Session 221: Whispers from the Hearth: The Light and the Soot

Day 6 - 7 Sunsebb CY 576

Gather ’round, if your boots aren't too muddy and your ears aren't too full of the winter wind. Old Vilma has seen the shadows lengthening over Orlane, and oh, how the "watchful and strained" air of our little village ripples when the restless ones pass through.

The high-and-mighty ones have moved on, their horses’ breath steaming in the sharp morning light as they rode for Hochoch. But before they left, there was quite the stir at the Slumbering Serpent. The new one—the Paladin, Lalie, refused to share a roof with the "Fearsome Five". She says she detected a foulness in them, an evil that would not let her sleep. She’d rather tuck into the Golden Grain than breathe the same air as a black soul, and so she moved her retinue in the dead of Sunsebb.

They’ve reached the stone walls of Hochoch now, a place that feels stable, though perhaps just as strained in its own way. They’ve been frequenting the Green Dragon, where the floors are swept but the eyes are just as guarded.  

But listen to what the birds tell me about the Temple of St. Cuthbert! Rosalind Greenshield, the High Priestess, nearly wept to see what Lalie carried in her hands. A relic lost to the records—a mace of disruption pulled from the "Barrowmaze". It’s a terrifying thing, blessed to blast the walking dead into nothingness with a single strike. The heavens seem to be arming their soldiers, for the paladin was told to wield it and smite the unrighteous.

Yet, where there is brilliant light, there is always soot. Armatzi, that cleric who usually knows better, has draped himself in darkness. He wears cursed plate mail now, a black skin imbued by necromancers. The Priestess says it’s a magnet for the enemy — that the dead can see him through it, like a beacon in the night. He’s walking a narrow bridge, that one, needing to slay twenty "enemies of the cloth" just to atone for his vanity in putting on a suit of mail without asking the stars what it was first.

And then there is the fire. Lhoss has laid claim to a staff that once belonged to a pyromancer named Pinto. It’s a hungry thing, filled with fifty-three charges of "burning hands" and "continual flames". It even tastes of gold — requiring a heavy price in coins and materials just to keep its fire fed. 

The party grows heavy with treasures — rings of protection and books of fire. But even as they sharpen their steel in Hochoch, the Barrowmarsh still thins its needles and peels its bark, waiting for the corruption to spread. 

Be careful, travelers. A mace may break a bone, and a staff may light a fire, but the shadows of the maze have long memories. Now, leave an old woman to her tea. The fire is getting low, and the wind is starting to howl.