Shivvara Garri: The Main Keep, Ground Level

Shivvara Keep

Open full size

An ancient Elven keep and tower crumble away for centuries, lost in the Ursa Forest. The keep is currently held by a half-mad pyromaniac alchemist, unleashing explosives and destruction on this section of the forest.

COURTYARD

Immediately before you, in front of what was once the main archway and entrance to the building, is a vaguely circular clearing, with five litters of pink stone spaced evenly around it. They might have once been statues; there are vague Elven features carved into some of the stones.
What's more, in the circle's center there is an unusually thick cluster of brambles and dartberry.
Tthe center of the circle is a well of some kind, its walls long since crumbled. A sound of gently running water issues up from the well. [The water can be used with some of the alchemist's reagents. If it is drunk, it lends a sense of refreshment and invigoration.]
The entrance to the keep, if it can. be called that, is an archway around which no stone remains. The archway is a greyer stone, now encrusted with lichen. It stands alone, surrounded by rubble and brambles.
The inner keep presumably lies beyond the archway, but most of the building has fallen into rubble, its walls no longer there, much of it overgrown with brush and bramble.
[Enter through archway or simply around and over the brambles and boulders, around the wall, finding the staircase down from B.]
(Note: a pink granite dragon has fallen from the rampart and smashed at the foot of the wall)

DESTROYED GROVE and DESTROYED CHAMBER...

Grove Trees and Altar razed and blasted... everything black or ashen
Destroyed chamber, blasted the walls of the keep, black rubble strewn in 50' radius; everything killed
SIX GOLDEN OAKS (small, hand-sized) scattered about

"DINING AND BARD"

Walls to the left lined with a fine

• Lying beneath rubble on the right and some still hanging from wall on left: A weapon rack, a few vissible among the bracken
• Rapiers, Longbows, Arrows, Fine Chainmail: All decayed, crushed, rotted
• Except beneath crumbled stonework: A Rapier completely untouched, beautiful and shining SHIVVARAN RAPIER, later a painting with a noble human man in a emerald and chainmail (Bairen), posing with the rapier
• And a serviceable medium steel shield
• And a number of helms, some winged

Long banquet table, perhaps once intricately carved with Elven knotwork and illustrations, table top mostly buried up to the top, with rubble and earth piling up below it. Seeking DC10 will find a hole, maybe 3' radius beneath the table. A CHOKER will whip up an arm to grab. Down in its burrow (5' below, 4' high and 10' sqaure).
CHOKER'S LAYER: 20 gp, 10 sp and scattering of tiny gemetric cut, like dice, rose quartz crystals (1gp x 20 = 20gp)... and two old daggers and a shortsword, one shortsword with a rose quartz on either side, where grip meets crossguard (extra damage die) and a club shod in iron (+1 damage)
"CRUMBLED" ABOUT

• Flagons (two of them silver plated pewter and designed with old runes): 5 gp each
• Broken crockery all around, some still in pieces, plates and bowls
• Bent ladles, spoon, forks, rusty knives
• and old trays and shards of wood and steel shodding, buried beneath shallow rubble throughout the room,
• along with bones (elven) rotted and scattered
• Two smashed lutes spattered in a black substance (ink?)
• One worn steel harp, most strings broken, very heavy

A WESTERNER PAINTING of a GREEN BEAR ( 3' x 2'), becoming one with the forest
Basement excavations are clearly not elven (Cheda added much more recently

SIX GOLDEN OAKS (small, hand-sized) scattered about

A: OLD GUARDHOUSE, RAMPARTS, and ORCS APPROACH

Little left of this room... Ancient longbows and arrows chewed and scattered about; same shields on the wall

two human skeletons at the top of the ramparts, in fine elven chainmail and mostly rotten green red cloaks, struck with arrows, bows and spears scattered

WHEN IT MIGHT BE GOOD... from view up here, can see ORCS and the THREE GOBLINS from before... They will be tromping up through the forest, and seeing someone on the ramparts will shoot... Orcs recruited by goblins for revenge, and for some treasure

Battle will be vs. Ramparts, but then also moving into the keep, with one mind: to kill the party
Stairs Down: two or three, or four, Web Lurkers hides on stairs with web, the lead to the basement, winding down and coming out in PYRONTICUS EXPLO's antechamber
Three pink-granite dragons, roughly hand size; one sitting on the rampart, the other dropped on the walk, the other fallen from the height, cracked and broken below

