A prophecy plotline · Stonetop to
Gordin’s Delve
· a
titan
pinned under the Third Delve, and the Stone is its last nail
Truth
A primordial titan lies pinned under the Huffel Peaks. Tor is Slayer-of-Beasts, and the village tale says he
slew three; the skeleton at
Titan Bones
is one. The Quern is the fourth, the one he could not kill. He put a javelin through its back and the giants
did the rest. Forge Lord plaques call it Abaloura, “the tremor”. The village calls it the
Quern because it turns under the hill and grinds, in a village that has no mill.
The binding is the one work the Makers shared besides the roads. The
Forge Lords
cast sevenorichalcum
pins and drove six through the beast. The
Stone Lords
sang the binding into the bedrock along a line from the Peaks to the bluff, and the
West Road
is the visible spine of it. The seventh pin is the Stone: Tor’s javelin, fifty feet showing.
Lightning striking it keeps the binding charged, which is why storms come to it and why the village air
tingles of ozone.
The Cistern is the binding’s ear and drum, a Stone Lord vault with a floor of
makerglass
that carries the Stone’s ringing into the rock. The water is the medium. The villagers have filled the
Makers’ tuning chamber with snowmelt for twelve generations, which is why nobody in Stonetop is bothered by
loud noises and everyone talks a little too loud.
Daagon
has a Mouth in the lake at the bottom of the Second Delve and has whispered to the Quern through the water for
centuries: they are pulling your nails; the last one is on the hill; go and break it. The nails are
what Gordin’s Delve calls the orichalcum “doors” in the Third Delve
(Delve secrets).
Miners pry one open every few years and a quake follows. Four of seven are out.
Mutra the Teeth wants the last two because Ustrina pay silver for their masters’ work. His powder-woman
Gessa Blackpalm wants them because Daagon told her where they are. When the sixth comes out the Quern can
move, and the only way it can go is along the binding under the road, three days toward the nail it can
reach from beneath. It surfaces under the bluff, breaks the Stone, and Stonetop goes down the crack.
“Rings spread across the Cistern water, and nothing has been dropped in. The dogs will not come near the
mouth. Somewhere under your feet, something very large has shifted its weight.”
Prophecy
Every child in Stonetop knows the skipping rhyme. “Horn” is the Cistern and “anvil” is the Stone, Tor’s
drinking horn and Tor’s anvil
(Tor in Stonetop).
Quern’s asleep and the anvil’s ringing,
count the thunder, the Thunderhead’s singing.
Horn runs cold and the horn runs still —
good for the barley, good for the kill.
Horn runs warm and the horn runs humming —
shut the door, the Quern is coming.
Horn runs black and the anvil’s broke —
that’s the year of the last of the folk.
Twymor has a longer stanza, copied from a Marshedge antiquarian’s book of Barrow Builder verse. Nobody
sings this part.
Seven nails for the beast Tor could not kill,
six in the mountain and one in the hill.
Draw them out and the road-stones sweat;
draw the last and the horn runs wet.
The road runs both ways, the chain runs one —
what climbs the road comes for the Stone.
“Shut the door” is the answer: the doors are the nails.
“Draw the last” is the line Gessa’s cult reads as an instruction.
“The horn runs wet” is the line that gets the village arguing to drain the Cistern.
Fresh delivery: the first violent storm of summer, lightning walks the Stone all night and
half the village dreams the same beast, chained on its back under a mountain, each dreamer one link
(Tor hook).
Everyone wakes humming the rhyme. Beth says the Cistern was doing it first.
Portents
Advance one when Seasons Change says a threat gets worse, when a pin comes out, or when the party spends a
week elsewhere. Each pin driven home reverses one. A storm with the Stone charged and the binding re-tuned
puts the Quern back to sleep where it lies.
The horn rings. Rings on the Cistern water with nothing dropped in. Only children and dogs
hear the hum. Goats will not drink from it. The ozone smell is stronger at the Cistern mouth than at the
Stone. This is already happening.
The storm dream. The whole village dreams the chained beast. Erin the Legend’s statue cracks
across the base. Three days later a tremor reaches Stonetop: pin five is out.
The horn runs warm. Cistern water warm at dawn, tasting of iron. The
Quiet Twins
stand at the foot of the bluff pointing up at the village. A sinkhole in a fallow field shows a broken
road-stone with scorched runes. Yohan’s cult keeps vigil at the Cistern at night.
