That's So Raven

For months you'd been having the dreams. Ravens — circling, watching, calling. They got worse. Then the line between sleep and waking thinned, and the ravens started coming during the day.

Then the invitation arrived.

You finished reading it, and the world changed.

You woke beside an oceanside shrine on the Sword Coast, half a day's walk from Leilon. Five strangers stood near you, blinking salt out of their eyes. A silver disc at the heart of the shrine read, "Dare much and the Lady will keep you." And there was Ubys — chisel in hand, calmly defacing it.

By dusk, the six of you were at the Toke Inn. Cloaked figures with torches scattered into the woods at Ubys' shouted curse. Inside, you met Jorry the innkeeper, a bedridden woman named Roz burning with fever from a rat bite, and a handful of guests too tired to ask questions. Lessie healed Roz. Jorry told you his son Rhovan had vanished.

Then the rats came.

They were larger than they should have been, and there were too many of them. You cut them down — KeYs' warhammer, Moist's ice, Ubys' bolt of guiding light, AC's sigil and a sword that smoked when it cut. When the last one fell, Lessie crouched low and whispered to the rats below the floorboards. They whispered back: "MORE. FRESH. BLOOD." — and then, grudgingly, they left, muttering about a Master.

In the basement you found a hidden chest, emptied recently — and a trapdoor with old runes carved beside it. Loosely translated: "joy of the hunt, how wonderful to bathe in the blood of prey."

Baphomet. The Demon of the Hunt.

Rhovan is somewhere down there. The Lady has not yet told you why she Called you here. The trapdoor stands open at your feet.

Next session: descend.