Episode II — The Price of Shelter
The survivors of The Sea Spray found refuge in the Golden Circlet Colony, a small elven settlement set amid a rare stand of trees in the otherwise desolate badlands of Osweg. Where the land beyond was harsh and broken, the colony endured through careful cultivation and older promises.
They were housed in a low, rough structure known as the Busted Anvil, little more than a hovel with a few tables and cots—but warm, dry, and alive with the smell of food. Venison stew simmered thick and rich. Vegetable mash and dense cornbread filled plates. A grain-heavy ale, aged longer than expected for such a place, flowed freely.
The innkeeper was a dwarf named Zhellin.
Zhellin spoke easily as he served them, explaining that the elves of the Golden Circlet were not native to the region. Long ago, they had been outcast from other elven communities and wandered until the Queen of Osweg granted them this land to dwell in peace. Whether that peace had ever truly existed was an open question.
A faded tapestry hung on the wall, depicting a vast tree with homes built among its branches—a memory of a life the elves no longer lived. Zhellin unrolled a rough map of Osweg and spoke of deeper history: an ancient civilization, long fallen, that once shaped the land using magical crystals. Its ruins remained.
So did its legacy.
He named it Dragonglass.
The crystal, Zhellin explained, carried lightning within it—visible, restless, alive. Worth more than gold by orders of magnitude. And catastrophically unstable. Fire did not set it off. Pressure did. A blow. A fall.
A small cauldron of it, Zhellin said, would be enough to tear a ship apart.
The implication did not need stating.
Zhellin described Osweg plainly: a land without real law beyond the coastal cities, ruled inland by bandits organized in a loose, feudal hierarchy. Among them were The Krakens, who preyed upon the Golden Circlet and other settlements too gentle—or too isolated—to resist.
Some among the elves wished to fight back. One such elf, Lan, had spoken openly of it. Others clung fiercely to pacifism.
The survivors argued among themselves.
Most hesitated.
Zovis did not.
Basarios Heros spoke fervently of glory, though only Gravos Etnad seemed to misunderstand him badly enough to think he meant a woman named Glory from South Street.
The decision came from Vincent Slag.
Vincent declared that by the Queen’s word, the elves had lawful claim to this land, and that made the bandits criminals. Law, even here, still meant something. The scofflaws would be dealt with.
Reluctantly, one by one, the others agreed.
Gravos did not want to fight bandits.
But he was willing to fight bandits.
Zhellin warned them of troll lands farther inland—spoken of carefully, as one speaks of storms or illness. Then he made his offer.
He knew where a trove of dragonglass was hidden. A cavern near the sea cliffs, accessible only through submerged tunnels where waves drove water upward through stone chimneys, creating violent waterspouts. Zhellin could not swim.
They could.
If they retrieved the dragonglass, they would have leverage: a weapon, a bribe, or a threat powerful enough to challenge the bandits.
The survivors slept uneasily in the Busted Anvil.
Morning brought cold wind and salt spray. Zhellin led them back toward the coast, to sheer cliffs where waves crashed into the rock below. Water roared through tunnels and burst upward through openings in the stone.
Somewhere among the cliffs stood a marker: a small dragon statue, weathered and only three feet tall. It marked the entrance.
Basarios spotted it first.
Zhellin gave brief instructions, wished them luck, and turned back.
He did not watch them descend.
What followed was chaos disguised as planning.
Basarios tied a rock to himself and leapt into the water. Grimgrun Blunderforge followed. Zovis tied rope and driftwood into a makeshift buoy and jumped after them. Gravos anchored a rope to the cliff and climbed down carefully, securing it below. Vincent, ChoRoke, and Thorin Windfurrow followed in turn.
They swam down. Found the tunnel. Pushed through churning water. And emerged into the air of a pitch-black cavern.
Light bloomed from Zovis’s spear and Vincent’s spell. Clothes were dried. Breath was caught.
The cavern did not stay quiet for long.
From the flooded chamber ahead came movement.
Two bloated figures walked along the bottom of the water as though it were solid ground. The dead, swollen and pale, advanced without haste.
The fight was brutal and disorganized.
Gravos was dragged under, bitten twice, and left unconscious and drowning. Vincent hauled him to the surface and spoke hurried prayers. Thorin dove in and was bitten down himself. ChoRoke fell. Vincent dragged bodies from the water as fast as hands could reach them.
Zovis, Basarios, and Grimgrun retreated to the cavern edge. Then Gravos—confused, bleeding, newly conscious—realized the fight was not over and dove back in anyway.
Blows landed. Magic flared. People fell. People rose again.
Thorin tore the head from one of the dead with his bare hands.
At last, the flooded chamber went still.
Several of the survivors nearly bled out on that stone.
None of them did.
They pressed on.
Natural caverns opened ahead. Moss was discussed at length by the dwarves. Stone began to shift. A tunnel collapsed, injuring Zovis and Vincent alike—Vincent having ignored Gravos’s careful warning sign of stacked stones.
Then the ground itself moved.
A tunneling beast burst from the stone, biting at Basarios. Thorin crushed it. From its stomach, Gravos recovered a small bone statuette carved in its likeness.
No one knew what to make of that.
Then came the buzzing.
Not bees.
Giant wasps descended, striking and retreating, felling Vincent before Zovis restored him. Grimgrun complained bitterly about the lack of honey. His eldritch blasts missed. His hellish rebuke did not.
Eventually, coordination replaced panic. The last wasp fell beneath Thorin’s strike.
The caverns fell silent once more.
The survivors stood, battered and soaked, deeper beneath Osweg than they had ever intended to go.
And they had not yet found the dragonglass.
Recorded Consequences
- Confirmation of dragonglass properties and danger
- First exposure of Zhellin’s partial truths
- Near-total loss of party members avoided through persistence alone
- Deeper entanglement with Osweg’s buried past
Connected Entries