Session 16.1: Stormbound
Padrig stands watch. Vahid and Mado return. Anwen becomes a Thunder.
Welcome back to Stonetop!
Welcome back to PTFO:Stonetop! Last week's recap episode covered the full arc of the story, with a focus on Session 15 — if you're just joining us, or if the details have gone fuzzy, I'd recommend giving that a read before diving in. Now, on with the adventure!
Scene 1: The Old Wall
The wind comes from the southeast, cold and sharp for mid-spring. Padrig draws his wolf-pelt cloak tighter and shifts his weight on the rough stone of the Old Wall.
The cyclopean stones beneath him are tall and sound—they’ll be sound long after Pad’s bones are dust—but the muster of Stonetop could never hold their massive perimeter. The inner ringwall encircling the steading was barely waist-high. We’ll need to get to work on this. He runs a hand along the rough stone. Marged’s1 folk and the miners from the Delve could quarry from here, use the rubble to build up the inner wall. If there’s enough time.
From up here, the village is a scatter of low, dark shapes atop the hillside, hearth-smoke rising thin and silver in the starlight. The nearest fields are dark furrows of turned earth, the young barley just visible as a pale green haze in the last of the twilight. Beyond, to the south and east, the rolling grasslands stretch into blackness, and on the horizon, a line of dark clouds blots out the stars.
Ozbeg sits atop the wall a few paces off, his recurve across his knees, humming something tuneless. The old Peaksman has been in fine spirits since Anwen delivered Parvati’s coin2 — he wears it on a cord around his neck now, tucked beneath his leathers where it rests against his chest. Padrig has caught him touching it when he thinks no one is looking, the way a young man touches a lock of his sweetheart’s hair.
He has also caught Ozbeg making eyes with Marged’s widowed sister at the well, and at the Public House, and twice when he was on duty at the granary, where the woman had no earthly business being. Ozbeg has never been one to think too far ahead in matters of the heart.
“Quiet night,” Ozbeg offers.
“Aye.”
“Cold, too.” He puts his hands inside his patchy yakhide cloak.
“Aye.” Padrig’s eyes sweep the southeastern horizon. Somewhere out there, Vahid and Mado should have this same cold wind at their backs, bearing Stormcatcher’s Crown back to Stonetop. Or they are dead in the sorcerer-king’s tomb, and the narrow gap through which their hopes shine is drawing closed. Anwen told him they’d return tonight if fate is with them. If fate is with them. Has fate been with us? When we failed at the Delve? When the Sun-Spear’s camp burned? We live, at least, we three who swore the oath over our hearth.
“You’ll wear a groove in that stone, the way you keep pacing,” Ozbeg says.
“I’m on watch, old hawk, you might be familiar with the notion,” he says quietly. “If you’re cold, get your blood moving and check the eastern watchtower. I want to know if Talfryn and Andras are awake.”
Ozbeg grunts. “If Vahid returns, we’ll see him from here. The whole gods-damned village will.” Oz has heard tell of what Vahid can do. Stormcatcher, some of the emigres still call him.
“As you wish. I’ll go,” Padrig moves to climb down from his perch atop the wall.
“Fie! You stay. I’ll go,” he huffs, climbing down himself. “Spare me your shepherd’s crook, captain.”
Padrig cracks a smile, despite himself. He’s trying to calm my nerves. Good man. “A shepherd? A houndkeeper, more like, pulled here and there by my unruly war-dogs.”
This sets Ozbeg chortling, but the laughter dies in his throat with a peal of thunder and a flash of lightning to the southeast. The wind gusts, pressing their collars against their faces.
Their eyes meet. “I’ll go to the eastern watchtower. You rouse Anwen.” Ozbeg is off running up the hill before Pad’s words are in the wind.
Anwen is already running when the second peal of thunder splits the sky.
