The Tomb of the Sunseeker One-Shot
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The Tomb of the Sunseeker One-Shot

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The Tomb of Zenith - CROSSOVER EPIC

CROSSOVER EPIC
The Tomb of Zenith
Date: Unknown. Inside the tomb, time does not hold
Party Level: Crushing Squirrels 8 · Heads and Tails 6
Table of Contents
Last Time

Beneath Zadash, at the dormant portal in the ziggurat, the Crushing Squirrels watched the red-and-black-cloaked loyalists' ritual fail, and then the scarab at Neilo's throat woke and pulled the whole party through the gate in a whirl of violet light. Far away, in their own night, Heads and Tails watched John's axe tear a wound in the air and drag them in after it, John hauled along at the end of his own arm by a weapon that would not let go. Neither group knows the other exists. Both are falling toward the same place.

Part I: The Scarab Door

The antechamber of the Tomb of Zenith · 0:00 to 0:55

The Landing

The violet light lets go of you all at once. You drop out of it onto something soft that gives under your boots and your knees, and the roar of the portal cuts off behind you, leaving a silence so complete you can hear the grains still sliding off your clothes.

The chamber is long and tall and silent, and it smells of dry stone and old heat. A single shaft of pale light falls from somewhere high above, catching the dust in the air. Sand has drifted in over everything, deep across the floor, banked in soft dunes against the walls and around the bases of the great square pillars, half burying fallen blocks of carved stone, as if a desert had been poured in through the ceiling a long time ago and left to settle. Bowls of fire burn low on stone plinths down both sides, though nobody here lit them. Every wall is carved, floor to ceiling. And at the far end, beneath a great carved sun, stands a tall arched door of dark stone in two halves, with a scarab cut down its centre, its rays spreading out across both doors, and at the scarab's heart, a small round hollow the size and shape of the amulet at Neilo's throat.

Behind you, there is nothing. No gate, no light, no way back. Only more carved wall.
The Squirrels alone (5 to 10 minutes)
  • Let them check on each other after the fall, look around, and talk.
  • The murals, the door and the fire bowls are all theirs to examine (checks below).
  • If Neilo lifts the amulet toward the hollow in the door, it warms in his hand but will not settle; it slides off the stone as if pushed. That is also a good moment to open the second portal.
  • When the scene has had its breath, open the second portal.

The Walls

Every wall of the chamber is carved. Tall robed figures, their faces worn smooth by time, stand in long processions that run from the corners of the room toward the scarab door. Some of them hold their hands apart, and between their palms runs a stream of something carved as fine flowing grains, curling like smoke. Some raise towers with it. Near the door, a ring of them kneels around a great bright disc, its rays cut so deep they cast shadows of their own.
History DC 15The robes, the tower shapes and the carving style match nothing you have ever seen or read about. These are older than any empire you know.
Investigation DC 13The scarab on the door is cut differently from the murals: sharper, newer, set over older carving that still shows around its edges.

The Second Portal

Then, behind you, the air tears.

You hear it before you turn: a sound like a sheet of canvas ripped in half. A wound of light opens in the middle of the room, ragged at the edges, and out of it, one after another, bodies fall. They hit the sand hard, tumbling, swearing, six of them, and the last one comes through arm-first, dragged, as if the axe in his fist pulled him through the gap all on its own. The tear snaps shut behind them.

Heads and Tails, you pick yourselves up out of soft sand in a dim, carved room, and you are not alone. Seven strangers are standing between you and a great carved door, turned all the way around, staring at you.
Reference

The Squirrels arrived a few minutes earlier through Neilo's scarab pull. The Heads come through John's axe tear. The door does not open until Neilo sets his amulet in the hollow at its heart, and it will not take the amulet until both parties are in the room.

Do not name: the builders, the Sunseeker, djinn, the shard, the soul.

Introductions

Strangers in the sand (about 30 minutes, the players' scene)
  • Each player describes their character to the room the first time that character speaks: what the others see, hear and notice about them.
  • Let the conversation run. Nothing in the room interrupts it.
  • The double-voiced players (John and Djiro, Aurene and Yurei) introduce both characters; let the comedy happen.
  • If the talk stalls, John feels the axe tug toward the scarab door. Only he feels it. Tell him privately.

The Axe, Up Close

Detect MagicNecromancy, wrapped tight around the axe head, and inside it something that moves the way a living thing moves.
Identify or Arcana DC 15This is not an enchantment cast on a weapon. It is a piece of a soul, lodged in the steel, and it is trying to get somewhere. Through that door, and down.
Remove CurseJohn's fingers open. The hunger in the steel goes quiet until the next long rest, but the pull toward the deep does not stop, and the cold inside the steel stays.
Dispel MagicThe pull goes slack for one minute, then returns.
Reference - the curse

The axe is patient and careful. It does not reveal itself to the group, and it does not force John to swing at anyone tonight; anything that gives it away gives the others a reason to dispel it. Its pull toward the way down is a tug that only John feels. Everything it wants, it asks for in private. All of it comes to a head at the chained man on Floor 2.

The Long Rest

Nothing comes. The door stays shut, the tear does not reopen, and the only sounds in the chamber are your own voices and the faint, dry whisper of sand settling in the corners. Whatever this place is, it seems content to wait.
If they choose to rest here (they all need it)
  • Who keeps watch with whom. Push for mixed watches, one Squirrel and one Head on each.
  • One quiet question asked on watch that nobody would ask in front of the whole room.
  • John's night: the cold in the axe's haft, the tug toward the door that only he can feel.
  • Then the real-world break, if you want one this early.
You wake in the sand, stiff and dry-mouthed, to the same dim light and the same silence. Your bodies are whole. The ache you carried in from your last nights, from the fall, from everything before, is gone. Nothing in the room has moved.
Long restFull HP, all spell slots, all class features, Hit Dice as normal. How much time passed outside is not known.

The Axe Breaks Its Silence

Reference - the axe

A shard of the failed ascendant's soul. It shares John's mind and can sift his memories more easily than he can. It has spoken to John before, promised him something about his daughter Elara, and has given him the silent treatment since the night at Glassthorne Esoterica: John took Tutu Keiliwa's head, but her head kept talking and she vanished, so the axe never got its killing blow.

It can feel its old body on Floor 2. Everything it says tonight is aimed at one moment: getting John to break the chains on the hanging man at the judgement when the others want to leave them whole. It never lies about Elara. It only withholds.

What it knows: as a still teddy bear on a shelf, John once watched Elara write a letter. He never read it. The axe has. It was addressed to Ithrin Vaelsorrow, an elf scholar of Uthodurn, and it asked about a city that fell under grey trees.

Only John hears the axe. Whisper it, pass a note, or take his player aside.

John, while the others crowd around the door, running their hands over the carving, arguing about the hollow at the scarab's heart, the cold in the haft of your axe shifts. For days it has said nothing at all. Now, very close, in the place behind your eyes where your own thoughts usually are, something clears its throat.
The Axe: "You promised me blood. You took her head and left her talking."
The haft goes colder in his grip, then still.
The Axe: "Feed me, and we'll talk."
If John answers or pushes
  • It says nothing more until it has been fed. Silence is its whole argument.
  • If John threatens to throw it away, it laughs: "Try and open your hand."

Opening the Door

Neilo, when you lift the amulet toward the hollow at the scarab's heart, it pulls the last inch out of your hand on its own and settles into the stone with a soft click, as if it was always meant to sit there. For a breath, nothing. Then a line of steel-blue light runs out from the amulet along every groove of the carved scarab, up its folded wings, down its legs, until the whole beetle is drawn in light across the dark stone.

The door groans. The two halves part down the scarab's centre and swing inward, slowly, pushing back the sand, and the amulet drops back into your palm, warm. Beyond the door, a hallway runs on into the dark.

And a voice comes out of the stone. To most of you it is only grinding, the sound of a great weight shifting far below. But to two of you, it is words, spoken very close, as if into your ear.
The welcome voice
  • Only Neilo and Yurei hear the words. Pass them a note, or lean in and say it quietly.
  • Everyone else hears grinding stone.
The Tomb: "...welcome, ascendant."

Part II: The Hall of Sun-Bearers

Floor One of the Tomb of Zenith · 0:55 to 1:40

The Hallway of the Dead

Past the scarab door, a hallway runs straight ahead, perhaps sixty feet long and wide enough for four to walk abreast, its walls plain and smooth. At the far end stands a second door, tall and dark, closed.

Behind you, the scarab door swings shut on its own. It does not slam. It simply closes, and the seam where its two halves met fades, and the carving fades, and then there is nothing behind you but a smooth stone wall, as if there had never been a door there at all.

And the hallway is full of the dead.

They lie along both walls, dozens of them, some curled on their sides, some sitting upright with their backs to the stone, some stretched out with their arms folded on their chests as if somebody laid them out with care. Bones in armour of a dozen different makes, rusted and green and crumbled to lace. Packs gone to dust. A water skin, dry as paper. Near the far door the bones lie thickest, and many of them carry old wounds: a skull split, ribs crushed flat, a thigh bone snapped clean. Further back, nearer to you, the bodies are whole, and very thin, and lie very still, and nothing at all has hurt them.
Reference - the hallway

Failed ascendants of many ages. Those near the far door died of wounds from the hall; those further back died waiting, of hunger and thirst, too afraid to go through again. The scarab door is gone for good. The hallway is safe while the far door is shut; the long rest, short rests and planning all happen here.

The far door opens onto the Hall of Sun-Bearers. Opening it wakes nothing. Crossing its threshold, or sending anything across it, wakes the hall. Retreating and shutting the door resets the hall completely, and the hall keeps nothing: no body, no blood, no dropped blade.

Searching the Dead

Close to the far door, scratched into the wall at about the height of a sitting man, letters have been gouged into the stone with a knife point, crude and deep. Under them, in a different hand, smaller, more letters. And under those, a third hand, so shaky it barely reads.
Reading the wall (Common, old spelling)First: "THEY STOP WHEN THE DOOR SHUTS." Second: "they always stop. they always start again." Third: "my father's sword is in there. i dropped it by the stair. when i opened the door again it was gone. nothing stays in there. nothing."
Against the far door itself, a skeleton sits slumped, as if it slid down the wood and never got up. Across its lap lies the handle of a great hammer, the head of it shattered into pieces around its knees. Its other hand is clenched shut on something.
Opening the handA chip of pale stone the size of a thumbnail, smooth and curved on one side, like a piece broken off a ball. The edges of it are sharp and new-looking. The skeleton's ribs are crushed flat on both sides.
Whoever closes their hand on the chipFor two heartbeats, they are somewhere else: on a sunken floor full of moving stone, a hammer in their hands, the orb ahead. Off to one side, a young man in a torn shirt stands perfectly still among the statues, and the blades swing past him on both sides, and not one of them touches him. Then a weight hits from the left, and the vision is gone.
Beside the far door, a little apart from the others, one skeleton sits with its back to the wall and its legs stretched out in front of it. It wears no armour, only the rags of a shirt. There is not a mark on its bones. Next to its bare feet, a pair of old boots stands side by side, neatly, toes to the wall, the way you leave them by a door at home.

Above its head, low on the wall, a few more words have been scratched into the stone.
Reading the scratch (Common, old spelling)"he said the floor was warm. we told him to get up."
In the middle of the hallway, half scuffed away by boots, someone once drew on the floor in charcoal: a big circle, and around the inside of it, a ring of small squares. On some of the squares, stick figures stand, arms at their sides. Next to each of those squares, a stick-figure statue has been drawn, standing still.
Along the lower wall, near the thinnest of the bodies, there are tally marks. Rows and rows of them, hundreds, scratched into the stone. They stop in the middle of a row.
Reference - the man with the boots

His boots split on the climb, so he went into the hall barefoot by chance. The statues walked past him. He watched the rest of his company die, came back out, and never understood why he was spared. He waited in the hallway for the next company to come through, and none came in time. Never explain any of this.

The Words Over the Door

Above the far door, cut into the stone in the same old style as the murals in the scarab chamber, runs a single short line of writing, in letters none of you have ever seen. Beside it, smaller, as if added later by another hand, the same line again in a script that looks almost like old Common.
History DC 14, or Comprehend Languages"Beyond lies holy ground."
Reference - the words (DM only)

The answer is bare feet. The sunken floor is carved as a sun, and nobody walks on it shod. Every ascendant past the threshold must be barefoot. Expect them to read it as "be respectful" first and try praying, bowing or kneeling; none of that does anything. The clues that turn the words into the answer: the man with the boots, the warm threshold, the worn footprints, the statues' bare feet, the west face of the pillar, and the statues walking past anyone who is barefoot.

The Hall

The far door swings open onto a wide stone landing, and below the landing a broad stair runs down into a round hall so big that your torchlight dies before it reaches the far wall. Bowls of fire burn low all around the curve of it, set into the outer wall and along the ledges, and their light is warm and orange and still. High on every wall, robed figures are carved in relief, pouring streams of fine grains from their open hands.

The floor of the hall is sunken, a great circle of worn flagstones carved with rings inside rings and long channels running out from the centre like the spokes of a wheel. It is clean. Not a bone on it, not a dropped blade, not a scrap of cloth. Around the floor, facing inward, stand fourteen figures of pale sandstone on square plinths, each taller than any of you, each wearing a carved breastplate shaped like a scarab, each with a long curved blade running down the outside of both forearms, not held but grown there, blade and arm one piece of stone. Their faces are smooth, with no eyes, no mouth, only a blank oval of stone.