The road-stones sweat. Pin six is out. A real quake: the Ringwall splits, the southeast
watchtower comes down, the West Road’s pavestones run with black water. That night a Hand of Daagon
rises through the Cistern floor (the Cistern).
The anvil rings. Lightning strikes the Stone out of a clear sky, night after night. Everyone
hears the hum now. Livestock bolt down the switchback. The Cistern drains itself into a crack that was not
there yesterday. Stones of the Old Wall tumble in a line from the end of the road toward the bluff.
Impending doom. At the next storm the Quern surfaces beneath the bluff and breaks the Stone
(the Stone). The bluff collapses into the Cistern. Stonetop is a crater.
Site moves
When the Quern turns (a pin pulled, a portent advanced), everyone in Stonetop rolls +nothing.
10+ you keep your feet and see what falls;
7–9 the tremor reaches a thing of yours (a wall, a still, a fence, a sleeping child’s cot);
6− the ground opens somewhere in the village and something is lost into it.
Earthquake hazards are on
Huffel Peaks page.
When you put your hand flat on the Cistern water and listen, roll +WIS.
10+ you learn where the Quern is on the line and how many nails still hold;
7–9 you learn one of those, and the water tells Daagon where you are;
6− you hear the whisper and it can now compel you
(whispers and visions).
When you drive a pin home in the beast’s back, roll +STR, with advantage if an Ustrina alloyed
it and a Stonetop smith set it.
10+ it seats and the Quern sleeps deeper (reverse one portent);
7–9 it seats, but the beast turns and the tunnel comes down behind you;
6− the pin flares and slags, and the Quern knows where you are.
People
Stats and kit. What they say is on the area where they say it.
Stonetop
Twymor (68, scholar, Geralt’s father). Has the second stanza. Knows the runes on the Stone are
the same hand as the road-stones. Wants to be believed, and wants his son to use the Scepter for something
other than dark power.
Digger (engineer from the Delve, built the Inn). Was foreman on the crew that pulled pin four.
The quake killed six of his men. He can draw the Third Delve from memory and never wants to go back.
Maggie, his sister, will make him.
Gwenda (60, outcast healer, Geralt’s mentor). Knows the old Cistern-rite, bread and whisky at
midwinter, and that it was once a life. She hears Daagon’s answer first.
Robert (drunk; father of the children Sven could not save). Volunteers for Gwenda’s rite.
Sober for it.
Quinton (65, old soldier). Drills the militia, walls the Cistern, and after the Hand argues to
drain it.
Filj (35, blacksmith, Sven’s father). The only forge in the village, and the hands that set a
pin.
Yohan (15) and the mask cult. They hear the whispers first and think they were chosen. The
Disturbing Mask can wear the voice from the well.
Beth (13, Dagmar’s sister). Heard it first, was not listened to, and is going down to prove it.
Gordin’s Delve
Mutra the Teeth (Boss: mines, timber). Each pin is Value 2 raw and the Ustrina pay double.
His amber idol fosters worship, and the worship is Daagon’s. Sells the party a pin once, at a ruinous price.
Gessa Blackpalm (powder-woman). Stats on Beast’s Back. Palms burned to the
bone in a blasting accident; Daagon healed them wet and webbed and gave her tremorsense. She has a map with
the seventh nail marked, and it is Stonetop.
Kiln’s sons (the shamed Hillfolk riders). They work Gessa’s crew because it is the only work the
shunned can get.
Bran Cask-Walker (whisky merchant). The party’s way in.
Odo Thriceborn (Boss: mines, housing). Would like to be the Boss who stopped Mutra’s quakes.
Llyr, once factor of House Ferrier, now Mutra’s door-warden. Carries the
Flaming Sword,
whose fire spirit’s instinct is to seek glory.
From outside
The Otavix
(Ustrina, Rubedix sect). Arrives with Bran’s
caravan to “study the Stone”. Its sect has bought two of the four pulled pins back from Mutra and holds
them. It can alloy orichalcum so a pin does not slag on the beast. It will not go down the Third Delve.
Three more of its sect follow it. Formal, tinny voice; “the” before every proper noun.
Uskl-Nazuc, a
thraulgwyn
band in the chambers around pins five and six. Stats on Third Delve. Gift: soundless
movement. Mark: cannot cross a line of orichalcum dust. Sacred treasures: a Forge Lord plaque naming
Abaloura, a Barrow Builder bronze horn, and the
Demonhide Cloak,
with a Hand of Daagon sewn into it.