She takes the steep path down from the hilltop at a reckless pace, her boots skidding on loose earth in the dark. She didn’t bother with armor — just her father’s grey cloak thrown over her wools and Maël’s aetherium spear3 in her hand. Behind her, Brogan4 keeps pace, silent as a shadow, his golden eyes shining in the dark. At Pad’s orders, the young, accursed warrior sleeps in the day and guards her at night, in case the sorcerer sends his long knives. He was on his feet and armed before Ozbeg had finished pounding on the door.
She sent Oz off with orders: Rouse Elder Garet. Rouse Cerys’s apprentice. Get torches lit in the Pavilion. Now she runs, Brogan at her heels, down the hill, towards where the sky seems to be splitting.
The lightning flashes again, closer now, and in its blue-white glare she can see the grasslands lit up for an instant — the dark line of the fields, the Old Wall, and beyond, something moving in the sky. She saw Vahid and Mado rise into the night from the shadow of the Ruined Tower, wrapped in a roiling whirlwind. This is the same — a whorl of wind and lightning, racing toward Stonetop from the southeast, low and fast.
Anwen finds Padrig at the eastern watchtower with Talfryn and Andras, their faces upturned to the sky.
When the lightning flashes again, she sees them: A pair of small, frail-looking figures, cradled in the storm’s embrace. They descend fast—too fast—and strike the earth a few hundred paces out, in the dark fields within the Old Wall. Another thunderclap rings out, and a blade of wind flattens the barley around them. Dirt and loose grass billow outward in a ring, and the air fills with the coppery smell of lightning.
Then, silence. Overhead, dark clouds gather, promising rain, and worse. Anwen is off running, with Brogan on her heels. She hears Pad handing out orders behind her, then his quick footfalls, trying to catch up. They cross the field at a dead run, the turned earth soft and treacherous underfoot, until Anwen sees them — two shapes in the furrows, one crumpled, the other on his knees.
Mado looks up at her approach. His face is grey with exhaustion, but his pale blue eyes are clear, and when he speaks, his voice is steady. “We have it.”
Here seems like a good moment to see how Vahid is doing. We’ve established that the storm-spirit possessing him is tearing him apart — putting strain on his flesh and organs, cooking him from the inside, and even though he doesn’t feel pain like he used to, soon his body will give out. But I haven’t put a clock on this — the purpose of this piece of fiction is not to actually kill Vahid, but rather to put pressure on the PCs to act swiftly.
At the gaming table, if the PCs were to dilly-dally, I’d use a clock as a tool to say ‘yes, I’m serious about this,’ but if they move with purpose, we can go clock-less. Since Vahid and Mado immediately went to the barrow to find Stormcatcher’s Crown, the way Vahid’s affliction manifests is in-scene moments where his body fails him. So, we’ll use Defy Danger to assess his state, recalling that he is still suffering from the all three debilities, giving him disadvantage on all rolls:
Vahid triggers Defy Danger w/ Constitution:
6+5+4+1 CON = 10, Strong HitAn auspicious first roll of the session. Being close to his goal has given him some renewed strength. He’s not clear of his debilities, and he’s still physically frail, but he can act as he pleases.
“And Vahid…?” Anwen says.
“He lives.” Vahid’s voice is a harsh whisper, but it seems to cut through the wind to find its way to Anwen’s ear. The Seeker rises from the earth, leaning heavily on the Azure Hand, but the strain is too much, and he falters. Instantly, Anwen is at his side, propping him up.
“My time is short,” Vahid says. “We must make haste to the House of Nine Thunders5, you and I.”
Anwen nods, and leads the party back up the hill, towards the village green.
By the time they reach the cistern, a crowd has gathered, despite the late hour. Anwen, Mado and Vahid’s absence caused a stir, which redoubled when she returned alone. Nothing could be done to settle the rumors: That Vahid had gone to challenge the sorcerer, that he had passed through the Last Door at the crossroads and never returned, that Mado and Anwen had dueled, and that she had slain the last of Cerys’ sons. At least they see us together and united. Anwen looks back at the eyes staring at them from windows and doorways. The last thing we need is more chaos and kinstrife.
“Return to your beds!” Andras calls out. “All is well!” Anwen sees Padrig grimace.