At the very centre, on a stepped round dais, rises a tall tapering pillar with a scarab cut into its face, and on top of it sits a smooth pale orb that catches the firelight and gives none back. Around the dais, in a ring, small crystals glow a soft steel-blue. Directly across the hall from you, beneath a great carved sun with figures kneeling around it, a massive double door stands sealed in the wall.

To your left and right, narrow stairs climb up onto two balconies that run partway around the hall's upper wall, looking down over the floor.
The threshold (anyone who touches or studies the sill of the doorway)The stone of the sill is worn into shallow hollows, side by side, hundreds of them, smooth as river rock. Footprints. Bare ones. And the stone is warm, like a step that has sat all day in the sun.
The statues, from the doorway: Perception DC 13Under all that armour, every one of them stands on bare stone feet, each toe carved with care. It is the only part of them that is not armoured.
The pillar beneath the orb is carved, deep enough that the firelight throws the shapes into shadow. From the doorway, you can make out the face turned toward you. The others face the side walls.
South face, from the doorway: Perception DC 12A ring of stone guardians around a sun. One robed figure stands before the sun with a great hammer raised, and the sun is cracked down the middle. All around that figure, other robed figures lie on the ground, broken, and the guardians stand over them.
East face, from the east balcony (inside): Perception DC 12The guardians have stepped down off their pedestals. On the empty pedestals stand robed figures, one on each, arms at their sides. The guardians have stopped where they are, each one turned toward its own pedestal.
West face, from the west balcony (inside): Perception DC 12Robed figures walk among the guardians toward the sun, heads up, hands empty. The guardians' blades are lowered. Behind the figures, at the very edge of the carving, a row of small shapes stands on a step, in pairs.
Let them plan
  • No clock until someone crosses the threshold. Let them search the dead, read the words over the door, look through the doorway, argue and plan.
  • Never explain the carvings or the words. A first run into the hall, then a retreat, can show them the other two faces.

The Hall Wakes

How to run this section
  • Read it top to bottom. Each beat is a few seconds in the hall: read the beat's narration, resolve what the hall does, then go around the table once (one action each), then the next beat.
  • No initiative. The statues always act first in a beat, then the players.
  • The beats repeat from Beat 4 until they solve it one of three ways, or retreat. A retreat resets everything; start again from the next Attempt heading.
Keep open: what the hall does, beat by beat

A statue's blow: +7 to hit, 13 (2d8 + 4) slashing. Each awake statue that is not frozen or broken attacks once per beat.

  • Beat 1: 4 statues wake, the ones nearest the door. They attack the 4 characters closest to them.
  • Beat 2: 8 awake. They spread out: anyone within about 30 ft of the door or the near side of the ring can be attacked.
  • Beat 3: all 14 awake. Every character on the floor is attacked by at least one statue.
  • Beat 4, and every beat after: all 14 attack, and the orb breathes: everyone on the floor takes 18 radiant (DC 15 Dexterity save for half).

Statues: AC 16. A statue breaks after two hits from attacks or damaging spells. Broken statues stay broken until a retreat resets the hall.

Barefoot characters are never attacked and the orb's breath passes over them, unless they strike a statue or the orb. Then they are fair game for the rest of that attempt.

Keep open: what a player can do on their turn
  • Fight a statue. Attack roll or spell against AC 16. Two hits breaks it.
  • Take a plinth. Climb onto an empty plinth: Athletics or Acrobatics DC 13. That plinth's statue stops, turns to face it and does nothing while someone stands there.
  • Push for the centre. Reach the dais: Athletics or Acrobatics DC 14. Failure: knocked back toward the stair, 7 bludgeoning.
  • Strike the orb. Only from the dais. AC 15, 250 HP. Every statue still free turns on whoever is on the dais.
  • Get your boots off. No roll; it takes the whole turn. Barefoot from the next beat.
  • Anything else sensible: drag a friend, heal, shield, run for the door.

Attempt One

The moment the first of you crosses the threshold, every carved channel in the floor below lights up, a thin line of steel-blue racing out from the centre to the edge like cracks in ice. All around the hall, the blank faces of the statues kindle together, a dull gold glow behind the stone where eyes should be.

Beat 1

Nearest the door, four of them move. They step down off their plinths and land with a sound you feel in your teeth, and grit pours from their joints. Their blank faces turn, slowly, across all of you, as if deciding. Then the curved blades along their forearms come up, and they come for whoever is closest.
4 statues attack the 4 nearest characters. Then around the table.

Beat 2

Four more wake, further around the ring, and step down. The first four are already among you. Stone grinds on stone on every side now, and the statues are spreading out, one to each of you that they can reach, blades rising and falling with no hurry at all.
8 statues attack, spread across everyone near the door and the near side of the ring. Then around the table.

Beat 3

The last of them wake, all at once, all the way around the hall, and come down off their plinths together. There is nowhere on the floor now that a blade cannot reach. And at the centre of the hall, the orb on its pillar begins to brighten, slowly, the way a coal brightens when someone blows on it.
All 14 attack; every character on the floor is a target. The orb is gathering. Then around the table.

Beat 4, and Every Beat After

The orb draws breath. You feel it in your chest before you hear it, a pull, as if the air itself is leaning toward the centre of the room. Then the light comes out of it all at once, white and blinding, washing across the whole floor, and through it the statues keep coming.
Orb breath: 18 radiant to everyone on the floor (DC 15 Dex for half). All free statues attack. Then around the table. Repeat this beat until they solve it or retreat. On repeats, use one of the short lines below instead.
Again the pull. Again the light. The stone under your feet is hot now, and the statues have not slowed at all.
The orb breathes in. Somewhere behind you, a blade comes down on stone where someone was standing a heartbeat ago.

The First Time Someone Is Walked Past

Read this the first beat any character is barefoot on the floor, whether they meant to be or not. Say nothing about why.
The statue in front of you lifts its blade, and you see it start to come down, and then it does not. Its head turns, slowly, past you, as if you were not there. It steps around you, close enough that its stone shoulder brushes yours and leaves grit on your sleeve, and goes on toward whoever is behind you.

Retreat

Use this whenever the last of them is back in the hallway and the door is shut.
The door swings shut behind the last of you, and the noise beyond it stops at once, as if cut with a knife. Nothing follows you. Nothing scratches at the wood. The hallway is as quiet as it was before, the dead lying exactly where they lay.
What a retreat does
  • The hallway is safe while the door is shut. Let them talk, heal, search the dead again and plan. Short rests are allowed.
  • The hall resets completely: every statue whole and back on its plinth, the orb whole, the floor clean. Anything left inside is gone, boots included.
  • They keep what they learned: the pillar's faces, how the statues move, and who was walked past.

Attempt Two

When the door opens again, the hall is exactly as you first saw it. Every statue stands on its plinth, its blank face dark. The orb sits whole and pale on its pillar. There is no blood on the floor, no broken stone, nothing of yours. It is as if you were never here.

Whoever goes first, as you step over the sill: the lines of light race out across the floor as before, but they run around the worn hollows in the threshold stone and leave them dark, as if the light will not touch them.
Run Beat 1 to Beat 4 again, exactly as before.

Attempt Three

The hall again, whole and silent and waiting, as if it has all the time there is. This time, as the first of you crosses the threshold, the stone under your boots is warm. Not hot. Warm, like a step that has sat all day in the sun.
The voice (Neilo and Yurei only)
  • As the statues' faces kindle, the tomb's voice speaks to the two of them, very quietly. Everyone else hears stone grinding.
The Tomb: "...beyond lies holy ground..."
Run Beat 1 to Beat 4 again.

Attempt Four and After

The hall, the same as ever. The statues stand on their plinths, and in the firelight, for the first time, you notice how carefully their stone feet are set: bare, flat, each toe placed just so, the only part of them that wears no armour.
Run the beats again. In Beat 2, the first character who fails a Push for the centre has a boot torn off in the fall; in the next beat, read The First Time Someone Is Walked Past for them.

The Three Ways Through

What ends it

1. Break the orb (the hammer skeleton, the chip, the south face). Deal 250 damage to it from the dais. Every free statue attacks whoever is on the dais. Damage to the orb is lost if they retreat.

2. Take their places (the charcoal drawing, the east face). At the end of a beat, no awake statue is free: each is either frozen by someone standing on its plinth or broken. Fourteen plinths and thirteen of them, so at least one statue must be broken.

3. Holy ground (the words, the man with the boots, the threshold, the west face). At the end of a beat, everyone past the threshold is barefoot, and none of them struck anything that beat.

If They Break the Orb

The orb cracks. A line of white runs across its face, and then another, and then it comes apart in a burst of light and pale shards that ring off the dais and skitter across the floor. Every statue in the hall stops where it stands, mid-stride, blade raised. The gold goes out of their faces. One by one, with a long grinding sigh, they fold down onto their knees and stay there, heads bowed toward the empty pillar.

If Every Statue Is Held

The last statue stops. All around the ring, the stone guardians stand facing their plinths, and the people standing on those plinths, and do nothing. Then, together, they lower their blades. Whoever stands on a plinth feels it before they see it: the statue in front of them is waiting. As each of you steps down, its guardian steps up behind you onto its own stone, turns, and goes still.

At the centre of the hall, the orb dims to the dull grey of river stone.

If They Walk as the Bearers Walked

Bare feet on warm stone. For a moment, nothing changes. Blades still raised, the statues stand among you, heads turning.

Then, one by one, they lower their arms. They do not look at you. They walk back through you, between you, around you, the way a crowd moves around people who belong in it, and each one steps up onto its own plinth, and turns, not inward to the orb any more, but north, toward the carved sun above the sealed door. And they go still.

At the centre of the hall, the orb dims to the dull grey of river stone.

The Hall Is Stilled

The light in the floor goes out. The silence that follows is total. You can hear each other breathing.

Across the hall, the great door on the north wall groans, and its two halves swing open onto a stair that goes down into the dark.

If John's Axe Brought a Statue Down

The Axe: "There. Was that so hard?"
Nothing more. The cold in the haft settles, almost content.

Room to Breathe

Before the north stair
  • The hallway behind them is safe. A short rest there is fine if they want one.
  • No clock. Let them talk about what just happened, and which way through they found.
  • Move on when the table is ready.

Part III: The Chamber of Four

Floor Two of the Tomb of Zenith · 1:35 to 2:50

How the chamber runs
  • Four puzzles, one at a time, each its own file on the big screen: Vault_Puzzle_1, Lens_Puzzle_2, Procession_Puzzle_3, Last_Expedition_Puzzle_4. Each opens on your setup screen; press Enter to begin. The ? key brings the setup screen back; players never touch it.
  • For each puzzle the floor takes a preset group of characters and turns them into the pieces on the board. The taken players hold the mouse, one at a time, and solve their own room; the rest of the table watches from the rim and may call advice, but never touches the mouse. Nobody on screen or off explains the rules; the taken find them by trying.
  • Vault takes Neilo, Magen and Sylas. Lens takes Lumi, Aurene and Nelvin. Procession takes Fand, Yurei and John. Last Expedition takes Djiro, Viktor, Shimmer and Present.
  • Every time a room resets (a fall, a guardian, a lost pilgrim), the taken characters make a DC 13 Constitution save as the floor swallows and spits them back. On a failure, 2d6 bludgeoning. Zero HP is real; the others can reach a downed character between rooms.
  • Every solved puzzle lowers the hanging man one stage and brings the Lamp back to talk. There are no timers. You set the pace; if a room stalls, press H for the next move and narrate it as the floor shifting under the Lamp's attention. The Lamp never explains a room; she watches.
  • Lore in this chamber comes only from the Lamp's mouth, before and after each puzzle, never from the screen.
The door opens onto a round chamber so wide that your lights do not reach the far wall. The floor is not stone. It is grains, steel-blue and fine as flour, and they are moving. Not blown. Moving, the way a crowd moves, flowing past your boots in slow currents toward the middle of the room, where they rise up and fold over themselves and sink again, as if the floor is breathing.

Above the center of the room, high up, something hangs. It is a man, or it was one, held in the air by seven chains that run up into the dark, cuffs at his wrists, his ankles, his waist, his throat. Between him and you there is a wall you can see through, a sheet of pale light standing in the air like a window of running water, humming very faintly, curving all the way around the middle of the room. The man behind it is dry and grey, his skin drawn tight over his bones, his armor green with age. His head hangs forward on his chest. His hands are fists. He is not rotted. He is kept.

John. The axe in your hand jerks, hard, toward the hanging man, and the voice in the back of your head says, so fast it stumbles over itself:
The Axe: "It's here! I finally found it!"
And then nothing. The haft goes still. However you ask it, however long, it does not answer again.
Arcana DC 14The wall of light is a barrier, and a complete one. Nothing you cast will pass through it, in either direction. It is not holding him up. The chains are.
Perception DC 13His armor is not plain. Over the heart, hammered into the breastplate, is a scarab with its wings spread, holding something above its head that has been cut clean out of the steel. One of his fists is clenched so hard the knuckles have split.
Neilo only, no rollThe scarab on his chest is the same one stamped on the frontispiece of the book in Brother Tirrion's library, wings, raised forelegs and all. In the book, there was a sun between its legs.

