Tiny Crack to Hell:
(When I ran it, it was tacked on to a very hacked-up version of "Hut of Darkness" from a Tales of the Reaching Moon issue. The river in question was switched to one flowing north to my-version-of-Goan in Pamaltela. Numerous other changes were made as well. Anyway, the PC's are trekking through the jungle at some point, and come upon a mysterious building. Read on...)
PC's are in the wilderness during a tremendous storm, at dusk. The Wastes work OK, as would any largely uninhabited place; the original run of this was in the jungle. They find a ruin: A building of stone. Inside there is one largeish chamber, with a couple of alcoves. I drew it as a very small version of the Jefferson memorial building in the United States, but suit yourself. In the middle of the chamber is something like an altar, covered with a cloth/leather sheet. The sheet has some enchantments to preserve it. Under the cloth is a stone rectangular prizm, about 1 m tall, 2 m wide, 1 m deep. The top has slot running most of the length of the altar. The altar was not marked in my run. The slot allows the viewer to look down, but all that can be seen is darkness.
Light put into the slot is swallowed up. Detection type spells sense something magical about the darkness, but not about the altar itself. The interior of the building has faded artwork, but none that survives depicts folks or gives clues as to whose place this was.
Cautious PC's will not remove the cloth, so enticements may be required. For example, stones that look like (or are) valuable are embedded in the altar, below the fringe of the cloth. Anyone with darkness in their culture (morokanth, trolls, Babeester Gor, Arkati) is drawn to the altar. Perhaps some ancient trickster has carved runes related to PC cults/culture into the stone and put them on the cloth.
If is night while the cloth is off the altar, a small shade will appear and cruise around the chamber. The PC's are likely to fight it. If not, it just floats around, putting out lights, until dawn, when it sinks back into the slot. Each night the slot is exposed, even for a little while, serves as a summons to trolls. Calculate the distance to the nearest trolls, and keep track of them. In my run, these were Jungle trolls, of which the PC's knew little. If the PC's are trolls, this is a big find once they figure out the slot's true nature.
If the PC's try to summon a shade from the slot, only small ones can be reached. PC's who destroy the altar are in for trouble, however. Soon after they do it, several small shades ooze out of the wreckage. Larger and larger ones follow. Under the altar, on the floor, is a small crack that leads to hell. Blocking it completely is the only way to seal off the flow of shades. The shades will fight to prevent this. Collapsing the building or moving the altar intact bring the same result.
If trolls get control of the place, they will use it as a Subere/Dehore holy spot. Any who show up will either demand the PC's leave now (if they are in a good mood) or grab the Defilers for a sacrificial Grand Opening of the new temple.
So what is the story of this place? I set it up as an abandoned Six-Legged Empire place, but the PC's never learned this. In fact, no one knew it was there until they showed up. In my version this was a subtle defense mechanism for the building, stolen from the movie version of the Shadow. The very foreign PC's were somehow immune.
Thanks for reading. Please send all "this is stupid and here's why" messages to:
Hal Bowman hal_bowman_at_hotmail.com
End of The Glorantha Digest V6 #29
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