4/10 : In the session for 4/10, 2023, our party of adventurers, comprised of Isa, a tribal healer from the local oppida of the Bronze Men of the High Grass Valley; her friend Moonstaff, assistant to the tribe’s shaman and initiate into the elemental god of Fire; together with Longfoot, a local tracker, hunter, trapper, and beastmaster; Leo, the Ducal Keep’s Master of Horse and captain of the Special Watch of Mellipolé; and Misha, crossbowman, engineer, and all around lurker in shadows, found themselves depleted of energy, battle-fatigued, and somewhat worse for wear. Well healed after fighting their way through several encounters in the caverns perched above the hidden valley of the Fins, and hewn into the side of the butte known as Broken Tooth Mountain, they nonetheless needed to rest. Unable to retrace their steps back down the mountain, they decided to take turns napping in the half explored and heretofore quite dangerous caves, while they recouped their energies for the suspected final push into darkness.
The party, overcome by exhaustion, soon found themselves within the realm of shared dream, wherein they encountered the diminutive figure of an unusual stone age woman who claimed not only to be the special charge of the Beastmaster Longfoot, but also to have been previously associated with the tribal folk who once lived in this region. In this dream she was depicted as having been led morosely by a procession of these tiny people, into the very same caverns, in all the guise and regalia suggestive of a human sacrifice. Beckoning to the party as she entered the caves she pointed in the opposite direction of their most recent excursion, suggesting that they had yet more to learn before descending further on their current downwards trajectory.
Upon awakening, the party returned to a deep pit from which they had previously retreated, and, sending in their expert climber, Garvin, to find a traverse, found instead a ledge below the lip of the chasm, leading into heretofore unexplored chambers of the caves. Going down instead of across, they soon discovered a room full of murals. After meditating on their meaning, and collectively reassembling a shattered final panel, the party was enlightened on the ancient history of the area, the Pinar people who once inhabited the Fins, and the demonic entity which now seemed to possess the caverns and the Valley as his own, a former hero of the Pinar, Aska of the Fins.
Delving deeper led to a crystal chamber and apparent shrine to the great Mistress of the Hunt, a goddess worshiped in many times and places and under many names. One of her devotees was luckily the previously maimed Beastmaster, Longfoot, whose prayers and offerings to the goddess were answered with a special boon, the ability to transform at will into a huge and ferocious panther. The rest of the party also received special healing and fortification after drinking from the magical waters of the goddesses’ font. Sacrifices of treasure were duly made, as well as pledges to remove the evil influences now present in the valley, and to purify the former sanctuary. Meanwhile, as they were exploring the history of the caverns, a telepathic message came that outside a probably magical blizzard was beginning to rage. It had become clear that there would be no easy leaving the Fins if this primal and elemental menace were not soon dispatched.
Newly fortified by the goddess and armed with spiritual weaponry gathered from the deceased artist-shaman, the party returned to its downward trajectory. Overcoming a metallic constructed guardian of bronze with liquid flowing metal in its tubular copper veins, they uncovered a secret passage. Behind this lay long wide corridors, seemingly melted right into the bedrock of the butte, and lit by magical glowing crystals lining its walls. Finally, they came to a circular chamber, centered on a raised lip and capped by a slab of black marble with dark and gold-flecked crystals growing from its surface. All about the perimeter of the room were other enormous quartz crystals, all but one of them seemingly burnt out, cracked, friable, and smoky in clarity. One of these crystals on the far side of the room, however, still glowed faintly with a flickering blue fairy-light that seemed to project itself into the quartz matrix only after crossing some vast and incomprehensible distance in space time. Heeding the warning of the doomed Ravenfolk Shaman, Yipsilix, who had been their traveling companion since they entered the caverns, they decided to leave this crystal unmolested and to open the marble and crystal-capped dias instead.Â
In doing so, however, they had inadvertently released a swarm of giant centipedes which poured forth from under the great stone cap, mandibles oozing clear viscous venom, their stinging bites landing against the warriors, left and right. When the battle was over there were several dead centipedes littering the floor, numerous party members potentially poisoned, and Yipsilix, who lay dying, his black feathered arm mangled by the blunt force of one of the insectile creature’s crushing bite. Now, the delvers stand bemused by shock and trepidation, breathing in the vile miasma of rotting flesh and bitumen radiating from the yawning portal they have only just unsealed. Below yawns the presumed lair of the genius loci of the mountain known only as Aska of the Fins, as Yip’s dying whisper echoes in their ears, “He is free!”
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