Session 1: Into the Shattered Vein

Location: The Leilon Mine, lower levels near the Deep Shaft
Time: Late morning, day after recruitment
Atmosphere: Claustrophobic stone. Dripping water. Echoes that don’t echo back right.

Recruitment & Setup

The call came differently for each of them.

• Lady Cassandra Vexmoor got it over breakfast—Cassian Albright convincing Lord Darius Vexmoor to keep the mine open and naming her, noble daughter of House Vexmoor, as leader of the “task force.” Big words for “we need you to crawl into a hole and not die.”
• Shyk got it from Captain Jareth Thornwall , who muttered disdain for the Vexmoors but spoke to Shyk with surprising faith. A strange faith, tied to the Watchers at Dusk — the order Shyk barely knows he belongs to.
• Elia found a riddle in an envelope, threads of fey and whispers of the lighthouse, and a servant’s request to join the mission.
• Vex Maravo was nudged along by Fizzwidget “Fizz” Bramblebark , gnome alchemist and tax-dodger extraordinaire. Fizz gave him a psychic-resonant stone and a wink: “With an adventurer’s license, you can call anything loot. Taxes don’t touch loot.”
• Vespera Rue Noctwyn , survivor of the mine collapse ten years ago, was invited by Thrain Coppercleft . She remembered bloody noses, flickering lights, the way stone itself can betray you.
• Hunter wasn’t invited. He hunted Cassandra down and asked to join anyway. She said yes. On the way, he saw Thalen — mad prophet of the sea — leave his fish stew unfinished, still muttering about how nothing good comes from digging into the earth.

Six lives converging on one tunnel mouth.

Descent into Darkness

The mine was almost empty—only the desperate still swung pick here, coughing blood and muttering prayers. The sickness had driven most away.

They weren’t two levels deep before the whispers started. Psychic trauma bleeding earlier than expected. Bloody noses. Shivers. Echoes that felt too close.

• Shyk put his hand to the stone, Stonesense humming. A heartbeat. Below. Getting faster.
• On the third level, glyphs flickered faintly, fey script, not the source but perhaps a shield. A fading pickaxe strike echoed deeper.

Then came the Mind Leeches. Pale and dripping, gnawing on a miner. The group cut them down, saved the man, and bought themselves gratitude from the pit-scarred folk of Leilon.

The Choices

The tunnels split: the pickaxe echo of a survivor, or the heartbeat below.

They chose lives first. Found a collapsed dwarf. Heard something else moving behind the stone.

The glyphs began to stutter, violent, as the heartbeat quickened. Something was building.

Hunter caught a whiff of fish stew, Thalen’s stink, drifting away from the mine. Another choice: chase the prophet, or stop the pulse.

They chose the pulse.

The Ritual

An illusory wall gave way to a hidden chamber. Runes carved with blood and time. Bloodhunter glyphs magic somehow braided to tear the mine down. Minutes until disaster.

Cassandra pieced the structure. They had a choice: flee and let the mine fall, or stay and stop it.

They stayed.
Checks. Counter-runes. Sweat. The chamber hummed and cracked but in the end—silence. They unraveled the ritual and the mine held.

Aftermath

• Thrain Coppercleft, grudging but honest, gave them credit.
• Cassian Albright gave them coin, licenses, and trust:
• Adventurer Licenses, stamped official.
• 50 gold each.
• The miners gave them respect, quiet and whispered.

They emerged not just alive, but changed.

Consequences & Threads

• Cassian trusts them now. He’ll send them where whispers grow thickest.
• Cassandra’s name rises, though her family remains under the glass.
• Vinrael has seen the glyphs before. He may see them again.
• Fizz expects Vex to bring him more stones — and more loopholes.
• Hunter suspects Thalen is more than a madman; the Crimson Sanctum stirs behind him.
• Rue has inherited whispers of her parents’ work; Thrain may see her as heir to their memory.
• The miners whisper that the mine itself breathes. That the rock is awake.

And far below, beneath stone and rune, the heartbeat hasn’t stopped.