Hugo Tuya’s guards are hunting the remnants of a deepfolk raiding party outside of Estala in the southern spine mountains. After being ambushed in the mountains northeast of Estala, they are close to an observatory that is said to be inhabited by an Astrologer and his small and cultish group of followers. The cast for these two sessions:

  • Bao Tap, human stormcaller
  • Calim “Ambros” Nefari, human rimewarden
  • Itzel, elven astrologer
  • Kyansei of the Eilika Tribe, wildling barbarian
  • Quangbae, wandering blacksmith

The guards had defeated their ambushers relatively comfortably, and with few injuries decided to push on after only a short break. They climbed through more switchbacks and edged their way along more mountain trails until they reached a flat stretch of bare stone at the edge of a chasm. On their right this bare plateau vaulted up into stony cliffs, and on their left plunged into an abyss. Ahead of them stood a few small stone buildings, clustered around a bridge over the chasm, and on the far side of the chasm they could see the observatory itself, a squat octagonal tower. The area was deserted, silent and still. In the still air the mountainside, buildings and the tower itself were wreathed in a foul-smelling mixture of smoke and fog, and from where the stood at the edge of the cluster of buildings they could see smoke from fires inside the observatory tower, drifting lazily out of its shattered gates and falling in wisps from its ramparts. It seemed that a fire had been set here perhaps a few days ago, and its last smouldering dregs combined with the mists of the mountains to form a thin haze that obscured their view across the canyon.

They moved toward the cluster of houses on the near side of the stone bridge, and soon realized that these houses too had been looted and burned, though the fires had not taken properly to the buildings’ stone walls and the small cluster of fires had long since exhausted themselves in the cold mountain air, leaving only tendrils of smoke drifting through the narrow ways between the houses. The road through the centre of the cluster passed through an arch of off-white structures that looked disturbingly like the teeth of some huge beast, rising from the ground to arch menacingly over the road. Itzel moved forward to investigate one, and as she approached a swarm of reanimates emerged from the buildings. The previous occupants of this small community had been mercilessly slaughtered, and their undead bodies left as a trap for any who came here.

They were surrounded, but the battle was brief and decisive. Soon they stood in the muck and stinking gore of 12 dead reanimates, tired but only lightly injured. The fate of this place was clear to them now, though they had had little doubt when they first saw the smoke. Deepfolk had raided it and killed its occupants, then reanimated them. They expected to see worse in the tower across the chasm. They searched the houses and found them already looted, all coin and valuables stolen, mirrors stripped from walls, glass shattered and removed. They moved carefully across the bridge, and entered the octagon of the observatory itself.

The Immolata

They passed through the shattered gate and into the observatory compound itself, where they immediately found the source of the smoke. A circle of six of the same strange tooth-like stone statues stood in the centre of the courtyard just inside the gate, and a huge bonfire smouldered under those teeth. The deepfolk appeared to have formed a pile of wood and furniture, covered it with huge quantities of books, and set the whole thing alight. From the teeth they had hung four of the tower’s residents, tortured horribly and chained facing the fire, and at the last they appeared to have thrown the body of the tower’s chief Astrologer onto the pyre, leaving it to burn. The fire was now just a smouldering pile of ash, stifled by rain, snow and cold, and the dead astrologer lay at its foot, having fallen from the flames as the pyre subsided.

The group split up. Some of them went to the outhouses of the tower to look for possible reanimates, while others stood around the pyre and wondered at the cruelty of the deepfolk. Calim moved forward to check the body, to see if this many had been dead when he hit the fire …

… and as he checked the corpse it twitched to life, rose up and grabbed him by the face with a burnt and scorching hand. Its eyes snapped open to reveal shadowy pits, and it raked him with claws of fire-hardened bone. At the same time the reanimates emerged from the outhouses to attack the party, and the trap was sprung.

This undead on the fire was not like reanimates they had fought in the past. It was blindingly fast, its touch burnt and sparked when it hit them, and it fought with feral intelligence. By the time they defeated it and its horde of undead accomplices it had seriously injured several of them, and when at last Kyansei was able to sever its head and hurl it back onto the smouldering ash heap they were all spent with the fury of the battle. Now they had learnt some more about deepfolk – that their necromantic powers extended beyond simple shambling zombies to dark rituals that could create much more powerful and dangerous creatures. Now, standing under a darkening sky against a tableau of torture and cruel arcane ritual, they realized that there was no depth of evil and savagery that the deepfolk were incapable of reaching. From now they agreed, they must always expect worse than they could imagine from these vile beasts.

The Observatory’s Secrets

Itzel and Kyansei searched the hot ash pile, hoping to recover any scraps or fragments of books that might be useful to her, but found only one, in a language Itzel was unfamiliar with. Though they found little, it became very clear from the structure of the fire that the intent of this ritual had been to burn the books – and Itzel suspected that the creation of the Immolata had been only a happy side effect of the book burning, that the deepfolk had taken advantage of rather than planning. The guards knew little of deepfolk culture, so they could not answer the question of whether deepfolk always destroyed human books when they raided, or if there had been some specific desire to destroy hidden or forbidden knowledge in this particular bonfire – they could only speculate as to the motives of such inchoate evil, but they were assured that the burning of the books was purposeful.

Having exhausted all avenues of exploration around the strange fire they began methodically searching the tower itself, hoping to learn something of what had happened here, but the place was thoroughly looted and yielded up few of its secrets. The chief Astrologer’s bedroom had been looted and its sole surviving clue, a chest, exploded with a trap as soon as Quangbae touched it, destroying all its contents. The library was empty, thoroughly divested of all its learning. The only clue they could find was in a strange laboratory-like room on one side of the building. In this room they found fine wires hanging from the ceiling, which appeared once to have ended in ornate coloured balls of blue, yellow, white or red, all hanging at different heights from the ceiling and at seemingly random positions in the room. These balls had been stripped from the wires, many of which had also been torn down, and now these balls, and more balls from a large supply held in baskets on shelves, had been cast all over the floor. There was nothing else in this room except a blackboard, which had been torn from the wall and cast on the ground, where it broke. Acting on a hunch, Calim put the pieces of the blackboard back together, and saw that someone had hurriedly erased some writing from the blackboard. The chalk duster they had used was nearby, covered in blood, and he guessed they had erased the board as the raid began, but been interrupted before they could flee. What message was so important that it must be erased even when a deepfolk raid was afoot? Calim carefully traced the shadow of the erased words, and discovered this strange message:

Seven deadly sins

Seven ways to win

Seven holy paths to hell

And your trip begins

Seven downward slopes

Seven bloodied hopes

Seven are your burning fires

Seven your desires…

It made little sense, but he copied it regardless. Had this message been erased to prevent the deepfolk reading it, or had it been scrubbed because it was forbidden knowledge that must not be left written down where future rescuers of the site might find it? They could not tell, and all they could do was record the words themselves.

They searched the remainder of the tower and found nothing. All its telescopes had been carefully removed and taken by the deepfolk, who had also taken all mirrors and any glass they could easily carry, all the coin, and anything else of value. The place had been stripped bare, its knowledge destroyed, its secrets buried in ash and blood and its treasures carried away by unholy and savage raiders. There was nothing for them to do here except ponder on the barbarity of the deepfolk mind, and the enigma of this place’s lost purpose. As night fell on the peak and a storm rolled in, they withdrew into the inner sanctum of the tower to contemplate these mysteries, and to prepare to leave.