And we’re back! If you don’t know why I’m posting on a Wednesday or providing nerdy Dungeon Crawl Classics content, check out either of the two links above. As I mentioned last time, the mighty Steve Grodzicki requested my next DCC treatment be Orthuun, the Blind Sovereign. When the awesome creator of Tales of Argosa speaks… let me tell you: the gods listen!
Demon-Gods Versus City-Gods
As I’ve mentioned previously, in the background of my Tales of Calvenor story is the cosmic struggle between what humanity call “demons,” roaming the wilds, and “gods,” who protect their cities. Both are immensely powerful immortal beings, and so I call them “demon-gods” and “city-gods” in my own worldbuilding documents. Think of them as titans versus Olympians in Greek mythology, which is the best analogy I can come up with from real-world lore.
The city-gods are pro-human, here to advance civilization and guardians of the cities that humans create. In DCC terms, they are the gods of Law. Each city has its own pantheon, and for the foreseeable future all the city-gods I’ll be outlining on Wednesdays are associated with my protagonists’ home of Oakton. Each pantheon of city-gods should, as a whole, represent different aspects of society that make humans’ cities vibrant and thriving. Quenvara the Rootmother, Oakton’s primary deity, is paradoxically a goddess of nature, because in Calvenor, cities can’t survive without a harmony with the natural world. We’ll meet other deities of things like music, sea trade, binding oaths, pleasure, medicine, and communication, because these things, too, are a part of human civilization.
Demon-gods, meanwhile, are here to tear down humans’ civilization. In DCC terms, they are the gods of Chaos. Demon-gods aren’t bounded by location, except that they thrive outside of civilization and roam the wilds between cities. As a worldbuilding note, I try and base each demon-god on a real, primary human fear. Orthuun the Blind Sovereign, for example, is a representation of humanity’s fear of the dark. There are also demon-gods of things like disease, fire, madness, and betrayal, because these are the things that tear human civilizations apart.
As long as I’m writing stories in Calvenor, there will be demon-gods raging against the walls of cities protected by city-gods. These immortal forces never manifest directly, but their minions, clerics, and manifestations essentially define the world in which my characters struggle to survive.
Writing Hadren Kelthorn helped me get in the mindset of what Orthuun would be like as a deity, and also who might follow a nihilistic demon-god of darkness and oblivion. Basically, Orthuun’s most devout followers are nihilists themselves, either because they’ve been beaten down by life or madness. They’re the “screw it, let’s just obliterate this world and start over” crowd. That said, Orthuun rewards his clerics with pretty sweet abilities!
I’m pleased with how the write-up came together, but I’m particularly happy with Orthuun’s holy quests. Set side-by-side with Quenvara’s, it’s easy to picture two characters being on opposite sides of the same mission, sent to destroy one another, or one hunting the other. As with so much of DCC, the story potential from these tables is dizzying.
Duskmarch 25, Hearthday, Year 731, the day of Sweet Requital in Oakton.
Maelen seethed. She would not survive floating eyes of death in the forest, face-eating skratt legions, insane cultists, and skinless nightmares only to be crushed in an earthquake. She would not die with coin-heavy packs that she never spent. Most of all, though, she would absolutely not watch more companions perish. Screw this Starless Rift! She wished she could punch Orthuun the Blind Sovereign square in the jaw.
With red mist clouding her vision, she roared forward, grabbing Alric by his oiled cloak and hauling him alongside her. Maelen’s boots hammered on the cavern floor, a rumble like thunder all around them. Debris skittered and danced, and rocks cascaded from above—at first smaller than a fingernail but soon as large as a fist. A stone glanced off her back and she shouted, “Go! Go!” to Vessa, three steps ahead of her, over the groaning earth.
The black mace’s handle slapped her thigh as she ran, its incessant hum in her ears. Maelen held her torch high, the speed of their flight and shaking ground making the light dance madly. She tripped briefly, her shoulder crunching into the jagged stone wall before rebounding. Yet she could feel none of her injuries as her panic-fueled rage grew.
By the time she’d reached the stone dais below the cavern entrance, Vessa was already climbing the rope hand over hand, her bow slung across her shoulders and heavy pack dangling from her back. She moved like a deer up a hillside, steps light and graceful despite the weight of her gear.
As she watched in horror, a rock from above bounced off the stone wall and struck Vessa hard, and for a moment Maelen thought she would let go and plummet to the floor. She hung limply by one arm, twisting above. Then the lass shook her head, grabbed the rope with her other hand, and repositioned her feet along the wall. Vessa continued upwards.
“Go!” Maelen said to the mage, tossing him bodily atop the dais. “Grab the rope and climb!”
“My staff…” Alric started, as Maelen vaulted to join him. The rumbling floor made even standing upright difficult now. She frowned when she saw the red and purple scraps of wet tissue littered across the dais, remnants of the first of those skinless creatures.
“I’ve got it!” she yelled. “Go!”
“Will the rope hold–?” he began, then saw the look on her face and paled. He turned, gripped the rope, and…
Climbed! Maelen always assumed the young man was weak because of his profession and lamed leg. Yet, she realized suddenly, she’d seen him again and again bash monstrosities with his staff and do real damage. And, she supposed, he compensated for his withered leg by bearing weight with his arms on that same stick every day. She’d never really considered that he might have some physical strength in that lanky torso of his. Without a second glance, the lad was pulling himself upwards, not as gracefully as Vessa but with steady, even movement. Maelen blinked, surprised.
Then something in the darkness crashed, like a boulder being pulverized, and she lurched into action. Maelen dropped the torch to the floor without looking back, picked up Alric’s staff and, in one clean motion, jammed it behind her, wedged between her travel pack and chain shirt. That done, she gripped the rope with thick, calloused hands, and pulled.
Alric’s question hadn’t been wrong. They’d descended one at a time, with lighter packs. Would the rope hold three of them, plus the treasure of the vault? She guessed they’d find out. With a vicious groan, she pulled, muscles bunching. Her boots found the cavern wall. She climbed.
The noise was deafening now, a combination of constant thunder and crashing stone. Twice, rocks as large as her head fell from above, one narrowly missing her arm and another glancing off her pack. Had either struck her, she would have fallen, head over feet, into the darkness. She assumed that Vessa had made it to the surface by the time she’d made half the climb, and soon after the light from above began reaching the glistening, water-stained rock all around her. Maelen was close. She yelled again, shoulders burning and hands aching, for what felt like days. Voices above her urged her on, though she couldn’t make out words over the cacophony of the Starless Rift.
Eventually, hands gripped her shoulders, pulling her upwards. Rain spattered across her face. And, just like that, she lay on her back, her panting breath making puffs in the cold winter air. Maelen wasn’t sure how long she lay there, every pain now flooding back, before Vessa called out.
“Look!” she croaked, the lass’ voice raw.
Like a turtle on its back, Maelen rolled awkwardly. She shrugged her shoulders in the steady rain to release the heavy pack and Alric’s staff so she could sit. Maelen glanced at Vessa, who sat three strides away on her knees, mouth open. The lad lay on his side between them, staring in the same direction. Maelen turned to follow their gazes.
The Starless Rift was sealing itself. The two sections of muddy plains now only lay a short leap apart. Even as she watched, still and stunned, the earth rumbled and groaned, each side reaching for the other. Over the next stretch of time—she couldn’t have said how long—the two sides met, the crack sealed. The rumbling thunder echoed across the plain, low and distant, and then fell silent. Only churned soil, the shape of a long crescent, remained.
In that moment, she thought of her mouse Tatter. The little friend had been with her for over two years and survived the worse this world could throw at them. When she’d scampered away in fear from the monstrosities in the shadows below, Maelen assumed they would find each other again. But now, with the Starless Rift closed, any hope of reunion died. The mouse was probably dead, in the darkness and offal stink of those caverns, and if not dead then trapped. A sob threatened to escape her mouth, but blind rage pushed it back. She struck the mud beside her with a fist and growled.
“What is it?” Vessa asked her.
“Get your asses up!” Maelen barked, pushing herself to her feet unsteadily. “We’re leaving this bloody place.”
“Mae?” her friend asked, but the warrior turned her back on her companions and stalked off in the rain, fuming.
She spoke little the rest of the day. It was impossible to know when in the day they’d emerged from the Starless Rift thanks to the steady storm, so she vowed to just keep walking north until it grew dark. Despite their injuries and exhaustion, she pushed them through the mud and rain, with far fewer and shorter breaks than her companions likely deserved. They didn’t push back on her militant march, though; Vessa and Alric were as eager to put distance from the Rift as Maelen.
As the journey lengthened, it became clearer that they’d emerged sometime in the morning. Was it the next day? Surely, they hadn’t spent more than that underground. Regardless, Maelen thought it made the accounting easier for when they’d reach waypoints and landmarks back to Oakton, assuming they made roughly the pace.
The longer they trudged across plains broken by low hills and dark, craggy rocks. As the miles dragged on, Maelen wondered at her own fury. Yes, she’d always been prone to getting into scraps, even as a young girl. But now the simple need for violence threatened to overwhelm her. Any increase in the rainfall, any unexpected slog of mud, any stumble by the mage—they all filled her with rage. Each slight complication, she held herself back from cursing angrily and often failed. Her fists bunched without her realizing it, tightly and painfully until her knuckles ached. Once, when Vessa whispered to her that she thought they should take a rest for Alric’s sake, Maelen barely avoided punching her friend in the jaw.
Was it the mace, she pondered? Surely the thing hummed to her in a tone only she could hear, and it seemed eager for combat. Did the weapon contain some sort of enchantment that manipulated her emotions? The very idea also made her want to strike something and smash it to pulp. But no, she thought the mace’s personality, if one could call it that, was much more jovial than destructive. Now that she considered it, the black weapon was like a mercenary companion of hers from years ago, even before the Larkhands, named Torin Bonebreaker. The man was crude, filthy, and built like a mountain, but always in uncannily good spirits. He looked forward to battle but wasn’t bloodthirsty for it. So too did it seem the mace was a humming, cheerful companion, happy to fight but otherwise just enjoying the traveling life in the beltloop at her hip. “If only it might rain more!” Torin would say if he were with them, “I don’t think the crack of my ass is wet enough yet!”
If not the mace, then why? It was the Starless Rift itself, and those skinless terrors, she realized. The utter wrongness of those creatures, combined with the oppressive darkness and bleak stone all around them, had triggered some animal instinct in her that she now found difficult to shut off. Like a cornered wolf, Maelen was snapping her slathering jaws at anyone who came near, even those meant to comfort her. She hated the uncontrolled feelings of it, but even as she spent the day grimly meditating on her emotions, could do nothing to erase it. Indeed, she almost wished the party would find more minions of Orthuun that she could destroy, that it would somehow purge her lust for violence.
They made camp in the rain, with little conversation amongst the three of them. Perhaps the only words spoken were when Vessa took inventory of their supplies and noted that they only had one more day of dry rations available, and only three torches that were both unused and had survived the constant wet. There was nothing to do about the torches, but Maelen told Vessa to keep an eye out for game on their journey, especially as they entered the forests of the Greenwood Rise. She must not have made the request respectfully, given that Vessa’s response was to spit and turn her back on her. Still, she felt confident that the lass would do some hunting, so mission accomplished.
Duskmarch 26, Stillday, Year 731
Shortly after setting out on the next day, the rain finally broke. By late morning the clouds had parted, showing cracks of blue sky and shedding the entire landscape in glistening, sparkling relief. The contrast from the previous day and horrors of the Starless Rift were stark, though it did little to lessen Maelen’s anger. For Alric and Vessa, however, the change seemed to allow for some light banter, and the two of them laughed several times at something Maelen couldn’t hear. Midday, after Vessa had crept away briefly to kill two chickens she’d spied in the long grass, the lad and lass sat closely and chattered while cleaning the animals. Maelen thought it was only a matter of time until Vessa bedded the mage and hoped she could wait until they’d returned to Oakton. The last thing Maelen needed was babysitting two lovesick kids.
Most of the day, they tromped through grassy plains stretching between occasional sandstone outcroppings. By mid-afternoon, the sky full of puffy clouds, numerous low ridges and scrub forests that preceded the Greenwood Rise appeared on the horizon. The trio topped a rise, and Vessa squinted, stopping abruptly.
“What is it?” Alric asked, looking at her with concern.
“It’s…” she licked her lips, sounding uncertain. “A tent, I think.”
Maelen shaded her eyes with one hand. Sure enough, far across the grasslands, near a low-lying ridge, was a structure that looked like a crude tent of some kind. White smoke rose from behind the tent, as if from a campfire. The more Maelen watched it, though, the less sense it made. The structure was somehow out of scale for the distance.
Vessa voiced her thoughts. “But it’s… massive.”
They ducked down in the tall, damp grass. Maelen figured that whoever set up the enormous tent couldn’t see them when they crouched, but equally there was no real place to hide their presence once they started moving. She swore, then tried to reign in her inner rampage.
“We’ve got two choices,” she said. “Backtrack and go a long way around, or head towards it and hope it’s someone willing to talk.”
“Perhaps,” Alric offered. “We wait to see if Vessa and her keen eyes can catch a glimpse of who might be setting up such a large tent in the wilds west of Oakton. Perhaps it’s knights of the Prince.”
“No banner that I saw,” Maelen shook her head. “You, Vess?”
The lass shook her head, rubbing at her bent nose in worry. “No. We’re carrying a lot of loot.” Her eyes scanned across Alric and Maelen. “And we’re awfully injured. We’ll look like easy marks to bandits.”
“But why such a large tent?” Maelen growled, her face a thundercloud of thought. “If you’re bandits, why make a bloody fire and announce yourself to everyone around?”
“It could be Saelith…” Alric whispered, and something prickled along her spine. Maelen still wasn’t convinced that a living being had escaped the Starless Rift, a general of a demon’s armies that was centuries old. But she’d also seen enough to make her cautious.
“Dammit all,” she scowled. “Let’s see if we can swing wide, then. Vess, you lead the way.”
The thief nodded and, still crouching, pushed back the way they’d come. Alric followed directly behind, bent awkwardly and his staff sticking up well above the waving grass. Maelen took up the rear and ventured a glance back towards the tent on the horizon.
Her blood went cold. A towering figure in furs and hides appeared from behind the tent, his head almost as tall as the structure. Even from this distance, Maelen could see that he was thick and heavy, his arms reaching down to his knees beneath broad shoulders. He walked with stooped, swaying steps to the side of the tent and paused, turning his slab of a back to them to look north, presumably at the Greenwood Rise.
“Giant!” Maelen hissed. “Keep your heads low!”
“Giant?” Alric paused, and Maelen shoved him forward. “Ow! Are there giants in the Redwood Marches?”
“There’s bloody one there now, you idiot!” she spat back.
Vessa, pushed her way through the grass, crouching and holding her bow low, leading them in a snaking pattern to a hill where they’d be unseen. It was maybe the worst possible position for Alric, whose lamed leg couldn’t support the crouch without the help of his staff. He fell several times, and each time Maelen unsympathetically dragged him up and barked for him to keep going. By the time they’d circled the low hill and paused, panting, even Maelen’s thighs burned with effort. A hundred bruises, cuts, and strained muscles protested as well. She groaned, stretching the leg and shoulder that hurt the most.
“Giant?” Vessa said, rubbing at her own wounded shoulder, the one struck by the rock. “You sure, Mae?”
She grunted in affirmation.
“It’s all Orthuun,” Alric panted, shaking his head.
“Drop it, lad,” Maelen admonished. “Not everything in the great wilds has to do with the bloody demon.”
“Don’t you see?” he said, a note of desperation in his voice. “Saelith the Vanished has arisen! He was one of Orthuun’s ten generals, to lead an army of darkness that will sweep over the land and destroy everything.”
“So?” Maelen scowled.
“So, a general needs an army…” Vessa gasped. “The giant is responding to… some kind of call?”
Alric spread his hands wide, as if revealing a magic trick.
“A general needs an army,” he nodded.
Maelen spat a particularly vile curse that surprised even her with its vitriol.
