It's time for annual Spring Festival at Meadowfen! Every year on the first day of spring birdfolk and humblefolk from the town and surrounding countryside gather to celebrate.
As usual, there are competitions of strength, dexterity, and cunning. The champions of these competitions get to travel with the hero Marcus Goldfeather and attempt to retrieve the fire from the eternal flame and bring it back.
Success means a year of good luck. Failure means, well, social disgrace and a year of bad luck.
This year saw several outstanding competitors. Of special note were a group of four that stood out among all the others. There was Dúnedain who entered the Hide and Seek competition and skillfully found the small Jerbeen who'd hidden in the local copse. Snow was the only participant who was able to hit Marcus two times. Even more remarkable he earned Marcus' respect by evading over half of the blows Marcus tried to land on him. The boxing match was an easy win for Cyrus the Black, he handily walked through the competition to earn the title of champion. Perhaps most surprising was the victor in the Mr Meadowfen competition. Amichai Brecht sang a spectacular hymn, stunned the crowd during the swimsuit competition, and fumbled through the Q&A portion. Despite that last little trip-up, he was hands down the most talented entrant and took the title of Mr. Meadowfen.
The next morning the party traveled with Marcus to the Eternal Flame. He hinted that there were always some creatures lurking inside the cave and a few of the other competition winners declined to go inside once they arrive. Undaunted, Dune, Snow, Cyrus, and Amichai went inside, crossing a strange circular entrance covered in runes. Inside the cave they saw the flame on the far side and a few party members noticed a pseudodragon lurking in a fissure in the wall.
Without warning, the party started shrinking, ending up about three inches tall. With that, several rats, scurried out from holes in the wall and attacked the party. At the same time the pseudodragon flew down thinking an easy meal had arrived. At first the party was overwhelmed by these (now) huge rats and a pseudodragon that seemed the size of a real dragon. They quickly adjusted their tactics, dispatched the rats (except for the one that dragged another dead rat off, likely for dinner), and focused on the pseudodragon. Realizing this easy meal was actually putting up a fight the pseudodragon flew back into its "cave" and left the party alone.
After that it was a fairly simple matter of climbing up, lighting a torch from the eternal flame, and hiking back out of the cave. A few moments after they climbed over the circular rune covered entrance, they went back to their normal size. When asked, Marcus said that always happens. It was some kind of ancient magic that no one seemed to be able to resist.
They party headed back to Meadowfen but had to camp for the night. During the first watch Marcus had what must have been a nightmare and woke everyone up when he screamed in his sleep, "Don't open the chest!" Snow asked him about it but all Marcus would say was that it happened in his early adventuring days up in the north. Pressed further about what was in the box, all he said was, "Shame."
The next morning on the way to Meadowfen the party saw what was a huge dust or smoke column appear far away to the southwest. Following that was booming shockwave. They hurried the rest of the way to Meadowfen so they could drop off the eternal flame and then go see what the explosion was.