The Lamp

Something lights up on the far side of the barrier, small and cold and blue, and comes bobbing through the pale wall as if it were not there at all. It is a lantern no bigger than a man's head, a cage of tarnished brass ribs around a globe of clouded glass, with no chain and no hook, hanging in the air. Inside the glass, where a flame should be, there is an eye. A real one, wet and quick, blue as the grains on the floor, with a lid that blinks, and it is looking at you. It takes you in, all thirteen of you, and the glass of the globe fogs and clears, fogs and clears, faster and faster, the way breath does on a cold window when someone is laughing.
Reference - the Lamp

An echo. One of the builders poured a piece of their own memory into this lantern long ago, and that memory is all she is: her personality, her warmth, the story, and the one errand below. Nothing else in this chamber speaks; the voice that greeted Neilo and Yurei in the halls above is silent here. She knows only what was poured into her. Anything outside it, she cannot answer, and she says so the same way every time: "Oh, honey, this echo wasn't given that." She does not guess, does not deflect, and is not troubled by the gap. She is a hostess: bright, quick, delighted to have company, sweet as syrup, and she does not stop smiling for anything. Light drawl, "honey" and "y'all," never heavy. She has watched every ascendant who ever crossed this floor and remembers all of them fondly, including the one hanging above her. She never announces a story or explains what the floor will do; the pieces of the Akh'marani tale come out of her after each solve as things that happen to remind her, never as a lesson, and she never says what any of it means. She gets more and more excited every time a room is solved. She never explains a room or its rules, however she is asked: "Oh, honey, I just watch." About the hanging man, only what she offers below.

Do not name: the builders, the Sunseeker, the Forgotten Ones, djinn, the shard, aether, sand. The medium is "the grains."

The Lamp: "Oh! Oh my. Oh my goodness. Hi! Hi, y'all! Look at you. Look at all of you! Do you know how long it's been since this floor had company? No, don't guess, honey, you'll make yourself sad. Come in, come in, mind the grains, they get everywhere."
She swoops a slow circle around the whole group, the blue eye turning to follow each face, and stops in front of the axe.
The Lamp: "And you brought a friend. Hello, friend. Oh, he's not talking? That's alright. He's shy. Everybody's shy the first time they're home."
She follows their eyes up to the hanging man, and drifts back toward the barrier until she hangs just below his feet, and the blue light catches his face from underneath.
The Lamp: "Oh, him? Y'all are wondering how an ascendant ends up all the way up there. Well, it's a funny thing. There are trials on this floor, honey. Tests. You pass them, you get to leave. You don't, and you and me are going to be seeing a whole lot of each other for a very, very long time. So do me a favor and fail a couple. This one up here stopped talking ages ago, and it has been so boring."
The globe fogs and clears, fast, twice.
The Lamp: "I'm teasing. Mostly. Oh, this is going to be fun. This is going to be so much fun. I can't wait to see what y'all do. Ascendants are just the most interesting things, every one of you does it different, and I never, ever know which way it's going to go. Go on, then. Floor's waiting."
Reference - what the Lamp will say if asked

Who is he? "A friend. The best climber I ever had. He's resting." Nothing more until the story is done.

What are you? "An echo, honey. Somebody poured a little of themselves into a lamp a long, long time ago, so there'd be somebody to keep the lights on. The rest of them went wherever they went."

Who poured you? Who built this place? What is the hanging man's name before the story is done? What is above the top door? Anything about the murals below, the sky, the birds, the gods: "Oh, honey, this echo wasn't given that." Always the same words, always kindly, never explained.

Can we go around? "There's no around. There's through. Four times through."

About the axe: "He'll talk when he's ready. They always do." She looks at it longer than at anything else in the room.

The First Room: The Vault

The grains under your feet stop flowing. For one breath the whole floor is still, and then it pulls away from the center like a tide going out, and where it was there is a floor of fitted stone, square and grey, cut into rooms and corridors and dead ends, sunk a hand's depth below where you stand. Walls of pale sandstone rise out of the grains along its edges and knit themselves shut. Gold chests, dozens of them, lift out of the floor on little columns of grains and settle into the corridors with a sound like coins dropped on a table. At the far end, one square of the floor glows warm and yellow, a door.

Neilo. Magen. Sylas. The grains climb your boots. They are at your knees before you can step back, at your waist, at your chest, and they are not cold, they are warm, like a hand. The room pulls you down into itself. The rest of you see three faces sink into the floor, and a moment later three of the little figures on the far side of the stone maze turn their heads and look up at you with Neilo's eyes, and Magen's, and Sylas's. They are sealed in. Each one alone, in a cell the size of a coffin, with a gold chest for a door. And Neilo, Magen, Sylas, you can feel the room the way you feel your own hand. Where you want to go, you go. What you lean on, moves, or does not.
The Lamp: "There they go! Oh, look at them, aren't they small. Well, don't look at me, honey, I don't make the rooms, I just watch them. Find your way back up. The rest of you can shout all you like, they'll hear you fine. I'll be right here. I want to see how you do it."
The Vault (Vault_Puzzle_1, four rooms, about 25 minutes)
  • The three taken players share the mouse. Click a character to select it, click a neighboring tile to step. Click a chest next to the selected character to push it one tile. Nothing pulls.
  • Cracked floor swallows a pushed chest and seals. A character stepping on a crack falls and the room resets.
  • Every room starts with all three sealed in their own cell behind a chest only they can push, and every room is built so that all three must push something before anyone reaches the door. If a chest ends up wedged in a corner, the room is dead; press R and narrate the floor shrugging the chests back into place.
  • Guardians appear from room three: tall grain-figures walking a marked path. Their next step shows in red. "Let the guardians move" is the wait button. Room three adds a key under a crack and a gate on the way out; room four adds a two-crack bridge that must be sealed before anyone can reach the last crack, and someone has to be across it before the final chest comes down.
  • Reset: Neilo, Magen and Sylas each save, DC 13 Constitution, 2d6 on a failure.
  • N skips a room, B goes back, W ends the whole puzzle if the night is running long. Nothing on screen explains itself; everything the players learn, they learn by pushing.
The last of the three steps through the glowing door, and the stone maze sighs and comes apart. Walls fold down into grains. Chests sink without a sound. And Neilo, Magen, Sylas, you are standing on the floor again among the others, dust in your hair, the warmth of the grains still on your skin, and above you, with a clank that runs through every one of the seven chains, the hanging man drops. One body's length. Then he stops, swinging a little, and is still.
The Lamp: "You did it! Oh, you did it, every one of you, I knew you would, I just knew it. Well, I hoped. And you did it in such an order! I'd never have pushed that one first. You know, that reminds me of something. Sit a second. I don't get to tell this often."
The blue light dims to a glow, the way a lamp does when someone turns the wick down to talk.
The Lamp: "Once upon a time there was a crowd of people out in the dry country who prayed to a man. Not a god, honey. A man. A man who went up a stair like this one, all the way, and came back down with something nobody else had, and they built him a statue with no face, because nobody remembered his face, and they knelt in front of it and pressed their fists to their chests the way he did in the stories. And then one year they looked at the statue and thought, well, why him? Why not us? So they went looking for his doors. All of them. They broke a lot of doors, honey. They carried out a lot of gold. They piled it so high under the statue that the pile was taller than his hands. And seven of them, the seven who had read the most, came to this door. And here's the sweet part. They put it all down. Right there at the step. Every coin, every knife, their mothers' rings. And they walked in with empty hands, the way the stories said he did. I thought that was so sweet. I still do."

The Second Room: The Lens

The grains draw back again, and this time what rises out of them is dark. A floor of black glass, polished, with no walls at all, and set into it, here and there, small round sockets like empty eyes. At one edge, a single point of white light burns in a brass mount, so bright it hurts, pointed inward across the glass. In the middle of the floor stands a crystal the size of a child, cloudy purple, and it is turning, very slowly, on nothing.

Lumi. Aurene. Nelvin. The grains do not climb you this time. The light does. It finds each of you across the room, and where it touches you, something steps out of you. A shadow, your shape, thin as smoke, and it steps down onto the black glass and stands there, and your body behind it goes still and grey like a thing left in a chair. The rest of you, looking down from the rim, see three shadows on the glass floor, and three dark sockets opened deep in it where the shadows came to rest, and you see the shadows reach for the sockets around them, turning them, and where a shadow turns one, a mirror rises out of it. Lumi, Aurene, Nelvin, you are the shadows. The light is somewhere across the glass, and it is not on you.
The Lamp: "Oh, that one gets me every time. Look at them down there, honey, like little bits of smoke. Go on, then. Find your way back to yourselves. I want to see which of you figures it out first."
The Lens (Lens_Puzzle_2, four levels, about 30 minutes)
  • The three taken players share the mouse. Click an empty socket: mirror one way. Click again: mirror the other way. Again: a splitter. Again: empty. The counter at the bottom shows how many of each are left; every piece is needed, every level. Nobody tells them any of this.
  • The beam draws itself live. A dark cell with a face in it lights up when the beam reaches it. When all of them are lit, the level ends.
  • The crystal swallows any beam that touches it and pulses while it feeds.
  • Four levels: six pieces, eight, ten, twelve, on nine, twelve, fifteen and eighteen sockets, with three to five dark cells and one to three crystals each. Nothing resets on its own here; a player can take a piece back out. If the table is truly stuck, H marks the next socket.
  • Reset: Lumi, Aurene and Nelvin save, DC 13 Constitution, 2d6 on a failure.
The last dark socket lights, and the beam does not stop at the glass. It runs up into the shadow standing over the socket and the shadow fills with it, from the feet up, like a glass filling, and it is Nelvin, and then Aurene, and then Lumi, standing on the black floor with the beams still crossing around their ankles, and behind them on the rim three grey bodies draw a breath and are gone. The floor goes soft and grey and sinks back into the grains. Above you, the chains clank, and the hanging man drops another length, and his boots are low enough now that you can see the soles have worn through.
The Lamp: "Yes! Yes yes yes! Two for two! Oh, I'm so glad it's you. I'm so glad it's all of you. Where was I. The seven. Come close."
The Lamp: "The seven got a long way. Further than anybody, empty-handed, helping each other up. I was so proud. And halfway up, in a niche in the wall, they found what he'd left behind. A disc, honey, about the size of a plate, with a thread of light running out of it toward the top. Just a piece of what he had. One piece. And they stood around it, the seven of them, and every one of them wanted to hold it. All of it. Not a share. And they were so polite about it at first! They took turns. And every time one of them picked it up and put it down, the disc was a little dimmer and the one who'd held it was a little bigger. Isn't that funny? I thought that was so funny. Nobody else laughed."

The Third Room: The Procession

This time the floor does not sink. It tilts. The whole chamber leans, slowly, like a ship taking a swell, and the grains run off to one side and pile against the wall, and under them is a floor of worn white tiles with holes in it. Not cracks. Holes. Round and black and deep, and the air that comes up out of them is cold. Across the tiles, three stone arches stand open, each one just wide enough for a person, each one leading nowhere.

Fand. Yurei. John. The floor leans toward you, only toward you, and your feet go out from under you, and you slide. You do not stop at the edge. You go over it, onto the white tiles, and there you are, three figures in pilgrims' grey, standing very still, because the floor has not finished leaning yet. And it is leaning the way you lean. Fand, you shift your weight, and the whole floor shifts with it, and all three of you slide together.
The Lamp: "Now this is the one I like best. Oh, I love this part. I never know which way people tip first. Go on. Mind the holes, honey. Or don't. I'll find out either way."
The Procession (Procession_Puzzle_3, three levels, about 15 minutes)
  • The three taken players share the mouse. Four arrows around the board tilt the floor. All three pilgrims slide in that direction until a wall or another pilgrim stops them. A pilgrim who slides over a hole is lost and the level resets. Nobody tells them the doors must fill at once; the room shows it.
  • The level ends the moment all three doors are filled after one tilt. The minimum solutions are five tilts, seven and ten; the obvious lines run through the holes.
  • Reset: Fand, Yurei and John save, DC 13 Constitution, 2d6 on a failure. Narrate the fall as a drop into cold dark and the floor spitting the character back onto the start tile.
  • H glows the next arrow.
Three doors fill in the same breath, and the arches close behind the three of them like mouths, and the floor rights itself so suddenly that half of you sit down. The white tiles are gone. Fand, Yurei, John, you are standing where you were. The chains clank. The hanging man comes down another length, and now he hangs low enough that if the barrier were not there you could reach up and touch his boots. His clenched fist is at the height of your faces. Between the fingers, gripped so hard the knuckles have split, there is a small triangle of white tile.
The Lamp: "Three! Three! Oh, nobody's ever gotten three! Hold on. Hold on, honey, let me get myself together."
The globe fogs and clears three times, fast, and the light inside wobbles and steadies.
The Lamp: "So. The turns stopped being polite. One of them wouldn't put the disc down. One of them took his wrist. One of them had a knife. Two of them went over the edge of the stair, and the stair is a long way down, honey, you've seen. And the one holding the disc, the one who'd read the most, he found out that if he held it and held on to somebody else at the same time, the light in them came across into him. Just like that. Like pouring. So he did it. One at a time. And every one he poured into himself, he got a little bigger, and a little stronger, and a little further from being somebody you'd want to climb with. Does that make sense? It made sense to me. Took him six times to run out of friends."

The Fourth Room: The Last Expedition

The grains do not move at all this time. The light does. The blue glow of the Lamp goes out, and in the dark, slowly, the chamber fills with a different light, grey and flat and coming from nowhere, and in it the floor is a stair. One narrow stair, four paces wide, climbing from a doorway at the bottom to a landing at the top, and the stair is full. Blocks of pale stone stand on it, tall ones and squat ones, packed so tight there is barely room to breathe between them, and at the very top, filling the landing from wall to wall, is one great block of darker stone with a scarab cut into its face, and no sun between the scarab's legs.

