016 - Delve
Solana spends the day and evening idle at Bittermoor, having trouble working up the courage to go. She talks to the people there, their goals, their aspirations. Some are interested in acquiring magic power for themselves. Some want to unravel mysteries of the people before Ironlanders. Some just like it there: close to hostility, but with strong people nearby. Some even discuss a vow they’ve made, and the trials they’ve went through. Solana eventually works up the courage. Ordinary people can do extraordinary things, or they wouldn’t be here in the first place. And here she is with them.
Morning rises, and she sets out to the ornate cave system. A massive cliff face along the edge of the Flooded Lands: presumably, if Solana climbed it, she would not be far from the Havens itself. Walking alongside it, it quickly become clears where the cave opening is… along with plenty of signs of a recently-cleared encampment. They’re here, and they’re probably inside.
The insides of the cavern are decidedly un-cavelike: the surfaces are smooth. This was clearly carved. Unfamiliar markings line the walls, perhaps some forgotten script. What is very obvious, however, are the slots inside the walls, and small altars near them. The dead must have been placed here - a faint smell of must and decay. If this really is where someone’s controlling undead, it’s a fine spot to do it.
Solana walks down the halls, trying to keep a mental map to ensure she can return. The amount of bodies here are incredible, and the ceiling never lowers: heading down staircases simply means more rows of spaces for bodies stacked on top of each other. There’s no way this many people even exist in the Ironlands! And this was what was buried of the people before?
And yet nobody’s here. Solana steps down another set of stairs - and stumbles as the stairs abruptly end to more rough stone ramping. It looks like here, the carving and detailing ends and either crudely-dug or natural cavern begins. Keeping note of this as a landmark, Solana continues into an underground pond.
Not interested in drinking what could be tainted water, curiosity nonetheless gets the better of Solana, who moves her torch in closer to try and see into the water.
A pair of beady black eyes looks back. A strange, grey-skinned creature, hunched over with abnormally long limbs, thrashes out of the water at Solana!
Solana expertly sidesteps, preparing a strong knee to the creature. Effective, but she’s too close: the monster’s long body grapples her! With a burst of power, Solana thrashes out. This creature doesn’t have the physical strength she does! Solana uses this to her advantage, quickly trying to counter-grapple. However, she soon realizes its intelligence: being locked together is just what it wants, and it’s pushing the scuffle closer and closer to the water - it doesn’t kill its victims by fighting, it kills by drowning! With a loud shout, Solana locks and breaks one arm, then the other. With a heavy heave, she throws the creature back into the water. It probably won’t be swimming back out any time soon.
The natural cave complex is small and winding, a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. Solana begins to worry: did she take the wrong way? She hasn’t seen any sign of Kjeld or his men, beyond the clues at the entrance to this cave. Just as her doubts risk overwhelming her, the way clears.
Smoothed and carved again, this chamber is filled with statues along the walls and center of the room. The statues appear to be heavily armored soldiers, although their features are slightly off to be considered an Ironlander. Most prominent are the massive tower shields each one wields, larger and much wider than themselves. They would almost need two hands to wield. Did this place have a purpose beyond the burial ground at its entrance? In a burst of insight, Solana notices: all these statues are facing away from the direction she came from. As if they’re guarding that underground lake. She treads carefully, taking a moment to admire the craft.
Close to the entryway of the next room, Solana grows dizzy. She was here, at this necro-sanctuary. She, alongside the priests and mystics, supervises the latest deceased warrior becoming en-statued, the sixth one “recruited”. She hopes with their eternal vigilance, nothing would come past here, and the dead above would stay safe… wait, no, that’s not happening at all. Is it? Did it?
She coughs. The floor is dusty. She looks around, looks at herself, pinches herself. She’s okay. Time to move on.
Solana enters. She finds herself at a vantage point, looking down into a decorated chamber. A circular pit is filled nearly to the brim with bones, corpses, and death. More alarmingly, she sees Kjeld, and a dozen or so soldiers.
Mid-Story Commentary
So at this point I had bought the Delve supplement, so obviously if I was going to do anything, it would be to use it immediately. So, we're running a Delve. If you were curious about how locked-in to the game I was at this point, the answer is enough to spend more money on it. This was just shy of two months into playing semi-consistently at this point.
Outside of talking about the game for a moment: I think the Delve system is way better than what came afterwards in Starforged for expeditions. It's about the same system, but something about the Theme+Domain cards and the flow of a Delve just feels better to me. That each stat also has different probabilities for progress and dangers makes it feel like more of a choice than "find a way to BS a reason to use my best stat every time". If I ever write Entitysworn, I'd write my own take on Delves/Expeditions/Journeys, I guess.
As far as what's happening in the story, looking up my play file leads me to believe this was an Ancient Barrow. We see a lot of very interesting structures that are presumably of the people of the past,though we don't exactly have many answers of it. If anything, there's only more questions since Solana looks like she's having an out-of-body (or out-of-time?) experience about it. Just a whole lot of things that have no answers.