A nine-fingered stranger
(Tor walking),
optional. Arrives at the public house the night the Stone is struck out of a clear sky.
The Cistern
StonetopHand of Daagon
“The water is black and still, and then it is not. Rings walk out from the middle to the walls and back.
The air tastes of a storm that is not here. Beth is sitting on the rim with her feet over the edge.”
A Maker vault under the village, filled with rain, snow and Stream water. Use the table’s answers for the
opening and whether anyone has been down; the default is a stone kerb over a shaft, a ladder, and a floor of
makerglass under twenty feet of water. Children play here. Folks gossip here.
Listen: the site move (hand on the water). Yohan’s cultists have been
doing it every night, and two of them can now be compelled.
Dive to the floor: Defy Danger +CON for the breath. The floor is a single disc of glass, warm,
and it hums against the palm. Runes ring its edge in the same hand as the Stone. Know Things here is how
the party learns what the Cistern is.
Gwenda’s rite: bread and whisky on the water at dusk. The rings stop for a night. Daagon answers
her the next morning in her sleep, and the answer is a life. Robert volunteers. If the village does it, the
Cistern goes quiet, the Quern stops for good, and the water is Daagon’s forever: a Mouth under Stonetop.
Quinton’s drain: after the Hand, he wants the water out and the shaft bricked. Drained, the
binding goes silent and the Quern moves faster; advance a portent. Persuade or Pull Together to stop him.
The Hand (portent 4): rises through the floor at night and takes what is most valued in reach.
It is here for whatever is in the water that night: an offering, a bucket, the horn idol from Tor’s shrine,
Beth.
HP 23; Armor 4 (resilience), 0 vs bronze Damage many hands (hand, close, grabby, ignores armor) Special qualities blind; tremorsense; reaches through matter like it was water Instinct to feed the Mouth
Sink into the stone, or emerge from it
Reach through armor, clothing, flesh and bone to take what is most valued
Retreat with its prize, back to the water
Bronze in the water: spears and knives from every home. Fighting it means being in the water
with it, in the dark, on glass.
Kill it: the village keeps the Cistern. Its hide is a piece for the Demonhide Cloak.
Let it go: it takes the prize down through the floor, and the floor is whole behind it.
Dialog (pick 1–2)
(Beth, not looking up)
“It was doing this before the storm. I told Kalli. I told Dagmar. It goes quiet when I sing the rhyme at it.”
(Gwenda, low)
“My grandmother put bread on this water every midwinter and never said why. I know why now. It is not bread
it wants.”
(Quinton)
“Whatever is in there came up through the floor. So we take the water away and give it nothing to come up
through. That is not superstition. That is a wall.”
(Yohan, at night, in someone else’s voice)
“Draw the last. Draw the last and the horn runs wet.”
Exits
Across the square → The Stone:
“Fifty feet of rune-cut rock, and the hair on your arms lifts as you get near it.”
Where the village argues → Public House:
“Every voice in the hall is raised, which is how it always is, and tonight it is louder.”
The same warm breath, up in the hills → Deep Crack:
“Behind the plinth in the Sealed Cave, a hairline split, and air that smells the way the Cistern tastes.”
The Stone
StonetopKeystoneClimax
“Faded runes wind the Stone from the ground to where the eye gives up. The lightning-scars are fresh. Put a
hand on it and it is warm, and it is trembling, very slightly, in time with the water below.”
The seventh nail. It cannot be pulled from above. The Quern must break it from beneath, and when it comes
the bluff itself is the battlefield. The runes are the binding written out; the road-stones carry the same
hand.
Read the runes: Know Things with a justification, per
Maker runes.
10+ the Stone is a nail, there are seven, and the runes name the road as the chain;
7–9 one of those, and a way to learn more (Twymor, the Otavix, the Hillfolk verse);
6− the Scepter offers to read it for you.
Ring the anvil (the rite): at the height of a storm, with the Cistern full, someone sings the
binding-note into the water while lightning walks the Stone. The note comes from Titan Bones, Tor’s Fist,
a Stone Lord dormitory, or a makerglass chime.
Thunderous Bellow
is that voice. Roll +CON or +WIS: 10+ the Quern sleeps where it lies and every portent
clears; 7–9 it sleeps, but the singer takes the Bellow’s 1d6 twice and the Cistern floor
cracks; 6− the note is wrong and the Quern comes now.