B: KITCHEN

Ancient standing cupboards against far wall, doors torn off: Some cups and flagons, plates and pitchers. Most of them broken. A steel wine-rack with three bottles; one has 3" (of "SLUDGE" treasure)left in it.
Three barrels below the ceilinged area, smelling sickly sweet, or sour pickle juice, or mold (each has some kind of basic, non-magical property... maybe SLUDGE)
Columns -- holding up partial ceiling--ntricate elven designs of figures standing beneath twisting oaks Two utility tables, still intact in place, no rubble here On second lvl abovem cleared off, the summoning place... Look up ritual
Earthen stairs down, freshly excavated, relatively precise
Basement of Shivvaran Keep

C : MODEST LIBRARY AND STUDY

@items
Shelves line the walls, all collapsed save for far wall (the latter will fall apart if handled too much)

• One Picture in fashioned (leaf scrolling) silver frame, the likeness of an oak-clad Queen with a staff and a bow, standing regally, her form blending with the forest background, another with splotched black goo (good painting and framr 5/5 gp)
...
and two old daggers and a shortsword, shortsword with a rose quartz on either side, where grip meets crossguard (extra damage die)

• A small elven wooden box on the floor, kattywompus, SQUIRREL PIN inside

One wall, rack of longswords, halbards, spears, and circular steel shields, decorative runework (not magic) inside--one longsword still serviceable
SIX GOLDEN OAKS (small, hand-sized) scattered about

Library Books: Open to the elements, most washed away and waterlogged, or bug-eaten...

BOOKS

One in High Elven (look this up) is a book about the surrounding forest, the Ursa Forest...

THE BOOK OF QUARA: THIS MIGHT BE PLACED ELSEWHERE, IF MISSED:

Items of the Old Shivvara 
One in archaic Bairen Common, in pretty good shape, about "The Golden Flute of Quara: The Relic Itself--Suppositions and Rumors---and the Frustrations of a Neverending Quest /// By the Lungan and Bergen, Accomplished Bards of the Western People and the Shivvaran Wood" Book is over 300 years old
THE QUARA at length "The Quara," and the the Western People of which Lungan and Bergan are members. The Quara was supposedly lost in the wood, by an Elven party traveling south to avoid the demonic forces gathering in the Ursa, or....
It was carried and played by QUAN'DIL OF SVANDALLA, the greatest High Elven bard of the age, so they say. When the flute was lost, the Elves say that she was lost with it....
The Shivvara and the Old Elven Presence in the Ursa Items of the Old Shivvara 

Some say the demons found it, and when they could not destroy it they hid it in a horrid cavernous complex, supposedly gone forever.

Some say the components of the flute--the music, the body, and the elven spirit--were extracted and stored, contained somehow in three Elven groves throughout the Ursa Forest, to keep them protected, until the Elves returned

Some say (a number of us, the Western People) the Quara is lost, and our quest has become ridiculous, to be abandoned

We say the flute is out there somewhere, in the forest, and its sweet powers are our obsession. We will not give up until we find it, or we die at the hands of this Shivvaran Forest.

The book includes

• Detailed suppositions about the power of the flute
• The mythology behind its creation among the Elves
: The Shivvara and the Old Elven Presence in the Ursa
• along with the (most accurate) link "Old Elven Presence" above, there are other stories:
  The various stories of how the flute arrived in the Wood, and for what it was used (almost all stories claim its powers against fiends and abberations in particular, but especially lycanthropesa0
• An attempt at describing the sound of its music, and its versatile abilities in the hands of an expert who has bonded to it
• Its specific magical powers (see link above)

At the end, a speculation about its current whereabouts; in three pieces among the Shivvara, across the southern Ursa forest; or locked safely in the realm of the Bear-people, or held and guarded among the wolves of north Deepwash
The Flute was created at a time when lycanthropy was the great scourge of the Ursa Forest, the Deepwash Mountains, and what is now the Orcreach. The Flute's music was supposedly a great repellant and healing device, against the werebears and werewolves that prowled openly in the forests and hills.

