The Sword of Aeonatus, one of 5 pieces of legendary anti-wizard relics, says it somewhere near Yewsforth. Barston, Derron, and Faruin investigate.
Let's pull two cards to get a vibe check for how this quest will go.
- 163 - A strange statue/tower of a fist.
- 201 - A tollhouse.
I like the idea of the large tower-fist being the remnants of an actual statue. The tollhouse is not a literal tollhouse. A road with a cost. Bandits? Monsters? I don't know. Let's pull one more card to see:
- 23 - 2d3 Insectfolk (friendly). Tell party about a nearby dungeon.
What would the insect folk have that would require a cost? The dungeon requires insect speech, maybe.
Ok, super quick glance through the ...the Pit books to see what the best semi-/intelligent insect folks might be...
Think I found a good fit. Beyond the Pit page 86. Minimites. Small, green fairy-like creatures with insect wings. Super hard to hit (combined skill + Dodge of 15) and naturally anti-magical. Friendly, but will take food.
I think the rest can flow from these pieces.
Three days south, seek you the golden pyramid, but watch out for 'zAllik-rayt, the Spider-King.
These were the words the unicorn Ilixin spoke before disappearing to the north, seeking whatever home she had been snatched from on the other side of the Mountains Midnight. Barston had explained he had been sent on a quest to find a particular box and no other details were given to him.
He has not even been told what is in the box.
But first, him and his friends are traveling west deeper into the foothills. Because the cultists had been looking for a particular relic.
Unreliability of old texts had made the strange wizard-thing think it was in Yewsforth itself, but the town used to be an entire region of mining and working towns of a people called the Yeule. Somewhere along the way, the Yeule's fort on the northern border became a buried relic of the long-ago war against the goblin mages. A town an hour away later would take that name, at least a phonetic derivation of it. Its original name long since lost.
"Let op de kleintjes," Fenwick had explained, which Faruin said meant mostly, "Watch out for the littles." The fort was not entirely abandoned out of lack of care, but apparently because something had taken up residence.
"A fight?," Barston had asked, "Gevecht?" Adding in the language of the Yeule. Yeulse.
"Ach, nee. Ze hebben honger. Aaltijd hongering. Kleine beestjes."
Others laughed. Barston has just started to pick up the language and so can barely pull the meaning, but he has faced demons and wizards and more warlocks than a man should ever meet, and figures the best way out is through.
Fenwick hugged Faruin tightly. The fatter, taller man looking comically worried about the short, strong woman now in full battle gear. The ancient war armor polished and cleaned to be a bit less garish.
The morning has been bright as they try to find their way across the landmarks...
None of the three have anything like navigation so we'll just a Skill check. Barston and Co get 8 (Derron has the highest) + 11 = 19. That's a good success.
...and before lunch they have found a hill where old stones bleach in the sun.
As they sit down to eat though, they hear fluttering of wings and small shapes dart close. Like little green folk with dragon-fly wings, the creatures land nearby and then start approaching the quick camp. Derron tenses up for a fight but Barston repeats the warning not to fight.
"Fenwick said they...hongering?" Looks over to Faruin to fill in the gap.
"Hebben honger. They are hungry."
"For what," Derron asks, still not convinced.
Barston hands up a ladle of cold soup and a chunk of dry bread and offers to one of the creatures. Soon, the little things are all over the trio. Standing on shoulders and in laps. Eating the food.
Let's say 2d6 days of provisions: 7. We'll split that roughly even from all of them.
After a while, the little creatures, a half-dozen total, have put away enough food for a full-sized person each. Now they lay basking in the sunlight, tiny green bellies extended. One is smoking a pipe the size of a rose thorn. In fact, it looks exactly like a rose thorn.
"Faruin..."
She starts trying to to explain their predicament in Yeulse.
I assume they speak Yeulse (Very Likely) → 62. Yes. Good, but not extremely well.
She gets a 6+11 (Yeulse of 4 + Skill of 7) = 17. Enough to get the basic concepts across.
The one smoking the tiny pipe leaps up and flies around in the air at her words. Others chatter incessantly in a language that seems similar to Yeulse but not precisely the same.
"De leder efter knytnævens sted!," Thornpipe says.
"Men farerne?," another asks, with Thornpipe waving the question away.
"De er enorme!"
After that, the six strange small chattery companions start flying off in the directions of the mountains.
Soon enough, Barston spots what remains of the fort in true. Battlements long covered in grass and dirt. Nearly looking natural except for a large stone fist rising up at an angle from the grass. Near it, a dark hole down into darkness is spotted.
The strange creatures seem reluctant to get any closer.
"This is us, I think," Barston says, and the three of them make preparation to travel down into the dark.
Another simple one setting up a mini-arc of maybe two-to-three scenes to retrieve the sword. Then we'll have a couple of scenes building up to whatever the golden pyramid is...
Since there are only around 10 entries left in this set, that will most likely wrap it up except for maybe a few random highlights.
Yeulse remains mostly Flemish. The name was just me trying to figure out how an alien ship could have missed and thought it was trying to search Yewsforth. It is a shout out to the singer Yeule at the same time. The minimites are using Google Translated Danish. Once again, it is not necessarily that the creatures are speaking in those languages, it's just a device to show language differences.
When this is all said and done, Barston and Derron will likely get 1-rank of Yeulse since it won't really matter in the longer stretch of things.
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