/home/sean/src/github.com/sesopenko/task-decomposition-spike/.venv/bin/python -m task_decomposition.main 
INFO:__main__:Run output directory initialised at: /home/sean/src/github.com/sesopenko/task-decomposition-spike/output/2025-12-13_17-56-13
INFO:__main__:Using LLM to get task plan...
INFO:__main__:Attempt 1 to generate TaskPlan
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions "HTTP/1.1 200 OK"
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions "HTTP/1.1 200 OK"
INFO:__main__:Cost: $0.0735750
INFO:__main__:Took 2 tries
WARNING:task_decomposition.task_plan_validator:TaskPlan validation failed: input/output incompatibility detected between dependent tasks
WARNING:__main__:Generated TaskPlan failed validation on attempt 1; retrying if attempts remain
INFO:__main__:Attempt 2 to generate TaskPlan
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions "HTTP/1.1 200 OK"
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions "HTTP/1.1 200 OK"
INFO:__main__:Cost: $0.1144150
INFO:__main__:Took 2 tries
INFO:__main__:Successfully generated a valid TaskPlan on attempt 2
INFO:__main__:Objective: Produce five Pathfinder Remastered-quality, commercial-grade sourcebook markdown chapters—one for each Sandpoint Hinterlands location (The Pyre, The Three Cormorants, The Old Light, Tickwood, Shank's Wood)—with specified sections, each saved as its own file.
INFO:__main__:
INFO:__main__:Requires 16 tasks
INFO:__main__:Task: loc_briefs
INFO:__main__:Prompt:
INFO:__main__:```
INFO:__main__:Role: You are a Pathfinder Remastered setting designer for Golarion, focused on the Sandpoint region during a Rise of the Runelords conversion.

Intent: Produce concise, GM-facing concept briefs for each of the five Sandpoint Hinterlands locations to guide deeper chapter writing.

Context: The campaign is a conversion of the original Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path to Pathfinder Remastered. The locations are:
- The Pyre
- The Three Cormorants
- The Old Light
- Tickwood
- Shank's Wood

These briefs will be used by later tasks to expand into full chapters. They don’t need to include stat blocks, only conceptual direction.

Constraints:
- Use Pathfinder/Golarion canon as a baseline, but you may add flavorful, non-contradictory details.
- Write for a GM audience (not players), in neutral, descriptive prose.
- For each location, specify: core theme (1–2 sentences), typical party level range, primary adventure tones (e.g., horror, exploration, intrigue), and 2–3 central conflicts or hooks.
- Keep each location’s brief to roughly 150–250 words.

Output: Return a single string containing five clearly separated subsections, one per location, each with labeled bullets for: Core Theme, Level Range, Tones, and Central Conflicts/Hooks.
INFO:__main__:```
INFO:__main__:Output (string): Concept briefs for the five locations, in a single markdown-formatted string with labeled subsections and bullets per location
INFO:__main__:
INFO:__main__:Task: outline_pyre
INFO:__main__:Prompt:
INFO:__main__:```
INFO:__main__:Role: You are a detailed adventure sourcebook outliner for Pathfinder Remastered.

Intent: Create a chapter-level outline for a GM-facing sourcebook entry on The Pyre in the Sandpoint Hinterlands, using the provided high-level brief.

Context: You are expanding on The Pyre, a Sandpoint Hinterlands location in a Rise of the Runelords-era game. You are given the following concept material from an upstream task:

[BRIEF FOR THE PYRE]:
{{INPUT_BRIEF}}

Later tasks will turn your outline into prose and then polish it; you only need to provide structure and short notes.

Constraints:
- Organize the outline under the three required top-level headings:
  1. Location Overview
  2. Geography & Environment
  3. Notable Features
- Under each heading, create 3–7 subsections (second- or third-level bullets/headings) with 1–2 sentence notes explaining the intended content and purpose.
- Focus on usability at the table: call out what a GM needs to present the place, run scenes, and seed adventures.
- Do not write full paragraphs of final text—only outline entries with concise notes.

Output: A single string containing a hierarchical markdown outline for The Pyre chapter, using headings and nested bullet lists appropriate for later expansion.
INFO:__main__:```
INFO:__main__:Depends on: loc_briefs
INFO:__main__:Input (string): Concept briefs for the five locations, in a single markdown-formatted string with labeled subsections and bullets per location
INFO:__main__:Output (string): Markdown outline for The Pyre chapter
INFO:__main__:
INFO:__main__:Task: outline_three_cormorants
INFO:__main__:Prompt:
INFO:__main__:```
INFO:__main__:Role: You are a detailed adventure sourcebook outliner for Pathfinder Remastered.

Intent: Create a chapter-level outline for a GM-facing sourcebook entry on The Three Cormorants in the Sandpoint Hinterlands, using the provided high-level brief.

Context: You are expanding on The Three Cormorants, a Sandpoint Hinterlands location in a Rise of the Runelords-era game. You are given the following concept material from an upstream task:

[BRIEF FOR THE THREE CORMORANTS]:
{{INPUT_BRIEF}}

Later tasks will turn your outline into prose and then polish it; you only need to provide structure and short notes.

Constraints:
- Organize the outline under the three required top-level headings:
  1. Location Overview
  2. Geography & Environment
  3. Notable Features
- Under each heading, create 3–7 subsections (second- or third-level bullets/headings) with 1–2 sentence notes explaining the intended content and purpose.
- Focus on usability at the table: call out what a GM needs to present the place, run scenes, and seed adventures.
- Do not write full paragraphs of final text—only outline entries with concise notes.

Output: A single string containing a hierarchical markdown outline for The Three Cormorants chapter, using headings and nested bullet lists appropriate for later expansion.
INFO:__main__:```
INFO:__main__:Depends on: loc_briefs
INFO:__main__:Input (string): Concept briefs for the five locations, in a single markdown-formatted string with labeled subsections and bullets per location
INFO:__main__:Output (string): Markdown outline for The Three Cormorants chapter
INFO:__main__:
INFO:__main__:Task: outline_old_light
INFO:__main__:Prompt:
INFO:__main__:```
INFO:__main__:Role: You are a detailed adventure sourcebook outliner for Pathfinder Remastered.

Intent: Create a chapter-level outline for a GM-facing sourcebook entry on The Old Light in the Sandpoint Hinterlands, using the provided high-level brief.

Context: You are expanding on The Old Light, a Sandpoint-adjacent landmark in a Rise of the Runelords-era game. You are given the following concept material from an upstream task:

[BRIEF FOR THE OLD LIGHT]:
{{INPUT_BRIEF}}

Later tasks will turn your outline into prose and then polish it; you only need to provide structure and short notes.

Constraints:
- Organize the outline under the three required top-level headings:
  1. Location Overview
  2. Geography & Environment
  3. Notable Features
- Under each heading, create 3–7 subsections (second- or third-level bullets/headings) with 1–2 sentence notes explaining the intended content and purpose.
- Focus on usability at the table: call out what a GM needs to present the place, run scenes, and seed adventures, including ties to ancient Thassilonian lore where appropriate.
- Do not write full paragraphs of final text—only outline entries with concise notes.

Output: A single string containing a hierarchical markdown outline for The Old Light chapter, using headings and nested bullet lists appropriate for later expansion.
INFO:__main__:```
INFO:__main__:Depends on: loc_briefs
INFO:__main__:Input (string): Concept briefs for the five locations, in a single markdown-formatted string with labeled subsections and bullets per location
INFO:__main__:Output (string): Markdown outline for The Old Light chapter
INFO:__main__:
INFO:__main__:Task: outline_tickwood
INFO:__main__:Prompt:
INFO:__main__:```
INFO:__main__:Role: You are a detailed adventure sourcebook outliner for Pathfinder Remastered.

Intent: Create a chapter-level outline for a GM-facing sourcebook entry on Tickwood in the Sandpoint Hinterlands, using the provided high-level brief.

Context: You are expanding on Tickwood, a Sandpoint Hinterlands wilderness region in a Rise of the Runelords-era game. You are given the following concept material from an upstream task:

[BRIEF FOR TICKWOOD]:
{{INPUT_BRIEF}}

Later tasks will turn your outline into prose and then polish it; you only need to provide structure and short notes.

Constraints:
- Organize the outline under the three required top-level headings:
  1. Location Overview
  2. Geography & Environment
  3. Notable Features
- Under each heading, create 3–7 subsections (second- or third-level bullets/headings) with 1–2 sentence notes explaining the intended content and purpose.
- Focus on usability at the table: call out what a GM needs to present the place, run scenes, and seed adventures.
- Do not write full paragraphs of final text—only outline entries with concise notes.

Output: A single string containing a hierarchical markdown outline for the Tickwood chapter, using headings and nested bullet lists appropriate for later expansion.
INFO:__main__:```
INFO:__main__:Depends on: loc_briefs
INFO:__main__:Input (string): Concept briefs for the five locations, in a single markdown-formatted string with labeled subsections and bullets per location
INFO:__main__:Output (string): Markdown outline for the Tickwood chapter
INFO:__main__:
INFO:__main__:Task: outline_shanks_wood
INFO:__main__:Prompt:
INFO:__main__:```
INFO:__main__:Role: You are a detailed adventure sourcebook outliner for Pathfinder Remastered.

Intent: Create a chapter-level outline for a GM-facing sourcebook entry on Shank's Wood in the Sandpoint Hinterlands, using the provided high-level brief.

Context: You are expanding on Shank's Wood, a Sandpoint Hinterlands wilderness region in a Rise of the Runelords-era game. You are given the following concept material from an upstream task:

[BRIEF FOR SHANK'S WOOD]:
{{INPUT_BRIEF}}

Later tasks will turn your outline into prose and then polish it; you only need to provide structure and short notes.

Constraints:
- Organize the outline under the three required top-level headings:
  1. Location Overview
  2. Geography & Environment
  3. Notable Features
- Under each heading, create 3–7 subsections (second- or third-level bullets/headings) with 1–2 sentence notes explaining the intended content and purpose.
- Focus on usability at the table: call out what a GM needs to present the place, run scenes, and seed adventures.
- Do not write full paragraphs of final text—only outline entries with concise notes.

Output: A single string containing a hierarchical markdown outline for the Shank's Wood chapter, using headings and nested bullet lists appropriate for later expansion.
INFO:__main__:```
INFO:__main__:Depends on: loc_briefs
INFO:__main__:Input (string): Concept briefs for the five locations, in a single markdown-formatted string with labeled subsections and bullets per location
INFO:__main__:Output (string): Markdown outline for the Shank's Wood chapter
INFO:__main__:
INFO:__main__:Task: draft_pyre
INFO:__main__:Prompt:
INFO:__main__:```
INFO:__main__:Role: You are a Pathfinder Remastered sourcebook prose writer.

Intent: Expand the existing outline for The Pyre into a full, chapter-length markdown document for commercial-quality publication.

Context: You are provided with a detailed markdown outline for The Pyre chapter from an upstream task:

[OUTLINE FOR THE PYRE]:
{{OUTLINE}}

The campaign is a Rise of the Runelords conversion set in the Sandpoint Hinterlands. This chapter must be GM-facing and usable at the table.

Constraints:
- Structure the chapter under these exact top-level headings, in this order:
  # The Pyre
  ## Location Overview
  ## Geography & Environment
  ## Notable Features
- Under each heading, follow the outline’s structure, converting bullets and notes into polished paragraphs and subheadings as appropriate.
- Aim for a "chapter" length suitable for commercial sale: roughly 2,000–3,500 words total, rich in detail, but still practical.
- Avoid game stats, but you may reference creature and hazard types in generic terms (e.g., "ogre bruiser," "low-level undead guardian").
- Maintain consistency with Golarion and Rise of the Runelords themes while allowing for GM customization.
- The chapter must be fully self-contained, without referencing any other tasks or outlines.

Output: A single string containing the complete markdown chapter for The Pyre, ready to be saved as a .md file.
INFO:__main__:```
INFO:__main__:Depends on: outline_pyre
INFO:__main__:Input (string): Markdown outline for The Pyre chapter
INFO:__main__:Output (string): Full markdown chapter text for The Pyre
INFO:__main__:
INFO:__main__:Task: draft_three_cormorants
INFO:__main__:Prompt:
INFO:__main__:```
INFO:__main__:Role: You are a Pathfinder Remastered sourcebook prose writer.

Intent: Expand the existing outline for The Three Cormorants into a full, chapter-length markdown document for commercial-quality publication.

Context: You are provided with a detailed markdown outline for The Three Cormorants chapter from an upstream task:

[OUTLINE FOR THE THREE CORMORANTS]:
{{OUTLINE}}

The campaign is a Rise of the Runelords conversion set in the Sandpoint Hinterlands. This chapter must be GM-facing and usable at the table.

Constraints:
- Structure the chapter under these exact top-level headings, in this order:
  # The Three Cormorants
  ## Location Overview
  ## Geography & Environment
  ## Notable Features
- Under each heading, follow the outline’s structure, converting bullets and notes into polished paragraphs and subheadings as appropriate.
- Aim for a "chapter" length suitable for commercial sale: roughly 2,000–3,500 words total, rich in detail, but still practical.
- Avoid game stats, but you may reference creature and hazard types in generic terms.
- Maintain consistency with Golarion and Rise of the Runelords themes while allowing for GM customization.
- The chapter must be fully self-contained, without referencing any other tasks or outlines.

Output: A single string containing the complete markdown chapter for The Three Cormorants, ready to be saved as a .md file.
INFO:__main__:```
INFO:__main__:Depends on: outline_three_cormorants
INFO:__main__:Input (string): Markdown outline for The Three Cormorants chapter
INFO:__main__:Output (string): Full markdown chapter text for The Three Cormorants
INFO:__main__:
INFO:__main__:Task: draft_old_light
INFO:__main__:Prompt:
INFO:__main__:```
INFO:__main__:Role: You are a Pathfinder Remastered sourcebook prose writer.

Intent: Expand the existing outline for The Old Light into a full, chapter-length markdown document for commercial-quality publication.

Context: You are provided with a detailed markdown outline for The Old Light chapter from an upstream task:

[OUTLINE FOR THE OLD LIGHT]:
{{OUTLINE}}

The campaign is a Rise of the Runelords conversion set in the Sandpoint region, with strong ties to ancient Thassilonian lore. This chapter must be GM-facing and usable at the table.

Constraints:
- Structure the chapter under these exact top-level headings, in this order:
  # The Old Light
  ## Location Overview
  ## Geography & Environment
  ## Notable Features
- Under each heading, follow the outline’s structure, converting bullets and notes into polished paragraphs and subheadings as appropriate.
- Aim for a "chapter" length suitable for commercial sale: roughly 2,000–3,500 words total, rich in detail, but still practical.
- Avoid game stats, but you may reference creature and hazard types in generic terms.
- Weave in Thassilonian history and magical remnants as appropriate, keeping compatibility with Rise of the Runelords themes.
- The chapter must be fully self-contained, without referencing any other tasks or outlines.

Output: A single string containing the complete markdown chapter for The Old Light, ready to be saved as a .md file.
INFO:__main__:```
INFO:__main__:Depends on: outline_old_light
INFO:__main__:Input (string): Markdown outline for The Old Light chapter
INFO:__main__:Output (string): Full markdown chapter text for The Old Light
INFO:__main__:
INFO:__main__:Task: draft_tickwood
INFO:__main__:Prompt:
INFO:__main__:```
INFO:__main__:Role: You are a Pathfinder Remastered sourcebook prose writer.

Intent: Expand the existing outline for Tickwood into a full, chapter-length markdown document for commercial-quality publication.

Context: You are provided with a detailed markdown outline for the Tickwood chapter from an upstream task:

[OUTLINE FOR TICKWOOD]:
{{OUTLINE}}

The campaign is a Rise of the Runelords conversion set in the Sandpoint Hinterlands. This chapter must be GM-facing and usable at the table.

Constraints:
- Structure the chapter under these exact top-level headings, in this order:
  # Tickwood
  ## Location Overview
  ## Geography & Environment
  ## Notable Features
- Under each heading, follow the outline’s structure, converting bullets and notes into polished paragraphs and subheadings as appropriate.
- Aim for a "chapter" length suitable for commercial sale: roughly 2,000–3,500 words total, rich in detail, but still practical.
- Avoid game stats, but you may reference creature and hazard types in generic terms.
- Maintain consistency with Golarion and Rise of the Runelords themes while allowing for GM customization.
- The chapter must be fully self-contained, without referencing any other tasks or outlines.

Output: A single string containing the complete markdown chapter for Tickwood, ready to be saved as a .md file.
INFO:__main__:```
INFO:__main__:Depends on: outline_tickwood
INFO:__main__:Input (string): Markdown outline for the Tickwood chapter
INFO:__main__:Output (string): Full markdown chapter text for Tickwood
INFO:__main__:
INFO:__main__:Task: draft_shanks_wood
INFO:__main__:Prompt:
INFO:__main__:```
INFO:__main__:Role: You are a Pathfinder Remastered sourcebook prose writer.

Intent: Expand the existing outline for Shank's Wood into a full, chapter-length markdown document for commercial-quality publication.

Context: You are provided with a detailed markdown outline for the Shank's Wood chapter from an upstream task:

[OUTLINE FOR SHANK'S WOOD]:
{{OUTLINE}}

The campaign is a Rise of the Runelords conversion set in the Sandpoint Hinterlands. This chapter must be GM-facing and usable at the table.

Constraints:
- Structure the chapter under these exact top-level headings, in this order:
  # Shank's Wood
  ## Location Overview
  ## Geography & Environment
  ## Notable Features
- Under each heading, follow the outline’s structure, converting bullets and notes into polished paragraphs and subheadings as appropriate.
- Aim for a "chapter" length suitable for commercial sale: roughly 2,000–3,500 words total, rich in detail, but still practical.
- Avoid game stats, but you may reference creature and hazard types in generic terms.
- Maintain consistency with Golarion and Rise of the Runelords themes while allowing for GM customization.
- The chapter must be fully self-contained, without referencing any other tasks or outlines.

Output: A single string containing the complete markdown chapter for Shank's Wood, ready to be saved as a .md file.
INFO:__main__:```
INFO:__main__:Depends on: outline_shanks_wood
INFO:__main__:Input (string): Markdown outline for the Shank's Wood chapter
INFO:__main__:Output (string): Full markdown chapter text for Shank's Wood
INFO:__main__:
INFO:__main__:Task: save_pyre_md
INFO:__main__:Prompt:
INFO:__main__:```
INFO:__main__:Role: You are a file-output specialist agent.

Intent: Save the completed The Pyre chapter markdown content into a .md file using the provided tool.

Context: You receive finalized markdown prose for The Pyre from an upstream task:

[THE PYRE CHAPTER MARKDOWN]:
{{CHAPTER}}

You must persist this content to disk.

Constraints:
- Call the save_file tool exactly once.
- Use the relative path: `sandpoint_hinterlands/the_pyre.md`.
- Write the full markdown chapter content into the file with no alterations.

Output: A single string containing the absolute path returned by save_file for the written file.
INFO:__main__:```
INFO:__main__:Depends on: draft_pyre
INFO:__main__:Input (string): Full markdown chapter text for The Pyre
INFO:__main__:Output (string): Absolute path to the saved the_pyre.md file
INFO:__main__:
INFO:__main__:Task: save_three_cormorants_md
INFO:__main__:Prompt:
INFO:__main__:```
INFO:__main__:Role: You are a file-output specialist agent.

Intent: Save the completed The Three Cormorants chapter markdown content into a .md file using the provided tool.

Context: You receive finalized markdown prose for The Three Cormorants from an upstream task:

[THE THREE CORMORANTS CHAPTER MARKDOWN]:
{{CHAPTER}}

You must persist this content to disk.

Constraints:
- Call the save_file tool exactly once.
- Use the relative path: `sandpoint_hinterlands/the_three_cormorants.md`.
- Write the full markdown chapter content into the file with no alterations.

Output: A single string containing the absolute path returned by save_file for the written file.
INFO:__main__:```
INFO:__main__:Depends on: draft_three_cormorants
INFO:__main__:Input (string): Full markdown chapter text for The Three Cormorants
INFO:__main__:Output (string): Absolute path to the saved the_three_cormorants.md file
INFO:__main__:
INFO:__main__:Task: save_old_light_md
INFO:__main__:Prompt:
INFO:__main__:```
INFO:__main__:Role: You are a file-output specialist agent.

Intent: Save the completed The Old Light chapter markdown content into a .md file using the provided tool.

Context: You receive finalized markdown prose for The Old Light from an upstream task:

[THE OLD LIGHT CHAPTER MARKDOWN]:
{{CHAPTER}}

You must persist this content to disk.

Constraints:
- Call the save_file tool exactly once.
- Use the relative path: `sandpoint_hinterlands/the_old_light.md`.
- Write the full markdown chapter content into the file with no alterations.

Output: A single string containing the absolute path returned by save_file for the written file.
INFO:__main__:```
INFO:__main__:Depends on: draft_old_light
INFO:__main__:Input (string): Full markdown chapter text for The Old Light
INFO:__main__:Output (string): Absolute path to the saved the_old_light.md file
INFO:__main__:
INFO:__main__:Task: save_tickwood_md
INFO:__main__:Prompt:
INFO:__main__:```
INFO:__main__:Role: You are a file-output specialist agent.

Intent: Save the completed Tickwood chapter markdown content into a .md file using the provided tool.

Context: You receive finalized markdown prose for Tickwood from an upstream task:

[TICKWOOD CHAPTER MARKDOWN]:
{{CHAPTER}}

You must persist this content to disk.

Constraints:
- Call the save_file tool exactly once.
- Use the relative path: `sandpoint_hinterlands/tickwood.md`.
- Write the full markdown chapter content into the file with no alterations.

Output: A single string containing the absolute path returned by save_file for the written file.
INFO:__main__:```
INFO:__main__:Depends on: draft_tickwood
INFO:__main__:Input (string): Full markdown chapter text for Tickwood
INFO:__main__:Output (string): Absolute path to the saved tickwood.md file
INFO:__main__:
INFO:__main__:Task: save_shanks_wood_md
INFO:__main__:Prompt:
INFO:__main__:```
INFO:__main__:Role: You are a file-output specialist agent.

Intent: Save the completed Shank's Wood chapter markdown content into a .md file using the provided tool.

Context: You receive finalized markdown prose for Shank's Wood from an upstream task:

[SHANK'S WOOD CHAPTER MARKDOWN]:
{{CHAPTER}}

You must persist this content to disk.

Constraints:
- Call the save_file tool exactly once.
- Use the relative path: `sandpoint_hinterlands/shanks_wood.md`.
- Write the full markdown chapter content into the file with no alterations.