Okay, okay… I’m violating my own internal rules a bit. Last week, I rolled on the “Back to Base” table because Vessa failed her Luck roll to leave the dungeon of the Starless Rift without incident. Her result—damage—inspired me to set up a bit of peril in the entire party’s escape. Now I want to do a Montage to get them out safely. This decision is a double jeopardy for them, since they already had to make their Luck rolls. But dammit… it’s fun, so I’m keeping it.
As a reminder, Montages in Tales of Argosa are abstracted collections of activities towards a common goal. In this case, that goal is escaping the Starless Rift before it seals up. Each PC takes turns declaring how they’re achieving this goal, either for themselves or in support of the party. The trick is that no one can use the same activity twice. They need 6 successes and I’ll say the challenge level is Hard, so they will fail at 2 failures. Great Successes count as two successes, whereas Terrible Failures count as two failures towards the tally. In other words, one Terrible Failure and they’re stuck underground (I have no idea what happens then, but yay for emergent storytelling!).
Maelen triggered the flight out at the end of last chapter, so she’ll go first with the obvious Will(Leadership) roll to push them past their fatigue and injuries. She succeeds with a 7. Vessa will reach the hanging rope that they’d set up entering the Rift and will try a Dex(Acrobatics) to scamper up it. She succeeds with a 10. In a bit of a surprise move, Alric will try a rarely used Str roll to lug their loot-laden packs up with Vessa. He needs an 11 or less and rolls a nat-20, which is a Terrible Failure. Uh oh.
Alric will use his last Reroll of the adventure and try again: 5! That’s a Great Success! The party went from being trapped underground to a 4-0 count thanks to that Reroll. Put a bookmark here, though, because his lack of Rerolls might come back to haunt him. Maelen, not to be outdone by the scrawny mage, will do a Str(Athletics) roll to get them all up the rope and out of the chasm. She rolls a 4, which is another Great Success and the party is officially safe. I’ll say that Vessa’s 8 damage from last time occurs because of falling rocks.
XXV.
Duskmarch 25, Hearthday, Year 731, the day of Sweet Requital in Oakton.
Maelen seethed. She would not survive floating eyes of death in the forest, face-eating skratt legions, insane cultists, and skinless nightmares only to be crushed in an earthquake. She would not die with coin-heavy packs that she never spent. Most of all, though, she would absolutely not watch more companions perish. Screw this Starless Rift! She wished she could punch Orthuun the Blind Sovereign square in the jaw.
With red mist clouding her vision, she roared forward, grabbing Alric by his oiled cloak and hauling him alongside her. Maelen’s boots hammered on the cavern floor, a rumble like thunder all around them. Debris skittered and danced, and rocks cascaded from above—at first smaller than a fingernail but soon as large as a fist. A stone glanced off her back and she shouted, “Go! Go!” to Vessa, three steps ahead of her, over the groaning earth.
The black mace’s handle slapped her thigh as she ran, its incessant hum in her ears. Maelen held her torch high, the speed of their flight and shaking ground making the light dance madly. She tripped briefly, her shoulder crunching into the jagged stone wall before rebounding. Yet she could feel none of her injuries as her panic-fueled rage grew.
By the time she’d reached the stone dais below the cavern entrance, Vessa was already climbing the rope hand over hand, her bow slung across her shoulders and heavy pack dangling from her back. She moved like a deer up a hillside, steps light and graceful despite the weight of her gear.
As she watched in horror, a rock from above bounced off the stone wall and struck Vessa hard, and for a moment Maelen thought she would let go and plummet to the floor. She hung limply by one arm, twisting above. Then the lass shook her head, grabbed the rope with her other hand, and repositioned her feet along the wall. Vessa continued upwards.
“Go!” Maelen said to the mage, tossing him bodily atop the dais. “Grab the rope and climb!”
“My staff…” Alric started, as Maelen vaulted to join him. The rumbling floor made even standing upright difficult now. She frowned when she saw the red and purple scraps of wet tissue littered across the dais, remnants of the first of those skinless creatures.
“I’ve got it!” she yelled. “Go!”
“Will the rope hold–?” he began, then saw the look on her face and paled. He turned, gripped the rope, and…
Climbed! Maelen always assumed the young man was weak because of his profession and lamed leg. Yet, she realized suddenly, she’d seen him again and again bash monstrosities with his staff and do real damage. And, she supposed, he compensated for his withered leg by bearing weight with his arms on that same stick every day. She’d never really considered that he might have some physical strength in that lanky torso of his. Without a second glance, the lad was pulling himself upwards, not as gracefully as Vessa but with steady, even movement. Maelen blinked, surprised.
Then something in the darkness crashed, like a boulder being pulverized, and she lurched into action. Maelen dropped the torch to the floor without looking back, picked up Alric’s staff and, in one clean motion, jammed it behind her, wedged between her travel pack and chain shirt. That done, she gripped the rope with thick, calloused hands, and pulled.
Alric’s question hadn’t been wrong. They’d descended one at a time, with lighter packs. Would the rope hold three of them, plus the treasure of the vault? She guessed they’d find out. With a vicious groan, she pulled, muscles bunching. Her boots found the cavern wall. She climbed.
The noise was deafening now, a combination of constant thunder and crashing stone. Twice, rocks as large as her head fell from above, one narrowly missing her arm and another glancing off her pack. Had either struck her, she would have fallen, head over feet, into the darkness. She assumed that Vessa had made it to the surface by the time she’d made half the climb, and soon after the light from above began reaching the glistening, water-stained rock all around her. Maelen was close. She yelled again, shoulders burning and hands aching, for what felt like days. Voices above her urged her on, though she couldn’t make out words over the cacophony of the Starless Rift.
Eventually, hands gripped her shoulders, pulling her upwards. Rain spattered across her face. And, just like that, she lay on her back, her panting breath making puffs in the cold winter air. Maelen wasn’t sure how long she lay there, every pain now flooding back, before Vessa called out.
“Look!” she croaked, the lass’ voice raw.
Like a turtle on its back, Maelen rolled awkwardly. She shrugged her shoulders in the steady rain to release the heavy pack and Alric’s staff so she could sit. Maelen glanced at Vessa, who sat three strides away on her knees, mouth open. The lad lay on his side between them, staring in the same direction. Maelen turned to follow their gazes.
The Starless Rift was sealing itself. The two sections of muddy plains now only lay a short leap apart. Even as she watched, still and stunned, the earth rumbled and groaned, each side reaching for the other. Over the next stretch of time—she couldn’t have said how long—the two sides met, the crack sealed. The rumbling thunder echoed across the plain, low and distant, and then fell silent. Only churned soil, the shape of a long crescent, remained.
In that moment, she thought of her mouse Tatter. The little friend had been with her for over two years and survived the worse this world could throw at them. When she’d scampered away in fear from the monstrosities in the shadows below, Maelen assumed they would find each other again. But now, with the Starless Rift closed, any hope of reunion died. The mouse was probably dead, in the darkness and offal stink of those caverns, and if not dead then trapped. A sob threatened to escape her mouth, but blind rage pushed it back. She struck the mud beside her with a fist and growled.
“What is it?” Vessa asked her.
“Get your asses up!” Maelen barked, pushing herself to her feet unsteadily. “We’re leaving this bloody place.”
“Mae?” her friend asked, but the warrior turned her back on her companions and stalked off in the rain, fuming.
And with that, our party’s foray into the Starless Rift is done. They are a mess: Alric has no Abilities (including spells) left, no Rerolls, 6 Luck, and 7 hp. Maelen is out of Adaptable uses, has 1 Reroll, 8 Luck, and 10 hp. Vessa, who stayed unbothered through several combats, has 1 Trick and 1 Reroll left, but is at a measly 5 Luck and 2 hp. To make matters worse, Saelith the Vanished has escaped his centuries-long imprisonment and is now stalking the world. Yes, they have a good amount of treasure, but will they survive the journey to Oakton to spend it and recover?
To find out the answer to that question, we’re back to Hexploration. I’ve already rolled weather and got “Colder, Wetter,” so the poor party is stuck with more winter rain. Maelen will resume her role of Guide back to Oakton, and I’ll give her a +2 to her checks since she’s essentially backtracking. The difference is that Vessa won’t spend the day as a Scout with 2 hp. She’ll stick with the group and simply Look Out for danger. With the bonuses from her Wilderness Lore skill and backtracking, Maelen needs a 15 or lower on a d20 to successfully navigate. She rolls a 9.
The Bones are kind to the party on this initial flight from their defeat. The Twins of Fate say No/Nil to a Travel Event, and the Hammer of Judgment agrees with a No. The Fortune die, meanwhile, says Sun, so some sort of boon or positive sign to the day. Given how gloomy everything is right now, I’m not sure what that boon could be, so I’ll roll on the Fortune Die Examples in the rulebook: I get “Advantage on Stealth.” Ah. The rain shields them from danger for the day as they slink out of the area. Excellent.
That night, the PCs make camp. I deduct rations and realize that they only have 1 remaining each! Vessa will have to do some foraging. The book says GM discretion on whether to roll for a Night Encounter if there’s already been an event today. I’ll use the Fortune roll above to say they’re free of Orthuun or Saelith’s wandering eye and can get a full (albeit cold and wet) night’s sleep.
With the dawning of a new day, the PCs each get 1 hp back. The weather finally turns warmer and drier. Maelen crushes her Guide roll, so they’ll make extra good time back. Vessa will now Forage, and she succeeds, which means the party doesn’t need to use rations today. I’ll roll on my random hunting table: She finds some chickens. Nice.
So, a perfect day, right? I Consult the Bones: The Twins say Yes/No and Judgment says Yes to a Travel Encounter, with the Fortune die on Nil. Travel Event incoming! I roll Random Encounter. Eee! We’re in Plains & Grasslands, which is a different table than the Forests one I’ve rolled before. I get: “Palisade: A wooden palisade fifty feet on a side has been erected here, protecting a large tent within. A solitary Stone Golem stands outside the entry gate.” Whoah! I first read that as “Stone Giant” and thought it was the tent of said giant, but now see that it’s a golem guarding a tent. I am going to riff of my initial reading of it and say it’s a Hill Giant, plus add in the Orthuun/Saelith angle, with no palisade. Didn’t think we’d be here but yay for random tables!
Time to roll my Activity die for the first time in a long time: I get “Eating: Having a meal, cooking,” etc. Appropriately enough, I also roll a Reaction on the Hill Giant and get: Hungry. Let’s catch the narration up and then jump in!
She spoke little the rest of the day. It was impossible to know when in the day they’d emerged from the Starless Rift thanks to the steady storm, so she vowed to just keep walking north until it grew dark. Despite their injuries and exhaustion, she pushed them through the mud and rain, with far fewer and shorter breaks than her companions likely deserved. They didn’t push back on her militant march, though; Vessa and Alric were as eager to put distance from the Rift as Maelen.
As the journey lengthened, it became clearer that they’d emerged sometime in the morning. Was it the next day? Surely, they hadn’t spent more than that underground. Regardless, Maelen thought it made the accounting easier for when they’d reach waypoints and landmarks back to Oakton, assuming they made roughly the pace.
The longer they trudged across plains broken by low hills and dark, craggy rocks. As the miles dragged on, Maelen wondered at her own fury. Yes, she’d always been prone to getting into scraps, even as a young girl. But now the simple need for violence threatened to overwhelm her. Any increase in the rainfall, any unexpected slog of mud, any stumble by the mage—they all filled her with rage. Each slight complication, she held herself back from cursing angrily and often failed. Her fists bunched without her realizing it, tightly and painfully until her knuckles ached. Once, when Vessa whispered to her that she thought they should take a rest for Alric’s sake, Maelen barely avoided punching her friend in the jaw.
Was it the mace, she pondered? Surely the thing hummed to her in a tone only she could hear, and it seemed eager for combat. Did the weapon contain some sort of enchantment that manipulated her emotions? The very idea also made her want to strike something and smash it to pulp. But no, she thought the mace’s personality, if one could call it that, was much more jovial than destructive. Now that she considered it, the black weapon was like a mercenary companion of hers from years ago, even before the Larkhands, named Torin Bonebreaker. The man was crude, filthy, and built like a mountain, but always in uncannily good spirits. He looked forward to battle but wasn’t bloodthirsty for it. So too did it seem the mace was a humming, cheerful companion, happy to fight but otherwise just enjoying the traveling life in the beltloop at her hip. “If only it might rain more!” Torin would say if he were with them, “I don’t think the crack of my ass is wet enough yet!”
If not the mace, then why? It was the Starless Rift itself, and those skinless terrors, she realized. The utter wrongness of those creatures, combined with the oppressive darkness and bleak stone all around them, had triggered some animal instinct in her that she now found difficult to shut off. Like a cornered wolf, Maelen was snapping her slathering jaws at anyone who came near, even those meant to comfort her. She hated the uncontrolled feelings of it, but even as she spent the day grimly meditating on her emotions, could do nothing to erase it. Indeed, she almost wished the party would find more minions of Orthuun that she could destroy, that it would somehow purge her lust for violence.
They made camp in the rain, with little conversation amongst the three of them. Perhaps the only words spoken were when Vessa took inventory of their supplies and noted that they only had one more day of dry rations available, and only three torches that were both unused and had survived the constant wet. There was nothing to do about the torches, but Maelen told Vessa to keep an eye out for game on their journey, especially as they entered the forests of the Greenwood Rise. She must not have made the request respectfully, given that Vessa’s response was to spit and turn her back on her. Still, she felt confident that the lass would do some hunting, so mission accomplished.
Duskmarch 26, Stillday, Year 731
Shortly after setting out on the next day, the rain finally broke. By late morning the clouds had parted, showing cracks of blue sky and shedding the entire landscape in glistening, sparkling relief. The contrast from the previous day and horrors of the Starless Rift were stark, though it did little to lessen Maelen’s anger. For Alric and Vessa, however, the change seemed to allow for some light banter, and the two of them laughed several times at something Maelen couldn’t hear. Midday, after Vessa had crept away briefly to kill two chickens she’d spied in the long grass, the lad and lass sat closely and chattered while cleaning the animals. Maelen thought it was only a matter of time until Vessa bedded the mage and hoped she could wait until they’d returned to Oakton. The last thing Maelen needed was babysitting two lovesick kids.
Most of the day, they tromped through grassy plains stretching between occasional sandstone outcroppings. By mid-afternoon, the sky full of puffy clouds, numerous low ridges and scrub forests that preceded the Greenwood Rise appeared on the horizon. The trio topped a rise, and Vessa squinted, stopping abruptly.
“What is it?” Alric asked, looking at her with concern.
“It’s…” she licked her lips, sounding uncertain. “A tent, I think.”
Maelen shaded her eyes with one hand. Sure enough, far across the grasslands, near a low-lying ridge, was a structure that looked like a crude tent of some kind. White smoke rose from behind the tent, as if from a campfire. The more Maelen watched it, though, the less sense it made. The structure was somehow out of scale for the distance.
Vessa voiced her thoughts. “But it’s… massive.”
They ducked down in the tall, damp grass. Maelen figured that whoever set up the enormous tent couldn’t see them when they crouched, but equally there was no real place to hide their presence once they started moving. She swore, then tried to reign in her inner rampage.
“We’ve got two choices,” she said. “Backtrack and go a long way around, or head towards it and hope it’s someone willing to talk.”
“Perhaps,” Alric offered. “We wait to see if Vessa and her keen eyes can catch a glimpse of who might be setting up such a large tent in the wilds west of Oakton. Perhaps it’s knights of the Prince.”
“No banner that I saw,” Maelen shook her head. “You, Vess?”
The lass shook her head, rubbing at her bent nose in worry. “No. We’re carrying a lot of loot.” Her eyes scanned across Alric and Maelen. “And we’re awfully injured. We’ll look like easy marks to bandits.”
“But why such a large tent?” Maelen growled, her face a thundercloud of thought. “If you’re bandits, why make a bloody fire and announce yourself to everyone around?”
“It could be Saelith…” Alric whispered, and something prickled along her spine. Maelen still wasn’t convinced that a living being had escaped the Starless Rift, a general of a demon’s armies that was centuries old. But she’d also seen enough to make her cautious.
“Dammit all,” she scowled. “Let’s see if we can swing wide, then. Vess, you lead the way.”