“Peace, Andras. There is nothing here we need hide from them,” she says, pitching her voice to be heard by the watchers. The young warrior looks abashed, and Padrig gives her a sturdy nod.
They reach the cistern. Padrig shrugs off his cloak and loosens the rope from around his waist. “I’ll descend first. Then you can bring Vahid down, Anwen.”
“I’ll go down before them, Padrig,” Mado puts in. “If he falls, you’ll need hands to catch him.”
“No. Anwen and I, alone,” Vahid rasps.
All fall silent.
“We do not know what the Stormbinder will do. Whether bystanders will be safe. It must be only those who intend to let its power act upon them. Anwen and I.”
“We have not decided that Anwen will take on this burden,” Pad says.
“We have not discussed it. But it is decided.”
“Go to the devils,” Padrig growls. “Anwen?”
Before Anwen can reply, Vahid speaks. “What other decision could there be, Padrig? We cannot face the sorcerer again without one of Stormcatcher’s chosen warriors. The Nine Thunders. And who in the village would you put forward? Yourself? You are hale, for your age. But that will not be enough. You, Mado? Will you subject yourself to my magic?”
“Save your own life, Seeker. Don’t drag anyone else into damnation with you.”
“Address me with respect, Mado. My damnation is your village’s salvation.”
“Enough! All of you. I will not have strife among us.” Anwen snaps, and they fall silent again. Help me, Pad. The whole village is watching.
“Vahid and I alone,” she says, gathering the Seeker up with her eyes. “But I will not hear you speak this way to your kith, Vahid. We are not your enemies.”
He inclines his head in an ever-so-slight apology. “You speak the truth. Mado, Padrig: My words were unworthy. I owe my life to each of you.”
“And mine to you,” Padrig says, his voice still tight. “Now let us help you make the descent.” He reaches for the Seeker, to harness him for the climb, but Vahid waves him off.
“That will not be necessary.” The Seeker stands tall, drawing on whatever deep reserves he has yet, and the wind rises.
Just as a reminder on how Vahid is able to do the things he’s doing — like flying, for example. He began the game with this arcanum:
And unlocked it back in Session 7, with the help of Katrin, a Hillfolk spirit-talker. Then in Session 15, when he stood at death’s door, he tore the spirit out of the cloak and bound it into his body, using its vis to animate his corpse, and merging its pneuma—its soul—to his own to cheat the Lady of Crows. While this has a lot of weird metaphysical implications, it also gives him all the powers that the spirit previously possessed, which you can see in the bulleted list above. I’m free-forming this system a little bit, but to keep me at least a little grounded in the mechanics, I’ll use the Blessed playbook’s Borrow Power move whenever I need to have Vahid make a roll. Here, though, he’s just flitting down to the bottom of the cistern, so no roll required.
Scene 2: Beneath Stonetop
The wind gathers around them, pressing Anwen’s cloak against her body, and then the ground falls away. She has seen Vahid fly—watched him rise from the shadow of the Ruined Tower with Mado at his side—but she has never felt it herself. Her stomach lurches as they clear the lip of the cistern and descend into the dark, the village, the watching faces, and the stars vanishing above them.
The descent is brief but rough — the wind stutters twice, and Anwen feels them drop sickeningly before Vahid steadies them. They strike the cistern floor harder than he intended, and the impact sends him to one knee, the Azure Hand ringing against the stone. The shallow water surges away from them, parting in a windblown circle of bare, Maker-carved stone.
Vahid forces himself to his feet, shunning Anwen’s offered hand, and his staff rises into his grasp. The familiar dome-shaped chamber is cold and still, the pale stone walls catching the Azure Hand’s light in veins of blue. The great semicircular door stands open, as they left it — beyond, the long hall of white stone stretches into darkness.
The last time she was here, when they had come down to explore it after Padrig and Vahid had first unsealed its depths, the young scholar was overcome by wonder. He marveled at the Makers’ craft, casting his lantern this way and that, running his fingers over the stonework, translating every inscription for Anwen’s benefit.