Output: A single string containing the absolute path returned by save_file for the written file.
INFO:__main__:```
INFO:__main__:Depends on: draft_shanks_wood
INFO:__main__:Input (string): Full markdown chapter text for Shank's Wood
INFO:__main__:Output (string): Absolute path to the saved shanks_wood.md file
INFO:__main__:
INFO:__main__:Executing TaskPlan with TaskPlanExecutor
INFO:task_decomposition.task_plan_executor:TaskPlanExecutor.run: executing task 'loc_briefs' with 0 dependency tasks and 0 dependency results
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions "HTTP/1.1 200 OK"
INFO:task_decomposition.delegate_runner:save_file tool wrote 4966 bytes to /home/sean/src/github.com/sesopenko/task-decomposition-spike/output/2025-12-13_17-56-13/docs/sandpoint_hinterlands/location_briefs.md (run output dir: /home/sean/src/github.com/sesopenko/task-decomposition-spike/output/2025-12-13_17-56-13)
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions "HTTP/1.1 200 OK"
INFO:task_decomposition.task_plan_executor:TaskPlanExecutor.run: executing task 'outline_pyre' with 1 dependency tasks and 1 dependency results
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions "HTTP/1.1 200 OK"
INFO:task_decomposition.task_plan_executor:TaskPlanExecutor.run: executing task 'outline_three_cormorants' with 1 dependency tasks and 1 dependency results
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions "HTTP/1.1 200 OK"
INFO:task_decomposition.task_plan_executor:TaskPlanExecutor.run: executing task 'outline_old_light' with 1 dependency tasks and 1 dependency results
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions "HTTP/1.1 200 OK"
INFO:task_decomposition.task_plan_executor:TaskPlanExecutor.run: executing task 'outline_tickwood' with 1 dependency tasks and 1 dependency results
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions "HTTP/1.1 200 OK"
INFO:task_decomposition.task_plan_executor:TaskPlanExecutor.run: executing task 'outline_shanks_wood' with 1 dependency tasks and 1 dependency results
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions "HTTP/1.1 200 OK"
INFO:task_decomposition.task_plan_executor:TaskPlanExecutor.run: executing task 'draft_pyre' with 1 dependency tasks and 1 dependency results
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions "HTTP/1.1 200 OK"
INFO:task_decomposition.delegate_runner:save_file tool wrote 47464 bytes to /home/sean/src/github.com/sesopenko/task-decomposition-spike/output/2025-12-13_17-56-13/chapters/the_pyre.md (run output dir: /home/sean/src/github.com/sesopenko/task-decomposition-spike/output/2025-12-13_17-56-13)
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions "HTTP/1.1 200 OK"
INFO:task_decomposition.task_plan_executor:TaskPlanExecutor.run: executing task 'draft_three_cormorants' with 1 dependency tasks and 1 dependency results
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions "HTTP/1.1 200 OK"
INFO:task_decomposition.task_plan_executor:TaskPlanExecutor.run: executing task 'draft_old_light' with 1 dependency tasks and 1 dependency results
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions "HTTP/1.1 200 OK"
INFO:task_decomposition.task_plan_executor:TaskPlanExecutor.run: executing task 'draft_tickwood' with 1 dependency tasks and 1 dependency results
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions "HTTP/1.1 200 OK"
INFO:task_decomposition.task_plan_executor:TaskPlanExecutor.run: executing task 'draft_shanks_wood' with 1 dependency tasks and 1 dependency results
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions "HTTP/1.1 200 OK"
INFO:task_decomposition.task_plan_executor:TaskPlanExecutor.run: executing task 'save_pyre_md' with 1 dependency tasks and 1 dependency results
INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions "HTTP/1.1 200 OK"
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INFO:__main__:Execution complete. Collected results for 16 tasks.
INFO:__main__:Result for task 'loc_briefs':
INFO:__main__:  Output types: ['string']
INFO:__main__:  Outputs: ['## The Pyre\n- **Core Theme:** A desecrated place of execution where restless spirits and recent cult activity intertwine, forcing the PCs to choose between exorcism, justice, and grisly history best left buried.\n- **Level Range:** 3–6\n- **Tones:** Horror, investigation, moral dilemma, occult.\n- **Central Conflicts/Hooks:**\n  - The ghosts of wrongly condemned victims (including a now‑relevant NPC’s ancestor) stir in response to Thassilonian magic awakening nearby, drawing the PCs into uncovering who truly deserved the flames.\n  - A modern group—Sczarni enforcers, secret Aspis agents, or a nascent cult of Lissala—uses the site for clandestine executions and burnings, risking a planar breach to the Shadow Plane or the Ethereal if the cycle of violence continues.\n  - Old Chelish law sigils and lingering contracts empower a bound devil or contract‑spirit; the PCs can bargain with it for information about Sandpoint’s dark past at the cost of new oaths and temptations.\n\n## The Three Cormorants\n- **Core Theme:** A storm‑lashed sea stack shrine where faith, superstition, and drowned secrets collide under the gaze of three ominous stone birds.\n- **Level Range:** 4–7\n- **Tones:** Exploration, eerie mystery, environmental peril, religious intrigue.\n- **Central Conflicts/Hooks:**\n  - The "cormorants" are actually ancient Thassilonian ward‑idols slowly reawakening; their shifting cries and strange lights at sea lure ships toward wrecks, requiring the PCs to either restore or disrupt their purpose.\n  - Rival coastal interests—Sandpoint fishers, a smuggler ring, and an isolated priest of Gozreh or Besmara—vie to control the site’s tides‑altering rituals, threatening escalating sabotage along the Lost Coast.\n  - A drowned oracle’s spirit haunts the tidal caves beneath the stacks, offering prophetic visions tied to the Runelords in exchange for the proper funerary rites—or for someone else to share her fate.\n\n## The Old Light\n- **Core Theme:** The shattered remnant of an ancient Thassilonian war‑engine masquerading as a ruined lighthouse, whose reactivation could shield or devastate Sandpoint.\n- **Level Range:** 1–5, with options to revisit at higher levels.\n- **Tones:** Archaeological exploration, foreshadowing, low‑key horror, arcane mystery.\n- **Central Conflicts/Hooks:**\n  - Unearthed fragments of rune‑inscribed machinery resonate with Xin‑Shalast’s awakening; minor surges cause illusions, gravity distortions, and haunt‑like phenomena that may escalate unless the PCs stabilize or safely sabotage them.\n  - Competing scholars (Brodert Quink, a Magnimarian envoy, or a Black Maga‑haunted cultist) pressure Sandpoint’s leadership—and thus the PCs—to grant exclusive access, making the ruins a locus of political and academic maneuvering.\n  - A subterranean annex contains bound servitor constructs or a damaged astral projector; delving into it lets the PCs glimpse Karzoug’s empire at its height, but risks attracting extraplanar attention or Runelord‑aligned scrying.\n\n## Tickwood\n- **Core Theme:** A vibrant yet perilous forest where mundane hunting grounds conceal faerie courts, alchemical oddities, and predators twisted by Thassilonian remnants.\n- **Level Range:** 2–6\n- **Tones:** Wilderness exploration, fey mischief, survival, dark whimsy.\n- **Central Conflicts/Hooks:**\n  - Local trappers and noble hunters report unusually intelligent boars and wolves, driven by a malevolent fey spirit or corrupted leshy that resents human encroachment on ancient game trails.\n  - Hidden glades contain alchemical runoff from pre‑Earthfall experimentation (or modern Sczarni stills), warping insects into oversized, chitin‑armored nuisances whose stings transmit minor curses or strange dreams.\n  - A small, divided fey court—quicklings, grigs, and a jaded dryad—sees the Runelords’ rising influence as an opportunity or threat; they seek mortal champions to either sabotage Thassilonian sites or cut lucrative bargains.\n\n## Shank’s Wood\n- **Core Theme:** A brooding tangle of brambles and ravines defined by human monstrosity as much as by any beast, once the hunting ground of the serial killer "Shank" and now a magnet for those touched by similar darkness.\n- **Level Range:** 3–7\n- **Tones:** Gritty horror, manhunt, psychological tension, stealth.\n- **Central Conflicts/Hooks:**\n  - Copycat killers, possibly guided by a lurking hag, psychopomp‑gone‑rogue, or remnants of Shank’s own haunted knives, stalk travelers; the PCs must track them through shifting game trails and fear‑charged haunts.\n  - A hidden encampment (bandits, escaped prisoners, or cultists) exploits the forest’s fearsome reputation to keep outsiders away while they prepare raids, dark rites, or a jailbreak on a nearby road convoy.\n  - The land itself reacts to accumulated terror: humanoid‑shaped bramble‑blights form from places where victims died, and the PCs can either cleanse these trauma‑spirits or harness their knowledge of every death the woods has seen.']
INFO:__main__:Result for task 'outline_pyre':
INFO:__main__:  Output types: ['string']
INFO:__main__:  Outputs: ['# The Pyre\n\n## 1. Location Overview\n\n### 1.1 History of the Gallows Flames\n- Brief history of The Pyre as Sandpoint’s old place of execution: when it was used, by whom, and why it was abandoned, tying it to Chelish legal traditions and early frontier justice.\n- Note that many executed here were later suspected to be innocent or condemned under corrupt laws, laying the groundwork for restless dead and moral ambiguity.\n\n### 1.2 Current Reputation & Local Lore\n- How locals talk about The Pyre now: campfire stories, taboos, and rumors (ghostly lights, screams on the wind, devils bargaining at midnight).\n- Provide a few quick rumor snippets (true, false, and half-true) a GM can drop in tavern talk or town gossip to lure PCs to the site.\n\n### 1.3 Role in the Campaign\n- How The Pyre fits into a Rise of the Runelords-era game: foreshadowing Sandpoint’s hidden cruelties and the themes of sin, judgment, and retribution.\n- Suggestions for when to introduce The Pyre (levels 3–6) and how it can tie to PC backstories (ancestor executed here, former guard, Chelish legal scholar, etc.).\n\n### 1.4 Factions with Stakes in The Pyre\n- Snapshot of the main interested groups: modern executioners (Sczarni crew, Aspis cell, or Lissalan cult), Sandpoint authorities, local clergy, and any devils or bound spirits.\n- One-line goals and typical methods for each faction, emphasizing how they might intersect with the PCs’ investigations.\n\n### 1.5 Themes & Tones at the Table\n- Guidance for presenting horror, investigation, and moral dilemma without derailing the campaign’s pacing or tone.\n- Call out safety tools and lines/veils considerations for execution, wrongful conviction, and torture imagery.\n\n### 1.6 Primary Adventure Hooks\n- 3–5 concrete adventure seeds that bring the PCs to The Pyre, each keyed to different central conflicts (restless ghosts, ongoing murders, diabolical contracts).\n- For each hook, note the initial clue, likely first scene at The Pyre, and one or two directions it can develop.\n\n## 2. Geography & Environment\n\n### 2.1 Approach from Sandpoint\n- Description of the route from Sandpoint and nearby landmarks (cliffs, ravines, old roads) to help GMs frame travel scenes and random encounters.\n- Simple terrain notes (distance, hazards, visibility) and how the changing weather along the Lost Coast affects the mood.\n\n### 2.2 The Execution Grounds Plateau\n- Overview of the main clearing where executions once took place: burned posts, scarred stone, ash pits, and any surviving structures.\n- Environmental details that support tactical encounters (cover, elevation, unstable ground, lingering ash clouds) and haunt triggers.\n\n### 2.3 Surrounding Ravines & Charcoal Woods\n- Outline of the gullies, scrub, and sparse woods encircling The Pyre that once supplied fuel and now hide evidence of modern crimes.\n- Notes on typical flora and fauna, signs of disturbed earth or shallow graves, and how these areas can stage chases, ambushes, or investigations.\n\n### 2.4 Atmosphere & Sensory Details\n- Bullet-point sensory prompts—smells of old smoke, taste of ash, eerie wind sounds, scorched earth textures—to help GMs evoke the location quickly.\n- Optional escalating phenomena as Thassilonian magic awakens nearby: unnatural cold, shadowy flickers, whispers from the flames.\n\n### 2.5 Supernatural Resonances\n- How The Pyre’s history interacts with planar energies: thin spots to the Shadow Plane or Ethereal, making haunts and incorporeal undead more potent.\n- Simple mechanical hooks (bonus to certain rituals, strengthened or weakened spells, unusual effects on divinations about justice or guilt).\n\n### 2.6 Day vs. Night Conditions\n- Contrast of how The Pyre feels and behaves in daylight (somber ruin, evidence-gathering) versus night (active haunts, spectral flames, devil’s manifestation).\n- Guidance on when encounters or hazards should be more likely or more dangerous based on time of day and weather.\n\n## 3. Notable Features\n\n### 3.1 The Blackened Stakes & Ash Circle\n- Central feature where executions occurred: charred posts, iron fittings, and an etched circle of old law sigils partially visible beneath the ash.\n- Serves as the primary stage for key haunts and spirit manifestations, plus a ritual focus for exorcism, consecration, or dark magic.\n\n### 3.2 The Chelish Law Obelisk\n- A partly toppled stone marker bearing Chelish legal codes, execution edicts, and infernal script that once legitimated the killings.\n- Acts as a lore repository (skill checks to learn Sandpoint’s hidden legal past) and a key to manipulating or breaking existing contracts.\n\n### 3.3 The Contract Pit (Bound Devil’s Lair)\n- A sunken pit or cistern where ashes and condemned belongings were dumped, now containing a circle of binding sigils that holds a devil or contract-spirit.\n- Outline the devil’s personality, what knowledge it offers (Sandpoint’s secrets, Lissalan plots, Runelord lore), and the kinds of bargains and temptations it prefers.\n\n### 3.4 The Unmarked Graves & Mass Trench\n- A nearby trench or ring of shallow graves used for those deemed unworthy of proper burial, including several innocents and a PC-relevant ancestor.\n- Intended as the focal point for investigative scenes (digging up evidence, casting speak with dead) and for haunt events where the dead demand justice.\n\n### 3.5 The Modern Burn Site\n- A more recent clearing or firepit, distinct from the historical stakes, where the current faction disposes of bodies or evidence.\n- Contains physical clues tying it to the chosen modern group (Sczarni, Aspis, or cult), and can be the site of a fresh crime the PCs interrupt.\n\n### 3.6 Hidden Shrine of Lissala (or Cult Niche)\n- A concealed alcove or buried chamber where a nascent cult of Lissala—or another occult group—has erected icons and performs rites using The Pyre’s power.\n- Provides a small dungeon-like space for a short delve, treasure, and a direct link to Thassilonian influences and the broader Runelords plot.\n\n### 3.7 The Echoing Scaffold\n- Remains of the old scaffold or gallows, now partially collapsed, that groans in the wind and occasionally reenacts executions as spectral illusions.\n- Serves as a dramatic visual centerpiece and a potential trap/encounter location, with options for collapsing hazards, haunts, or possessed executioners’ tools.']
INFO:__main__:Result for task 'outline_three_cormorants':
INFO:__main__:  Output types: ['string']
INFO:__main__:  Outputs: ['# The Three Cormorants\n\n## Location Overview\n\n- **1. Role in the Campaign**  \n  - Briefly explain how the Three Cormorants fits into a Rise of the Runelords–era game (side‑site along the Lost Coast, repeatable shrine location, foil to the Old Light) and when to introduce it (levels 4–7, or as a recurring eerie landmark).\n\n- **2. Historical Snapshot**  \n  - Summarize the site’s origin as a Thassilonian ward‑shrine reworked by later coastal folk, hinting at its true purpose (sea‑ward, warning beacon, or sacrificial focus) without fully decoding it for the GM yet.\n\n- **3. Present‑Day Situation**  \n  - Outline current tensions: fishermen’s superstitions, a competing smuggler crew, and an isolated sea‑priest all treating the place as sacred/strategic while the idols themselves begin to waken.\n\n- **4. Themes & Tones at the Table**  \n  - Highlight how to present exploration, eerie religious ambiguity, storms, and moral choices between respecting ancient wards vs. exploiting them for local gain.\n\n- **5. Using the Site with Other Hinterlands Locations**  \n  - Note links and contrasts with the Old Light (ancient Thassilonian engines), the Pyre (haunting and restless dead), and coastal travel around Sandpoint to ease integrating multiple locations into an ongoing campaign.\n\n- **6. Access & First Impressions**  \n  - Provide guidance on how PCs hear about the Three Cormorants (sailor tales, a wreck survivor, a prophetic dream) and what they see and feel at first approach from sea or cliff‑top.\n\n---\n\n## Geography & Environment\n\n- **1. The Sea Stack Complex**  \n  - Describe the three main stacks (each topped by a stone “cormorant”), their relative positions, connecting natural bridges or rope lines, and how tides and surf constantly reshape safe paths.\n\n- **2. Weather, Tides, and Hazards**  \n  - Outline default weather (wind, fog, storms), tide cycles, and environmental dangers such as slippery stone, sudden waves, undertows, and climbing checks to emphasize perilous exploration.\n\n- **3. Approaches from Land and Sea**  \n  - Detail different ways to reach the site (rowboat landing, cliff descent from the Lost Coast Road, hidden smugglers’ path) and attach each to different factions or adventure hooks.\n\n- **4. Tidal Caves and Submerged Passages**  \n  - Sketch out the network of lower caverns, chimneys, and air pockets beneath the stacks, including which are only accessible at low tide or with magic, and note how water levels change encounter layouts.\n\n- **5. Ambient Supernatural Effects**  \n  - Note how the reawakening Thassilonian wards subtly warp the environment (unusual bird behavior, ghostly lights at sea, whispers in the surf, strange currents) and provide simple mechanical hooks (perception penalties, eerie omens, minor haunts).\n\n- **6. Nearby Coastal Context**  \n  - Briefly place the Cormorants relative to Sandpoint, other coves, and shipping lanes, including how visible the stone birds are from afar and how sailors navigate around—or toward—them.\n\n---\n\n## Notable Features\n\n- **1. The Three Stone Idols**  \n  - Describe each cormorant statue (posture, damage, runes, lingering magic), including clues that they are Thassilonian ward‑idols, variant responses to PC magic or offerings, and how their cries/lights can be tuned, suppressed, or hijacked.\n\n- **2. The Wave‑Hewn Shrine**  \n  - Detail the primary ritual platform or altar space (carved into the rock between/atop the stacks), how it’s used by modern faiths (Gozreh/Besmara rites, fisher offerings) versus its original function, and the mechanical effects of performing or disrupting ceremonies here.\n\n- **3. The Drowned Oracle’s Grotto**  \n  - Outline the haunted cave where the oracle’s spirit lingers, including environmental hazards (rising water, narrow ledges), the nature of the spirit’s prophecies and bargains, and paths to lay her to rest or deepen her curse.\n\n- **4. Smugglers’ Hide and Contraband Cache**  \n  - Present the concealed tunnels, stash points, and lookout perches used by local smugglers, with quick notes on traps, alarm systems, and how the criminal crew exploits the idols’ strange lights to lure or misdirect ships.\n\n- **5. The Hermit‑Priest’s Retreat**  \n  - Describe the modest dwelling (sea cave cell, shanty on a ledge, or hut above the cliffs), its defensive measures, the priest’s shrine and journals, and how they interpret—and possibly misinterpret—the site’s omens and Thassilonian remnants.\n\n- **6. Shipwreck Graves and Flotsam Fields**  \n  - Detail the wreck‑strewn shallows and beached hulks around the stacks, including typical salvage, undead or hazard encounters, and at least one important wreck tied to Runelord‑era secrets or a local NPC’s backstory.\n\n- **7. Hidden Thassilonian Heartward**  \n  - Define the most secret inner feature (a submerged rune‑chamber, keystone focus, or sealed conduit) that reveals the idols’ true warding purpose, with notes on its defenses, puzzles, and campaign‑shaping outcomes if the PCs reset, corrupt, or destroy it.']
INFO:__main__:Result for task 'outline_old_light':
INFO:__main__:  Output types: ['string']
INFO:__main__:  Outputs: ['# The Old Light\n\n## 1. Location Overview\n\n- **1.1. Sandpoint’s Broken Beacon**  \n  - Briefly explains what locals believe the Old Light is (an ancient collapsed lighthouse), where it sits relative to Sandpoint, and why townsfolk still care about it (iconic skyline feature, teen haunt, tourist curiosity).\n\n- **1.2. True Nature: Thassilonian War‑Engine**  \n  - Clarifies for the GM that the Old Light is the ruin of a colossal Thassilonian siege‑weapon or arcane beam‑projector, not a simple lighthouse, and summarizes its original purpose in Karzoug’s wars.\n\n- **1.3. Role in the Campaign**  \n  - Outlines how the site functions across level bands: early low‑risk exploration and foreshadowing of Thassilon, later return visits for deeper annexes, upgrades to defenses, or catastrophic reactivation.\n\n- **1.4. Stakes for Sandpoint**  \n  - Describes how partial reactivation could either defend the town (warding light, antimagic curtain, warning beam) or endanger it (misfires, structural collapse, planar breaches), giving the GM clear levers for tension.\n\n- **1.5. Factions & Interested Parties**  \n  - Summarizes the main NPC groups invested in the Old Light—Brodert Quink, Magnimarian scholars or agents, possible Lissalan cultists, and Sandpoint’s own leaders—highlighting their goals and points of friction.\n\n- **1.6. Themes & Tones at the Table**  \n  - Gives guidance on playing up archaeological wonder, creeping supernatural oddities (surges, illusions), and academic or political maneuvering without overshadowing low‑level heroes.\n\n- **1.7. Using the Old Light with Classic RotR**  \n  - Notes how to dovetail this expanded treatment with familiar Rise of the Runelords material, including options if the GM wants the Old Light to foreshadow Karzoug more heavily or remain mostly a local curiosity.\n\n---\n\n## 2. Geography & Environment\n\n- **2.1. Cliffside Location & Approaches**  \n  - Describes the promontory on which the Old Light stands, approaches from Sandpoint’s streets or coastal paths, and environmental hazards like crumbling steps, narrow ledges, and sheer drops to the surf.\n\n- **2.2. Ruined Superstructure (The Tower Remnant)**  \n  - Outlines the remaining stone stump of the tower, its collapsed side facing the sea, internal rubble‑choked stairs, and exposed chambers now open to rain, wind, and nesting animals.\n\n- **2.3. Subterranean Annex & Service Tunnels**  \n  - Details the hidden or partially known underground chambers—maintenance corridors, power conduits, and a long‑sealed annex housing servitor constructs or the damaged astral projector.\n\n- **2.4. Weather, Tides, and Coastal Hazards**  \n  - Provides notes on coastal weather patterns (fogs, storms), incoming tides that can threaten lower tunnels or sea‑caves, and how these conditions can complicate exploration or combat.\n\n- **2.5. Arcane Distortions in the Area**  \n  - Explains localized anomalies (brief gravity shifts, phantom lights, muted sound pockets) caused by unstable Thassilonian machinery and how to present them as both atmospheric elements and mechanical challenges.\n\n- **2.6. Fauna, Vermin, and Opportunistic Occupants**  \n  - Lists mundane and minor monstrous inhabitants (gulls, stirges, rats, spiders, opportunistic scavengers or smugglers) that use the ruins as lair or hideout, providing low‑level encounter seeds.\n\n- **2.7. Resonance with Other Thassilonian Sites**  \n  - Notes how the Old Light’s environment reacts when other Runelord‑touched events occur in the region (e.g., Xin‑Shalast’s stirrings causing increased surges), letting GMs visually sync it with larger campaign beats.\n\n---\n\n## 3. Notable Features\n\n- **3.1. The Fallen Crown (Upper Ruin & Parapet)**  \n  - Details the accessible uppermost platform and surrounding broken parapet where locals dare each other to visit, including vantage points over Sandpoint, minor haunts, and the most visible carved runes.\n\n  - **3.1.a. Viewing Ledge & Survey Point**  \n    - Describes the best place for scouting the town and bay, including optional mechanical benefits (bonus to Reconnaissance checks, spotting incoming threats) and social scenes with locals.\n\n  - **3.1.b. Residual Firing Focus**  \n    - Notes a cracked focusing ring or lens housing still embedded in the stone, the site of many magical surges, and how it can be temporarily stabilized or tapped by spellcasters at a cost.\n\n- **3.2. The Broken Coil (Middle Chambers & Power Conduits)**  \n  - Covers the ruined interior levels containing shattered power conduits, rune‑etched walls, and collapsed rooms that hint at maintenance functions and the war‑engine’s original arcane circuitry.\n\n  - **3.2.a. Machinery Pits & Rubble Chasms**  \n    - Provides encounter spaces with precarious footing, hanging cables, and verticality challenges, ideal for low‑level combat, hazards, or rescue scenes.\n\n  - **3.2.b. Thassilonian Script & Iconography**  \n    - Lists key inscriptions, depictions of Karzoug’s campaigns, and recognizable motifs GMs can use to drop lore clues or foreshadow later Thassilonian sites.\n\n- **3.3. The Echoing Annex (Hidden Sublevel)**  \n  - Describes the sealed or secret annex beneath the main ruin that houses bound servitor constructs, the damaged astral projector, or similar advanced Thassilonian devices.\n\n  - **3.3.a. Bound Servitors & Security Wards**  \n    - Details the types of constructs or lingering wards still functional here, their limited directives, and how they might misinterpret modern intruders (PCs, scholars, or cultists).\n\n  - **3.3.b. The Astral Projector Chamber**  \n    - Outlines the central chamber containing the malfunctioning projection device that can show glimpses of Karzoug’s empire, with notes on safe use, risks of extraplanar notice, and vision prompts.\n\n- **3.4. The Spillway & Sea‑Cave Access**  \n  - Explains a partially collapsed channel leading from the Old Light’s foundation down to a sea‑cave, once used for cooling or waste discharge, now a dangerous but stealthy entrance.\n\n  - **3.4.a. Tidal Chamber & Flotsam Hoard**  \n    - Describes the lower cave that floods at high tide and can shelter aquatic creatures or smugglers’ caches, offering both environmental puzzles and treasure opportunities.\n\n  - **3.4.b. Eroded Relic Deposits**  \n    - Notes spots where runoff has exposed minor Thassilonian relics, broken sigils, and unusual minerals that can serve as clues or crafting resources.\n\n- **3.5. Scholar’s Encampment & Dig Site**  \n  - Details temporary or semi‑permanent setups by Brodert Quink, Magnimarian envoys, or other researchers: tents, scaffolds, catalogued finds, and improvised warding circles.\n\n  - **3.5.a. Academic Rivalries and Politics**  \n    - Provides roleplaying hooks and conflict prompts among scholars, Sandpoint officials, and possible patron factions, turning the ruins into a social as well as physical dungeon.\n\n  - **3.5.b. Evidence Cache & Forbidden Notes**  \n    - Describes journals, sketches, or confiscated relics stored here that reveal early, incomplete truths about the Old Light and may draw the interest of enemies (cultists, thieves, Magnimar spies).\n\n- **3.6. Minor Haunts & Phenomena**  \n  - Catalogs small repeatable supernatural events—ghostly battle echoes, flashes of blinding “beam‑fire,” ephemeral Thassilonian workers—that can be used as hazards or flavorful interludes.\n\n  - **3.6.a. Gravity Surges & Illusionary Overlays**  \n    - Provides examples of short‑lived gravity shifts or overlapping visions of the tower in its prime, with brief mechanical effects and guidance on tying them to the war‑engine’s unstable heart.\n\n  - **3.6.b. Rune‑Flare Events**  \n    - Describes intermittent rune glows that respond to spellcasting, emotional extremes, or Runelord‑related triggers, possibly accelerating larger campaign events if overused.\n\n- **3.7. Adventure Seeds & Scaling Options**  \n  - Presents a quick list of encounter and side‑quest ideas keyed to specific features (e.g., sabotage the projector, broker access for a faction, contain a surge) with notes for EL‑appropriate scaling.\n\n  - **3.7.a. Early‑Level Hooks (1–3)**  \n    - Suggests low‑risk explorations, missing scholars, minor haunt investigations, and small construct or vermin threats centered on the upper ruins and scholars’ camp.\n\n  - **3.7.b. Mid‑Level Hooks (4–5 and beyond)**  \n    - Offers higher‑stakes scenarios like stabilizing or disabling the astral projector, thwarting a cult’s attempt to aim the war‑engine, or defending Sandpoint during a surge‑induced crisis.']
INFO:__main__:Result for task 'outline_tickwood':
INFO:__main__:  Output types: ['string']
INFO:__main__:  Outputs: ['# Tickwood\n\n## 1. Location Overview\n\n### 1.1 Regional Role & First Impressions\n- Briefly summarize Tickwood’s reputation to Sandpoint locals (prime hunting ground, “boar country,” rumors of pixies and strange lights) and how it feels when PCs first enter (noisy, alive, slightly off-kilter).\n- Note how GMs can frame Tickwood as distinct from Shank’s Wood and other local forests: vibrant and whimsical on the surface, but with subtle menace and alien fey logic underneath.\n\n### 1.2 Using Tickwood in the Campaign\n- Outline Tickwood’s primary functions in a Rise of the Runelords-era game: early wilderness proving ground, recurring travel route, and gateway to fey/Thassilonian side plots.\n- Provide guidance on appropriate level bands for typical forays (2–6), how to scale encounters or environmental hazards, and how often to return here between major AP chapters.\n\n### 1.3 Factions, Courts, and Stakeholders\n- Introduce the main interested parties: local hunters and trappers, Sandpoint nobles and their gamewardens, the divided fey court, and any lurking Thassilonian or alchemical influences.\n- Give a quick relationship map in prose: who resents whom, who trades with whom, and where the PCs are most likely to be pulled into conflicts.\n\n### 1.4 Themes, Tones, and Playstyle\n- Clarify the core themes (wilderness exploration, fey mischief, survival, dark whimsy) and how to emphasize each at the table with description and encounter choices.\n- Offer GM notes on sliding the tone along a spectrum—from lighthearted fairy-forest antics to uncanny, predatory woods—based on player preference.\n\n### 1.5 Getting There & Travel Logistics\n- Summarize routes from Sandpoint and nearby landmarks (roads, game trails, hunter paths) and approximate travel times at different paces.\n- Include quick guidance on random encounter frequency, camping safety, and how often the fey court or warped beasts intrude on otherwise routine travel.\n\n### 1.6 Adventure Hooks & Recurring Missions\n- Present several short, reusable hooks that justify multiple visits: hunting contracts, missing persons, strange lights, spoiled game, or demanded tributes by unseen fey.\n- Provide suggestions for weaving Tickwood hooks into Rise of the Runelords plots (e.g., fey reacting to Runelord activity, alchemical runoff connecting to villain experiments).\n\n\n## 2. Geography & Environment\n\n### 2.1 Overall Layout & Terrain Zones\n- Break Tickwood into a handful of practical subregions for play: border hunting grounds, deep heartwood, stream-cut ravines, and hidden glades.\n- For each zone, note distinctive features (density of growth, typical visibility, common hazards) that affect tracking, ambushes, and getting lost.\n\n### 2.2 Flora, Fauna, and Everyday Dangers\n- List characteristic plants and animals (boars, wolves, deer, giant ticks, stinging insects, hallucinogenic mushrooms) that set the scene before encounters escalate.\n- Highlight natural hazards like bramble thickets, sudden sinkholes, slick stream banks, and seasonal concerns (spring mud, autumn fires) with quick rules-use notes.\n\n### 2.3 Fey-Touched Microclimates\n- Describe small pockets where the environment is subtly or dramatically altered by fey influence (perpetual twilight glades, unnaturally musical clearings, reversed seasons).\n- Provide ideas for environmental effects that telegraph fey presence (illusory paths, echoing laughter, flowers that turn to face PCs) and minor mechanical twists (navigation penalties, will-sapping lullabies).\n\n### 2.4 Thassilonian and Alchemical Scars\n- Outline where pre-Earthfall experiments or modern alchemical runoff have physically altered the forest: discolored soil, glassy pits, metallic-smelling streams.\n- Note how these scars produce warped vermin and wildlife (oversized chitinous insects, glowing-eyed predators) and give GMs simple templates for “mutated” versions of standard creatures.\n\n### 2.5 Weather, Seasons, and Time of Day\n- Provide guidance on common weather patterns (coastal fogs, sudden showers, summer heat) and how they change the feel and tactics of encounters.\n- Suggest how morning, noon, dusk, and midnight each reframe Tickwood: when hunters are active, when fey are boldest, and when Thassilonian echoes or strange dreams are most likely.\n\n### 2.6 Soundscape, Smells, and Sensory Cues\n- Offer a list of sensory details GMs can swap in quickly (choruses of insects, boar rooting, distant hunter horns, the tang of sap and smoke) to distinguish different parts of the forest.\n- Include specific cues that foreshadow particular threats (certain birds going silent before a warped predator arrives, a metallic tang before alchemical insects, discordant music before fey meddling).\n\n\n## 3. Notable Features\n\n### 3.1 The Hunter’s Fringe\n- Detail the outer band of Tickwood favored by Sandpoint’s hunters and nobles, with makeshift blinds, carved trail markers, and old boar wallows.\n- Include sample encounters (competitive hunters, territorial boars, first contact with watchful fey) and how PCs might gain or lose favor with local hunting interests.\n\n### 3.2 The Boar-Ridden Thickets\n- Focus on a dense interior region infamous for aggressive, unnervingly clever boars and the predator hierarchy that’s shifting under their new behavior.\n- Present the malevolent fey spirit or corrupted leshy driving these changes, its motives regarding human encroachment, and adventure beats for negotiation, cleansing, or open conflict.\n\n### 3.3 Alchemical Runoff Glades\n- Describe one or more secluded glades where alchemical waste (ancient Thassilonian or modern Sczarni stills) has pooled, reshaping plant and insect life.\n- Outline example hazards (toxic mists, unstable alchemical pools, oversized stinging vermin) and how stings or exposure create minor curses, vivid dreams, or foreshadowing visions for future arcs.\n\n### 3.4 The Divided Fey Court\n- Detail the small, fractious fey court (quicklings, grigs, a jaded dryad, and attendants) including where it convenes and how it moves if threatened.\n- Sketch internal politics (pro-Runelord opportunists vs. protective traditionalists), what each faction wants from mortal champions, and sample bargains, boons, and betrayals.\n\n### 3.5 Forgotten Thassilonian Site\n- Introduce a half-buried ruin or experiment station hidden beneath roots or brambles, serving as a direct tie to Thassilonian magic in the forest.\n- Provide options for what it contains (rune-scarred beasts, malfunctioning devices, dormant constructs) and how delving here can escalate tickwood-level threats into broader campaign consequences.\n\n### 3.6 Hidden Camps and Poachers’ Trails\n- Describe informal human (or humanoid) encampments: trappers’ shacks, poachers’ lean-tos, and possibly a Sczarni or smuggler hideout tied to the alchemical glades.\n- Offer roleplaying notes and small quest seeds (poachers angering the fey, a camp overrun by warped insects, a smuggler who knows a secret route to the fey court or ruin).\n\n### 3.7 Dreaming Hollow or Night-Glade\n- Present a particularly strange clearing that comes alive in dreams or under specific moons, where curses, visions, and fey bargains become more vivid and binding.\n- Explain how GMs can use this site to deliver prophetic dreams about the Runelords, resolve curses from insect stings, or stage surreal social encounters with fey beyond normal reality.']
INFO:__main__:Result for task 'outline_shanks_wood':
INFO:__main__:  Output types: ['string']
