Exploring the Cairn: Hall of Honor

 A much more cautious group of adventurers takes to the task of exploring the large alcoves. Starting with the west wing, Bobert and Paul search for historical evidence or valuables overlooked by previous explorers.

    The western hall extends roughly forty feet ending with a marble platform raised roughly 6 inches from the floor. On the platform sits a shattered apparatus, its curved ovular frame giving the appearance of a noble's dressing mirror, only a third of which remains.

    Paul inches forward down the hall, each step slow and light like a cat. Towards the end of the hall, he pauses and looks back and forth, the rest of the party holds their breath in anticipation of a trap being tripped. A moment of pause and nothing, the tension subsides.  Paul continues on to follow the wall around the back of the apparatus and then up onto the platform. Content with his search, he beckons Bobert forward.

    Bobert moves in closer to inspect the device. Studying the apparatus intently, he notices the device bears many of the same runic markings observed along the walls of the cairn. As best as he can describe to the party, Bobert tells them "The glyphs do not seem to belong to any alphabet I've come across, but are very similar to arcane symbols we might recognize today as being closely associated with elemental air signs. They might even be associated with teleportation. Though, with the device shattered, completely unusable."

    Scratching his head, Dasani throws a small pebble to the floor, "Well that's most unfortunate. I would love to have seen where it went!"

    With nothing further of interest here, the party makes its way down the eastern hall. Shortly into the hallway, the party's advance is halted by a collapsed passage. A huge pile of collapsed rubble blocks the alcove from top to bottom. It looks like it would take weeks to tunnel through the densely packed debris.

    The legend, given his dwarven nature, suggests "Let's start digging! There's probably something valuable on the other side!"

    The party gives a collective roll of eyes before Dasani speaks up, "While that sounds like a great time, let's grab the low-hanging fruit before we starting digging up the cairn. Besides, we don't even have a pick or shovel to our names right now."

    The group turns to head back down the corridor, The Legend, walking backward a number of steps, intently searches the rubble before turning, with a frown, to follow the party.

 

    Rounding the corner to head further north into the cairn the central hallway opens into a large chamber with wings leading to the east and west. Further to the north yawns a twenty-foot-wide open arch draped from top to bottom in translucent cobwebs. An eerie green light flickers from beyond the webs, casting strange shadows about the hallway. To the west, three short stairs lead to a wide marble dais, but the far end is obscured by darkness. Huge slabs of cracked masonry and scattered debris choke the eastern wing, with what appears to be a small burrow leading into the rubble, and the sibilant, almost human whispers present in the passage become a chorus in this massive chamber, echoing off the walls like spectral howls.

    Dasani speaks up first while pointing to the dais and then to the rubble, "Let's go check out the dais and head to the hole over there."

    Paul chimes in, "Let's split up, I doubt many can fit in that alcove, I'll take a look and the rest of you can check out the dais. I feel like any traps would have been sprung long ago anyway."

    The members all nod, as Bobert speaks up, "I'll head over with Paul. We'll be back shortly if there's anything of importance."

    Dasani shrugs and the Legend cocks a brow as the party turns in separate directions as part of their investigations.

    Paul and Bobert take light steps down the hallway to the east, towards the opening in the rubble. As they near, their nostrils flare and Bobert gags from the smell of dead carcasses, feces and urine sprayed along the walls. Even worse, the opening is such that the heroes must crawl through on hands and knees.

    Bobert, trying to cover his nose with one hand gestures with the other hand at the hole, "You first?"

    Paul leans down to the burrow hole and pokes his head in, listening intently for any threats, then gets on his hands and knees to crawl through. Satisfied there's no danger, Bobert follows.

    The two adventurers crawl through mud and filth to emerge on the other side, where the hall extends upwards 30 to 40 feet. The two survey the space between the rubble and eastern most wall.

    The far side is rank with the smell of wild animals. Irregular piles of rubble litter the den, as do hundreds of bones and bone fragments from the creatures' past meals. Most of the corpses belong to animals, but it's clear a few are unmistakably human.

    Paul and Bobert search the detritus for anything carried in or digested and expelled by the wolves. Squinting his eyes in a far corner of bones, paul spots a worn backpack, half-wrapped around a ribcage with skin and muscle still clinging to parts of it.

    

    "Look at this!", as Paul beckons Bobert to see the cache. 

