The Caves

Kisdon is riddled with caves, and these caves are magical. They are not part of Rogan's realm, but are also not uninhabited. They contain a vis source, the one that the covenant will be able to get as a protected source, and also potential accomodation. Say, six pawns of Terram vis per year. The inhabitants are not human, but not faeries either. They are magical creatures, intelligent enough to be grogs or companions, who could be played as Pcs. They could also wage guerrilla war on the covenant, if approached differently.

The Vis Source

The vis source is in a dead-end cave about a hundred feet below the surface. The room has a magical aura of 2, and is about forty feet in diameter, with its ceiling reaching up to twenty feet. The vis source itself is on the wall opposite the entrance: white crystals, worth one pawn of Terram vis each, grow there, dropping off when complete, every two months. The growing crystal glows quite brightly, illuminating the cave. The cave is inhabited by a large serpent, about fifteen feet long, mottled grey and white, with a bright red crest along its head. This serpent is vicious, and will attack anything entering the cave. It leaves the cave on occasion and roams the upper levels of the cave complex. It will not emerge from underground.

Scattered around the cave are the skeletons of other, smaller snakes, and twenty crystals, each worth a pawn of Terram vis. The serpent itself is also worth five pawns of Animal vis. If the walls of the cave are examined, then images of snakes will be found carved in the surface. These carvings are somewhat unusual, in that they seem to be melted in. There is a similar carving of a dragon surrounding the place where the vis is produced.

The Serpent

Magic Might 25

Bite 1st +10 Atk +12 Dam +18

Acid Missile, Dam +25 to one target.

It can spit a stream of acid at anyone within the cave or standing in the doorway, and it can do this once every five rounds. It can bite in the round wherein it spits.

Fat +3 Def +5 Soak +10

Body Levels: OK/OK, -1, -3, -5, Incap.

The Temple

Three hundred feet below the surface, centrally placed in the hill, is a large chamber (100 feet across, forty feet at the peak) which contains a man-sized stalagmite in the centre. The stalagmite is also vaguely man-shaped when the characters find it, and becomes gradually more defined as the years pass, eventually becoming a portrait statue of a young woman, after about twenty years. The statue and the ground below it are intensely magical, with a Magic Resistance of 70, and a Soak of +50 against mundane damage. In a cavity under the statue is a Dragon's Egg, which is about thirty years away from hatching.

The room is a temple for the Syethiss, and over a hundred small statuettes of dragons and serpents stand in niches melted into the wall. Between the niches, the wall is covered in carvings representing the life of a great Dragon. This is the history of the dragon Perristus, who lived from 112 to 893 AD, and whose egg lies beneath the floor. She created the Syethiss to guard this egg, and concealed the rest of the brood elsewhere. Each of the statuettes (of which there are 117) is carved from one of the Terram crystals and is worth a pawn of vis. Taking them will incur the eternal enmity of the Syethiss, however. There will always be at least twenty of them in here, of whom a dozen are guards.

The woman in the statue has a psychic link to the young dragon, and is compelled, by her own desires, to guard it until it reaches some kind of maturity, about twenty years after hatching.

The Syethiss

The Syethiss are intelligent serpents. They are normally about eight feet long, and a mottled grey and white colour. The serpent in the cave is a Syethiss sport, and a dangerous one, which has kept them out of the cave for many years. Their tails are prehensile, and they secrete a strong acid in their mouths which allows them to shape stone into tools by licking it. They can produce good edges by this method, and are usually armed with stone swords. They can also create extremely intricate items, such as stone chests with hinges.

Most Syethiss are stronger than humans, but less intelligent. They are adapted for underground life, and sunlight would blind them, as they find their way about by touch and sound. They can see, and that is one reason why they have such respect for the Terram crystals. Some of them are born with coloured crests, and these have magical abilities. The precise abilities vary from Syethiss to Syethiss, but are on the Virtue level, rather than being Hermetic magic. Perristus was vastly powerful, but even she had her limits.

The Syethiss have a doom hanging over them: when the egg hatches, they will cease to reproduce, and then die out. The magi might be able to find a way around that problem, if they are on good enough terms with the Syethiss to want to.

Normal Syethiss

Per +3, Scan 3 (if on guard duty)

Sword 1st +5 Atk +6 Dam +14

Fat +2 Def +4 Soak +10 Body Levels OK, -1, -3, -5, Incap.

There are many non-warriors, but they are not likely to be encountered at first, unless the characters decide to investigate.