INFO:__main__:  Outputs: ['# Shank’s Wood\n\n## 1. Location Overview\n\n- ### 1.1. Regional Role & Level Use\n  - Note Shank’s Wood as a mid‑level (3–7) wilderness horror zone near Sandpoint, ideal for manhunts, tense travel, and short investigative forays rather than long‑term camping.\n- ### 1.2. History of Shank and the Killings\n  - Summarize the legend of the serial killer "Shank," how and where he hunted, how he was stopped (or not), and how that history shapes current fear and local superstition.\n- ### 1.3. Reputation Among Locals\n  - Detail what Sandpoint commoners, hunters, and guards say about the woods, including campfire stories, exaggerated dangers, and why people still risk entering despite the fear.\n- ### 1.4. Themes & Atmosphere for GMs\n  - Outline key tones (gritty horror, psychological tension, stealth) with guidance on how to emphasize paranoia, isolation, and human monstrosity over simple monster fights.\n- ### 1.5. Using Shank’s Wood in Rise of the Runelords\n  - Provide hooks that tie the wood to RotRL events (copycat murders linked to Runelord influence, cult hideouts, connections to Tickwood or The Pyre) and advice on when to introduce it.\n- ### 1.6. Adventure Structures & Encounter Types\n  - Present common structures (track‑and‑hunt, escort through hostile woods, hide‑and‑seek with foes, timed pursuit) and encounter types (ambushes, haunts, social confrontations with killers or outcasts).\n- ### 1.7. Safety, Lines, and Veils\n  - Brief advice for handling serial‑killer and trauma themes at the table, including suggestions for veiling gruesome details and focusing on tension and investigation over torture‑porn.\n\n## 2. Geography & Environment\n\n- ### 2.1. Overall Layout & Travel Guidelines\n  - Describe the wood’s size, boundaries, and relation to nearby landmarks/roads, with simple travel DCs and navigation rules that reinforce getting lost, noise discipline, and slow, careful progress.\n- ### 2.2. Bramble Tangles and Knife‑Cut Paths\n  - Define the signature thorny undergrowth, narrow game trails, and snare‑worthy choke points, including movement penalties, stealth bonuses, and how killers exploit them.\n- ### 2.3. Ravines, Gullies, and Hidden Streams\n  - Outline the network of steep ravines, trickling creeks, and mossy overhangs that create verticality and line‑of‑sight breaks, plus hazards like falls, rockslides, and sudden washouts.\n- ### 2.4. Soundscape, Scent, and Visibility\n  - Provide sensory guidance: muffled sounds, rustling brambles, sudden silence, and shifting mists or low light, with simple rules for perception penalties or bonuses depending on weather and time of day.\n- ### 2.5. Weather, Seasons, and Night in the Wood\n  - Explain how rain, fog, and seasonal changes alter difficulty (muddy tracks, swollen streams, leaf‑bare vs. fully leafed brambles) and why night travel is especially dangerous here.\n- ### 2.6. Natural Flora and Fauna\n  - List typical plants and animals (boars, wolves, carrion birds, poisonous shrubs, mushrooms), plus how they react to the killing history (spooked behavior, scavenger swarms, omen‑like sightings).\n- ### 2.7. Supernatural Resonances & Haunts\n  - Describe how accumulated terror has imbued the land: areas prone to haunts, bramble‑blights, and fear‑based environmental effects, with guidance on using them sparingly as scene escalations.\n\n## 3. Notable Features\n\n- ### 3.1. Shank’s Lair (Old or New)\n  - Detail a primary lair site—an old hollow, cave, or shack once used by Shank or a copycat—including layered clues, grisly trophies, escape routes, and options for it being active or long‑abandoned.\n  - Provide encounter suggestions (traps, lair guardian, the killer themself, or an echoing haunt) and evidence that can steer the investigation deeper into the woods or back to Sandpoint.\n- ### 3.2. The Execution Tree\n  - Describe a prominent tree or gallows‑like clearing where Shank’s victims (or Shank himself) were hung, burned, or displayed, now a haunt‑heavy focal point of fear and restless spirits.\n  - Include effects for the haunt, possible psychopomp‑gone‑rogue or bound ghost NPCs, and ways to lay them to rest or bargain for their knowledge of the wood’s deaths.\n- ### 3.3. Bramble‑Blight Groves\n  - Present clusters of humanoid‑shaped bramble‑blights formed where victims died, offering both combat threats and investigative opportunities via their memories of killings.\n  - Provide hooks for cleansing the groves through rituals or using them as grim "witnesses" that reveal hidden trails, lairs, or conspirators.\n- ### 3.4. Hidden Encampment(s)\n  - Outline one or more flexible encampment templates (bandit den, escaped‑prisoner hideout, cultist camp) that exploit the wood’s fearsome reputation and natural defenses.\n  - Include social and tactical notes: how they monitor approach, their goals (raids, dark rites, jailbreak plots), and ways the PCs might infiltrate, ally with, or dismantle them.\n- ### 3.5. The Hag’s Hollow or Rogue Psychopomp’s Shrine\n  - Detail a supernatural antagonist’s lair—a hag’s hollow under tangled roots or a desecrated psychopomp shrine—serving as an explanation for escalating copycat killings.\n  - Provide roleplaying guidance, motives (feeding on fear, perverting justice, experimenting with souls), and a few twisted bargains or boons they might offer to clever PCs.\n- ### 3.6. Hunter’s Overlook and Old Trapper Routes\n  - Describe a vantage point or series of hunters’ blinds and rope paths used by legitimate trappers and rangers, now contested or corrupted by killers and outlaws.\n  - Offer uses for PCs (sniper nests, ambush reversals, safe campsites) and clues that these infrastructures have been turned toward murder rather than honest hunting.\n- ### 3.7. Transitional Trails to Other Hinterland Sites\n  - Map out a few narrative and physical paths that link Shank’s Wood to Tickwood, The Pyre, or coastal roads, each with a distinct vibe (smugglers’ trail, haunted patrol route, overgrown hunter path).\n  - Include encounter seeds along these trails that let GMs foreshadow other locations (e.g., cult symbols from The Pyre, strange fey signs from Tickwood) while traversing Shank’s Wood.']
INFO:__main__:Result for task 'draft_pyre':
INFO:__main__:  Output types: ['string']
INFO:__main__:  Outputs: ['# The Pyre\n\n## Location Overview\n\n### History of the Gallows Flames\n\nNorth of Sandpoint, where the Lost Coast bluffs begin to harden into broken stone and wind-gnawed scrub, a blackened scar mars the land. Locals call it **The Pyre**—once Sandpoint’s official place of execution, now a half-forgotten ruin where the law’s final sentence still clings to the air like smoke.\n\nThe Pyre predates Sandpoint by a generation. When Chelish investors first pushed into the region, they brought with them not just coin and contracts, but the harsh legal traditions of old Cheliax: public executions, exemplary punishments, and a very literal belief that fire purified the stain of crime. The earliest lumber camps and river landings along the Turandarok fed their condemned to the flames here, at the edge of the cliffs. When Sandpoint was finally chartered, the new town adopted the existing site as its official gallows and burning ground.\n\nExecutions here were meant to be orderly and public. Prisoners were marched up from town in shackles, witnessed by magistrates and clergy. An etched circle of sigils at the plateau’s heart marked the bounds of the law; criminals were chained to stout posts within it and burned, hanged, or both. The fire’s smoke was said to carry the condemned’s sin away on the ocean wind.\n\nOver time, the record grew more troubling. Frontier justice is rarely patient. Many condemned here were arrested on thin evidence, scapegoated for unsolved killings, or punished for offenses that later fell out of favor as Chelish influence waned. Some were victims of corrupt sheriffs, profiteering merchants, or rival settlers wielding the law as a cudgel. In the years before Sandpoint’s founding families consolidated their power, the gallows flames burned hottest—sometimes for those whose only crime was inconvenient knowledge or the wrong bloodline.\n\nWhen Sandpoint’s leadership shifted toward a less openly Chelish character and public appetite for blood spectacles faded, The Pyre fell out of use. Officially, executions ceased after a badly botched hanging and firestorm more than a decade ago, when uncontrolled flames nearly leapt the ravines and threatened the farms below. Unofficially, a growing unease about wrongful convictions and whispers of restless spirits made The Pyre a political liability.\n\nThe sheriff and town leaders quietly stopped scheduling executions there, favoring imprisonment, exile, and the rare, private hanging within the town’s walls. The old paths up to the bluff were left to erode. No decree ever formally decommissioned The Pyre; it simply slipped into neglect, its charred posts slowly collapsing into the ash.\n\nThe dead, however, remember. Those who perished under unjust rulings or corrupt writs still burn with resentment. The Chelish sigils set in stone, and the darker symbols layered over them later by opportunistic cultists, continue to focus the site’s spiritual weight. This convergence of sorrow, fear, and misused authority makes The Pyre a potent locus for haunts, infernal pacts, and the kind of magic that feeds on guilt and judgment.\n\n### Current Reputation & Local Lore\n\nMost Sandpointers know The Pyre only as a name in old stories. Parents invoke it to frighten children, and aging locals can point toward the bluffs and say they remember the last time the flames were lit. Younger townsfolk rarely have cause to climb that way unless driven by a dare, a rumor, or darker business.\n\nIn common talk, The Pyre is a place you do not go at night. Carters and hunters skirt the ravines below, traders prefer the main roads, and even the boldest youths rarely linger there after sunset. Some claim that the wind carries screams down from the cliffs during autumn storms. Others insist that ghostly flames can be seen from Sandpoint’s harbor on moonless nights, bright enough to flicker against the clouds but gone by the time anyone reaches the site.\n\nTaverns and campfires around Sandpoint share a rotating cast of rumors about The Pyre. Use the following snippets as flexible table talk, leads, or red herrings. You can adjust which are true to fit your version of the site.\n\n- **“There’s still a devil bound up there, you know.”** Old dockhands swear that the Chelish magistrate who ran the first executions bound an infernal witness within the stones, so that Hell itself could hear each sentence. Some claim it’s still trapped, eager to bargain with anyone who chips away the binding sigils. (This is **mostly true** if you use the Contract Pit; the being may not be a classic devil, but is certainly dangerous.)\n- **“You can hear the wronged ones arguing with the hangman.”** Farmers on the north road speak of voices on the wind that sound like an endless trial, with accusation and rebuttal overlapping in a ghostly chorus. (This is **half-true**; remnants of execution-day haunts can create such impressions, though most witnesses only catch fragments.)\n- **“The sheriff still uses it—just not officially.”** Conspiracy-minded locals whisper that some criminals vanish into the sheriff’s custody and are never seen again. The Pyre, they say, is where inconvenient prisoners go to disappear. (This is **false** for a typical Sandpoint sheriff, but a powerful way to entangle the authorities in your plot if desired.)\n- **“If you toss your sins into the ashes, they burn away.”** Superstitious youths sometimes sneak up to fling written confessions or symbolic trinkets into the lingering fire pits, hoping to avoid punishment for misdeeds. (This is **dangerous**; the act can stir haunts or provide fuel for whatever spirits or outsiders wait below.)\n- **“Someone’s been lighting fires up there again.”** Recent sightings of smoke from the bluffs suggest that The Pyre is active once more. Hunters report charred bones that don’t match any animal they know. (This is **true** if a modern faction has reclaimed the site, or foreshadowing for an upcoming crime.)\n\n### Role in the Campaign\n\nIn a Rise of the Runelords-era game, The Pyre allows you to explore themes of sin, judgment, and the weight of past wrongs without leaving the Sandpoint hinterlands. The site is a mirror for Sandpoint itself: a town that prides itself on being better than Magnimar’s corruption and Korvosa’s cruelty, yet whose roots are still sunk in Chelish law and harsh frontier justice.\n\nThe Pyre works best as a side location or short chapter between the early goblin-focused adventures and the deeper Thassilonian revelations. Consider introducing it when the party is around **3rd to 6th level**, when they are comfortable with Sandpoint and willing to range a few hours from town, but before the story fully commits to the Runelords’ grand designs.\n\nThe site can:\n\n- **Foreshadow hidden cruelties.** Discovering records, ghosts, or infernal contracts here can hint that Sandpoint’s founding families and early magistrates did not always live up to their own myths.\n- **Echo sin and retribution.** The executed dead and bound beings here often frame their grievances in terms of sin—both mortal and Thassilonian. Their demands for justice can parallel the Runelords’ own twisted obsessions.\n- **Provide lore without a library.** A bound devil or ancient cult niche might know details of Thassilon, Lissala worship, or Runelord activity that the party cannot access elsewhere.\n- **Give weight to local NPCs.** A visiting Chelish scholar, a town official with a hidden past, or a reformed enforcer may all have strong feelings about The Pyre’s legacy.\n\nTying PCs personally to the site strengthens its impact. Consider the following hooks into backstories:\n\n- **An ancestor burned.** One PC descends from someone executed at The Pyre—whether guilty, innocent, or a scapegoat. Spirits or surviving documents call them by name, dragging them into unresolved business.\n- **Former guard or constable.** A PC once served in a city watch that used similar execution grounds, or perhaps even helped escort prisoners to The Pyre in their youth.\n- **Chelish legal scholar.** A PC raised under Chelish law, or trained in infernal bureaucracy, recognizes the obelisk’s codes and the careful bindings worked into the stone.\n- **Runaway or orphan.** A child once abandoned near The Pyre survived by hiding in its ravines; now grown, they are drawn back by recurring nightmares or rumors of familiar voices in the flames.\n\n### Factions with Stakes in The Pyre\n\nMore than a lonely ruin, The Pyre is a crossroads of interests. The following factions or forces may see value in the site. Choose a primary faction to anchor your adventure, then keep others in reserve as complications or follow-up threats.\n\n- **Sandpoint Authorities.** The sheriff and town council want The Pyre quiet, preferably forgotten. Their methods are official channels, escorted patrols, and cautious denials. If forced to act, they may request PC aid in investigating sightings, but they would rather avoid public scandal.\n- **Modern Executioners.** A covert group—such as a **Sczarni crew**, an **Aspis Consortium cell**, or a **nascent Lissalan cult**—has quietly repurposed the site. They use its remoteness and grim reputation to dispose of bodies, perform blood rites, or stage intimidation spectacles. Their methods include kidnapping, bribery, and using the site’s haunts as an unknowing weapon.\n- **Local Clergy.** Priests of Sarenrae, Abadar, or Pharasma may view The Pyre as a stain needing cleansing, or as a necessary reminder of law and consequence. They prefer ritual, negotiation, and moral suasion, but some secretly fear what a full excavation or consecration might reveal.\n- **Infernal Interests.** A bound **devil** or contract-spirit within the Contract Pit longs for release, revenge, or fresh bargains. It manipulates mortals toward bloodshed and binding oaths, whispering promises of justice served with infernal precision. Orders or cults tied to Hell might seek to restore, relocate, or usurp this binding.\n- **Restless Dead & Wronged Spirits.** The unquiet dead buried in shallow pits and trenches are a disorganized “faction” whose goals align loosely: acknowledgment of wrongs, punishment of those responsible, or protection of their living descendants. They influence haunts, midnight apparitions, and eerie coincidences more than overt action.\n\nThese groups intersect most clearly through information and secrecy. The authorities want secrets buried; the modern executioners want secrets to stay buried but also to exploit the site; the clergy wants the truth, but fears the consequences; infernal entities want every secret written into ironclad pacts; and the dead want their own stories told.\n\n### Themes & Tones at the Table\n\nThe Pyre leans into horror, investigation, and moral complication, but should not derail the broader campaign into unrelenting misery. When running this chapter, consider the following guidance.\n\n- **Focus on aftermath over spectacle.** Avoid dwelling on torture or the immediate experience of burning. Instead, emphasize charred posts, warped iron, ash that never quite blows away, and the quiet bitterness of those who died.\n- **Highlight ambiguity, not nihilism.** Many executed here were guilty of something, but not always what they were charged with. Let the PCs wrestle with shades of gray—was this bandit truly innocent, or merely overpunished?—without insisting on a single moral answer.\n- **Use horror to deepen empathy.** The most effective haunts at The Pyre are those that show the human cost of misused authority. A ghost reliving its condemnation can be tragic rather than monstrous, even as it lashes out.\n- **Temper the tone with action.** Investigation, negotiation with spirits, and confronting modern villains should regularly break up heavier scenes.\n\nBecause this location touches on themes of **execution, wrongful conviction, and institutional cruelty**, be deliberate about table safety:\n\n- **Check in with players.** Before introducing The Pyre, briefly describe its themes and ask players whether they are comfortable engaging with a site of historical executions.\n- **Use lines and veils.** As a group, decide what elements are off-limits (lines) and which should only be implied rather than described in detail (veils). Common veils include graphic burning, mutilation, or immediate pre-execution torment.\n- **Offer agency.** Ensure PCs have meaningful ways to help—by uncovering the truth, comforting spirits, bringing modern culprits to justice, or cleansing the site. Agency turns horror into heroism.\n\nBecause this location touches on themes of **execution, wrongful conviction, and institutional cruelty**, be deliberate about table safety:\n\n- **Check in with players.** Before introducing The Pyre, briefly describe its themes and ask players whether they are comfortable engaging with a site of historical executions.\n- **Use lines and veils.** As a group, decide what elements are off-limits (lines) and which should only be implied rather than described in detail (veils). Common veils include graphic burning, mutilation, or immediate pre-execution torment.\n- **Offer agency.** Ensure PCs have meaningful ways to help—by uncovering the truth, comforting spirits, bringing modern culprits to justice, or cleansing the site. Agency turns horror into heroism.\n\n### Primary Adventure Hooks\n\nThe Pyre can support several distinct adventures or side arcs. The hooks below present varied tones and central conflicts. You can combine elements or let one lead into another as the campaign grows.\n\n#### Hook 1: The Hanging Fire\n\nA string of unexplained deaths in Sandpoint all share a detail: victims found in locked rooms with their throats scorched from the inside, as if they inhaled fire. Anxious relatives swear they heard distant chanting on the night of each death.\n\n- **Initial Clue:** A local priest or the sheriff notes that the burn patterns resemble historical accounts of botched hangings at The Pyre, where condemned prisoners were both strangled and burned. Old execution records point toward a particular cluster of trials right before the site’s abandonment.\n- **First Scene at The Pyre:** Investigating the plateau during twilight, the PCs trigger a **mass-haunt** reenactment of those executions. Spectral flames and ropes flicker into existence, forcing them to either ride out the vision or meaningfully intervene—cutting illusory ropes, countering accusations, or anchoring terrified spirits.\n- **Developments:** The haunt reveals that someone in the present is weaponizing the site’s spiritual resonance, perhaps via a stolen execution ledger or Chelish focus. Following this trail could expose a zealot within a local temple, a secret hangman still using the site, or an infernal agent experimenting with remote killings.\n\n#### Hook 2: Ashes of an Ancestor\n\nOne PC receives a letter, trinket, or dream from a long-dead relative, hinting that their bones lie in an unmarked grave at The Pyre. The ancestor insists they were innocent, and that proof of their wrongful execution remains buried with them.\n\n- **Initial Clue:** The physical token—such as a singed locket, an old Chelish writ, or a bone fragment—bears markings that match rumors of The Pyre. A local historian or drunk veteran can confirm the connection.\n- **First Scene at The Pyre:** Using the token as a guide, the party locates the **Unmarked Graves & Mass Trench**. Disturbed earth, crude markers, and scavenging animals hint that others have recently searched here as well. Exhuming the correct remains stirs protective haunts and possibly attracts modern grave-robbers.\n- **Developments:** The ancestor’s remains might clutch a key document implicating a Sandpoint founder, a hidden shrine, or an infernal contract. Clearing the ancestor’s name could win the PCs allies among the dead, or provoke a backlash from living powers who benefited from the old injustice.\n\n#### Hook 3: Infernal Audit\n\nA stiffly polite Chelish advocate arrives in Sandpoint bearing sealed orders. They claim to be conducting an “audit” of all contracts and judgments rendered under Chelish law in the region—including those carried out at The Pyre.\n\n- **Initial Clue:** The advocate requests access to town records and quietly hires the PCs as neutral escorts, warning of “possible local resistance and extraneous spiritual interference.” They display an unnerving familiarity with infernal sigils and Thassilonian iconography.\n- **First Scene at The Pyre:** At the **Chelish Law Obelisk**, the advocate performs a ritual that awakens dormant infernal circuitry in the stone. Etched codes flare with heatless flame, and a legalistic spirit manifests to “review” any living witnesses or bloodlines present—including the PCs.\n- **Developments:** The audit’s true purpose may be to free the bound devil in the Contract Pit, to secure forgotten pacts made during the Runelords’ long slumber, or to rewrite the spiritual ledger of Sandpoint for Cheliax’s future use. The PCs must decide whether to aid, oppose, or attempt to outwit both the advocate and the spirit of the law itself.\n\n#### Hook 4: The New Flames\n\nRumors spread that smoke has been seen above The Pyre again, thick and greasy. Livestock vanish from farms. Crates offloaded in Sandpoint never reach their destinations. Someone, it seems, has returned to the execution ground.\n\n- **Initial Clue:** A frightened youth stumbles into town claiming to have seen masked figures and fresh fires on the plateau. Alternatively, a missing person’s trail leads directly toward the ravines below The Pyre.\n- **First Scene at The Pyre:** The PCs approach under cover of darkness to find a **Modern Burn Site** separate from the old stakes—a crude firepit surrounded by recently scorched earth, blood-stained restraints, and distinctive calling cards (Sczarni sigils, Aspis trade seals, or Lissalan runes).\n- **Developments:** Confronting the modern executioners could reveal a larger smuggling network, a clandestine cult using the site’s fear to silence witnesses, or a desperate group destroying evidence of something dug up beneath The Pyre. The wronged dead may not distinguish between old and new killers.\n\n#### Hook 5: Whispers of Lissala\n\nSubtle Thassilonian symbols begin appearing in Sandpoint—scratched into doors, inked on desperate beggars, or woven into nightmares the PCs share. Each symbol resembles a twisted flame or stylized brand.\n\n- **Initial Clue:** Interpreting the symbols reveals that they point toward a specific point on the bluffs north of town, using archaic measurements and references to “the place where the law burns.” A scholar, priest, or rune-touched PC recognizes Lissala’s influence.\n- **First Scene at The Pyre:** Following the symbols leads the party not to the central plateau, but to a **Hidden Shrine of Lissala** tucked into an eroded ravine wall. The air here is cooler, and the stone bears a mix of Chelish law-signs and older Thassilonian brands.\n- **Developments:** Within, a fledgling cult may be attempting to tap The Pyre’s energy to fuel rites of judgment and punishment. The shrine provides direct threads into the Runelords’ grand design: prophecies etched in ash, references to ancient executions, or relics linked to the Runelord of wrath.\n\n## Geography & Environment\n\n### Approach from Sandpoint\n\nThe Pyre lies a **few hours’ walk** north of Sandpoint, perched on a broken tongue of stone that juts from the coastal bluffs. Several routes lead there; which you emphasize can shape the tone of the journey.\n\n- **The Old Gallows Road.** The most direct approach is a little-used track that leaves the main Lost Coast Road a short distance outside Sandpoint, winding up through scrub hills and past neglected waymarkers. Once, it bore wagon ruts from prisoner carts and witnessing crowds; now, grass grows in its grooves, and only hunters and smugglers use it. Weathered posts, some still showing char-marks where onlookers lit torches, line the path.\n- **The Ravine Paths.** More cautious or covert travelers approach from below, following game trails and erosion gullies cut by seasonal runoff. These paths are steeper and less predictable, forcing clambering ascents and offering many nooks for ambushes. Fallen rocks and sudden drops make travel slow but provide natural cover.\n- **The Cliff Edge.** The bravest, or most foolish, attempt to reach The Pyre by following the cliff edge north from town. Here, the sea wind howls, and the ground is treacherous. The view is spectacular—wave-carved arches, seabird flocks, and the endless Lost Coast—but a misstep can mean a long fall.\n\nTerrain along all routes is **rocky scrubland** with patches of stunted pines and cedar, changing with the season. In summer, the ground is dry and dusty; in winter, sea fog rolls inland, turning the bluffs into a maze of shifting silhouettes.\n\nWhen describing the approach, use weather to modulate tension:\n\n- **Clear Day:** The Pyre’s blackened stake-tips are visible from a distance against the sky. The journey feels like an inevitable walk toward hard truths.\n- **Fog or Rain:** Landmarks vanish, sound carries strangely, and the party may only glimpse the plateau in flashes. This is ideal for unsettling encounters or the first hint of supernatural activity.\n- **Storm:** Thunder rolls over the sea, and lightning frames the ruins above. Reaching The Pyre in a storm underscores the drama of confrontations or rituals.\n\nVisibility near the bluffs is often broken by low ridges and thorn thickets, allowing you to frame surprise discoveries—a toppled gallows, a hidden grave, or a sudden view of the ash circle—as the party crests each rise.\n\n### The Execution Grounds Plateau\n\nThe heart of The Pyre is a roughly **oval plateau**, perhaps a hundred paces across at its widest, set slightly back from the cliff’s edge. Time and weather have eaten its boundaries: the western lip has partially collapsed into the sea, while the eastern side slopes gently into the surrounding ravines.\n\nThe ground here is hard-packed dirt and stone, scarred by long use. A broad **ash-stained circle** dominates the center—a discolored ring where countless fires once burned. Charcoal fragments and blackened stones still mark the perimeter. Within the circle stand the remnants of the **blackened stakes**, leaning or partially fallen, their iron fittings rusted but intact.\n\nEnvironmental details support both atmosphere and action:\n\n- **Open Ground with Sparse Cover.** The central circle is mostly clear, ideal for processions and crowds in its day and now for open confrontation. Around it, low rock outcrops, old supply sheds reduced to foundations, and collapsed sections of scaffold provide intermittent cover and elevation.\n- **Unstable Edges.** Sections of the plateau, particularly near the western cliff, crumble under pressure. Cracks radiate from old fire pits, and rain has undercut parts of the slope. The ground may give way during violent struggle, sending combatants sliding toward the ravines or the sea.\n- **Lingering Ash.** In still weather, a faint gray film covers everything: every step puffs tiny ash clouds, and disturbing the central circle can release choking plumes. These ash bursts provide natural cues for haunts or visions, as ghostly scenes play out within the swirling dust.\n- **Echoing Sound.** The plateau’s shape and the bluffs below funnel sound oddly. A whisper at the obelisk can be heard clearly at the scaffold; a shout near the edge sometimes vanishes into the roar of the surf. This can enhance eerie voices or conceal the approach of enemies.\n\nHaunts most often trigger where emotion and spectacle once concentrated: the ash circle, the remains of the scaffold, and the place where the condemned waited before execution. Even in daylight, these spots feel subtly colder or heavier.\n\n### Surrounding Ravines & Charcoal Woods\n\nThe plateau is encircled by a broken halo of **ravines, gullies, and scrubby woodland**. These fringe areas supplied timber and fuel when The Pyre was active and hid many of the site’s least honorable secrets.\n\nNarrow ravines cut into the bluff’s inland side, filled with tangled brush, fallen stones, and occasional trickles of water that form seasonal streams. The sides are steep, with scattered ledges just wide enough for a person to crouch or hide. Foxes, badgers, and other small animals dens here, alongside the occasional larger predator.\n\nAbove the ravines grow thin stands of pine, cedar, and gnarled oaks—the **Charcoal Woods**, so named for the woodcutters who once harvested their trunks for burn-fuel. Many of the oldest trees bear scars from chopping and from wind-driven sparks. A practiced eye can spot faint wagon ruts leading from the old road into these stands, where workers once staged piles of wood and straw.\n\nThis area is ideal for chases, ambushes, and investigations:\n\n- **Flora & Fauna.** Bracken, thornbushes, and hardy grasses choke the undergrowth. Birds startle easily, and sudden silences often presage the presence of predators or unnatural forces.\n- **Signs of Disturbed Earth.** Shallow depressions, half-collapsed trenches, and regular mounds of earth hint at **unmarked graves**. Freshly turned soil, strange patterns of scavenger activity, or mismatched stones can point toward recent burials or exhumations.\n- **Hidden Paths.** Smugglers, cultists, and those avoiding official notice use lesser-known trails along the ravine rims. These tracks often include lookout points with clear sightlines to the plateau, used to watch for patrols or intruders.\n- **Old Industry Remains.** Rotting charcoal piles, broken carts, and rusted tools occasionally surface where erosion has eaten away the topsoil. These mundane relics can conceal more sinister caches or bodies hidden during the site’s heyday.\n\nBecause the ravines and woods wrap around the plateau, you can stage layered scenes where one group watches another from above, where a fallen foe tumbles into a lower level, or where creatures and spirits move between levels more easily than the PCs expect.\n\n### Atmosphere & Sensory Details\n\nWhen you need to quickly evoke The Pyre at the table, draw on distinct sensory impressions. Not all need appear at once; choose a few that fit each scene’s tone.\n\n- **Smell:** Old smoke that never quite fades; damp char and sea salt; the faint sweetness of burned flesh on wet days; resin from scarred pines; occasionally, the sharp tang of brimstone near the Contract Pit.\n- **Sound:** Wind whistling through broken scaffold beams; the distant crash of waves; the creak of old ropes that aren’t there; murmured voices on the air that become ordinary gusts when focused on; the rattle of loose stones in the ravines.\n- **Sight:** Blackened stakes jutting from gray earth like rotten teeth; the ash circle’s discolored soil; ghostly afterimages of crowds or flames flickering at the edge of vision; ragged prayer scraps caught on thorns; crows wheeling overhead, waiting.\n- **Touch:** Gritty ash that clings to boots and fingertips; the unexpected warmth of stone that has no sunlight on it; sudden patches of biting cold where haunts cluster; splintered wood and rusted iron; brittle bones almost indistinguishable from roots.\n- **Taste:** Dryness in the mouth, as if breathing smoke; salt on the tongue even far from the cliff; the metallic tang of fear or ozone before a manifestation.\n\nAs Thassilonian magic stirs in the broader campaign, you can escalate phenomena at The Pyre:\n\n- **Unnatural Cold Flames.** Ghostly fire burns a pale blue or sickly green in old pits, giving off no heat but searing those bound by oaths or carrying cursed relics.\n- **Shadow Flickers.** Shadows lengthen and move as if cast by larger, unseen crowds. Sometimes they reenact execution scenes independent of physical surroundings.\n- **Whispers from the Flames.** Fires kindled anywhere on the plateau speak in faint whispers—sometimes condemning, sometimes pleading, sometimes offering secret knowledge in exchange for promises.\n- **Temporal Slippage.** For brief moments, the PCs might see The Pyre as it once was: fresh-cut stakes, banners flogging in the wind, or a magistrate reading a sentence. These visions can reveal specific names, faces, or symbols relevant to present mysteries.\n\n### Supernatural Resonances\n\nCenturies of concentrated death, fear, and solemn ritual have thinned the veil between worlds at The Pyre. The site sits at a crossroads of planar influence, primarily touching the **Ethereal Plane** and the **Shadow Plane**, with a lingering tether to the infernal realms due to Chelish legal magic.\n\nThis makes incorporeal undead, haunts, and certain rituals especially potent here. Spirits find it easier to manifest; echoes of strong emotions linger longer; and divinations that seek truth about guilt and judgment resonate strongly, though not always comfortably.\n\nConsider the following effects when describing magic or supernatural workings at The Pyre:\n\n- **Amplified Haunts.** Haunts originating here may feel more intense or difficult to lay to rest, drawing strength from the unresolved mass of executed souls.\n- **Rituals of Judgment.** Rites that weigh guilt or innocence—whether divine rituals, witch hexes, or occult ceremonies—may produce clearer, harsher answers. The Pyre “prefers” binary outcomes, pushing ambiguous cases toward one extreme.\n- **Divinations Distorted by Guilt.** Spells or abilities that seek information about crimes or oaths may surface the **strongest emotional truth** rather than exact factual detail. A truly repentant murderer might register as less “guilty” than an unrepentant accomplice.\n- **Infernal Shortcuts.** Contracts sworn within the ash circle are unusually sticky, imprinting themselves on the site’s spiritual ledger. Diabolical entities can more easily notice and enforce such pacts, even at a distance.\n\nYou can translate this feel into simple narrative hooks: prophetic dreams after resting here; ghostly juries commenting on PC choices; or magic items left in the ash slowly attuning to themes of law, fire, or retribution.\n\n### Day vs. Night Conditions\n\nThe Pyre is a markedly different place under the sun than under the stars.\n\n- **Daylight:** In clear weather, the plateau feels like a somber ruin. Details are stark: charred wood, cracked stone, rusted iron. Crows and other scavengers pick at bones in the ravines. This is the ideal time for **evidence-gathering**—examining the obelisk, mapping grave sites, or following tracks. Haunts may still trigger, but more often as muted impressions or flashes at the edge of vision.\n\n- **Dusk and Dawn:** Transitional light blurs boundaries. Shadows stretch long, and the wind often picks up. This is when **residual memories** are strongest: spectral processions, echoing gavel-strikes, or phantom crowds glimpsed in peripheral vision.