Chapter 04

General Summary

Crucible: The Dream Village

• As the fog dissipates, our heroes find themselves in a dream-like realm. In their minds, they know the following:

  Nestled deep within a verdant forest, shielded by an ancient, whispering grove, lies a secluded village untouched by the world's troubles. Sunlight filters through the canopy in dappled patterns, casting an ethereal glow over the quaint wooden houses with thatched roofs. A small river, clear as crystal, winds its way through the village, providing a lifeblood for the community and their livestock.
  
  The villagers are a simple folk, their lives centered around farming, fishing, and a deep-rooted spirituality. Their faces are etched with a serene contentment, a stark contrast to the turmoil that plagues the outside world. Children play freely, their laughter echoing through the tranquil streets. There’s a sense of timeless peace in the village, a sanctuary from the harsh realities beyond the protective forest.
  
  A thick fog often shrouds the village at dawn and dusk, obscuring it from view and adding to its mysterious allure. It is said that this fog is a magical barrier, protecting the villagers from the evils that lurk in the shadows.
  
  A shadow is creeping across the land, a malevolent force that whispers of decay and despair. Its approach is heralded by unnatural storms, eerie silence, and the withering of life. The villagers of the hidden hamlet, once basking in eternal twilight, begin to feel its chilling breath.
  
  Ancient texts, unearthed from the depths of forgotten dwarven halls, spoke of this darkness, a cosmic imbalance that could only be rectified through a profound sacrifice. A life for a world, the grim prophecy reads. And the sacrifice must be pure, innocent, untouched by the world's corruption. A villager.
  
  You stand at the precipice of a moral abyss. Your hearts pound against your ribs as the weight of the world rests on your shoulders. Before you is a community, a tapestry of lives innocent of the horrors beyond their sheltered haven. To condemn one of them to such a terrible fate is a burden no hero wishes to bear.
  
  Yet, the alternative is unthinkable. To allow the darkness to consume this idyllic refuge, to watch as hope and life wither under its malevolent touch, is a torment equally as profound. There is no easy path, no heroic charge to vanquish this foe. Only a heart-wrenching decision.
  
  You can force a sacrifice, a desperate gamble that might save the world but will forever stain your souls. You could attempt to convince a villager to offer themselves willingly, a hope as fragile as a newborn's breath. Or, you could search for another path, a desperate gamble against time, a quest for a solution that might not exist.

• Grasping their situation quickly, our heroes discuss briefly what to do and decide quickly to seek out the village elder, an aging dwarf going by the name of Grimulf Mountainhold, and seek assistance. The old dwarf informs them his family founded the village hundreds of years ago and have been the guardians of the remains of the wizard tower that predates the community. The remains of the tower contain an old library of a dozen books.
• Reading through the books, the party discover a solution

  A glimmer of hope emerges from the depths of despair. Legends speak of a Heartstone, a relic of ancient power capable of purging the land of darkness without the sacrifice of life. This stone, forged in the heart of a dying star, holds within it the essence of creation and purification. Yet, its location is all but inaccessible, burried inthe lair of a Belaithaman, a demon of old created by The Maeg Anri. A perilous quest lies ahead, a journey into the heart of madness. To find the Heartstone requires courage, wisdom, and a strength of spirit that transcends mortal limitations. It is a path fraught with peril, but it offers a chance to redeem the world without sacrificing innocence.

• Our heroes hunt down the lair of the demon and confront it. The battle is brutal and bloody, a mere hint of the savagery of the Belaithamin, but our heroes emerge victorious, finding the Heartstone and saving the village.