The thief nodded and, still crouching, pushed back the way they’d come. Alric followed directly behind, bent awkwardly and his staff sticking up well above the waving grass. Maelen took up the rear and ventured a glance back towards the tent on the horizon.
This situation feels like it warrants a simple Fate question: Is the hill giant (which is what I’ve placed in the scene instead of a stone golem) in a position to spot them? I’d call the chances “Unlikely” on the Mythic GM Emulator Fate Chart, but with the Chaos Factor at 7 this still provides a 65% chance of a Yes. I roll a 20… the giant definitely can spot them.
In that case, it’s time for a Group Dex(Stealth) check, where two of our three PCs must succeed to avoid notice. Vessa has the best chance of success and will roll first: Her 15 is below the 17 she needs and succeeds. How about Maelen? A 14 is just under her 15 target. Whew. So now Alric only needs to not have a Terrible Failure. His Dex is only 7, but he is trained in Stealth. He will succeed at an 8 or better, but needs to roll under a 13 to avoid the TF. My roll is… 4.
Well, fine. I spent time thinking up a backstory for the hill giant, what he was doing out on the plains, and how these details fit into the Orthuun/Saelith stuff, apparently for nothing. I’ll add him to the Characters List to possibly appear down the road and look for ways to make the massive tent somehow relevant later (also a helpful reminder to use that list!). This emergent storytelling stuff is fascinating.
Her blood went cold. A towering figure in furs and hides appeared from behind the tent, his head almost as tall as the structure. Even from this distance, Maelen could see that he was thick and heavy, his arms reaching down to his knees beneath broad shoulders. He walked with stooped, swaying steps to the side of the tent and paused, turning his slab of a back to them to look north, presumably at the Greenwood Rise.
“Giant!” Maelen hissed. “Keep your heads low!”
“Giant?” Alric paused, and Maelen shoved him forward. “Ow! Are there giants in the Redwood Marches?”
“There’s bloody one there now, you idiot!” she spat back.
Vessa, pushed her way through the grass, crouching and holding her bow low, leading them in a snaking pattern to a hill where they’d be unseen. It was maybe the worst possible position for Alric, whose lamed leg couldn’t support the crouch without the help of his staff. He fell several times, and each time Maelen unsympathetically dragged him up and barked for him to keep going. By the time they’d circled the low hill and paused, panting, even Maelen’s thighs burned with effort. A hundred bruises, cuts, and strained muscles protested as well. She groaned, stretching the leg and shoulder that hurt the most.
“Giant?” Vessa said, rubbing at her own wounded shoulder, the one struck by the rock. “You sure, Mae?”
She grunted in affirmation.
“It’s all Orthuun,” Alric panted, shaking his head.
“Drop it, lad,” Maelen admonished. “Not everything in the great wilds has to do with the bloody demon.”
“Don’t you see?” he said, a note of desperation in his voice. “Saelith the Vanished has arisen! He was one of Orthuun’s ten generals, to lead an army of darkness that will sweep over the land and destroy everything.”
“So?” Maelen scowled.
“So, a general needs an army…” Vessa gasped. “The giant is responding to… some kind of call?”
Alric spread his hands wide, as if revealing a magic trick.
“A general needs an army,” he nodded.
Maelen spat a particularly vile curse that surprised even her with its vitriol.
Duskmarch 25, Hearthday, Year 731, the day of Sweet Requital in Oakton.
Vessa groaned and rolled to her back. Something wet and sticky had sealed one side of her face to the floor and the motion tugged at her skin painfully. For several heartbeats she lay there, breathing through cracked lips and trying weakly to gain her bearings. Her entire body hurt, sharp stabs of pain everywhere alongside a deep ache.
Where was she? The floor felt hard, but soft, liquid forms touched her skin, sliding around as she touched them like lifeless slugs. The smell of rotten meat and the heavy, sharp scent of blood filled her nose.
She coughed and remembered in a start: The tomb! In Starless Rift!
Something crusted over her eyes, so she scrubbed at them with one hand and opened them wide, struggling to sit up. Even with her eyes open, there was only blackness. Panic seized her chest and she began panting, remembering the hordes of skinless terrors piling atop her companions… Maelen dropping from exhaustion and pain, ready to die… Vessa’s own desperate intervention, and—oh! Wings! She patted her shoulders awkwardly, trying to reach her back. The raven’s wings were gone as if they’d never existed.
She needed light.
For a long, terrified stretch of time, Vessa explored the space around her on hands and knees. The horrifying creatures’ organs and ropy muscles lay everywhere, sloughed bonelessly to the ground as they died. She tried to calm her own frantic breathing and the pounding of her heartbeat in her ears, to sense if any of the things’ telltale snuffling or clacking of teeth were nearby.
She heard nothing. The tomb was as silent as it was dark. Lifeless.
Sobbing, she found a single arrow, but not her bow, or the dagger she’d unsheathed from her boot to tackle the creature looming over Maelen. How far had she and the creature tumbled and fought before everything went dark? She remembered it abruptly ceasing its movements and beginning to disassemble. Then all light had gone out and…
She couldn’t remember anything after that. Her muscles felt stiff and half-numb, blood drying tight against her skin. How long had she been unconscious? Were her companions still here or had they left her? Were they dead? Visions of Maelen dropping her black mace to the stone floor, defeated… of Alric being buried under a pile of skinless bodies clawing at him.
“Maelen?” she croaked, her throat dry and voice rough. “Alric?”
No answer.
Truly panting now, her search became desperate. Her hands slid through wet, cold offal. She sobbed, pushing forward and patting in front of her. Vessa called out again, her voice high and frantic. Still no one answered.
She was alone. Trapped in darkness, with nothing to fight and no one to save.
It was the Larkhands, all over again.
With a sudden gasp of triumph, her hand touched a leather strap. Either her travel pack or the pack of a companion. She pulled it to her knees, slick fingers shaking and fumbling with the clasp. Snot ran over her upper lip as she cried loudly, pushing through the materials in the pack until she found the long, solid form of a torch. More searching produced a tinderbox. Shaking her head, shuddering with sobs, she clumsily struck flint and steel to no effect. Vessa growled and redoubled her efforts. There was a brief flicker of light as she produced a spark. Then another. Another. A fourth time was enough to catch the resin-soaked cloth. For a moment, nothing… and then fire bloomed at the tip of the torch, shedding a dancing, orange light around her.
Vessa wiped a forearm across her running nose and tear-blurred eyes to look around, shoulders shuddering.
She was still in the tomb, its polished black walls making a perfect square topped by a low dome. Gore from the skinless terrors lay everywhere, only vaguely human-shaped and strewn seemingly haphazardly. Any etched runes along the walls or floors had been scratched out or split by spiderweb cracks. Her head scanned back and forth, eyes wild and wide, looking for her friends. Vessa pulled herself to her feet, body protesting with pain and stiffness, and swept her torch around in a wide arc.
There! She stumbled, tripped, and stumbled again to where she saw Maelen’s legs, splayed beneath a mound of red tissue and stinking organs. Vessa dropped to her knees and pushed the offal away. Thankfully, the remnants of the abominations had only covered her torso, not smothered her face. Was she breathing? Maelen’s chest rose and fell slowly, steadily. The thief sobbed again, then wiped her eyes and searched for injuries.
Miraculously—and somehow wrongly, a tiny voice in her mind whispered—the most grievous wounds she’d seen as Maelen faced death in the battle had healed. How? Was Alric able to use his magic after she’d tackled away the creature looming over her? Still, the warrior’s flesh was riddled with bites, bruises, and angry scratches. Nothing fatal that she could see, but none of it would feel good, and Vessa didn’t think she had enough bandages to wrap everything. Maelen would be in very real danger of infection if they couldn’t treat those wounds.
Something in the shadows behind her groaned, and Vessa’s heart skipped a beat, a scream catching in her throat and threatening to escape. She whirled, holding her torch out defensively.
Alric, coated head to toe in crusted blood and scraps of gore, stirred weakly. She moved to him as quickly as her battered body could manage. He was alive!
Eventually, they all limped to the edge of the black, still pool to take stock of and address their injuries as best as they could manage around the column of warm air. Alric was the worst of them, both in terms of how many bite wounds he’d suffered as well as overall spirits. He looked ten years older than when they’d entered the Starless Rift, haggard and stooped, every movement eliciting a wince of pain. None of his wounds bled significantly, and once they’d cleaned him of the gore, they didn’t bleed at all. Vessa thought that odd but he rebuffed any attempts to discuss it. His new cloak, however, was as shredded as his robes had been, and utterly ruined. She gave him hers… she liked her older cloak’s fit better, anyway.
Maelen couldn’t keep the concern from her eyes or voice when she regarded Alric. “Lad…” she said, licking her lips. “Can you… heal yourself?”
The look he gave her was haunted and filled with shame. He shook his head grimly, then turned away.
Vessa moved to speak to him, but Maelen grabbed her bicep. “Leave it,” she murmured.
So, with a weary sigh, Vessa worked to address her and Maelen’s wounds as best she could, cleaning them both of as much from the horrible nightmare they’d experienced as possible. When that was done, they were still filthy and stunk worse than a tannery, but it still felt considerably better than being caked in gore.
For the rest of her torch’s life, she navigated carefully and filled with disgust through the places in the tomb where they’d fought the skinless terrors. Vessa found her bow, dagger, and enough arrows to half-fill her quiver. When she returned to the warmth of the poolside hole, she handed Maelen back her heavy mace. The warrior took it and stared down at its black, spiked head for a long while, jaw clenched, longer than Vessa lingered. Both of her companions, it seemed, had winding paths in their own thoughts to explore.
She only had two torches left in her travel pack, same as the others now. With a weary sigh, she lit one of them and wandered back to the tomb. Ignoring the viscera strewn everywhere, she picked her way towards the central area, where Saelith the Vanished had been entombed. The concentric circles of runes all around the indentation in the stone were littered with cracks, shards of basalt crunching under her boots as she approached.
The circular tomb was empty. Vessa wished she was surprised, but it’s what she expected. Those horrific creatures had been working like bees in a hive to weaken the magic here and, apparently, they succeeded. Was Saelith alive again, walking the caverns somewhere nearby? Or was his liberation simply part of a larger ritual, the body now gone to serve some grander purpose for the demon-lord Orthuun? Surely Alric would have an opinion, some theory he would want to research back at the Inkbinders Lodge.
The thought of Oakton made her chest seize in longing, and for a moment Vessa couldn’t breathe. Whatever was happening in the Redwood Marches—the corrupting influence of a dark god and its army’s generals—it no longer had anything to do with Vessa Velthorn. Maelen had promised her that once they’d left this place, they would return to the city and stay there for a long while. She would take whatever coin they’d recovered from this place and make a life beneath the stretching branches of the Argenoak. She would rebuild the reputation she’d enjoyed with the Larkhands as a thief-for-hire, breaking into merchants’ vaults and guild houses once more. She looked down at the lark tattoo on her hand and smiled grimly. Nightwights and corrupted skratt hordes and certainly skinless monstrosities would be reserved for her nightmares from now on, and nothing more.
Envisioning home provided her with a spark of energy, and Vessa left the vacant circle in the room’s center to explore the far sides of the vast room, away from where they’d entered and fought the terrors. Discarded piles of organs still lay strewn here, but few enough that she could avoid them easily. Vessa held her torch out front, the orange light dancing over the black stone and its scratched, defaced symbols.
She stopped, blinking. Ahead, a section of the wall was open, pushed inwards like a door though it had no handle or visible hinge, twice as tall as Vessa and three times as wide. When they’d first entered, had this door been open? The thought unsettled her. She didn’t think so, though it was possible their collective torchlight didn’t reach to the far side of the room. Still, as she soared over the battle—she had flown!—Vessa was sure she would have seen such a large opening. She glanced over her shoulder to check if one of her companions was there with a torch but no. She was alone. Hm.
Carefully and quietly, she stalked towards the opening. As she approached the wall, her eyes roamed over the surface and her ears searched for any noise beyond her flickering torch. Sensing nothing, she stepped into the opening.
On some level, she knew that she was taking unnecessary risks. Perhaps the day’s constant peril had numbed her to danger, or perhaps she knew in her bones that Saelith the Vanished had already left his prison. Whatever the case, Vessa found a tall rectangular room of the same smooth, basalt walls, much like the vault they’d discovered in Thornmere Hold.
It was just as sparsely filled, too. A few squat wooden chests sat neatly organized upon the floor, alongside a small scroll rack. The gold-gilded lantern with a stag seal that hung from a hook near the doorway was the twin of the one she’d sold three months ago and was the strongest evidence that this place was indeed created by the same ancient order that had buried the artifacts within Thornmere Hold. Alric would be pleased, with plenty of new theories to occupy his time. Vessa hoped those chests held coin, or at least valuable items they could sell. Grinning, she turned to go fetch her companions.
As she exited, her eyes caught something in the firelight. A small dark blemish on the otherwise smooth stone of the door. She bent down, bringing her torch to see. It was… a keyhole? She fished the golden key she’d retrieved from the corpse. The key slid perfectly into the lock. So. A locked vault, after all, with a barely perceptible keyhole along the blank surface of wall one would have to know existed. But how had it opened, especially after the battle? And why were the contents still here? Unless there had once been more housed in the vault? She shook her head, padding away. More mysteries of the Starless Tomb.
She found Maelen and Alric in the same place she’d left them, on opposite sides of the column of warm air. Maelen still stared absently at her weapon, while Alric’s back was to her across the hole in the floor, eyes unfocused and head bent. Vessa doubted they even noticed she’d departed, much less returned.
“Hey,” she said. Maelen’s head snapped up, her face a thundercloud of anger. Alric blinked slowly and, painfully, turned his body back to face them both. Vessa waited until she had both of their attention and ignored her friend’s glare. “I found something. Come on.”
They gathered their packs and she led them through the rocky corridor and back to the tomb, then around its perimeter towards the back wall. Neither of her companions spoke while they moved, each still lost in thought. When Vessa glanced back to check they followed, she couldn’t decide which expression concerned her more: Maelen’s scowl at everything and anything, or Alric’s abject despair. She wondered briefly how she must appear. Could it be that she was the least haunted by this awful place? Whatever the case, they all needed to be free of it, and soon.
When they returned, the vault door still lay pushed open. Vessa stepped into the middle of the room and turned in a slow circle, holding her torch before her, to show the chests and scroll rack. The air in it felt stale, oddly still.
“Treasure, Mae,” she said. “And perhaps answers, Alric.”
Maelen grunted and pushed into the room, immediately dropping to her knees in front of a chest and examining the lock. Alric limped to the scroll rack and settled himself painfully in front of it. Vessa grinned. Good.
For another full torch’s light, they worked. And with each passing discovery, both of her companions returned to some semblance of their former selves. In the end, they’d profited an entire chest each of old copper oaks and another of silver thorns. Not any golden crowns here, but still enough money to—almost—be worth the misery they’d endured.
In addition to the coins and the golden lantern, one chest included two items: First, a carefully packed silver chalice that Alric immediately declared magical, though he said he would need to study it in more detail to understand its properties. Second, a long wooden case that revealed a needle, like an oversized sewing needle, as ebon black as Maelen’s mace and seemingly made of the same alien metal. Alric declared it magical as well, and when he laid the needle upon the floor it slowly turned on its own volition, then stopped. Alric tapped his lip with a finger, puzzling at its intent, before returning it to the case.
The mage also took four scrolls. One, he said, was a written log on the construction of Saelith’s prison, while another seemed to be a journal from early years here by one of its occupants. Alric said both documents would be invaluable to uncovering the history and intent of the order who’d fought Orthuun long ago. The final two scrolls were magical spells, though again he said he’d need to study them to understand their intent. His mention of spell-scrolls sent a thrill through Vessa, and she again remembered flying over the tomb on her giant raven’s wings. Perhaps, she thought, there would be one positive memory of the Starless Rift, at least as its other horrific visions faded. She’d flown.
By the time they’d filled their travel packs and pockets, Maelen was again ordering them around with grim efficiency, and Alric was positing ideas about the greater meaning of ancient orders. Vessa hoped their lifted spirits would endure through the return to the surface and desperately, desperately wished that return would be terror-free.
Maelen was the last to leave the vault. She lingered there, squinting.
