Death Cult Artifact Found in Dark Wood Temple

This excerpt from the Peregrine Chronicles, as recovered and compiled by Vederuun the Collector, details the discovery of a necromantic artifact. Original author is unknown. The excerpt describes the services rendered to one Professor Winsome Landy in the Dark Wood. Particularly noteworthy is the depiction of undead and extensive magical ideation on the part of the author.

Note, too, the superstitions of the author, projected through the protagonist. The author has no qualms, no shame, assigning the superstitiousness to Polaris' vanguard, too, the enlightened Magnanimous (may He be eleven times blessed).

This excerpt follows the earliest account of Peregrine of the Watershed in combat, found in Valorton: An Extensive History by Erdique Boshaman. New, signed, leather-bound copies of his book are available in reputable stores about town.

We continued into the Dark Wood for some hours before we reached the stone structure, Winsome's crypt, jutting from the earth and flora. Winsome trembled as we approached. She is not forged for the bloody work nor the hunt. Norry and Lily comforted her that she might be coherent if we needed to question her.

An unobstructed opening had above it a carved relief of a serpent consuming its own tail, an Ouroboros by Mag's determination, a symbol of life and rebirth. We crept beneath it, allowing our eyes to adjust to the deep darkness within the chamber beyond. Cut stone composed the smooth walls, floor and low ceiling. Two rows of pillars some twenty or thirty feet apart extended into the darkness To our left, we heard sounds of scratching, rending, and mastication, the smacking of lips on wet meat in careless feasting. The darkness was too great to see its source.

I lit torches and gave them to our smallest companions. The source of the sounds was not revealed to us, but we did see a doorway to the west. Certainly the feasting was happening within. We lit torches ensconced on the pillars, Norry and I, his timidity too great to venture into the darkness unescorted. The chamber was revealed to us, but the western door remained in shadow.

Magnanimus asked for a small stone, but none was forthcoming from the group, so I gave him a piece of copper. He enchanted it to give off a bright glow and threw it across the chamber to rest at the western door. While Lily and the Professor lit the rest of the sconces, I strode to the door with Norry at my heel and, still not seeing the source of the sounds, kicked the lit coin into the room.

I could now see the room was decorated in carvings of blooms and buds as if a tribute to the season of spring, but juxtaposed at the northern wall were hunched humanoids, feasting ravenously on bloody flesh. They rose, revealing themselves to be the freshly undead remnants of a human and an elf, surely the explorers, Tanlik and Skein. As they ambled toward me at the door, I called back to the professor for her wishes. We had not discussed this possibility. She resigned that we should do what was necessary.

Once faced at the door by the corpses, I was overcome by stench and retched. My nausea was overwhelming and though I struck at them time and again with my glaive, I could not harm them. Finally, Norry plunged his rapier into one, an arrow whizzed past my ear and a crackle of mystical red energy seared through the stench. I managed to regain some focus as the corpse of Tanlik spluttered and croaked its dismay.

Frantic hacks at their rancid limbs and torsos finally began to land and as I held the doorway, Norry and I ground them down to piles of festering meat. First an arm fell to the floor, then the human corpse, and then the elf, gushing foul fluid over the stone.

My senses gathered as I heard commotion behind me. Another fetid corpse, the gnome, Quinn, animated by some unnatural force had emerged from an opening in the east wall. Lily strove to fell it with her long bow while guarding the professor. Magnanimus and Aramis had also turned to attack it from where they stood. I strode toward it, too, hoisting a javelin from my back

Water damage, the cause of which is unclear, considering the exemplary condition of the rest of the manuscript despite its age, has made this portion of the text tragically undecipherable. However, a crude drawing of an ouroboros can be made out in the upper margin over the words “bone, blood, egg.”

altar was Calador, huddling like a child in the centre of a razed village. Flecks of spittle decorated his lips and damp, tangled hair clung to his face. “I am so sorry,” he sobbed, repeatedly, “What have I done?” In his lap he held a carved bone.