The man beside her now does not marvel. He walks through the open door without breaking stride, the shallow water retreating around him. He does not hesitate at the threshold. He does not wait for her.
Anwen follows, her spear held tightly in her hand, though she knows the tunnels here are deserted. As Vahid enters the first chamber, a silvery light begins to shine from behind the smooth marble, illuminating everything with a light like the moon’s.
In the center of the vast atrium is this place’s strange sentinel: A cloud of swirling tesserae of Makerglass, the colors of a stormy sky, held and tossed in the air by an unfelt wind. Anwen stops short—even seeing it for the second time, she is struck with awe that some living being imagined such a wonder, and had the craft and art to bring it into being.
When Vahid approaches it, it seems to respond, coalescing like a murmuration of starlings—no, like a pack of hunting drakes tightening their circle around unwary prey. Anwen rushes to Vahid’s side to pull him away or to shelter him—the Seeker is just watching them, as though they really were only birds in the sky.
But they do not strike. Instead, they draw ever closer to one another, arranging themselves into a mask of grey and white glass, its feminine features sharp and lordly. From its mouth, a voice like thunder rings out: “D’VERE HOS, B’HER-INDRATHSDUZIR”
Vahid inclines his head to the thing of glass and Maker-magic, and it dissolves once again into a swirling cloud. “Vahid? What did it say?”
His pure-blue eyes are cool and unblinking. He is deciding whether to lie to me. Anwen feels her heart sink. Vahid, you are my friend, my oath-brother. Please.
His stony face flinches. Whether it is the dull sensation of his body slowly dying or something he saw in her eyes, Anwen cannot be sure. Finally, he replies.
“It said, ‘Welcome home.’”
Vahid moves on without a word, past the sentinel, and into the tiled causeway beyond. The pools on either side are still and clear, their waters lit from within by the soft glow of Makerglass. On the walls, the friezes of the Nine Thunders stare down at them — tattooed warriors frozen mid-charge, their aetherium lightning-scars catching the light.
Vahid stops here, and kneels beside one of the pools. “The ancient Thunders cleansed themselves here before the ritual. We should do the same.” He throws off the rags of his cloak and gingerly lowers himself in. The water hisses and bubbles when it touches his red, branching scars.
Anwen nods numbly, and casts aside her father’s cloak and, after a pause and a glance backwards, she strips off her wools and splashes into the pool opposite Vahid’s.
The water is warm — warmer than it ought to be, this far underground. At first, there is nothing but the simple comfort of it on her aching muscles. Then, a flutter in her chest, a sharp intake of breath. The ceaseless chatter at the back of her mind—the quarrels they had above, the looming threat of the sorcerer, all the work they must do to prepare—falls quiet, and what remains is still and clear as the water itself.
Beneath the surface, the aetherium tracery in the mosaic floor pulses faintly, and the water seems to sharpen around her, every ripple distinct, every play of light across the surface a thing she could reach out and touch. She can hear Vahid’s breathing across the causeway, the slow drip of water from a crack in the vault, the faint hum of the Makerglass sentinel in the atrium behind them.
Vahid’s eyes are closed. “This will prepare us to control the power we will take hold of. Let it flow through you.”
Cerys’s voice comes to her unbidden. When the soul of a mortal and the pneuma of a spirit share one body, they are not two minds. They are as one. As when blood is spilt into water, once they are joined, they are not so easily put asunder. She had dismissed it, then. Cerys’ heart has been full of mistrust for as long as Anwen has known her. But now, Vahid moves through these halls as though he were their master.
It doesn’t matter. We must fight the sorcerer with everything we have. Or we’ll fail Stonetop, just like we did the Delvers. She closes her eyes.
The world narrows to sensation. The warmth of the water on her skin, the stone beneath her feet, the steady pulse of the aetherium matching itself to her heartbeat. Her breathing slows. Is this what he feels when he channels the storm? Then Vahid’s voice, from across the causeway: “It is enough. Come.”