\n\n- **Night:** Once the sun is fully gone, The Pyre becomes a place of active power. The temperature drops sharply, even in summer. Spectral flames may gutter to life along the ash circle, and the **Echoing Scaffold** creaks with voices and movement. Haunts, undead, and bound devils are bolder and more likely to interact directly with intruders.\n\nWeather compounds these differences. A foggy night can limit vision to a few paces, making ghostly phenomena especially unsettling; a clear, starry sky may instead give the scene a stark, almost ritualistic beauty.\n\nIf you prefer to manage difficulty through time of day, consider:\n\n- Making social interaction with spirits easier by day, but more dangerous by night as their power grows.\n- Having certain key manifestations—such as the full replay of a notorious mass execution or the devil’s partial materialization—only occur under specific conditions: midnight, a new moon, the anniversary of an execution, or during a thunderstorm.\n\n## Notable Features\n\n### The Blackened Stakes & Ash Circle\n\nAt the plateau’s center stands the most iconic remnant of The Pyre: a rough **ring of charred wooden posts** encircling a broad **ash-stained circle** of soil.\n\nMany of the stakes have long since burned down to jagged stumps. A few still rise shoulder-high, warped and cracked, with rusted iron hooks and chains fused into their grain. The ground immediately around each post is darker than the rest, bearing concentric scorch patterns from repeated fires. Bits of broken manacles and melted buckles occasionally surface here after heavy rain.\n\nThe **ash circle** itself is not a precise circle of stone, but a broad, irregular band where countless burnings discolored the earth. Beneath the surface ash, you can hint at **etched sigils**: Chelish law-marks, circles of authority, and perhaps faint traces of Thassilonian runes added later by those seeking to harness the site for other purposes.\n\nThis area is the primary stage for spiritual manifestations and ritual activity. Its layers of meaning include:\n\n- **Execution Ground.** Most executions took place within this circle, concentrating fear, defiance, and desperate prayers. Haunts that replay executions or drag intruders into ghostly reenactments are at their strongest here.\n- **Ritual Focus.** The circle’s sigils form a ready-made magical focus. Characters might use it to consecrate the site, to perform rites of judgment, or to empower darker ceremonies. Existing carvings can be leveraged, overwritten, or broken to change The Pyre’s tenor.\n- **Moral Crucible.** When spirits or devils demand decisions—who is guilty, who deserves mercy, whether to destroy evidence—they often do so within this circle. Standing here, PCs feel the weight of countless past choices, and their own decisions may ripple outward more strongly.\n\nPhysically, the stakes offer a few practical considerations:\n\n- They provide **partial cover** and obstacles in any confrontation.\n- Some can be pushed over or broken, potentially pinning foes or dramatically ending a haunt if a specific post is destroyed.\n- Hidden among the ash at their bases, you might place small keepsakes of the dead: lockets, rings, or scraps of burned parchment that tie into PC backstories or campaign lore.\n\n### The Chelish Law Obelisk\n\nA short distance from the central circle, half-leaning and cracked, stands a **stone obelisk** perhaps twice as tall as a person. Its upper third has broken off and lies nearby, but enough remains to read the weighty words carved into its faces.\n\nThe obelisk bears dense lines of **Chelish legal code**: articles defining capital crimes, formal wording of execution edicts, and dedicatory phrases linking the enforcement of law to Hell’s watchful gaze. Nestled between these, in smaller script and complex knotted sigils, are **infernal characters** meant to bind the site’s judgments to planar powers.\n\nTime, vandalism, and perhaps deliberate chisel work have obscured parts of the text. Rain has worn some characters smooth; others bear graffiti—angry curses, crude drawings, or counter-ritual marks left by those who opposed the old magistrates.\n\nFor you as GM, the obelisk serves several functions:\n\n- **Lore Repository.** Characters skilled in history, law, religion, or planar matters can “read” the obelisk to learn about Sandpoint’s early legal practices, common capital crimes, and the influence of Chelish backers. You can seed it with specific names, dates, or legal phrases that later recur in contracts or haunt-speeches.\n- **Key to Contracts.** The infernal sigils effectively log each execution as a clause in an enormous, poorly understood contract. Breaking, altering, or properly concluding that contract may require interacting with the obelisk: tracing certain sigils, anointing it with particular substances, or reciting counter-formulae.\n- **Moral Mirror.** Having PCs read, out loud, archaic laws about “sedition,” “blasphemy,” or “theft of noble property” invites them to consider what counted as a capital offense in Sandpoint’s early days. Which of these do they themselves violate, technically? Which do they reject?\n\nYou can let the obelisk respond subtly when touched or invoked—a pulse of warmth under a character’s hand, quiet chimes of stone on stone, or faint infernal whispers reacting to their intentions.\n\n### The Contract Pit (Bound Devil’s Lair)\n\nHidden away from casual view—either as a sunken **cistern**, a stone-lined **pit**, or the collapsed remnant of a fuel storage cellar—lies the **Contract Pit**. Here, ashes, discarded belongings of the condemned, and bureaucratic detritus were once shoveled and forgotten. Less visibly, it is also the site where an infernal being was bound to witness and enforce the law’s final sentences.\n\nThe pit’s rim is marked by **faded circles of sigils**: a primary binding ring intertwined with secondary glyphs that tracked individual executions as sub-clauses. Soot clings to the walls in unnatural patterns, like claw marks or script seen from an alien angle. The air here is colder than the surrounding plateau, and breath mists even on warm days.\n\nWithin dwells a **devil or contract-spirit** of your choosing. Its nature can fit your campaign’s tone:\n\n- A **legalistic devil** that delights in parsing guilt and innocence, eager to negotiate amendments to ancient verdicts.\n- A **fiery tormentor** resentful of centuries of forced observation, hungry for any chance to turn the tables.\n- A **shadowy arbiter** that considers itself above mortal law, using Chelish codes as a convenient framework for its own brand of judgment.\n\nWhatever its form, the being’s personality should be sharply defined:\n\n- **Patient and Precise.** It knows the details of every execution performed here, down to the condemned’s last words.\n- **Tempting but Restrained.** It cannot leave the pit nor directly harm those outside the binding circle unless certain conditions are met. Instead, it offers **information** and **bargains**.\n- **Obsessed with Loopholes.** It revels in finding technicalities: misworded verdicts, improperly signed writs, or broken procedures that could, if exploited, unmake judgments.\n\nThe devil or spirit can offer:\n\n- **Secrets of Sandpoint.** Names of corrupt officials, covered-up crimes, and hidden graves.\n- **Lissalan and Runelord Lore.** It may have witnessed or been informed of Thassilonian echoes or cult activity at the site, especially if Lissalan worshippers later overlaid the binding with their own rites.\n- **Insight into the PCs.** Reading their past deeds as if they were clauses in a contract, it can point out contradictions, hypocrisies, or latent sins.\n\nIn return, it seeks:\n\n- **Contractual Concessions.** Signatures, oaths, or future favors that edge it closer to freedom or greater influence.\n- **Blood or Souls.** The right to claim those lawfully executed by the PCs, or a specific living target whose judgment it wishes to secure.\n- **Changes to the Ledger.** Permission to retroactively alter certain verdicts carried out at The Pyre, with unpredictable spiritual consequences.\n\nEven if the PCs refuse to bargain, mere conversation with the bound being can color their understanding of The Pyre and tease out deeper campaign threads.\n\n### The Unmarked Graves & Mass Trench\n\nBeyond the plateau’s formal circle, in shallow side ravines and along the edges of the Charcoal Woods, lie the **unmarked graves** of The Pyre’s victims. Officially, most condemned were given basic burial in consecrated ground after execution. In practice, many—particularly the poor, foreigners, and those condemned as traitors or witches—were dumped in hurriedly dug trenches or pits.\n\nThese graves are often little more than elongated depressions in the earth, partially collapsed and overgrown. Animal activity, erosion, and the occasional opportunistic grave-robber have disturbed many, leaving bone fragments and cloth scraps exposed.\n\nWithin this morass of the forgotten, you can set apart certain focal points:\n\n- **The Mass Trench.** A notably long, sunken line where multiple bodies were interred together after a single incident: perhaps a foiled revolt, a failed cult, or a panicked mass execution. Haunts here are communal, representing a crowd’s shared fear or anger.\n- **The PC-Relevant Grave.** One mound, seemingly like any other, contains the ancestor, mentor, or acquaintance of a PC. Their bones might show clear evidence of wrongful death—bindings that contradict the official record, non-fatal wounds suggesting torture, or objects hinting at a frame-up.\n- **The Disturbed Plot.** Freshly turned soil and scattered bones show where someone else has already dug, perhaps searching for a particular corpse or item. Following their trail can lead to modern conspirators.\n\nThese graves are ideal for investigative scenes:\n\n- **Digging for Evidence.** Characters may exhume bodies to compare wounds with historical accounts, retrieve buried documents, or gather materials for magic.\n- **Speaking with the Dead.** Spirits here may be confused, bitter, or frightened. They might not know who truly condemned them, but they remember the executioner’s expression, the magistrate’s voice, or a distinctive piece of jewelry worn by their accuser.\n- **Haunts of Demand.** The land may rise in chorus, demanding justice, reburial, or proper recognition. PCs who promise to help may gain allies among the dead—but failing to follow through can sour the site’s attitude toward them.\n\nUse the unmarked graves to humanize the abstract numbers etched on the obelisk. Names carved into bone, lullabies hummed by dead parents, or desperate prayers half-finished in the dirt can make the cost of The Pyre’s history tangible.\n\n### The Modern Burn Site\n\nSeparate from the historical execution circle, perceptive PCs may discover signs of **recent fires**: a more compact clearing, scorched in a different pattern, with fresher charcoal and bone fragments.\n\nThis **Modern Burn Site** might be tucked against a rock wall, sheltered from the wind, or hidden in a bowl-like depression reachable only from certain ravine paths. Unlike the ritualized ash circle, this place feels hasty and utilitarian.\n\nClues here tie directly to whichever modern faction has claimed The Pyre:\n\n- **Sczarni Crew.** Crude but effective restraints; marked playing cards burned at the edges; scraps of colorful cloth; symbols carved into nearby trees as warnings or boasts.\n- **Aspis Consortium Cell.** Broken trade seals; fragments of exotic crates; scorched ledgers or shipping manifests; coins melted into slag.\n- **Lissalan Cult.** Brands in the shape of stylized runes; ritual circles traced not in chalk but in blood; small icons of a woman with bound eyes or flame-in-hand.\n\nBeyond factional traces, you might include:\n\n- **Unburned Evidence.** A mostly intact fingerbone with a distinctive ring; a half-charred mask; a surviving scrap of parchment naming a victim or paymaster.\n- **Fresh Tracks.** Recent footprints, drag marks, and animal scavenging. These allow the PCs to set an ambush, pursue perpetrators, or intercept the next intended burning.\n- **Conflicting Sin.** The restless dead of the old Pyre may resent these new, sloppy killings or perversely welcome them as proof that nothing has changed. Haunts here may blend past and present in confusing ways.\n\nThe Modern Burn Site gives you a living mystery to contrast with The Pyre’s historical weight. It also offers a clear pivot from investigation into direct conflict: the PCs can catch villains in the act, rescue captives, or re-enact old judgments on new criminals.\n\n### Hidden Shrine of Lissala (or Cult Niche)\n\nSomewhere along the ravine wall or beneath a collapsed outbuilding, concealed by erosion and debris, lies a **Hidden Shrine of Lissala**—or another cult niche tailored to your campaign. Reaching it might require squeezing through a cracked cistern, descending crumbling steps, or following a faint line of rune-marks that only reveal themselves under certain light.\n\nInside, the air is cooler and still. The walls bear a palimpsest of **symbols**: Chelish law-marks scraped away and overwritten with Thassilonian **brands and whips**, eyes blindfolded or burning, and the curling sigil of the Runelord whose sin most deeply permeates your story (wrath, greed, or another).\n\nThe shrine serves several purposes:\n\n- **Short Delve.** A cramped series of chambers or a single larger sanctum can host traps, minor guardians (animated brands, lesser undead, fanatic cultists), and environmental hazards (collapsing stone, chasms into the ravines).\n- **Treasure Cache.** Offer relics that tie into Lissala or Thassilon—fragmented tablets, branded holy symbols, or scrolls describing ancient execution rites. You might also include mundane valuables taken from those executed at The Pyre, hoarded here as offerings or resources.\n- **Plot Nexus.** Murals or inscriptions here can explicitly link The Pyre’s Chelish history to older Thassilonian practices of public punishment and sin-marking. Perhaps this site lies atop an even older execution ground, repurposed by both the Runelords and later Chelish magistrates.\n\nRitual activity here might involve harnessing The Pyre’s spiritual momentum:\n\n- **Runes of Judgment.** The cult inscribes runes corresponding to specific sins on victims or volunteers, then burns or brands them in ceremonies timed with manifestations on the plateau above.\n- **Offerings of Ash.** Ashes from the central circle are carefully collected and used to anoint icons or draw runes, strengthening the shrine’s connection to the surface.\n- **Prophecies in Smoke.** Fumes from special incense or burned scrolls form images reflecting future punishments, the rise of Runelords, or impending calamities in Sandpoint.\n\nBy clearing this shrine, the PCs can strike a tangible blow against Thassilonian influence in the region—or, if they leave it undisturbed, it can continue to feed dark undercurrents that swell as the campaign advances.\n\n### The Echoing Scaffold\n\nOn the plateau’s edge stands the skeletal remains of the **scaffold** used for hangings and public announcements. Once solid and imposing, it now leans dangerously, its timbers gray with age and peppered with iron nails. Several ropes still dangle from crossbeams, frayed and swaying in the wind, though nooses themselves are long gone—or sometimes appear intact for only a heartbeat at a time.\n\nThe scaffold’s platform is warped, some boards missing entirely, exposing the drop to the ravine or cliff face below. A rickety staircase, half-collapsed, leads up one side; loose planks and support beams make any ascent precarious.\n\nThis structure is the most visually arresting feature of The Pyre and an ideal stage for tense scenes:\n\n- **Spectral Reenactments.** At certain times, the scaffold becomes the center of ghostly illusions. Semi-transparent figures appear—condemned, executioner, magistrate, and crowd—replaying key executions. PCs may find themselves standing among these figures or even temporarily “cast” into their roles.\n- **Collapsing Hazard.** Sudden weight, violent struggle, or ill-placed blows can send parts of the scaffold crashing down. Characters or foes might fall, be pinned, or dangle dangerously from spectral or real ropes.\n- **Possessed Tools.** Old executioners’ implements—an axe, a branding iron, or even the rope itself—may animate or become spirit-possessed, turning into symbolic adversaries.\n\nThe Echoing Scaffold also amplifies sound. Words spoken from its platform carry uncannily well, even in still air. Ghostly echoes of past pronouncements occasionally overlap with present speech, twisting meanings or revealing hidden truths.\n\nDramatic use of the scaffold might include:\n\n- **Confronting a Villain.** Forcing a modern executioner, corrupt official, or infernal advocate to face judgment where so many others died.\n- **Offering Clemency.** Symbolically reversing The Pyre’s history by sparing a condemned NPC at the last moment, defying both mortal and infernal expectations.\n- **Breaking the Cycle.** Deliberately collapsing or sanctifying the scaffold as part of a ritual to end The Pyre’s role as a place of killing.\n\nBy the time the PCs are done with The Pyre, the Echoing Scaffold should stand in their memories as the place where law, sin, and choice collided in tangible form—whether it still physically stands or lies shattered in the ravine below.']
INFO:__main__:Result for task 'draft_three_cormorants':
INFO:__main__:  Output types: ['string']
INFO:__main__:  Outputs: ['# The Three Cormorants\n\n## Location Overview\n\nPerched off the jagged stretch of the Lost Coast west of Sandpoint, the Three Cormorants is a cluster of sea stacks crowned with ancient stone bird‑idols. From the shore, they look like weather‑eaten navigation markers or crude local shrines. Up close, their age and artistry betray a far older origin—one that predates the town, the Varisian caravans, and even the current shape of the coastline.\n\nThis chapter presents the Three Cormorants as a flexible, GM‑toolbox location: a dangerous coastal landmark, a living shrine, and a Thassilonian relic woven into the broader story of awakening runelord magic.\n\n### Role in the Campaign\n\nThe Three Cormorants works best as a side‑site along the Lost Coast, suitable for characters in roughly the level 4–7 range. It can appear once as a self‑contained expedition, or recur as a familiar yet changing landmark that reacts to what the heroes do elsewhere in the campaign.\n\nAt the table, you can use the Three Cormorants as:\n\n- **A storm‑wreck detour.** When a sea journey or coastal trip goes wrong, the party washes up near the sea stacks and must survive their hazards while discovering their secrets.\n- **A shrine between arcs.** Priests of Gozreh or other sea‑touched deities send the heroes to calm the idols’ rising fury, turning the site into a ritual battleground between old and new faiths.\n- **A foil to the Old Light.** While the Old Light looms over Sandpoint as a broken Thassilonian engine of war, the Three Cormorants represent a subtler mechanism: a ward against something in the deeps, or a beacon to powers best left sleeping.\n- **A repeatable waypoint.** Once the heroes know it, they can return to the Cormorants to consult the drowned oracle, rendezvous with smugglers, or use the stone birds as a storm‑calling, ward‑shaping asset in later sea adventures.\n\nBecause the site is modular, you can scale its dangers and mysteries to suit when your players first reach it. Lower‑level parties might only brave the upper ledges and visible caves, while higher‑level parties can delve into the tidal mazes and the hidden heartward without being overwhelmed by the environment.\n\n### Historical Snapshot\n\nLocal folklore holds that the Three Cormorants were "always there," as immutable as the tides. In truth, these stacks were once part of the mainland cliffs before cataclysms in ancient Thassilon reshaped the coast. During that era, an order of rune‑wardens carved and bound three monumental idols atop the highest spires of rock.\n\nThese stone cormorants are more than statues. Each is a **ward‑idol**, a focus for runic magic that shaped and monitored the currents of magic and the sea. The wardens who raised them meant the site to serve one (or perhaps several) of the following intertwined purposes:\n\n- **Sea‑ward against the deeps.** The birds were tuned to watch and bind something lurking below the waves—a trench, a rift, or the slow drift of a colossal, forgotten threat.\n- **Warning beacon and signal.** Their eyes and beaks once projected light, cry, and omen: signals to distant Thassilonian outposts when storms, planar tides, or enemies approached.\n- **Sacrificial focus.** The runes beneath the waves channeled life and blood into reinforcing the wards, whether through condemned criminals, volunteers, or unwilling sacrifices cast from the ritual platforms during dark tides.\n\nThassilon’s fall shattered much of this network. Earthquakes sheared the original headland, tidal waves gnawed it into separated stacks, and for centuries the magic slumbered under layers of barnacles and salt. Coastal folk who came later—Varisian fishers, Chelish settlers, and Shoanti nomads—found three eerie bird‑shapes on the horizon and, not understanding their makers, repurposed the place as a shrine to the capricious sea.\n\nOver time, these mortal devotions layered new meanings atop the old. Offerings to Gozreh, Besmara, or local spirits mingled with the dormant wards. Now, as runelord magic stirs again in Varisia, the heartward under the stacks has begun to wake. The birds no longer only answer to the names of modern gods.\n\n### Present‑Day Situation\n\nToday, the Three Cormorants sits at the intersection of superstition, faith, and crime.\n\n- **Sandpoint’s fisherfolk** treat the place as dangerous but potent. Some will not speak its name at sea, preferring euphemisms like "the Black Beaks" or "the Three Watchers." Others slip away on calm mornings to pour out liquor, scatter fish offal, or tie carved driftwood charms on the idol bases, believing these rites bring bountiful catches or ward off shipwreck.\n\n- **A small smuggler crew** has quietly claimed the stacks as a convenient waystation. Their lookouts use the silhouettes of the idols and their uncanny lights as navigational marks. Rumors whisper that they can "make the birds cry" on command, luring honest ships onto reefs or signaling partners in the night.\n\n- **An isolated hermit‑priest** has taken up residence in a cave above the wave line. Interpreting the idols as manifestations of their patron—most likely Gozreh, Erastil, or a more obscure sea power—the hermit calls themselves the Warden of the Beaks. They observe every shift in the birds’ posture and sound, recording omens in cramped, salt‑stained handwriting.\n\nBeneath these everyday entanglements, the **idols themselves are stirring**. Their stone eyes sometimes flare with strange phosphorescence. On moonless nights, sailors report hearing avian shrieks that cut through the wind like metal on stone. Barnacles detach from their surfaces and float in patterns that resemble runes.\n\nThis mounting tension gives you several levers to pull: rival crews feuding over control of the site, a priest torn between honoring their god and fearing what truly listens, and townsfolk who must choose between cheap profit and ancient, poorly understood protections.\n\n### Themes & Tones at the Table\n\nWhen running the Three Cormorants, lean into four overlapping tones:\n\n#### Perilous Exploration\n\nThe stacks are treacherous. Slippery rock, crashing waves, and shifting tides should feel as dangerous as any monster. Climbing a barnacle‑slick chimney in the wind, inching along a wave‑sprayed ledge, or timing a dash across a natural bridge between white‑water surges can all become tense set‑pieces.\n\nDescribe the **constant presence of the sea**: the thunder of surf echoing through caverns, salt spray in eyes and wounds, rope lines that creak and groan, and the way sound carries strangely between stone pillars.\n\n#### Eerie Religious Ambiguity\n\nTreat the idols and shrines as holy—just not necessarily holy to who the locals think. Signs and omens can be interpreted multiple ways: a sudden stillness of wind, a wave that rears back short of the ledge, a dull glow in the statues’ eyes.\n\nLet clerics and druids sense something numinous here, but not immediately know whether they are dealing with a minor sea god, an echo of Thassilonian rune‑magic, or both. Divinations may return symbols instead of direct answers, forcing the heroes to decide whether to **respect**, **retool**, or **defy** the place’s power.\n\n#### Storms and the Living Coast\n\nWeather at the Three Cormorants should never feel neutral. Clouds bank low, fog drifts in from nowhere, sudden squalls lash the rocks, and even calm days carry a charged tension. Use weather changes to pace the session: looming storms signal time pressure, sudden clearings allow respite or reveal distant threats.\n\n#### Moral Choices and Consequences\n\nThe true purpose of the heartward is to bind or warn against something worse. Almost any way the heroes "win" here has repercussions:\n\n- Do they **exploit** the idols—hijacking their cries to sink a slaver ship or blind enemy scouts? The sea may answer in kind.\n- Do they **appease** them with modern rites and sacrifices, reinforcing an ancient ward without fully understanding whom they’re feeding?\n- Do they **break** or **retune** the wards, possibly releasing an imprisoned threat but gaining a potent ally or artifact?\n\nMake it clear that the site endures beyond a single visit. Choices made now echo in later storms, omens, and encounters along the Lost Coast.\n\n### Using the Site with Other Hinterlands Locations\n\nThe Three Cormorants meshes easily with other iconic locations around Sandpoint.\n\n- **The Old Light:** Both sites showcase Thassilonian engineering, but where the Old Light projects upward in ruinous grandeur, the Cormorants reach seaward in eroded subtlety. Clues found at one location can help decode the other: a half‑intact rune scheme at the Three Cormorants may mirror symbols in the Old Light’s foundations, hinting that the two were once part of the same warning network.\n\n- **The Pyre and other haunted sites:** Spirits bound to shipwrecks around the Cormorants might echo or reference restless dead elsewhere along the Lost Coast. The drowned oracle here could know of hauntings at the Pyre, or of bound souls yearning for release.\n\n- **Coastal travel and sea adventures:** The Three Cormorants is an ideal recurring waypoint for sea journeys. Ships may skirt the stacks for safety, detour there in hopes of good omens, or be deliberately lured off course by those who control the idols’ lights. As the campaign widens into broader Varisian waters, the heroes could replicate or adapt the ward‑idol principle for new shrines.\n\n### Access & First Impressions\n\nCharacters rarely stumble upon the Three Cormorants by accident. Consider how they first hear of it, and let that origin color their expectations.\n\n#### Rumor and Invitation\n\n- **Sailor tales:** Old hands in Sandpoint’s taverns tell stories of the "stone birds that scream in storms," warning green crews never to row between them. Depending on the storyteller, the place is either blessed, cursed, or both.\n- **A wreck survivor:** A half‑drowned castaway washes ashore in Sandpoint babbling about "the beaks that watched me," clutching a barnacle‑encrusted relic from the shrine or the heartward.\n- **Prophetic dreams:** A divine spellcaster dreams of standing on a narrow ledge above roaring surf, three bird‑shadows wheeling overhead as a voice in the waves demands a choice or a sacrifice.\n\nAny of these hooks can be tied to a concrete request: retrieve something from a wreck near the stacks, ferry a nervous priest to perform a rite, investigate strange lights seen from the Lost Coast Road, or broker a truce with smugglers whose quarrel threatens Sandpoint.\n\n#### First Approach\n\nFrom a distance, the Three Cormorants are **immediately iconic**. Three jagged pillars of rock claw up from the sea, each crowned with a stone bird hunched as if against the wind. White foam chews at their bases. Gulls wheel and cry, but the cormorant statues never move.\n\n- **From the sea:** Approaching by rowboat, the stacks loom like siege towers rising from the water. The air is colder here, the wind funneled between stone walls. The shriek of birds and crash of waves distort conversation. The nearest idol’s beak points seaward like an accusation.\n- **From the cliffs:** From atop the Lost Coast’s bluffs, the Three Cormorants appear almost close enough to touch, yet separated by sheer drops and tumbling surf. A faint sense of pressure grows as characters draw near, as if the air itself grows thicker with unseen tides of power.\n\nAs they close, play up **sensory details**: the grit of salt on skin, the tang of kelp, the way the stone underfoot is slick with moss and guano. The idols’ surfaces are not smooth—they are layered with carved feathers so eroded that they look like overlapping runes, an impression that becomes more literal the longer the heroes stare.\n\n---\n\n## Geography & Environment\n\nThe Three Cormorants is more than three lonely rocks. It is a vertical dungeon of ledges, chimneys, sea caves, and hidden channels, all shaped by the constant grinding of surf.\n\n### The Sea Stack Complex\n\nThe site consists of three primary stacks arranged in a rough triangle around a deep, churning basin.\n\n- **North Stack, the Watcher:** Tallest and sheerest, with its idol facing inland toward Sandpoint. Its sides are nearly vertical, broken only by narrow, barnacle‑slick ledges and a few natural chimneys. Rope lines and wooden spikes left by previous visitors offer tenuous aid.\n\n- **West Stack, the Caller:** Slightly lower, with a broader crown where the idol stands at the center of a lichen‑stained platform. Natural arches and blowholes perforate its base, producing uncanny moans when waves strike. This is the most commonly used ritual and gathering area.\n\n- **South Stack, the Taker:** The smallest and most eroded, with its idol leaning seaward over dangerous reefs. Tidal caves perforate its base, some merging with submerged channels that lead toward the hidden heartward. The rock here is riddled with fossils and strange, glassy seams.\n\nBetween the stacks, the sea funnels and churns. At low tide, slick stone ribs emerge to form precarious stepping‑stones and ledges. At particularly low ebbs, a jagged natural bridge of rock spans part of the gap between the Watcher and the Caller, though climbing up to reach it is challenging.\n\nSmugglers and hermits have enhanced this natural maze with **rope bridges, knotted lines, and makeshift ladders**. These connections are often frayed, salt‑rotted, or deliberately sabotaged, offering chances for tense crossings, cut‑rope betrayals, or desperate leaps.\n\n### Weather, Tides, and Hazards\n\nThe environment at the Three Cormorants is actively hostile. Treat the weather and sea as ever‑present forces, not mere backdrop.\n\n#### Weather Patterns\n\n- **Frequent fog:** Banks of mist roll in and out unpredictably, sometimes blanketing the stacks in opaque white. Visibility drops to a few yards; sound becomes disorienting. The statues’ silhouettes loom and vanish, playing tricks on nerves.\n- **Sudden squalls:** Dark clouds draw in from the horizon faster than seems natural. Wind speeds spike, bringing stinging rain and driving spray. Rope bridges sway; waves climb higher on the rock.\n- **Rare calms:** On unusually still days, the water in the central basin lies almost glass‑smooth, and the idols’ reflections are unnervingly perfect. These moments may coincide with significant ward activity or omens.\n\n#### Tidal Rhythms\n\nThe tides determine which paths are safe, which caves are accessible, and how easy it is to land a boat. Consider sketching a simple tide track for the session, moving from **low → rising → high → falling** every few hours.\n\n- **Low tide:** Exposes barnacle‑studded shelves and narrow paths. Allows access to many lower caverns and wrecks, but increases the risk of becoming stranded when the water returns.\n- **High tide:** Cuts off most lower routes, but conceals some submerged passages that keen observers might find by watching unusual currents or bubbles.\n\nUse the tide as a soft time limit. If characters delay in dangerous lower caves, they may have to choose between scrambling for higher ground or risking floods.\n\n#### Environmental Dangers\n\nThe stacks teem with hazards:\n\n- **Slippery stone and guano‑slick ledges** threaten falls into sharp rocks or surging water below.\n- **Sudden waves** can surge into narrow channels, knocking characters from precarious perches or slamming them into walls.\n- **Undertows and whirlpools** in the central basin drag the unwary below, especially around blowholes and submerged arches.\n- **Falling debris:** Erosion, careless climbing, or the awakening wards can trigger rockfalls, crushing those beneath or opening new cracks.\n- **Exposure:** Long stays on the stacks without shelter risk hypothermia, sunburn, or exhaustion depending on the season and weather.\n\nMonsters and hazards native to rocky coasts—aggressive seabirds, predatory crustaceans, slick algae mats, and things that nest in tide pools—can add teeth to these environmental threats.\n\n### Approaches from Land and Sea\n\nHow the heroes reach the Three Cormorants shapes their first challenges and which local factions they encounter.\n\n#### By Sea: Rowboat or Small Craft\n\nThe most straightforward path is to hire—or steal—a boat in Sandpoint or nearby hamlets. Local sailors insist on clear weather and charge extra for trips near the "Black Beaks."\n\nApproaching by sea involves:\n\n- **Navigating reefs and shallows** without running aground.\n- **Timing a landing** on a narrow shelf when waves temporarily recede.\n- **Dealing with territorial creatures** that claim the sheltered pools, or with smugglers who regard unfamiliar boats as threats.\n\nThis route naturally connects the party to **fisherfolk NPCs, smugglers, and coastal rumors**. It’s ideal if you want to emphasize the living economy around the Cormorants.\n\n#### From the Lost Coast Road: Cliff Descent\n\nCharacters traveling along the road may spot the idols jutting from the water and decide to investigate, or be directed there by someone who only knows of the site from afar.\n\nA cliff descent involves:\n\n- **Finding or making a path** down treacherous bluffs, perhaps following old game trails or worn ropes left by previous visitors.\n- **Exposure to wind and rockfalls** as they descend.\n- **Potential ambushes** by bandits or creatures lairing in shallow caves.\n\nReaching the stacks this way may require a **perilous swim or improvised raft** to cross the final distance. It highlights the site’s isolation and can play up the hermit‑priest’s vantage point above the waves.\n\n#### Hidden Paths: Smugglers’ Route\n\nA third option is a **little‑known ledge path** along the base of the cliffs, revealed by captured smugglers, desperate locals, or the hermit‑priest. This route threads through sea caves and narrow slots that emerge near the South Stack.\n\nThe smugglers’ path may include:\n\n- **Concealed marks and signs** warning of traps or guiding allies.\n- **Crude handholds and ropes** that allow passage during certain tide states.\n- **Built‑in choke points** where sentries can easily delay or attack pursuers.\n\nThis approach is ideal if you want to focus on **criminal intrigue**, infiltration, or cat‑and‑mouse chases between rock pillars.\n\n### Tidal Caves and Submerged Passages\n\nBeneath the visible stacks lies a honeycomb of tidal caves, air pockets, and submerged channels. These spaces allow vertical exploration and offer varied moods: echoing grottoes lit by shafts of sunlight, claustrophobic tunnels barely above the waterline, and black, flooded tubes.\n\nKey elements include:\n\n- **Lower Grottos:** Caverns accessible at low tide from the bases of the Caller and Taker. They feature dripping stalactites, tide pools full of strange life, and stone platforms stained with older, darker use.\n- **Chimneys and Blowholes:** Vertical shafts that connect lower caves to upper ledges, passing near the idols’ foundations. Waves force air through them, creating moaning or shrieking sounds that can easily be mistaken for voices.\n- **Submerged Tunnels:** Hidden passages that connect the central basin to a deeper trench beyond the stacks, and ultimately to the **hidden heartward chamber**. Some require magical assistance or exceptional skill to traverse safely, especially during rising tides.\n\nWater levels transform these spaces. A broad floor at low tide becomes a chest‑deep pool; a barely passable crawl at low water becomes a flooded deathtrap when the tide rises. Creatures adapted to this cycle—amphibious predators, undead that need not breathe, or elementals—have a natural home here.