Djiro. Viktor. Shimmer. Present. You are not pulled down. You are stood up. One moment you are standing with the others and the next you are standing on the stair, and you are the stone. You are the tall blocks. You can shift, one step, if there is room to shift into, and so can every other block on the stair when you lean on it. You can see the great dark block above you at the top of the stair, and you can feel it wanting down.
The Lamp: "Last one. Oh, this one's the simplest thing in the world, honey, and it is the hardest. Look at that big fella up top. Look at him wanting down. Well, don't let me keep you. I am dying to see how long it takes you."
The Last Expedition (Last_Expedition_Puzzle_4, three stairs, about 20 minutes)
  • The four taken players share the mouse. A sliding-block stair, four wide and five tall, with a door at the bottom. Click a block, then an arrow or an empty square beside it, to slide it one step. Nothing can be lifted over anything. Nobody tells them the big block must reach the door; the door does.
  • The great block with the scarab must reach the door. Four of the blocks carry the faces of the four taken characters; the rest are plain stone.
  • Three stairs: 22 steps at best, then 31, then 50.
  • H selects the block that should move next and glows its arrow. Nothing resets on its own here.
  • Reset: Djiro, Viktor, Shimmer and Present save, DC 13 Constitution, 2d6 on a failure.
The last block slides aside, and the great dark one comes down the stair, one step, one step, one step, with nothing in its way, and goes out through the door at the bottom, and the stair is empty behind it. Then the grains lose their shape and run, and the stair pours down into the floor, and Djiro, Viktor, Shimmer, Present, you are standing among the others again with the grey light fading, and above you the chains let out, link by link, slow, and the hanging man comes down through the air until his bare feet, the boots gone now, worn to nothing, hang a hand above the floor. The barrier of pale light flickers. Thins. And goes out, like a candle pinched, and the air that was behind it smells of old leather and dust.

He hangs in front of you. Close enough to touch. His skin is dry and grey and whole. There is no rot on him anywhere. His hair is still dark. Under the drawn lids, his eyes move.
The Lamp: "Four. Four for four. Oh, honey, oh, I could just cry, if I had the parts for it. Nobody's ever heard the whole story. He never even heard the whole story, and he was in it."
The blue light drifts up beside the hanging man's face and hangs there, close, like a hand on a cheek.
The Lamp: "This is Ithrin. He's the one who read the most. He came up the last stair with six friends inside him and nobody beside him, and he stood at the top with the disc held up in both hands, and he was so strong by then, honey, you have no idea. Stronger than the man on the statue, maybe. That's what he wanted. And the door at the top looked at him, and the door didn't open. The light turned right around and went back down the stair and into the floor, and the disc went with it, and the floor came up and took him, the way it takes everybody who gets that far and no further. And the floor doesn't let things rot. It's very tidy that way. That was a long time ago. He's been so patient. I wonder what he'd do, if it was him standing where you are. I've wondered that for a very long time."

The Judgement

In the middle of the floor, under the hanging man, the grains heave up and harden into a pedestal of grey stone, waist high, and on it, flat, lying across the top, is a sword. It is plain. A soldier's blade, straight and heavy, with a wrapped grip gone black with age. The grains around the pedestal's foot settle and go still, and for the first time since you came into this chamber, the floor is not moving at all.

The chains let out one more length, and stop. Ithrin hangs with his chest at the height of the sword's point, his arms drawn out to either side by the cuffs, his throat bare.
The Lamp: "So. Here's where I leave it with y'all, because this part was never mine. You've heard how he got up there. You've walked the same floor. There he is. Do whatever you think is right, honey. I mean that. Whatever you think is right. And then I'll finally know what people do, when they get here. I've wanted to know that longer than you've been alive."
She floats back, up and away, out of reach, and the blue eye settles on the group and does not blink.
John. The axe is warm in your hand. Not the haft. The whole of it, the way a cup is warm when there is something hot inside it, and the voice is back, quieter than it has ever been, almost gentle, right behind your ear.
The Axe: "John. Break these chains, and I'll tell you about Elara."
Reference - the judgement

Only John hears the axe. Elara is his daughter's name. Whatever John tells the others is his choice.

The chains break to a single strike of the axe on any link, and to nothing else. The sword kills Ithrin outright: one strike, no roll, no save; he does not resist. Anyone may take it. The Lamp says nothing while they decide.

The Choice (no initiative, as long as the table needs)
  • John breaks the chains: read Unbound. Branch B.
  • Someone takes the sword and kills him: read The Kill. Branch A.
  • Nobody acts: read Hesitation. Branch B. Arguing counts as doing nothing: when the table has gone round twice without anyone moving, the axe moves on its own.
  • Record the outcome in the Branch Record in the DM Notes.
  • If the group tries to stop John by force, a contested Athletics check against him holds his arm for that moment, and the axe whispers only to him: "They don't trust you. They never will. She would."
  • In every outcome, John is free from here: the axe is only an axe. In every outcome, the Lamp gives Neilo the key and the door opens. Read The Key after the outcome.

Unbound

The axe comes down on the chain and does not ring. It goes through the link the way a knife goes through a candle, and the steel-blue light that has crawled along every chain since you came into this room stops crawling, and goes out, in all seven at once. The chains fall. They hit the floor around the pedestal with a sound like a bell dropped down a well, and Ithrin drops with them, onto his knees, and stays there, head down, hands open on the stone.

Out of the axe head tears a streak of cold shadow, and it pours into the kneeling man through his open mouth like water into a dry riverbed. John, the axe in your hand goes light. It weighs what an axe weighs. Your fingers open.

Ithrin lifts his head. His eyes are open, and there is a faint blue frost in them. He looks at his hands. He opens the clenched fist, and the little triangle of white tile drops and clicks on the floor.
Ithrin: "So close. I was so close."
He turns his head toward John.
Ithrin: "A bargain is a bargain. Elara. She was writing a letter, and the name at the top of it was mine. Ithrin Vaelsorrow. That is all I saw."
He rises, turns his back on all of you, and walks. Not to any door. Into the far wall of the chamber, where the grains part for him and close behind him, the broken chains dragging from his wrists and clinking, until the clinking fades.
The Lamp: "Uh oh."
The Lamp: "Well. Honey. You went and let him out. I did say whatever you thought was right, and I suppose you thought that was, and it's not my place to say, it's really not. But that was a very hungry man you just put back in the world, and there's exactly one way to fix a mistake that size, and y'all know what it is. You make sure he doesn't eat anybody else. Ever. He's gone down. He'll be waiting."

The Kill

The sword goes in under the breastbone, through the green armor, through the scarab with the hole in its heart, and Ithrin does not make a sound. His head comes up. His eyes open, grey and dry, and look at whoever is holding the grip, and for one long moment he is looking at you the way a man looks at someone across a table. Then his head goes down again, and this time it does not stop. The grey skin cracks along the jaw and the cheek and falls away in flakes, and under it there is nothing but dust, and the dust goes too, and the chains swing empty, seven cuffs clinking against each other, and a breastplate lies on the pedestal around the sword like a shed skin.

John. The axe screams. Not the steel. The thing inside it, and this time it is not in the back of your head. It is in the room. Every one of you hears it, a sound like wind through a cracked door, rising and rising until it is words.
The Axe: "MINE. THAT WAS MINE. I WAITED. I WAITED IN THE DARK. I WAITED IN A BLADE. I WAS A BREATH AWAY FROM MY OWN HANDS AND YOU PUT A SWORD IN THEM."
The Axe: "I WILL DESTROY EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU FOR WHAT YOU JUST DID. EVERY ONE. I WILL FIND SOMETHING TO WEAR AND I WILL COME BACK UP THESE STAIRS AND I WILL NOT STOP."
A streak of cold shadow tears itself out of the axe head and throws itself at the empty chains, and goes through them, and finds nothing, and shrieks, and spins once around the chamber so fast the grains lift off the floor in a ring, and then it goes down. Straight down, into the floor, through the grains, and the cold goes with it.

John, in your hand, the axe is only an axe. It weighs what an axe weighs. Your fingers open.
The Lamp: "Ohhh. So that's your justice? A kill for a kill? Huh. I don't know, honey. Sounds a little more like revenge to me. Not that I'm judging. I'm a lamp."
The blue light swings slowly from the empty chains to the hole in the floor where the shadow went, and back.
The Lamp: "That's probably not a good thing, though. I'll be honest with y'all. You've made a big, big mess, bringing an Akh'marani soul loose into the tomb with nothing to hold it. He'll find something to hold it. There's plenty down there. You'd better hurry on down and fix it before he does. Oh! Oh, but I almost forgot."

Hesitation

The sword lies on the pedestal. Nobody has touched it. Nobody has touched the chains. And in the quiet, John, the axe in your hand gives one long shudder, like a dog shaking off water, and goes cold, and out of the axe head tears a streak of shadow that does not ask anyone anything. It goes straight to the hanging man and pours into him through his open mouth.

Ithrin's eyes open. Blue frost in them. He looks down at the chains on his wrists, and at the sword, and at you, all of you, one after another, slowly, as if he is counting. Then he smiles, with cracked grey lips, and the chains do not break. They simply let go of him. The cuffs open. He drops to his feet on the floor, lightly, like a man stepping off a cart, and he is gone. Not through a door. Not into the wall. The grains under his feet rise up around him in a column and fall, and there is nothing inside them.

John, in your hand, the axe is only an axe. It weighs what an axe weighs. Your fingers open.
The Lamp: "Uh oh."
The Lamp: "Seems like y'all hesitated for just a little too long there, honey. He's not a patient man. Never was. That's sort of the whole story. Well. He's gone down, and he's got his own hands back, and I expect he's going to want to use them. If I were you, and I'm not, I'd go down after him quick, and I'd go together."

The Key

The Lamp drifts down to the pedestal and hangs over it, and the blue light inside the globe brightens until the brass ribs throw shadows across all your faces.
The Lamp: "Y'all solved my trials. All four. Nobody ever has, not all the way, so I never got to do this part, and I've been looking forward to it for the longest time. Oh! And one more thing. One more thing, I nearly forgot, it's been so long. I was told, when I was poured, that if somebody came up here wearing a certain something at their throat, I was to give them this. It's only one part, honey. It's not the whole of anything. But I was told you should have it, and I think so too."
The blue eye turns to Neilo and stays on the scarab at his throat.
The Lamp: "Here. This is yours."
The glass of the globe clouds over, thick and white, and when it clears, the eye is gone and there is something else inside the lantern. A curved piece of pale stone the size of a palm, glowing, one edge cut in the shape of a key's bit. The brass ribs open like fingers. The stone does not wait to be taken. It lifts out of the lantern and flies, straight across the chamber, straight to Neilo, straight to the scarab at his throat, and it strikes the amulet and sinks into one of the two keyhole-shaped hollows on its face, and the gold closes over it as if the hole had never been there.

Neilo, the scarab burns against your chest, not hot, but bright, a light you can feel through your shirt and through your ribs, and from it, out of nothing, grains begin to pour. They stream out into the air beside you and gather there and shape themselves, a narrow waist, two rounded bells, a frame of nothing at all, until an hourglass hangs in the air at your shoulder, as tall as your forearm, full to the brim. The grains inside it are the color you choose. And a crust of the same grains runs over your skin and your clothes, light as a breath, and settles there, and holds.

The grains in the hourglass are not falling. Not yet.
Neilo's awakening
  • Noboru Suna awakens here. Neilo's player chooses his first form: Satetsu (black iron), Sabaku (golden) or Masago (grey-blue). The hourglass and the crust on his skin take that form's color.
  • Hand him the Fragment of the Zenith item text. The Fragment of the Dawn no longer requires attunement.
Reference - do not name

aether, core, sand (the medium is "the ancient magic" or "the grains"), the Sunseeker, the builders. The second keyhole stays open until the throne.

The Lamp: "Oh, look at you. Look at you! It likes you. It never liked him. Well. That's the trials, and that's the errand, and that's everything this echo was given, which has never once happened before. Go on, now. Door's that way. Mind the grains."
The lantern's light goes out, and the brass cage hangs dark and empty in the air for a moment, and then it is not there at all. Where the far wall of the chamber was, there is a door. It was not there before. It is simply there, a tall frame of pale stone standing open on a quiet room beyond, and the grains on the floor flow toward it and through it and lie still.

Part IV: The Still Room

A quiet room below the Gauntlet · 2:40 to 2:55, room to breathe and the real-world break

The room beyond the door is quiet and cool and made of the same pale old stone as the murals in the antechamber, cut in clean six-sided shapes. In its centre lies a pool, perfectly still, filled not with water but with steel-blue grains so fine and so level that the surface reflects your torchlight like glass. Around the walls, low benches have been cut into the stone, a dozen of them, more than a dozen, as if whoever made this room expected company. There is a single door on the far side, and it is shut.

The air in here is different. Still. Cool. The grinding you have heard in the walls since you came through the scarab door, the far-off shift of great weights, is gone. Nothing follows you across the threshold.
Room to breathe
  • A short rest, if they want one. Nothing enters this room.
  • John's first quiet minutes with nothing in his hand but an axe.
  • Let them talk about the Lamp, her story, the judgement, and what John did or did not do.
  • Call the real-world break here. When everyone is back, the door opens.

The Murals of the Still Room

Above the benches, the walls are carved, all three of them, floor to ceiling, in panels divided by plain stone pillars, five to a wall. The carving is old and cracked and very fine, and where the carver cut the grains, he set real ones into the stone, so that in the light of your torches the blue in the pictures moves. The wall facing the door is the first your lights reach.

The Wall of the Builders

In the first panel, great crowned figures lean down out of carved clouds, three times the height of the people beneath them, and from their open palms a warm light pours down, cut in gold, onto a crowd of men and women in plain robes who kneel and lift their hands to catch it. The light collects in their cupped hands as small flames. Behind them, a village, a well, low houses. Above the givers, a sun with rays like knives.

