equine wizard’s built-in wand. Highly intelligent, educated, and wise, Cedy also possesses the high-strung nature of his ancestor...and a nasty narcolepsy curse placed on him by a witch he knows only as Naproxen.
We meet Lute, a drow farmer who is having a very, very hard time with all the sun shining off the snowy peaks, the ensuing snow blindness likely not what her coworkers intended when they sent the workaholic farm hand to the mountains for a rest. She is a simple woman, a bit of a bumpkin, but also a stout warrior and an absolute genius with mechanics. Lute feels out of place on the mountain, surrounded by the wealthy at play, thrill seekers, activists, and the occasional wandering curiosity, but at least she’s given a proper jacket before the sun sets on the mountain.
Io and Evelyn capture the attention of their fellows, preaching the ecological impact of light pollution on the environment, animals, and even people. They’re watched closely by pair of humanoid Denver police in the while and gold uniforms worn by all members of the theocracy. The astronomers’ diatribe turns critical of the gold-plated rooftops of Denver, mandated to honor the Sun Goddess Amatis, and they are interrupted by a Department of Wildlife ranger, who clandestinely alerts them to the authorities about to put an end to their lecture.
The ranger, a young woman with a bobbed haircut, heavy black eyeliner and a chip on her shoulder, seems to be familiar with two members of ski patrol: a stunning woman with long wavy black hair and mischief all over her face introduces herself as May, and gets Lute a coat so the poor drow doesn’t freeze. A tall, muscular man with a waist-length braid introduces himself as Chris and warns the newbies not to take the peak lightly.
As the day turns into evening and the final lifts are coming in for the day, the valley is rocked by the sound of an explosion, and an avalanche crashes down the slopes. The last occupied lift chair is buried under a mass of snow, threatening to suffocate or crush the family of three trapped beneath it.
On the bunny slopes east of the lift, a ski class is slammed down the slope by the avalanche onto the village pavement. To the horror of the instructor, two of the children from the class didn’t make it to the bottom.
Our heroes realize that under so much snow, the victims likely have 3 minutes or less before they suffocate. The countdown begins.
Alvin and Lute leap into action to save the lost students, following the baying guidance of Chris’ two basset hound assistants, Tybalt and Mercutio, who he rushes up the mountain in a sled pulled by a snowmobile. Faced with powdery snow that can’t hold their weight, Alvin uses his natural fire to make a solid icy crust for himself and Lute to run on, and they use their considerable strength to dig out 8-year-old Alex and his 9-year-old sister Rocio. Alvin wraps the boy in his coat and makes a tiny bro for life. When Lute pulls Rocio from the snow, she recognizes the girl likely has a collapsed lung, and sends her down the hill with May on the snowmobile to get her to treatment from the Emergency Clerics as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, Io announces to all present that she’s detected the smell of gunpowder, and a massive brown wolf digs furiously at the spot where the last lift chair is buried. Io, driven more by curiosity perhaps than by any innate heroism, follows the wolf and helps dig...using her magic, she detects not just the family of three under the snow, but a fourth figure as well. Cedy, possessing hooves and a skiddish nature, considers fleeing until a small child on tiny skis bumps into him while trying to scramble up the slope. Learning that the child’s mom, dad, and sister are the ones trapped under the fallen chair, Cedy straps skis to his hooves, scoops up the child on his back and carries the little boy up the mountain.
Their charges safely delivered to the keeping of Ski Patrol, Alvin steals Chris’ snowmobile and Lute wisely rolls her way down the slow to the fallen lift. Realizing that one of the 4 shapes under the snow is somehow rising, the wolf shoulders the small child out of the way, and Cedy pulls the kid away from the hole. Io grabs a fascinating crystal as it rises to the surface, only to lose her hold on it when the wolf clamps its massive jaws down on her wrist. Alvin and Lute immediately start digging, knowing the clock is ticking for the buried family.
