The Dread Ring
Type: Necrotic clearing — temple-entrance site Region: Neverwinter Wood (roughly fifteen miles north of the ruined Cragmaw / Heiress's keep) Status (latest): Descended, end of session 036. The full party descended via the Levitate-phrase mechanic. The four pursuers (confirmed Shadovar) were already in the Church of Sorrow when the party crossed the portal. The surface clearing is now behind them. First Appearance: Session 035
Description
A large circular clearing in the otherwise-dense Neverwinter Wood. All the trees within the ring are dead — long-dead, standing bare; the wood around them living but visibly bent away. The air over the clearing does not move. Necrotic stillness.
At the center: a hole in the ground. Ringed by strange, reddish, firm, vine-like growths — not plants, exactly, more like the bones of plants fused into a fence. The hole drops down. Greg's reference at the table: if you've seen the D&D movie, you've seen it.
The Dread Ring is the entrance to a Temple of Shar. Per Ravi's confirmation and Ubys's Raven Queen-granted Divination from session 034, the temple within is a three-way intersection — paths down branch toward both the Underdark and the Shadowfell.
What the Party Knows
- Ubys's Divination (cast end of session 034) pointed north, in the Neverwinter Wood, a clearing. The clearing is the Dread Ring.
- Ravi's confirmation (session 035) named the place — the Sharran temple is below; from below, the way down branches.
- The dead trees are a known necrotic-signature pattern; the trees did not die naturally. The clearing is the result of the temple's leakage, not its cause.
- Four pursuers are inbound to the Ring as of session 035's close — per Ravi's warning; arriving by nightfall.