Act 1, Scene 1: On the way to Shivvara, Orbbin Gnomish Village

(last session): The party is headed west along the Ursa Way, and the first day of travel yields a number of encounters, most of them Dwarven merchants in caravans carrying goods from Tennka, or further down the march of mountains (Jennka or Fennka).

(Bringing sapphires, pink or green turquoise, blue emeradls; iron ore; gold ore; items of good stell; some basic textiles)
Two encounters are striking however, one of them a sorcerer and dragon-servant named Peakfriend Ger-Traisan, and another encounter with a caravan of Dwarves, who stop and take an interest in the party.
Ursa Way Encounters, Ursa Forest or Northestern Way

GOBLINS IN THE FOREST

A group of goblins camps out or hides in the forest along Ursa Way, as it heads into the dense thick of trees. The party has been warned by the Dwarven Caravan that the goblins are there in the liminal edge of the wood.
The nasty creatures are not there anymore, however. They're now deeper in the wood, along the trail, reading to ambush. There are seven of them:
2 Stealthy Goblins (HIDE up in a tree) 6 Basic Goblins (on the ground, HIDE to ambush)
The Stealthies will hider up about 20' in the oak trees, among the foliage, and the basic goblins will ambush on the ground from all sides, hiding themselves at first.
So the goblins will attack on the ground, and the stealthies up in the trees with its sling.
Goblins will fight to loot and flee if things don't go their way.
TWO ITEMS OF TREASURE FOUND ON GOBLINS: The lsat two items:

• Dwarven Zubb
• Anti-venom elixir

THROUGH THE WILD: NOVA'S SPIDERS

At some point, Cheda Bowstring will look around carefully, left to right, and then turn left and head back into the forest. "This is the way, heading south." Glances warily at Nova. "With luck we'll avoid the spiders..."
Matter of fact, and then simiply walking into the wild, (longbow in hand, arrow knocked?). It's very slow going, over and around fallen logs, through thickets of raspberry and around impenetrable thornbushes.

There are creatures in the gloom of the woods--some hooting--owls perhaps--scrambling squirrels in the trees, deer watching intently, then running off--dark and drizzly even at the height of the day.
At nigthfall, exhausted from tromping throught the woods, Cheda finds a clearing. Rain has stopped and the weather is warmer.
Make camp here in the little amount of space available. That night (during Kahn's watch) Nova has a dream, swarming with spiders, wakes with a start and just has a feeling, a sense of danger, but also drawn to it.
Energy leads off into the forest, drawing Nova in, to near pitch-black.
Could get caught in the web. To an colony of giant spiders, and a huge array of webs.
Spiders: ["Is it her? Does she know? Is she complete? Will we tell her?"]. Turns to Nova, "We have a secret, spider-shield. Let us eat your friends, and we will tell you. Bring them to our webs, and we will devour them, and you will go free with a new knowledge of who you are..."

BEAR and HER CUB TRAPPED IN THE WEB, ANOTHER SHADY SPIDER HEADING FOR IT

DUEL FOR KEEL

• Mother Spider (Tara'noth) will unwrap him and revive him, on one condition: Blood Sport, he battles two smaller spiders in a duel. (Love the blood sport!)

• If Keel wins, Tara'noth must give Nova the information and let them go, but to be hunted down day by day, to be captured mercilessly and brought to the Queen, when you least expect it, for a horrid death.... ("We will enjoy the hunt, tasting your fear and hopelessness...")
• Note that Tara'noth would actually enjoy giving the information; drawijng it out creates more terror, and a meal or two!
• If the spiders win, Keel will choose one of the party to be wrapped and eaten, and you may go then, to be hunted nonetheless, without the information you seek. And of course the hunt will go on...

The secret is, "Though we cannot touch you, nor do we wish to, You, spider-shield, are the feast of Lolth. We can smell it; you are the one; the whisperings inform us... Go forward to the Pit; you cannot avoid it; and meet your horrible doom in the rotten jaws of Lolth."