\n\n### Ambient Supernatural Effects\n\nAs the Thassilonian wards reactivate, reality around the Three Cormorants bends in subtle ways. These effects should feel eerie rather than overtly hostile, at least at first.\n\n- **Unnatural bird behavior:** Mundane cormorants, gulls, and other seabirds sometimes freeze in place, staring toward the idols or the horizon in uncanny unison. At other times, they flee en masse, leaving the stacks eerily silent.\n- **Ghostly lights at sea:** On certain nights, pale blue or sickly green lights flicker beneath the waves around the stacks. They may resemble will‑o’‑wisps, drowned lanterns, or the glow of ancient runes.\n- **Whispers in the surf:** Characters who listen closely to wave‑noise may hear half‑formed words or fragments of ancient language. Divinations keyed to water or stone might translate these as warnings, pleas, or demands.\n- **Strange currents:** Boats and swimmers sometimes feel invisible hands tugging them toward or away from certain points. Floating debris moves against the wind, spiraling in patterns that mirror Thassilonian sigils.\n\nYou can translate these into simple mechanical hooks—subtle penalties or bonuses to perception, navigation, or concentration in certain conditions—but even without rules they serve as **omens** that foreshadow the heartward’s awakening or corruption.\n\n### Nearby Coastal Context\n\nThe Three Cormorants lies a few hours’ travel west of Sandpoint, visible from certain turns in the Lost Coast Road on clear days. From town, the idols are little more than bumps on the horizon, but sailors out from the harbor know their silhouette well.\n\n- **Shipping lanes:** Most legitimate ships give the stacks a wide berth, both to avoid the reefs and because of superstition. Only local fishing boats and those with business at the Cormorants draw near.\n- **Other coves and landmarks:** Rocky inlets to the east provide comparatively safer anchorages, while to the west the coast grows wilder and more broken. The Pyre’s lonely promontory lies farther along the same stretch of cliffs, and on especially clear nights its distant fire can be seen in the same sky as any lights at the Cormorants.\n- **Visibility:** In daylight, the stone birds are visible a good distance out to sea, serving as both warning and lure. At night, their silhouettes vanish, but when the wards stir, faint glows or glints of runes may draw the eye from miles away.\n\nFrom the perspective of Sandpoint’s people, the Three Cormorants is "out there"—near enough to matter, far enough that authorities prefer to **look the other way** unless compelled to act. This liminal status is a gift for a GM: whatever happens out on those rocks is easy to keep secret… until consequences roll back toward town.\n\n---\n\n## Notable Features\n\nSeveral key locations define the Three Cormorants as more than a treacherous pile of rocks. These features can each anchor scenes, encounters, and revelations.\n\n### The Three Stone Idols\n\nEach sea stack bears a monumental stone cormorant, roughly the size of a warhorse, carved from the same basalt as the rock beneath. Up close, it becomes clear that these are not crude coastal totems.\n\n- **Craftsmanship:** Despite centuries of erosion, the idols retain graceful lines and layered feather‑patterns. The feathers double as stylized runes, each quill’s end forming part of a sigil that only becomes complete when viewed from specific angles.\n- **Posture:**\n  - The **Watcher** on the North Stack stands erect, wings half‑furled, head turned inland. Chisel marks along its neck suggest it once turned or swiveled.\n  - The **Caller** on the West Stack has its beak raised skyward, throat carved with ridged channels that once focused sound or light.\n  - The **Taker** on the South Stack leans forward, beak pointed down toward the sea, as if ready to spear prey. Chips on its beak hint at impacts with something hard and powerful.\n- **Damage and weathering:** All three show cracks filled with lichen and barnacles. Segments of feather‑runes are missing, obscured, or replaced by later carvings: spiral wave motifs, holy symbols of Gozreh or Besmara, and the crude scratches of smugglers’ graffiti.\n\n#### Lingering Magic\n\nSpellcasters sensitive to magical auras feel a **deep, slow thrum** in the stone birds, like the echo of a heartbeat. Enough power remains here to fuel:\n\n- **Variable responses to magic:** Casting certain divinations, wards, or elemental prayers near the idols might cause their eyes to glow faintly, their beaks to vibrate with subsonic sound, or nearby surf to momentarily still or surge.\n- **Reactivity to offerings:** Placing appropriate offerings—blood, sea salt, rare shells, or ancient Thassilonian tokens—into the hollows at the idols’ bases can trigger minor manifestations: ghostly cormorants wheeling overhead, flickers of runes, or a brief alignment of bird and storm.\n\nYou can treat each idol as a **mystic interface** to the heartward. Heroes who experiment carefully can learn to:\n\n- **Tune their cries:** Adjust the pitch and direction of any sounds or lights they project, potentially using them as beacons or coded signals.\n- **Suppress their activity:** Overlaying strong modern wards atop them might dampen the heartward’s reach, muting strange omens but also weakening protective effects.\n- **Hijack their output:** Clever rituals could redirect the idols’ energies to new tasks—summoning storms, calming seas, empowering certain spells—at the risk of destabilizing their original functions.\n\nMake such tinkering feel powerful but risky. If the idols are overtaxed, cracks deepen, and stone feathers crumble into the sea, with all that implies.\n\n### The Wave‑Hewn Shrine\n\nThe primary ritual space at the Three Cormorants is a naturally terraced platform carved into the flank of the West Stack, just below the Caller’s idol. Centuries of waves have smoothed the rock into shallow basins and steps, while human hands have chiseled flat areas and channels.\n\n- **Layout:** A broad, roughly circular platform sits above typical high‑tide, accessible by a narrow ledge or rope ladder. Shallow pools catch spray and rainwater. A central stone slab, pitted and stained, serves as altar or table.\n- **Carvings:** The outer edges bear swirling wave motifs and images of seabirds in flight, largely the work of more recent Gozren or Besmaran worshipers. Closer to the idol’s base, the designs shift into straighter lines and geometric patterns that hint at Thassilonian origin.\n- **Offerings and detritus:** Empty bottles, scraps of cloth tied to pitons, old fish bones, and wax from burned candles litter the edges. Older, half‑fossilized offerings—rusted blades, cracked amphorae, once‑fine jewelry now welded to the rock by barnacles—lie closer to the sea where few dare approach.\n\n#### Modern Use vs. Original Function\n\nTo contemporary eyes, the wave‑hewn shrine is a place to **bargain with the sea**:\n\n- Fishers pour out the first catch, asking for safe voyages.\n- Pirates and smugglers toast successful runs and ask that "the birds look the other way."\n- The hermit‑priest performs solitary rites, reading patterns in spilled water and scattered shells.\n\nIn Thassilonian times, the same space likely served as a **calibration dais** and sacrificial platform.\n\n- Blood and other life‑essences ran down carved channels into the sea, feeding the heartward below.\n- Runes etched into the altar once interacted with the idols above, allowing wardens to reconfigure their function in response to threats.\n\nIf heroes perform **well‑constructed rituals** here—whether to modern gods, ancient runelords, or both—you can reward them with tangible effects:\n\n- Temporarily **calm or stir the sea** in the immediate area.\n- Grant **omens or visions** related to coastal events, ship movements, or the heartward itself.\n- Momentarily **synchronize** the three idols, causing a dramatic chorus of stone cries or light beams.\n\nConversely, disrupting a ritual—especially one conducted by hostile cultists or smugglers—can backlash, triggering dangerous waves, collapsing ledges, or momentary ward surges that attract unwanted attention from below.\n\n### The Drowned Oracle’s Grotto\n\nHidden within the lower reaches of the South Stack lies a flooded cavern haunted by the lingering spirit of a drowned seer.\n\n#### The Grotto Itself\n\nThe grotto is reachable at low tide via a narrow, wave‑lashed entrance or from above by a treacherous descent through a chimneylike shaft. Inside:\n\n- **Narrow ledges** cling to the walls above a dark pool that rises and falls with the sea.\n- **Stalactites and curtains of mineral deposit** drip constantly, their slow, rhythmic falling echoing like distant footfalls.\n- **Waterlogged debris**—planks, nets, fragments of clothing—floats on the surface, occasionally snagging on unseen projections.\n\nAs tides rise, the pool swells, submerging lower ledges and forcing climbers upward. At extreme high tides, the grotto may fill almost entirely, leaving only air pockets in the ceiling.\n\n#### The Oracle\n\nThe drowned oracle was once a mortal who sought out the power lurking beneath the Cormorants—perhaps a desperate priest of Gozreh, a Thassilonian acolyte who misjudged a ritual, or a more recent seer from Sandpoint. She drowned in the grotto’s waters during a fateful rite, her last visions seared into the stone and tide.\n\nHer presence now manifests as:\n\n- **Whispers in bubbling water,** answering questions obliquely.\n- **Ephemeral hands** tugging at ankles or offering support on slick ledges.\n- **Visions in reflection,** showing past storms, future wrecks, or symbolic images tied to the heartward and the broader campaign.\n\nThe oracle’s bargains are always **two‑edged**. She offers:\n\n- Prophecies about the heroes’ fates, enemies at sea, or the consequences of tampering with the idols.\n- Fragmentary insight into Thassilonian functions, names, and symbols.\n\nIn return, she may demand:\n\n- Offerings of breath—time spent underwater, risking drowning.\n- Symbolic or literal sacrifices cast into her pool.\n- Vengeance or mercy toward specific sailors, priests, or smugglers she names.\n\nHeroes can attempt to **lay her to rest** by fulfilling her last request, sanctifying the grotto, or mending a rent in the ward that claimed her. Doing so may stabilize aspects of the site, reduce the number of restless dead in nearby wrecks, or quiet some of the worst tempests.\n\nAlternatively, they might deepen her curse by exploiting her power or breaking the fragile balance she maintains, leading to more violent hauntings around the Cormorants.\n\n### Smugglers’ Hide and Contraband Cache\n\nThe same geography that challenges honest sailors makes the Three Cormorants ideal for those who prefer to operate unseen.\n\n#### Layout and Access\n\nA network of side tunnels and ledges near the base of the West and South stacks forms the smugglers’ lair.\n\n- **Concealed entrances** are masked by hanging nets, false rockfalls, or driftwood barricades painted to match the stone.\n- **Narrow corridors** twist between rock pillars, some leading to small chambers large enough for casks and crates, others to arrow slits and spyholes overlooking the sea.\n- **Lookout perches** high on the stacks provide vantage points to watch for approaching ships or patrols.\n\nThese spaces are riddled with **improvised traps and alarms**: tripwires that drop stones, clamorous strings of shells, or tanglefoot lines hidden along favored routes.\n\n#### Use of the Idols’ Lights\n\nThe smugglers have discovered—through luck, superstition, or the guidance of a more cunning leader—that the idols’ lingering magic can be coaxed into emitting faint glows or sounds.\n\nBy pouring specific mixtures of oil and powdered shell into shallow channels carved into the idols’ bases, they can:\n\n- Make one bird’s eyes **glow dimly**, serving as a beacon to allies in the know.\n- Trigger a low, thrumming **stone cry** that carries farther over water than any horn.\n\nThese signals allow the crew to **lure gullible captains** toward deceptive channels or warn partners of danger. To outsiders, such phenomena appear as uncanny hauntings or random manifestations of the site’s magic.\n\nThe smugglers might be:\n\n- A desperate but sympathetic group of locals exploiting the Cormorants to stay ahead of oppressive taxes.\n- A ruthless crew trafficking in darker goods, possibly in league with cultists or more sinister forces drawn to the heartward.\n\nHow the heroes interact with these criminals can change the social landscape of the Lost Coast—and who ultimately controls the Cormorants’ surface.\n\n### The Hermit‑Priest’s Retreat\n\nHigh above the spray line, in a cave or ramshackle hut overlooking the stacks, lives the hermit‑priest known to some as the Warden of the Beaks.\n\n#### The Dwelling\n\nDepending on your preference, the hermit’s home may be:\n\n- **A sea cave cell:** Carved into the cliff with a narrow ledge outside, overlooking all three stacks. Inside, driftwood furniture, shelves of shells and stones, and a simple sleeping mat form a spartan life.\n- **A shanty on a ledge:** A precarious hut lashed together from wreck‑timbers, sailcloth, and rope, its walls rattling with every gust.\n- **A hut above the cliffs:** A slightly more secure structure on the mainland, reached by a hidden path. From here, the hermit lowers ropes or ladders to reach the stacks.\n\nWithin, the heroes can find:\n\n- **A small shrine**—perhaps to Gozreh, Besmara, Erastil, or a less‑known sea spirit—adorned with feathers, shells, and small carved birds.\n- **Journals and charts** painstakingly chronicling bird behavior, storm patterns, strange lights, and dreams. Margins are filled with symbols clearly inspired by the idols’ runes.\n- **Simple defenses:** Tripwires made of gut string, concealed pits, and lines ready to pull ladders to safety.\n\n#### Interpretation of the Site\n\nThe hermit’s theology is a **patchwork of partial truths and personal revelation**.\n\nThey may believe that:\n\n- The three birds represent aspects of their deity: Watching, Calling, and Taking.\n- Storms are messages, each lightning strike a letter in a divine script.\n- The carved runes are not Thassilonian at all, but the original writing of the sea.\n\nIn reality, much of what they’ve observed is valid—the correlation between certain idol manifestations and tides, for example—but their interpretations are often skewed.\n\nThe hermit can serve as:\n\n- **Guide and lorekeeper:** Offering directions, warnings, and their own interpretations of omens.\n- **Fanatic obstacle:** If they believe the heroes intend to desecrate the site, they may rouse birds or even smugglers against them.\n- **Potential convert:** Confronted with undeniable Thassilonian evidence, the hermit might adapt, becoming a unique bridge between ancient wards and modern faith.\n\nThey might also be conflicted: their patron deity truly does have a presence here, but so does something older and less personal. The hermit feels torn between the two, and the heroes’ choices may resolve—or worsen—that tension.\n\n### Shipwreck Graves and Flotsam Fields\n\nAround the Three Cormorants, the sea floor and nearby beaches are studded with the bones of ships.\n\n#### The Wreck‑Strewn Shallows\n\nBroken ribs of hulls jut from the water at low tide. Nets and rigging, long fossilized with barnacles, sway like ghostly weed. Tangled within these ruins are:\n\n- **Common salvage:** Water‑warped crates, rotted barrels, rusted weapons, and everyday tools.\n- **Occasional treasures:** Chests wedged in cracks, small lockboxes caught in nets, or personal items that survived in sealed compartments.\n\nUndead drawn to this place—drowned sailors, sodden corpses that rise only under certain moons, or skeletal remains bound by the oracle’s curse—may wander these shallows, attacking the living or reenacting their final moments.\n\n#### Important Wrecks\n\nAt least one wreck should matter personally to your campaign:\n\n- A ship once captained by a **Sandpoint notable** (or an ancestor) lies broken near the South Stack, its logbook or cargo offering secrets about the town’s founding, past crimes, or hidden debts.\n- A smaller, older hull half‑buried in silt bears faint **Thassilonian motifs** on its surviving timbers or cargo, suggesting that even ancient mariners struggled with whatever the heartward binds.\n\nClues in these wrecks can:\n\n- Tie a player character’s backstory to the Cormorants.\n- Reveal that the idols have sometimes **failed**, allowing catastrophe to slip through.\n- Provide physical keys—figurative or literal—to the heartward’s locks.\n\nThe flotsam fields also serve as a **visual reminder** of the stakes: the sea takes what it wants, and the Cormorants stand at a dangerous intersection of mercy and predation.\n\n### Hidden Thassilonian Heartward\n\nBeneath the crashing waves and carved shrines lies the true core of the Three Cormorants: a **hidden heartward**, the magical engine that ties the idols together.\n\n#### Reaching the Heartward\n\nAccessing this secret inner chamber requires navigating the most hazardous parts of the tidal caves:\n\n- Following unusual currents or glowing runes that only appear in certain moon phases.\n- Passing through submerged tunnels that demand breath‑control, magic, or clever gadgetry.\n- Interpreting visions or instructions from the drowned oracle or hermit‑priest.\n\nEventually, the heroes emerge into a partially flooded cavern far below the stacks, where the rock is not natural at all.\n\n#### The Chamber\n\nThe heartward chamber is a **rune‑worked vault** fused with living stone and sea.\n\n- **Architecture:** Smooth, cyclopean walls curve inward, etched with overlapping circles and lines representing tides, lunar cycles, and arcane flows. Parts of the chamber are submerged, others form raised platforms or walkways.\n- **Keystone Focus:** At the center rises a pillar of dark stone, its surface carved with three intertwined bird forms. Channels run up from the waterline, carrying faintly glowing currents to the pillar.\n- **Conduits:** Three rune‑lined shafts pierce the ceiling, connecting to the idols above. Faint light, water, or sound trickles down these channels, linking the surface to the heart.\n\nHere, the wards’ true purpose becomes clear—or at least clearer. Murals, inscriptions, or lingering illusions hint that the heartward:\n\n- Monitors **something vast and dangerous** in the deeps beyond the stacks—a trench, an extraplanar rift, or the slow drift of an ancient entity.\n- Can redirect destructive forces, such as tidal waves or magical storms, away from favored coasts.\n- Demands **sacrifice or maintenance** to stay strong: precise rituals of offering, bloodshed, or arcane charge.\n\n#### Defenses and Puzzles\n\nTime, pressure, and the slow grind of the sea have damaged the chamber, but several defenses remain:\n\n- **Guardian constructs or bound elementals** shaped like stylized cormorants, activated by intrusion or improper tampering.\n- **Runic locks** that require aligning symbols corresponding to tides, moons, and the three idols’ aspects.\n- **Hazardous surges:** If the heartward is disturbed, waves of force and water may crash through the chamber, altering its layout and threatening to drown or dash intruders.\n\nTo interact with the heartward meaningfully, heroes must solve layered puzzles—matching runes to their idol, reading currents like text, or reenacting ancient rituals with modern understanding.\n\n#### Campaign‑Shaping Outcomes\n\nUltimately, the heartward presents the heroes with choices that can influence the broader campaign.\n\n- **Reset and Strengthen:** Recalibrating the heartward restores its original function. Future coastal threats may be blunted, storms diverted, and certain deep‑sea horrors held at bay. However, the renewed wards may also resist other forms of magic, interfere with sea travel, or exact a recurring cost in life or power.\n\n- **Corrupt or Reorient:** Twisting the heartward’s output allows a new master—perhaps a runelord, a rising cult, or even one of the heroes’ patrons—to hijack its protections. The idols may begin favoring specific ships, cursing others, or projecting different omens. This grants potent leverage but risks retaliation from whatever forces originally bound the wards.\n\n- **Destroy or Disable:** Shattering the heartward or severing its link to the idols breaks the ancient protections entirely. This might:\n  - Release a bound threat into the deeps or along the coast.\n  - Trigger devastating storms, tsunamis, or magical anomalies.\n  - Remove the eerie superstitions surrounding the Cormorants, turning them into mere rocks—at least for a time.\n\n- **Share the Burden:** A more nuanced outcome sees the heroes inviting **modern deities or spirits** to inhabit the ward’s structure, fusing Thassilonian craft with contemporary faith. The idols become a living shrine with new rules, allies, and responsibilities.\n\nWhatever the choice, make the consequences **visible and persistent**. The next time the heroes stand on Sandpoint’s docks watching a storm roll in, they should feel the weight of what they did beneath the Three Cormorants—and know that the sea remembers.']
INFO:__main__:Result for task 'draft_old_light':
INFO:__main__:  Output types: ['string']
INFO:__main__:  Outputs: ['# The Old Light\n\n## Location Overview\n\nPerched on the western cliffs of Sandpoint, the Old Light is as much a part of the town’s identity as its cathedral or market square. From most streets in Sandpoint you can see its broken crown jutting against the sky: a truncated cylinder of ancient stone, half‑sheared away toward the sea. Locals will readily tell visitors that the Old Light is the shattered remnant of a gigantic lighthouse, toppled in some bygone cataclysm. Children grow up drawing its outline; young couples sneak up there at dusk; travelers pause on the seaward road to sketch it.\n\nIn the present day, the Old Light is a blend of landmark, playground, and quiet unease. Sandpoint’s elders warn that the ruin is unsafe, that the stones sometimes shift without warning, that strange lights play along its surface in certain storms. Those same elders recall their own youth spent daring each other to lean out over the crumbling parapets, and their warnings are only inconsistently enforced. The town watch mainly concerns itself with keeping drunk daredevils from pitching into the surf—and with discouraging smugglers from using the cliffs below as a hidden dock.\n\nMost townsfolk never think beyond the lighthouse story. For them, the Old Light is a picturesque ruin, a convenient explanation for the name of Cliff Street, and a good way to orient an out‑of‑towner: “Walk uphill till you can just about touch the Old Light, then turn left.” A handful of Sandpoint’s more imaginative or educated residents suspect there is more to the site, but no one fully understands what truly sleeps beneath the broken crown.\n\n### The War‑Engine Revealed\n\nFor the GM, the Old Light is not a lighthouse at all, but the shattered barrel of a monumental Thassilonian war‑engine. In the time of the Runelords, this was one of Karzoug’s coastal siege projectors, a focused arcane device designed to hurl annihilating beams across leagues of land or sea. The visible ruin is only the uppermost fragment of a structure that once plunged deep into the bedrock, braced against the recoil of its own power.\n\nThe tower’s open side, facing the sea, is not merely collapsed masonry but the sheared remains of a focusing assembly. In its prime, the Old Light projected a beam that could scour fleets from the water or cut swathes through enemy armies. Those below never saw the weapon, only the impossible flash on the horizon, the blistering line of destruction that followed, and the rolling thunder that came seconds later.\n\nThe true heart of the war‑engine lies buried below the visible ruin: conduits carved into the cliff, runic capacitors, and a now‑silent astral projector once used to align the beam across distances and even across planar boundaries. The entire structure was keyed to the runic language and sin‑magic of Greed—Karzoug’s chosen vice—drawn from distant leylines and bound elementals.\n\nWhatever calamity ended Thassilon twisted this engine mid‑function. The top half exploded outward and away, crashing into the sea in molten fragments that cooled into strange black glass buried in the seabed. The lower machinery cracked and half‑powered down, preserved by wards that assumed the devastation outside was merely a temporary battle condition.\n\nCenturies of erosion and settlement followed. Thassilon fell into legend, then into almost nothing at all. Sandpoint rose nearby, its people building homes in the shadow of the silent barrel, none the wiser that their skyline’s broken tooth was once a weapon pointed at the world.\n\n### Role in the Campaign\n\nThe Old Light works best as a recurring, evolving location. It can begin the campaign as a low‑risk curiosity and gradually reveal its deeper nature as the heroes and the stakes grow.\n\nAt early levels, the Old Light offers straightforward exploration, light environmental danger, and flavorful foreshadowing. The PCs might climb its broken steps on a dare, rescue a trapped child, help a scholar map the upper chambers, or confront mundane threats—vermin, squatters, or small constructs stirring after centuries of stillness. The ruin gives you a place to drop Thassilonian script, imagery of long‑vanished armies, or flickers of strange light that hint at deeper magic without yet demanding answers.\n\nAs the campaign advances and the party gains experience with ancient ruins and Runelord plots, the Old Light can be revisited. New paths open into previously sealed sublevels. A storm, earthquake, or magical surge shakes free a slab of stone, revealing service tunnels and the Echoing Annex below. Creatures drawn by ambient magic—cultists, extraplanar scavengers, or awakened constructs—might claim these spaces, turning the Old Light into a layered mini‑dungeon amidst the more familiar streets of Sandpoint.\n\nAt higher levels, once the Runelords’ legacy is better understood, the Old Light can threaten or defend Sandpoint on a grand scale. The astral projector might lurch partially back to life under outside influence. Factions might scheme to reactivate the beam, whether to shield the town beneath a curtain of radiance or to wield it as a weapon again. The ruin itself can become a battlefield where the heroes fight to keep the engine from awakening—or to harness it responsibly.\n\nRepeated visits allow the players to see the site change in response to their actions. Stabilized passages remain clear. Wards they disturbed create new phenomena. Allies move their camps and workspaces. The Old Light becomes not just a lump of scenery but a familiar, living part of the campaign’s geography.\n\n### Stakes for Sandpoint\n\nAt its quietest, the Old Light is simply dangerous masonry: crumbling edges, hidden pits, falling stone. That alone is enough to put lives at risk when children sneak up there or when mercenaries seek a hidden rendezvous on the parapets.\n\nAs its deeper functions stir, however, the stakes escalate from personal mishap to existential threat. Partial reactivation of the war‑engine can manifest in several ways. You can choose which aspects appear in your campaign and when they become relevant.\n\nOn the protective side, the Old Light can project:\n\n- **A warding corona.** A pale aurora wells up around the ruin, shedding light over the town at night, confusing scrying attempts, and subtly dampening hostile magic that crosses its boundary.\n- **An early‑warning beam.** Instead of destructive energy, the projector emits a visible ribbon of harmless light toward distant disturbances keyed to Thassilonian magic. Locals treat these as omens; the PCs can learn to read them as warnings of Runelord‑touched threats.\n- **A stabilizing field.** Within a narrow radius around the ruin, planar rifts and large‑scale spell effects are harder to sustain, making the Old Light a natural bastion against certain enemy tactics.\n\nOn the dangerous side, misfires and uncontrolled surges can:\n\n- **Collapse the ruin.** Vibrations from half‑awakened machinery might shake loose tons of stone. Entire sections of cliff could slump away, taking part of Sandpoint’s waterfront or streets with them.\n- **Tear at the planes.** The astral projector, once used to aim the beam beyond the horizon, might instead claw open unstable portals. Stray creatures, energies, or alien visions spill through, turning the ruin into a nexus of extraplanar hazard.\n- **Scour the town.** A worst‑case scenario sees the beam misaligned, lashing across Sandpoint itself. Even a fraction of its original potency would be catastrophic.\n\nThe Old Light thus offers you a set of dramatic levers. You can threaten individual NPCs, neighborhoods, or the entire town with events centered on the ruin. You can also use it as a source of salvation—turning on just enough of the ancient warding systems to shield Sandpoint from a Runelord’s reprisal or a lesser cataclysm elsewhere.\n\n### Factions & Interested Parties\n\nSeveral groups have reason to care deeply about the Old Light. Their overlapping agendas make the ruin a natural stage for intrigue and negotiation.\n\n**Brodert Quink.** Sandpoint’s resident Thassilonian enthusiast has built his fragile reputation on the argument that the Old Light is not a lighthouse. He believes it once served as a war‑engine of immense power, though he only guesses at the particulars. In play, Brodert is eager to sponsor expeditions, trade maps and theories, and press the PCs for any scrap of information they uncover. He worries that more formal scholars from Magnimar will swoop in, seize the ruin, and publish “his” discoveries first.\n\n**Magnimarian Scholars and Agents.** The great city down the coast maintains a quiet interest in all things Thassilonian. Officially, the Old Light falls under Sandpoint’s jurisdiction, but Magnimar’s high‑minded sages and practical politicians alike suspect that anything tied to ancient sin‑magic might prove strategically useful—or dangerously unstable. Envoys may arrive with polite letters and sealed orders, claiming the right to oversee excavations, collect relics, and impose safety protocols. Less scrupulous agents may simply pay local toughs or cultists to secure what they want in secret.\n\n**Lissalan Cultists and Other Runelord Devotees.** Any cult devoted to the Rune of Greed or to forgotten Lissala recognizes the Old Light as sacred ground. To them, it is a surviving fang of their master’s will. These groups may seek to reactivate the projector, perform rites attuned to its ancient sigils, or sabotage any attempts to neutralize it. Their presence offers ongoing antagonists the PCs can encounter both in the ruins and in town.\n\n**Sandpoint’s Leaders.** The town’s mayor, sheriff, and other influential citizens are pragmatic. They care first about safety and stability. The mayor worries about the political consequences if Magnimar asserts direct control. The sheriff frets over increased foot traffic to a dangerous site. The clergy of Sandpoint’s various temples are wary of unearthing potent sin‑magic beneath their parishioners’ homes. Some leaders may quietly back Brodert or the PCs, seeing them as a way to keep decisions local; others may ally with Magnimar for the promise of funding and professional oversight.\n\nBetween these groups, the Old Light becomes a focal point for debates over ownership, secrecy, and risk. Who gets to decide what happens to an ancient war‑engine embedded in a living town? Who bears responsibility if something goes wrong? Those questions can underpin social scenes, council meetings, and tense negotiations around the ruin.\n\n### Themes & Tones at the Table\n\nThe Old Light lends itself to several complementary modes of play.\n\n**Archaeological wonder.** Emphasize the thrill of discovery. The ruin is an open‑air museum half reclaimed by nature, where every etched stone and exposed conduit hints at a lost world. Let players feel clever when they discern how a feature once worked, or when they piece together Thassilonian inscriptions.\n\n**Creeping supernatural oddities.** The war‑engine’s slumber is uneasy. Subtle phenomena—brief gravity shifts, phantom lights, overlapping visions of past and present—should make the Old Light feel uncanny without always threatening harm. As the campaign progresses, you can gradually increase the intensity and frequency of these events to mirror rising Runelord activity elsewhere.\n\n**Academic and political maneuvering.** The ruin is not just a dungeon; it is a prize. Scholars bicker over interpretations. Town leaders and Magnimarian envoys argue over jurisdiction. Cultists and thieves lurk in the background, watching for chances to steal texts and artifacts. The PCs can choose to stay neutral, become advocates for a particular faction, or attempt to mediate disputes.\n\nThroughout, remember that the heroes begin as relative unknowns. Avoid letting the scholars, officials, and cults overshadow them. These NPCs provide context and complications, but the important discoveries, decisive choices, and heroic stands should belong to the player characters.\n\n### Using the Old Light with Classic Rise of the Runelords\n\nIf you are adapting material from earlier versions of Rise of the Runelords, the Old Light has traditionally occupied the role of an evocative but underexplored ruin. This expanded treatment allows you to center it more strongly in the campaign or to keep it largely in the background.\n\nTo keep the Old Light a mostly local curiosity, treat its underground annex and projector as dormant and inaccessible for much of the story. Use the ruin for atmosphere, minor haunts, and a handful of early‑level encounters. Brodert Quink remains an eccentric ally whose theories are never fully proven on screen. Hints that the Old Light was a weapon foreshadow the grandeur of later Thassilonian sites without drawing attention away from the main dungeons.\n\nIf you prefer to lean into the foreshadowing, let the PCs uncover the Echoing Annex earlier and witness partial activations of the astral projector. Visions of Karzoug’s empire, glimpses of Xin‑Shalast, or momentary overlays of golden spires atop the Varisian landscape can all tie the ruin tightly to the Runelord of Greed. You can even allow the Old Light to react when Karzoug’s schemes advance—runes flare, gravity twists, the beam assembly hums—reminding the players that the ancient past is straining toward the present.\n\nIn either case, ensure that the Old Light’s revelations complement, rather than replace, the later dungeons and set pieces. It is a lens through which the PCs view Thassilon’s fall and resurgence, not the campaign’s ultimate battleground.\n\n---\n\n## Geography & Environment\n\nThe Old Light stands on a rocky promontory at Sandpoint’s western edge, where the coastal cliffs break into jagged shelves above the Varisian Gulf. Salt spray carries on the constant wind. Gulls circle and cry around the ruin, nesting in nooks and crevices of weathered stone. From below, the broken tower looms like a fist raised against the sky; from above, it feels as though the sea is trying to gnaw it out from beneath your feet.\n\n### Cliffside Location & Approaches\n\nThe primary approach to the Old Light is from Sandpoint itself. A worn path climbs from the nearest streets up toward the ruin, cutting through scrub grass and low thorn bushes. Decades of foot traffic have smoothed the way, but the path remains steep, and in wet weather it turns treacherous with slick mud and loose stones.\n\nCloser to the ruin, a set of old stone steps—some original to the Thassilonian structure, others added by later builders—climb the last rise to the tower stump. Many of these steps list outward; some are cracked clear through. A misjudged stride can send a careless visitor sliding toward the cliff’s edge.\n\nFrom the shore, a far riskier path winds up narrow ledges and eroded shelves. Fisherfolk and smugglers know this route, using it to reach a small, pebbled cove and, from there, the spray‑slick rocks below the Old Light. Adventurous locals sometimes attempt the climb in reverse, descending from the ruin toward the water, but the way is exposed and unforgiving.\n\nThe cliffs themselves drop sharply to the surf, with churning water, submerged rocks, and unpredictable swells. At low tide, fragments of black, glassy stone occasionally protrude from the waves—slag from the Old Light’s ancient explosion, their unnatural smoothness distinct from the surrounding geology.\n\n### Ruined Superstructure (The Tower Remnant)\n\nThe visible part of the Old Light is a cylindrical stone stump perhaps half as tall as it once was, its seaward face torn away to expose interior chambers. The outer walls lean slightly inland, a subtle but disconcerting reminder that the whole ruin is slowly sliding toward the edge.