The abandoned gate hangs open on one hinge. Beyond it, corpses lie among collapsed cottages, their clothes stiff with mud and old rain. A gaunt young woman, with hollow cheeks, cropped brown hair, and a mud-streaked gray dress, stumbles ahead, one sleeve dark with dried blood, repeatedly glancing toward the ruined meeting hall.
She drops to her knees beside a shallow pit beneath the bodies and claws free a black, leather-bound book. Its clasp bears a symbol that seems to shift whenever the eye tries to fix upon it.
The Ritual Survivor
I found it under them. The pages name the next sacrifice. You have to help me stop it.
Before the book can be opened, three hooded figures emerge from the hall. They drag a bound villager across the weeds, his heels carving twin lines toward the doorway.
The survivor rises and plants herself between you and the hall. Her hands shake, but she does not move aside. Inside, something knocks once against the warped doors.
The Ritual Survivor
Please. Whatever you are, do not let them take him.
The book opens in her grip without permission. Its pages flutter rapidly, then stop at a passage marked by a wet-looking thumbprint. The ink beneath it begins to move.
✓ Quest Accepted
Rescue the bound villager
✓ Quest Accepted
Stop the next sacrifice
“I rush the hooded figures and cut the villager's bonds.”
SUCCESS (Great Strength, rolled +3)
Lushion rushes across the weeds, staff of Dark Rituals striking the earth. Preternatural awareness catches the front hooded figure's knife before it turns, guiding him clear of the thrust.
Paranoia makes every shifting hood look like a waiting ambush; he checks each silhouette instead of committing blindly. That hesitation costs him a clean opening, but the staff's dark channel tears through the delay.
A pulse rolls from the staff. The three cultists stagger apart, their grip breaking as the bound villager , a middle-aged man with a broad, mud-streaked face, thinning dark hair, and a torn brown tunic, drops hard onto the weeds. Lushion reaches him before they can recover.
The staff's hooked metal cap slices through the ropes in one precise sweep. The villager's wrists come free, and the severed bindings fall smoking into the mud.
The Hooded Figure at the Front
The former archmagi's hound. Take the eastern road. The shrine is beneath the bell tower.
The front cultist retreats with the others toward the hall, abandoning the open gate. Their panic reveals a clear route into the eastern ruins and names the next destination.
The Ritual Survivor
He can run. The bell tower is east, past the dead orchard.
Quest Complete
Rescue the bound villager