NEXT MORNING

Cheda informs, "One more day to Orbbin, village of the Ursa Gnomes, and a day and a half beyond that."
Go to Orbbin, Gnomish Village in the Ursa Forest

ORBBIN, gnomish hamlet... reached after full day's march through the forest

Cheda is a "g'nubbit"--a "gnome friend"... She demonstrates by getting on one knee, with head bowed, and a slight flexing of the fingers--very hard to pick up, sends a primal energy--and the statement: "I honor the burrows in which you live, the your circles beyond ancient; and the magic ways you practice." (in Gnomish)

She is then greeted joyfully, and her friends trusted and honored. Takes them in for the evening,

• a hearty jug of groggin-cubby handed around,
• and some thimble-whiskey,
• and pure water from the gnomish well
• as well as a massive tossed salad of beans and lily-seeds, flavored with raspberry vinegar and salt.

BUGGINS and HUMM are the two hosts, jolly, laugh-lines, tell stories of forest aniimals and their follies, yet with a reverence

BUGGINS: one-eyed gnome (Subby-Ghib: one-eye)
• Green hair
• Fascinating eye patch with delicate, pulsing designes of green knotwork
Tells the story of the Shivvara
• A thousand years ago or more, longer ago than any Elf can understand, a scouting contingent of High Elves came north, looking for a new place to settle
• They found the Ursa Forest a place with good energy, good magic
• And so it was...
• The Elves built keeps and villages and set up a noble relationship with the trees and animals here.
• But after many centuries, the magic or the forest invited a horrid eveil into the world
• Demons from the deep Abyss came up, seemed to boil up out of the forest floor itself
• Needless to say the Demons destroyed wherever they went, and their numbers were many
• The Elves were overwhelmed, and in the end they needed to uproot and return south to their ancestral homeland
• The demons remained, and they ravaged the forest for 100 years or more, laying waste to most of the land
• The demons slowly faded away, or so it is told, and the forest grew back, clearing the way for the "Western" people
• The humans were a nomadic clan, making their way into the forest
• They were enchanted, and they took over the Elven Keeps and made theim their own
• The Westerners made a good life in the Ursa Wood, and they stayed for a long time, hunting and fishing and fighting off the goblins and orcs that lurked among the trees.
• They held their noble ground against a military threat from the Deepwash Mountains. They were a proud people, and
• For over a century they resided in relative peace
• But for reasons known not even to the Gnomes, their influence ended.
• That was when "The Strangers" moved in and took over the Shivvaran keeps throughout the forest.
• Weird people they are, spreading abberations and behaving in bizarre, often evil ways
• Many Shivvara have become home to these strange sorcerers, and they plague the forest with their twisted magic and twisted minions.
• Otherwise it's just us here in the deep forest, and those silly goblins! Aside from the animals and the occasional orc, the others come only on specific errand


• Can explain the alchemist, PYRONTICUS EXPLO as an ultimate in unnatural magician / alchemist
• Inviting warped abberations to guard Shivvar, creating un-holy alchemical concoctions
• Can explain how the 'splody-powder is made
• Blackened Thalas mashed with a demon's saliva, with pyroxin (below) sprinkled (not necessary, but makes it more potent)
• makes a paste, dries crusty onto anything, then becomes a very potent explosive with a very delicate trigger
• Blackened Thalus can only be gathered in an area already destroyed and blackenerd by the splodey-powder,
  bark from oak yields PYROXIN, scraped off of bark (two combine with one other reagent to make the powde more potent)
• Skeleton minions sent out mindlessly to gather Thalus, too stupid to gather PYROXIN

And stories of Gnoilly Wunderhill, the ancient hero of smiles and good things...
Don't seem to worried about the alchemist, although honoring the Heroes for seeking hiim out and destroying him
And also talk (still jolly) of Shivvara.
An old gnome--PUBBA'NARG BUB'IGG--sitting by the fire all this time silently, just staring into the fire. (She is hundreds of years old now and barely alive it seems.).

• When the heroes talk of Shivvara, she eventually looks up with her filmed-over eyes and wrinkled gnomish face, and bent gnomish nose, and says quite clearly, "Go down to go up. Go down to go up."
• Then she goes back to staring at the fire

Take from here: Act 3, initial: Nientesha the Storyteller: The Shivvar and the Forest Explosions

Locations around Orbba:

HOOKS and INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCES

KAHN: DRUIDIC GROVE of GNOILLY UNDERHILL, and HERB MARKET

• A hill, ringed with oaks at the top, and a Druidic Burrow nearby (home of Gnoillian Druidic order)
  An altar of broken, grey basalt, scattered with powdered earth (mixed with water, to make paste/mud, and dried brown oak-leaves, and the ancient skulls of seven squirrels
  Make an offering? Hub-Gnoill will see them if their offer is worthy, and interview them briefly
  will lead them on a silent walk
  through the forest to a hidden trove, and given KHAN a gilded oak leaf necklace (see treasure) and an AIR WALK SCROLL (see treasure)...
  Home of the druidicc order of Gnoilly Underhill
  A gnomish take on the Druidic God of nature (actually a very versatile god, stands for nearly anything)
  

Gnomes will buy and sell herbs the next morning

Lily-seed oil, for poultices and salves

Joyflower: Lifts spirits and lends a sense of optimism

Birchbark: Healing, eaten or poultice

Acorn Mush: Hearty, fortifying, +1 FORT for an hour

Oakleaf salve: with oil, a poultice for wounds, +1 to healing roll

Pink Salt: Radiates a positive energy, good for long journeys

Thimbleberries: Eaten over the course of many days, improves sharpness of mind, +1 INT bonus for one hour

• Muckweed Tincture: Impervious to rainy weather
  Dartbush berries, crushed: a mild nerve poison
• THALAS is the healing herb found close to the Elven ancestral home of SHIVVARA... takes on the opposite effect closer to the aberrative keep, in blackened areas; +2 to healing roll, adds +2 hp to any magical healing when offered up with the spell

NOVA
Dapper fellow passed within our territory, and we stopped him to question, ended up with quite a TRIGGU'BUGGER, a party in the firelight.

His name was GNOMES, IN PARTING,
Give a jug of Groggin-Cubby--a very fine gift--and send the Heroes on their way

As a parting gift the Gnomes give Kahn a RUNESTONE, blessed by the powers of Gnoilly Wunderhill, lends a "gnomish flair" to whatever imprinted on it

RUNESTONE, spell storing (three) (lvl 1, consumable, 10 GP), and a quartz crystal stylus.... Etch a 1st level spell-rune on it, then can transfer it to an item or person, to cast/will the spell for it/them when they want.

More Encounters if necessary or useful

Ursa Forest Encounters

BLACKENED AREAS

Two blasted, blackened areas found first, maybe 50 yards radius, roughly circular in, small crater and everything around it blown back and blackened and killed;
only one wispy wavy vine growing up and twining around all the dead tings.
A white flower on its stalk.
(White flower--Deadly Thalas--can be dried combined with reagents to make more splodey bombs, and pyroxine scraped off of scorched oak trees, for more potency--rare and hard to find)--still needs another reagent (from keep)
The keep of SHIVVARA is only a hilltop away.

NARRATIVE: APPROACHING THE SHIVVARA

Weather clears up, first sun you've seen in weeks, shining down through the dripping oak trees, coloring the forest floor so brilliantly in leafy greens and red berries.  Beads of recent rainwater reflect diamonds and sparkles in the green dazzle all around.
And so a forested hill is before you, and looking up you can see a majestic tower of Shivvara rising at the top, with its pink-granite masonry, now crumbled and worn in places, hundreds of years old.

(Cheda Bowstring kneels in front of a great, scorched twisted oak, and utters an oath of vengeance on every abberation near or in the keep. "Ellathel braed" (or you make it up)--No mercy
It looks as though [approaching from the east] the keep's size is considerable, although not compared to the lavish mansions of Broondian merchants like Buskar Skwash.  Looking left up the hills,, you take in a the one-story keep of pink and green granite, in long-gone shambles, little more than a pile of vines and rubble. 

In contrast, on the far right of the Shivvara, a tower of the same material rises far above the oaks around.  Although built of the same pink-green stone, the tower evidences patching or some kind, as if from a dull grey cement.  Nevertheless, it stands thus tall and sturdy.  You shield your eyes to the dazzling sunlight and gaze up at the tower's conical roof.  The high architecture is strangely well-maintained compared to the keep.

In between the two, and looming ahead at the main bulk of the hill-top, there weighs-in a high wall of defense, topped with old crennelations.  The imposition of the wall gives no doubt of its use in the defense of the keep, long ago.  Strangely, its builders constructed with an imposition of dark grey granite--a stark difference from the architectures on its left and right.


Act 3, Scene 2: The Lower Keep of Shivvara The Tower of Pyronticus Explo