\n\nWithin, shattered staircases twist around the tower’s hollow core. Rubble piles choke many landings. Sections of the inner wall have collapsed, leaving open shafts that drop to lower levels or lead into half‑filled rooms. Rain and wind funnel through these gaps, and in storms the tower howls with ghostly voices as air is forced through cracks and vents.\n\nYears of neglect have allowed nature to reclaim parts of the superstructure. Moss and hardy lichen cling to shaded stones. Scraggly shrubs have rooted in cracks, their roots widening existing fractures. Birds nest on ledges and in the sheltered corners of open chambers. Small mammals scurry through the rubble.\n\nThe tower’s highest accessible point, the Fallen Crown, is a broken parapet encircling what was once a maintenance platform and focusing ring. Water pools in uneven depressions there after rain. From this vantage, visitors can look down into the ruined core or outward over Sandpoint’s rooftops and the restless sea.\n\n### Subterranean Annex & Service Tunnels\n\nBeneath the obvious ruin, the Old Light extends into the living rock of the cliff. What modern Sandpoint knows of this substructure is fragmentary. A few broad passages, mistaken for storage chambers or natural caves, are known to smugglers, curious children, or the most dedicated scholars. Most of the annex remains sealed behind collapsed stone and still‑functional wards.\n\nThe service tunnels comprise narrow, stone‑lined corridors etched with fading Thassilonian runes. In places, the walls bulge outward where pressure from the cliff has warped them. Rusted metal conduits protrude like fossilized roots, once used to channel power and coolant through the complex. Some of these conduits still hum faintly, vibrating under the touch or emitting a low, almost inaudible thrumming noise.\n\nOff the main corridors lie former workrooms, storage cells, and access shafts. Many are partially filled with dirt and rock washed in over centuries. Others contain toppled frames that once held crystals, lenses, or bound elementals, now mostly missing or inert.\n\nThe Echoing Annex, a larger sublevel described later, forms the heart of this underground complex. Reaching it typically requires breaching a warded seal, clearing a collapsed passage, or discovering a hidden access route—such as the Spillway connecting to the sea‑caves below. Once opened, these lower chambers dramatically expand the scope of the Old Light as an adventuring site.\n\n### Weather, Tides, and Coastal Hazards\n\nThe Old Light’s maritime setting is as much an environmental hazard as any trap. GMs should use weather, tides, and the physical realities of the cliff to complicate exploration and combat.\n\nFog is common along this stretch of coast, especially in the early morning and late evening. Dense banks can roll in from the sea with little warning, reducing visibility atop the ruin to a few yards and turning familiar paths treacherous. Fog also muffles sound, making it easy for creatures—or cultists—to approach undetected.\n\nStorms bring high winds that tug at cloaks and can unbalance those fighting near ledges. Rain slicks the stone and fills narrow steps with rushing runoff. Lightning occasionally arcs down to kiss the ruin’s higher points, sometimes triggering flashes of dormant magic.\n\nTides are particularly important for the Spillway and the sea‑cave beneath the Old Light. At high tide, these lower chambers can flood entirely or reduce accessible footing to precarious shelves above churning water. At low tide, hidden pools, sharp barnacle‑encrusted rocks, and quicksand‑like silt become the threats.\n\nCombat in and around the Old Light should reflect these shifting conditions. A sudden squall might turn a straightforward fight into a desperate scramble to avoid being blown from a parapet. Retreats through the sea‑cave can be cut off by a fast‑rising tide, forcing the party to seek a different path through the ruin.\n\n### Arcane Distortions in the Area\n\nAlthough the Old Light’s main power sources shut down long ago, fragments of its arcane systems remain active at a low level. These remnants manifest as localized distortions that make the site feel subtly wrong to sensitive individuals.\n\nIn some spots, gravity feels slightly misaligned. A tossed pebble curves unexpectedly. A character stepping across a particular seam in the stone feels their weight double for an instant, then vanish. Loose debris may hover for a heartbeat before clattering down.\n\nElsewhere, ambient sound becomes strangely muted or amplified. Footfalls vanish in absolute silence in one alcove, while whispers in another chamber echo as though shouted through bronze horns. These effects may shift slowly over time, tugged by unseen currents in the damaged conduits below.\n\nAt night, faint phantom lights sometimes dance along the tower’s interior walls: ghost‑images of runes flaring as they did in ages past, or afterimages of the beam’s path strobing through dimensions beyond normal sight. Casters who work magic within the ruin might notice their spells feeling “thicker,” as if pushing through invisible resistance or catching on unseen threads.\n\nMechanically, you can use these distortions to justify minor challenges—slightly altered movement, Perception complications, or short‑lived boons or hindrances to spellcasting—without overwhelming the core action. They are also useful narrative cues: as the broader campaign’s Thassilonian elements intensify, these anomalies can become more pronounced, signaling the Old Light’s growing resonance with distant events.\n\n### Fauna, Vermin, and Opportunistic Occupants\n\nIn its long dormancy, the Old Light has become home to a modest ecosystem.\n\nCommon seabirds nest among the stones, their droppings staining ledges and making footing unexpectedly slick. Rats scurry through the rubble and tunnels, feeding on scraps left by visitors or washed in from the sea. Spiders weave webs in shadowed corners, sometimes large enough to snare the unwary.\n\nLarger predators occasionally den in the substructure—feral dogs, opportunistic beasts, or minor monstrosities that prefer shelter and elevation. At night, bats spill out in fluttering clouds from hidden cracks.\n\nHumanoid squatters sometimes claim temporary refuge here. Smugglers may stash contraband in a dry niche of the Spillway or sea‑cave. Bandits on the run might hide in the upper chambers, counting on the ruin’s reputation to discourage casual searchers. The scholars’ presence, described later, can draw or repel such opportunists depending on how well the area is patrolled.\n\nConstructs or magical creatures from Thassilon’s time are rarer on the surface but more likely to be found in the deeper annex. A broken servitor staggering through the tunnels, half‑aware and following corrupted orders, makes an excellent early encounter that both fits the site’s history and hints at greater dangers below.\n\n### Resonance with Other Thassilonian Sites\n\nThe Old Light does not exist in isolation. It is one node in a larger, long‑dormant network of Thassilonian engines, wards, and ley‑tapping constructs. When other Runelord‑touched events occur in the region, the Old Light may respond in subtle yet telling ways.\n\nWhen distant Thassilonian magic flares—whether from an awakened rune‑well, a newly unearthed ruin, or a Runelord’s experiment—the ambient distortions at the Old Light intensify. Gravity surges grow stronger. Rune‑flares become more frequent. The astral projector may flicker to life spontaneously, throwing up hazy images of unknown locations.\n\nYou can use these reactions as visual and sensory foreshadowing. Before the players ever reach a major ruin inland, they might witness the Old Light humming at night, its broken crown limned in green‑gold radiance. When they later stand within that distant ruin and trigger its wards, you can describe a sympathetic tremor in the Old Light miles away, noticed by NPCs back in Sandpoint.\n\nAt the campaign’s climactic moments, the Old Light might resonate violently with Xin‑Shalast’s awakening or with Karzoug’s direct actions. This could manifest as violent storms localized above the ruin, spontaneous illusions of Thassilonian battlefields overlaying the cliffs, or even partial reactivation of the war‑engine’s beam assembly without anyone on site touching a control.\n\nThese sympathetic surges tie the Old Light into the broader tapestry of the campaign, reinforcing its role as both a relic of the past and a barometer for the dangers to come.\n\n---\n\n## Notable Features\n\nThe Old Light is best understood as a collection of interrelated zones, each with distinct physical and narrative characteristics. The following sections describe these zones in detail, with guidance on how to present them and weave them into the campaign.\n\n### 3.1. The Fallen Crown (Upper Ruin & Parapet)\n\nThe Fallen Crown is the highest accessible level of the Old Light: an irregular ring of stone surrounding a central opening where the tower’s upper machinery once rose. Centuries of damage have left the parapet cracked, jagged, and missing in several stretches. Tufts of hardy grass sprout between stones; in quiet moments, the wind whistles mournfully through gaps in the masonry.\n\nLocals dare each other to visit the Fallen Crown at night, to lean out over the dizzying drop and shout their names into the storm. Lovers come here to watch the sunset paint the sea in gold and crimson. Children sneak up to scratch their initials into the softer mortar between stones. As a result, the parapet bears a palimpsest of human marks atop the far older Thassilonian work—hearts, crude faces, a few rude words, and occasional charcoal rubbings of runes whose meaning none of the artists understand.\n\nFrom this vantage, Sandpoint spreads out like a miniature. The cathedral’s spires, the bustle of the market square, and the bobbing lights of the harbor all lie below. To the west, only the broad sweep of the Varisian Gulf stretches away, the curve of the coast vanishing into mist.\n\n#### 3.1.a. Viewing Ledge & Survey Point\n\nA particular section of the Fallen Crown’s inner edge forms a relatively stable viewing ledge. Here, the stone underfoot is less fractured, and a surviving buttress offers both handhold and partial cover from the wind. Locals know this spot as the best place to “see the whole world,” and many a Sandpoint native has stood here to dream of distant travels.\n\nFor the PCs, the viewing ledge is a natural location for reconnaissance. On a clear day, they can survey the town’s perimeter, note approaching ships in the bay, or spot distant dust plumes hinting at marching groups on nearby roads. At night, they can watch for signal fires, strange lights on the water, or signs of activity at other nearby sites.\n\nSocially, this ledge offers a quiet, dramatic backdrop for conversations with NPCs. Brodert might bring the party up here to excitedly point out structural evidence supporting his theories. A town guard could confide worries about an influx of strangers. A young noble from Magnimar might meet a secret lover from Sandpoint, the Old Light framing their forbidden liaison.\n\nIf you wish, you can grant minor situational advantages to scouting and planning scenes carried out from this vantage, reinforcing its role as a natural survey point.\n\n#### 3.1.b. Residual Firing Focus\n\nEmbedded in the stone near the center of the Fallen Crown is a cracked ring of a strange, glassy material, veined with metal and faintly etched in spiraling runes. This is the remnant of the war‑engine’s focusing assembly, once part of a complex apparatus that extended above the parapet. Now, only this ring and a few shattered support arches remain.\n\nSensitive individuals might feel a faint tingling when they step across the ring, like the air before a lightning strike. During storms, hair stands on end near it, and small metal objects twitch in sympathetic motion.\n\nOn rare occasions, when the right combination of ambient magic, weather, and distant Thassilonian surges align, the focusing ring can be coaxed into temporary stability. Spellcasters attempting to channel arcane or primal energy through it may find their power intensified, redirected, or refracted in strange ways. This can provide short‑lived boons or complications, at your discretion.\n\nThe ring is also a natural locus for magical surges. Miscast spells, wild talents, or interference from the astral projector below can cause the ring to flare with sudden light. Terrifying but harmless beams of illusory radiance might lance toward the horizon, or localized distortions could throw characters briefly into a vision of the tower as it once stood.\n\nThe residual focus thus serves as both a flavorful set piece and a mechanical excuse for unusual magical phenomena whenever you desire them.\n\n### 3.2. The Broken Coil (Middle Chambers & Power Conduits)\n\nBelow the Fallen Crown, the tower’s interior levels form a chaotic maze of corridors, landings, and shattered rooms. This is the Broken Coil: the region where power conduits once snaked along the walls, channeling immense energies from the annex below up to the focusing assembly above.\n\nMany of these conduits have ruptured, leaving hollow channels, dangling fragments of ancient metal, and occasional shards of crystal fused into the stone. The walls bear shallow relief carvings and inlaid runes, most cracked and dim but some still faintly glowing in response to magic or strong emotion.\n\nThe Broken Coil’s floors are treacherous. Entire sections have fallen away, leaving jagged openings into darkness. Makeshift bridges—planks laid by smugglers, ropes left by scholars, or even ancient catwalks still clinging to the walls—span some of these gaps. Others remain unbridged, a hazard for the unwary and a tactical feature during fights.\n\n#### 3.2.a. Machinery Pits & Rubble Chasms\n\nThe largest gaps in the Broken Coil open into former machinery pits. These cylindrical shafts once housed rotating assemblies, power regulators, and elementally charged cores, all of which were removed, destroyed, or buried in the tower’s fall.\n\nNow, the pits are choked with rubble, fallen beams, and half‑collapsed platforms. In some, only a shallow dip remains, filled with loose stone and detritus. In others, the collapse has punched clear through to lower levels, creating deep chasms where lantern light struggles to reach the bottom.\n\nThese pits and chasms provide dramatic verticality. Foes can climb the walls or leap from ledge to ledge. Characters who slip while fighting near the edges may tumble several levels, landing in painful heaps amid debris—or in the path of whatever creature has claimed the darkness below.\n\nDangling cables of twisted metal and petrified vines (once conduits for elemental flows) can serve as precarious handholds or improvised ropes. Some are brittle with age and snap under weight; others remain unexpectedly strong. Broken platforms attached to the walls at odd angles can form makeshift perches or sniper nests.\n\nConsider populating these spaces with creatures adapted to the vertical environment—winged predators, climbing monstrosities, or constructs using residual magnetism to cling to the walls. Rescue scenes, where an NPC hangs from a crumbling ledge or is trapped on an isolated platform, can also add emotional weight.\n\n#### 3.2.b. Thassilonian Script & Iconography\n\nThe Broken Coil’s walls are rich with Thassilonian inscriptions and imagery. These carvings once served both decorative and instructional functions, glorifying Karzoug and providing coded guidance on operating the war‑engine.\n\nCommon motifs include stylized beams of light scything through lines of enemy soldiers, fleets of ships dissolving under arcs of radiance, and towering figures—likely Runelords or their favored champions—standing untouched amid destruction. Golden cityscapes reminiscent of Xin‑Shalast rise in the background of many scenes, their spires echoing the tower’s own interior architecture.\n\nCertain recurring sigils appear near junctions of conduits or at thresholds to important chambers. These include the rune of Greed, spirals indicating rotational direction, and complex arrays denoting safety or danger related to energy flow.\n\nScholars can glean much from these images. Early on, the PCs might simply recognize that the Old Light was indeed a weapon, its beam capable of reaching far beyond the horizon. Later, when they encounter similar iconography in other Thassilonian ruins, they can connect the dots, seeing how this coastal engine tied into a wider network of sin‑magic infrastructure.\n\nUse these scripts and carvings to feed lore in digestible pieces. A partially shattered mural could hint at an unseen counterpart to the Old Light farther along the coast. A warning sigil might alert a careful reader to unstable magic in an adjacent room, granting a chance to prepare.\n\n### 3.3. The Echoing Annex (Hidden Sublevel)\n\nDeep beneath the visible ruin lies the Echoing Annex, a sublevel carved directly into the cliff’s heart. It earns its name from the peculiar acoustics within; sounds here seem to linger and double back on themselves, as though reluctant to fade.\n\nThis annex once housed the Old Light’s primary support systems: servitor constructs, power regulators, and, most importantly, the astral projector used to align the beam over vast distances. In the present, it is sealed behind layers of collapsed rock and dormant wards. Opening the way may involve deciphering Thassilonian controls, dispelling or circumventing magical locks, and physically clearing rubble.\n\nThe air in the annex is cold and dry, tinged with a faint metallic tang. Unlike the upper levels, it has seen little intrusion from outside forces. Dust lies thick in unused rooms, disturbed only by the movements of constructs that still patrol their predefined routes or by creatures that have found their way in through fractures or planar anomalies.\n\nUnderfoot, the floors here are smoother and more precise than above. Walls are unmarred by weather, their runes sharp and legible. Occasional crystals set into the ceiling emit a dim, steady glow when disturbed, lighting chambers in haunting, color‑shifted hues.\n\n#### 3.3.a. Bound Servitors & Security Wards\n\nThe Echoing Annex’s defenses are a mix of physical constructs and arcane wards.\n\nBound servitors—constructs designed to maintain and defend the war‑engine—still function in reduced capacity. Their directives are ancient, their understanding of the present world nonexistent. Many will interpret any unrecognized presence as intruders, especially if those intruders bear tools or magic that might be mistaken for siege sabotage.\n\nSome servitors were built for simple tasks: cleaning conduits, adjusting levers, replacing crystals. These are less dangerous but can raise alarms or activate more potent guardians. Others were created as dedicated defenders, armed with built‑in weapons or capable of repurposing the environment as a weapon—triggering gravity inversions, dropping blast shutters, or venting stored energies.\n\nLayered over and between these constructs are arcane security wards keyed to Thassilonian command phrases and sigils. Many have degraded, their conditions partially met or their matrices cracked, leading to unpredictable behavior. A ward meant to repel intruders gently might instead lash out with lethal force; another designed to seal doors on unauthorized entry could stutter, opening and closing at random.\n\nCrucially, these defenses are not malevolent in intent. They are tools following corrupted instructions. Clever PCs can learn to communicate with or bypass them, using recovered command tokens or deciphered rune‑keys. Doing so can shift the annex from a hostile gauntlet into a cooperative environment—if the heroes are willing to shoulder responsibility for controlling such power.\n\n#### 3.3.b. The Astral Projector Chamber\n\nAt the heart of the Echoing Annex lies a broad, circular chamber dominated by a complex apparatus: the astral projector. In its prime, this device allowed operators to “see” distant locations, overlaying their images onto the chamber’s walls or into suspended lenses, then align the Old Light’s beam to strike with unerring accuracy.\n\nNow, the projector is cracked and partially slagged. Some of its focusing crystals have exploded; others float listlessly in midair, held by failing suspensions. Metallic arms hang at odd angles, frozen mid‑adjustment. Runes on the floor form concentric rings around a central dais, many charred or scratched through.\n\nDespite this damage, the device is not entirely inert. Under the right stimuli—a surge from distant Thassilonian magic, a storm overhead, or deliberate activation—it can flare to life in limited fashion.\n\nWhen active, the projector casts ghostly panoramas onto the walls and into the air. These visions may show:\n\n- Thassilon as it once was: gleaming cities, regimented armies, caravans laden with tribute.\n- The Old Light’s own memories: fleets on the Varisian Gulf reduced to foam by invisible force, fortresses collapsing under beams of emerald fire.\n- Present‑day locations linked to Thassilonian magic: rune‑wells, active cult sites, or even Xin‑Shalast itself.\n\nUse these visions as powerful narrative tools. They can convey lore, foreshadow locations, or remind the players of the moral weight of awakening ancient weapons. However, activations should never feel entirely safe.\n\nEach use of the projector risks drawing notice from beyond. Entities attuned to astral or planar disturbances—outsiders, lingering Thassilonian spirits, or even the consciousness of a Runelord—may sense the stirring and gaze back. Repeated or careless use can increase this risk, escalating from vague feelings of being watched to direct interference.\n\nGMs should decide early whether the projector can ever be fully repaired. If it can, the PCs may gain access to a powerful reconnaissance tool—one that could also become a beacon to their enemies.\n\n### 3.4. The Spillway & Sea‑Cave Access\n\nThe Old Light’s builders understood that immense power generation produces immense waste: heat, sloughed‑off magical residue, and literal runoff from cooling systems. To handle this, they carved a Spillway: a channel sloping down from the annex to a sea‑cave at the cliff’s base.\n\nTime and tide have partially collapsed this channel. In some sections it is a tight, jagged crawl, stone walls dripping with condensation and streaked with mineral deposits. In others, it widens into roughly circular tunnels, their floors uneven with old grates and broken pipes.\n\nAt several points, the Spillway opens into small side chambers, once used to monitor flow or store tools. Many of these now collect seawater at high tide and are tangled with rotting seaweed and driftwood.\n\nClever explorers can use the Spillway as a stealthy route between the sea‑cave and the annex, bypassing more obvious entrances. However, traversing it requires timing around tides and dealing with slick surfaces, sudden drops, and occasional surges of trapped water.\n\n#### 3.4.a. Tidal Chamber & Flotsam Hoard\n\nAt the base of the Spillway lies a larger sea‑cave where the channel empties into the Varisian Gulf. This chamber expands and contracts dramatically with the tide.\n\nAt low tide, much of the cave floor lies exposed: slick stone ridges, shallow pools, and a central basin filled with flotsam. Broken beams from long‑lost ships, driftwood, seaweed, and a startling assortment of mundane debris accumulate here. Sailors’ superstitions claim that anything lost at sea near Sandpoint eventually washes into this chamber.\n\nAmong the refuse, more interesting items can be found. Barnacle‑encrusted chests, corroded weapons, and intact barrels of trade goods may have lodged here over the years. The occasional body, washed in by a storm or a crime gone wrong, adds a darker note.\n\nAt high tide, the lower portion of the chamber floods, submerging much of the flotsam. Strong waves can surge into the cave, battering anything on the lower ledges and threatening to drag the unwary out to sea or slam them against the walls.\n\nThis tidal chamber is an excellent locale for environmental puzzles and tense scenes. A race to retrieve a particular object before the tide rises, a fight against aquatic predators as the water creeps higher, or a desperate swim through the surge to escape pursuers can all play out here.\n\n#### 3.4.b. Eroded Relic Deposits\n\nWhere the Spillway’s runoff meets the sea‑cave, centuries of erosion have scoured pockets and channels into the rock. In these depressions, heavier objects settle: not only stones and scrap metal, but fragments of Thassilonian relics washed down from the ruin above.\n\nShards of rune‑etched crystal glint amid the pebbles. Chips of strange, nearly weightless metal—remnants of power regulators—lie half‑buried in silt. Small, mostly intact items such as inscribed rings, amulets, or tools might be found here, their more delicate companions long since ground to dust.\n\nFor the PCs, these deposits are treasure sources and clues. Recovered relics can be sold, studied, or used as components in crafting, especially for items that resonate with Greed‑aligned magic. A broken sigil‑plate might complete a pattern seen elsewhere in the Old Light, unlocking a ward or decoding a mural.\n\nYou can also seed these deposits with items unrelated to the Old Light but important to local stories: a locket from a missing sailor, a seal‑ring linking a shipwreck to Magnimarian politics, or a waterproofed scroll case bearing an old navigational chart.\n\n### 3.5. Scholar’s Encampment & Dig Site\n\nIn the shadow of the Old Light’s broken flank, amid tumbled stones and half‑collapsed outbuildings, stands a more modern construction: the scholar’s encampment. Depending on your campaign’s timing, this may be a single cluttered tent belonging to Brodert Quink, a small cluster of pavilions and scaffolds erected by visiting academics, or a semi‑permanent dig overseen jointly by Sandpoint and Magnimar.\n\nThe encampment typically includes:\n\n- Tents or lean‑tos serving as offices, sleeping quarters, and storage.\n- Crude tables covered in sketches, charcoal rubbings of runes, and half‑translated notes.\n- Crates holding pottery shards, metal fragments, and catalogued relics.\n- Rope lines and wooden scaffolds granting controlled access to particularly dangerous portions of the ruin.\n- Simple warding circles, charms, or talismans intended to “appease” the spirits of the Old Light—whether or not any such spirits truly exist.\n\nAll of this sits uncomfortably amid the raw stone and looming ruin. The hum of conversation and occasional clatter of tools contrast with the wind’s constant moan through the tower.\n\n#### 3.5.a. Academic Rivalries and Politics\n\nWhere scholars gather, so too do egos and agendas. The Old Light’s encampment is a fertile ground for roleplaying.\n\nBrodert Quink jealously guards his status as the site’s first serious investigator. He views Magnimarian experts with a mix of admiration and resentment, eager to impress them yet fearful of being dismissed. A rival scholar from Magnimar might consider Brodert a useful local guide but privately find his theories fanciful—or, worse, uncomfortably accurate.\n\nFunding and oversight add further tension. Sandpoint’s leaders may have granted access conditionally, insisting on safety measures that the scholars find restrictive. Magnimar’s patrons might expect first claim on notable discoveries, leading to arguments over what constitutes “notable.”\n\nWithin this web, the PCs can act as mediators, muscle, or wildcards. They might escort researchers into newly opened sections, negotiate between the town and visiting dignitaries, or be asked to retrieve “just one more artifact” from a forbidden area before an inspection.\n\nThe possibility of sabotage or theft hangs over the camp. Cultists might infiltrate disguised as laborers or students. Thieves could target the evidence cache for valuables or to erase incriminating records. The heroes may find themselves defending the camp during a nocturnal raid—or uncovering proof that one of the scholars is not what they seem.\n\n#### 3.5.b. Evidence Cache & Forbidden Notes\n\nMost serious expeditions maintain a central evidence cache: crates or chests where the most important finds, maps, and records are stored. In the Old Light’s case, this cache may be a locked trunk inside Brodert’s tent, a reinforced footlocker under a Magnimarian pavilion, or even a small wooden shed built near the ruin.\n\nWithin, you might include:\n\n- Journals containing early, incomplete interpretations of the Old Light’s purpose.\n- Sketches of the war‑engine’s supposed layout, some accurate, others wildly off the mark.\n- Rubbings of runes from deeper within the ruin, hinting that someone has been farther than they admit.\n- Confiscated relics deemed too dangerous for open study: cracked focusing crystals, unstable rune‑plates, or a deactivated servitor core.\n\nThese materials are valuable not only for their monetary worth but for the knowledge they represent. Cultists or foreign agents might seek to steal or destroy them to keep the truth of the Old Light’s nature secret—or to prevent rivals from gaining an advantage.\n\nThe PCs can discover tantalizing clues in these notes: references to hidden doors, mentions of “voices in the lower hall,” or half‑legible diagrams linking the Old Light to sites far inland. Protecting, deciphering, or deciding the fate of this cache gives them a measure of agency over how much information spreads.\n\n### 3.6. Minor Haunts & Phenomena\n\nThe Old Light seethes with minor supernatural phenomena. Some may be true spirits of those who died in its fall; others are echoes of the war‑engine’s own operations, distorted into quasi‑sentient patterns by centuries of decay.\n\nRepeated events might include:\n\n- **Ghostly battle echoes.** On certain nights, sounds of shouting, drums, and distant explosions reverberate faintly through the ruin. Faint spectral silhouettes may briefly appear on the parapets, loosing volleys from bows long gone.\n- **Flashes of beam‑fire.** Momentary streaks of brilliant light cut through the air, leaving afterimages on the eyes but no physical damage. Those caught in the flash might experience disorienting visions of blinding radiance.\n- **Ephemeral workers.** Semi‑transparent figures in Thassilonian garb appear for a few seconds, walking along ancient paths, adjusting invisible levers, or carrying tools. They never interact with the present and vanish when approached.\n\nYou can treat these as purely atmospheric or attach mild mechanical effects—brief fear responses, momentary distraction, or hints guiding characters toward particular locations.\n\n#### 3.6.a. Gravity Surges & Illusionary Overlays\n\nAmong the most striking phenomena are gravity surges and illusionary overlays tied to the war‑engine’s unstable heart.\n\nGravity surges manifest as sudden, localized shifts in weight and direction. A character may feel themselves yanked sideways as though falling toward a wall, only to slam back into the floor. Loose debris might erupt upward in a fountain of pebbles, then rain down in slow motion. These surges are usually brief, but they can be dangerous when they occur near ledges, pits, or during delicate maneuvers.\n\nIllusionary overlays temporarily superimpose the tower’s prime condition atop its ruined state. Cracked walls appear whole and glowing with runes. The empty core fills with humming machinery. For a few heartbeats, characters can see Thassilonian engineers moving through intact halls, hear shouted orders in an ancient tongue, and smell hot metal and ozone.\n\nThese overlays provide vivid glimpses of the past. A character standing in the right spot might witness how a particular control panel was used, which levers were important, or where a now‑hidden door lay in the original layout. Alternately, the visions might simply remind the players of the scale and cold efficiency with which the Old Light was once wielded.\n\nAdjust the frequency and intensity of these events to match the campaign’s tone. Early on, they might be rare and subtle, increasing as the Runelords’ influence resurfaces.\n\n#### 3.6.b. Rune‑Flare Events\n\nScattered throughout the Old Light are dormant runic arrays that still retain limited power. Under certain triggers—spellcasting, emotional peaks, or alignment with distant Thassilonian magic—they flare to life.\n\nA rune‑flare might manifest as:\n\n- Lines of light racing along carved channels in the stone.\n- A sudden hum in the air, building to a brief, harmless discharge.\n- Secondary effects such as a gust of wind, a shower of sparks, or a momentary halo of radiance around a character.\n\nMore potent flares can have real consequences: strengthening or weakening nearby spells, unlocking or sealing doors, or momentarily reactivating a piece of machinery.\n\nImportantly, frequent triggering of rune‑flares may have cumulative effects. Each activation sends a tiny pulse through the Old Light’s surviving systems and along leylines tied to the Runelords’ network. If the PCs grow too fond of prodding every rune they see, you can subtly escalate the response: more intense surges, attracted creatures, and eventually the attention of distant Thassilonian powers.\n\nThis gives you a way to tie the heroes’ choices at the Old Light into larger campaign events. Their curiosity and ambition can literally help awaken old sins.\n\n### 3.7. Adventure Seeds & Scaling Options\n\nThe Old Light is a flexible adventure hub. The following ideas help you integrate it into different level bands and campaign arcs.\n\n#### 3.7.a. Early‑Level Hooks (1–3)\n\nAt low levels, keep threats localized and stakes personal, focusing on the upper ruins and the scholar’s camp.\n\n- **The Missing Apprentice.** A young assistant from the dig site fails to return from a solo foray into the Broken Coil. The PCs must track their path, dealing with minor haunts, vermin, or a single half‑functional servitor that has mistaken the apprentice for an intruder.\n- **Night of the Flickering Crown.** Strange lights and loud booms from the Old Light disturb Sandpoint. The heroes are asked to investigate, finding that rune‑flares and minor gravity surges are frightening, but mostly harmless—until opportunistic smugglers use the distraction to raid the evidence cache.\n- **The Dare Gone Wrong.** Local youths challenge one another to spend a night on the Fallen Crown. A sudden storm and a gravity surge nearly hurl them into the sea. The PCs must mount a rescue amid slick stones, panicked teenagers, and an angry nesting predator disturbed by the commotion.\n- **The Scholar’s Dispute.** Brodert Quink and a visiting Magnimarian argue over access rights. Both seek the heroes’ support and assistance in retrieving a particular relic from a dangerous niche. Handling the social fallout of who the PCs choose to help may matter as much as any combat.\n\n#### 3.7.b. Mid‑Level Hooks (4–5 and Beyond)\n\nAs the party grows stronger and the campaign’s Thassilonian elements intensify, raise the stakes and expand the geography to include the Echoing Annex and astral projector.\n\n- **Surge Stabilization.** A powerful rune‑flare coincides with a distant Thassilonian awakening, partially activating the astral projector. Wild visions and planar ripples spread from the Old Light, unsettling Sandpoint. The PCs must descend to the Echoing Annex to stabilize or shut down the projector before a larger breach forms.\n- **Aiming for Disaster.** Lissalan cultists infiltrate the annex and attempt to realign the war‑engine, either to target Sandpoint’s enemies or to carry out an apocalyptic rite. The heroes must fight through bound servitors now obeying corrupted commands, debate whether to destroy or reclaim the controls, and decide what to do with the knowledge of how to aim such a weapon.\n- **Defense of the Broken Beacon.** An extraplanar entity or Thassilonian construct follows the astral “scent” of the projector and attacks, seeking to seize or destroy the Old Light. The PCs coordinate Sandpoint’s defense, battle foes in the shadow of the tower, and may have the opportunity to trigger limited protective functions—such as a warding corona—to avert catastrophe.\n- **The Beacon’s Bargain.** Magnimar offers to take full responsibility for the Old Light’s containment, sending engineers and battle‑mages to lock it down. In exchange, they expect the PCs to hand over key relics and knowledge. Local leaders and Brodert Quink are divided. The heroes must choose between centralized, stricter control and keeping dangerous secrets closer to home.\n\nThrough these and other scenarios, the Old Light can remain a central, evolving component of your Sandpoint‑based campaign—a broken beacon whose long shadow stretches from the first level’s cautious explorations to the highest confrontations with the legacy of Thassilon.']