THE JOURNAL OF SHIVVARA GARRI

THIS MAY ALSO BE FOUND SOMEWHERE ELSE
Strewn among the rubble, a small-sized book... more of it here: See The Shivvara and the Old Elven Presence in the Ursa Items of the Old Shivvara 

D: COUNCIL CHAMBER

Smaller room, great circular table in the mniddle, half crushed with chunks of rubble fallen, mostly ritted away... litter of five silver flagns in and among the rubble on the floor
Open to the air, everything moldy and damp
On the edge of a splodey-powder explosion, western rubble blackened and crumbled
A large CRYSTAL SPHERE has rolled to the floor, its perfectly spherical, clear / pearlescent form slightly cracked...

Detect magic or successful (DC20) perception check, see within:

a recording of an elven council (7 menberes), discussing the encroachment of demonic forces, and decision made to leave," looks at "camera": Let it be known to those that care; we shall leave within the season... meanwhile soon to need to fortify, especially the tower and ramparts... Those that might be able and willing, please send help..."

Then a snarling red blur of matted fur and wicked claws, a horned head and wild burning eyes, bursts into the scene. There is yelling and chaos and blood (splashing the sphere), the image goes crooked and distorted then disappears.

Three human skeletons, as if hiding under table, a bit scattered and chewed, in tatters--once fine livery, total of 30 gp among them

-Three daggers in sheathes, one a larger and rougher black leather, at the base of the fallen table (TWO GOLD WINGED DAGGERS, and ONE COLD IRON, see NOTES) Can stick dagger in slot on the ramparts, and a slot on the first level of the tower... These also protect the keep with a pink-green forcefield, for one day, every moon
Daggers also can be used as weapons

E: MEDITATION AND LOWER MAGIC

This room destroyed in rubble, a faint hum of magic about it, a kind of residue (magic is more powerful in this room)... Seven faced "silk?" meditation cusions "lined up" along the "walls"
Basement of Shivvaran Keep The Tower of Pyronticus Explo
and two old daggers and a shortsword, one shortsword with a rose quartz on either side, where grip meets crossguard (extra damage die)
a finger-sized sculpture (like jade) of a antlered deity, robed with a twining staff, arms outstretched (40gp), in a locked, shabby-velvet little jewelery box
3 pink granite butterflies (see notes)

NARRATIVE, COMING UPON THE SHIVVARA GARRI

The Shivvara Garri sits heavy in its ruins at the crest of a hill just ahead. The hilltop is visible through the trees, although you are still at the low point of the rise. At the hilltop are three sections facing.
On the left, a crumbled wall of pink stone, and several blackened trees.
In the middle, rising high above you, is a wall and looming-tall rampart and crennelations, built of an entirely different stone of dark grey, barely touched by the ruins of time.
Finally, to the right of the great wall towers an even taller structure: a spiring tower, rising up in both pink and grey, as if some stone-waller corrected the crumbling pink spire as it weathered, filling in the chinks with grey stone and mortar. Capping the tower is a conical roof.
In random piles atop the hill, a pinkish-green granite, which might have once been so polished and lovely, litters the ground around. Vines and brambles seem to cover everything. Indeed, the forest seems to have partially swallowed the keep--strangled it in green.
But still, all of these sights are gained without having started began the hill. There will be more above.

- - - - - - - - - - -end of narrative- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

..

The Three Goblins have recruited several orcs to find the party and get revenge, and also for loot

FOES IN BACK POCKET

(DEMON IN BACK POCKET, the BABAU DEMON, summoned long ago and lying dormant, until... cr6) (ABBERATION IN BACK POCKET, the VAMPIRIC MIST, added for flavor anywhere... can sense blood within a mile... cr3, maybe more than one)
OTHER POSSIBLE CREATURES IN THE KEEP and BELOW, or in the TOWER, POSSIBLE GENERALLY IN SHIVVARAN RUINS ANYWHERE

• PENANGALAN, B3 cr5, Head and Guts can occupy youthful bodies
• GRINDYLOW, cr0 B2
• CHOKER (already in module)
• NIGHTGAUNT (Dream, cr4, b3)
• DIZIRIAK, possibly taking over of the keep, an insect-like humanoid of runes and light, cr3 B2
• SKELETONS (already in module)
• SINSPAWN (already in module)
• RUST MONSTER (below, cr3 B1)
• WEB LURKER (already in module)
• (FLESHWARPS at some point, when Drow are involved)
• MIMIC (already in module)
• OTYUGH (cr b1)
• WEREBEAR (cr4, b1, possibly hiding out / dwelling in ruins, or more likely lurking around)