The Ruined Keep

An account by Connor Wentworth

Deep in the woods east of Faversham, lies a crumbling keep from a bygone age. Its walls are nearly obliterated either by time or by siege. There are two main buildings inside what were once sturdy, stone walls. The kitchen building is nearly as crumbled as the walls, and there is a huge gaping hole in the side of the building. Piled high in the kitchen is a mound of rotting food. Nearly lost my own lunch in here as the smell was atrocious! A Majimonster nest no doubt, though they were not present during my exploration.
The other building housed the main living quarters of the keep and is in very good standing compared to the rest of the structure. I could see no point of ingress, but for a locked wooden door. It took me two trips to fully explore this ruin for I had to go back to Faversham to find someone who could pick a lock. Fortunately for history, I found just such a person; a nice fellow, if a little dull. Flint Paelun I think was his name. He got the door open in no time at all and together we stepped into a place that no one has seen for nearly 200 years, since The Fall of the Maji.
The interior of this building is a simple one-room construction, with stone support pillars throughout. It was probably meant as a summer home for some noble. There are several bookcases along the walls, a desk, five cots, and a large table in the center of the room. Seated at this table are two skeletons. Their position suggests that they died playing cards. An odd way to go if you ask me. On the table, next to them was a disgusting journal, with moldy pages. It smelled almost as bad as the rotting food in the kitchen! It must be very old indeed. I've taken it with me for further study. Its contents as follows:

July 29, 1432
Akari, Kasumi, Mahavir, and Stancliff have come up with some plan to end this madness. They’ve asked us to keep this bit of stone safe until it’s over. I hope to the gods it works! The populace is looking for someone to blame for this mess, and I get an uneasy feeling about this stone.
July 30, 1432
We sent Elusia with the stone to Pearlwich. It’s too dangerous here. We keep hearing shouting in the distance. Someone will probably come for us sooner or later. We have decided to stay behind in case Mahavir and the others return.
July 31, 1432
The townsfolk have found where we’ve been hiding. They are outside now taunting and chanting. I wonder if their fervor means that Mahavir and the others have failed. “You can’t stay in there forever!” they say. It seems we face death by starvation or death by mob. The two of us have made a pact to stay in the keep on the slim hope that pretending to still have the stone will help Elusia get away. Nothing left to do but play cards. Fellowship is the greatest treasure.

How intriguing! The first entry must have been referring to Akari Oshiro, Mahavir Burman, Captain Stancliff Preston, and Kasumi Oshiro. But what sort of magical artifact was this stone? An important enough one for two Maji to choose to die playing cards, apparently! I searched and searched this room for any kind of stone but could find none. Does the word stone refer to something else, perhaps? And what sort of calamity were the Maji fighting at this time? It seems to me based on the accounts I’ve read that the Maji considered the mobs of non-magical people to be a mere inconvenience. There was something larger going on that the Maji were even more afraid of. Unfortunately, much information from the past has been lost. We may never truly know the secrets of that time in our history...

Type

Keep

Related Report (Secondary Locations)

• Olkedo Session 3

Related Plots

• The Black Stones

A cabbage?

As we were leaving I caught a whiff of something rotting. I put the stinking journal out of the room and followed my nose to a trap door under a rug. I opened the door, which wasn't locked, and found a small compartment. This sort of hidden compartment is used the world over to conceal valuables. This one, however, contained nothing more than a slightly wilted cabbage! My nimble fingered companion seemed to think that this meant someone had to have been here recently. My how the uneducated jump to conclusions! I tried to explain to the poor chap that clearly this was a magical cabbage. Some sort of food preservation spell must have been cast on it. The dolt then asked if there was a cabbage in the floor why wouldn't the Maji have eaten it? Well clearly they didn't know it was there, of course! Not everyone is blessed with my powers of perception.