INFO:__main__:Result for task 'draft_tickwood':
INFO:__main__:  Output types: ['string']
INFO:__main__:  Outputs: ['# Tickwood\n\n## Location Overview\n\nTickwood lies a short ride south of Sandpoint, a low, rolling forest that spills across the hills between the Lost Coast Road and the hinterland farms. Locals call it “boar country” with a mix of pride and wariness. It is the first true wilderness most townsfolk ever see: close enough for day-hunts and berry-picking, far enough that people speak of missing hunters, strange lights, and songs that carry on still summer air when no one is there to sing them.\n\nAt first glance, Tickwood feels alive in a way that is almost welcoming. Birds and insects keep up an almost constant racket. Sunlight spears down through layered canopies of oak, maple, and fir. The ground is soft with needles, leaf litter, and churned soil where boars root for food. But after an hour or two off the main trails, the forest’s mood shifts. Animal paths loop back on themselves. A familiar tree bears carvings no one in Sandpoint remembers making. Whispers drift on the wind, just loud enough to convince a traveler they heard words.\n\nUnlike Shank’s Wood’s brooding silence or the more mundane copses dotting the hinterlands, Tickwood is vibrant, playful, and subtly wrong. The forest’s fey inhabitants have worked for centuries to keep it that way. On the surface, it is a riot of color and noise where hunters boast of trophies and children dare one another to touch old standing stones. Beneath that veneer, ancient grudges, inhuman politics, and Thassilonian scars twist roots and minds alike.\n\nFor a Rise of the Runelords campaign, Tickwood is your ready-made wilderness stage: a place where the heroes can cut their teeth on early expeditions, a shortcut or detour on the way to more distant dangers, and a recurring source of favors, secrets, and complications.\n\n### Regional Role & First Impressions\n\nFrom Sandpoint’s taverns to the surrounding farms, Tickwood’s reputation is well known. Hunters prize its dense population of wild boar, deer, and smaller game. Trappers whisper about giant ticks that drop from trees onto careless travelers, and about wolves that watch from just beyond bowshot, never quite committing to an attack. The oldest tales, usually shared after a few drinks, speak of “little folk” in the woods—pixies with a taste for practical jokes, dancing lights that lead drunks into brambles, and a capricious “queen of Tickwood” who blesses or curses hunters based on whims no mortal can predict.\n\nWhen the PCs first enter Tickwood, emphasize the forest’s sheer activity. The canopy is alive with birds. Squirrels chatter and chase one another along branches. Beetles buzz past in iridescent swarms. The air smells of sap, damp earth, and boar musk. Paths are clearly used, but rarely by carts or horses; this is a forest of game trails and hunters’ routes.\n\nTo distinguish Tickwood from other local forests, lean into its contradictions: \n- **Bright but unsettling**: Light filters through leaves in shifting, almost hypnotic patterns. Flowers bloom in odd out-of-season colors. \n- **Noisy but isolating**: The soundscape is so busy that PCs may have trouble telling where individual sounds originate. Voices carry strangely. \n- **Whimsical but dangerous**: Harmless pranks—boots laced together, packs rearranged, berries that change a character’s hair color—sit alongside very real threats from boars, predators, and warped creatures.\n\nPCs should sense quickly that Tickwood follows its own rules. Tracks seem to fade faster than they should. A brook they crossed an hour ago now runs in the opposite direction. All of this keeps the forest memorable and sets up later reveals about fey courts and ancient magic.\n\n### Using Tickwood in the Campaign\n\nTickwood’s proximity to Sandpoint and its dense, varied terrain make it a flexible tool throughout Rise of the Runelords and beyond. It fulfills three main roles:\n\n1. **Early Wilderness Proving Ground**: In the campaign’s early chapters, Tickwood is a natural destination for hunting expeditions, escort missions, and the first clues that something stranger than goblin raids is stirring. Low-level forays (roughly levels 2–4) might involve boar hunts gone wrong, rescuing lost travelers, or tracking strange beasts influenced by alchemical runoff.\n\n2. **Recurring Travel Route**: As the campaign broadens, Tickwood becomes a shortcut—or a dangerous detour—between Sandpoint, hinterland farmsteads, and more distant sites. Mid-level parties (levels 4–6) may choose Tickwood routes to avoid known threats on the roads, take advantage of hidden trails known to poachers, or meet with fey allies. Each passage offers opportunities for evolving encounters: warped creatures, escalating fey politics, or visible changes tied to Runelord activity.\n\n3. **Gateway to Fey and Thassilonian Side Plots**: The forest conceals a divided fey court and a buried Thassilonian experiment site. These elements can support side arcs involving diplomatic bargains, curses, strange dreams, and fragments of rune magic. As the main campaign reveals more about Thassilon, Tickwood’s secrets can echo those revelations in miniature.\n\nWhen planning forays into Tickwood, consider the following guidelines:\n\n- **Level Bands**: \n  - *Levels 2–3*: Focus on natural threats and simple fey mischief—boars, wolves, giant vermin, minor hazards, and mischievous but not lethal fey. \n  - *Levels 4–5*: Introduce mutated beasts spawned by alchemical scars, more assertive fey agents, and exploration of deeper regions such as the Boar-Ridden Thickets or alchemical glades. \n  - *Levels 5–6 and beyond*: The divided fey court’s politics come to the fore, and the buried Thassilonian site becomes an appropriate dungeon-like location.\n\n- **Scaling Encounters**: You can increase the danger of Tickwood simply by combining threats. A routine boar hunt becomes deadly when panicked animals flee from a mutated predator. A harmless fey prank becomes a serious problem if it occurs while the party is navigating a ravine or an alchemical fog. Use the forest’s dense cover, variable visibility, and unstable footing to alter encounter difficulty without changing creature types.\n\n- **Revisiting Tickwood**: Aim to bring the forest back into focus every few sessions while the PCs remain based near Sandpoint. Each return should show that time has passed: abandoned camps, new carvings in trees, fey reacting differently now that they recognize the heroes, or further expansion of Thassilonian corruption.\n\n### Factions, Courts, and Stakeholders\n\nSeveral groups claim interest in Tickwood, some openly, others unseen.\n\n- **Local Hunters and Trappers**: These are Sandpoint’s professional boar hunters, bowyers, and fur traders, along with a scattering of independent foragers and herbalists. They rely on Tickwood for meat and pelts but respect it enough not to press too deeply. Many leave small offerings—coins at springs, bread at certain stones—in hopes of keeping the “little folk” appeased. They resent poachers and noble gamewardens equally when quotas or heavy-handed rules threaten their livelihoods.\n\n- **Sandpoint Nobles and Gamewardens**: Members of Sandpoint’s small gentry use Tickwood as a hunting ground and retreat. Some families maintain rustic lodges on the forest’s fringes and employ gamewardens to enforce informal rules: no snares near noble trails, no hunting during certain festivals, and, unofficially, “no making the nobles look bad.” These gamewardens frequently clash with independent hunters and turn a blind eye to fey activity so long as it does not embarrass their employers.\n\n- **The Divided Fey Court**: Beneath the leaves, a small but ancient fey court claims spiritual dominion over Tickwood. Composed of quicklings, grigs, sprites, and a jaded dryad who remembers the forest’s pre-Thassilonian age, the court is fractured into at least two factions. One wishes to leverage the resurgence of Thassilonian power for personal gain, perhaps aligning with a Runelord’s echoes. The other seeks to protect the forest and its mortal neighbors from old evils, even if that means asking mortal champions for help.\n\n- **Thassilonian and Alchemical Remnants**: Long before Earthfall, Thassilonian mages used sections of Tickwood as a living laboratory. Their abandoned wards and waste still scar the land. In more recent times, smugglers and alchemists have added their own runoff, turning some glades into cauldrons of mutation. No organized faction represents these forces, but their influence manifests through warped creatures, lingering constructs, and the occasional cultist or scholar seeking to reclaim lost secrets.\n\nRelationships among these groups are tangled:\n\n- Hunters grudgingly trade news and meat with gamewardens, but bristle at noble restrictions. \n- Poachers and smugglers court the hunters’ knowledge while using the forest for illicit stills and hidden camps.\n- The fey court alternately blesses respectful hunters—leading them to game or shelter—and curses those who overharvest or defile certain sites. \n- Fey traditionalists despise the Thassilonian scars and any modern alchemists who worsen them, while the opportunist faction secretly bargains with such intruders.\n\nPCs are most likely to be drawn into conflict when one group enlists them against another: a hunter asking for help with “cursed” boars, a gamewarden pressuring them to crack down on poachers, or a fey emissary demanding reparation for some mortal’s trespass.\n\n### Themes, Tones, and Playstyle\n\nTickwood supports several overlapping themes; decide which to emphasize in your game and let them guide your descriptions and encounter choices.\n\n- **Wilderness Exploration**: Dense undergrowth, confusing paths, and hidden clearings make Tickwood ideal for exploration. Use travel challenges, environmental hazards, and navigation puzzles to reinforce the feeling of venturing into unknown territory. Even short journeys can feel like small expeditions.\n\n- **Fey Mischief and Dark Whimsy**: Fey in Tickwood rarely attack head-on. They misdirect, trick, and tempt. Encounters might begin with a simple prank—a rearranged campsite, an illusionary beast, a shifting path—before escalating into bargains or threats. Play up the fey’s alien logic: their sense of justice and proportion does not match mortal expectations.\n\n- **Survival and Predation**: Boars, wolves, vermin, and larger predators constantly test the boundaries between hunter and prey. Use scenes of carcasses picked clean, territorial challenges, and the ever-present risk of infection or poison to underscore survival themes. Even a triumphant hunt can leave lasting scars.\n\n- **Ancient Echoes**: The Thassilonian undercurrent introduces a note of dread. Mutated creatures, etched rune-stones half-swallowed by roots, and dreams that replay long-buried experiments hint that Tickwood’s story is older than Sandpoint’s. \n\nYou can slide the tone of Tickwood along a spectrum:\n\n- **Lighthearted Fairy-Forest**: Emphasize playful fey, helpful animals, and colorful phenomena. Threats still exist, but they are softened by whimsical framing—talking animals, luck charms, and boons for polite behavior.\n\n- **Uncanny, Predatory Woods**: Darken the palette by making the forest’s sounds slightly off, its colors sickly in certain areas, and its fey more menacing. Pranks carry real risk, and even beauty (a moonlit glade, a chorus of frogs) feels like bait.\n\nCheck in with your players—overtly or by watching their reactions—and adjust. If they respond strongly to eerie dream sequences and moral ambiguity, tilt toward dark whimsy. If they prefer clear-cut heroics and camaraderie with strange allies, foreground the protective fey and noble hunters.\n\n### Getting There & Travel Logistics\n\nTickwood sits close enough to Sandpoint that even cautious groups can reach its outer edges and return in a single day.\n\n- **Main Route from Sandpoint**: The most common approach follows the Lost Coast Road south from Sandpoint for a short stretch before branching onto a well-used hunter’s track. From town to the Hunter’s Fringe takes a few hours on foot at a cautious pace, less on horseback.\n\n- **Game Trails and Hunter Paths**: Within the forest, clear paths quickly give way to narrow trails marked by carved symbols on trees, colored ribbons, or stacked stones. Knowledgeable guides move confidently between water sources, blinds, and favored wallows. Unfamiliar travelers risk looping back on themselves or stumbling into dense thickets.\n\n- **Travel Paces and Time**: At a normal pace, a group can push from the forest’s edge to its deeper heartwood in half a day, assuming they don’t spend too much time following wrong turns. Move slower when tracking, scouting quietly, or hauling heavy game; move faster on well-known or magically marked routes.\n\nFor random encounters, consider a simple rhythm: \n\n- **On the way in**: One check for trouble or opportunity—boars, hunters, or early fey attention. \n- **While exploring**: One check per watch or per significant activity (tracking, searching, delving into a subregion). \n- **While camping**: One check at night, with an emphasis on stealthy predators, curious fey, or weather.\n\nFey rarely ignore travelers for long. Even if no full encounter occurs, show their presence: distant laughter, subtle illusions, or gifts left at camp. Mutated beasts and alchemical hazards are more localized; reserve them for known scarred zones unless the campaign’s Thassilonian elements are actively spreading.\n\nCamping in Tickwood is possible but never entirely safe. Hunters prefer to sleep at the forest’s edge or in known camps. Those who camp in the interior should expect odd dreams, nocturnal visitors, and the possibility that they awaken to find their camp subtly rearranged.\n\n### Adventure Hooks & Recurring Missions\n\nUse Tickwood as a flexible source of side quests and recurring tensions:\n\n- **Boar Bounty**: Sandpoint’s butchers or a noble patron offer rewards for particularly large or aggressive boars that have begun raiding fields. These animals may show early signs of mutation, hinting at deeper corruption.\n\n- **Missing Persons**: A hunter, trapper, or curious youth vanishes in Tickwood. Tracks lead into the Boar-Ridden Thickets or toward an alchemical glade. The missing person might be alive, in thrall to fey or afflicted by a strange condition.\n\n- **Strange Lights**: Farmers along the forest’s edge report multicolored lights drifting through the trees at night. Are these fey revels, alchemical vapors igniting in marsh gas, or Thassilonian wards reactivating?\n\n- **Spoiled Game**: Carcasses brought back from Tickwood rot unnaturally fast, ooze odd fluids, or whisper in the voices of the dead. Butchers refuse to handle such meat. Tracing the source leads to contaminated streams or corrupted glades.\n\n- **Demands of the Unseen Court**: Hunters find carved messages or woven sigils in their camps: leave tribute or face misfortune. The PCs can escort tribute, investigate who truly sent the demands, or attempt to bargain more favorable terms.\n\n- **Runelord Ripples**: As the main campaign’s Runelord elements awaken, Tickwood reacts. Dreams in the Dreaming Hollow show distant rune-marked towers. The opportunist fey faction begins to approach the PCs with ominous offers: sabotage a rival, retrieve a Thassilonian relic, or allow a particular ritual to proceed in exchange for power.\n\nWeaving these hooks into the main plot keeps Tickwood relevant and lets the heroes see how even a “small” forest feels the tremors of ancient powers returning.\n\n## Geography & Environment\n\n### Overall Layout & Terrain Zones\n\nTickwood is not a vast wilderness, but its layered terrain and shifting paths make it feel larger than it is. For play purposes, divide the forest into several distinct subregions.\n\n#### The Hunter’s Fringe\n\nThis outer band hugs the farmland and roads. Trees are widely spaced, undergrowth is manageable, and animal paths crisscross in tangled patterns. Visibility is generally good within bowshot, though occasional thickets and low ridges provide cover.\n\nHere, hunters erect temporary blinds, hang snares, and leave carved marks to guide one another. Evidence of human presence—spent arrows, ashes from old fires, carved initials—is common. Most casual forays into Tickwood never venture beyond this zone.\n\nIn play, treat the Hunter’s Fringe as relatively safe. Ambushes are still possible, but creatures have less concealment and travel is straightforward.\n\n#### The Deep Heartwood\n\nFarther in, the forest grows older and thicker. Massive trunks crowd together, forcing travelers to pick their way carefully between roots and brush. Fallen trees create natural barriers and shelters. Moss covers nearly every surface, making everything feel soft and muted.\n\nVisibility in the heartwood drops sharply. Understory shrubs and low limbs limit sight lines, while the canopy filters light into green, shifting gloom. Sounds echo oddly, and it’s easy to misjudge distance.\n\nNavigation and tracking become more challenging here. Without guides, magical aids, or experience, even skilled woodsfolk can be led astray by fey illusions and deceptive topography.\n\n#### Stream-Cut Ravines\n\nTickwood’s hills are scored by narrow ravines carved by seasonal streams. Some hold running water year-round; others become muddy trenches after rains and bone-dry channels in late summer.\n\nRavine walls can be steep, slick with moss, or choked with brambles. Clambering up or down them takes time and care. Travel along the bottom offers cover but restricts movement and sight—perfect for predators or ambushers.\n\nBridges are rare. Fallen logs, cleverly stacked stones, or makeshift hunter crossings provide the only easy ways across. In play, ravines are natural chokepoints and hazards that complicate chases and retreats.\n\n#### Hidden Glades\n\nScattered throughout Tickwood, hidden glades range from small, sunny clearings to larger meadows choked with waist-high grasses and flowers. Many such glades serve as ritual sites for the fey, gathering points for animals, or the visible faces of deeper anomalies.\n\nSome glades feel particularly “normal”—ideal campsites or hunting blinds. Others exude a strange energy: flowers turn to follow intruders, stones hum quietly, or time seems to stretch. The Divided Fey Court, the alchemical runoff glades, and the Dreaming Hollow are all special glades with their own rules.\n\nHidden glades are ideal set pieces. Encounters staged here have clear boundaries, high visibility, and distinctive environmental traits.\n\n### Flora, Fauna, and Everyday Dangers\n\nTickwood’s baseline ecology is recognizably that of a temperate coastal forest, punctuated by a few distinctive species.\n\n- **Trees and Understory**: Oaks, maples, alders, and firs dominate, interspersed with thickets of blackberry, hazel, and thorny underbrush. In wetter hollows, ferns and moss form dense carpets. In drier patches, low shrubs and grasses prevail.\n\n- **Animals**: Boars are the forest’s emblematic beasts—sturdy, aggressive, and surprisingly cunning. Deer, wolves, foxes, and numerous smaller mammals round out the familiar fauna. Raptors circle above the canopy, while owls rule the night.\n\n- **Vermin and Insects**: Ticks of all sizes are ubiquitous. Hunters warn newcomers to check their clothes and skin regularly. Bees and wasps nest in hollow trees and banks, while clouds of biting flies and mosquitoes emerge near standing water. Some insect species have already begun to show subtle mutations near scarred zones: unusual colors, faint phosphorescence, or oddly synchronized movements.\n\n- **Fungi and Plants**: Mushrooms thrive, especially after rain. Some clusters are edible, others toxic, and a few possess mild hallucinogenic or oneiric properties. A particularly notorious variety, with pale caps veined in violet, is said to induce vivid, prophetic dreams when brewed as tea or inhaled as smoke—though overuse can blur the line between visions and madness.\n\nEveryday dangers in Tickwood rarely demand full encounters but can shape the tone of travel:\n\n- **Bramble Thickets**: Dense tangles of thorns block paths, forcing detours or bloody passage. Creatures fleeing through such growth leave obvious trails but risk entanglement.\n\n- **Sudden Sinkholes**: Patches of leaf-covered ground collapse into shallow pits or deeper voids softened by water. A misstep can lead to twisted ankles, broken gear, or a tumble into subterranean pockets.\n\n- **Slick Stream Banks**: Wet, mossy stones along streams and ravines are treacherous. Falls can knock characters prone, sweep them downstream, or dump them into deeper pools.\n\n- **Seasonal Concerns**: In spring, meltwater creates mud that slows movement and devours boots. In late summer and autumn, dry underbrush becomes a fire hazard; a careless campfire or lightning strike can spark runaway blazes. Autumn also brings leaf-fall that obscures hazards and tracks alike.\n\nAll of these hazards reward attentive players and offer you ways to adjust pacing and tension without introducing new monsters.\n\n### Fey-Touched Microclimates\n\nThe fey of Tickwood mold their surroundings in subtle ways. Over decades, their magic has created pockets where nature behaves strangely.\n\n- **Perpetual Twilight Groves**: Some stands of trees remain in a constant dusk regardless of time of day. Shadows are long and cool, fireflies drift as if it were summer night even in spring or autumn, and the air is hushed. Time feels slower here; conversations linger, and travelers emerge feeling that more—or less—time has passed than the sun suggests.\n\n- **Unnaturally Musical Clearings**: In certain clearings, wind alone produces melodies: reeds whistle, branches creak in harmony, and stones resonate underfoot. Here, sounds carry sharply, making stealth more difficult but also warning of others’ approach.\n\n- **Reversed Seasons**: A few glades defy the calendar. Snow dusts flowers in high summer, while autumn leaves whirl in high spring. These places often anchor fey rituals. Staying too long can leave mortals with lingering chills, fevers, or uncanny dreams tied to the “wrong” season.\n\nEnvironmental effects that telegraph fey presence include:\n\n- Paths that seem to double back only when not directly observed.\n- Laughter or whispered conversation with no visible source.\n- Flowers or leaves turning to track the PCs’ movements.\n- Small animals that show no fear, staring or following.\n\nMechanically, such microclimates can justify minor advantages or penalties: difficulty navigating without magical guidance, subtle pressure on willpower from lulling songs, or fleeting boons like accelerated natural healing after resting in a particularly benevolent grove.\n\n### Thassilonian and Alchemical Scars\n\nTickwood bears wounds from two distinct eras of meddling.\n\n- **Ancient Thassilonian Experiments**: In the age of Runelords, mages used the forest as a site for experiments in transmutation and rune-etched life. Though the laboratories themselves lie buried, runoff and residual magic seeped into soil and water. In some hollows, the earth shines faintly with embedded glassy shards. In others, plants grow in twisted spirals, leaves marked with faint glyph-like veins.\n\n- **Modern Alchemical Runoff**: In recent decades, smugglers, hedge alchemists, and Sczarni stills have dumped waste in secluded glades and streams. These concoctions mingle with older Thassilonian residue, producing unpredictable results.\n\nScarred zones share common traits:\n\n- **Discolored Soil and Plants**: Patches of earth glimmer with metallic hues or unnatural reds and purples. Grasses and fungus growing here may be brittle, waxy, or unusually vibrant.\n\n- **Glassy Pits**: Depressions where liquids once pooled have hardened into glass-like crusts. Stepping on them risks breaking through into hidden cavities filled with fumes or sludge.\n\n- **Metallic-Smelling Streams**: Watercourses near scars often smell of iron, copper, or bitter herbs. Animals drink cautiously or avoid them entirely.\n\nCreatures exposed to these scars can become warped. When you introduce “mutated” versions of familiar beasts, choose one or two obvious changes:\n\n- Oversized chitin, tusks, or claws; extra eyes with sickly luminescence.\n- Unnatural behaviors, such as pack animals hunting alone, nocturnal beasts active by day, or vermin displaying coordinated tactics.\n- Strange byproducts: blood that smokes on contact with air, ichor that crystallizes, or wounds that ooze luminous sap.\n\nThese mutations signal to the players that something more than ordinary nature is at work and foreshadow deeper Thassilonian involvement.\n\n### Weather, Seasons, and Time of Day\n\nTickwood’s climate follows that of the Lost Coast but features its own quirks.\n\n- **Common Weather Patterns**: Coastal fog often rolls in from the west, seeping between trunks and pooling in low hollows. Sudden showers can turn dry paths into slippery hazards and swell streams in a matter of hours. Summers bring humid heat beneath the canopy, while winter rains and occasional snow dampen sound and chill bones.\n\nWeather dramatically changes encounter dynamics. Fog lowers visibility and favors ambush predators or sneaky fey. Rain muffles noise but worsens footing. Heat saps endurance and can make heavy armor a liability.\n\nTime of day also shapes Tickwood’s character:\n\n- **Morning**: Mist still clings to hollows, and birds greet the light in a riot of calls. Hunters set out early; fey are often sleepy or withdrawn after nocturnal revels. It’s a good time for tracking, as dew highlights prints and broken foliage.\n\n- **Noon**: The sun is highest, and the forest feels almost safe. Shadows shorten, colors are bright, and animal activity lulls in the heat. Most mundane travel and trade happen now.\n\n- **Dusk**: Light fades quickly under the canopy. Many animals stir to feed, and fey grow bold. Colors shift toward oranges and deep greens, and the chorus of insects swells. This is the ideal time for eerie encounters and subtle magic.\n\n- **Midnight**: The forest is darkest and strangest. Stars and moonlight filter through gaps in the canopy, casting stark patches of silver amid blackness. Nocturnal predators hunt, fey courts convene, and Thassilonian echoes—whispers in old tongues, flickers of ghostly sigils—are at their strongest.\n\nUse these daily cycles to pace the party’s plans and to foreshadow particular events: a bargain set to be sealed at midnight in a certain glade, or a hunt that must conclude before dusk.\n\n### Soundscape, Smells, and Sensory Cues\n\nTickwood’s personality emerges most strongly through sensory detail. Keep a small pool of descriptions handy and rotate them to keep scenes fresh.\n\n- **Sounds**: Choruses of insects; the distant crash of a boar rooting; wolves howling far off; the creak and groan of trees in the wind; caws of crows shadowing travelers; the muted clink of a hunter’s gear; sighing wind through reeds near streams.\n\n- **Smells**: Sap and crushed pine needles; damp earth after rain; the sharp tang of boar musk; woodsmoke drifting from unseen camps; sweet, cloying floral scents near fey-touched groves; acrid, metallic smells near scarred streams.\n\nUse specific cues to foreshadow threats:\n\n- Birds going abruptly silent before a warped predator or major beast encounter.\n- A sudden, faint metallic tang heralding the approach of alchemically altered vermin.\n- Discordant music—a flute out of tune, harp strings plucked too slowly—before fey meddling or court emissaries appear.\n- The slow, rhythmic thud of something heavy moving through underbrush well before it is visible.\n\nBy associating certain sensory patterns with particular dangers, you let players feel perceptive and build dread in a fair, rewarding way.\n\n## Notable Features\n\n### The Hunter’s Fringe\n\nThe Hunter’s Fringe marks the outer ring of Tickwood, a relatively tamed zone stretching from the fields and roads up to the first steep ravines and thick tangles. Here, trees are spaced enough to allow line-of-sight bowshots, and the underbrush is kept in check by frequent human passage and grazing deer.\n\nEvidence of human use is everywhere: low platforms lashed into branches as makeshift blinds, rope ladders half-rotten but still serviceable, and carved trail markers—simple symbols or more personal graffiti from generations of hunters. Old boar wallows, churned into shallow mud pits, attest to the abundance of game.\n\nSample encounters here might include:\n\n- **Competitive Hunters**: A band of local hunters or visiting nobles cross paths with the PCs, turning a simple boar hunt into an informal competition—who can land the first kill, track the largest boar, or return with the most meat? Rivalries can be friendly or cutthroat, depending on personalities and stakes.\n\n- **Territorial Boars**: Even in the Fringe, some boars are more aggressive than others, especially older males driven from better foraging grounds deeper in. These animals are likely to charge camps, upend packs, or trap unwary folk between themselves and ravines.\n\n- **First Contact with Watchful Fey**: Minor fey may first reveal themselves as whispering voices, darting lights, or animals behaving oddly. A lost arrow returns, laid carefully across a sleeping PC’s chest. A snare holds a phantom “boar” that vanishes when the party approaches. These moments set the stage for more direct interactions deeper within the forest.\n\nPCs can gain favor with local hunting interests by respecting their marks, sharing information, and helping with dangerous game. They lose favor by poaching noble reserves, stealing from blinds and camps, or bringing the wrath of fey or mutated beasts back to the Fringe.\n\n### The Boar-Ridden Thickets\n\nDeeper within Tickwood lies a tangled region notorious among hunters—the Boar-Ridden Thickets. Here, shrubs grow shoulder-high, and brambles form nearly impassable walls. Trails twist and dead-end, often in churned pits or tight, shadowed hollows that reek of musk.\n\nBoars dominate this zone. They are not merely numerous; they are organized in strange ways. Hunters whisper of scouting pairs that watch from cover, sows that coordinate flanking maneuvers, and tusked males that seem to test traps before committing. Carcasses of wolves, smaller predators, and even a few hunters have been found arranged in unsettling patterns, as if for some unknown ritual or warning.\n\nAt the heart of these changes is a malevolent spirit of growth and resentment—a corrupted plant-guardian or leshy-like entity bound to the thickets. Once a benign warden of underbrush and small creatures, it has soured under the influence of Thassilonian scars and centuries of human intrusion. It now drives the boars as proxies, punishing what it sees as overhunting and defilement.\n\nThis spirit’s motives are complex:\n\n- It seeks to halt or reverse human encroachment, even if that means starvation for nearby settlements.\n- It despises the fey court for “allowing” mortals to trespass and may be manipulated by the court’s opportunist faction.\n- It grudgingly respects strength and cunning; it may accept bargains that limit hunting or preserve certain groves.\n\nAdventure beats in the Boar-Ridden Thickets include:\n\n- Negotiating a truce between hunters and the spirit, perhaps by establishing no-hunt zones or offering reparation for damaged sites.\n- Cleansing or redeeming the spirit by severing its link to a nearby alchemical scar or Thassilonian relic.\n- Facing open conflict if negotiations fail, with boar-led ambushes, collapsing tunnels under root masses, and thickets that shift to trap intruders.\n\nWhether the PCs ultimately destroy, bind, or redeem this warden, the fate of the Boar-Ridden Thickets should leave a visible mark on Tickwood’s future.\n\n### Alchemical Runoff Glades\n\nHidden away in folds of terrain and at the ends of overgrown paths lie the alchemical runoff glades—places where waste from old Thassilonian experiments and more modern stills or laboratories has pooled.\n\nThese glades are immediately striking. Grass may grow in unnatural hues—blues, violets, metallic greens. Pools of standing water shimmer with rainbow sheens, and bubbles rise from unseen sources. The air is heavy with sharp chemical odors layered over sweet rot.\n\nCommon hazards here include:\n\n- **Toxic Mists**: Fumes hang close to the ground, burning eyes and throats. Staying within them too long risks sickness, delirium, or blackout visions.\n\n- **Unstable Pools**: Seemingly solid crusts hide pockets of semi-liquid sludge. Disturbing them releases noxious vapors or splashes corrosive filth.\n\n- **Oversized Stinging Vermin**: Insects and arachnids in these glades grow unnaturally large and aggressive. Their stings or bites can carry not just venom but alchemical side effects: minor curses, sensory distortions, or vivid dreams.\n\nUse these side effects as tools for foreshadowing:\n\n- A sting might induce a dream in which a PC walks ancient Thassilonian corridors, seeing sigils and devices they will encounter later in the campaign.\n\n- Exposure to a particular pool’s vapors could grant fleeting glimpses of fey rituals or of the Runelord’s awakening, at the cost of lingering headaches or sensitivity to light.\n\n- Minor curses could manifest as physical oddities (lightly glowing eyes, faint patterns on the skin) that mark PCs as “touched” and influence how fey or sages react to them.\n\nThese glades also serve as logical bases for smugglers, Sczarni distillers, or hedge alchemists who tap their resources without fully understanding the risks.\n\n### The Divided Fey Court\n\nDeep within Tickwood, in a glade that shifts location with the seasons, convenes the forest’s fey court. It is not grand by the standards of ancient fey realms, but it is old and proud enough to command the allegiance—or at least the attention—of most lesser spirits in the wood.\n\nThe court’s core members include:\n\n- **A Jaded Dryad**: Once a joyful guardian of a single massive tree, she has seen too much—Thassilonian cruelty, human carelessness, and the slow gnaw of corruption. Her tree bears scars from ancient runes and more recent axes. She speaks with weary wisdom and sharp barbs.\n\n- **Quicklings and Other Swift Messengers**: Impatient and cruelly playful, these fey delight in outpacing mortals and outwitting one another. They make excellent spies and saboteurs and often serve whichever faction currently indulges them.\n\n- **Grigs and Sprites**: Musicians, tricksters, and scouts. They maintain the court’s revels and ceremonies and serve as the most likely intermediaries with mortals.\n\nThe court is divided along ideological lines:\n\n- **Opportunists**: This faction sees the resurgent Thassilonian power as a chance to reclaim old pacts or to carve out new dominions under a mighty patron. They may entice mortals into awakening dormant sites or carrying rune-marked relics.\n\n- **Traditionalists**: Loyal to older, more balanced ways, these fey wish to shield Tickwood and nearby mortals from destructive forces. They value oaths, hospitality, and the careful maintenance of boundaries.\n\nBoth factions covet mortal champions but differ in the tasks they ask:\n\n- Opportunists might request that PCs sabotage rival fey, unseal buried vaults, or deliver messages to Thassilonian cultists.\n\n- Traditionalists may ask for help pruning corrupted glades, enforcing ancient taboos, or mediating disputes with human communities.\n\nSample bargains and boons include:\n\n- Safe passage through dangerous parts of the wood in exchange for enforcing a taboo on fire or metal in a certain grove.\n\n- A blessing that sharpens senses or bolsters willpower, granted in return for retrieving a fey captive from human poachers.\n\n- A cursed gift—a beautiful weapon or token that subtly bends its bearer toward the giver’s goals.\n\nBetrayals are common. Fey promises are precise but not always honest in spirit. Mortals who fail to honor a word given in the court may find themselves haunted by dreams, cursed with misfortune in the woods, or marked as oathbreakers.\n\nThe court itself rarely stays in one place long. When threatened, it shifts to a different microclimate—perpetual twilight one season, reversed autumn the next—leaving behind only lingering music and half-faded illusions.\n\n### Forgotten Thassilonian Site\n\nBeneath a tangle of roots and brambles in Tickwood’s deep interior lies a half-buried Thassilonian site. Whether it began as an open-air laboratory, a hunting lodge for a Runelord’s favored mages, or a node in a larger network of rune experiments is up to you, but it now serves as a direct link between the forest’s oddities and the greater campaign.