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Deepest Night
A large, grassy hill stands in the High Moors, cracked by some ancient stress. It was thought to be a barrow, once, but it was never meant to be a tomb. It is a vault turned into a prison as punishment for the poor souls who vowed to defend it... and failed.
Inside this hill, beneath it, and beyond it, secrets await—secrets that could destroy an artifact of great power, for good or ill. Despite the danger and despite the woe that befell previous trespassers inside the hill, someone must venture inside to learn those secrets. The artifact could already be in the wrong hands.
This short Dungeons & Dragons® adventure is written to suit four to six characters of 9th level. With this text and the core D&D rulebooks, you have everything you need to play.
Part of a Series
This adventure is written as the fourth in a five-part series. Whether you're playing this as part of our adventure series or weaving this adventure into another campaign, read "Part 3: What's Next?" to get an idea of where some of these threads lead and how you can change those threads to accommodate your campaign.
This adventure alludes to a recurring villain named Tyreus, who is searching for an artifact called the Stone of Creation. More about his plans are revealed in other adventures in this series. If you prefer not to use him and want to substitute another villain in for ours, you can adapt this adventure to refer to a villainous NPC of your own. By combining the immediacy of the players' choices with the mysterious histories and ambitions of key NPCs, this scenario explores themes of past mistakes and current consequences. The final adventure in this series expands on these themes to explore how the characters confront and conclude the larger tale.
Background
A powerful mage is at work enacting a villainous plan near the Sword Coast. He is a trespasser from another plane here in pursuit of power, following in the footsteps of forebears who came here long ago. He is called Tyreus, though few here know him by name. He seeks an artifact called the Stone of Creation, from which he has already claimed smaller pieces.
To challenge and defeat Tyreus in the next adventure, the heroes return to the site of the Stone's arrival in the Realms to learn how it all went wrong and, maybe, how to capture or neutralize the artifact.
Fall of an Ancient Meteor
Thousands of years ago the Stone of Creation existed in another world in the multiverse, where it had been used and abused by warring mages. To protect the Stone and themselves, the mages of that world locked it in a colossal sphere of stone with two guardians to tend it: a gorgon called Kyrilla and a male human called Kathikon. They swore an oath to their gods to defend the Stone and protect its vault, for the sphere was meant to float, hidden, between various elemental planes of existence until the mages could decide what to do with it. But when the mages went looking for it, they could not find it.
The spherical vault fell out of the elemental planes and into the Material Plane, landing by chance in the High Moors of the Realms, near the Sword Coast. There, things become unclear.
First, creatures of the ancient Realms cracked open the shell and took the Stone. Even the guardians, Kyrilla and Kathikon, cannot recall who they were—it was so long ago. But rather than die defending the Stone, they hid, each afraid of losing the other. Thus they broke their oaths to the gods and thus they were each cursed with hideous beauty and a petrifying gaze—so that they would find it impossible to see each other's faces again.
For centuries, they dwelled alone in what remained of the sphere. That ended when yuan-ti cultists from the Serpent Hills found the sphere and dug into it, thinking it was a burial mound that might contain lost treasures. When the cultists found, instead, Kyrilla and Kathikon, they mistook them for medusae from legends. The cultists bestowed upon them powers to summon snakes. They gave them gifts, from supplicants to servitor snakes. They wanted to know the guardians' secrets—they wanted to know more about the Stone of Creation.
During this time, in a fit of sorrow and desperation, Kyrilla and Kathikon looked upon each other for the first and only time since they were cursed. Kyrilla survived. Kathikon was turned to stone. 3 DEEPEST nIGHT Episode 4 DEEPEST nIGHT Episode 4 Furious, heartbroken, and now alone, Kyrilla took out her anguish on the yuan-ti. Many of them were petrified by her gaze. Others were slain and devoured by the huge serpents they had once given unto her as gifts. And so the yuan-ti sealed up the sphere like a tomb and left it, never to return.
But rumors spread even out of the Serpent Hills.
Hamish's Tale
More than 50 years ago, a wizard from the planar city of Ravnica by the name of Sylvene followed legends about a lost artifact all the way to the world of Faerûn. In Waterdeep, she found two strong allies: a dwarven rogue called Artura and a generous giant named Hamish Hewland. Artura wanted to discover lost treasures. Hamish—who believed himself to be descended from a giant of Ravnica—wanted to see the world his ancestors came to explore. As they all set out to explore the High Moors near the Sword Coast, they met a human fighter named Waltarn Everlake in the village of Secomber, and he joined their party. But the adventure met with disaster when the party delved into the lair of Kyrilla without knowing what they were getting into. Sylvene and Artura managed to recover pieces of the artifact they sought, but Waltarn was slain by arrows out of the darkness, and Hamish was turned to stone while attempting to secure everyone's escape by closing up the entrance to the monster's lair.
Hamish's petrified body still stands at the verge of the monster's lair, awaiting new heroes and a chance to breathe again.
Adventure Synopsis
The adventure is set in motion when a ghost pleads with the adventurers to pursue a way to interfere with Tyreus's plans—or even to destroy the Stone of Creation—by venturing into a monster's lair in search of secret lore. When the adventurers arrive at the site of the lair, they likely find evidence of a previous adventuring party, whose misadventures here still echo through the years. Once inside the lair, they find a harrowing collection of monsters defending the secrets needed to destroy the Stone of Creation. Along the way, they may discover more about its strange origins and the danger it poses.
Can they also put an end to the monster that inhabits this strange place? What price will they pay for the information they seek? And what plans do they make for their final confrontation with Tyreus?
Adventure Hooks
The adventurers can become involved in this scenario in several ways, whether they're continuing along from previous scenarios or entering into the fray with this one.
The Tomb's Ghost
If the adventurers have access to Waltarn's crypt from the prior adventure, "A Verdant Tomb," Waltarn's ghost appears to them there and sets things in motion. He explains that the keystones Tyreus stole from the tomb were recovered from the place where Waltarn was killed: a place that fell to the Realms from some far plane of existence. He tells them to head 110 miles southeast of the confluence of the Delimbiyr, east of Secomber, where a huge hill "looks as if it had been cracked by lightning." More secrets about the stones can doubtless be found there. "You are more powerful now than we were then," Waltarn says. "But be wary all the same."
A Visit from a Spirit
If the adventurers need another way into the adventure, whether they've played prior installments or not, another spirit comes into play. The spirit of Artura—who is not dead but rather lost on the Astral Sea—reaches out to the adventurers as if she were a ghost. She hasn't chosen them personally but sees their futures entwined with her past in her surreal vision.
She sees the Stone of Creation like a dark, black anchor in the water, holding her spirit in place, pulling down on fate. "Something bad is going to happen, and I know that damn thing is part of it!" To find out more about it, she tells the party to journey to where the Stone came from: 110 miles southeast of the Delimbiyr confluence east of Secomber. "That's where things went wrong. Maybe it's not too late to set them right?"