TRILEMMA GAME

@Drgwen,@Rumo

We begin in a fishing village near the south end of Halfnight Lake (SW corner of map above). We've been traveling through the land called "Once Martol", seeking rumors and lore of the Martoi for our purpose. In the village tavern, we heard it said:
What more urging do we need to explore?

Let's note a few things about Once Martol:
• The entire land is as black (at all times) as Darkvale on a cloudy night; no guides will take travelers into it willingly.
• Animals seem unaffected by the darkness. They are also enormous and territorial (as is common in wild places).
• Lamps and torches seem to shine only feebly here.

Halfnight Lake is on the border of Once Martol, and as the name suggests, the western half the lake is all times black as night while the eastern half experiences night and day. People who live on the shores and fish the waters do so out of desperation; the water and the fish are bad.

Dahlia recalls that the ancient Martoi mined brilliant pigments that stick very well. The pigments were a 🌈 of colors. Some say they could be used in magic to make paintings that summon what is painted.

You gather with locals in the tavern. There's a variety of talk about how bad the fish taste lately, how Erwin wants to move away from here, but Kadya won't let him leave because her mother (whom he hates) is sick. Almost everyone here is sick … something about the water, or the fish. The imported wine soothes their stomachs. It's not clear what they trade for the wine, though someone mentions sending a kid off to a "better life" in the eastern lands.

Then someone lets slip that they're having a hard time getting pigment off their hands! Listening closer, you hear that Birevia pays gold for the tiniest scrap of that pigment, and these hills supposedly have lots. Maybe, the gigantic lynx guards a mother lode. But no-one has the guts to challenge it.

"You'll need torches for the dark place," volunteers one of the locals — a shifty looking young man with a patchy blond beard, whose eyes don't match. "Just one coin." He has a whiny voice.

The young man gets an anxious look on his face and scratches his scraggly beard. "I don't know. People stay out of the dark around here, for the most part. I don't think even anybody has been up the hill to where the lynx was in a while. We're not real adventurers, round here. Just tryna get by, right?"