Peacebond the keystone:Peacebond
glyphs cut around the Stone’s foot sap the will to struggle of anything that surfaces here. The Quern
hesitates at the bluff, which is the round the party needs.
If the Quern surfaces
Portent 6, or a 6− on the rite. It comes up under the bluff in the storm and the switchback goes first.
It cannot be killed, only hurt back down the line.
HP 30; Armor 6 (size, resilience), 2 vs orichalcum or black iron Damage grinding bulk (reach, area, forceful, messy) Special qualities blind; tremorsense; cannot leave the binding-line Instinct to shrug off what pins it
Throw the ground
Swallow a building
Bellow so the Cistern floor cracks
Go still, and listen
What hurts it: the Otavix’s pins used as spears; the black iron nail from Underfalls if they
kept it; the Stone’s own lightning if someone can bring the beast to the Stone’s foot in the storm;
Nerth Serpent’s Vigor
for whoever is closest. The Flaming Sword’s spirit gets its glory here.
15+ damage from those sources in a scene: it withdraws down the line and the portents reset
to 4. It has not gone anywhere.
The militia: spears and shields from every home, the way the village has always drilled, on a
bluff that is coming apart. Pull Together.
If the Stone breaks: the bluff goes into the Cistern and the Quern lies down in the crater,
asleep again. See Outcomes.
Dialog (pick 1)
(Twymor, hand on the runes)
“The same hand as the road. The same hand as the floor of the horn, if my father told it true. This was
not a monument, Geralt. It was a nail. We built our houses around a nail.”
(Filj, to Sven)
“I can set a pin if the masked one tells me the heat. I cannot go where you are going to set it. Bring
the hammer back.”
(the nine-fingered stranger, if used)
“Three I killed. This one I only pinned, and I was young, and I was tired. You will not kill it either.
Pin it better than I did.”
Exits
Down the shaft → The Cistern:
“The water is answering the Stone. You can hear it now without putting your ear to it.”
Out past the Old Wall → West Road:
“Basalt slabs, beveled and unbroken, running west toward the mountains. The chain, if Twymor is right.”
North, to the cleft it was carved from → Tor’s Fist:
“Lightning walks a lonely peak on the horizon, and lights dance after it.”
Public House
StonetopTalk
“The hall is full and nobody is dancing. Twymor has a book open on the long table and Quinton has a spear
across his knees, and everyone is waiting for the three of you to say what it is.”
Where the village decides things. Bran Cask-Walker’s caravan is stabled under the same roof, with a
black-robed passenger who has asked to see the Stone. Digger is drinking alone. Erin the Legend’s statue,
outside, has a crack across the base since the storm.
The dream: ask each PC what link they were in the chain, and what the beast’s face was.
Twymor’s stanza: read aloud, since Sven cannot read it. Sven can read a drawing, and Gessa’s
map, when they have it, is a drawing.
Digger’s confession: Persuade, or Maggie does it for them. He tells the fourth pin: the “door”
was too small to walk through, warm to the touch, and the quake came three days after and killed six.
The Otavix: it wants to see the Stone and the Cistern floor and will not say why unasked. Asked
straight, with the rhyme, it tells the seven nails and that it holds two. Ask it what its masters owe.
Yohan: the cult offers to “keep the vigil” at the Cistern. Two of them already hum the last
line in their sleep.
The village’s vote: drain it (Quinton), feed it (Gwenda, not yet aloud), send the hunters west
(Kalli, who wants Dagmar home before the horn runs black). Whatever they choose, the Otavix’s sect arrives
in three days looking for it.
Dialog (pick 2–3)
(Twymor)
“It is a children’s rhyme because that is how a thing survives twelve generations of people who cannot
read. Listen to it as if it were written by someone who was frightened.”
(Digger)
“It was not a door. A door you walk through. This was the size of a cellar hatch and it was warm, and Gessa
had us blast around it like a tooth. Three days. Six men. I came down the road and I did not stop.”
(the Otavix)
“The Stonetop stands on the work of the masters of the Otavix. The Otavix would see the floor of the
water-house. The Otavix does not say more in a room with this many ears.”
(the Otavix, asked straight)
“Seven. The Mutra has sold the Otavix two and calls them doors, and the Otavix has not corrected the
Mutra, because the shame is the Otavix’s. They must go back. The Otavix cannot be the hands.”
