Session #18: Green Creek Shrine - Part 1

Session #18: Green Creek Shrine

20 Memun 530

Deep in the Green Creek Mines, the Deputies debated Thaktira’s offer and settled on stuffing the severed, hissing head into a sack. As Twig crept toward it without making eye contact, his boot clipped the grisly trophy and sent it rolling into the nearby black lagoon, where it slipped beneath the water and vanished from sight.

Choosing to leave Thaktira’s fate to the depths, the Deputies turned their attention to the locked chest they had recovered. Twig checked for traps, found none, and deftly picked the lock; with a haul too heavy to carry, Suffering Succotash conjured a floating disk to bear the chest and its contents as the posse pushed farther into the maze of tunnels.

After several more hours of poking around played‑out shafts and side passages, the Deputies discovered a new cavern dominated by a wide, vertical shaft dropping forty feet into darkness. On one side lay the splintered remains of a derrick and winch once used to lower miners and tools into the pit. At the bottom, stood a large crystal ewer filled with faintly luminous liquid and a chiseled blue‑veined marble statue of a winged humanoid, sharp‑featured and beautiful, with two rows of letters across its chest: D‑A‑N over G‑E‑R.

As the Deputies approached, the marble figure raised its right arm and presented an open palm toward them. Paladin Cordoch halted the group and invoked his divine sense, feeling a strong celestial presence below in the shaft. He tried to parley with the silent guardian, but it offered no sign of understanding or response.

After a conference, no one was eager to climb forty feet down into a dark hole to tangle with a towering stone angel, so the Deputies backed off. This time, Imaranger’s sharp memory, a charred torch, and some of Suffering Succotash’s ink were put to use marking the route clearly, and the posse retraced its steps out of the mines.

The Deputies returned to Green Creek Shrine and made camp on the upper floor of the Grand Hotel, posting watches through the quiet night. Their rest went undisturbed, the only sounds the creak of old boards and the distant whisper of the wind across the abandoned town.

21 Memun 530

Come morning, rested and patched up, the Deputies headed for the hilltop temple that gave Green Creek Shrine its name. The structure still stood solid, but every valuable or portable item had long since been stripped away, leaving only dust, sun-faded murals, and the bones of sacred architecture.

In the central rotunda, they found the heart of the shrine desanctified. Cleric Zefyola Cherryhill’s quest was clear: perform the rites to re‑sanctify the holy ground, a ceremony expected to take about half an hour. Anticipating trouble, the Deputies spread out—some holding the rotunda, others covering the courtyard, and a few taking positions in the surrounding quadrangle to watch the approaches.

Once preparations were set, Zefyola began her ceremony. Minutes later, a wave of zombies shambled up the central southern corridor, and Kruk, Urxes, and Simon moved to meet them head‑on. Almost immediately, squads of skeletal archers appeared in the quadrangle windows, firing into the courtyard, while desiccated, corpse‑like warriors took to the rooftop and loosed longbow fire down into the melee below.

As the Deputies inside the rotunda unleashed spells to blunt the undead advance, the clash of arcane power and sacred rite created a jarring resonance that rippled through the ceremony. Zefyola fought to maintain her focus but staggered under the disruption, and the rite collapsed unfinished, the shrine still spiritually dead.

With the corpse‑warriors pulling back to the rooftops and beyond, the Deputies mopped up the last of the skeletons and zombies that remained inside the temple grounds. Knowing the site would not be reclaimed in a single bloody morning, they withdrew from the temple as well, intent on regrouping and planning a cleaner, better‑defended attempt to complete the ceremony on the following day.

Here ends Session #18.