December 1st, 973
GM Note – this is the preparation you did for Nareen’s Hill when you were back in Dolven’s Hollow and before you visited Barrow’s Edge. I’m just putting it here in Session 20 to help keep things well organized.
Nareen’s Hill
Back in Dolven’s Hollow, in preparation for their journey to Nareen’s Hill, the heroes gathered once more around a now-familiar table. Before them lay the decrypted letters of Captain Nelson, their attention drawn again and again to the two that spoke of that place. The pages passed from hand to hand, each reader lingering just a moment too long.
Candlelight flickered across the parchment, and the shadows it cast seemed to shift in ways that had nothing to do with the flame. The words were legible now—plain, even—but they resisted understanding all the same, as though something in them had not yet agreed to be known.
(GM Note – read those letters here; they’re the fourth and fifth letters)
The group sat in uneasy silence for a moment after finishing. The words lingered, like the fading toll of a distant bell.
“Well,” Ant said at last, “that’s… not encouraging.”
“‘Suppression to be executed immediately,’” Merrythought said, tapping the page. “The good colonel appears to be in the habit of issuing orders to the past—as if it were in the habit of obeying.”
“And Farris…” Wolfgang added. “He goes in, finds something important, and comes back half-broken, muttering about memory and bells that ring themselves?”
A pause settled over the table.
“Either something very strange happened to him,” Laveleen said slowly, “or something very deliberate.” She considered that for a moment. “Probably both.”
“And Varnes,” Hunkle said, “is in the middle of it.”
They spoke for a time after that—of burned archives and buried records, of whether Farris had been attacked, enchanted, or simply pushed past what the mind can comfortably hold. No single theory held for long, but each left something behind, and slowly the shape of things began to emerge and a quieter understanding settled in.
Whatever had happened at Nareen’s Hill had not been accidental.
And if the answers were anywhere—they were still there.
They found Barin near the forge, sleeves rolled, speaking quietly with Phineas. He dismissed the boy with a nod as the party approached, wiping his hands on a cloth.
“You’ve got that look,” he said. “The one that says you’re about to go somewhere you shouldn’t.”
“We need to ask you about a place,” Shamus said. “Nareen’s Hill.”
Barin paused. “…Right,” he said. “That would be the place.”
He glanced toward the forge, then back to them.
“Nareen’s Hill… a nowhere place with just a chapel, they’ll tell you. Quiet. Out of the way.” He gave a small shrug. “That’s not wrong. Just not the whole truth.”
“What’s the rest of it?” Cassyndra asked.
“There’s a very small order—the Brethren of the Veiled Bell—that maintains the chapel. Or maintained it. On the surface, they did what you’d expect—services, burials, tending to the farms.”
A beat.
“But that’s not why they were there. There’s a repository under the chapel. Old records. The kind the Crown prefers not to keep close.”
“Why not Manchester?” Wolfgang asked.
Barin gave a faint, humorless smile. “Because then people might read them.”
He let that sit for a moment. “They keep it just far enough away. Close enough for the right people. Far enough that no one else thinks to look.”
“If your man went there,” he continued, “he was chasing something old.” A slight tilt of the head. “Or something someone wanted buried.”
Another pause.
“Something else. Things have shifted up there. Past few months, maybe longer. We’ve heard it from a few directions—travelers, a contact or two. Chapel’s ‘closed.’ Renovations, they say.” He huffed softly.
“Places like that don’t renovate.”
“And the Brethren?” someone asked.
“Officially? Reassigned. Crown business. Left in a hurry—the kind of hurry you don’t usually see from the Crown.”
He looked at them more directly now.
“Unofficially? No one I’ve spoken to actually saw them leave.”
The forge crackled behind him.
“If something’s been taken from that place,” Barin said quietly, “it wasn’t done lightly.”
“And whoever did it…” His gaze moved to each of them in turn. “…may not be finished.”