As the crystal falls, the first hand is uncovered from the snow...a man. The wolf grabs the unconscious man by the coat and starts dragging him down the hill. The fallen crystal snaps into a living being of ice and malice, and attacks our heroes with savage claws and frigid breath that’s so cold it burns. Alvin shrugs off the attacks of the creature, instead focusing on digging out a second figure...a little girl. The boy in Cedy’s care takes his sister down the mountain, and the wizard turns his considerable brain to the task of identifying the creature and its weaknesses...an ice mephit, impervious to cold but vulnerable to force or fire. Lute’s skill with a pitchfork becomes incredibly handy against the brittle creature, and Io hurls fists full of stars at the ice imp to melt its defenses.
Alvin pulls an unconscious woman from the snow and gives her the very shirt off his back, his hair flaming with righteous anger and generating as much body heat as he can for the frozen mother. Slashed, frozen and battered, our heroes defeat the mephit and take a moment to lick their wounds. Chris appears, snowshoe-clad and riding the back of May’s snowmobile. Fortunately, as far as dudes go he is about as chill as they come, and he’s here to take the mother back to base camp, not to raise the issue of the stolen snowmobile. His hounds no longer bay urgently, but instead offer tail wags of a job well done. May checks on the party and gives her congratulations and very charming wink or two before returning to her ski patrol duties.
The large wolf appears again and, in a flurry of fur and magic, transforms back into the shape of the bob-haired Wildlife ranger, who at last introduces herself as Chipeta. With a an entirely inconvenienced groan, she casts a healing spell that fully restores the entire party as effortlessly as rolling her eyes, which she does - a lot. After a brief conversation with someone that our heroes can neither see nor hear, Chipeta tells them that they’re expected.
The party follows the wolf druid up the slopes to an impossible cave that could neither exist nor be hidden if it did, but here we are. “Grandmother wants to see you,” Chipeta tells them, and, much chagrined, adds by way of directions through the magical labyrinth of caves, “Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother’s house you go. The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh.”
The party is thusly left to navigate the cave, which is warm and smells like autumn, with the sound of running water guiding them to a subterranean river. They ford the warm water and emerge into a forest, or at least the essence of a forest, as the scent of pine and feeling of soft fir needles on their skin doesn’t seem to have any source that our company can detect.
They come at last to three separate paths, and, remembering Chipeta’s unenthusiastic rendition of the song, everyone looks to Cedy to see if, in fact, the horse knows the way. Suddenly aware of something strange in his pocket, Cedy realizes that something has been pickpocketed onto him - a stone, with three indentations but only one that passes all the way through. Matching the stone to the orientation of the cave, Cedy guides the party through a doorway to a large den occupied by a massive, sprawling tree covered in autumn leaves and occupied by a mammoth coyote wearing a beaded headress.
Grandmother Coyote welcomes the heroes with a smile that has entirely too many teeth and thanks them for helping her children. Chipeta, May, and Chris, it turns out, are all members of the Mouache tribe, who have been charged with keeping the Nameless trapped under the Continental Divide for as long as the people have inhabited these mountains.
Grandmother then poses a classic riddle to the company: “When you walk the mountain, you come to two paths. One leads to the Sacred Valley, another leads you astray and you wander forever. Two golden reflections of the same woman appear at the head of each trail. One always tells the truth, and one always lies. What should you ask to determine who is who?”
Thanks to Cedy’s powers of logic, they answer the riddle to Grandmother’s satisfaction, who then poses another...a riddle that does not yet have an answer, but that they must seek the answer to, instead. “Now what do you do if both reflections are liars? What do you do if neither knows the way to the Sacred Valley, and they lie to keep everyone at the base of the mountain, under her?” Charging our heroes to find the answer to this unanswered riddle and to help her children keep the Nameless contained, Grandmother Coyote offers them a gift, if they can find it, and they sense that they have taken enough of the ancient predator’s time.
On the way out of the cave, our heroes catch sight of something in the summery river. Alvin fishes it out and finds beaver skin with strange pictoglyphs shaved into it. As they ask themselves what the skin might be, the glyphs come to life and sketch out the shape of the slope, and show a safe path down the mountainside and back to the village. Reunited with Chipeta at the entrance, our heroes make their way down the mountain, guided by the beaver skin map.
As they pass, the smell of gunpowder hangs in the air.
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