    Opening the backpack, the adventurer find an elaborate lantern of indigo metal, inset with indigo glass panes. 

    

    Turning to see Paul's discovery, Bobert looks as if something has caught his eye. He bends down to find an intricately carved armband still around the boney appendage of the deceased owner. He thinks to himself,  "These markings are elven in nature", giving a frown and audible "Hmmmm."

    Bobert pulls the band off the skeleton and holds it up for Paul to see. Paul holds up the lantern.

    The two smile and Bobert, amused, exclaims "Well, at least we didn't come away empty-handed, perhaps there's treasure to be found yet."

    Bobert and Paul crawl out of the den and walk towards the western end of the hall where Dasani and the Legend have been studying a series of frescos lining the walls surrounding the dais. Standing in the middle of the dais, the wall painting makes it look like he is standing within a massive room with seven, short hallways radiating outward. A chain dangles from the ceiling at the end of each hallway and each chain bears a gleaming colored lantern. Clockwise, the colors are red, orange, yellow, green blue, indigo and violet.

    Paul casually walks up to the dais to stand next to Dasani who notices the indigo lantern in Paul's hand.

    Bobert comments, "Well, I guess we have an idea about this lantern now. Looks to be part of this assembly, which I presume is further into the cairn."

#dungeons

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#barbarian

    

Halls of the Whispering Cairn

    After a peaceful night within the shelter of the old foreman's mining office, the adventurers wake to a breeze sweeping through the hills and a distant, faint moaning. like a specter on the prowl. The air was crisp, and the skies clear with a bright yellow-orange sunrise, light streaming over the nearby bluff into the mining office.

    Dasani was the first to greet the morning. "Well, I guess finding the cairn will be easy enough, just follow the noise!"

"Aye", responded The Legend, shaking off the leaves and dust that had blown in over the night.

"Alright all, grab your rations and let's get a move-on. Would probably be best to have as much daylight as we can get", Bobert interjected. The group nodded, hoisting their gear to their backs and moving out.

 After about 20 minutes following a narrow path through the thickets and pine, the adventurers made their way to the mouth of the cairn, a wide, monolith-lined portal partially obscured by underbrush.

"I think this is it", exclaimed Dasani.

Studying the markings around the entrance, Bobert nods in agreement and adds, "Indeed, judging by the noise coming from within, I'd say we found it too."

The Legend, hopping to the front of the party, says in a haughty tone, "Then let's get moving and show anyone still inside what we're made of!"

    Inside the cairn, naturally dim light illuminates the long hallway, which extends into darkness, even beyond the dark vision of the dwarf. The walls bear horizontal bands of deceptively simple geometric patterns at waist level, interspersed with glyphs of startling detail. In other parts, the walls look as if they had been hacked apart by tools or weapons; slash marks from ax or sword, along with claw marks and pieces of fur and blood caught on the edges portend danger in the dark recesses.

    The Legend is unphased, as he marches confidently down the hallways, shouting, "Come out, come out, wherever you are! Fear not unless you are a foe!"

Paul and Dasani followed closely, while Bobert kept some distance.

    Further in, the party passed two alcoves, which they searched. In ancient days, the alcoves held great incense braziers mounted upon marble columns. Looters have since plundered these priceless artifacts, leaving only four small anchoring holes. With the hall running North to South, in the western alcove, the party finds a moldy bedroll, likely used by the locals when they dare to spend a night in the cairn, fearful of venturing any further.

Bobert examined the alcove in further detail and noticed thin, hollow tubes in patterned bands upon the walls. These seemed to be the source of the strange whispers filling the hallway.

    Shaking his head side to side, Bobert explains the system and physics of the tubes to the party, his sense of disappointment in the mundane clearly palpable, "No ghosts indeed, just a bunch of tubes carves into the cave to catch the wind, which then resonates to create the sounds we heard on the way up. Silly children are afraid of nothing more than large panpipes."

    With the area thoroughly searched and nothing of further value to be discerned, the party continued north towards two larger alcoves. As the light began to yield to the dark, Dasani and Bobert channeled their mystical abilities to afford themselves a source of illumination. Dasani, with a bit of flare made his sword glow as if on fire. Bobert simply affixed the source to the ring on his finger.

    As the party approached the alcove, the sounds of growls and snarls quickly filled the hall as a pack of hungry wolves startled the party, charging at them from the hallway further north!