“What is it?” Vessa asked.
“It’s… emptier than Thornmere Hold,” she said slowly. “I’m not complaining about the coin, mind you, but…”
“You think Saelith took something before he left?” Alric said thoughtfully. “Yes, that makes sense. He undoubtedly was the one to open the vault in the first place. He was looking for something, and now has it.”
The doom of that sentence hung in the air. Vessa cleared her throat. “It doesn’t concern us. He’s gone, and someone will fight him, but not us. We need to get out of here and back to home.”
Maelen blinked and nodded once. “Right enough. Let’s go.”
With so many coins weighing down their bags, Maelen didn’t think they could return the way they’d arrived, across the still pool of water. That decision suited Vessa just fine. Not only did she worry about both companions’ injuries, but she didn’t relish the idea of freezing to death, wet, without the warm column of air on the opposite side.
Yet by the time they’d left the vault behind, each of them was left with only a single unburnt torch each. They would need to navigate through unexplored caverns with the very real danger of getting lost and running out of light. As a result, they decided to have Maelen carry a single torch, keeping the other two as replacements. The warrior walked as briskly as she thought Alric could follow given his poor health and lack of walking staff, with Vessa close behind.
Thankfully, the cavern complex of the Starless Rift was not vast. Maelen located a hidden exit from the tomb that avoided the flooded chamber and led them around, through rocky corridors and, occasionally, open caverns, though none as large as the one that had housed the most gruesome of the otherworldly monsters. Indeed, they discovered no less than four additional piles of viscera, where more of the abominations must have been prowling when Saelith escaped. Alric guessed that somehow the ritual that had opened the Starless Rift had also spawned the awful minions throughout the cave complex.
“It all makes sense,” he said in his deep baritone, as they stooped at the pool’s opposite edge. They’d found their way back around to their previous route, and now the mage had his staff and Vessa her shortsword. “The members of the order that created this place hadn’t been corrupted like those the ageless figures from Thornmere Hold. Somehow the tomb seems to have held Orthuun’s corruption at bay. At least until Hadren cracked open the rift. Then, well…” He shrugged one shoulder and winced at the pain it caused. “We know what happened next.”
Those three members of the order had been slaughtered, and horribly. While other skinless creatures prowled the darkness hunting, the mass of them had gathered at the tomb to free the Blind Sovereign’s general. Once freed, the power of the ritual had been severed, which is why the abominations had all, as one, dropped lifeless to the stony floor. Vessa shuddered as she remembered it all.
Then a thought struck her, which she said aloud. “But if the ritual only lasted long enough to free Saelith… Why is the Rift still open?”
Alric paused, considering it.
And, as if the idea had triggered it, the entire cave complex shuddered once. A deep rumble echoed all around them, then settled into silence.
“What was–” Vessa began to ask.
“We go. Now,” Maelen cut her off.
They exited back towards the large chamber, filled with natural stone columns, where they’d fought the most terrifying of the skinless creatures and where the ancient orders’ members lay eviscerated. They hustled, all injured, without comment or question.
As they passed closer to the exit, the rumble began again, this time building and shaking the floor beneath them. A stray rock tumbled nearby.
“GO!” Maelen yelled, and they began a last, desperate flight through the darkness.
Duskmarch 25, Hearthday, Year 731, the day of Sweet Requital in Oakton.
Vessa groaned and rolled to her back. Something wet and sticky had sealed one side of her face to the floor and the motion tugged at her skin painfully. For several heartbeats she lay there, breathing through cracked lips and trying weakly to gain her bearings. Her entire body hurt, sharp stabs of pain everywhere alongside a deep ache.
Where was she? The floor felt hard, but soft, liquid forms touched her skin, sliding around as she touched them like lifeless slugs. The smell of rotten meat and the heavy, sharp scent of blood filled her nose.
She coughed and remembered in a start: The tomb! In Starless Rift!
Something crusted over her eyes, so she scrubbed at them with one hand and opened them wide, struggling to sit up. Even with her eyes open, there was only blackness. Panic seized her chest and she began panting, remembering the hordes of skinless terrors piling atop her companions… Maelen dropping from exhaustion and pain, ready to die… Vessa’s own desperate intervention, and—oh! Wings! She patted her shoulders awkwardly, trying to reach her back. The raven’s wings were gone as if they’d never existed.
She needed light.
For a long, terrified stretch of time, Vessa explored the space around her on hands and knees. The horrifying creatures’ organs and ropy muscles lay everywhere, sloughed bonelessly to the ground as they died. She tried to calm her own frantic breathing and the pounding of her heartbeat in her ears, to sense if any of the things’ telltale snuffling or clacking of teeth were nearby.
She heard nothing. The tomb was as silent as it was dark. Lifeless.
Sobbing, she found a single arrow, but not her bow, or the dagger she’d unsheathed from her boot to tackle the creature looming over Maelen. How far had she and the creature tumbled and fought before everything went dark? She remembered it abruptly ceasing its movements and beginning to disassemble. Then all light had gone out and…
She couldn’t remember anything after that. Her muscles felt stiff and half-numb, blood drying tight against her skin. How long had she been unconscious? Were her companions still here or had they left her? Were they dead? Visions of Maelen dropping her black mace to the stone floor, defeated… of Alric being buried under a pile of skinless bodies clawing at him.
“Maelen?” she croaked, her throat dry and voice rough. “Alric?”
No answer.
Truly panting now, her search became desperate. Her hands slid through wet, cold offal. She sobbed, pushing forward and patting in front of her. Vessa called out again, her voice high and frantic. Still no one answered.
She was alone. Trapped in darkness, with nothing to fight and no one to save.
It was the Larkhands, all over again.
With a sudden gasp of triumph, her hand touched a leather strap. Either her travel pack or the pack of a companion. She pulled it to her knees, slick fingers shaking and fumbling with the clasp. Snot ran over her upper lip as she cried loudly, pushing through the materials in the pack until she found the long, solid form of a torch. More searching produced a tinderbox. Shaking her head, shuddering with sobs, she clumsily struck flint and steel to no effect. Vessa growled and redoubled her efforts. There was a brief flicker of light as she produced a spark. Then another. Another. A fourth time was enough to catch the resin-soaked cloth. For a moment, nothing… and then fire bloomed at the tip of the torch, shedding a dancing, orange light around her.
Vessa wiped a forearm across her running nose and tear-blurred eyes to look around, shoulders shuddering.
She was still in the tomb, its polished black walls making a perfect square topped by a low dome. Gore from the skinless terrors lay everywhere, only vaguely human-shaped and strewn seemingly haphazardly. Any etched runes along the walls or floors had been scratched out or split by spiderweb cracks. Her head scanned back and forth, eyes wild and wide, looking for her friends. Vessa pulled herself to her feet, body protesting with pain and stiffness, and swept her torch around in a wide arc.
There! She stumbled, tripped, and stumbled again to where she saw Maelen’s legs, splayed beneath a mound of red tissue and stinking organs. Vessa dropped to her knees and pushed the offal away. Thankfully, the remnants of the abominations had only covered her torso, not smothered her face. Was she breathing? Maelen’s chest rose and fell slowly, steadily. The thief sobbed again, then wiped her eyes and searched for injuries.
Miraculously—and somehow wrongly, a tiny voice in her mind whispered—the most grievous wounds she’d seen as Maelen faced death in the battle had healed. How? Was Alric able to use his magic after she’d tackled away the creature looming over her? Still, the warrior’s flesh was riddled with bites, bruises, and angry scratches. Nothing fatal that she could see, but none of it would feel good, and Vessa didn’t think she had enough bandages to wrap everything. Maelen would be in very real danger of infection if they couldn’t treat those wounds.
Something in the shadows behind her groaned, and Vessa’s heart skipped a beat, a scream catching in her throat and threatening to escape. She whirled, holding her torch out defensively.
Alric, coated head to toe in crusted blood and scraps of gore, stirred weakly. She moved to him as quickly as her battered body could manage. He was alive!
Welcome to the aftermath of Saelith the Vanished being freed. On one hand, it’s awesome that all three PCs survived what was a nearly impossible encounter, and I’m rewarding them by a) allowing them some time to gather themselves without immediate threat, b) leaving them in the tomb where they still can find treasure, and c) keeping their gear mostly intact. On the other hand, they ultimately failed to both defeat the skinless terrors and keep Saelith imprisoned, which will likely shape the rest of their (possibly short) lives. Here are the consequences I decided as a result: First, everyone awakes at 1 hit point, even Vessa. Second, everyone loses 1 point of Luck (which feels fair, as it’s the equivalent of passing a Luck check against the hazard of Saelith’s liberation). Third, they’ll need to each burn an additional torch for recovering down here, leaving them with 2 each. If they stay exploring the Starless Rift, there is every possibility they will run out of light. Finally, Alric’s new cloak is shredded (which is fine, because it means they have three cloaks for three PCs).
That said, I’m going to give them a Short Rest in these hours after waking. Alric passes one of his two Will checks and it only makes sense to recover hit points, which will bring him to 7 of 14. Maelen thankfully passes both checks and will use one for hit points (10 of 20) and one to replenish her Supplies, just in case. Finally, Vessa also passes both checks and will use both for hit points (10 of 14). It makes sense to me that Alric gets the short straw on this recovery given his encounter with Saelith. His magic—and likely enthusiasm for using it—is currently gone.
I’ve already established that a Major and Minor magic item exist down here. Did Saelith leave the Major Item here, though? I’ll do a quick Fate roll, and the normally-50/50 chance gets bumped to 85% because of the Chaos Factor (which has climbed to a record-level 8!). But I roll… 90! He took it with him, and I’ll have to remember that if and when the party ever confronts him again. What a bummer for the party, but it both makes logical sense and adds an additional consequence for failing in the previous encounter.
Still, Saelith will have left the less important stuff (to him), which still means booty for the party. To figure out what this booty will be, I’ll use the Lair Treasure table in the Tales of Argosa rulebook, targeting the HD 3-4 line in honor of the skinless terrors and subtracting the Major Item. I roll 265 copper pieces, 840 silver pieces, 3 (aww…) gold pieces, a scroll of A Wisp Unseen (very cool… the same spell Hadren used in the Heart & Dagger to kick off this adventure), a scroll of Place of Perfect Night (another thematic addition), a scroll of “complex formulae and detailed charcoal sketches” which the rulebook says depicts a flying contraption but I’ll twist to say is the design for this prison, which may be valuable later, a “silver chalice with sun and star icons. If you warm yourself in sunlight for 15 minutes and drink from the cup, you don’t require food or drink for the next 24 hours,” which sounds very much like something placed by the ancient order against Orthuun, and, finally, an unblemished needle that I’m going to twist the description and function of to fit the story. By GM fiat, I’m also going to add the same item they found in Thornmere Hold: a gold-gilded lantern with a Calvenor seal on it (I’ve decided these go onto the possible Threads List, which includes an adventure seed that may or may not shape the story). No Major Item, but that’s still a lot!
Eventually, they all limped to the edge of the black, still pool to take stock of and address their injuries as best as they could manage around the column of warm air. Alric was the worst of them, both in terms of how many bite wounds he’d suffered as well as overall spirits. He looked ten years older than when they’d entered the Starless Rift, haggard and stooped, every movement eliciting a wince of pain. None of his wounds bled significantly, and once they’d cleaned him of the gore, they didn’t bleed at all. Vessa thought that odd but he rebuffed any attempts to discuss it. His new cloak, however, was as shredded as his robes had been, and utterly ruined. She gave him hers… she liked her older cloak’s fit better, anyway.
Maelen couldn’t keep the concern from her eyes or voice when she regarded Alric. “Lad…” she said, licking her lips. “Can you… heal yourself?”
The look he gave her was haunted and filled with shame. He shook his head grimly, then turned away.
Vessa moved to speak to him, but Maelen grabbed her bicep. “Leave it,” she murmured.
So, with a weary sigh, Vessa worked to address her and Maelen’s wounds as best she could, cleaning them both of as much from the horrible nightmare they’d experienced as possible. When that was done, they were still filthy and stunk worse than a tannery, but it still felt considerably better than being caked in gore.
For the rest of her torch’s life, she navigated carefully and filled with disgust through the places in the tomb where they’d fought the skinless terrors. Vessa found her bow, dagger, and enough arrows to half-fill her quiver. When she returned to the warmth of the poolside hole, she handed Maelen back her heavy mace. The warrior took it and stared down at its black, spiked head for a long while, jaw clenched, longer than Vessa lingered. Both of her companions, it seemed, had winding paths in their own thoughts to explore.
She only had two torches left in her travel pack, same as the others now. With a weary sigh, she lit one of them and wandered back to the tomb. Ignoring the viscera strewn everywhere, she picked her way towards the central area, where Saelith the Vanished had been entombed. The concentric circles of runes all around the indentation in the stone were littered with cracks, shards of basalt crunching under her boots as she approached.
The circular tomb was empty. Vessa wished she was surprised, but it’s what she expected. Those horrific creatures had been working like bees in a hive to weaken the magic here and, apparently, they succeeded. Was Saelith alive again, walking the caverns somewhere nearby? Or was his liberation simply part of a larger ritual, the body now gone to serve some grander purpose for the demon-lord Orthuun? Surely Alric would have an opinion, some theory he would want to research back at the Inkbinders Lodge.
The thought of Oakton made her chest seize in longing, and for a moment Vessa couldn’t breathe. Whatever was happening in the Redwood Marches—the corrupting influence of a dark god and its army’s generals—it no longer had anything to do with Vessa Velthorn. Maelen had promised her that once they’d left this place, they would return to the city and stay there for a long while. She would take whatever coin they’d recovered from this place and make a life beneath the stretching branches of the Argenoak. She would rebuild the reputation she’d enjoyed with the Larkhands as a thief-for-hire, breaking into merchants’ vaults and guild houses once more. She looked down at the lark tattoo on her hand and smiled grimly. Nightwights and corrupted skratt hordes and certainly skinless monstrosities would be reserved for her nightmares from now on, and nothing more.
Envisioning home provided her with a spark of energy, and Vessa left the vacant circle in the room’s center to explore the far sides of the vast room, away from where they’d entered and fought the terrors. Discarded piles of organs still lay strewn here, but few enough that she could avoid them easily. Vessa held her torch out front, the orange light dancing over the black stone and its scratched, defaced symbols.
She stopped, blinking. Ahead, a section of the wall was open, pushed inwards like a door though it had no handle or visible hinge, twice as tall as Vessa and three times as wide. When they’d first entered, had this door been open? The thought unsettled her. She didn’t think so, though it was possible their collective torchlight didn’t reach to the far side of the room. Still, as she soared over the battle—she had flown!—Vessa was sure she would have seen such a large opening. She glanced over her shoulder to check if one of her companions was there with a torch but no. She was alone. Hm.
Carefully and quietly, she stalked towards the opening. As she approached the wall, her eyes roamed over the surface and her ears searched for any noise beyond her flickering torch. Sensing nothing, she stepped into the opening.
On some level, she knew that she was taking unnecessary risks. Perhaps the day’s constant peril had numbed her to danger, or perhaps she knew in her bones that Saelith the Vanished had already left his prison. Whatever the case, Vessa found a tall rectangular room of the same smooth, basalt walls, much like the vault they’d discovered in Thornmere Hold.
It was just as sparsely filled, too. A few squat wooden chests sat neatly organized upon the floor, alongside a small scroll rack. The gold-gilded lantern with a stag seal that hung from a hook near the doorway was the twin of the one she’d sold three months ago and was the strongest evidence that this place was indeed created by the same ancient order that had buried the artifacts within Thornmere Hold. Alric would be pleased, with plenty of new theories to occupy his time. Vessa hoped those chests held coin, or at least valuable items they could sell. Grinning, she turned to go fetch her companions.
As she exited, her eyes caught something in the firelight. A small dark blemish on the otherwise smooth stone of the door. She bent down, bringing her torch to see. It was… a keyhole? She fished the golden key she’d retrieved from the corpse. The key slid perfectly into the lock. So. A locked vault, after all, with a barely perceptible keyhole along the blank surface of wall one would have to know existed. But how had it opened, especially after the battle? And why were the contents still here? Unless there had once been more housed in the vault? She shook her head, padding away. More mysteries of the Starless Tomb.
