The Artefact!
“A missive, your Greatness. From the scouts sent to search for the artefact.”
“Bring it forth.” Snatching the parchment from the hand of your minion, you observe the message scrawled upon it.
‘We followed the priestess’s map to the barrow. Her tales were correct. Therein we found the Skull of Grinwald Ironborne, sealed in a stone casket with his earthly riches.’
You do not wait to finish the note. “Where is the skull?” You demand of your underling.
“Here, your Greatness. They mutter, bowing deeply to garner your approval. The flaps to your tent are flung wide by soldiers clad in plate armour. Between them, they carry a small oaken chest, decorated with iron banding and engraved with the scenes of battle. They place the chest atop a table before you and step back to the edges of your tent.
Reaching out, you trace the edges of the chest in anticipation. The sturdy wood seems to shudder beneath your hands as if the power within can barely be contained. In a surge of compulsion, you fling open the lid. Snaking tendrils of black magic explode from the box, filling the tent with darkness and drawing gasps from the soldiers within. Around you, you hear the clattering of armour hitting the ground, and the dry rasping of breath being pulled from fleshy lungs. As the blackness clears, a charnel scene is revealed. Your soldiers lie dead and dying in the mud, the skin scoured from their faces by the necromantic energy of the artefact. After casting a quick gaze over the fallen soldiers, you turn your attention to the contents of the chest; the Skull of Grinwald Ironborne.
The horned skull is bound in leather save the eye sockets, snout, and horns. Embossed into the leather are arcane sigils of binding and imprisonment that glow with a pallid purple light. The curling horns of the skull have been stained crimson with blood, and are capped with barbed cones of black iron. Lifting the skull high, you feel power surging through your body. This will bring about your dreams. A great rift torn through the fabric of this world, unleashing your allies from their abyssal realm.
Slowly, carefully, you replace the artefact in its entombing chest and return to the missive.
‘Upon the walls of the tomb were scrawled a myriad of messages in an infernal script that took many hours to decipher. Most seemed to be warnings, and accounts of the conquests of Ironborne, but one struck us as more pertinent to your own objectives, your Greatness. It read thus:
‘Up twisting river of cold water,
Lies the site of untold slaughter,
Encircled by the giant’s bones,
The sanguine Altar of Black Stone.’