Players! Want to play this quest? Stop reading and notify your DM. Save the fun for the game-table!Running this Quest
You can adjust any of the information below according to your campaign, preference or imagination. Feel free to experiment and let other visitors know what works for you in the comments below.
Your journey continues, leading you further through the forest. After some time you notice an unusual sound. You think you can hear a voice, being carried by the wind. You listen intently and can now hear what sounds like a child, ever so softly crying. It seems to come from some distance away, deeper into the thick of the undergrowth.
An investigation check (DC 15) will yield many small footprints leading up and down, left and right. Players with high nature or survival skills will recognize these as human child tracks. Additionally, rolling higher then DC20 will reveal these tracks are from one and the same child.
You make your way through the dense foliage, following the sound of the voice. You can now clearly hear whimpering close by. You reach an open patch and step out of the bushes. You are standing in a small clearing, surrounded by plants and trees, in the middle of which you see a young boy sitting hurled up against a large rock. He looks up at you with a sad look in his eyes. “I.. I can’t get out of the forest.” he says.
An investigation check (DC 15) will yield runes that have been carved into the rock. The rock seems to have cracked right through the middle, splitting the runes in two. A history (DC20) or arcana check (DC15) will reveal the following:
These runes appear to be very old and belong to the schools of Abjuration and Conjuration. Alongside the runes a text in Old Dwarvish reads “Spoken proud, it’s name aloud, a traveller goes where this wind blows.”
This rock and its runes are an ancient means of fast travelling. Speaking the name of a wind direction will teleport you towards the nearest similar stone in that direction. This kind of travel could be incorporated into your story world, with similar stones throughout the land. But it could also ‘misfire’ in all four directions, as if no other receiving stones are present.
However, in this case the stone is broken. It won’t work unless the cracked halves of the stone are placed together again.
Risks and Rewards
Solving the puzzle by destroying the runes is harmful and can potentially kill the child. But if the party figures out what the stone is for, and repair it, they gain the option to fast travel.
Player Options
If the party decides to bring the child with them, without repositioning the stone, they will walk for a couple of minutes, only to find themselves back at the stone. Optionally you could mess with the party by making them perform nature checks to find the way out (but which consistently fail).
You comfort the boy and tell him that you’ll get him to safety. “I’ve tried.” he says. “But it doesn’t work. We will never go home again.” You hold his hand tightly and make your way back into the dense bushes surrounding the stone. After some time the undergrowth opens up a bit and you can walk easily. A couple of more minutes and you find yourself looking for the path you came from. It is nearby, behind some of these bushes. You crawl through them and you step into a clearing. “See?” says the kid, as he points to the cracked stone in the middle. “Never.”
If the party decides to repair the stone, the child can be rescued without being teleported back to the stone. This can be done by repositioning the two halves of the stone together as close as possible. To do this, you need to succeed a strength check (DC20). Also, optionally, the party can fast-travel from this stone to any wind-direction, given a 10% failure chance (because of the crack).
If the party decides to remove the runes, the child can be rescued without being teleported back to the stone. To do this, you need to succeed a strength check (DC15). Once the runes break they let out a wave of energy that hits everyone within 15ft with 2D10+3 radiant damage.
