Dawn In the Barrow

Your eyes open to the pale light of early dawn breaking pouring through the barrow entrance. You banish the blankets wrapped around you, and stumble outside to the stream.

You can't stop thinking about your dream. It had felt more... solid, you suppose, than the morning before. Certainly more detailed. But some parts had been less real than others. The armies, in particular. They were... not quite ghosts. Like echoes, but of sight rather than sound. But the land had felt real, and the sea, and other things that swirl around your mind—the crown, the sword, the eye—

You splash your face with water. No. If you're going to make any sense of it, you have to keep your thoughts coherent.

"Good morning, my lord."

You jump slightly, and turn to find the pixie who swore herself to your service the night before. You hadn't heard her approach at all.

"You certainly can move silently." She begins to apologize, but you wave away her concerns. Instead, you push on to another subject. "How much did you overhear last night?"

She blushes.

Ah. "Not quite what I meant. Before that?"

She takes a moment to calm herself. "I heard the oath she swore to you."

"And what do you think?"

She pursed her lips. "I trust that if she doesn't keep her word, she'll regret it." Considering what happened to her, that's about as good as you can expect.

"The arrangement will profit us," you say, "one way or another." You take another drink from the stream. "Have you had breakfast, yet?"

"No, my lord." If the shift in the conversation bothered her at all, it didn't show.

"Then I want you to gather something to eat for the both of us. There are berries enough in the the area for us. It should also help you start to learn the area around the barrow, but try not to be too long—I've business while it's still morning—the earlier the better." Holly will be safer here, with you.

She sets off on her task, and you turn back towards your barrow. You linger in the doorway for a moment, taking in the sight of it. You knock on the wall.

Building Location Detected

Available Resources:

15x Stone, 3x Worn Blankets, 1x Inscribed Archfey Sarcophagus, Sealed, 14x Silver Ingots, 7x Gold Ingots

Available Actions:

Remodel Alankor_Fey_Barrow_12.7_Location_1 into Lair Entranceway for 10x Stone, 2x Ore (Any)

Warning! This is the required first step to unlock many of the features of the Keeps and Settlements 1.0.0.0.0.2 Update!

You accept, and another window appears overtop the last.

Please choose metal type:

Silver, Gold

Given its relative value and current abundance, you pick silver. With a single tap, the world in front of you shifts. For a brief moment, the barrow the very heart of chaos—up is left, down is backwards, inside is sideways. When that moment passes, the barrow is... not quite gone.

The room in front of you now is a perfect circle, perhaps sixteen feet across at the longest—a little larger than it had been before. The walls are not quite perfectly smooth, and the roof is a squat dome. The entranceway, where you're standing, in better shape than you can recall it ever being, its bricks now set in an arch. Lining the walls are a series of sconces forged from shining silver, each bearing a smoky flame. That smoke is quickly gathering in the domed hollow of the roof.

On a whim, you approach one of the sconces and give it a tap.

Upgradeable Feature detected!

Upgrade Silver Sconce to Magical Sconce?

You give it a tap, and:

Error: Feature requires either an invocation or a source of power.

An... invocation?

You speak the name of your barrow aloud, and by its name bid in Sylvan that it give you light—the first you've spoken your native tongue in all your memory. In the blink of an eye the error window shifts into a progress bar. With a tap, a message floats away from the sconce.

No Tools, -50%. Total build speed: 50%

It doesn't take long for you to finish it. When you have. little glowing lines run along the silver. The coughing red flame sputters and dies. In its place rises a pale, ethereal blue, with not a wisp of smoke in sight.

This pleases you. So much so that you repeat the process with the remaining sconces. The smoke already in the barrow is lurking in the dome, but it should dissipate in time.

"My lord! My lord!"

You turn to find the pixie fluttering in through the barrow entrance. Her wings are beating hard, and she's breathing hard.

"My lord," she puffs, "there's a dryad. The naiad in the stream found her. She's in really bad shape."

You heart drops out of your chest. There are dryads squirreled away all over the forest. But you know who it was right down to your bones.