Adventure Story
Our journey began upon a boat and carried us at last to the gates of Valkengard. No sooner had we arrived than local robbers tried to make prey of us, and no sooner had they struck than we answered in kind. After the scuffle, we made our way to the Brick Mammoth and secured a room, taking our first shelter in the city.
Our rest did not last. The dark mage Zarkcan ambushed us, but we endured and struck him down. In the aftermath, we secured a delving permit and began gathering the city’s tangled threads: Sutter Izen, the Shahn black market, and the fate of Lady Thora and her missing son Itarus.
At the Emperor’s Fancy we found Sutter Izen gambling in the back room. We won Lady Thora in a dangerous game of chance, but her son remained out of reach. We then followed the trail of the Beavered Battleaxes, and eventually struck north into the wilds. A barrow mound crawling with zombies drove us back, but the wilderness soon placed stranger allies in our path.
In catacombs at 11,21, the Zecko Kobold Team shared intelligence on Cyrus, holed up in a tower at 12,22. With the scout Glipto, we approached as wine merchants, overwhelmed Cyrus’s brigands, and brought him alive to Valkengard. The reward helped finance further preparations, while Zecko inherited the captured tower.
Another lead in Zarkan’s journal drew us to 08,21. On the road we survived an attack by lions, then encountered the Shrine of the Sun Healers at 8,23. Its leader, Priestess Kalosi, asked us to free Cyrus and bring him to her; we declined and continued on to Morkaal’s Tomb.
Within the tomb, riddles and a guarded landing stalled our first approach. We found corpses and coin-filled urns, triggered traps that raised the dead, and returned to the sealed door by another route. Beyond it lay enormous murals of an enigmatic masked figure, and a cracked sarcophagus radiating magic. Deeper still, we discovered named sarcophagi marked by faintly magical letters. Fenrel crossed a difficult gap while Movomi read the auras; four zombie heads attacked but were quickly dispatched.
We then looted the sarcophagi and set the Eye of Jakar into a strange arm embedded in a sealed door. Its grotesque ritual opened the way, where wights and more murals waited beyond the raging river. But Movomi reclaimed the eye, unleashing toxic gas, sealing the door, and waking the giant statue outside. The tomb’s deepest secrets remain guarded, and our descent continues.