In the second, the people have used it. A woman lifts stone into a tower with a gesture. A man heals a child with a glowing hand. A scholar reads from a tablet of light. The village has become a city with domes and bridges, and the crowned figures watch from the clouds with their palms still open.

In the third, the city sits at the top of the panel and the stone beneath it is cut away, caverns under the streets, and a line of people descends a stair into them with torches. At the bottom they have found a vein in the rock, and the carver has set real grains into it, steel-blue, running through the stone like a river of stars. One figure kneels and lifts a handful. One presses it into his own chest, where a small round hollow has opened and glows. The gold in the city above is faint here. The blue below is the brightest thing on the wall.

In the fourth, the city blazes blue. Every chest in the street has its lit hollow. Towers rise out of the ground in one piece. The gold light from the sky has stopped. And the crowned figures lean down again with their faces changed, mouths open, hands reaching for the blue, and the carver has cut the grains running through their fingers like water through a sieve. Their own chests are hollowed too, and the hollows are black.

In the fifth, the sky is full of shapes with no faces and no feet, hanging down out of the clouds like roots, cut deep and crude into the finished stone, and under them the city is struck flat. Towers split. The well is a crater. The people are cut falling, running, kneeling, and the hollow in every chest goes dark along the panel, one after another. At the far edge, one figure kneels with its back to the sky and both hands pressed flat over its chest, and the light in it is the last on the wall.
Investigation DC 13The shapes in the fifth panel were not carved with the rest. They are cruder and deeper, cut into a wall that was already finished, and the stone inside the cuts is a different colour, as if it has never seen light.

The Wall of the Seven

The wall to your left begins with a shrine. A crowd of people in rough travelling robes kneel before a great faceless statue of a seated man with his hands cupped in his lap around a glowing disc, a scarab with spread wings on his chest, a sun with knife-rays behind his head. Old rusted rings and broken tablets are heaped at his feet. The kneeling ones press their fists to their own chests. Along the edge of the panel, a cliff face with a row of small shut doors cut into it.

In the second, the same crowd, armed now, is breaking the doors open with picks and bars and dragging out chests of gold and jewelled blades and pale stone tablets, and heaping them under the statue higher than its knees. One man stands on top of the heap with his arms raised, and the carver has cut him taller than the statue's hands.

In the third, seven of them climb a straight stair with empty hands. Their packs and coins and good knives lie in a heap at the first step. Along the stair's edge, cut tiny, the things they pass: a maze of chests, a bent beam of light, a tilted floor with holes, a stair full of stone blocks. Halfway up, a niche, and in it a disc the size of a plate, glowing, with a thread of grains running out of it toward a door at the top that is cut with a single closed eye.

In the fourth, they have stopped at the niche and turned on each other. One clutches the disc. One has his wrist. One has a knife out. Two fall off the edge of the stair into nothing. The holder is cut larger than the rest, rough and swollen, and from the chests and open mouths of the others thin streams of blue run into him, and the hollows in their chests crack and go dark while his burns.

In the fifth, he stands alone before the eye-door with the disc held up in both hands, and his face is smooth stone, left blank by the chisel. The thread of light has turned. It runs away from him, back down the stair, into the floor, and the floor rises around him in grains to the waist. Seven chains come down out of the carved sky and close on his wrists, his ankles, his waist, his throat, and lift him off the stair, and the disc is gone from his hands, and in the scarab on his chest there is a hole where it was. In the margin beside the stair, the one thing on the whole wall with a face: a small lantern, a cage of ribs around a globe, and the eye inside it turned out of the wall toward you.

Over the eye-door, in letters so small you have to bring your light within a hand of the stone, four words.
The lintel, in the same script as the words over the hall door above. Neilo and Yurei read it without trying. To everyone else it is four cuts in the stone:
"Not this one. Not yet."

The Wall of the Keepers

The wall to your right begins under the ruined city. In a cavern beneath it, a handful of survivors in plain robes kneel and pour what they carried, a cupped handful each, into one pool, and out of the pool rises a world. A sky, hills, a sea, a moon, all of it cut in blue, all of it folded inside a closed shell of stone like a pearl inside an oyster. Above the shell, in the real sky, the faceless shapes hang down from the clouds and reach for it, and their hands pass through the shell and close on nothing.

In the second, the inside of the pearl. Hillsides cut away to show halls of pale stone within them, and in the halls, scholars bent over long tables of grains, shaping spheres, threads, rings. One builds a floor of moving tiles. One cuts a single closed eye into a door. Shelves, lamps, instruments. The halls are crowded.

In the third, the builders make company. Out of flowing grains they shape figures, and the figures kneel before them with open hands: faceless statues with curved blades, a lantern of brass ribs with an eye inside, long-legged birds of glass with spear beaks, four-armed diggers with shells on their backs, and behind them all, an enormous faceless figure seated on a throne with its hands cupped in its lap.

In the fourth, the same hall three times across one panel. First the long table crowded with scholars. Then a few, old and bent, and empty chairs. Then one old figure alone at the table with his hands resting on a small sphere of grains, and his creations standing around him in silence, the lantern closest.

In the fifth, there are no people. The statues stand their posts in an empty hall. The lantern floats alone through an empty chamber. The glass birds nest on a mesa under the blue moon. The diggers are under the dunes. The seated figure on its throne has its hands cupped and empty. And in the foreground, a shut door with a single closed eye, and on its lintel the only worn place on the whole wall, a patch rubbed smooth where many hands have touched the stone from the other side.
Reference - the murals

Builders: the people who received the gods' gift, found the grains under their city, and were struck for it. The crowned givers are the gods; the faceless shapes are the gods when they strike. Never name either, never say djinn, celestial, the Forgotten Ones, the Sunseeker, or aether. The black hollows in the gods' chests in panel four are not commented on.

Seven: the Akh'marani. The faceless statue in their shrine is the one they worshipped; never name him. The man on the heap and the swollen holder on the stair are the same man, Ithrin, and nothing says so.

Keepers: the survivors made this place and everything in it. Every creature the party meets in the tomb is in the third panel. The world inside the shell is a made thing, sun, moon, sky and all; nothing in the room calls it real or false. If anyone asks the Lamp about any wall, she answers only from what her echo holds (see her reference in Part III).

The hall door's inscription on Floor 1 and the lintel on the Seven wall share one script. No roll reads it; only the two who hear the tomb.

With no sound at all, the door on the far side of the room swings open, and through it pours a light so bright and so warm that for a moment none of you can look at it.
Short restSpend Hit Dice and regain short-rest features as normal.

Part V: The Zenith Steppe

Floor Three of the Tomb of Zenith · 2:55 to 4:05

The Sun That Does Not Move

You step through the door and there is no ceiling.

There is sky. Enormous, pale, cloudless sky, and straight above you, nailed to the very top of it, a white sun so bright that it bleaches the colour out of everything it touches. Your shadows have gone. You look down for them and they are not there, because the light is coming from directly overhead and has nowhere to throw them.

Below the door, a slope of red grit runs down onto a plain of dunes and flat-topped mesas that stretches to every horizon, rust and ochre and bone-white, shimmering in the heat. The door you came through stands on its own in the open, a frame of pale stone with nothing behind it but more desert. The air tastes of hot dust. Somewhere far off, carried on the wind, you can hear something that might be singing.

On the tallest of the mesas, miles away, a stone arch stands against the sky. Neilo, the scarab at your throat is warm, and it grows warmer when you turn to face that arch.
Survival DC 12The sun has not moved at all in the minutes you have been watching. The heat is real, but not deadly. Water will be a problem in a day, not an hour.
Perception DC 14The singing comes from the mesa tops to the east. On the dunes to the west, the surface ripples, very slightly, against the wind.

The Dirt

You have been walking for perhaps half an hour, up one dune and down the next, when the ground ahead of you moves. Not the wind. The grit on the face of the dune in front of you slides away in a sheet, and something underneath it turns over and stands up, and then another, and another, in a loose ring on every side. They are as tall as a man and twice as broad, with heavy domed shells of dark ridged stone on their backs, like enormous beetles standing upright, and each of them has four arms, two thick and two thinner. Their faces are flat plates of stone with two deep-set points of steel-blue light for eyes. None of them has raised a hand.

One of them is bigger than the rest, its shell scarred with old white gouges, a band of beaten bronze hammered around the top of its head like a crown. Hung on a cord around its neck is a curved piece of pale stone the size of a palm, one edge broken clean. Behind it, half out of the grit, a smaller one is lying on its side. Its shell is cracked across, and in the crack, catching the sun, there are splinters of something clear, like glass.
Reference - Iron Brow and the Burrow

The Stonebacks are constructs of the tomb with their own minds. They do not attack unless attacked; they do not lie. Iron Brow is the chief. Voice like rocks rolling in a barrel, slow, with pauses as if each sentence is being lifted. It never asks a question; it states what it sees, and it counts things. It calls the party "topwalkers" (never "door-comers," that is the birds' word), the clan "the Burrow," the Glasswings "the loud ones," and the sun "the stone that does not move." Dust Knuckle is its second and says nothing in front of the chief. Twelve in the ring. The young one on its side was hurt last storm; the splinters in its shell are glass feathers. Iron Brow holds the dirt's half of the sun-stone on the cord around its neck and will not hand it to strangers.

The Burrow knows the roost takes its young and eats topwalkers. It has told every topwalker this and none of them stayed to hear the end of it, so Iron Brow no longer says it unasked. If asked straight, it answers straight; nothing more.

Iron Brow: "Topwalkers. Thirteen. The stone opened and let out thirteen. It has never let out so many."
It looks at each of them in turn, slowly, as if counting them again, and then east, toward the mesas, and back.
Iron Brow: "You are dry. Water is under you. One step down. The Burrow gives it."
Two of the smaller Stonebacks drop to their knees and dig with all four hands, and in a moment there is a hollow in the grit with clear water seeping into it. Nobody in the ring drinks first.
Iron Brow: "Drink before the loud ones find you. The loud ones find every topwalker. That is so."
While you drink, the hurt one behind the chief's legs moves. It drags itself forward on its two thick arms, slowly, its cracked shell scraping the grit, until it is lying in the open between the ring and you, and it lifts its flat stone face and looks at you, at whichever of you is nearest, with its two small blue lights. Iron Brow does not stop it. None of them do. The splinters in the crack of its shell catch the sun.
Iron Brow: "That one is Grit. Storm took the shell off him. He held the rock. The rock did not hold him."
A pause, long enough to lift a stone.
Iron Brow: "Topwalkers have small hands. The Burrow's hands are too big for the crack. That is all I say."
Reference - what the Burrow will say if asked

What happened to him? "Storm. The loud ones come down in the storm. They take the small ones up. Grit held the rock. The rock did not hold him. Four were taken up that storm. Four."

The birds take your young? "Yes. That is so." If pressed: "Every storm. Count what is in their nests. The Burrow has counted."

What is the stone on your neck? "The Burrow's." If asked for it: "No. Every topwalker wants it. Every topwalker goes up to the loud ones. Come down again with your own hands and say it again."

What are the birds? "Glass. Loud. Hungry." It will not say more; it has said it before to topwalkers who were already looking at the mesas.

Who made this place? "Not the Burrow."

Why are you helping us? "The Burrow gives water. That is what the Burrow is."

If someone tends Grit (any healing, or working the glass splinters out of the crack with small hands, no roll needed): Grit's blue lights brighten, and it butts its flat head once, hard, against that character's leg, the way a goat does. Iron Brow says nothing. When the party leaves, it turns its whole body to watch them go, and Dust Knuckle follows at a distance until the mesas, and is still there, half-buried at the mesa's foot, when they come down again.

If attacked: the ring closes and fights with fists; the Burrow does not pursue past the dune.

Medicine or Nature DC 12The splinters in the young one's shell are long, thin and clear, with a fused edge. They went in from above, hard, the way something thrown or dropped goes in.
Perception DC 13The ring of Stonebacks has left a gap on the east side, toward the mesas. Nobody is standing between you and the singing.

The Guide

You have barely left the Burrow's dune when something lands in front of you in a spray of grit, wings folding. It is taller than any of you, standing on two long thin legs the grey of old bone, and its body is a teardrop of white glass, every feather a thin pane fused at the edges, so that the sun shines straight through it and scatters little rainbows across the ground at its feet. Its neck is long and curved, and its head ends in a beak like a spear of smoky crystal. It cocks that head to one side and looks at you with one round eye of steel-blue light.
Reference - Reedwing

A young Glasswing, a construct of the tomb with its own mind. Curious, eager, and honest in the way a child is honest: it has no idea what the roost does with door-comers, it only knows that they are brought up and that afterward the roost sings. It learns speech by mimicking: it repeats the last few words it hears, then slowly starts to use them right. Its voice is high and rasping. It calls the elder "Old Crest." It does not know what the party is, and it does not care much: they came out of the Makers' door, so they matter.

Reedwing: "Hello?"
It hops closer and taps its beak twice against the ground, then flinches back from the Stonebacks' dune without looking at it.
Reedwing: "Hello. Hello, hello. You came out of the door. Out of the door! Nobody comes out of the door. Come. Come up. Old Crest must see. Come up, come up, away from the dirt-ones. Dirt-ones are bad. Come up!"
It flaps off a short way toward the eastern mesas, lands, and looks back.