    The Legend had just enough time to square up against the wolves as they closed the gap with a feral swiftness. The first wolf all but crashing into the sturdy dwarf, narrowing missed the dwarf's leg as the wolf snapped its jaws on the attack. The other two wolves closed in on Paul, scraping and clawing, but unable to penetrate the hard, leather armor.

    Bobert was able to infuse The Legend with Bull's strength in an effort to make quick work of this situation, allowing the dwarf to swing his ax with increased intensity and power.

    A frenzied melee ensues, with The legend taking a swing at a wolf, but narrowly missing, Paul connects with his scimitar, leaving a huge gash in the larger of the two wolves, as another grabs a hold of his leg and trips the young slayer.

    The wolf dueling with the dwarf connects, leaving a deep wound in his shin, exposing the bone underneath, the dwarf shouting in pain.

    Bobert lends support to the fray with magic missiles aimed at the largest of the three, as purple barbs of force punch into the side of the beast.

    Dasani begins casting a spell of healing while the battle lurches on. The dwarf connects, clobbering the wolf, which yelps from the blow. Paul, while pronated on the dusty floor of the hallway, swings at a wolf though fails to land a strike. The two wolves go in for the kill, sending the young slayer into shock as they tear into his flesh. Dasani finishes his chant as a soothing light washes over the combatants, closing their wounds.

    More missiles slam into the large wolf and the revived slayer manages to connect, sending a leg flying across the hall, bringing the beast down, the other still nipping at him.

    The dwarf manages to bury his ax as it bites hard into the creature, nearly severing the spine and sending it to the ground as Dasani prepares another round of healing for the beleaguered combatants.

    Bobert, his magical energy exhausted, calls upon his bonded ring to fire one last volley of missiles while Paul, still prone, works to evade the wolf's jaws.

    As the missiles connect to the creature's hindquarters, the dwarf is able to land an ax strike to the head simultaneously, whipsawing the beast and slamming it into the eastern wall.

    As fast as it had begun, the combat was over.

    Panting, out of breath, Dasani speaks in a hushed voice, "Perhaps being a bit quieter would serve us better."

    Paul, dusting himself off and rubbing a bruise nods in agreement, responding with exasperation "Definitely".

    

#dungeons

#dragons

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#dnd

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#dice

#art

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#barbarian

Adventure Begins

    A stout dwarf lands in the muddy street with a thud, thrown a solid ten feet by a half-orc, whose frame filled the doorway of the nearby tavern. The grizzled miner staggers up, his mud-caked beard dripping as he careens to and fro on his way back to find his quarters. "And stay out you cur!", screamed the imposing bouncer of The Feral Dog, a seedy tavern serving clients from the underbelly of Diamond Lake. Yet another miner thrown into the street after too much hard drinking from a day's toil in the nearby caverns. But the party hardly took notice of this common occurrence on mornings of the sleepy, mining town.

    Commonality aside, there was another reason not to notice the scene unfolding on this crisp, autumn morning, as the soon to be adventurers focused on their journey to the Whispering Cairn as part of a dare. As often is the case in this moribund mining town, perhaps out of boredom, perhaps out of juvenile antics, the four adventurers were off to stay the night in the cairn to earn a few gold pieces from friends, a bet bandied about during a game of poker and too many rounds of ale. Perhaps they would emerge heroes, uncovering clues to the disappearance of a young lass six years prior? Or better yet, treasure and fame? At the very least, the adventurers would have bragging rights and tall tales for poker nights to lord over drinking friends for days to come.

    The party includes peculiar characters such as "The Legend", a bristly Dwarf from a family of caravan guards that have worked with miners in the region for over 40 years; his family helping to get their ore and goods to and from Free City, the main commercial hub of the region, and home to an expansive menagerie of culture and citizenry. The young dwarf wears an old set of banded armor and wields his father's axe, along with a long spear aptly named, "Giant Sticker", strapped across his back. He is a gregarious individual with flighty attention and a naive view of the world. As his nickname suggests, he is a legend in his own mind, but certainly seeks to make an impression on others with such a bold title.