A Momentary Divergence

• Maiya and Le’otie awake to find themselves being nuzzled by a white dire wolf with icy blue eyes. The wolf declares them to be her children and proceeds to tell them a brief history of the world through the eyes of the wolf (see The White Wolf: The Unifier) and bestows upon them a role in destiny: Maiya as the wolf’s nose, Le’otie as the wolf’s fangs, together called to unite the people of Aerith.
• DeClain and Oleander awake under the lone tree of the manor’s courtyard. They awake having had a brief memory of separate visions: DeClain’s that of being part of a war council, viewing a battle map and tokens, giving strategic advice to a king; and Oleander’s that of giving a cry of confidence in the men of an army he was leading against a mysterious and dark foe.
• Midgwyn awakes in the manor’s downstairs bedroom and peruses the book she’d discovered earlier, Personal Reflections: Ja’acob Hardfoot (see the Hardfoot Manor), and learns that the cleric built a great machine a thousand years ago just before the Demon War that had the ability to read the Divine Will. Determining to find this machine, she discovers the wardrobe in the bedroom is on a siding track. She slides the wardrobe aside to reveal a short passageway that leads downward. At the bottom of the stairs is a collection of machinery. Central in the room appears to be a control panel of some sort, and on the west side of the room are three huge metal tori (a surface or solid formed by rotating a closed curve, especially a circle, around a line that lies in the same plane but does not intersect it; e.g., like a ring-shaped doughnut). None of the machinery does anything, no matter how she manipulates it. A door leads out of the room, but she decides not to open it before gathering the rest of her companions.
• Zafaris awakens in one of the upstairs bedrooms. As she gathers herself, she detects a shadow flit quickly across her window. Unsure of the size of whatever cast the shadow (and thus how far away it was), she nevertheless suppresses a shiver as her instincts tell her she is being watched.

The Crypt

• Our heroes are intrigued by Midgwyn’s discovery but decide to explore the door she found before doing anything about the machine (which, they guess, can be activated by plugging the Heartstone into the receptacle at the bottom of the well).
• Behind the door they discover a dark hallway that ends in a concealed door to a crypt beneath the chapel. In the crypt, they find eight sealed stone vaults holding long-deceased dwarves. On the southeastern vault, subterranean vegetation grows (e.g., fungus, mold, etc.).
• The name on the vault of “Thorgrim Stoneheart.” Zafaris discusses the wisdom of opening the vault (she is curious as to why it’s growing anything) while Oleander searches the rest of the crypt and discovers a set of biographies, a book each dedicated to one of the occupants of the vaults.
• The Thorgrim Stoneheart’s biography has a hand-written preface:

  Thorgrim was a devout cleric of nature, a protector of the dwarven people. His faith was absolute, and he was revered for his wisdom and power. However, a deep-seated pride and a growing thirst for knowledge led him down a dark path. He began experimenting with forbidden magics, seeking to extend life and increase power. His experiments corrupted him, transforming him into a creature of shadow and death.

• Oleander calls out for Zafaris to cease trying to open the vault just as the lid crashes to the ground.
• Inside the vault, the party finds a desiccated dwarven corpse. The corpse is in nowhere near as bad of shape as they would expect a thousand-year-old corpse to be. The corpse is dressed in a fine green cloak and is holding a staff decorated with a snake on its tip. The corpse’s head rests on a small chest. The heroes discover arcane writing on the inside of the vault and on the underside of the vault lid that may have once defined a ritual seal, now broken. Still, nothing happens with the corpse. The party decides against looting the vault or desecrating the body, instead resealing the vault with the lid.

The Great Machine

• The only thing left is activating the machine under the manor. Zafaris agrees to plug in the Heartstone, and the manor trembles as the Great Machine surges to life.
• The central equipment of the Great Machine is a complex network of buttons and switches. Most of its identifying symbols are dwarven, but the machine’s workings are so complex our heroes have little hope of understanding how to operate it. The three metal tori dominating the western wall all buzz with power. The southern torus' center glows a bright blue. The other two have a dull blue filling their center with dwarven numbers scrolling down their aces when suddenly both tori stop scrolling a display a series of numbers in bright blue.
• It takes time, but the party slowly pieces together that the numbers are navigational markers identifying the location of something… two somethings. A couple of days go by as they work out the locations on an old map of Aerith, but they finally determine where the numbers point: one is in New Aerith City, and the other is in the Stone Mountains between the nation of Baerdid and the Empire of Sharapov.

A Concerning Discovery

• Getting some air, our heroes gather outside and discuss the events of the last several days.
• Zafaris, still with the feeling of being watched, catches a glimpse of the shadow again. She looks up and gasps. The rest of our heroes take her cue and look up as well to discover something the world hasn’t seen for a thousand years: a great dragon resting on the lip of the canyon, its predatory gaze falling upon them…

Report Date

11 Aug 2024