(Kalli, to Dagmar)
“You go west and I will keep the children away from the water. Come back before it runs black. That is the
whole of what I am asking.”
Exits
Out to the square → The Cistern / The Stone:
“Night. The Stone is dark and the water is not quiet.”
West with Bran’s wagons → West Road:
“Three days of pavestone to the Delve. Bran is glad of the company and does not ask why.”
Deep Crack
Sealed CaveLore
“Behind the plinth, a hairline split in the floor. Warm air, wet iron and spoiled fruit. Down the crack,
a long way down, something breathes in, and the peacebond loops on the walls seem to tighten with it.”
The Deep Crack on the
Sealed Cave sheet is a side-vent of the binding-line. The peacebonded
dead were not the only thing that cave was sealed against. Run the cave from its own sheet; this is what
the crack adds.
Listen at the crack: as the Cistern move, +WIS, with the same result. The shades answer too.
Study the loops with the rhyme in mind: Know Things. The peacebond is a lesser cousin of the
binding-song, and a titan has a will to sap. This is where the party learns Peacebond can hold the
Quern still for a round, at the Stone or on its back.
Open the crack: Make Pliant the Stone or a week with picks. Warm air becomes a wind. Advance a
portent; the shades rise in the Gallery.
Dialog (pick 1)
(a morose shade)
“We lay down because the loops asked us to. It is asking, too, down there. It does not want to lie down.
It has been lying down for so long.”
(Glasbren, from the roots)
“The hill has a heartbeat now. It did not, when I came. I do not like a hill with a heartbeat. Make it
stop and I will tell you a secret that is worth it.”
Exits
Back through the cave and down to the village → The Cistern:
“Half a day. The smell follows you as far as the sheep-runs.”
Tor’s Fist
WhitefangsExpedition
“A cleft at the crown of the peak, the walls fifty feet apart and rune-cut on both faces, and the empty
shape between them is the shape of the Stone. When the storm hits, the cleft rings one note, clean, and
the lights come after.”
The Stone was carved from here
(Tor’s Fist).
Chart a Course as the book gives it: late spring or summer, five days from the Foothills, a guide, warm
clothes, a mountaineer, and the final sheer climb in wind. This is also a holy site far from the Things
Below, where a cursed book can be buried.
Hear the note: stand in the cleft through a storm. Defy Danger +CON against the cold and the
lightning. Whoever endures it can carry the binding-note home and sing it into the Cistern
(the Stone).
Bury the Codex here: the cleft accepts it. Hec’tumel will offer, on the way up, to say how to
stop the Quern in exchange for the book staying in the pack. What he says is true and it is the rite of the
Cistern with a life in it.
Draw the Quern’s attention: a 6− on the climb and the mountain answers the note from below.
The line runs here too, faintly.
Exits
Down and south, six days → The Stone:
“From the last ridge you can see the Stone catching the sun, a splinter off this mountain, three days’ walk
of grass away.”
West Road
TravelThe chain
“Basalt slabs the width of four carts, beveled, unbroken, and wet. Nothing has rained. The water in the
beveled joints is black and runs uphill, toward the mountains.”
Three days Stonetop to Gordin’s Delve on the
Makers’ road, the
Crossroads at the end of the first. The binding runs under the pavestones. Its wards against violence and
evil are the Stone Lords’ song made a road, and they weaken as the portents climb.
Portent 4 and up: the stones sweat black. The road’s hesitation move still works, but a beast
of chaos can set foot on it now.
Pry a stone: the runic calligraphy underneath is the same hand as the Stone
(runic calligraphy).
A shattered road-stone does 1d8 ignoring armor to a thing of chaos, once.
The Crossroads under a new moon: the party can call Digger’s six dead by name. They know where
pin four went.
A tremor on the road: the site move. On a 6− here, the slab under someone tilts and the black
water takes their pack.
Fellow travelers: immigrants heading up to the Delve for the wages Mutra is suddenly paying.
Roll disposition from the road’s table.
Exits
South at the Crossroads, a day → Titan Bones:
“Smoke on the horizon, and a skeleton the size of a hill under it.”
West, up into the Peaks → The Terraces:
“Sorrow’s Gate, a sprawl of tents on the last pavestones, and above it seven terraces of lashed timber and
ruin, and the three black mouths of the Delves.”
East, home → The Stone:
“The Stone is the first thing you see and the last thing the lightning lets go of.”