Scene Breakdown
This sequence calls back to something we set up way back in Session 5.4 — you can see the corresponding scene breakdown right here. There, we established that these pools contain the magic of Id’n Otez’s Galvanic Infusion, a Maker enchantment that makes the user preternaturally alert and focused, granting advantage on all WIS rolls.
Crazy to think that episode was published in 2022. If you’ve been sticking with this story since then, many thanks for your Bodhisattva-like patience.
They rise from the water and dress. Anwen catches glimpses of the ruin of Vahid’s body as he drapes himself with his rent cloak—branching red scars, creeping from his crown and his heart to reach every inch of flesh.
The causeway ends at the great double doors of grey-white marble. The stone serpent that once coiled around the doorway lies in pieces on the causeway floor — shattered by Padrig’s axeblows and Vahid’s desperate magic on their first expedition. Its crystalline teeth are scattered across the mosaic tiles, shining like precious jewels. Anwen steps carefully over the rubble of its segmented coils.
The doors stand ajar, forced open and never closed again. Beyond is darkness. Vahid steps through without hesitation, and the passage illuminates before him, with pale white crystals set into the ceiling flickering to life.
Carved friezes line the walls on either side: Proud warriors testing themselves in combat, then immersed in pools like the ones they just left, then gifted weapons of Makerglass. And last, a scene that stops Anwen's breath: the warriors entering a vast black chamber, lightning arcing from a great orb above them, and led by a towering Maker with a crown on her brow that weeps blood down her face.
She looks at Vahid’s scarred body, the red, branching marks the storm-spirit has already left on his flesh. The friezes could be portraits of him. The stairs end, and the chamber opens before them.
The walls are dull black basalt, rough-hewn, carved from the very bones of Stonetop’s hill. The ceiling vaults so high above that the Azure Hand’s light cannot find it. And there, suspended from the unseen vault by heavy chains of gold and copper stretched taut and crackling with power, is the Stormbinder.
It is a perfect sphere of aetherium, so vast it would fill the whole of the Pavilion of the Gods. Lightning arcs across its surface in slow, wandering paths, illuminating runes so dense and intricate they seem to move. At its base, a massive cartouche — a cloud and thunderbolt in the palm of an open hand, the same sigil that marks the Azure Hand. The sigil is mirrored on the black stone floor directly beneath the sphere.
The air hums. Anwen can feel it in her teeth, in her ribs, in the soles of her feet. The clarity from the pools is still sharp in her, and every nerve in her body is telling her the same thing: this place is alive, and it is waiting.
Vahid opens his hand to her. “The crown. Mado entrusted it to you.”
He did—pressed it into her hand before Vahid took them into the depths. Anwen did not think Vahid had seen. She offers it to him, and he takes it and places it atop his head. He does not grimace when it cuts him, and his clotted blood flows slowly down his forehead.
Vahid moves to the cartouche on the floor, looking up. The sphere’s light plays across his ruined face. He motions for Anwen to take a place before him — around Stormcatcher’s mark is a circle of nine jagged lightning runes. The Nine Thunders. Anwen wonders what it must’ve been like to be part of such a band. Against what threat would Stormcatcher need nine such warriors?
She takes her place. Vahid raises the Azure Hand, and the Stormbinder awakens from its slumber.
First, a roll from Vahid to control the Stormbinder’s energies. His advantage from the galvanic infusion cancels out his debility.
Vahid triggers Defy Danger w/ Wisdom: 5+3+1 WIS = 9, Weak hit.
The device works — Anwen and Vahid receive the storm-markings, saving Vahid’s life, and granting Anwen enormous power. But something goes wrong — the process is overwhelming, and Anwen may lose control. We’ll roll for that as well, and she has advantage from the infusion:
Anwen triggers Defy Danger w/ Wisdom: 5+2+1-1 WIS = 7, Weak Hit.Anwen is able to avoid completely losing control, but she needs to get away.
Onward:
The sphere descends.
The chains strain and sing as the Stormbinder lowers itself toward them, and the lightning on its surface quickens, racing along the runes in patterns that repeat and build. The glyph beneath Anwen’s feet begins to glow, and the overpowering smell of ozone fills the air.