She found Maelen and Alric in the same place she’d left them, on opposite sides of the column of warm air. Maelen still stared absently at her weapon, while Alric’s back was to her across the hole in the floor, eyes unfocused and head bent. Vessa doubted they even noticed she’d departed, much less returned.
“Hey,” she said. Maelen’s head snapped up, her face a thundercloud of anger. Alric blinked slowly and, painfully, turned his body back to face them both. Vessa waited until she had both of their attention and ignored her friend’s glare. “I found something. Come on.”
They gathered their packs and she led them through the rocky corridor and back to the tomb, then around its perimeter towards the back wall. Neither of her companions spoke while they moved, each still lost in thought. When Vessa glanced back to check they followed, she couldn’t decide which expression concerned her more: Maelen’s scowl at everything and anything, or Alric’s abject despair. She wondered briefly how she must appear. Could it be that she was the least haunted by this awful place? Whatever the case, they all needed to be free of it, and soon.
When they returned, the vault door still lay pushed open. Vessa stepped into the middle of the room and turned in a slow circle, holding her torch before her, to show the chests and scroll rack. The air in it felt stale, oddly still.
“Treasure, Mae,” she said. “And perhaps answers, Alric.”
Maelen grunted and pushed into the room, immediately dropping to her knees in front of a chest and examining the lock. Alric limped to the scroll rack and settled himself painfully in front of it. Vessa grinned. Good.
For another full torch’s light, they worked. And with each passing discovery, both of her companions returned to some semblance of their former selves. In the end, they’d profited an entire chest each of old copper oaks and another of silver thorns. Not any golden crowns here, but still enough money to—almost—be worth the misery they’d endured.
In addition to the coins and the golden lantern, one chest included two items: First, a carefully packed silver chalice that Alric immediately declared magical, though he said he would need to study it in more detail to understand its properties. Second, a long wooden case that revealed a needle, like an oversized sewing needle, as ebon black as Maelen’s mace and seemingly made of the same alien metal. Alric declared it magical as well, and when he laid the needle upon the floor it slowly turned on its own volition, then stopped. Alric tapped his lip with a finger, puzzling at its intent, before returning it to the case.
The mage also took four scrolls. One, he said, was a written log on the construction of Saelith’s prison, while another seemed to be a journal from early years here by one of its occupants. Alric said both documents would be invaluable to uncovering the history and intent of the order who’d fought Orthuun long ago. The final two scrolls were magical spells, though again he said he’d need to study them to understand their intent. His mention of spell-scrolls sent a thrill through Vessa, and she again remembered flying over the tomb on her giant raven’s wings. Perhaps, she thought, there would be one positive memory of the Starless Rift, at least as its other horrific visions faded. She’d flown.
By the time they’d filled their travel packs and pockets, Maelen was again ordering them around with grim efficiency, and Alric was positing ideas about the greater meaning of ancient orders. Vessa hoped their lifted spirits would endure through the return to the surface and desperately, desperately wished that return would be terror-free.
Maelen was the last to leave the vault. She lingered there, squinting.
“What is it?” Vessa asked.
“It’s… emptier than Thornmere Hold,” she said slowly. “I’m not complaining about the coin, mind you, but…”
“You think Saelith took something before he left?” Alric said thoughtfully. “Yes, that makes sense. He undoubtedly was the one to open the vault in the first place. He was looking for something, and now has it.”
The doom of that sentence hung in the air. Vessa cleared her throat. “It doesn’t concern us. He’s gone, and someone will fight him, but not us. We need to get out of here and back to home.”
Maelen blinked and nodded once. “Right enough. Let’s go.”
I won’t bore you here with the accounting of it, but I’ve spread the loot across their various Gear Slots on the three character sheets. In the end, they must leave about 200 copper pieces behind, but I’ll just handwave the amount they found and say the total they discovered was 200 cp less, and that they can bundle everything back with them.
Speaking of handwaving, with their packs laden with loot, I don’t see how the party can successfully cross the black pool in the same way as before, though Alric will obviously want to retrieve his staff and Vessa her shortsword. At the same time, I’m not currently keen on continuing another 4-5 sessions of dungeon exploration as they make their way through an alternate route through the caves of the Starless Rift, especially if the primary foe (the skinless terrors) have returned to the void from whence they came. As a result, I’m going to use the very cool Back to Base rules in Tales of Argosa, which allow for a single Luck roll to see if each PC can make their way out of the dungeon (in this case) without major incident. If they fail, there’s a table to see what prevents them from doing so, and the consequences. It’s an elegant way to handle the situation I’m in, and especially great (as the rulebook states) for “West Marches-style” games that rely on each game session starting in a particular place, possibly with different players.
Unfortunately, the party is low on Luck. I’ll let them modify the roll with their strongest stat, based on what each PC relies on to get out of fixes. Let’s see how this goes: Alric will make a Luck(Int) check and succeeds with an 8. I’ll now reduce his Luck to a paltry 6. How about Maelen? I’ll give her a Luck(Str) check in hopes she can power her way through an obstacle or two. She unfortunately fails with a 12, though, and I don’t want to use her last Reroll to try again. As a result, she rolls on the Back to Base table and gets: Animal Death. Well, damn. I’d already said that Tatter ran away when sensing the skinless terror boss. Apparently, she’ll find (or not find) the poor mouse’s corpse and poor Tatter is no more. I never really figured out how to use Tatter in the story, but I envisioned it possibly becoming Alric’s familiar at some point. Oh well. Sorry to see you go, little rodent!
Finally, Vessa’s Luck(Dex) roll also fails with a 13, and I also don’t want to use her last Reroll. She takes Damage, which I’ll set as 1d10. If she rolls 10, things get hairy and I may need to slow down to deal with a… situation. However, another disaster (sort of) averted: 8 damage brings her to 2 hp. Ouch. I’ll have to figure out some narrative way to explain the added injury. Ohhh… I have an idea. Peril incoming!
With so many coins weighing down their bags, Maelen didn’t think they could return the way they’d arrived, across the still pool of water. That decision suited Vessa just fine. Not only did she worry about both companions’ injuries, but she didn’t relish the idea of freezing to death, wet, without the warm column of air on the opposite side.
Yet by the time they’d left the vault behind, each of them was left with only a single unburnt torch each. They would need to navigate through unexplored caverns with the very real danger of getting lost and running out of light. As a result, they decided to have Maelen carry a single torch, keeping the other two as replacements. The warrior walked as briskly as she thought Alric could follow given his poor health and lack of walking staff, with Vessa close behind.
Thankfully, the cavern complex of the Starless Rift was not vast. Maelen located a hidden exit from the tomb that avoided the flooded chamber and led them around, through rocky corridors and, occasionally, open caverns, though none as large as the one that had housed the most gruesome of the otherworldly monsters. Indeed, they discovered no less than four additional piles of viscera, where more of the abominations must have been prowling when Saelith escaped. Alric guessed that somehow the ritual that had opened the Starless Rift had also spawned the awful minions throughout the cave complex.
“It all makes sense,” he said in his deep baritone, as they stooped at the pool’s opposite edge. They’d found their way back around to their previous route, and now the mage had his staff and Vessa her shortsword. “The members of the order that created this place hadn’t been corrupted like those the ageless figures from Thornmere Hold. Somehow the tomb seems to have held Orthuun’s corruption at bay. At least until Hadren cracked open the rift. Then, well…” He shrugged one shoulder and winced at the pain it caused. “We know what happened next.”
Those three members of the order had been slaughtered, and horribly. While other skinless creatures prowled the darkness hunting, the mass of them had gathered at the tomb to free the Blind Sovereign’s general. Once freed, the power of the ritual had been severed, which is why the abominations had all, as one, dropped lifeless to the stony floor. Vessa shuddered as she remembered it all.
Then a thought struck her, which she said aloud. “But if the ritual only lasted long enough to free Saelith… Why is the Rift still open?”
Alric paused, considering it.
And, as if the idea had triggered it, the entire cave complex shuddered once. A deep rumble echoed all around them, then settled into silence.
“What was–” Vessa began to ask.
“We go. Now,” Maelen cut her off.
They exited back towards the large chamber, filled with natural stone columns, where they’d fought the most terrifying of the skinless creatures and where the ancient orders’ members lay eviscerated. They hustled, all injured, without comment or question.
As they passed closer to the exit, the rumble began again, this time building and shaking the floor beneath them. A stray rock tumbled nearby.
“GO!” Maelen yelled, and they began a last, desperate flight through the darkness.
If you’re confused about why I’m throwing Dungeon Crawl Classics content on a Wednesday into my blog, you must have missed last week’s post where I introduced this little (and by “little,” I mean “gargantuan”) side project to translate my Oakton gods and demons into DCC-usable content. Ostensibly I’m doing this work so that I can GM a home game sometime in the future, but mostly I’m doing it because it’s fun.
Last week, I asserted that any of my Law-promoting city-gods of Oakton and any of my Chaos-promoting demon-gods of the wilds could be either deities (i.e. provide clerics power) or patrons (i.e. provide wizards power), depending on the goals and aims of the human in relationship with them. To demonstrate how this relationship differs, I’ll look at the Rootmother as a patron. She’s so protective and human-loving… she wouldn’t corrupt a poor wizard, would she? By golly, she would!
It’s fun to think about a cleric of Quenvara and wizard of Quenvara both leveling up and evolving over the course of a long campaign. The cleric would be continually steered towards the Rootmother’s edicts, sent on quests to promote her ideals and working to maintain her favor. In doing so, the cleric would have tons of healing and protection magic at their disposal. The wizard, meanwhile, would be slowly twisting and mutating over time, becoming something like an Ent from Tolkien or treant from Dungeons & Dragons, a living embodiment of Quenvara’s wishes without the strict need to uphold her ideals. Both paths are brimming with story potential, which is one of the reasons I love DCC so much.
In my write-up for the Rootmother as a patron, I’ve relied heavily on Daniel J. Bishop’s Yddgrrl, the World Root expansion of the Invoke Patron spell in the DCC rulebook. I admit, I’m totally enamored with the Patron Taint and Corruption results for Quenvara, but I suspect that’s going to be true for every patron I write.
The hardest bits, at least for me, were the patron-specific spells, since DCC spells can get absolutely bonkers at higher spell check results. The “Control Plants” spell was the trickiest, and I stared at Control Fire and Control Cold for a long time to try and puzzle out its effects. You’ll also note that I expanded the “Failure, lost, and worse!” ranges for the spells, as one of my homebrew tweaks to DCC rules is saying that any spell check result in that spell’s level (i.e. 1-3 for a third-level spell) can result in patron taint and/or corruption. Otherwise, in my experience, both patron taint and corruption are too rare, and I don’t know a single wizard player who doesn’t revel in these tables.
Next week, by request from one Stephen Grodzicki—awesome author of the Tales of Argosa rpg I’m playing in my solo-play… check out all his work at Pickpocket Press!—I’m turning my attention to the primary antagonist of my Tales of Argosa story so far: Orthuun, the Blind Sovereign. I hope you enjoyed the safety and peace of the Rootmother these past two weeks, because things are about to get… dark.
Please let me know what you think below or via email at jaycms@yahoo.com!
Alric sat paralyzed for a moment, stunned by Maelen’s sudden charge. He knew that she considered violence as a way of solving most problems, but he’d seen her use restraint before. Not this time. Alric hadn’t even been able to count all the skinless, blind aberrations crawling over the tomb and scraping at the protective runes before she’d left their sheltered corridor with an angry shout. If there had been any hope of subtlety, it was gone. Now they would fight. What he didn’t know is how they’d survive.
The closest monstrosity was a mere ten strides away, and Maelen closed the distance before the creature even registered her presence. With a mighty swing, the warrior clubbed the thing to the smooth, basalt floor, and a second strike caved its head in. The horror unraveled, as if its bones had suddenly disappeared, spilling muscles and viscera at Maelen’s feet. She immediately thrust her torch into the mass, scorching it with a wild-eyed yell of triumph.
Two more creatures abandoned their tasks, heads rising like rabbits to focus on the brief scuffle. With unnerving, jerky speed, they were loping towards her with snuffling, wet breaths, overwide mouths clacking their sharp teeth. Alric saw more of them stirring at the edges of torchlight. In moments, she would be mobbed by more of the things than even the mighty Maelen Marrosen could handle.
Alric pulled a scroll from his belt, one he’d found within Thornmere Hold.
“Help me!” he hissed at Vessa, who was just as wide-eyed and shocked, her head darting left and right, tracking the creatures. Alric pushed the torch into her hand. “Hold this.”
He’d hoped to have time someday to translate the spell upon the scroll fully to memory, but that day would never come. The mage didn’t know how to help Maelen, who seemed in some sort of berserk rage, but he could at least help Vessa survive this situation. Without sparing another thought, his eyes roamed over the parchment, his lips mumbling the words and pulling the power forth. As he spoke, the scroll’s edges blackened as if thrown in a fire, rapidly spreading and consuming the document.
Alric had often wondered at the power of inscribing a spell, allowing anyone to use its magic. It was something he had hoped to try one day, to take the power of Orthuun and translate it into readable text upon a scroll. Regardless, the intricacies of scroll work evaded him. Somehow, he innately knew the scroll-spell’s effect, how to pronounce the alien words, only when staring directly at the parchment and widening his awareness. The how and why of it was surreal. So much of the knowledge surrounding magic eluded his comprehension.
The effect, however, was immediate. Vessa gasped as enormous raven’s wings, black as night, burst from her back. Alric plucked the torch from her startled fingers, his head spinning as the spell transmitted through him and vanished, the scroll now nothing more than ash fragments falling to the stone floor. Abstractly, he noted that the magic from the scroll felt somehow cleaner, less tied to demonic power… less corrupting. An observation for another day.
“Go!” he cried out. “Fly above their reach! Help Maelen!”
“But—how?” she faltered.
“No time! Don’t think! Go now!” he urged.
With a flap of those ebon wings, she launched herself up and towards the domed ceiling, stirring his cloak with the wind of her departure. He had only a vague idea of how long those wings would remain, but he hoped desperately it was long enough to escape this place, once Maelen and he had been overwhelmed by clacking teeth and bloodstained fingers.
As quickly as she’d left, he could no longer see Vessa in the gloom. Yet an arrow shaft appeared suddenly upon one of the skinless monsters, and it shrieked a teakettle wheeze of pain, arching its ropy back and searching skyward with its eyeless head.
Moments later, something clattered within the inner circle of runes and smoke began filling the tomb. Another arrow took a creature through its neck and it slumped to the floor, unraveling as it did so into a pile of gore. The sound of enormous wings flapping echoed in the chamber. Vessa was raining death and havoc from above, and he grinned fiercely.
Out of the shadows, an abomination scampered at Alric, its hands held out from its skinless body, clawed fingers flexing. The thing was considerably smaller than the one that had mauled him earlier, but still his legs momentarily went weak, his bladder threatening to betray him. He had only a breath to ready himself and then it was upon him, snuffling wetly, grasping, and clacking sharp teeth. The stench of rotten meat filled his nose. Alric clenched his jaw and swung the torch as hard as he could manage, directly into the shining muscles and tendons of its chest. It shrieked, rearing back, and he followed it, the torch still pressed into the terror’s torso.
Then, the body erupted in flames, like a campfire’s tinder suddenly catching. In a brilliant sheath of orange flame that lit the entire room around them, the thing continued its teakettle whistling and rolled frantically on the stone floor. Alric stepped back, eyes wide, as he saw two more of the abominations stalking at him, mere strides away, stark shadows dancing across their hideous forms. They circled their burning companion, teeth clacking, crouched to leap.
An arrow struck the flaming creature, silencing it as it smoldered upon the stone. Alric edged back, torch held up defensively.
Whether they coordinated their attack or simply shared similar instincts, both horrible creatures hurled themselves upon him simultaneously, one from the left of the blackened mass and one from the right. Alric hit the first with his torch but then he went down under their wet, stinking bodies. He felt teeth tear into his shoulder while another clacked frantically near one ear. He panicked and screamed.
Alric didn’t know how long he pushed and batted with his torch, screaming himself hoarse as the things tore and ripped at him. Perhaps it was a mere eyeblink of time or perhaps much longer. Whatever the case, he almost didn’t notice that one of the creatures suddenly disappeared.