Titan Bones
HillfolkLore
“Kiln is sitting on a rib the length of a house, not looking at you. His band is packed to move. When he
finally speaks it is to the hill, not to you.”
The wayside under the skeleton
(Titan Bones). Kiln’s band
keeps the tale of the fourth beast, the one that was nailed and not slain, and the Barrow Builder verse
whole, with the cadence the second stanza lost.
Ask for the tale: he gives it if the party’s debt from the raid stands, or for the news that
his sons are alive in the Delve.
Ask for the cadence: that is a thing sung, not told, and the band’s singer is a girl of nine.
Kiln asks a price in return: his sons home, without the band’s name in Mutra’s ledger.
Hillfolk on the pins: mining is sacrilege. Pulling a nail from Grandfather’s back is a thing
there is no word for. If the band learns what the boys are doing, Kiln cannot take them back.
Dialog (pick 1–2)
(Kiln, to the hill)
“This one under us, the Rain-maker killed. There was one he could not. He put a spear in it and the giants
put six more, and they set a village on the last spear so no one would pull it. That is your village.”
(Kiln)
“The song is not mine to give. It is the child’s. Bring me my sons and she will sing it to you until you
can carry it, and then you will owe her, not me.”
(the singer, nine)
“You have to hold it low, lower than talking. It is not a song for the mouth. It is for the feet.”
Exits
Back north to the Crossroads → West Road:
“The pavestones again, and the shine on them is not dew.”
The Terraces
Gordin’s DelvePolitics
“Every third building on the Terraces has a fresh crack in it. Mutra’s compound has none, because it is
built into Maker stone. A lean man in a clerk’s coat stands at its gate with a sword too good for him,
and his hands are bandaged.”
Mutra’s compound, the Swap, and the other Bosses. Mutra holds one pulled pin and is paying double wages
for the crew going after five and six. Odo Thriceborn is losing tenements to every quake. The Otavix’s
sect has a stall at the Swap and is quietly out of silver.
Ask Around: the pin crew went down the Third Delve four days ago with Gessa and two Hillfolk
boys. The Delve moves for hire, with the local Prosperity.
Mutra: sells the pin for a Surplus of whisky and the Inn’s next year of timber, or for the
party doing a thing to Odo. He does not believe in the rhyme and he does not need to.
Odo: gives the party a prospector who knows the Third Delve’s upper forks, if Mutra’s crew
comes back short and the Terraces stop shaking. He wants to be told the story first, loudly.
The Otavix’s sect: three of them, formal and unhappy. They release the two pins to whoever will
go down with them, and one of them will alloy at Filj’s forge or at Foundry, watched.
Llyr: the sword’s spirit wants glory and a Boss’s gate is not it. Commune with it, or let Llyr
overhear what is under the mountain. He will ask to come. He is burning himself alive by inches and calling
it purpose, and the Quern is the first purpose big enough.
Kiln’s sons: ask after them by description and Mutra’s people will know why. The boys are
below with Gessa (Beast’s Back).
Dialog (pick 2)
(Mutra the Teeth)
“Doors. Nails. Call them what your grandmother called them. The masked ones pay silver by weight and the
ground shakes whether I dig or not. Two more and I stop, if that comforts you.”
(Llyr, at the gate)
“It wants to be drawn. Every hour. I tell it there is nothing here worth drawing on. If there were, I
think it would let me sleep.”
(Odo Thriceborn)
“I lost the fourth terrace’s east row last month. If Mutra’s crew stops coming up, I will build the story
of why into every one of my new walls. Go and be the story.”
(an Ustrina of the sect)
“The Rubedix will alloy. The Rubedix will carry to the mouth of the tunnel. The Rubedix will not go under
the mountain, and the Stonetop will not ask a third time.”
Exits
The right-hand Arm → Second Delve:
“Three hundred feet, a landing, left. Three hundred feet, a landing, left. Down and down, toward water.”
The left-hand Arm → Third Delve:
“The tunnel forks in the first hundred yards and does not stop forking. Fresh timbering, and the smell of
powder.”
Back down through Sorrow’s Gate → West Road:
“The pavestones are wet all the way to the horizon now.”
Second Delve
Gordin’s DelveDaagon
“The last landing is a ledge over black water that does not end. The miners’ brick wall is down again.
There are coins on the ledge, and a shoe, and the water is moving in rings, the same rings as home.”