The Glasswing Roost

The climb up the mesa is hard, a scramble up red rock baked hot enough to sting your palms, but Reedwing waits for you on every ledge, impatient, chattering your own words back at you. At the top, the mesa is hollow. A bowl of rock opens beneath you, sheltered from the wind, and in it are dozens of nests woven from dry grass and pale feathers of glass, and dozens of Glasswings, standing on one leg, preening, turning their spear-beaked heads to watch you come over the rim. The singing stops. A few of them take to the air in alarm, and the sun through their wings throws moving rainbows over the whole bowl.

In the largest nest, at the centre of the bowl, an old Glasswing is lying in the grass. Its glass has gone cloudy and grey with age, cracked in a long white line across its crest, and a great ragged mane of feathers hangs around its head, chipped and dull, hung with cords of grass and strings of bone rings and old cracked eggshell. It lifts its head as you approach, very slowly, and both its eyes are on you, and they are wet, and tired, and kind.
Reference - Cracked Crest and the roost

The Glasswing elder, a construct of the tomb with its own mind, old and grand and very, very hungry. Speaks slowly and formally, in full sentences, with a soft click of the beak ("tk") between thoughts. Warm, grieving, reasonable. Everything it says in the common tongue is a performance it has given many times. The roost eats door-comers: every ascender who came through the door before was fed, flattered, sent to kill the Burrow's chief, and eaten on their return, whether or not they managed it. The bones and gear under the nests are theirs. The roost also raids the Burrow in every storm and takes its young; the eggs the roost drinks are its own.

It holds the sky's half of the orb under its nest. It will never give it; the ask is a way of using the party to bring Iron Brow out and weaken him, so the roost can take the dirt's half and the Burrow in one swoop, and eat the champions at the feast after. The surface read must hold absolutely until the feast: no winks, no hunger in the common tongue. Only the song, which the party cannot understand, says anything true.

The halves: two curved pieces of pale stone, each the size of a palm, faintly warm, one edge broken clean; together they make a sphere the size of a fist. They are NOT Neilo's keys. The orb opens the arch and nothing else.

Cracked Crest: "Tk. Reedwing says you came out of the Makers' door. Tk. Reedwing says many foolish things. Come closer. Let me see you in the light."
It looks at each of you in turn. When it reaches Neilo, it stops, and its head dips, very slightly.
Cracked Crest: "Tk. So. The door has opened, and it has opened for a crowd. You are welcome in the roost. Rest. Drink. You will eat with us. That is our way, before anything is asked."
Reference - the elder softens them first

Cracked Crest does not go near the orb or the Stonebacks until the party brings it up twice. The first hour in the roost is rest, water in glass bowls, nests cleared for them, young birds brought to look at them, the song, the egg. Any mention of the arch, the stone, the sun-stone or what the Burrow wears gets waved off: "Tk. Later. First we feast. First the roost celebrates door-comers. It has been so long." Then it changes the subject to them: where they came from, what the door was like, which of them is the leader, who is the strongest. It is flattering and it is counting.

Only when they ask again, after the egg, does it answer; that is The Ask. If the party never asks, Reedwing, bursting with it, asks for them: "Old Crest, are you going to tell them about the stone?"

The Song in the Bowl

The elder settles back into the grass, and around the bowl the Glasswings take up their singing again, softly, the sound you heard from the dunes, a high glassy chord that rises and falls and breaks into clicks and rises again.

Yurei. The sound sits at the edge of your hearing the way a word sits on the tip of a tongue. Not a tune. There are joints in it, like the joints of a sentence, and the rise and fall has a shape you almost know, from somewhere lower than learning, the way the body you wear knows how to breathe. It does not come off the edge. It stays there. But twice, in the chord, there is a sound that the throat you wear would make, if it were saying something to a child at dinner, and both times the whole bowl sings it together.
Reference - the song, stage one

Yurei understands nothing yet. The two sounds she picks out are the roost's word for "eat" and the roost's word for "guests," sung as one phrase, but she gets no meaning, only the feeling that the sounds are words and that one of them belongs to meals. If her player asks what it means: "You could not say. It sounds like something said over food." Nothing more until the turning. Do not let the table roll for it.

The tongue is the Serrati body's own; never name it or its homeland, never say "Serrati." The Glasswings do not know what Yurei is.

The Egg

Two Glasswings step forward from the crowd, a pair, one with a fringe of bright feathers standing up from its crest, and between them they roll an egg across the grass to the elder's nest. It is the size of a melon, smooth and white as porcelain, and inside it, through the shell, something glows a soft steel-blue, slowly brightening and dimming, like breathing. The elder cracks the top of it with one tap of its beak. The inside is a thick, glowing liquid that smells of nothing at all.

The elder dips its beak, drinks, and then the pair each drink, and then all of them turn to look at you.
Cracked Crest: "Tk. Drink. It will make you strong."
Drinking from the eggWhoever dares to drink regains 2d10 hit points and, for a caster, two expended spell slots of their highest level; for anyone else, one expended use of their main class feature (Rage, Action Surge, Ki, Superiority Dice, a Channel Divinity, Wild Shape, a Static or Kami or Karasuba point, as fits). It burns going down and leaves a hum in the chest that lasts the rest of the floor. The egg feeds everyone who drinks; there is only the one.
RefusingThe pair who brought the egg look at each other. The elder clicks once, slowly. Nothing more is said about it.
Perception DC 14, anywhere in the roostThe nests are not woven only from grass and glass. Worked into the walls of the larger ones, under the feathers, there are straps, a buckle, the rim of a shield, a sleeve of mail gone white with age. In the elder's nest, deep in the grass, something pale and curved that is not a feather.

The Ask

After the egg, when the party asks about the stone for the second time. The elder sighs, long, and settles deeper into the grass, like something it hoped not to have to say.
Cracked Crest: "Tk. The stone. Yes. You want to go through the arch, and the arch wants the sun-stone, and half of it is under me. Right here, under this old body. Tk. And of course it is yours. Of course. I would put it in your hands now. The roost would sing it."
The bowl clicks. The elder lets it run, then lifts one foot, and it stops.
Cracked Crest: "But the roost has to see something first. Tk. Half a stone is half a door. The other half is on the neck of the Stonebacks' chief. Iron Brow. Diggers, four-armed things with shells on their backs, under the dunes to the west, you have smelled them, it is on you. They take our eggs in the storms. One more child, every storm. And the roost has given its half to door-comers before, tk, and they went down to take the other, and the dirt broke them, and both halves were gone, and the roost sang for nothing."
Cracked Crest: "So. Show the roost you are strong. Go down, stand in the dirt's ring, their chief loves a fight, and take the dirt's half first. Then come up with it, and mine is yours, of course, of course, with my own beak, in front of everyone, and the two go together in your hands, and tomorrow the arch. Tk. That is all. That is all I ask."
Reference - what the elder is doing

Every word is true and the whole thing is a lie. Cracked Crest has no intention of trading anything. It wants the party to walk into the Burrow's ring and batter Iron Brow in a fair duel, because a fair duel is the only thing that gets the chief out from under the dunes, on one knee, with its shell cracked, in the open, with the whole clan standing around it unarmed to watch. Then the sky comes down. The Glasswings do not go with the party. They say they will stay in the roost, and the party will believe it, and the roost will be empty behind them within a minute of their leaving.

Play the elder as generous, tired and sincere. It grants the half at once, warmly, so that the one condition sounds small, and it never explains the stone beyond "the arch wants it"; the Makers and the splitting are not its story to tell. It never pushes. If the party hesitates it lets the bowl sing, and lets Reedwing ask, with real excitement, whether they are going to go.

Reference - what the Glasswings will say if pressed

Have you seen a Stoneback take an egg? "Tk. No. They come in the storm. In the storm nobody sees anything. But the eggs are gone after, and the dirt is torn up."

We saw a hurt young one of theirs with glass in it. "Tk. Then they fought among themselves over what they stole. Glass breaks. It is in everything here."

What is in your nests? Whose shield is that? "Tk. The storm brings many things up out of the dirt. We build with what the wind leaves us." Said without a pause. Every bird in the bowl is still.

Who are the Makers? "Tk. The ones who made the arch. The door. The sun. Us. Nobody has seen one. Tk. Perhaps you are one. Are you?"

Give us your half first. "Tk. And then you go to the arch with half a door and wait for the sun to move. It does not move. Win the other half, and mine is waiting. I am old. I am not going anywhere."

Will you come with us? "Tk. No. The dirt does not fight with the sky watching. They would call it a trick. Go with the dirt's law, alone, and win it their way, and they cannot say a word." Reedwing, if asked to come: it looks at the elder, and the elder clicks once, and Reedwing says it will show them the slope and no further.

What happens if we don't? "Then you will wait at the foot of the arch until the sun moves. Tk. It does not move." After this answer, the roost begins, very softly, to sing again.

Reedwing, asked about the egg they drank: "Egg? Egg was our sister. Sister would have flown after the next storm. Now sister is in you. Now you are strong!"

Reedwing, asked what the roost does with door-comers: "Door-comers come up. Old Crest talks. Door-comers go down to the dirt-ones. Then door-comers come back, and everybody sings, and then it is quiet, and then no door-comers." It does not understand what it has said.

Insight DC 16 on the elder, during the Ask: It is not lying about the stone being under it. Everything about the Stonebacks it says with the ease of something said many times before, to many faces. On a 20 or more: when it says "stronger than them," its eyes go to the party's weapons, not to the west.

The roost sings you out. Every nest, every bird on every ledge, the whole bowl of glass ringing with it, and the elder on its nest with its head bowed, and the path down the western slope open and empty before you. Reedwing hops ahead to the lip of the rock and stops there, and points down with its whole body toward the dunes.
Reference - leaving the roost

No escort. That is the point. The party walks down alone with the song behind them, and the song fades, and the sky over the dunes is empty for the whole walk. Anyone who looks back from the dunes (Perception DC 18) sees the roost rim bare of birds, every one of them, and nothing in the air. If a player says it out loud, let the table sit with it; do not confirm anything.

If the party refuses the Ask and tries to leave the roost another way, or fights in the bowl, run the two beats of The Escape now, with no feast and no hostage; the elder's half is under the nest, the dirt's half is still on Iron Brow's neck, and the Burrow will give it to anyone who comes down the mesa with glass on their boots. In every other case, read The Burrow's Way.

The Burrow's Way

The Burrow is waiting where you left it, and it is already standing. All twelve, in their ring, and Iron Brow in the middle with Grit behind its legs. The sky above the basin is empty and white and silent, and the chief looks at it for a long moment before it looks at you.
Iron Brow: "Topwalkers. You went up. You came down. You came down with no loud ones over you. That is not so. That has never been so."
It lifts the pale half-stone on its cord in one lower hand and lets it drop against its chest.
Iron Brow: "You want this. The Burrow does not give. The Burrow is won. That is the Burrow's way, since the first digging. Two of yours. Two of mine. Fists. No running. No tricks. The Burrow watches, and when it is done, it is done, and nobody is dug under."
Iron Brow: "If yours stand, the stone is yours and the Burrow says so to the sky. If mine stand, you go up with nothing, and the Burrow gives you water first. Choose your two. Choose the ones who hit hardest. I want to feel it."
Reference - the duel's honor

Iron Brow fights straight and expects it back. It names its second, Dust Knuckle, with one hand on its shell. Before the first exchange it strikes its own chest twice with both upper fists, and every Stoneback in the ring does the same: that is the salute, and if a champion returns it, the chief's eyes brighten. It will not strike a champion who is down. It will not use its lower hands to grab. If a champion is knocked out of the ring, Iron Brow waits for them to come back.

If the party asks it why it does this: "The Burrow is stone. Stone is tested. Stone that is not tested is sand." If they ask about the empty sky: "The loud ones always watch. Today they do not. I do not know what that is." If the party warns it outright that the birds sent them: it looks at the sky for a long time, and then at them. "Then the Burrow fights with its eyes up. The ring still stands. Choose your two." It will not call the duel off; a warned Burrow dies slower in the Carnage, and Grit is not taken. Remember this for The Escape.

The duel of champions: three exchanges, no initiative (about 5 minutes)

Two champions face Iron Brow and Dust Knuckle. Push for one champion from each party.

Three exchanges. In each, both champions roll a check of their choice and narrate it (Athletics, an attack roll, Acrobatics, a spell used as a shove). Each roll is contested by the Stoneback's +7.

An exchange is won if both champions beat their opponent's roll. Win two of three, and the champions stand at the end.

Each lost roll costs that champion 2d10 bludgeoning. Each won roll costs the Stoneback it beat the same, and show it: the chief's shell cracks a little more with every one.

Trying to kill in the duel, or cheating with magic the Stonebacks can see: the ring closes on the party (4d10 bludgeoning each) and the Carnage begins at once, with the Burrow and the party both in it.

Whoever wins, read The Carnage as soon as the third exchange is called. The Glasswings are not waiting for a winner. They are waiting for the chief to be on its knees.

The Carnage

The third exchange ends. Iron Brow is on one knee, its shell split in a fresh white line from crown to spine, breathing like a bellows, and whether it is you or it that stands at the end, it lifts both upper fists and strikes its own chest, twice, for the ring to see.

Something sings. One note, from the dunes behind you, from the rim of the basin, from the slope you walked down, from everywhere at once.

They were in the sand. They were in the grass and flat against the lee of the dunes and under the lip of the basin, white on white, every bird in the roost, and they come up out of it all together, forty, fifty, more, a wall of glass closing from every side with the sun behind it, and the Burrow does not even have time to turn. Spear-beaks go through shells like nails through bark. The ring is gone under wings. Dust Knuckle takes two birds off one of its arms and a third puts it down from behind. The small ones are lifted. Grit is lifted, screaming, by a bird on each arm, up and out over the dunes. And Iron Brow, on one knee, with its shell split open, gets one hand around a Glasswing's neck and breaks it, and another, and then there are six on its back and it goes down into the grit face first and does not get up.