    The Legend is accompanied by three others. Dasani, a human oracle of life, dedicated to aiding those in need and healing the sick. Dasani is a charismatic individual, though soft-spoken. He does his best to balance the temper of the dwarf, especially in social situations that require greater.. finesse. Dasani was an apprentice to a healer in the caravans. Paul, an Elven slayer, is quiet and reserved. He's an agile Elf, highly capable in combat, and has a keen sense of his enemies and surroundings. Paul worked as a tracker for the caravans, often responsible for running down game for the guards when provisions ran low or became stale. Finally, there is Bobert, a wisened practitioner of magic, keenly intellectual, but as fragile as a house of cards. Bobert was a family friend of Dasani's father and often traveled along to provide counsel to the young oracle and caravan leaders. Bobert aided the folk of the caravans with his knowledge of local customs and lore. The cairn provides each with a perfect opportunity to hone their thirst for adventure and hopefully, take advantage of their unique backgrounds.

    And so on this particular morning, there was haste in the steps of the group as they set off, with bare provisions, to stay a night in the fabled, Whispering Cairn. The cairn is normally just a day's ride, but presently lacking horses, they set off by foot. The roughly two-day journey led the group past an abandoned mine, whose charter lapsed when its manager died a few years after the mine went dry. The party spent an uneventful night in the dilapidated manager's shack at the mine before pressing on to the cairn for a mid-morning start. 

    As night fell, the group was still far too wild-eyed to sleep, even after the tough march through the Iron Hills. Youthful exuberance fueled ideas and fantastical stories about the cairn. 

    Leading in, the dwarf asked quizzically, "What do we do when we get there? Do we just run in or how does this work?" 

    "Well", Paul replied, "It would probably be best to enter quietly and not announce our presence. The element of surprise could work towards our benefit." 

    "Rubbish!", exclaimed the dwarf. "I do not want to bore our friends back home with how we snuck around the dungeon without even so much as a squeak of a rat to mark our journey to the cairn!" Paul rolled his eyes. There would be no winning this argument. 

    "Fine", Paul stated, then added, chuckling, "We'll announce our presence to all the foul beasts therein, but you go first!" Dasani and Bobert both cracked a smile. 

    "Well, I'll certainly be last then, far behind you!", mused Bobert. They all nodded approvingly, for they knew a small misstep could put the frail wizard in need of medical care for days. 

    The Legend chimed in, "Argh, we know. Slip on a rock and you'll be in a cast for days", slightly bruising the ego of Bobert. 

    Then Dasani asked, as if to the air itself, but clearly hoping for a response from the wizard, "I wonder why they call it the Whispering Cairn?" This was clearly an olive branch to the wizard in an effort to make him feel more included in the conversation and to remind the group why he was brought along. 

    "Ah yes", Bobert began, seizing the moment to speak, "The cairn received its curious name due to the haunting, almost magical tones which emerge from the depths of the forelorn tomb when the wind is blowing just right. Legend has it, the cairn was created to entomb the greatest of the Wind Dukes, who fought in the cataclysmic conflict between Law and Chaos. The largest of the tombs here is said to honor Icosiol, who was slain by Miska, the Wolf-Spider." "But that was centuries ago", added Bobert, "So likely all we'll find is dust and maybe some old bones."

    "Bah, you're probably right", concluded The Legend, clearly unhappy with the adventuring potential of an old dusty tomb, lost to the elements of time and looted many times over.

#dungeons

#dragons

#dungeonsanddragons

#dnd

#rpg

#dice

#art

#fantasy

#d20

#and

#dnd5e

#tabletop

#castle

#drawing

#roleplay

#dungeonsanddragonsart

#dragon

#roleplaying

#dndart

#crafts

#dicetower

#digitalart

#dungeonmaster

#sketch

#3dprinting

#artist

#barbarian

About the Site

The site and its contents come from a series of table-top game sessions following the "Age of Worms" adventure path and other adventures. The DM asked me to join to assist his son and friends in their effort to learn and enjoy the experience of table-top gaming. He and I, being well into middle-age, grew up with D&D and similar table-top adventures. Having the chance to share the experience with new players in such a setting took me back to those earlier years. After a few weeks of play and the group's growing interest in this genre, along with some genuinely nail-biting encounters, this seemed like a magical moment to capture the adventure. I am hopeful for some good storytelling. 

The characters herein are those used in the game. Some creative license and embellishment will naturally take place, but ultimately, the outcome will stay true to the in-game events as they transpired. Italicized pieces of text are sections taken out of context of the adventure, e.g., words and descriptions provided by the module's original authors.