The subterranean lake and its cult
(Delve secrets).
The whisper to the Quern comes through this water. Mutra’s people bring the offerings; Mutra has never
come down himself.
Wall it: bendis-root smoke (a sack, Value 2, from Marshedge goods) and bronze runes on the
ledge, per
cleansing corrupted sites.
A day’s work and a Defy Danger against the whispers. Done, the Quern has no voice telling it where the
last nail is and turns in place: the portents stop climbing for a season. The pin crew is unaffected.
The offer, before the wall goes up: feed the Mouth something beloved, by anyone, and Daagon
gives “a way to defeat your enemies” (a black menhir’s worth of true instruction on the Quern’s weak
point). It is not lying, and it is not done with whoever paid.
Cultists: six of Mutra’s people keep the ledge, stats as the book’s cultist. They do not fight to
the death. One of them is Gessa’s brother and will say where she is.
HP 6; Armor 0 Damage pick or knife (close) Special qualities webbed hands, wet eyes Instinct to belong, to feel important
Make a sacrifice for the cause
Have second thoughts, maybe
Dialog (pick 1)
(the water, to whoever listens)
“The horn is full. It has always been full. Pour it out and I will tell the old one where to put its
shoulder.”
(Gessa’s brother)
“She is on its back. She says it likes her. She says when it stands up she will be standing on it and
nothing will ever be on top of her again.”
Exits
Up the landings → The Terraces:
“Daylight, and the smell of Foundry, and it has never smelled so good.”
An ancient side passage, spoked off the ninth landing → Beast’s Back:
“Warm. Rippled walls, like something melted them. The floor rises and falls, slowly, under your boots.”
Third Delve
LabyrinthThraulgwyn
“The timbering stops and the tunnel walls turn to rippled stone. Then the first white face, low in a
side-crack, hand up against your light. It does not run. It is counting you.”
The lower forks of the Third Delve and the
Labyrinth beyond. Uskl-Nazuc
holds the chambers around pins five and six and calls the Quern Grandfather. Gessa’s blasting has been
keeping them awake for a month.
Getting lost: the book’s Lost in the Dark, unless Digger’s map or Odo’s prospector is along.
Mental Map gives advantage.
Parley: they speak a Hillfolk dialect; Kiln’s sons can translate if the party has them. They
want the noise stopped. Offer that and they guide the party to the beast’s back.
Orichalcum dust: a line of it and they cannot cross. Ustrina powder from the Swap, Value 1.
The band’s treasures: in the champion’s keeping. The Demonhide Cloak remembers a Hand of Daagon
and will show how one was killed, on a 10+.
HP 8; Armor 1 (the Cloak) Damage femur (close, crude, advantage) Special qualities wears the Demonhide Cloak; passes unnoticed when wrapped in it Instinct to let Grandfather sleep
Vanish into the Cloak
Call the band
Trade the loud ones for quiet
Dialog (pick 1)
(Wurg, from the dark)
“You are loud like the powder-woman. Grandfather does not sleep when it is loud. Make her quiet and you may
touch his back. Be loud and we eat the quiet ones first.”
(Wurg, of the Cloak)
“It is from the water. The many-hands. My mother’s mother killed it with the yellow metal and wore it so
it would remember who killed it.”
Exits
Up the fresh-timbered fork → The Terraces:
“Timber, then torchlight, then the sound of picks that are not yours.”
Down, where the floor is warm → Beast’s Back:
“The walls stop being walls. They are ribs, under stone, and the stone breathes.”
Beast’s Back
LabyrinthGessaThe Quern
“A cavern with no far wall, because the far wall is the beast. Rock and sinew, ridged like a spine the
size of the Terraces, rising and falling. Two heads of red metal stand out of it like fence-posts, and a
woman with wet black hands is packing powder around the nearer one. Two Hillfolk boys hold her lamps.”
Pins five and six, and the empty sockets of one to four. A pin is a rune-cast orichalcum spike the length
of a man, sunk to the head. The sockets weep. This chamber is on the binding-line and every tremor starts
here.
Gessa: she does not want a fight, she wants ten minutes. She will offer the party the map with
Stonetop marked, and the way out, to leave her to it. If they will not, she lights the fuse and brings
the roof down between them.
Kiln’s sons: they drop the lamps the moment a Hillfolk word is spoken. Without lamps Gessa
is blind and the party is not, if they brought their own.
