Battlemap
Red Hand Cave
The first thing you notice is the red handprint beneath your boots, still wet after centuries.
The place called Red Hand Cave was once a hidden refuge and ritual vault cut into a living limestone hill. Its abandoned passages now shelter fanatical custodians, starving prisoners, and a buried thing that has learned to listen through the stone.
Cold mineral air, wet rope, and the sour smell of old blood cling to the tunnels. Water ticks from unseen cracks, while distant scraping travels through the stone. Lanterns burn with low blue flames wherever the old warding marks remain intact.
☠ Threat
The main threat is Shura Below, a limestone-skinned vessel animated by the Listening Deep. It speaks through dripping water, borrowed voices, and tremors underfoot, urging creatures to break the old seals. Shura commands the surviving wardens and seeks the blood needed to open the locked southern door in room 21.
History
Red Hand Cave began as Orsh, a prison cut by stoneworkers who served a vanished mountain kingdom. They sealed a fragment of the Listening Deep beneath the hill, then founded a guard order to maintain the wards. Centuries later, the order became a cult, renamed the chambers, and used captives in renewal rites. Its last master died before completing the final rite.
Encounter Table
CRPale rats with salt-crusted fur and mineral teeth.
Blind attendants wrapped in damp prayer cloth, guided by vibrations.
A crawling mass of bones held together by red cord and cave mud.
A wet limestone hound whose mouth repeats the last voice it heard.
Rumours & Whispers
The red hands in the old cave are not painted to warn people away. They are there to count the dead.
A miner came home speaking in the voice of his own father, who had been buried thirty years ago.
The cult beneath the hill keeps a treasure room where every coin is warm to the touch.
The cave's guardian can be killed only after someone reads a vow aloud in a language nobody remembers.
At night, water runs uphill from the cave entrance toward the mountain.
Quest Hooks
Quest giver: Bram, a blunt one-eyed miner
Miners from the nearby settlement vanished after breaking into a lower seam. Their foreman may still be alive in the prison chambers.
A silver mine claim and 300 gold pieces
Quest giver: Sela Vard, a soft-spoken archivist
A scholar wants the original Orsh inscriptions copied before treasure hunters destroy them.
A translated warding charm and rare maps
Quest giver: Thess, a breathy village seer
A local child has begun repeating a voice heard only inside the cave, naming one adventurer as its new vessel.
A blessing against enchantment and sanctuary in town
Quest giver: Odrik Sorn, a disgraced pilgrim
The old cult's surviving descendants want the sealed door opened, believing an ancestor waits beyond it with promised riches.
A jeweled ritual knife and a dangerous favor
Corridor Notes
Faded red handprints mark the safest route through the cave, though several point toward dead ends.
Iron bells hang from cords across the ceiling, many rusted silent and a few still capable of summoning guards.
Thin streams of warm water run along carved channels, carrying flakes of black stone toward the deeper chambers.
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