Vor Svetelik

The Green Lords called this place "the Great White City." It was a place of beauty, learning, and study. But when the Fae rebelled, the scholars of Vor Svetelik were tasked with breeding beasts of war. When the Green Lords turned in desperation to the Things Below, the city's waters fouled and its white trees grew sickly. When other Makers shattered what is now Ferrier's Fen, this city became the Green Lords' last refuge and the site of the war's last battle.

The Green Lords made the invaders pay.

They laid traps. They sent their loyal servants to die in waves. They unleashed new horrors, each worse than the last, retreating all the while. And when the Fae and their Stone Lord allies reached the center of the city, they found it… empty.

Naught remained of the Green Lords, except tunnels leading deep into the earth, collapsed behind them.

The Stone Lords retreated to their hills.

The Fae fell to bickering and their armies disbanded. Those few mortal servants of the Green Lords who survived were left to fend for themselves, eventually becoming the Forest Folk.

And Vor Svetelik, the Great White City, was left a blighted, infested ruin.

Impressions

• A scraggly canopy in the valley below, hints of streets and buildings, a broken white tower
• Pale and spindly trees, bearing withered leaves and oozing black sap
• A steady, damp warmth, like foul breath, even in the dead of winter
• That feeling you get when you move a rock and see the grubs and worms squirming beneath, but constantly, everywhere you look

Hooks

• An artifact that the PCs desperately want lies in the city's ruins
• A southern antiquarian knows where to find the ruins, and is leading a substantial expedition there, using Stonetop as a basecamp
• A Fae chieftain is besieging the ruins, attempting to finally exterminate the Fomoraij
• An earthquake cracks open the ruins; horrors vomit forth into the surrounding woods

Getting there

The ruins of Vor Svetelik lie in the Great Wood, wherever you (the GM) need them to be. They should be at least a few days' travel from Stonetop.

To find the ruins, PCs will need a guide or detailed directions.

• A Fae, a spirit of the wild, or the Forest Folk could guide them, but wouldn't want to. All sane beings shun the ruins.
• A Green Lord ruin might contain a map or directions, but the PCs would risk getting lost. Such instructions would be centuries out of date!
• Magic like the Sylvan Web could help the PCs find the ruins themselves, though they'd still risk getting lost on the way.
• The West Road once led from where Stonetop stands to Vor Svetelik. It's broken and long-buried, but could show the way to one who knew what to look for.

Areas

• Outer slopes of the hills surrounding the city, jagged, overgrown, littered with Forest Folk glyphs and invaders' graves.
• Inner slopes of those same hills, steep and unstable, trees thinning out as one descends. Signs of old battle abound.

Stone Lord constructs still stand watch.

• The city's outskirts, hiding ruins of manor-houses and plantations.
• The city's center, tightly packed with ruins, corpses, and danger.
• The undercity, old sewers, cisterns, tunnels, basements, and vaults; linked via erosion, collapse, and beast-burrows.

Sites

The following can all be found in the city's center, though still some distance apart.

• The Conservatory, once a latticed dome of living wood and glass, now burnt, broken, shattered. Bound fertility spirits mournfully tend to hazardous growths.
• The Menagerie, mostly intact. Cubbies line the walls, each with tissue (fur, tooth, etc.) from a different beast. A plasmic horror dwells in a central pit.
• The Great Library, broken white tower, poking through the canopy. Lower levels largely intact—grand, overgrown. Heavily warded, a few chambers still perfectly preserved. Littered with the remains of invaders.
• The Necropolis, cluster of ziggurats, domes, and monuments near the city's center. Ransacked and vandalized, with few tombs intact. Deeply haunted.
• The Hallow Tree, amphitheater carved from a single, massive, fossilized tree stump. Green Lords once met here to share and debate. All that remains is a basalt slab, piles and piles of bones, and hints of tunnels long-ago collapsed.

Terrain

Pick 1 or combine 2, or have someone roll the Die of Fate (d12). If you like, roll 1d6 for size/scope/intensity.

Discoveries

For any of these, pick 1 or have someone roll the Die of Fate.

The cracked portal

Somewhere deep in the ruins is a huge slab of white rock, etched with a magic circle.

A large crack mars the stone and the circle, yet they still thrum with power.

The circle is a portal, connected to those beneath the Ruined Tower, the Labyrinth, near Three Coven Lake, and so forth. The portal can be opened (see Opening the Way, Opening the Way), but it is dangerous and unstable.

When you open the cracked portal (from either direction), roll +INT: on a 10+, the portal opens but pick 1 from the list below;

on a 7-9, the portal opens but pick 2:

• Any who traverse it risk serious harm —1d10 damage (messy, ignores armor)
• You draw the attention of some dangerous primordial entity, like an archon or a voidblight
• The cracks grow bigger; subsequent attempts to use this portal will have a cumulative -1 penalty

On a 6-, the cracked portal shatters violently (1d10 damage, reach, area, messy, forceful, ignores armor) and leaves a rift in its place. The other portal cracks (or shatters, if it was already cracked).

Dangers

Hazards

• Ground collapsing underfoot, dropping (deeper) into the undercity
• A dangerous climb—up or down—and a reason to attempt it
• Spells of war, trapped in stasis, crackling in the air and waiting to spring
• Weird distortions of time and space
• Fae glamours, concealing a place or waiting to ensnare
• Hazardous growths, run rampant or deployed as defenses

Deathgrip vines

In some parts of the city, you'll find hunks of stone cracked apart by vines. The vines bear clusters of burrs all up and down their stalks, which easily fall off and cling to clothing, gear, hair, even skin. The burrs are annoying, maybe a little painful, but not (immediately) harmful.

Throughout the ruins, though, are old sigils of power. When these burrs are brought within a few paces of the sigils, they rapidly sprout and start to grow. And burrow.

And grip. And tear.

When you try to free yourself of sprouting deathgrip vines, roll +STR or +DEX (your call): on a 10+, you can get free if you pick 1 from the list below; on a 7-9, you can get free if you pick 2:

• Tear vines from your flesh (1d8 damage, messy, ignores armor)
• Lose/discard 1d4 × worth of items ◇
• Someone else (who isn't in a similar plight) needs to help you

On a 6-, take 1d6 damage (messy, grabby, ignores armor) and the vines continue to grow, burrow, and constrict. Each time they deal damage, increase the damage die by one step.