The charge on pin five: pull the fuse or move the powder; Defy Danger +DEX. If it goes, pin five
is out and the site move fires for everyone in the chamber.
Drive a pin (the site move) for each of one to four the party carries. Two from the Otavix, one
from Mutra, and Digger’s, which the six dead at the Crossroads can place: it went into the beast, not out
of it, and is lodged under the fourth socket where a hand can reach.
Peacebond on the back: glyphs cut into the sockets while the pins go in. The Quern lies still
for the work; every pin roll has advantage.
The Flaming Sword at Blaze: the spirit will not let itself be sheathed here. Whoever wields it
takes the Blaze die each roll and the beast takes it too.
HP 14; Armor 1 (leather) Damage blasting charge (near, area, messy, loud, reload), knife (hand) Special qualities tremorsense; wet, webbed hands; marked by Daagon Instinct to never be under a fall again
Hear the beast breathe
Set a charge where the rock is thinnest
Bring the ceiling down between herself and trouble
HP 30; Armor 6 (size, resilience), 2 vs orichalcum or black iron Damage grinding bulk (reach, area, forceful, messy) Special qualities blind; tremorsense; cannot leave the binding-line Instinct to shrug off what pins it
Turn in its sleep
Bring the ceiling down
Go still, and listen
It is asleep here and stays asleep unless a pin comes out or a 6− wakes it. Awake, it does not fight in
this chamber. It turns over, and the chamber is gone.
Dialog (pick 1–2)
(Gessa, not stopping)
“I was under a fall for two days once. You learn what the mountain weighs. This one is going to stand up,
and when it does I am going to be on top of it, and nothing is ever going to be on top of me again.”
(Gessa, holding out the map)
“There is your village, and there is the seventh. I do not want your village. I want the door. Take the
map and go up the way you came and we will not see each other again.”
(the elder of Kiln’s sons, in Hillfolk)
“Does my father know where we are? Does he know what this is? Do not tell him what this is.”
Exits
Back up through the ribs → Third Delve:
“The white faces are waiting at the first fork. They count you again, and the count is different.”
The spoked passage, up toward water → Second Delve:
“The warmth fades and the wet comes up to meet it. The rings on the lake are faster now.”
Outcomes
Pins seated, Stone rung: the Quern sleeps. The Cistern rings once more, clean, and stops.
The Otavix cuts its sect-mark into the kerb. Kiln’s sons come home. Twymor’s stanza gets a last line,
and the children skip to it.
Pins seated, Stone not rung: the portents drop to 1 and stay there. The Quern strains. Every
storm is a question.
Stone rung, pins not seated: it sleeps, until the next Boss finds the next door.
The whisper walled: the portents hold for a season. Mutra keeps digging.
Gwenda’s rite: it sleeps, the village lives, and there is a Mouth under Stonetop that answers
when the water is listened to.
The Stone broken: the bluff is in the Cistern and the Quern is asleep in the crater, because
the fall was what it wanted. The Old Wall was the last village’s.
Evacuation: Marshedge or Titan Bones, with the granary and the horses. The people of Stonetop
survive. Stonetop does not.
Homefront
The Cistern is a resource on the steading sheet. Drained, bricked, or fed, it changes what
the village is. Fouled by Daagon, it stops counting as water for anything but Daagon.
Watchtower and Ringwall come down at portent 4. Rebuilding is a project, and the Old Wall’s
stones are on the move.
Yohan’s cult either keeps a vigil that is now useful, or has two members who can be compelled by
the water. Both are threads.
The Otavix’s sect owes Stonetop, or Stonetop owes it. An Ustrina trade partner nobody in the
village would have believed.
Gordin’s Delve has one Boss fewer, or one Boss richer. Odo remembers who told him the story.
Kiln’s band takes its sons back, or does not. Either way the band knows Stonetop carried them out.
Pacing
Homefront session: portents 1–2, the dream, the Public House, Beth at the Cistern. Ends on
the first tremor.
Out and back: Deep Crack or Titan Bones for the lore. Tor’s Fist if the season allows.
Gordin’s Delve: the Terraces, the pins, Llyr, the Second Delve ledge.
Under the mountain: Third Delve, Uskl-Nazuc, Gessa, the beast’s back.
The storm: the Hand in the Cistern, the rite at the Stone, the bluff. Whatever is unseated
comes up.
Two portents in a row with no reaction from the village, and Quinton drains the Cistern.
Hand of Daagon