Maelen hooked the shaft of her black mace around the neck of a skinless terror and pulled it off him. The thing bucked and flailed its limbs, teeth gnashing in empty air. Alric kicked his own tormenter, gaining some distance for a breath, and sobbed.
The warrior looked awful, covered in gore and with several gaping bite marks marring her skin. One eye had swollen shut, and that side of her face looked disfigured and mottled. Yet she wrestled with the abomination, arms corded in muscle, as it struggled to free itself from the headlock and assault her. It did so, bursting free with a teakettle shriek, and then Maelen stumbled. Teeth scissoring madly, the eyeless creature reared, ready to pounce upon the warrior. Maelen glared up but her mace clattered to the stone floor. She was spent.
Then, in a burst of air, Vessa rocketed from nowhere to tackle the terror with a shout of “Nooo!” Alric saw a flash of her pale skin, black-feathered wings, and then Vessa and the skinless thing were rolling away from them in a bundle of red muscle, ebon feathers, and furious struggle.
The creature he’d kicked away was on him again, its weight pressing down upon him. The stink of offal filled his nose, teeth clacked inches from his face. Alric flapped his free hand towards Maelen and found her boot. He murmured magic words he didn’t understand, drawing on Orthuun’s power, feeling his entire body go numb. Alric felt with certainty his own impending death in this underground tomb, mauled and eaten by these creatures from some other world. He would channel as much magic as he could muster to heal Maelen before he expired.
The thing atop him shuddered, then went slack, its muscles drooping beneath his hands. Slimy muscles and organs slid over him, melting across his body like sap over a trapped insect. Alric sputtered and thrashed, trying to get himself clear of the mess and understand what was happening.
Then the torches went out.
Alric knew, in that moment, that Saelith the Vanished, general of Orthuun the Blind Sovereign, had broken free of its tomb. More of the creatures must have stayed at their tasks, defacing the protective runes. Or perhaps the damage that had already been done was enough. Whatever the case, Saelith’s tomb was breached. Death would take them. Despair filled him.
“Mistsong…” a sibilant voice, harsh and light, whispered in his ear. Alric flinched away from the sound, throwing his hands up protectively.
“Mistsong…” it repeated. “I would speak with thee…”
“Wh-what?” Alric gasped. “Who?”
“Kelthorn the Unlit is no longer of use to me. But thee…” it whispered in delight, and then inhaled deeply, as if smelling a rose. “I sense the Night Crown’s touch upon thee. He Who Knows No Dawn has taken thine heart. Darkened thine blood. Thou art part of the Endless Black now.”
“No… no, I don’t want it…” Alric shook his head.
The voice tsked. “Thine wants matter not. Take my hand, little darkling. Let us blanket this land and prepare for the End.”
Though he was utterly blind in the oppressive darkness, Alric could feel a hand being offered, a hand as large as his chest. He wouldn’t have been able to explain how, or why he knew the figure before him was immensely tall and thin, with rag-like robes floating around him as if underwater. It crouched over him, arm outstretched.
The seer Wink’s words flashed in his mind: When you get to the cliff’s edge, little mouse: Don’t jump. Run or fight, but don’t jump into the darkness!
Alric swallowed and then slumped to his back. “No,” he whispered, barely audible. “I won’t… come with you. Kill me. Take the book… I won’t…” his own words trailed off, unsure how to finish the sentence, depleted of willpower.
The voice tsked again, the hissing voice directly in his ear. “Thou art weak. Watch thine cities blacken, darkling, and then will I offer again. Until then… gather thy power.”
Then the voice laughed, a light and chilling sound, echoing within the vast chamber.
Alric’s eyes fluttered in the darkness. He felt he couldn’t catch a breath, that his hollow and heartless chest was grasping for something it couldn’t quite reach. His limbs were numb and lifeless.
Welcome to the single longest weekly installment yet! Happy New Year! We’re starting off 2026 with a bang!
As I tried to think of how the party was going to disrupt the activities of the skinless terrors, I remembered Maelen’s madness of explosive rage. It’s something I had been peppering into her POV prose, so by the time I got to the reveal of the Tomb of Saelith the Vanished, I thought, “Well, bummer. There’s really no choice for what Maelen’s going to do.” Yep, she’s going full Leeroy Jenkins. Will her charging into the fray have similar results as poor Leeroy’s party? Let’s hope not, but I have a sinking feeling.
There are three groups of skinless terrors: a) 2 dripping blood into tomb itself, b) 4 scraping at the circles of sigils surrounding the tomb, and c) 3 damaging the outer walls’ symbols. The party is currently Far from the first group, (rolling high-low) 3 of the second group are Close and 1 Far, and the third group has 2 Close and 1 Far. That makes a total of 4 Far and 5 Close in terms of range.
Here’s how I’m going to run this encounter: For each skinless terror, I’ll roll high-low. On a low roll, they will continue their activity, ticking a slice off our 14-slice ritual counter (see last week). On a high roll, they’ll sense the intruders and join the combat. For all the Far opponents, I’ll automatically use Round 1 to continue breaking the runes.
One way or the other, I think the party is screwed, and I have a sinking feeling that I’ve put them either in a TPK situation or set them up to release Saelith the Vanished. I suppose we play to find out, though, right?
Maelen gets a surprise round and attacks Skinless Terror 1 with advantage. She moves and smacks it with Bonebreaker, rolling a 14 to hit and doing 5 damage, taking it to 7 hit points. Now she’ll roll Initiative on Round 1 and gets a 4 so will swing again. This time she rolls a 21 total for 8 damage, killing it. Whew.
Alric’s choice is fascinating, and could determine the outcome of the encounter. He has recovered 1 spell usage. Does he save it for Mend Flesh, try and dispel something via Sever Arcanum, or even use Cradle of Formlessness to turn himself or Maelen to mist and escape? I think, instead, he’s going to use his scroll of Wings of the Raven King on Vessa, thinking to save her first. I had hoped he could inscribe the spell into his spellbook next downtime, but alas. The advantage of a magic user using a scroll is that it doesn’t require a spell check or risk DDM, so he can just do it. I’ll also rule that a magic user using a scroll automatically triggers its Great Success effect, which in this case means Vessa will be able to fly for 1d6 x 10 minutes. I roll 2, so she’ll have wings for 20 minutes.
As a result, Vessa will launch herself into the air and fire down upon Skinless Terror 2. She rolls 22 total and hits for 5 damage against its 14 hp, so it now has 7 left. It makes sense while the PCs have the advantage to try a Minor Exploit, so she’ll also try and knock it down with her shot (or perhaps pierce its leg), which means it will have to stand up and move this turn, not attack. I roll opposed Dex checks and the skinless terror rolls a nat-20, which is a Terrible Failure. I’ll say it loses its entire turn and will need to stand next turn.
Now it’s the nasties’ turn (deep breath):
Skinless Terror 1 is dead.
Skinless Terror 2 (Close, walls) is at 7 hp, prone, and unable to act this round. It regenerates 1 hit point, though, ending the turn at 8 hp.
Skinless Terror 3 (Far, walls) will continue raking runes. Clock = 13.
Skinless Terror 4 (Close, runes) rolls high and will attack Maelen. It moves and bites at Maelen twice: First roll is a nat-1! That gives Maelen a free swing: She rolls 20 total and hits for 8 damage, knocking it to 10 hp (beefy boy!). Its second bite is a 9 total and misses.
Skinless Terror 5 (Close, runes) rolls high and will also attack Maelen. It moves to her other side and bites twice: Hitting once for 2 damage. Maelen drops to 10 hp.
Skinless Terror 6 (Close, runes) rolls low and rakes runes. Clock = 12.
Skinless Terror 7 (Far, runes) rakes runes. Clock = 11.
All in all, not bad! Maelen already at half her maximum hit points, though, gives me a sick feeling.
XXIII.
Duskmarch 24, Goldday, Year 731.
Alric sat paralyzed for a moment, stunned by Maelen’s sudden charge. He knew that she considered violence as a way of solving most problems, but he’d seen her use restraint before. Not this time. Alric hadn’t even been able to count all the skinless, blind aberrations crawling over the tomb and scraping at the protective runes before she’d left their sheltered corridor with an angry shout. If there had been any hope of subtlety, it was gone. Now they would fight. What he didn’t know is how they’d survive.
The closest monstrosity was a mere ten strides away, and Maelen closed the distance before the creature even registered her presence. With a mighty swing, the warrior clubbed the thing to the smooth, basalt floor, and a second strike caved its head in. The horror unraveled, as if its bones had suddenly disappeared, spilling muscles and viscera at Maelen’s feet. She immediately thrust her torch into the mass, scorching it with a wild-eyed yell of triumph.
Two more creatures abandoned their tasks, heads rising like rabbits to focus on the brief scuffle. With unnerving, jerky speed, they were loping towards her with snuffling, wet breaths, overwide mouths clacking their sharp teeth. Alric saw more of them stirring at the edges of torchlight. In moments, she would be mobbed by more of the things than even the mighty Maelen Marrosen could handle.
Alric pulled a scroll from his belt, one he’d found within Thornmere Hold.
“Help me!” he hissed at Vessa, who was just as wide-eyed and shocked, her head darting left and right, tracking the creatures. Alric pushed the torch into her hand. “Hold this.”
He’d hoped to have time someday to translate the spell upon the scroll fully to memory, but that day would never come. The mage didn’t know how to help Maelen, who seemed in some sort of berserk rage, but he could at least help Vessa survive this situation. Without sparing another thought, his eyes roamed over the parchment, his lips mumbling the words and pulling the power forth. As he spoke, the scroll’s edges blackened as if thrown in a fire, rapidly spreading and consuming the document.
Alric had often wondered at the power of inscribing a spell, allowing anyone to use its magic. It was something he had hoped to try one day, to take the power of Orthuun and translate it into readable text upon a scroll. Regardless, the intricacies of scroll work evaded him. Somehow, he innately knew the scroll-spell’s effect, how to pronounce the alien words, only when staring directly at the parchment and widening his awareness. The how and why of it was surreal. So much of the knowledge surrounding magic eluded his comprehension.
The effect, however, was immediate. Vessa gasped as enormous raven’s wings, black as night, burst from her back. Alric plucked the torch from her startled fingers, his head spinning as the spell transmitted through him and vanished, the scroll now nothing more than ash fragments falling to the stone floor. Abstractly, he noted that the magic from the scroll felt somehow cleaner, less tied to demonic power… less corrupting. An observation for another day.
“Go!” he cried out. “Fly above their reach! Help Maelen!”
“But—how?” she faltered.
“No time! Don’t think! Go now!” he urged.
With a flap of those ebon wings, she launched herself up and towards the domed ceiling, stirring his cloak with the wind of her departure. He had only a vague idea of how long those wings would remain, but he hoped desperately it was long enough to escape this place, once Maelen and he had been overwhelmed by clacking teeth and bloodstained fingers.
As quickly as she’d left, he could no longer see Vessa in the gloom. Yet an arrow shaft appeared suddenly upon one of the skinless monsters, and it shrieked a teakettle wheeze of pain, arching its ropy back and searching skyward with its eyeless head.
Round 2! Let’s give Vessa the Initiative roll this time, which she succeeds with an 8. Rather than fire at disadvantage at the two attacking Maelen, she’ll drop a Smoke Bomb in the tomb itself, enveloping Skinless Terrors 7-9 for (rolling 1d4) 4 rounds. Since there’s nothing mechanically that allows them to avoid the effect, those three will be Blind despite not having eyes, inhibiting their actions. Somehow the smoke messes up their chittering echolocation, I guess.
Maelen, meanwhile, will keep swinging away. Can she finish off Skinless Terror 4? She hits with a 13 and does 5 damage, bringing it to 5 hp. She’ll try a Minor Exploit to throw it away from her. The opposed Strength roll absolutely goes in her favor, and it’s swatted to the floor.
What the heck can Alric do? He has a torch as a weapon (his staff is sitting on the other side of the pool beyond the twisting corridor), but only 8 hit points. He will edge into the room but Dodge, giving any attackers disadvantage to hit him.
Not a great turn damage-wise, but they’re setting up. Let’s see what happens on the skinless terror’s turn…
Skinless Terror 1 is dead.
Skinless Terror 2 (Close, Maelen) is at 8 hp and prone. It will stand up and move towards (rolling 1-4 Maelen, 5-6 Alric): Maelen. It also regenerates to its full 14 hp.
Skinless Terror 3 (Far, walls) rolls high and will use both moves to get within Melee of Alric.
Skinless Terror 4 (Melee, Maelen) is at 5 hp and prone. It will stand and Charge Maelen. I’ll say it can only use one bite with this maneuver, but it rolls a 17 and hits, thankfully doing only 1 damage. Maelen is at 9 hp. It regenerates to 11 hp.
Skinless Terror 5 (Melee, Maelen) bites twice, hitting with the first bite but rolling a nat-1 on the second! It does a whopping 7 damage to her, though, taking her to 2 hp. Her return attack hits (21 total) and does 9 damage against its 14 hit points. It is down to 5 hp but then regenerates to 6 hp.
Skinless Terror 6 (Close, runes) rolls low again and rakes runes. Clock = 8.
Skinless Terror 7 (Far, runes) is Blind. Can it continue to rake runes? I’ll say it can if I roll low. I do. Clock = 7.
Skinless Terrors 8 & 9 (Far, tomb) are also Blind. They both roll low and continue to drip blood onto Saelith, ignoring the smoke. Clock = 5.
With the skinless terror’s regeneration, this feels like an unwinnable fight, especially for Maelen. Can Alric win initiative in Round 3? He rolls an 11, exactly making it. Wow, that was close.
Mend Flesh is unfortunately a Touch spell, and he will surely die if he wades into the three skinless terrors mauling his companion. He’ll have to save it for a later time, if such a time exists. Instead, he has Skinless Terror 3 right in front of him. He’ll swing his torch, rolling a 12 and hitting! Way back in Chapter 8 I ruled how torches work as weapons: -2 to hit as an improvised weapon, 1d3 damage as a club, plus 1d3 damage fire. The creature has 12 hit points and he will do only 1 damage with the club but 3 fire damage, bringing it to 8 hp and unable to regenerate. Moreover, I think he’ll try out game’s first Major Exploit and try and set it on fire. To do so, he needs a Luck roll and unfortunately rolls a 15. I’ll use a Reroll, allowing him to try again. This time he rolls a 6! The creature is now Burning, and will take 1d6 fire damage at the start if its next turn. Alric’s Luck score drops to 8 and he has only a single Reroll available. Quite literally, the party’s luck is running out.
Maelen, let’s see what you can do. She attacks the wounded Skinless Terror 5 and hits with a 20 total. Her max 10 damage kills it, and allows her Opportunist ability, attacking Skinless Terror 4. That roll is a nat-18 so also hits, doing 8 total damage and bringing it to 3 hp. She’ll try the same Minor Exploit to get it away from her (and allow Vessa to finish it). She crushes the opposed Strength roll and succeeds.
Vessa fires, barely hitting its 10 AC with a total of 11. Her max 9 damage obliterates it. Death from above!
Now things get bad:
Skinless Terrors 1, 4, and 5 are dead.
Skinless Terror 2 (Melee, Maelen) is at 14 hp. It bites twice at the critically wounded Maelen. An 11+2=13 misses her 14 AC and a 6 total misses! It’s at full hit points so doesn’t regenerate.
Skinless Terror 3 (Melee, Alric) is Burning and takes a max 6 damage to 2 hp. It must make a Will check to do anything but put itself out and rolls a 19, failing. It rolls around the stone floor and does not regenerate.
Skinless Terror 6 (Close, runes) finally rolls high and will enter the fray. Who will it attack? I roll Alric. It moves within Melee and bites twice: A 9 total misses, and then it rolls a nat-1! Can Alric make it pay with his torch? He rolls a 9+1-2=8, missing its 10 AC. Still, nice.
Skinless Terror 7 (Far, runes) is Blind. It mindlessly rakes at runes, sensing the task is close to completion. Clock = 4.
Skinless Terror 8 (Far, tomb) is Blind and follows suit. Clock = 3. Eeeee!