The carvings reminded me of home, in that moment, of the scrimshaw we use to commemorate the Turning of the Wheel. Perhaps it was that familiarity that fed my desire to salvage Calador's brokenness instead of ending his sobbing misery. As I watched Calador grip the bone, knuckles white, though, I felt repulsed by these carvings. Meaningless to me, in my heart burned a certainty that these carvings signified a profane insult to the Turning, as if the bone itself were a stake thrust in the spokes of time, hindering its holy motion.

“That bone,” Lily whispered, but in the chamber we could all hear, “it's changed him. The corpses upstairs, this altar. Its necrotic power works through him, now.” In my heart, I too knew this to be true. My blood began to boil, but as I looked at the bone again, carved, clutched in pale hands, glistening dark hair draped forward, I was reminded of my sister carving my first hunt. “I will mark the falcon here,” she says, “in the high place over your brothers.”

I became dimly aware that Magnanimus and Norry were imploring Calador to release his grip on the bone. I could see by the flexing of his whitening fingers that, though he knew he should, he would not. Could not. I strode around the other side of the altar, noting the desiccation of the corpse splayed there, and carefully approached Calador's flank.

What happened next, I have no way to explain. Norry decided to throw a stone dagger at Calador. He retaliated (or was it the bone?) by emanating a wave of horrifying visions directly into my mind. I staggered, but then leaped into action. The time of pleading for cooperation had ended.

Behind me, I heard Lily and Professor Landy call out and Magnanimus marched to their aid. A bright light emanated from him and shone upon the dwarven figure that had shambled to its feet. The corpse of Graz, bodyguard to the malfortuned explorers, had risen.

Aramis wisely conjured cleansing flames to burn two corpses on the opposite end of the room. They would not be rising to support an addled master.

We fell upon Calador, then, almost mercilessly. “Don't kill him,” two voices called out as he began to crumple, and I was surprised that one of them was mine.

When Calador lay limp on the stone floor, Norry leapt forward to claim the cursed bone for himself. I cried out, but he already had it in his foolish hands. His face slackened and paled and his eyes seemed to stop seeing. We struck the bone from his hands and gathered it, taking every care not to touch it directly, into an empty chest salvaged from the explorers' supplies.

We bound Calador's hands, arms, legs and feet, uncertain of what state he would awake in. Magnanimus performed rites of cleansing and blessing in the name of his god. We helped the professor gather the remnants of the dead and burn them in a pyre of deadwood a short distance from the entrance to the crypt. I watched the sparks and smoke rise up to the dusky sky until we finally headed back.

We took turns, the strong among us, carrying Calador. He did not awaken before we arrived back at the Tempered Vale.

As for the chest, I would not let it out of my grasp. I am called upon by the Turning of the Wheel to see the bone destroyed. While most of us reviled the bone, there were those of us that coveted it. Norry and Aramis approached me several times as we returned to the Tempered Vale by torch and emerging starlight. They wished to study it, they said. What insights could be unlocked if we could understand it! They wished to sell it, they said. What might someone pay to take hold of power over life and death?

Surely they know I walk the land in search of plunder and glory in battle. They mistake my lust for glory as a lust for knowledge and power over the Wheel. They misunderstand my plundering of trophies as a lust for riches.

The desperate tones under their words, their changes in tack when trying to convince me, and the looks in their eyes made me wary that the care we took to secure the bone without touching it may not have been enough. Calador defeated, could the bone be reaching out for a new vassal, causing the others to crave it? Why do I hate it, then? Am I unworthy? Do I carry a blessing that protects me?

I heard the voice within when I made the sacrifice of blood. I heard the promise of reward. Was that the voice of the self-consuming serpent, the Ouroboros? Is the bone an icon of its will or an abomination of it? Is the reward the strength of determination I have to correct the Cycle, to resist the bone's call? Or am I already its thrall, my determination for its destruction a reverie I experience while I actually enact its wicked will?

Magnanimus and I guard the chest. I trust him most in this matter, but not entirely and the others not at all. He prays. I write. I wonder if we are mad. If someone else reads what I have written, will it be raving gibberish? I have checked the chest twice to confirm the bone remains within. Did I stare at it? How long? I doubt myself, but my resolve to destroy this thing is stronger than ever. In the morning we will seek guidance to this end. Also, I must talk to Calador if he has regained his sense.