Then Stormcatcher’s crown answers. Vahid cries out — the first sound of pain she has heard from him since his death and resurrection — and from the barbed tines of the crown, his blood runs freely, streaming down his face in dark ribbons. Where it falls on the cartouche, the stone drinks it in, and the sigil blazes blue-white. The Azure Hand rises of its own accord, and a bolt of lightning leaps from the sphere to the staff’s headpiece and through Vahid’s body into the floor, and the chamber explodes with light.
The vis hits Anwen like a charging aurochs. It enters through the soles of her feet and tears upward through her, searing pathways through her body—the same meridians the pool’s gentle current had traced, now flooded with a force that threatens to tear her asunder. She screams, and her scream is the thunder. Her skin burns and the lightning scars write themselves into her flesh, branching from her heart outward along her arms, her shoulders, her spine. The storm-marks of the Nine Thunders, warriors of ancient legend, now come again.
She falls to her knees on the basalt. The pain is extraordinary, but it is not the pain that threatens to overwhelm her. It is the rush of power. It floods her mind like a surging river, and in its torrent she sees the faces of her enemies—the storm-marked assassin standing over Kirs’s broken body. Odo Thriceborn, murderous man and ravenous beast. Maël, the sorcerer’s chosen, and the crack of her axe as it shattered against him when they dueled on the mountainside.
Their faces ignite a fury in her, pure and righteous. I am the Thunderhead. Woe to those who threaten my home.
She cannot see. The chamber is white with lightning. She can feel the storm in every fiber of her body, singing, screaming, demanding release. She is on her feet, spear in her hand, and the aetherium in its blade is alive with a corona of crackling vis. Somewhere, far away, she hears Vahid’s voice calling her name, but the storm is louder, and it wants out.
We’ll close out the episode there! Vahid has a choice to make: Anwen is struggling to control her newfound power. Vahid could use his magic to restrain his friend, and stop her from causing damage or getting into trouble. That’s probably what old Vahid, Vahid the scholar, would do. Of course, this could also show the village exactly how powerful and dangerous Vahid—even a storm-marked warrior can’t overcome him.
But what might Vahid the Stormbinder do? He might instead let Anwen exult in this newfound power a bit. He might think it’s right and proper for the village to see Anwen’s newfound strength, and to prove he has done exactly what he set out to do—capture the power of the Makers for Stonetop.
Importantly for this dilemma: Since this is a weak hit, and not a full miss, I’m going to stipulate that Anwen isn’t going to go accidentally kill someone—she’ll instead put herself in some danger.
As is our custom on PTFO:Stonetop, the choice in this dilemma is up to you all. Unleash the fury of the storm on the button below to vote:
This year I am determined to get PTFO:Stonetop back on a weekly pub schedule, so I’m going to shoot for 3/23 for Session 16.2. Thanks as always for reading, and I’ll see you next week!
Marged is one of the village elders, and her sons and their extended kith serve as the village’s stonemasons.
Before they left for Gordin’s Delve, Ozbeg entrusted Anwen with a silver coin to give to Madame Parvati, the madame of the House of the Mountain’s Daughter in Gordin’s Delve. When Anwen and Parvati parted ways during the flight from the Delve in Session 14.7, Parvati returned the coin to Anwen to give back to Ozbeg with her regards.
Anwen’s aetherium spear was taken from Mael, the champion of the Stormcrows after she slew him at the trailhead during the Battle of Gordin’s Delve.
Brogan was one of the bandits in Padrig’s old crew, who was left behind when they were driven out of Gordin’s Delve, years ago. He fell into the power of Odo Thriceborn’s cannibal cult, and has been infected with the Howling Curse.
This is the ancient Maker complex hidden beneath the village which the party first explored way back in Session 5.4.
Ooh! Anwen takes the Storm's power and we have two PCs with control issues. This is going to be fun.
So glad to see Stonetop back in my feed.
Back to The Storm! Power sought pays a price for it....