Skinless Terror 9 (Far, tomb), meanwhile is Blind but senses the combat. Can it find its way out of the smoke? I roll Perc and get an 8, succeeding. It will move towards (rolling) Alric.
I can’t believe Maelen survived Round 3! But they are still in major peril. Two skinless terrors are still working on their tasks and could push the Saelith clock to zero within two turns, and Maelen and Alric are still facing 4 opponents—or 8 bite attacks—and only have 2 and 8 hp themselves. For now, let me take a narration pause for breath.
Moments later, something clattered within the inner circle of runes and smoke began filling the tomb. Another arrow took a creature through its neck and it slumped to the floor, unraveling as it did so into a pile of gore. The sound of enormous wings flapping echoed in the chamber. Vessa was raining death and havoc from above, and he grinned fiercely.
Out of the shadows, an abomination scampered at Alric, its hands held out from its skinless body, clawed fingers flexing. The thing was considerably smaller than the one that had mauled him earlier, but still his legs momentarily went weak, his bladder threatening to betray him. He had only a breath to ready himself and then it was upon him, snuffling wetly, grasping, and clacking sharp teeth. The stench of rotten meat filled his nose. Alric clenched his jaw and swung the torch as hard as he could manage, directly into the shining muscles and tendons of its chest. It shrieked, rearing back, and he followed it, the torch still pressed into the terror’s torso.
Then, the body erupted in flames, like a campfire’s tinder suddenly catching. In a brilliant sheath of orange flame that lit the entire room around them, the thing continued its teakettle whistling and rolled frantically on the stone floor. Alric stepped back, eyes wide, as he saw two more of the abominations stalking at him, mere strides away, stark shadows dancing across their hideous forms. They circled their burning companion, teeth clacking, crouched to leap.
Round 4 is a big one, and Maelen is back to rolling Initiative. She rolls a 7! Whew.
As far as I can tell (wow, this is a tough combat to do theater of the mind), Maelen “only” faces Skinless Terror 2, which has a full 14 hp. Though it’s not hugely original, she’ll swing Bonebreaker. Nat-19! She did it! Amazing. For Maelen, that means 11 damage, taking the creature to 3 hp, and then rolling on two tables. First, I’ll roll 1d6 on the Bonebreaker table, because it might invalidate the next result: 6! That result shatters the creature’s skull and it instantly dies. First time for the major magic item successfully performing an insta-kill! Skinless Terror 2 is dead, and she has a moment of respite.
Vessa will fire at the smoking, almost-dead Skinless Terror 3. I’ll say that, because of the flames and it rolling on the floor, she won’t get the disadvantage of it being in melee with Alric. She hits it with an 11 total, and her damage bonus means the arrow will automatically kill it.
Alric is still facing two unharmed skinless terrors and has only a 50/50 chance of hitting them, with an even lower chance of succeeding on another Major Exploit. I’ll say he backs up a step and simply tries to Dodge the four bite attacks coming his way.
Which leaves us with:
Skinless Terrors 1-5 are dead.
Skinless Terror 6 (Melee, Alric) will roll with disadvantage against the mage. The first bite rolls 18 & 2, so misses. The next rolls 10 & 11, which hits his 10 AC. 3 damage brings him to 5 hp.
Skinless Terror 7 (Far, runes) is Blind. It rolls low again and continues to rake at runes. Clock = 2.
Skinless Terror 8 (Far, tomb) is Blind and rolls low. It drips blood into the tomb, sensing the figure within stirring. Clock = 1. Yes… ONE!
Skinless Terror 9 (Melee, Alric) is facing Alric with disadvantage. The first bite rolls 12 & 15, hitting for 4 damage and bringing him to 1 measly hit point. ONE! Thankfully the second bite rolls nat-20 (!) and 3 (!!).
My poor little heart can’t take this combat, folks.
An arrow struck the flaming creature, silencing it as it smoldered upon the stone. Alric edged back, torch held up defensively.
Whether they coordinated their attack or simply shared similar instincts, both horrible creatures hurled themselves upon him simultaneously, one from the left of the blackened mass and one from the right. Alric hit the first with his torch but then he went down under their wet, stinking bodies. He felt teeth tear into his shoulder while another clacked frantically near one ear. He panicked and screamed.
Round 5, and a lot must go right for all three PCs to survive this combat. Vessa is up with the Initiative roll and rolls an 8! (expect a lot of exclamation points in this block of text) She’ll let Maelen start off the action, in hopes to employ Finisher.
Maelen will charge (not mechanically Charge, since the skinless terror’s AC is low and hers is important to survival) Skinless Terror 6. Nat-1! Oh noooo! The skinless terror gets a free bite against her and rolls a nat-19! What is happening!?!
It’s time to employ a rule from Tales of Argosa that I haven’t yet used. From the rulebook: “Once per adventure, a PC may attempt a Rescue, which may only be used to protect another person or thing. Rescues are available when it is not the PC’s turn, in response to something happening within Close range. A Rescue allows one player to negate or reverse an adverse event for another player or NPC. Only one party member may attempt a Rescue per situation, and Rescues are exclusive to PCs.”
Seeing the scene as if in slow motion, Vessa will attempt to Rescue Maelen. She will swoop down from the air and intercept the skinless terror, knocking it aside. To do so, Vessa will make an Initiative check: 11, which succeeds, meaning she can indeed react fast enough to avert disaster. Now is the tough part: a Luck(Dex) roll to perform the feat. Vessa’s Luck is currently 7, with a Dex modifier of +2. She’ll need a 9 or under on 1d20, with one Reroll available. She rolls… a 2! Success! In fact, that’s a Great Success, so I’ll say that she doesn’t even have to end her action in Melee with the creature… she simply knocks it aside and swoops back into the air. Her Luck score reduces to a paltry 6, and she’s used her one Rescue until Level 3. Meanwhile, Malen is alive. For now.
Actually, I’m going to combine Vessa’s Rescue with her attack, and say she tries a Backstab on Skinless Terror 6 from above, using her dagger (recall she left her shortsword on the opposite shore). She hits with a nat-16, and her damage is 1d4+1 with the dagger plus 1d8 for the Backstab. That’s 7 total damage against its 14 hit points, bringing it to 7 hp. She possibly could have done more damage with an arrow, but I like the cinema of that move.
Alric will not Dodge. Instead, he’ll attempt to Mend Flesh on Maelen now that she’s next to him. What a hero! He will pass his Int(Arcane Lore) check easily, which will restore 1d6+2 hit points. He rolls 5 total, bringing her to 7 hp. Not great, but gives her a better chance of surviving this turn. Now, how does the DDM roll go? His DDM number is 2, so he needs higher than that on a 1d8 and rolls a 5. His DDM number goes up to 3 and, importantly, he is completely out of spells.
Hoo boy… it’s the skinless terrors’ turn:
Skinless Terrors 1-5 are dead.
Skinless Terror 6 (Close, Alric/Maelen) is at 7 hp and prone. It will stand and move into Melee (a little cheap? Maybe but makes sense given the Rescue success). It also regenerates to 9 hp.
Skinless Terror 7 (Far, runes) is Blind and finally rolls high. Can it find its way out of the smoke? I roll a 5 on its Perc chance so yes. It rushes towards Alric and Maelen. The smoke dissipates after this turn.
Skinless Terror 8 (Far, tomb) is Blind and… rolls low. The Clock moves to zero. Damn! I’ll have this take effect next turn.
Skinless Terror 9 (Melee, Alric/Maelen) will roll on opponent: Maelen. It bites twice and hits once, doing 2 damage and bringing Maelen to 5 hp. Hey, that would have killed her without the Mend Flesh!
So, the good news is that everyone is still alive. I sort of can’t believe it, and have prepared myself multiple times for either Alric, Maelen, or both to meet their demise. But they did it! A horde of terrible baddies and they’re still here!
The bad news is, now I have to decide what happens when Saelith the Vanish is freed, which will officially end this encounter and be B-A-D for our intrepid party. Oh… I have an idea. This will be fun.
Alric didn’t know how long he pushed and batted with his torch, screaming himself hoarse as the things tore and ripped at him. Perhaps it was a mere eyeblink of time or perhaps much longer. Whatever the case, he almost didn’t notice that one of the creatures suddenly disappeared.
Maelen hooked the shaft of her black mace around the neck of a skinless terror and pulled it off him. The thing bucked and flailed its limbs, teeth gnashing in empty air. Alric kicked his own tormenter, gaining some distance for a breath, and sobbed.
The warrior looked awful, covered in gore and with several gaping bite marks marring her skin. One eye had swollen shut, and that side of her face looked disfigured and mottled. Yet she wrestled with the abomination, arms corded in muscle, as it struggled to free itself from the headlock and assault her. It did so, bursting free with a teakettle shriek, and then Maelen stumbled. Teeth scissoring madly, the eyeless creature reared, ready to pounce upon the warrior. Maelen glared up but her mace clattered to the stone floor. She was spent.
Then, in a burst of air, Vessa rocketed from nowhere to tackle the terror with a shout of “Nooo!” Alric saw a flash of her pale skin, black-feathered wings, and then Vessa and the skinless thing were rolling away from them in a bundle of red muscle, ebon feathers, and furious struggle.
The creature he’d kicked away was on him again, its weight pressing down upon him. The stink of offal filled his nose, teeth clacked inches from his face. Alric flapped his free hand towards Maelen and found her boot. He murmured magic words he didn’t understand, drawing on Orthuun’s power, feeling his entire body go numb. Alric felt with certainty his own impending death in this underground tomb, mauled and eaten by these creatures from some other world. He would channel as much magic as he could muster to heal Maelen before he expired.
The thing atop him shuddered, then went slack, its muscles drooping beneath his hands. Slimy muscles and organs slid over him, melting across his body like sap over a trapped insect. Alric sputtered and thrashed, trying to get himself clear of the mess and understand what was happening.
Then the torches went out.
Alric knew, in that moment, that Saelith the Vanished, general of Orthuun the Blind Sovereign, had broken free of its tomb. More of the creatures must have stayed at their tasks, defacing the protective runes. Or perhaps the damage that had already been done was enough. Whatever the case, Saelith’s tomb was breached. Death would take them. Despair filled him.
“Mistsong…” a sibilant voice, harsh and light, whispered in his ear. Alric flinched away from the sound, throwing his hands up protectively.
“Mistsong…” it repeated. “I would speak with thee…”
“Wh-what?” Alric gasped. “Who?”
“Kelthorn the Unlit is no longer of use to me. But thee…” it whispered in delight, and then inhaled deeply, as if smelling a rose. “I sense the Night Crown’s touch upon thee. He Who Knows No Dawn has taken thine heart. Darkened thine blood. Thou art part of the Endless Black now.”
“No… no, I don’t want it…” Alric shook his head.
The voice tsked. “Thine wants matter not. Take my hand, little darkling. Let us blanket this land and prepare for the End.”
Though he was utterly blind in the oppressive darkness, Alric could feel a hand being offered, a hand as large as his chest. He wouldn’t have been able to explain how, or why he knew the figure before him was immensely tall and thin, with rag-like robes floating around him as if underwater. It crouched over him, arm outstretched.
The seer Wink’s words flashed in his mind: When you get to the cliff’s edge, little mouse: Don’t jump. Run or fight, but don’t jump into the darkness!
Alric swallowed and then slumped to his back. “No,” he whispered, barely audible. “I won’t… come with you. Kill me. Take the book… I won’t…” his own words trailed off, unsure how to finish the sentence, depleted of willpower.
The voice tsked again, the hissing voice directly in his ear. “Thou art weak. Watch thine cities blacken, darkling, and then will I offer again. Until then… gather thy power.”
Then the voice laughed, a light and chilling sound, echoing within the vast chamber.
Alric’s eyes fluttered in the darkness. He felt he couldn’t catch a breath, that his hollow and heartless chest was grasping for something it couldn’t quite reach. His limbs were numb and lifeless.
Wednesday, what? New Year’s Eve, what? What’s happening here?
Well, see… Two related but distinct things have been occurring in my life, and they’ve led me to this Wednesday post (and possible future Wednesday posts… read on!). First, I’ve been unemployed since July. I don’t like the word “unemployed,” honestly, because it sounds so negative. Better to say that I’ve been happily unemployed since July, taking a large severance package from my employer instead of moving to Amsterdam. The unexpected windfall has allowed me to, for the first in years, slow down, travel, and enjoy time with loved ones. Over the last six months, I’ve reconnected with friends that I haven’t seen in over a decade, spent quality time with my adult kids, soaked up experiences with my awesome wife of thirty years (including getting an awesome new puppy), and—most profoundly—supported my mother through her husband’s unexpected death. It’s been a blessing to have this time and freedom, truly, and I’m not a religious guy so don’t use that word lightly.
Second, I’ve been spending many, many hours with my TTRPG books. They’ve long sat there, the collection growing each year, waiting patiently for me to have some downtime. Now that I have that time, it’s been a joy to both dive into nostalgic books from my gaming past and introduce myself to new games I’ve picked up but never absorbed. My brain has been swimming in dozens of game systems and mechanics, and piles and piles of nerdy lore. It’s been fabulous.
I’m not quite ready to retire from my day job, but one of the things I’ve long envisioned when I do is to host an in-person Dungeon Crawl Classicscampaign at my house (right now all of my weekly games continue to be online). DCC remains my favorite fantasy TTRPG, exploding with random tables and emergent storytelling (it’s a testament to Tales of Argosa that when I promote it to people, I describe it as “DCC’s more elegant, sword-and-sorcery cousin”). When I’ve allowed myself to dream, I always assumed that I and my players would co-create a campaign world from whole cloth. But—thanks entirely to my weekly Tales of Calvenor game—I now realize that any fantasy game I run for a long time, maybe forever, will be in my own homebrewed world of Calvenor.
DCC and Calvenor Cosmology
One of the things that’s often bothered me about DCC’s cosmology is the fuzzy line between deities (where clerics receive their magic) and patrons (where wizards do). Both deities and patrons are supernatural, immortal, otherworldly entities influencing the world through mortals, but deities do so without corruption, keeping clerics on a leash of approval/disapproval. Patrons, meanwhile, corrupt the literal hell out of their poor wizards, constantly entering into dangerous bargains. Yet, as far as I can tell, there’s no particular difference as to why one supernatural entity is a deity versus a patron except it’s whatever the author wanted to write.
The Princehold of Calvenor is the nation in which my current story takes place, a small part of a much larger world. Within Calvenor are disparate cities, and each city—like Oakton, my current story’s epicenter—is protected from the wilds by a pantheon unique to that city. Outside, in the wilds, are demon-gods who rampage and scheme to take down those cities. The entire conceit of my fantasy world is that the gods of Law support human civilization and the demon-gods of Chaos oppose them.
So, in my world, I justify the distinction thusly: ANY deity of Law OR demon of Chaos can be a deity for a cleric OR a patron for a wizard (if I ever decide what Neutral entities are in my world, the same goes for them). The difference is that a cleric is in harmony with an entity’s goals and belief system whereas a wizard only wants power, and thus the entity is steering a wizard against their will towards their belief system.
Take two characters from my story: Alric Mistsong and Hadren Kelthorn. Both are in relationship with Orthuun the Blind Sovereign. Hadren, in the above terms, would be a cleric of Orthuun, promoting the demon-god’s nihilistic goals and gaining power as a result. Alric, meanwhile, uses Orthuun as a patron, channeling power from the demon-god via his corrupted spellbook but actively working against the destruction of his own world. Both clerics and wizards are dangerous gigs (especially as it relates to Orthuun), but in very different ways.
As I mentioned, one of the key aspects of DCC that makes the game so flavorful, exciting, and awesome is the mountain of custom, random tables. Each spell, each deity, each patron, each major magic item, each demon or dragon… they’re all—ALL OF THEM!—multiple pages long and full of bespoke tables that send your games into madcap directions.
But do you see the problem? To do my homebrewed world justice, I’ll need to make both deity and patron entries for every supernatural entity in my world. To begin with, that means tackling the twenty-two Oakton gods and twenty-ish demon-gods. That’s, oh… almost ninety pieces of work? And each piece includes a multi-page entry with multiple random tables? Let’s not forget, too, that’s only one city in a vast nation, nestled within an even vaster planet.