It is over in the time it takes to say it. The basin is glass and stone and torn grit and the Burrow is twelve shapes that do not move, and the birds are standing on them.
Yurei only, as the sand comes alive. Out of the one note, two words you have heard before, the ones sung over the egg, and this time they are not sung, they are screamed, and one of them you understand:
"Eat."
Cracked Crest comes last, carried over the dune on a litter of grass by six birds, and is set down beside the chief's body. It walks the length of it, slowly, on its old grey legs, and stops at the head, and hooks its beak under the cord, and lifts the pale half-stone off Iron Brow's neck, and holds it up in the sun for all the bowl of the sky to see. The birds scream. Then it turns to you, with its wet, kind, tired eyes, and lowers its head.
Cracked Crest: "Tk. Champions. You stood where the dirt stands, and now the dirt is still. Forever still. The sky remembers this. Tonight you eat at my nest, at the head, all of you, and the two halves go together in your hands, as I said, in front of the roost, and tomorrow the arch. Tk. Come. Come up. It is a long time since the roost had a feast."
Reference - the walk back

If a player says "you said you would stay": "Tk. I said the dirt would not fight with the sky watching. The sky was not watching. The sky was waiting." No apology in it. The elder is pleased with itself and does not hide it well.

Fifty birds around them, the elder carried ahead, Reedwing hopping beside whoever was kindest to it, not looking at the basin. Anyone who turns back toward the Burrow finds three Glasswings standing in the way, heads tilted, not touching. A fight here is The Escape with no feast and no hostage, on open sand, with the whole sky above; let the table feel how bad that is and most will walk. The dirt's half is in the elder's beak-pouch from here on. Grit is alive, carried to the roost with the other small ones; the party will see them in the nests. If the party warned Iron Brow before the duel, Grit was sent down a burrow before the first exchange and is not in the nests; it finds the party at the arch.

If a player asks Yurei what she heard: one word. "Eat." Nothing else is clear yet.

The Feast

The roost at dusk, except there is no dusk here, only the same white sun nailed to the top of the sky. The bowl is full. Every Glasswing in the sky has come down, and they stand shoulder to shoulder around the elder's nest in a ring ten birds deep, and you are inside it, seated on woven mats at the head of the nest with the elder lying beside you. In the nests behind the ring, small grey shapes with cracked shells are lying very still, six of them, seven, with a bird standing over each. Grit is one of them. Its blue lights find you across the bowl.

Eggs are brought. Not one. Thirteen, one for each of you, rolled across the grass by pairs of birds, white and glowing and breathing their soft blue light, and the elder taps the top off each one with its beak, and they are set before you, and the roost begins, very softly, to sing.
Yurei. The song has a floor under it now, and you are standing on it. The chord comes off the edge all at once, every click a word, and you understand every one of them, the way you understand your own name:
"Drink, guests, drink. The sleeping cup. Drink and lie down soft. Then the nests. The small ones first, the small ones are sweet. The mouths last, the mouths are the last to stop. Like the others. Like all the others."
Yurei, the elder is looking at you. Its old wet eye is on your face, and you understand, now, why your throat shaped an answer to the song on the mesa, and what the birds are, and what the sky-ones brought the small ones here for, and what is in the cup in front of you, and the cup in front of everyone you came in with.
Yurei's awakening
  • Settari no Hitomi wakes here, with the cups set down and the song in her ears: Ichizoku no Koe first, then the rest. Hand Yurei's player the feat the moment she chooses to speak, in whichever tongue.
  • What she tells the table is hers to tell, and how fast. The roost understands her if she answers in its tongue; nobody else in the bowl can.
  • The cups: anyone who drinks before Yurei speaks, or after and anyway, makes a DC 15 Constitution save or is paralyzed for one minute; on a success they are poisoned for one minute instead. The egg's gift from the first visit does not come with it.
Reference - the feast

The elder's nest: the sky's half of the orb is under the grass at the elder's own breast, on the bones. The dirt's half is in the pouch under its beak. The elder is within arm's reach of whoever sits at the head, by its own arrangement; it has never once been grabbed.

The roost waits for the cups. It will not strike before they are drunk unless someone strikes first, or someone speaks the roost's tongue from a topwalker's mouth, which stops the song dead.

Cracked Crest, if Yurei speaks to it in its own tongue, answers in it, and only Yurei hears: "Tk. Little crow. You came up the rock in a door-comer's skin. I wondered. Drink anyway. It is kinder than the beaks."

The Escape

The song stops. Every beak in the bowl is turned toward the head of the nest, and the elder has not moved, but it is not kind anymore. It is only old, and very hungry, and ten birds deep on every side.
Two ways out, and they can be the same way
  • The hostage. The elder is in reach. A grapple (contested Athletics against +2; it is old) or any hold the player can narrate puts a blade, a hand, a spell at its throat. The whole roost freezes: forty beaks a foot from the ring, and not one moves while the elder is held. It gives up the dirt's half from its pouch at once, in its own tongue through Yurei or by pointing with its beak. The sky's half must be dug out from under it, from the bones. The party walks out of the bowl with the elder in the middle of them and the roost walking backward in front of them all the way to the western slope. At the slope, whoever holds it decides. Let it go and the roost takes it back and does not follow. Kill it and the roost screams, and follows, and The Fight runs on the slope with the party already moving.
  • The fight. Two beats below. The elder breaks like the rest.
  • Grit and the small ones. Anyone who spends their beat, or their walk out, freeing the Stoneback young from the nests gets them: they are heavy, slow, and alive, and they will follow the party to the arch and down into the earth under it, if there is time. If nobody does, they stay in the nests, and that is where the next storm finds them.
The fight: two beats, no initiative (about 15 minutes)

How it runs. No initiative. Two beats. In each, every player says what their character does and rolls one check of their choice (an attack roll against AC 12 counts). DC 13. Glasswings are glass: any hit shatters one. There are more of them than there are of the party, but they are not brave once the first dozen break.

Success: a Glasswing breaks, or one that had hold of someone lets go, or a small one is pulled out of a nest.

Failure: a beak goes in, 2d8 piercing, and that character is seized by two birds and dragged a step toward the elder's nest. Two failures in a row on the same character and they are at the nest, and the elder's beak comes down: 4d8 piercing, no save, once.

The elder does not leave its nest. It breaks like the others to any hit that reaches it, but every bird in the bowl is between the party and it in beat one, unless someone already has it by the throat.

After beat two, what is left of the roost scatters into the sky and does not come back. Reedwing is not among them. It is crouched in the smallest nest at the edge of the bowl with its head under its wing, and it has not moved since the song stopped.

It is over very fast, one way or the other. The bowl is broken glass in the sun, throwing rainbows over nothing, and the singing is far away and getting farther. Under the grass of the elder's nest, when someone pulls the grass away, there are bones. Many bones, old and white and neatly stacked, and among them the things the nests were made of: straps, a buckle, the rim of a shield, a sleeve of mail. And on top of the bones, laid there like an egg, a curved piece of pale stone the size of a palm, faintly warm, one edge broken clean. The twin of the one from Iron Brow's neck.
Reedwing: "...Quiet now. Quiet now. Where is the singing? Door-comers? Where is Old Crest?"
Reference - Reedwing after

Reedwing is a child. It did not know. If spoken to kindly it comes out of the nest and follows the party to the arch at a distance, saying their words back to them. If the party leaves it, it stays in the broken bowl with the small Stonebacks, if any were left, and what happens between them is Quinn's.

The Sun-Stone

The two halves are brought together, and the moment they come within a hand's breadth of each other, they leap. They snap together in the air with a sound like a bell, and the seam between them is gone, and what hangs there for a heartbeat is a sphere of pale stone the size of a fist, glowing, warm as a loaf. Then it drops into the nearest open hand, and it is only a stone, and heavy.
Reference - the sun-stone

The orb opens the arch when carried under it; it does nothing else and fits nothing on Neilo's amulet. Nothing on the steppe comments on the amulet. Do not name: aether, core, sand (the medium is "the ancient magic" or "the grains"), the Sunseeker, the builders.

Far off, on the tallest of the mesas, the stone arch begins to glow. A line of light runs up one side of it and down the other, and in the space beneath it, where there was only sky, a stair appears, going down into the rock.
Reedwing: "Arch is open. Arch is open. You go down. Down, down. ...Come back? Come back and tell?"
Getting to the arch
  • On foot: an hour's hard walk across the dunes and a climb.
  • If Neilo chose Masago, this is where Karura first takes wing: a ritual of ten minutes, and a great bird of grey-blue grains carries him and two others across the plain. Reedwing flies beside it, not singing.
  • If the Burrow is friendly, the Stonebacks dig a straight tunnel under the dunes in minutes.

Part VI: The Throne of Zenith

Floor Four of the Tomb of Zenith · 4:05 to 5:35

The Throne Hall

The stair beneath the arch goes down a long way, out of the white light and into a cool dark that smells of old smoke and older stone, and opens at last into a hall so tall that its ceiling is lost in shadow.

The floor is drifted knee-deep in pale dust, piled against the bases of great square pillars like snow against a wall. Between the pillars hang black banners, ragged at the edges, each stitched with a wheel of golden rays. Bowls of fire burn low on stone blocks along the walls, and their light is the only light, warm and orange and flickering. Half-buried in the drifts lie timbers, lengths of chain, and round shields, dozens of them, dented and rusted, of a dozen different makes.

At the far end of the hall, a wide stair of shallow steps climbs to a dais, and on the dais, on a throne cut from a single block of stone, sits a figure. It is enormous, three or four times the height of any of you, carved seated, robes falling in long folds over its knees to its bare stone feet. Its hands rest cupped together in its lap around something small. Behind its head stands a great disc, carved with rays, like the sun at the top of the sky upstairs.

It has no face. Where a face should be, the stone is smooth.
Perception DC 13Crystal pylons, six of them, stand among the pillars, dark and cold. And something small glints between the statue's cupped hands.
Investigation DC 14The shields in the drifts are not one army's. Different metals, different shapes, different ages. Some of them are so old the iron has gone to powder inside the dust.

The Kindling

Branch A: If They Killed Him

The cold arrives before anything else. Your breath smokes. The bowls of fire along the walls gutter, all at once, and lean toward the dais. And out of the dark above the throne comes a streak of shadow, thin and torn and screaming, the scream you heard in the chamber gone high and ragged, and it does not slow down. It hits the seated figure in the chest like a thrown spear and vanishes into the stone.

Branch B: If He Walked Out Whole

You hear it before you see it. The clink of chain dragging over stone. Then, from the shadows beside the dais, the man from the chamber walks out into the firelight, unhurried, broken chains hanging from his wrists, frost glittering in his eyes. He climbs the steps one at a time. When he reaches the throne, he turns and looks back at you, and then he climbs up into the seated figure's lap, the way a child climbs into a parent's, and lies down across the cupped stone hands, and the stone takes him, and he is gone.
The Soul: "I crossed the floor. I crossed it first. Do you know how long I have been cold?"

Then, in Either Branch

For a moment the seated figure is still.

Then its cupped hands close. And fire takes it from the inside. You see it first in the cracks, a light behind the stone like a lantern behind paper, and then the light becomes heat, and the heat becomes flame, pouring out of every seam of the statue, roaring up toward the lost ceiling.

And the hall comes to it. The timbers in the drifts lift and fly to it and lash themselves to its limbs, and the chains whip after them and bind them on. The shields of a hundred dead ascendants rise out of the dust in a clattering storm and wrap themselves around its chest, overlapping, with bands of iron between them, until its whole torso is a burning cage. A great iron ball studded with spikes drags itself out of the drifts and becomes one fist. A hooked claw of black iron becomes the other. Somewhere in the walls above you, stone cracks, and the sleeping statues of the hall above come down through the ceiling in pieces and are swallowed into its legs.

It stands up off the throne. Thirty feet of fire and timber and iron, and at the top of it all, wreathed in flame, the smooth blank stone where a face should be.

Inside the cage of its chest, in the fire, there are shapes. People. Their arms reaching out between the bars.

And it laughs.
The Soul: "I'm cold now. Warm me."
Reference - the boss

The miniature: the painted burning colossus. Gargantuan, 4x4 squares. The soul is the only being in the tomb that is not a construct of the tomb. It was a man once, an ascendant who failed on Floor 2.

Branch A: frenzied and broken. Branch B: whole, remembers being a person, can be talked down in Phase 3.

