Cleardraw Conspiracy

531SaClCo

Through the twilight-shrouded streets of Cleveral, the city mourned beneath banners of sacred blue and gold, honoring Carlo Cleardraw, the twice-blessed hero thought to be unshakable. His funeral procession moved with solemn reverence, petals and prayers scattered for the man who had been a beacon against darkness and a voice of divine purpose. But as the procession reached the temple of Auronel and the coffin was placed at the altar, its lid split open after a bearer’s faltering grip, and the impossible was revealed. The coffin was empty.

Confusion and panic erupted within the temple’s sanctum as divine wards sealed the mourners inside. The high priest, stunned but steadfast, declared that Carlo’s death defied divine law; no illness nor blade should have taken him. Within the casket lay only a trace of ash and a pale blue feather, an echo of Auronel’s presence, sacred and ominous. Whispers stirred that Carlo had not died, but vanished through means older and stranger than death itself. In the feather’s glow and the priest’s trembling voice, the room breathed an unrest no prayer could soothe.

Within the temple’s quiet chambers, three casket bearers met with the party, worn from travel, heavy with memory. Tharen, the seasoned warrior, spoke of Carlo’s recent heroism; Brenna, the dwarf rogue, shared her sorrow at his unwavering belief in her. And Elaric, the older cleric, recounted a strange wound delivered in battle, one he had dismissed until now. Their recollections spiralled into guilt, suspecting that they should have seen the signs. But Elaric’s pious serenity began to crack, and the party felt unease settle like dust. Something in his tale did not align with Carlo’s fate.

That fracture split open when Brenna, consumed by fury, dragged Elaric before the group. She accused him of betrayal—that he had delivered Carlo into a trap masked as divine mandate. Elaric confessed to being manipulated by Imiriel’s high priests, who claimed Carlo’s blessings endangered cosmic balance. Twisting silence into duty, they had convinced him sacrifice was necessary. His remorse was deep, his gods distant, and his faith shaken. As Brenna hurled a prayer crystal and Carlo’s journal at his feet, Elaric’s grief turned to resolve.

The journal revealed Carlo’s final thoughts, a warning and a plea, hinting at knowledge beyond his fate. Elaric read the words and begged for redemption, offering to lead the party to Carlo’s prison beneath Imiriel’s church. A single feather descended as he knelt, a soft seal of divine acknowledgment, not of forgiveness, but of purpose yet unfulfilled. The party, raw from betrayal and aching with hope, chose action over doubt. Carlo’s story was not over.

Guided by Elaric, they found their way to the forgotten church, a place quiet in distance but thrumming with foul magic. Outside its sealed chamber, the air pulsed with corrupted essence. Elaric’s face twisted between fury and regret as he realized the depth of his error. With trembling hands, he pushed open the final door, and within, Carlo hung in cursed chains, his light siphoned, his soul endangered. The party had arrived at the brink, and their next steps would not be taken lightly.

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PDF adventure – Cleardraw Conspiracy

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The Hidden Well

530SuHiWe

From the dusty road into Solbrook, the party spotted a crowd and a rough tent city mushrooming out by the edge of the farmland. News had spread like wildfire, some ancient thing had been uncovered beneath the wheat fields and people swarmed in chasing coin, knowledge, or the thrill of something big. Scholars flocked in to gawk at a hundred-foot statue, unlike anything they’d seen before. Locals threw up shelters and ramshackle stores to handle the surge of visitors. And adventurers, much like the party themselves, arrived drawn by whispers of treasure dangling just below the surface.

The makeshift village around the sinkhole had just about everything a hopeful wanderer could want. A cluster of tents behind a fence acted as a cheap inn where even a few coins stretched far. Market stalls bustled with gear, rations, rope, parchment or anything you’d need for a delve into the unknown. And down one crowded lane, the party found themselves drawn to a big red tent pitched by the Scholars of Yole. They were calling in seasoned adventurers to crack the first sealed chamber. There was solid coin for stepping up, and talk of steady work for anyone who could prove they weren’t just swinging swords for show.

The interior of the large red tent was nothing short of chaos; towering shelves crammed with scrolls and trinkets doubled as walls, dividing beds for the Scholars of Yole. At the heart of it all sat a young dwarven man at a desk, briskly taking names and occupations before offering coin to would-be adventurers. He laid out the deal clearly: ten gold a day, more if blades clashed or bones broke, and a finders clause granting rights to any non-crucial relics uncovered during exploration. With the way in newly breached, the scholars were eager to hire seasoned help and the party had arrived right on cue.

Over the next two days, the party led the way as scouts, helping the scholars navigate the buried ruin’s booby-trapped halls and crumbling chambers. While the first room glittered with valuable relics, the deeper they ventured, the more decay and rot took hold, until they stumbled into a room that was strangely pristine. With no mould, no rust, and no dust, it stood in stark contrast to what came before. Then came another immaculate room, its trap already sprung yet untouched by time. Something wasn’t adding up, and the sense of unease began to gro.

After securing their modest haul and settling in for the night, the party was preparing for rest when alarms shattered the quiet. Sprinting toward the commotion, they found a crowd clustered around a fallen guard near the statue’s rope ladder. His body showed clear signs of burns and further evidence of scorched clothing and warped armour could easily be seen. Yet the cause of death was announced as drowning. A pool of strange liquid had spilled from his mouth, now carefully stored in a scholar’s vial. With no signs of an attacker, magical discharge, or nearby creature, the scene was deeply unsettling. Investigating the area, the party spotted scorched rope and another ominous pool of liquid at the base of the ruin’s entrance. Something had either fled inside or emerged unseen

The party, grim but resolute, returned to the spotless halls that had first stirred suspicion and began their search. A trail of liquid travelling through the halls seemingly the only thing that indicated anything that had passed through this area. These rooms, eerily untouched by the decay surrounding them, felt too perfect, too preserved. As they pushed deeper with a handful of scholars in tow, a soft dripping noise caught their attention. Heads tilted back just in time to witness a thick glob of jelly-like slime drop from above, splattering across their shoulders and arms. It burned as it touched skin, acidic and alive; A sudden, vicious contrast to the sterile quiet that had lulled them into a false sense of safety.

The party followed the halls and rooms and eventually stepped out from the polished hallways into the yawning mouth of a cavern that swallowed sound and light alike. Stone platforms jutted out over a lake of thick, light green liquid that shimmered like oil under torchlight, ripples pulsing from nowhere and yet everywhere. The air hung heavy with the scent of rust and something far older. At the far end, half-shrouded in steam rising from the lake, loomed a massive metallic figure; humanoid in shape, but twisted with wrongness. Pocked and scarred across its surface, it loomed still and watching, with metallic pseudopods frozen mid-reach from its torso, as if caught in the act of crawling free.

The adventurers crept forward, each step echoing off stone as they traversed across the slippery raised platforms. Below them, the water stirred; slow and deliberate, responding to their presence. The statue’s form appeared cast from once-polished metal, now streaked with the same green liquid that coated the cavern’s depths. Droplets slid down its face, giving the impression it was weeping, and under flickering torchlight, the tentacle-like appendages seemed to writhe. As they approached, the viscous water began to gather, slithering into itself, pooling and reshaping. Somewhere behind, a scholar whispered a prayer. Ahead, the silence fractured as water rushed and a creature coalesced, dripping from the statue in a perfect mimicry of its monstrous form.

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PDF adventure – The Hidden Well

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