I mean, that’s just a bonkers amount of work.
And yet…
I have time right now! My brain is alight with ideas!
To stretch my creative muscles, it only makes sense to start with the most central deity in the Oakton pantheon, the goddess that is the focus of declarations and exclamations almost every single week: The Rootmother, known by her sacred name Quenvara to clerics and power-hungry wizards alike (note that none of the current story’s protagonists know or use this name for her).
Below I’ve created a full DCC-style deity entry for her, much of which is either inspired by or taken directly from the excellent (free!) Ildavir write-up in Clerics of the Known Realms by Sean of Realm 15. Because I’m not at all worried about selling these write-ups, I’m perfectly happy to steal good work and give credit where it’s due.
Next week I’ll provide the very different Patron write-up of Quenvara the Rootmother. I absolutely do not promise to keep these entries going every week on Wednesday, but I’ll do so as my time and passion allow. The priority is the Saturday story, but this project is a wonderful outlet of energy and time, and each entry only gets me closer to my DCC retirement dream…
Today’s post is a curveball bonus, so please let me know what you think below or via email at jaycms@yahoo.com!
“By the Rootmother’s teat,” Maelen swore, looking out over the black pool.
Alric sidled up at her shoulder, holding his guttering torch out over the water and straining to see as far as possible. “If we swim,” he said cautiously. “We’ll have no light. And we’ll freeze.”
“I know, lad,” she spat curtly. “But my rope is currently dangling at the cliff’s edge. You see a way to climb these walls? Or move the rubble from the other passage?” She ground her teeth, rage bubbling behind her eyes. This cursed Starless Rift!
“We could return to where we started,” Vessa said in a low voice. She stood on the other side of the mage, the three of them atop a stone dais only wide enough for them to stand abreast. Beyond the lip of the dais… water, smooth and black and seemingly endless. “Weren’t there other passages from there?”
“There were,” Alric said absently, his eyes still searching. “But I feel… we’re close to something. Beyond the water.”
Again, anger flooded her mind, and she almost swatted the lad. His vague proclamations… look where they’d gotten them: deep underground with skinless terrors stalking every shadow. Her hands shook, and she clenched her grips around the mace and torch. Maelen wanted very much to fight, to hurt something.
With a growl, she cocked her arm sideways and hurled her torch out over the water, like skipping a stone across Lake Miren. The torch swung end over end into the darkness, illuminating the cavern in chaotic, dancing shadow as it flew. Then it disappeared into the water with a brief hiss, the pool rippling out from its impact.
“What did you do that for?!” Vessa asked incredulously. With only Alric’s low torch, the cavern felt very dark.
“It was almost done anyway,” she grunted. “Wanted to see how far it went.”
“Oh,” she nodded. “Okay. I saw the shore, which makes the pool… what? Maybe thirty strides across?”
“And nothing from the water stirred,” Alric said in a low voice. “So perhaps there aren’t predators awaiting us below the surface. Good idea, Maelen.”
Maelen grunted again. She hadn’t even thought about there being nasties in the water, and seeing the opposite shore was a boon. Truth be told, she’d thrown the torch in anger, not strategy. With effort, she reigned in her inner tumult. Maelen still wanted to fight something—to batter it with her mace until it stopped moving—but there was no use butting heads with her companions in the meantime. She exhaled loudly.
“We swim,” she said decisively. “I’m listening if you have ideas how to keep our gear dry, particularly the torches and tinderboxes. Assume it’s too deep to stand.”
While Alric’s light died, they debated ways of crossing the water. None of them could come up with an alternative to swimming, not without Maelen’s rope and pitons. The most pressing issue, they decided, was how to keep their most important gear—torches, tinderboxes, Vessa’s bow, rations—dry. Assuming they survived the crossing, the next question was how they’d warm themselves, as the water felt icy chill and their body heat was already low.
Only Vessa possessed an oiled cloak, and it became the basis of their plan. They wrapped their vital items in it, tied with belts and full of air. Alric insisted the Tome of Unlit Paths be at the center of the bundle, because he said its demonic powers may help keep the other items dry. Maelen thought that all sounded like bunk, that what he truly cared about was the safety of the book, but she held her tongue. Vessa, the strongest swimmer, would hold her bow above the water as she moved, so it would be up to Maelen and Alric to guide the floating bundle.
While they organized, Maelen lit another torch. It was a waste, as she’d just need to leave it on this side of the pool, but Alric’s flame had all but guttered out by the time she’d sparked hers to life. They finished adding items to the mass, including boots and scrolls, Malen’s chain shirt, Vessa’s quiver of arrows and smoke bombs. Maelen groused that it would be too heavy to float, but Alric disagreed.
Still, the mage decided he could not struggle with his staff the same way Vessa would her bow, so begrudgingly agreed to leave it on this side of the pool. Vessa did the same with her shortsword, saying it would drag her down while swimming. They both looked at Maelen’s hip, where the mace thrummed to her ears alone. She scoffed when she saw their worried glances.
“I’ve got it,” she grinned. “The mace comes with me.”
With the bundle secured, Maelen propped the torch upright with two rocks, as close to the water’s edge as she could manage. Then she frowned, staring at the still, black pool for several heartbeats. Was anything waiting for them below the surface, ready to pull them under? She didn’t see any movement. Dammit all and this place! With an unhappy grunt, she plunged into the water.
The cold of it constricted her chest and stole her breath, and immediately the weight of her mace and clothes pulled her down. She used one hand and foot to steady herself on the rocky wall, and said, as confidently as she could manage.
“Day’s not getting shorter. H-hand me the bundle and let’s go.”
Alric had stripped his tattered robes, and he looked pale, thin, and cold in his smallclothes, with angry-looking wounds everywhere on his shoulders and neck. He eased himself into the pool feet first, grimacing at the cold. When he slid all the way in, he gasped and sputtered. It was no surprise to Maelen that the lad wasn’t much of a swimmer. Still, he struggled his way forward in the open water, holding one side of the bobbing mass of Vessa’s cloak, while Maelen continued pushing her way along the wall. While they worked out their rhythm, Vessa glided past them easily, swimming with long, lithe strokes of her legs past the lad and holding her bow aloft.
Now that she was fully immersed, she realized the subtly rank smell of the water. Disease and parasites weren’t something she’d even considered, but now it felt as if somehow filth slid along her skin, black oily fingers caressing her. She spit any wetness from her lips.
“C-careful of not getting the water in your m-mouth!” she gasped at her companions. They didn’t say anything back, but she felt confident they’d heard her.
It was slow going, and the cold threatened to rob her of her strength even as the weight of the mace pulled at her. In a sudden flash of emotion, she missed her mouse Tatter. The little thing had been with her for the past two years, a constant source of companionship without asking for anything but scraps of food in return. Yet the Starless Rift had swallowed little Tatter, as surely as it had snuffed the lives of those unknown priests. Maelen wondered if the mouse had scurried out of the cavern system or was huddling, cold and fearful, in a small crevice somewhere. It was a gloomy train of thought.
At some point her teeth began chattering, and she clenched her jaw shut painfully. The lad moved methodically but never fell back or went under. She could see him in the flickering, fading orange light as a rippling shape beyond the bulk of the cloak, which bobbed like a bulbous sea creature between them.
Once they’d neared the opposite shore, the light from the torch was only a vague, dancing glimmer behind them, doing little to illuminate the way. Maelen pulled with her hand and pushed with her bare foot along the rough rock, her other hand guiding their gear. Her own breath filled her ears, panting in quick, short puffs now. She lost sight of the mage, and her teeth chattered too much for her to risk speaking. All the while, she imagined more of those skinless monstrosities clutching at her legs from below, pulling her into the inky blackness of the befouled water. She visualized withering from whatever plague awaited her, then rising as a mindless zombie. Tatter’s small corpse, curled in a ball somewhere nearby and forgotten, swam in her thoughts. Maelen would never admit it to anyone, but real fear gripped her in those moments, replaced by a seething, roiling anger.
Ahead, something splashed and her heart nearly stopped.
“V-Vess?” she said, her voice much weaker than she’d expected, her lips trembling with cold.
“H-here,” she stuttered back. “Made it. Oh!”
Maelen wanted to ask what that meant, but all her willpower was used to keep pulling herself forward with numb limbs. Vessa’s voice wasn’t that far ahead, she thought desperately, so the shore must be…
Her knee struck rock and she stumbled, her face momentarily dipping into the oily water. She spat and sputtered, and with a flailing, flopping effort she was glad no one could see, pushed herself up the rocky shelf to the other side of the pool. With straining muscles, she pulled the cloak and its contents after her, reaching for Alric as she did so. They clasped cold hands, and the lad gasped and stumbled forward towards her.
“S-so c-c-cold,” he stuttered, barely audible.
“G-get the gear with me,” she puffed, barely recognizing her own voice. “N-need to light a t-t-torch.”
Blindness and cold combined to make her hands clumsy and stupid. It took forever for the two of them to wrestle the cloak up onto the rocky ground, near Vessa’s voice. As they drew closer, the thief joined in pulling the bundle.
“I’ve got it,” she whispered. “Go get warm, keep going past me.”
Warm? Maelen’s mind worked as sluggishly as her feet, but she let the lass fumble with the belts and knots while she stumbled away from the water’s edge. There, as she’d said, warm air touched her face. She moved towards it like a bee to a flower, her hands outstretched. Somewhere nearby, she heard Alric fall and curse in pain as he did likewise.
By the time she’d found the heat’s source, she was no less confused. It wasn’t a fire and shed no light, but there was simply… hot air, blowing up from the earth like some sort of summer wind. Whatever the source, she dropped next to it and let the air wash over her. Maelen closed her eyes with pleasure, her teeth eventually stopping their chatter and feeling returning to her limbs like needle pricks.
Behind her, flickers of light signaled Vessa lighting a torch, which meant both the tinderboxes and torches had survived the journey. She turned to see the lass padding over to them with a wide grin on her face. With the light, Maelen could see the cloak opened wide, their possessions lying in a wide, scattered clump on the rocky floor. Beyond, the black water shimmered, still recovering from their passing.
“Amazing,” Alric sighed. She turned back to see that they both huddled over a hole in the rock, perhaps a full stride across. It was from the hole that the hot air blew. “Is it a natural phenomenon, or some enchantment?” he asked, seemingly to himself. She looked up, seeing that the ceiling overhead also had a hole in it, pulling the air upwards.
“It’s the first good thing we’ve found in this awful place,” Vessa said, still whispering, joining them around the hole. “Let’s not worry why or how it’s here. Just enjoy it.”
“Aye,” Maelen agreed. She thought Vessa was right to keep her voice low. “When you’re warmed enough, help me get any damp gear from the rain over here, and some rations. We won’t leave until we’re dry and fed.”
“Thank the Rootmother,” Vessa saluted, and closed her eyes in the warmth.
They used a full torch’s light to stay by the hole and its pocket of warm air, their spirits rising. The respite wasn’t enough to banish the images of the skinless, eyeless horrors that prowled the Starless Rift, or the ghastly ritual circle of Hadren Kelthorn, or even the terrifying, freezing trek across the black pool. But, at least for a brief while, the nightmares of this place faded into the background.
Vessa even found a small, flat wall of rock where someone—presumably the poor souls who’d been torn apart—had hammered pegs and hung hooded cloaks even better oiled and resistant to water than Vessa’s, each an identical dark gray. Alric and Vessa debated why the three garments were here and how they’d been used, adding even more speculation as to the Rift’s former occupants. In the end, though, they left the mystery unsolved and agreed that the cloaks would aid them all. One even fit Alric’s tall, lanky frame, and proved to be a passable replacement for his shredded robes.
Maelen and Alric lit new torches from the dying flames of the last one. She judged they had more than enough light to last them through exploring the caverns and back to the surface, assuming this underground complex wasn’t sprawling. Still, no use being wasteful. Her angry throw of the torch across the water suddenly flashed in her mind, and she growled in embarrassment at the memory.
“Ready?” she said, more gruffly than she intended. Her two companions nodded back. They grimly moved towards the opening at the far end of the chamber.
She led them through a craggy, winding corridor of stone. With the odd column of air behind them, the horror of this place returned, tingling along her spine and keeping her eyes flicking at shadows warily. Every step they took sounded too loud to Maelen’s ears. Around every bend in the rock, she expected a vile monstrosity to leap at her with blind eyes and outstretched claws.
Eventually, Maelen heard noises from up ahead, her jaw clenching in fear. She stopped the others and jerked a chin at Vessa to move forward, at the edge of her torchlight.
“Careful, lass,” she whispered. Wide-eyed, Vessa nodded, and with an arrow nocked on her bow, padded ahead in a crouch.
One foot after the other, Maelen moved in a slow stalk. Whatever was making noise beyond her light, it wasn’t a single creature. Several bodies moved in the darkness with shuffled feet and labored breathing. She could hear Alric’s panting breath behind her. The lad was terrified, and rightly so. Still, she wished he was quieter.
Vessa had paused at the end of the corridor, a doorless entrance to a large chamber beyond. She beckoned them to her with a jerk of her chin. The three of them crouched, torchlight flickering across what could only have been the tomb of Saelith the Vanished.
It was the first crafted place they’d seen within the Starless Rift, a perfect square carved with exacting precision, larger than her light could reach. The walls seemed to be formed from dark basalt blocks, somehow fused together, and along each wall were carved recessed circles, some smooth and clean, others rough-edged or broken, no two identical. The ceiling above arched into a shallow dome, at the center of which was an enormous circular relief whose exact design she couldn’t make out in the dim shadows. Indeed, Maelen blinked several times to be sure, but it seemed as if the chamber itself somehow suppressed the light from the torches, keeping everything within the tomb muted and dull.
Directly below the circle in the ceiling was another circle, depressed within the smooth stone floor. She couldn’t be sure, but it seemed as if the form of a man lay within, robed all in black, on its back with arms and legs spread wide. All around the circular depression were a multitude of runes, more than on the doors of Thornmere Hold, more than had circled Hadren Kelthorn, rings and rings of symbols radiating out from the open grave.
Those sigils were breaking.
Spiderwebs of cracks ran from the depression and through the runic writing, each one glowing faintly gray in the darkness, a pale and eerie light like the eyes of Sarin the Night Captain or those floating wisps in the forest.
All these details Maelen absorbed in an instant, but it was not where her eyes lingered. Instead, her mouth went dry at the sight of a small legion of those skinless terrors, scampering and snuffling across the scene. They were not the larger versions like the one that had almost killed Alric, but instead the size of a child. Small comfort, though, because as she watched the eyeless monstrosities, their shining muscles and sinew exposed, she counted four… six… at least nine of the things. Far too many to fight, that was certain.
What were those abominations doing, though? Some capered at the walls, clawing at the recessed circles and leaving long, bloody trails as they did so. Some crouched outside the rings of runes, their heads down, like they were feasting upon or biting the stone. Finally, two of the creatures knelt at the edge of the circular depression, their arms outstretched, ropy strings of blood and gore falling into the tomb itself. Even as Maelen watched the creatures, like ants on an anthill, her eyes flicked to those spiderwebbed cracks as they lengthened and spread.
Alric spoke her realization aloud.
“They’re breaking him out,” he whispered in horror. “They’re freeing Saelith.”
“What do we do?” Vessa answered back, barely audible.
A red mist clouded Maelen’s vision. All her fear and pain roiled in her gut, expanding to her now-shaking fists. Curse this damned demon and the misery he brings! Flashes of Vastren Hollow and the massacre there swam in her mind. Death and shadows, everywhere Orthuun’s name is spoken. She heard something growling, low and deadly, and it took several heartbeats to realize the sound came from her own throat.
“Mae?” Vessa turned to her in alarm.
Maelen barely heard her. Screw this place and these otherworldly blights! She was not the victim here, not the prey! She was Marr the Merciless! She didn’t sit on her bloody hands while something gnawed her face! She could almost feel Sarin the Night Captain’s touch upon her skull, the world dimming and turning to darkness. She shook her head angrily at the memory. One hand gripped her black mace, the other a flickering torch, her knuckles turning white. Rage flooded her mind.
My Hero Brain 