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The Pyre
Gargantuan construct possessed by a shattered soul, neutral evil
Armor Class 18
Hit Points Phase 1: 150 (120 in Branch A, 180 in Branch B). Phase 2: 80
Speed 40 ft.
STR26 (+8)
DEX8 (-1)
CON24 (+7)
INT14 (+2)
WIS14 (+2)
CHA18 (+4)
Saving Throws Str +13, Con +12, Wis +7
Damage Immunities fire, poison
Damage Vulnerabilities cold (see Burning Aura)
Condition Immunities charmed, frightened, paralyzed, petrified, poisoned
Senses truesight 60 ft., passive Perception 12
Traits
Legendary Resistance (3/Day). If the Pyre fails a saving throw, it can choose to succeed instead. Tick one above.
Burning Aura. A creature that starts its turn within 10 ft. takes 7 (2d6) fire damage. Any cold damage dealt to the Pyre smothers the aura until the start of its next turn.
The Cage. Its chest holds up to three creatures. A caged creature is restrained and takes 10 (3d6) fire damage at the start of each of its turns. It cannot free itself. Another creature frees it by breaking a bar (AC 15, 20 HP) or with a DC 18 Strength check from an adjacent space.
Innate Spellcasting (Charisma, spell save DC 16, +8 to hit). The soul casts through the construct; no components. Tick a use when spent.
3/day each Heat Metal    Hold Person
1/day each Fear    Wall of Fire    Counterspell
Actions
Multiattack. One spiked fist and one claw (Branch A: two claws).
Spiked Fist. Melee Weapon Attack: +13 to hit, reach 15 ft., one target. Hit: 26 (4d8 + 8) bludgeoning damage, and the target is pushed 15 ft.
Claw. Melee Weapon Attack: +13 to hit, reach 15 ft., one Large or smaller target. Hit: 17 (2d8 + 8) slashing damage, and the target is grappled. At the start of the Pyre's next turn, if the target is still grappled, it is stuffed into the Cage.
Fire Breath (Recharge 5-6). It throws its head back and the fire in its chest roars up; it breathes at the start of its next turn. 60-ft. cone, DC 18 Dexterity save, 45 (10d8) fire damage on a failure, half on a success. Untick "recharged" above when used; roll a d6 at the start of each of its turns, 5 or 6 ticks it again.
Legendary Actions (3 per round, reset at the start of its turn)
Fist (1). One spiked fist attack.
Stoke (1). Every caged creature takes 10 (3d6) fire damage now.
Drag (2). One creature within 30 ft. that the Pyre can see: DC 16 Strength save or it is pulled 20 ft. toward the Pyre over the floor.
Gaze (2, Phase 2 only). The eyes move early: the lock shifts to a new character until the top of the next round.
Lair Actions (initiative 20, every second or third round)
Inhale. It draws all the heat in the hall into its chest. Every creature not behind a pylon or full cover takes 14 (4d6) cold damage, and every non-magical flame in the hall goes out. Tick "Inhale pending" above.
Nova. The round after an Inhale, it releases the heat as a wave of fire across the floor. Every creature not behind a pylon makes a DC 16 Dexterity save, taking 27 (6d8) fire damage on a failure, half on a success. A pylon that shields someone cracks; it shatters on its second Nova. Untick "Inhale pending".
Branch B only. It may Inhale and Nova in the same round, once in the fight.

Phase 1: The Pyre

The claw comes down, closes around a body, and lifts. Over the roar of the fire you can hear the shields of the cage grind open, and the figures burning inside it reach out between the bars, all of them, toward whoever is being brought to them.
The cross-party levers
  • The rescue: nobody leaves the Cage on their own. Someone else has to break them out.
  • The jaw combo: while it charges its Fire Breath, two characters from different parties can force its head down (a combined Strength contest against its Strength +8, or 30 force or thunder damage to the head from two sources). The breath bursts inside its own cage: the Pyre takes 45 fire damage that ignores its immunity, and every caged creature is thrown free.
  • Cold: any cold damage smothers its aura until its next turn.

Phase 2: The Gaze

It staggers. The fire along its arms gutters and sinks, and it sways, sagging forward. Then, in the smooth blank stone of its face, two lines of light split open. Eyes. They are the same steel-blue as everything else in this tomb, and they turn, slowly, across all of you, and stop on one.
Phase 2: The Gaze (80 HP)

The lock: at the top of each round, the eyes lock onto one character. Until the next round, the Pyre uses that character's AC, attack bonus and current HP, each +2, and hits with that character's best damage die, doubled.

Why it works: against a fresh level 8, it becomes a wall. Against a spent level 6, it becomes beatable. The strong party protects the weak, and someone may step into the gaze on purpose.

The telegraph: the eyes' glow lands on the chosen character every round. Narrate it the same way each time so the table cracks the rule inside two rounds.

The eyes find you. And the thing in front of you changes. It holds itself the way you hold yourself. It raises its claw the way you raise your weapon. When it moves, it moves with your speed, and your guard, and your habits, and it is looking at you as if it has known you all your life.

Phase 3: Breaking the Hold

The fire goes out of it all at once, like a candle pinched. The timbers sag in their chains. The shields of the cage hang loose and rattling. And in the centre of its chest, where the fire was hottest, there is something that never burned at all: a knot of shadow, dark and cold, clenched like a fist, the only thing in all that wreckage that is not on fire.
Phase 3: Tearing Out the Soul

The task: combined successes from at least two characters of different parties, each reaching through the bars: an Athletics check to hold the cage open plus an Arcana check to grip the knot (DC 16 each, both must succeed to count as one combined success). Or 30 radiant or force damage aimed through the bars counts as one success.

Branch A: two combined successes.

Branch B: four combined successes. A successful Persuasion or Insight (DC 15) from a character who speaks to the man inside, about the floor he crossed or the cold, also counts as one.

Meanwhile: the Pyre still swings its spiked fist once per round at whoever is closest to the cage, and the lair actions continue.

Branch B: If They Talk to Him

The Soul: "Don't. Don't touch it. I crossed the floor. I was first. The others were slow, and I was not going to wait for them, and for that, they hung me in chains."
The Soul: "Do you know what it is to be in pieces for so long you forget which piece is you? One of me rode in a stranger's hand. One of me hung in the chains. One of me was here, waiting. I was so cold."
The knot in the cage loosens, a little.
The Soul: "...Is it warm? Where you're sending me?"

Branch B: The Second Line

The Soul: "Bear. One more thing, for free. She was asking about a city that fell under grey trees. Where the light goes thin. She wanted to go and see it."

Branch A: Thrown in Rage

The Soul: "You want her? You want your little girl's secret? Ithrin Vaelsorrow! She wrote to Ithrin Vaelsorrow about the city under the grey trees, where the light goes thin, and you sat there with your stitched-on eyes and never read a word of it!"
The knot in the cage clenches tighter.

The End of the Pyre

The knot comes out of the cage in someone's hands, cold enough to burn, and for one moment it is the shape of a man, small and grey and curled up tight. Then it comes apart like smoke in a wind, and it is gone, and it does not come back.

The chains let go. The timbers fall, one after another, and break apart into ash before they hit the floor. The shields drop, ringing, back into the dust. The spiked ball rolls away down the dais steps and stops. All of it collapses inward and down, in a slow rain of embers, until there is nothing left standing in the hall but the seated figure on its throne, exactly where it was, its robes falling over its knees, its blank face turned toward you.

The bowls of fire along the walls flare back up, one by one.

The Second Key

In the statue's lap, the cupped stone hands, which closed when the fire took it, open again, slowly, with a sound like a door. Lying in its palms is a curved piece of pale stone, glowing. It is the twin of the one the Lamp gave you, two floors above.

Neilo, when you reach for it, it does not wait for your hand. It lifts out of the stone palms and flies to the scarab at your throat, and sinks into the second keyhole, and the gold closes over it as if the hole had never been there, and the moment it does, the amulet flares with a light so bright that everyone in the hall throws up a hand. Against your chest, you feel something move. Something growing. When the light fades, the scarab on the amulet's face has a new leg, low on its right side, finely made, as if it was always there. At your shoulder, in the hourglass, the first grains begin to fall.

The light from the scarab does not go out. It reaches across the hall to the seated figure on the throne, a thin line of steel-blue, and touches the smooth stone where its face should be.

And the figure begins to glow.
The chronicle
  • Play the hologram video on the big screen now.
  • Nothing in the hall comments on it, explains it or speaks after it.
  • When it ends, read The Seven Lights, then go to Session End.

The Seven Lights

When the figure on the throne goes dark again, the light from the scarab does not. It lifts off the amulet in a slow spiral of glittering grains, curling up and out around Neilo, and in the turning dust, points of light kindle, one after another. Seven of them.

Four hang faint and far, barely there, like stars behind cloud. One burns a cold, clear blue. One shines a steady gold, somewhere off in the dark of this world. And one, the nearest, burns so bright it throws Neilo's shadow across the floor behind him.

Then the gold light, the steady one, swells. The grains rush toward it from every side and pile up into a shape: a mountain, broad at the base and broken open at the top, its peak a ragged crater with a glow deep in its throat. You fall toward it. Over the crater's lip, down through the glow, down through the dark rock beneath, and the mountain opens out around you into a great hollow cut into the stone. A quarry. Terraces stepped down its walls, one below another, level after level, down further than you can follow. All of it made of the same glittering grains, every ledge and every step, sifting and shifting as you fall.

Then it all comes apart at once and pours back into the scarab, and the hall is only firelight again.
Reference - the map (DM only)

Seven lights, one per fragment tomb. Bright means a fragment on the plane Neilo stands on; faint means another plane; blue means a fragment Neilo already holds. Brightest: the Tomb of Zenith. Steady gold: Alaxya's second fragment. Blue: the Tomb of Dawn. Faint: the other four, which include Exandria's two remaining tombs.

The location hint: the mountain and the quarry are Alaxya's second fragment tomb, a quarry inside a volcano on the Alaxya map (Kindlespine is the volcanic range). Nothing names it.

In the Tomb of Dawn's map, three lights shone bright, all on Exandria. One of those two other Exandrian fragments has since been taken by someone now on a different plane. It cannot show from Alaxya either way; the theft only shows the next time Neilo opens the map on Exandria, when one of the bright lights will be faint. Never explain any of this.

Reference - the Fragment of the Zenith

Rare wondrous item, no attunement. Recovered from the Tomb of Zenith. Fills both keyholes on the scarab; grows the bottom-right leg (the second leg of seven fragments; the top-left came earlier). While set in the scarab, Neilo has the Noboru Suna feat. The Fragment of the Dawn no longer requires attunement.

Session End

The glow fades from the seated figure. The hall is quiet again, only the soft crackle of the fire in its bowls, the ash settling in the dust, and the sound of a dozen people breathing who, this morning, did not know each other existed.

In John's hand, the axe weighs what an axe weighs. At Neilo's throat, the scarab is warm and still, its wing covers smooth where the two keyholes used to be. Behind the throne, where the great sun-disc stands against the wall, a seam of light has opened at the disc's edge, thin as a thread, and through it, very faintly, comes a breath of air that does not smell like this tomb at all.
The hand-off
  • The table passes to the substitute DM from this moment. The seam of light behind the throne is his to open, or not.
⬥ ⬥ ⬥

DM Notes

Session Summary

Date: Unknown; inside the Tomb of Zenith

Party Level: Crushing Squirrels 8, Heads and Tails 6

Running time: landing, introductions and long rest 0:00 to 0:55, Floor 1 0:55 to 1:35, Floor 2 1:35 to 2:50, the Still Room and break 2:50 to 3:05, Floor 3 2:55 to 4:05, Floor 4 4:05 to 5:20, chronicle 5:20 to 5:35, hand-off 5:35 to 6:00.

Items Acquired

  • Fragment of the Zenith (Neilo): two keys, both keyholes filled, bottom-right leg grown. Noboru Suna awakens at the Lamp's key on Floor 2; the second key comes from the throne after the Pyre. The sun-stone orb from the steppe is a separate thing: it opened the arch and is spent.
  • John's axe: now an ordinary axe.
  • Possibly: Grit and the Stoneback young; Reedwing.

Key Revelations

  • The tomb is a place of trials, and its creatures are minds, not monsters; some of the minds are hungry.
  • The axe carried a piece of a failed ascendant's soul home.
  • Murals of an ancient people shaping the ancient magic and drawing it into their chests. Nobody explains who they were.

NPCs Encountered

  • The Tomb (the welcome voice): heard as words only by Neilo and Yurei.
  • The Lamp: a builder's memory-echo in a floating lantern, the only voice on Floor 2; a cheerful hostess who tells the Akh'marani story in pieces, answers nothing outside her echo, hands Neilo the first key as an errand she was poured with, and vanishes.
  • Ithrin Vaelsorrow: the hanging man, the last of the seven; preserved, not rotted. Named only by the Lamp.
  • Reedwing: young Glasswing, mimic, the roost's lure; did not know.
  • Cracked Crest: Glasswing elder; the roost eats door-comers and raids the Burrow; held the sky's half of the sun-stone under its nest, on the bones; took the dirt's half from Iron Brow's body.
  • Iron Brow: Stoneback chief, the Burrow; honest, met first; calls the party topwalkers; held the dirt's half; killed by the roost after the duel. Dust Knuckle, its second, killed. Grit, the hurt young one, carried to the roost alive.
  • The Soul: the failed ascendant, the only being in the tomb not made by it. Speaks to John through the axe until the judgement.

Branch Record

  • At the judgement: John broke the chains (B) / they killed him (A) / nobody acted (B)
  • The duel: champions stood / fell. The feast: hostage / fight / fight on the walk. Cracked Crest: alive / killed. Grit and the small ones: freed / left. Reedwing: followed / left in the bowl.
  • Neilo's first form: Satetsu / Sabaku / Masago

Future Hooks

  • The seam of light behind the throne: the substitute DM's door.
  • Five fragments remain.
  • John: the name Ithrin Vaelsorrow (an elf scholar of Uthodurn) and the city under the grey trees where the light goes thin. Points north toward the Savalirwood and the ruins of Molaesmyr; never name either at the table.
  • Tutu Keiliwa, separately: healing, slowly becoming a hag, and drawn on her own to the ruins of Molaesmyr, where she will make her lair. The two threads meet there.
  • Reedwing asked them to come back and tell.
  • Neilo: remember the Fixed Value on Satetsu no Yaiba and Satetsu Toge when his Charisma changes.
⬥ END OF SESSION ⬥
October 11th, 2026 October 12th, 2026