Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Painfully" data-source="post: 483099" data-attributes="member: 601">The meteorites are a result of a comet that visits regularly.  Here's a passage I read to the dwarves in the party, who had met privately with the NPC dwarven cleric who gave the speech.----THE DRAFT----Once every 350 years Moradin bestows a gift.  A comet visits the skies for 7 days, some say it is the forge of Moradin, himself.  During that time, often on the 3rd or 4th day, there are pieces of that comet that fall from the sky.  All the clan leaders beseech their high priests to divine the location of where the pieces might fall to the earth so that they might retrieve the sacred rock, but in my clan, it was only I, Ori Cloudhammer, who had seen that place in my dreams.  Again and again, I found myself always in the same dream, and looking at the same place.  Word had gotten around to the high priest, and by his decree I have set forth to recover the stone.The stone is very much like mithril, but it is much more than that.  It is said to possess a raw soul, untouched, and unfinished, from the forge of the Allfather.  Clans from ages past have fought wars over it.  Devils have bargained for it.  And now such knowledge comes only to a few, if any.  The dwarves are no longer as close to the Allfather as they once were, but to possess this rock, to be able to craft it and to hold it in one’s hands, it is enough to command the respect of every dwarf that claims loyalty to Moradin.It is said that the soul in the stone will form itself in the image of it’s possessor.  It was argued amongst my clan that I was too young, but my grandfather, who is too old and ill to even walk, was quick to remind the clan elders of their debt to him.  He was the one who led our clan to their home today, after our clan was decimated by drow.  Some say it was disloyalty from someone inside the clan that led to our downfall there, but most refuse to believe it, even to this day.  But such tales are best left for another time.My mission is simple:  retrieve the stone and take it to my clan.  Priests there are waiting to use their powers to protect the stone from dark influences, and to make it stronger against our enemies.If you will swear loyalty to Moradin, and aid me in my goal, my clan will reward you well.  With most of my comrades dead, I am desperate for assistance, and it seems by chance, or fate, that I have finally set eyes on another dwarf.  In a land of strangers, I am wary of trusting anyone else.  What say you, ____________?----END----There's a bit more to the background, but you get the idea.  The dwarves have slowly lost touch with Moradin over the generations until fewer and fewer dwarven clerics received the visions.As for the two bad guys that are able to divine the meteorites as well.  They are able to intelligently estimate, and/or use magical means (one of them specializes in scrying magic), to actually locate the pieces after they fall.FYI, the seven day comet thing must seem peculiar, but there is at least one historical account of such a thing happening IRL, though I don't think it was seven days long.The average party level was between 3rd and 4th, and they didn't have any caster types at all, so I used an NPC cleric to divine the meteorites location.  No doubt there were plenty of diversions in between them and their destination.  This was basically an action plot, with a race between the players and and infernal duergar priest (a durzagon from MM2).The durzagon was an agent for one of the main bad guys.</blockquote>

Verification