Session XXVII — What the Hand Remembers
False Stone
The night they brought her home, the demon stood over the map in the command room and told them who holds the Ivory Sanctum and why: Xanthir Vang, keeping it while Baphomet's daughter harvests crystals in the Abyss. Then she put her finger on a blank place southwest of Drezen. They gave one day to getting ready. Korroc mended his torn armor beside the prisoner he once threatened to kill, and three of the knights sat a whole day on the forge floor until the things they carry woke. Then they rode out on horses made of smoke, through a forest that was still alive, down into a gorge, and in by a back door through walls of stone that were not stone. The guide who knew the way was Arueshalae — who had come and gone there once as one of them.
Fallen Guardian
Terendelev
Silver Dragon · Protector of Kenabres
“She had a hoard, as dragons do, and nobody in Kenabres ever saw it. What she left instead was a single silver scale to each of the few who were with her at the end, with a little of her in it and no instructions. She did not tell them what to save it for. She trusted them to know. A year on, the dwarves still spend theirs on the least heroic thing imaginable, drifting down cliffs they would rather not climb, and she would have laughed at that, the knights think, and called it exactly what it was for.”
The One Who Asked Her Everything
Caleth
Paladin / Wizard
He stood over the map and asked the questions until the Ivory Sanctum had a place on it. The next day he carried twenty of Drezen’s people to the bell and came back for more, ten folds before nightfall, and copied a working into his book that makes horses out of nothing. He took all five of them up a cliff in a single step. Deep under the Green Gate, looking at three great spiders standing still in the dark, he said quietly what they all were thinking: so that is where they came from.
The One Who Taught Them to Sit
Nageru
Monk / Paladin
When Caleth asked whether a demon could be trusted, he answered that this one had been touched by a goddess. He felt before anyone that the things they carried had been taking in what the wardstone left in them, and he sat two dwarves down on a forge floor and showed them how to meet it, with the amulet from under his tunic in his palm. He walked down a hundred-foot wall on bare feet. In the dark he settled lower and struck from the floor, and a construct the size of an elephant folded under him.
The One Who Found the Door
Thane
Inquisitor / Rogue
He sat the long day on the forge floor, and the knife he made with his own hands woke. On the road he cast the night’s rest for all of them and spent it pressing the back of his neck, sure that something out in the dark was watching, though nothing ever came. Under the Green Gate he killed two of the great spiders from behind and found a door in a blank wall that he refused to ask the demon about. Two more demons went home on his knives. Then he looked at three doors and asked the only question left.
The One Who Left the Axe
Korroc
Paladin / Oracle
He mended his torn armor through the night beside the prisoner he once threatened to kill, and when it was done he held out his hand and the man took it. He sat a day on the forge floor until his shield woke. He laid his talking axe on Irabeth’s table so it would not spend the road screaming at their guide, and told her he was coming back for it. Under the Green Gate he walked twice into stone that was not stone, was lifted off the floor in a construct’s jaws, and answered with fire.
Current Status
Three Doors
The Sanctum found · The back way taken · Which one?
The front gate is veiled and a basilisk keeps it, so she took them the way only the Sanctum's own were meant to know. Past the false walls, three great constructs stood motionless in a cavern, the same kind that once came over a rise outside Drezen, and they woke. Up a stair that ended in a blank wall, through a door the wall did not admit to, two demons went home. Now the knights stand in a room thirty feet high, tiled in pale ivory and cut with a maze that makes the eye ache, under a carving of a goat-headed demon. There are three doors, and this is the house of Xanthir Vang.
Book 3 of 6|Mythic Tier 4–5|Level 11
