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dailyadventureprompts · 5 months

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Wilderness: The Secret of Grist Ridge

Taking its name from the its centuries old owner, the rolling highlands known as the Domain of Daldivain still bears the scars from when it was vast salve farm that fed the armies and granaries of the old empire. Since the empire's fall the people of the domain have maintained small settlements and scattered villages, herding over the the valleys and rises their debt-bound ancestors once toiled to cultivate.

All is not as peaceful as the picturesque vistas of the domain would suggest; cloud drakes, once a rarity and folkish sign of good fortune have become invasive in the region, beginning to prey on livestock and even lone travellers as their numbers swell.

After having several of their homesteads savaged by the beasts, one of the villages has sent for the party: The majority of its residents including the majority of its elders want the party to hunt the beasts back to their lair, but their wisewoman claims to have had a vision that points them to Grist Ridge, the old ruins that lay at the heart of the old autarch's domain. Most have no idea what the mushroom addled crone is talking about, but there is some rumour of treasure in the old mill that may make it worth checking out.

Adventure Hooks:

Early in their journey our heroes encounter a band of warriors led by Haltri Drakesbane, a woman who sees herself as the protector and future leader of the domain's people. Already having proven herself by slaying the beasts that preyed upon her kinsmen's land and several other villages, she's more than happy to ally with the party and split the glory if it means driving the drakes out for good. Her offer is not without caveat: Haltri hopes to leverage strength of arms into a unifying authority over the scattered peoples of the domain, and her detractors (including the village elders who sought the party out) fear what her ambitions may lead to if she goes unchallenged.

Feeling an inexplicable desire to wander, the journymage Enilo (along with his fluffy familiar, Cloudchaser) has sought out the ruins at Grist Ridge, spending days exploring and journaling about his experience. Enilo doesn't know it yet, but he's been called by the goddess of sky and enlightenment to receive a revelation that may change the future of the domain, provided the party's willing to have him tag along during their exploration and later defend him when Haltri shows up sometime midway through the delve to take the ruins for herself.

Though a number of the usual dungeon denizens have made their home in Grist Ridge, there is something malevolent skulking around its deepest reaches, filling the tunnels between the old windmills with the echo of scraping chains and a distant grinding sound that unsettles to the bone. It leaves handfulls of corroded coins from the old autarchy in places where others may find them. The locals know not to touch these, as it seems accepting the gifts of the lurking horror means inviting it to follow you home.

Background: One of many such sites left over after the fall of the old Autarchy, the ruins today known as Grist Ridge once surveyed a vast domain of slave farms owned by one of the old empire's richest men, Lord Daldivian, who's mark on the region endures even centuries after his death.

The old lord bought up the debts of hundreds and dragged them off to work in his fields, grinding them down much in the same way his mills ground down the grain they cultivated. Because he didn't need to pay his workers he was able to sell grain for less, bankrupting score upon score of the region's old farming families and creating people desperate enough to sell either their ancestral land (expanding Daldivain's domain) or themselves into bond slavery for fear of starvation, swelling his workforce from hundreds to thousands.

Daldivane was of course using lives as grist for his ambition long before the first mill was built: The region that came to be his was originally open wilderness along the Autarchy's border inhabited by worshipers of the goddess Yithini, who the old empire considered heathen and thus worthy of extermination. Lord Daldivane used his in with the imperial military to raze their homes and shrines, sowing his first fields with meal ground from their bones. He also used this military connection to hunt the endemic species of drake near to extinction, both because the beasts were sacred to Yithini and because they threatened to impede his expansion.

Further Adventures:

Enilo's observations of the region and the ruins (built on the space of Yithini's demolished temple) will eventually lead him to a series of revelations: The drakes aren't invasive, they are merely returning to their natural population levels after being culled. The environment is healing because of the return of its natural predator. There were people who lived in the domain before who's existence and subsequent elimination Daldivane concealed, who lived in harmony with the drakes through their worship of the now forgotten sky goddess. Unexpectedly finding himself a prophet, Enilo will return to the people of the domain and begin expounding on this secret history, reawakening the worship of Yithini in what was once her sacred land and sparing the people from further clashes with their draconic neighbours.

Haltri does indeed have ambition, taking the exactly wrong lessons from the stories of Daldivane she imagines herself as a new, kinder, autarch, seeking to reclaim the mills of Grist Ridge and rebuild the economic engine that made the old lord one of the richest men in the known world. This will of course require the denizens to be put to work in the fields once again, but in her opinion its the least they can do to repay her for driving the drakes away and keeping them safe. Its up to the party to uncover these ambitions, or perhaps look aside for the sake of their new, increasingly powerful ally.

The thing stalking the foundations of Grist Ridge is a demon born of Daldivane's pittiless greed and the sorrow of those he enslaved. Stalking around the lowest reaches of the ruins and emerging only at night, it resembles a man dressed in tattered finery of the old autarchy with his legs fettered together and his arms bound to a yoke. Where its face should be there is only a cracked millstone, grinding forever and ever over its bleeding and lipless lower jaw. Most disturbingly of all It hungers for bones: placing severed limbs or whatever stray mice it can catch in its mouth and grinding them to powder, sometime after its meal coughing up bloody autarchy coins the way an owl might a pellet. Though it does not speak or perhaps even really THINK the demon of Grist Ridge believes in fair commerce, as any who feed it are due a compensatory amount of treasure just as anyone who takes from its offerings owes it in some way.

Art

#low level #wilderness mountain #wilderness highland #exploration #mountain dungeon #highland dungeon #fiend #monster hunt #demon #yithini

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