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?"

The village is on the side of the lake that has half-day and night. The sun is on the edge of zenith and about to be eclipsed by the magic of the area.

" you got about another 20 minutes and then it's gonna be dark for 18 hours" answers the boy. " it doesn't rain much here but if it starts you come indoors. The rain raises the curses from the soil and makes your eyes go dark."

Just to illuminate the sitch a little, the bluff where the lynx is rumored is in the dark part of the land. You don't have any choice but to go there in the dark. It's never daylight there.

The people in the tavern look at Dahlia in a puzzled way. Then an old woman scoffs at her. "We all know what poisons the lake. It's the curse on the land, when the rain falls it rises from the soil and flows into the lake. You think you'll solve that by rowing a boat out on the lake?" She laughs bitterly, and turns her attention back to her handleless porcelain mug.

The old woman squints at Dahlia "Since the time of the Martoi and their wars, the land has been dark," she answers. "Some say it's from a foolish effort to conceal the movement of troops in darkness. Anyway, to the west it's always dark; here it just gets dark when it rains. But the runoff makes the fish and water bad." She shakes her head slowly. "People try to move away but no land will accept our refugees. They're worried that the darkness is contagious."

The old woman looks blankly at Myrven. "Maybe … in Once Martol." (You recognize the name: the former capital of the Martoi kingdom, long since fallen to ruins through their ancient internecine strife.) "You think you can reverse the curse?" She scoffs again. "You'd be the first to try. That I know of."

"It's … that way? Time is weird in the darkness. And I don't know anyone who's been there. So I can't really guess how far, how many hours."

Montage

The villagers are hospitable, and let you stay overnight (all 18 hours) in the tavern for free. The fish and the water do taste strange, and make your stomachs hurt.

Morning comes way too long after "sunset" and you already are restlessly awake when the sun rises. Equipped with a single torch, you set your backs to the village and step toward the vertical veil of darkness, beyond which are the bluffs where the lynx is rumored. You've been told it will take 2 torches to get there …

The journey in darkness seems interminable. The gloom, which seems more palpable than ordinary light, strangely attenuates and swallows the light of your torch. You can barely make out a ten foot distance around the path you tread. You light the second torch from the first and plod onward, uphill along the edge of a strange-smelling stream that glimmers in the torchlight with strangely fluorescent pastel colors. There seems a good likelihood that ancient Martoi pigments are indeed in them thar hills, given the rainbow appearance of the stream.

Near the haft of the second torch, you reach the base of a steep incline. Above, you see a glowing opening in the face of the bluff. Firelight flickers there but casts little illumination into the damping darkness all around.

You hear a strange airy howling noise, like wind blowing around a corner. It comes from somewhere nearby — you think.

You then hear a rasping snarl from the same direction. Looking that way, you see two round golden glowing eyes. In the darkness it is hard to tell the size of the creature that has those eyes. But it has a voice: "Welcome to the place of the Ricalu," it says in a meowing tone. "Do you bring gifts?"

What was that noise? A cooing chirp? "I am not Ricalu," the cat-voice answers. "I am not named. But I like to drink wine. Did you bring any?"

Again the cooing chirp. Soft paws pad toward you. The lynx is big — easily half your size — and rainbow-pastel like the stream. It bleps its tongue at the sight of the wine skin. Then it sits, its head a little higher than waist-high, its posture proud. "You may squirt the wine into my mouth," it says, and gapes open fangéd jaws.

After several gulping swallows, the big cat abruptly closes its jaws; a little wine splashes on its snout, which it licks clean with a very long tongue. "Thank you, honored guests," it says. "Come in the house of the Ricalu. This way!"

The lynx turns away from you, and pads into the darkness ­— abruptly out of sight, its eyes not visible.

Do you follow?

You traipse after the lynx, which shadowy moves around a large boulder and squeezes through an opening taller than your heads but so narrow that you must turn sideways. Inside is a cavern that smells very much of cat, a large space beyond your torchlight. The lynx turns around a few times on a large bed of faded grass, then settles down with its head on its crossed front paws. It yawns. "At the back of the cave you can go left, or right," it says. "Either way you'll meet the Ricalu."

Who is carrying the lit torch at this point? Is that Dahlia? If not, does the torchbearer go with Dahlia?

In any case, the torch is flickering low and blue. Another torch need be lit.

Left or right?

The leftward opening leads into a cramped and damp passageway, its stone walls scored by tools. The torchlight shows faint streaks of fluorescent pigments in the rock. It seems this passage might once have been a mine tunnel.

You hear footsteps and then turn a corner in the passage and confront a small wrinkled creature with pale skin as iridescent as an opal. Multicolored and faintly glowing tattoos seem to crawl on that skin.

"What are you doing up out of the works?" the creature demands of you. "Get back down the shaft at once!"

The creature is indeed humanoid. It wears a scanty loincloth and has a generally genderless appearance. You notice that it's not carrying any light source.

"Of course, the pigments! … (idiots) …" the creature makes an impatient gesture at you, over its shoulder in the direction you were headed. "Hurry up!"

The strange wizened character does not follow you as you trod further along the tunnel, which gets small in places (your torch flame battering and sooting the ceiling) but is not impassable.

You hear the sound of metal striking stone, first faintly ahead of you and then you step out of the tunnel onto a ledge that overlooks a dark space. Although the cavern is large and unlit, you can see frequent small showers of sparks as mining tools strike rock; and you hear a continuous quiet chanting and grunting as workers, all in darkness, wield the tools.

There is a set of steps carved into the ledge leading down into the pigment mine, as that is what this seems to be. Do you think it odd that there are no lights?

The workers toil in darkness, chanting, still invisible to you aside from the sparks struck by their tools. You are guessing that they resemble the creature who sent you here, but you don't yet know.

Descending the steps from the ledge, it is a long way down to the mine floor. Dozens of feet down. The torch light does not reach the far wall where sparks fly at various levels.

The mine floor is muddy with a faint pastel fluorescence in the mud. Not visible from the ledge, with your feet squishing in the moist and pigmented clay it is apparent that some treasure remains to be had, here.

Crossing the floor toward the working wall, the torchlight shows you the base of wooden scaffolding with a ladder going up into darkness. There are no workers near the … wait, the torch shows a small person reclined on the lowest wooden plank platform, at about your chest level. They are asleep, clutching their chisel and scoop to their chest.

"Eeep!" says the sleeper as it or he or she awakes. "Hello bright lights hurt eyes please put them out!"

The now-awakened creature wraps its forearm across its eyes to block the light from your torch.

Damn it's dark … as your eyes adjust to the stygian surroundings.

Moments pass, and, strangely, vision gathers. With the torch extinguished, you can distinguish first nearby and then distant features of this mine face. Of most interest is the stranger nearest you, who smiles gratefully at the relief of light.

"I'm Ricalu," s/he says in a mid-register voice. "Nice to meet you, Ricalu. Are you here to help mine pigment?"

"We are Ricalu," says the small person who wears a diaper and nothing else. "We mine pigment. Come put down your burdens and I will bring you to your tools. We have extra!"

Looking around you see the dozens of Ricalu working the face at all levels of the towering scaffold. They are various shapes and sizes, some small and others quite gangly.