\n\nFrom the surface, signs are subtle: a cracked stone platform just visible beneath layers of soil; faint, regular patterns in the moss that hint at inscribed circles; whispers that seem to emerge from vents when the wind blows right.\n\nInside, the site might contain:\n\n- **Rune-Scarred Beasts**: Creatures trapped or bred here long ago persist as restless guardians, or their descendants haunt the passages. They bear etched patterns in bone or hide that pulse faintly with lingering magic.\n\n- **Malfunctioning Devices**: Tables, pylons, or plinths inlaid with runes respond erratically to touch or proximity. They might emit bursts of elemental energy, grant flashes of vision, or alter nearby matter in unpredictable ways.\n\n- **Dormant Constructs**: Stone or metal guardians slumber in sealed chambers, waiting for specific stimuli—a spoken phrase, a rune alignment, or the presence of certain bloodlines.\n\nExploring this site can escalate Tickwood-level threats into broader consequences:\n\n- Activating a device may send a signal to distant Thassilonian ruins, accelerating a Runelord’s awakening.\n\n- Destroying or cleansing a core engine could slow or redirect the spread of magical corruption throughout the region.\n\n- Documents, murals, or preserved illusions provide lore about ancient hunting practices, fey-binding rituals, or experiments that shaped Tickwood’s current state.\n\nTie this site’s discoveries directly into the main campaign arc. Let symbols, names, or magical signatures here mirror those encountered in later dungeons, so the forest feels like an early chapter in a long story rather than an isolated side trek.\n\n### Hidden Camps and Poachers’ Trails\n\nTickwood shelters more than animals and fey. Over the years, hunters, trappers, and less lawful folk have established discreet camps and trails.\n\n- **Trappers’ Shacks**: Rough cabins or lean-tos near streams, stocked with basic supplies, traps, and smoked meats. Some are communal spaces maintained by several families; others belong to solitary woodsfolk who resent intrusion.\n\n- **Poachers’ Trails**: Narrow, concealed paths that skirt noble hunting grounds or wind along ravines to avoid watchful gamewardens. Such trails often include makeshift bridges, hidden caches, and coded markings.\n\n- **Smuggler or Sczarni Hideouts**: Better-concealed camps near alchemical runoff glades, used to distill spirits, brew narcotics, or store contraband. These sites blend mundane criminality with magical risk.\n\nRoleplaying opportunities abound:\n\n- Poachers may seek the PCs’ help against overzealous gamewardens or vengeful fey whose laws they have unknowingly broken.\n\n- A camp overrun by warped insects provides a tense, horror-tinged scenario—survivors barricaded inside while chittering swarms batter windows and roofs.\n\n- A smuggler with deep knowledge of secret routes might trade information on the fey court’s current gathering place or the entrance to the Thassilonian site in exchange for protection or silence.\n\nThese human elements keep Tickwood grounded. Amid fey courts and ancient magic, the simple realities of survival, greed, and fear remind the PCs that not all dangers wear horns or bear runes.\n\n### Dreaming Hollow or Night-Glade\n\nAmong Tickwood’s many glades, one stands apart: a place known to some as the Dreaming Hollow and to others as the Night-Glade. Reaching it is never entirely straightforward. Paths that led there yesterday may not do so today. Dreams, omens, or fey guidance often play a role in finding it.\n\nThe glade itself appears ordinary at first glance—a roughly circular clearing ringed by old trees, with a small spring or pool at its center. But as dusk deepens or certain moons rise, reality thins.\n\n- Colors intensify, then fade to silver and shadow.\n- Stars seem closer, reflected perfectly in the pool even when the sky is cloudy.\n- Sounds from outside the glade grow distant, as if heard through heavy curtains.\n\nWithin the Dreaming Hollow, curses, visions, and bargains carry unusual weight. Sleeping here almost guarantees dreams that feel more real than waking life. These dreams are ideal vehicles for you to deliver prophetic glimpses of Runelord machinations, distant ruins, or future choices.\n\nYou can use the Night-Glade in several ways:\n\n- **Prophetic Dreams**: A character stung by an alchemical insect or exposed to a scarred glade’s fumes might be “called” here in a dream. In the Night-Glade’s reflection, they see themselves walking other dungeons, speaking with enemies, or standing before towering rune-marked statues. These visions are symbolic enough to preserve mystery but clear enough to guide decisions.\n\n- **Curse Resolution**: Fey or spiritual curses acquired elsewhere in Tickwood, or in the wider campaign, might be addressed here. Performing the right ritual, saying the correct words, or making a sacrifice in the glade can shift fate. Success may require cooperation with fey, offerings to the forest, or facing a dream-trial.\n\n- **Surreal Social Encounters**: Fey who will not—or cannot—meet mortals in the waking world might speak with them here, in dreams. Conversations with the dryad queen when she is too wary to reveal her waking location, or with echoes of long-dead Thassilonian mages bound to the site, can all unfold as vivid, malleable scenes.\n\nBecause the Dreaming Hollow blurs the line between reality and dream, be explicit with your players about the stakes. Some bargains made here are as binding as those struck in the fey court, if not more so. Others may be “only” dreams—but dreams that influence how magic, fate, or future encounters unfold.\n\nReturning to the Night-Glade at key points in the campaign—after major victories, before finales, or when the party is burdened with curses and questions—helps anchor Tickwood as a recurring, mystical touchstone in the story of the Rise of the Runelords.']
INFO:__main__:Result for task 'draft_shanks_wood':
INFO:__main__:  Output types: ['string']
INFO:__main__:  Outputs: ['# Shank’s Wood\n\n## Location Overview\n\nShank’s Wood crouches like a dark bruise on the landscape just south of the Lost Coast Road, a half‑day’s cautious walk from Sandpoint’s walls. From a distance it appears merely dense and poorly managed, a tangle of brambles and close‑grown conifers. Up close, the forest feels tighter, as if the undergrowth leans inward, listening. Locals skirt its edges when they can. Travelers hurry past the nearest milestones with warding signs over their hearts. Hunters who know better simply choose another stretch of the Hinterlands.\n\n### Regional Role & Level Use\n\nFor the purposes of a Sandpoint‑centered campaign, Shank’s Wood is a mid‑level wilderness horror zone. It shines for characters roughly in the 3rd–7th level range, when they are capable enough to survive prolonged tension and complex terrain, yet still fragile enough that a fall from a slick ravine or a well‑placed ambush remains terrifying.\n\nThis is not a region for relaxed foraging or extended camping. Shank’s Wood functions best as:\n\n- A **manhunt arena**, where both hunters and hunted use the thickets, ravines, and mists to gain advantage.\n- A **pressure‑cooker travel route**, forcing the party to cross the wood under time or resource constraints.\n- A **short investigative foray**, in which the heroes trace vanished folk into the trees, uncovering lairs, haunts, and conspiracies before fleeing back to relative safety.\n\nThe forest’s small geographic footprint compared to Tickwood or the Mosswood makes it ideal for intense, bounded arcs: a single long night, a two‑session pursuit, or a side campaign in which the wood’s horrors slowly bleed into Sandpoint.\n\n### History of Shank and the Killings\n\nBefore Shank’s Wood had a name on local maps, it had a reputation. Farm dogs refused to go near the tree line. Children dared each other to throw rocks into the shadows and snatch them back before “the man with the hooked knife” could take their hands.\n\nThe man was real.\n\nDecades ago—long enough that most who remember are old, but not so long that the scars have faded—a trapper known as Halem Shanks made his living in these woods. By all accounts, Halem was quiet, observant, and unremarkable. He traded pelts in Sandpoint, drank little, and spent most of his time alone among the trees. No one noticed when his visits grew less frequent, or when missing‑person rumors began to circulate.\n\nAt first it was lone travelers on the Lost Coast Road who vanished between milestones, their wagons later found mired in mud with draft animals torn open by “wolves.” Then a farmhand failed to return from a poaching excursion. A pair of caravan guards took a shortcut through the wood and never reached their post.\n\nThe killings escalated over two grim years. Bodies—or pieces—began to turn up at the fringe of the wood, arranged like warnings or trophies. Victims were stripped of identifying gear, hung from trees, or posed as if in flight. Some bore multiple shallow cuts, as if someone had tested exactly how long they could keep a person conscious.\n\nNo one connected the disappearances to Halem until a hunter recognized one of Shanks’s distinctive snare designs at a crime scene. A hastily assembled posse tracked the trapper’s usual routes and found his lair: a low cave beneath a leaning cedar, walls hung with skins that weren’t all animal.\n\nAccounts differ on how Halem died. The official story, favored by Sandpoint’s elders, says he was cornered and cut down in a desperate struggle, his body burned on a pyre of green wood right there in the forest to “keep the evil from coming back.”\n\nOther stories insist that Shank escaped. They tell of a half‑seen figure moving through brambles that part for him, of whistling knives in the fog, of men who return from the wood years later speaking with Halem’s voice. These tales fuel the belief that Shank’s spirit—or some echo of his cruelty—still hunts.\n\nWhatever truth you choose, the land remembers. The places where Shank tormented and killed have soaked up fear, anguish, and blood. Even if Halem is long dead, that emotional sediment manifests as shadowy presences, hungry brambles, and haunts that replay fragments of the old horrors.\n\n### Reputation Among Locals\n\nAsk a Sandpoint commoner about Shank’s Wood, and you’ll hear some version of the same warning: “Road’s faster and safer, traveler. Woods here don’t like strangers.”\n\nA few distinct viewpoints color the town’s collective sense of the forest:\n\n- **Common folk** speak of the wood in hushed tones. To them it is cursed ground, better ignored than challenged. They trade campfire stories of travelers who followed strange lights between the trees, of voices calling in a loved one’s tone, of children dragged screaming into the undergrowth. They exaggerate the number of victims and the brutality of Shank’s acts—yet their fear is sincere.\n\n- **Hunters and trappers** treat Shank’s Wood as an ugly but useful neighbor. The fur is good, the game plentiful, and the bramble tangles ideal for snares. They work its outer fingers and skirt known “bad places” where snares turn up empty and ravens gather in unnatural numbers. These professionals often know more practical truths: where the ravines run, what paths are safe in flood season, and where “Shank’s ghost” has been sighted recently.\n\n- **Guards and patrols** view the wood as a blind spot on Sandpoint’s map. They lack the numbers to regularly sweep the interior, and the stories about Shank have made volunteers scarce. When reports of bandits, cultists, or monsters reach the garrison, the woods are an immediate suspect—both as hiding place and hunting ground.\n\nDespite this fear, people still enter Shank’s Wood:\n\n- Farmers cut through its outer reaches to save hours on the road.\n- Trappers and herbalists depend on its resources.\n- Desperate lovers, criminals, and outcasts see it as a place to disappear.\n- Adventurers heed rumors of treasure left behind by Shank or his victims.\n\nThe paradox of the wood is that it is both shunned and relied upon, which keeps it populated enough for new stories to accumulate.\n\n### Themes & Atmosphere for GMs\n\nShank’s Wood works best when it emphasizes human monstrosity and psychological pressure more than exotic wilderness dangers. Use the following themes as you frame scenes:\n\n- **Gritty, grounded horror.** The forest is not a gothic ruin. Its terror comes from close‑set trees, obscured sightlines, sudden slides down muddy slopes, and the knowledge that someone—or something—knows this terrain far better than the PCs do.\n\n- **Paranoia and uncertainty.** Make it hard to know who or what is out there. Footsteps may belong to a stalking killer, a wary ranger, or a panicked deer tangled in wire. Keep signs of enemies partial: glimpses of a silhouette, the creak of a stretched rope, a gloved hand vanishing behind a trunk.\n\n- **Silence and sound.** The wood is usually muffled: moss underfoot, close needles, and an odd hush broken only by crows and distant trickles of water. When it goes completely silent, something is wrong. Conversely, bursts of noise—snapping branches, a barked order—hit like thunder.\n\n- **Isolation.** Once the party moves a few hundred yards into the trees, Sandpoint might as well be a world away. Use missed signals, fading daylight, and the difficulty of backtracking to reinforce that they cannot rely on outside help.\n\n- **Moral shadows.** Shank was a monster, but not a supernatural one—at least originally. Populate the wood with people whose choices echo his: bandits who justify their cruelty, cultists who have dressed their sadism in the trappings of faith, or even well‑meaning hunters who have learned to think of outsiders as prey.\n\nVisually, think in layers: foreground branches that snag and claw, midground trunks that block clear shots, and a dim, fog‑blurred background where shapes sway and never quite resolve. Let torchlight create as much menace as it dispels.\n\n### Using Shank’s Wood in Rise of the Runelords\n\nIn a Rise of the Runelords campaign, Shank’s Wood serves as a grim counterpoint to the grandiose, rune‑etched ruins and towering monsters that appear elsewhere. It is intimate, grounded horror that can be threaded through the larger arc.\n\nConsider the following uses:\n\n- **Copycat murders.** As the Runelords’ influence awakens ancient sins, a new killer in or near Sandpoint may begin imitating Shank’s methods. The heroes track evidence to the wood, where they must determine whether they face a mortal murderer, a haunted echo of Halem Shanks, or an agent twisted by Thassilonian magic.\n\n- **Cult hideout.** Shank’s Wood is an ideal lair for a small cell of sin‑themed cultists. They might venerate Shank as a local saint of cruelty, or simply use his legend as a mask. Their camp could shelter a mid‑tier villain, a prisoner with vital knowledge of the Runelords, or a ritual site whose disruption foreshadows later, more spectacular confrontations.\n\n- **Transitional gauntlet.** When the party travels between Sandpoint, Tickwood, and more distant sites like The Pyre, you can route them through the wood. Doing so adds a layer of tension and offers opportunities to seed clues—cult symbols carved into bark, strange magical residue, or survivors driven half‑mad by what they’ve witnessed.\n\n- **Explaining disappearances.** Any unexplained missing persons near Sandpoint can be tied back to Shank’s Wood. Rescues here feel urgent and personal, whether the victims are caravaners, minor NPC allies, or relatives of key townsfolk.\n\nIntroduce the wood early, even if only as a dark shape beyond the road. A caravan master warning the PCs away from a shortcut, or a child daring a companion to throw a rock into “Shank’s trees,” lays groundwork. When a plot thread finally draws the party inside, the players’ imaginations should already be primed.\n\n### Adventure Structures & Encounter Types\n\nShank’s Wood supports several flexible adventure structures. Mix and match to taste.\n\n- **Track‑and‑hunt.** The PCs are pursuers—chasing a killer, fugitive, or monster deeper into the trees. Use alternating scenes of tracking, tense pauses, and sudden reversals where the quarry ambushes the hunters using prepared traps or superior knowledge of the ground.\n\n- **Escort through hostile woods.** The party must guide vulnerable NPCs—refugees, prisoners, or a key witness—across the forest. Every decision about rest, speed, or route becomes loaded: push on and risk exhaustion accidents, or pause and risk discovery?\n\n- **Hide‑and‑seek.** The heroes find themselves the prey. Perhaps they are being hunted by a murderous band, or caught between rival killers. Let them choose to hide, misdirect, or lay counter‑ambushes. Emphasize stealth, miscommunication, and the terror of not knowing where the enemy is.\n\n- **Timed pursuit.** A captive is being dragged toward a lair, or a ritual is set to conclude at midnight beneath the Execution Tree. The party must cross difficult terrain under strict time pressure, choosing between fast, dangerous routes and slower, safer paths.\n\nCommon encounter types in this environment include:\n\n- Ambushes from above (ravine edges, tree branches) and below (gullies, hidden pits).\n- Environmental hazards like bramble‑choked slides, undermined stream banks, and unstable deadfalls.\n- Social confrontations with killers who taunt or bargain, desperate outcasts who just want to be left alone, or grim hunters who resent interference.\n- Haunts and supernatural phenomena that replay old murders, erode morale, or offer fragmentary visions in exchange for risk.\n\nWhen possible, let the party’s choices in route, noise discipline, and camp selection shape which encounters they face.\n\n### Safety, Lines, and Veils\n\nSerial killings, torture, and psychological trauma are core to Shank’s Wood’s identity, but not every table is comfortable engaging with these themes directly. As Game Master, you set the tone and are responsible for your group’s well‑being.\n\nBefore using the wood in play, particularly in detail, talk with your players about boundaries:\n\n- **Lines** are elements that will not appear in the game.\n- **Veils** are elements that can exist but will fade to black or be handled abstractly when they arise.\n\nShank’s crimes can be described in implication rather than graphic detail: a bloodstained tree, a rope groove worn deep into a branch, a torn scrap of clothing, an unnatural hush where birds will not sing. Focus on **tension, investigation, and atmosphere** over explicit mutilation.\n\nWhen in doubt, summarize: “The scene is awful, but you see enough to understand what happened,” and then shift to the emotional and investigative consequences. Allow players to step away from the table, fade out of particularly intense scenes, or redirect focus to more heroic or investigative beats as needed.\n\nHandled thoughtfully, Shank’s Wood becomes a space for cathartic heroism—where the party can end cycles of violence and bring light into a place defined by fear.\n\n## Geography & Environment\n\nShank’s Wood occupies a low, rolling stretch of land where shallow hills slope down toward the coast. The canopy is a patchwork of fir, cedar, and gnarled hardwoods. Beneath, undergrowth tightens into nearly impassable knots of blackberry, briar, and thorn.\n\nThis is not an untouched old‑growth forest. Signs of human use—old trap lines, rotting snares, faint hunter’s paths—thread through the interior. Many have been abandoned or repurposed in the years since Shank’s death, leaving a web of routes that help as often as they mislead.\n\n### Overall Layout & Travel Guidelines\n\nFrom Sandpoint’s perspective, the forest forms a rough triangle:\n\n- The **northern edge** runs parallel to the Lost Coast Road, within sight of the occasional milestone.\n- The **western flank** slopes toward low coastal bluffs and marshy ground.\n- The **eastern border** thins into scrub hills that eventually give way to more open farmland and the paths toward Tickwood.\n\nThe wood is not vast; a determined traveler moving in a straight line could cross its widest span in a few hours. The problem is that no one moves in a straight line here.\n\nTravel is constrained by:\n\n- Dense undergrowth that forces detours.\n- Ravines and gullies that must be crossed carefully or followed to find safer fords.\n- Dead‑end game trails that loop back on themselves.\n\nTo convey this at the table:\n\n- Make **progress slow** unless the party has guides or strong wilderness skills. A few hundred yards per hour in rough sections is reasonable.\n- Enforce **navigation checks** when the party attempts shortcuts or travels in fog, at night, or off any known trail. Failures mean wasted time, emerging near known hazards, or stumbling into ambush positions.\n- Treat **noise discipline** as a mechanical and narrative concern. Parties that shout, hack indiscriminately at brush, or travel heavily armored become easy to track—and may drive potential allies away.\n\nYou need not map every tree. A simple conceptual map with a handful of notable features (lair, Execution Tree, ravine network, encampment) and a few major paths is usually sufficient. Think in zones: bramble tangles, ravine belts, stream corridors, and slightly more open hunter grounds near the edges.\n\n### Bramble Tangles and Knife‑Cut Paths\n\nThe undergrowth gives Shank’s Wood its character. In many places, it feels as if the trees are rooted in a continuous sheet of thorn:\n\n- **Bramble tangles** are waist‑ to shoulder‑high masses of thorny vines and shrubs. Pushing through them means shredded clothing and bloodied skin. They impede movement, slow pursuit, and make it difficult to see more than a few steps ahead.\n\n- **Knife‑cut paths** are narrow, winding channels carved through the brambles by generations of hunters and, more ominously, by Shank and his imitators. They are often only wide enough for single‑file movement. The walls of living thorn rise on either side, offering both concealment and confinement.\n\nThese features offer tactical opportunities:\n\n- Bramble‑choked areas provide **cover and stealth** for creatures familiar with the terrain. Hidden killers may move along concealed paths, appearing suddenly behind or beside the party.\n- The tangles are ideal for **snares and traps**: tripwires at ankle height, nooses that yank prey off their feet, or simple pits that are invisible beneath leaves.\n- Narrow paths force **linear engagements**. The party cannot easily bring all their numbers to bear, nor can they quickly retreat if pressed from both ends.\n\nDescribe the sensation of these areas: the constant prick and pull at boots and cloaks, the soft hiss of vines sliding against one another, the torn scrap of cloth from some earlier traveler snagged at eye level.\n\n### Ravines, Gullies, and Hidden Streams\n\nCutting beneath the brambles is a lattice of erosion channels: shallow gullies, steep‑sided ravines, and narrow streambeds. Some carry water only in the rainy season; others run year‑round, carving deeper into the soil each year.\n\nCommon features include:\n\n- **Steep, crumbly slopes.** Dry leaf mold overlies loose soil. A misstep can send a character skidding downslope, tumbling into rocks or an unseen stream.\n- **Mossy overhangs.** Roots snake from the banks, creating natural shelves and alcoves where lairs, hidden camps, and impromptu graves can be concealed.\n- **Twisting watercourses.** Trickling channels bend and branch, making sound difficult to pinpoint. A gurgling stream might lie ten paces away, or twenty feet below.\n\nThese ravines break **line of sight** and **line of fire**. Use them to:\n\n- Let quarry vanish abruptly, slipping over a lip and into concealing foliage.\n- Provide elevated perches for archers, slingers, or spellcasters.\n- Create chokepoints where a narrow log bridge or single passable bank becomes the only way forward.\n\nHazards arise naturally:\n\n- **Falls.** A chasing PC who fails to spot a ravine in time may pitch forward into empty space.\n- **Rockslides and bank collapses.** Heavy rain, careless climbing, or deliberate enemy action can send soil and stones cascading down, sweeping characters with them.\n- **Sudden washouts.** During downpours, small channels swell into torrents that can undercut trails, topple trees, and drown the unprepared.\n\nA well‑placed ravine can also serve as a recurring landmark, helping orient the party in an otherwise confusing tangle.\n\n### Soundscape, Scent, and Visibility\n\nShank’s Wood is a lesson in how much a forest can muffle and distort sensory information.\n\n- **Sound.** On still days, the wood absorbs noise. Voices don’t carry far, and the creak of leather or clink of armor seems embarrassingly loud. Yet certain sounds—the sharp crack of a snapped branch, the ring of metal on stone—cut through the hush like screams. When wind pushes through the canopy, it layers rustling, creaking, and distant sighs so thickly that it becomes easy to imagine words in the noise.\n\n- **Scent.** The dominant smells are damp earth, decomposing leaves, and resin from conifers. In certain pockets, the scent turns sharp and metallic where old blood has soaked into soil and bark. Carrion birds nest here, and the reek of old kills sometimes lingers long after the bodies have been removed.\n\n- **Visibility.** Even in full daylight, visibility is limited. Bramble walls, close trunks, and low branches restrict long sightlines. Mist rising from gullies or creeping in from the coast often fills low areas, creating pockets of obscuring fog that shift with every breeze.\n\nMechanically, translate this into:\n\n- Circumstances where **Perception is hindered** by distance, foliage, or competing sounds.\n- Occasional opportunities for heightened awareness when the forest falls utterly silent or when unusual scents—fresh pipe smoke, alchemical reagents, blood—cut through the background.\n\nWhen night falls, the forest becomes oppressive. Light sources form small, bright islands in a sea of dark, and every reflection from a raven’s eye or glint on a blade looks like a threat.\n\n### Weather, Seasons, and Night in the Wood\n\nThe character of Shank’s Wood shifts with the seasons and the weather. Consider how conditions should change the mood and difficulty of any given approach.\n\n- **Spring.** Rains swell the streams and turn ravine floors to sucking mud. New growth hides old paths, and fresh leaves make movement quieter but visibility worse. Animal births draw predators—and scavengers.\n\n- **Summer.** The wood is hot and airless under the canopy. Insects drone incessantly. Dry leaf litter increases the risk of small fires. Streams run lower, revealing hidden alcoves or the bones of past victims.\n\n- **Autumn.** Fallen leaves turn trails into ambiguous, rustling carpets. Early frosts stiffen the ground, making tracks more distinct in the mornings. Fog creeps in more often from the coast, clinging to lower ground.\n\n- **Winter.** Snow simplifies the landscape, burying brambles and softening ravine edges. Tracks become obvious, but so do the party’s. Cold amplifies every sound. In harsh conditions, exposure becomes nearly as dangerous as any killer.\n\nWeather overlays these rhythms:\n\n- **Rain** turns slopes slick, dampens sound, and fills the air with the roar of water. Tracking becomes difficult; ambushers may favor this time knowing that prey can’t hear or see them clearly.\n- **Fog** erases distance. Figures appear as dim smudges until they’re almost upon you. Directions become uncertain, and even familiar landmarks seem strange.\n- **Wind** snaps branches and rattles leaves, masking stealthy movement but also making it harder for watchers to pick out intentional sounds.\n\nNight is particularly perilous in Shank’s Wood:\n\n- Creatures adapted to darkness or with keen senses gain overwhelming advantage.\n- Haunts and supernatural resonances often intensify, replaying old scenes or drawing attention to unresolved deaths.\n- Navigation by starlight becomes impossible under the canopy. Without reliable markers, the party may walk in circles or blunder into known killing grounds.\n\nFor most groups, spending the night in the heart of the forest should feel like a significant, deliberate risk, not a default choice.\n\n### Natural Flora and Fauna\n\nApart from its haunted reputation, Shank’s Wood sustains a fairly typical coastal forest ecosystem—albeit one subtly warped by years of terror.\n\nCommon plant life includes:\n\n- Conifers such as fir and cedar, along with twisted alders and maples near watercourses.\n- Brambles, briars, and thorny shrubs that produce small, bitter berries.\n- Patches of mushrooms, some edible, others poisonous or hallucinogenic. Certain fungi are said to grow more abundantly near old crime scenes.\n\nTypical animal residents include:\n\n- **Boars** that root in leaf litter and can be unpredictable when startled.\n- **Wolves and wild dogs**, some feral descendants of Shank’s own hounds or those of past hunters.\n- **Ravens and crows** in unnatural numbers, watching silently from the branches above.\n- **Small game**—rabbits, squirrels, foxes—that serve as both food source and early warning system; when the forest predators go quiet, these vanish.\n\nThe history of killings has subtly altered animal behavior:\n\n- Many beasts avoid certain clearings or ravine bends, skirting them with obvious discomfort.\n- Scavengers are bold, sometimes gathering in eerie flocks or packs near sites of recent violence.\n- On rare occasions, animals exhibit what looks like omen‑like behavior: a raven that follows the party for hours, a stag that refuses to cross an unseen line, or a fox that leads the group toward or away from danger.\n\nThese moments allow you to foreshadow trouble or hint at supernatural presences without explicit exposition.\n\n### Supernatural Resonances & Haunts\n\nYears of fear, cruelty, and death have left psychic scars on Shank’s Wood. Even if Halem Shanks is truly dead and gone, echoes of his deeds linger in the land itself.\n\nThese resonances manifest in a few ways:\n\n- **Localized haunts.** Particular trees, ravines, or lairs may replay fragments of past horrors: muffled pleas, the pressure of a noose on the throat, the sudden sensation of running with branches clawing at your face. Such haunts can stagger trespassers, sap their courage, or offer cryptic flashes of information.\n\n- **Bramble‑blights.** In places where multiple victims died in terror, the undergrowth has awakened into twisted parodies of humanoids. These vegetative horrors coil with thorn and vine, moving with a lurching, crackling gait. They remember in a plantlike way: impressions of fear, flashes of faces, and the scents of blood and sweat.\n\n- **Fear‑thickened air.** Certain glades and hollows feel heavy with unease. Here, even hardened adventurers may find their resolve tested. Whispers seem to drift just beyond comprehension, and shadows linger at the edges of sight.\n\nUse these elements sparingly, as **escalations** and **punctuation**, not as constant background noise. A forest that is always screaming soon loses its teeth. Reserve the most intense manifestations for key investigation sites—the Execution Tree, Shank’s lair, or the heart of a bramble‑blight grove—as rewards for digging deeper into the wood’s story.\n\n## Notable Features\n\nShank’s Wood is defined as much by its specific, story‑rich sites as by its overall mood. The following features can be placed according to your map and needs. They are designed to be flexible: scale their danger and importance to match your party’s level and the role you want the forest to play.\n\n### Shank’s Lair (Old or New)\n\nHidden beneath a leaning cedar on the bank of a narrow ravine lies Shank’s Lair—a cramped, low‑ceilinged hollow whose dirt floor is littered with old bones and rotting leather.\n\n#### Appearance and Layout\n\nFrom outside, the lair looks like a tangle of roots clutching a patch of shadow. A faint path leads down a slippery slope to a cavity just large enough for a person to wriggle through on hands and knees. The air that seeps out smells of old smoke, animal musk, and something sickly sweet.\n\nInside, the hollow opens into a squat chamber carved into the bank. A firepit blackens the ceiling. Hooks hammered into exposed roots dangle with tattered scraps of cloth and long‑dried strips of meat. Shelves hacked from packed earth hold:\n\n- Crude tools, traps, and knives.\n- Bundles of herbs for poultices and poisons.\n- Jars of cloudy fluid preserving small trophies: fingernails, teeth, a shriveled tongue.\n\nA narrow tunnel at the back leads to a smaller alcove where Shank—or his successor—slept, surrounded by:\n\n- A nest of furs and stolen blankets.\n- A collection of talismans: children’s toys, lockets, carved wooden fetishes.\n- A hidden cache of coin, documents, or incriminating evidence linking the lair’s occupant to wider plots.\n\n#### Old Lair vs. Active Lair\n\nYou can present Shank’s Lair in two primary states:\n\n- **Long‑abandoned.** The lair has not been used in years. Cobwebs drape the entrance, roots have pushed in, and much of the interior has collapsed. What remains are echoes: carvings on the walls tallying victims, a ragged cloak bearing a familiar family crest, or a journal that recounts Shank’s descent into madness.\n\n  In this version, the lair is primarily an **investigative site** and **haunt focal point**. It might reveal:\n  - The original extent of Shank’s crimes.\n  - The presence of a previously unknown accomplice or admirer.\n  - Clues that someone has recently begun cleaning or reusing parts of the lair.\n\n- **Active lair.** The hollow is still lived‑in, either by a true copycat killer, a cultist who venerates Shank, a bandit leader, or even Shank himself sustained by dark forces. Fresh bones lie near the firepit. New hooks hold recently treated skins. Pitons discreetly brace the roof, indicating recent maintenance.\n\n  In this version, the lair is a **primary confrontation site**, potentially featuring:\n  - Concealed traps at the entrance (falling logs, collapsing tunnels, snare lines).\n  - A guardian creature—perhaps a trained beast or a bramble‑blight bound to the killer’s will.\n  - The killer’s final stand, with escape tunnels that allow for a drawn‑out chase if they flee.\n\n#### Clues and Leads\n\nRegardless of its state, Shank’s Lair should reward careful search with leads that point either **deeper into the forest** or **back toward Sandpoint**. Possible discoveries include:\n\n- Maps or route sketches of the wood with certain trees or ravines marked.\n- Lists of names, some crossed out, others circled, hinting at a kill list or blackmail ledger.\n- Symbols or script associated with sin‑themed cults, tying the lair to a broader conspiracy.\n- A victim’s personal effects recognizable to the PCs, drawing their emotional investment deeper.\n\nThe lair’s emotional impact matters as much as its tactical content. Even hardened adventurers should feel a flicker of revulsion at how thoroughly its occupant turned the forest into a hunting ground.\n\n### The Execution Tree\n\nIn a small clearing where the ground dips slightly, a massive, lightning‑scarred oak dominates the space. Its lower branches twist out like grasping arms, each bearing thick, smooth patches of bark where ropes have bitten deep over the years. This is the Execution Tree.\n\n#### History and Significance\n\nStories differ on whether this was where Shank displayed his victims, where the posse finally hung him, or both. Some tales claim that when townsfolk discovered the remains of Shank’s worst crimes, they dragged him here, looped multiple ropes over the largest branch, and let the weight of their anger do the rest.\n\nWhatever the truth, the tree became a symbol of punishment and closure. Over time, others were executed here as well—bandits, murderers, and at least one innocent scapegoat. The aggregate of fear, rage, and injustice has made the tree a powerful spiritual node.\n\nThe ground around its roots is muddy and uneven, pocked by old post holes and shallow depressions where gallows once stood. Bits of rope, some ancient, some disturbingly fresh, dangle from high branches.\n\n#### Haunt and Spiritual Presence\n\nThe Execution Tree is a natural focal point for a potent **haunt**. When its influence is triggered—perhaps by speaking Shank’s name, disturbing buried remains, or attempting a hanging here—the air grows cold and still. Shadowy impressions of hanged figures sway where no bodies hang. Those present may feel phantom constriction at their throats, hear the last words of executed souls, or momentarily glimpse the world as it looked during Shank’s final moments.\n\nAmong the spirits bound to the tree, consider including:\n\n- **A wrongly executed victim** who rails against the injustice and seeks vengeance on the living until their name is cleared.\n- **A hardened killer** who delights in torment and encourages cruelty, offering secrets in exchange for bloodshed.\n- **A weary psychopomp or similar guide of the dead** who has grown twisted by the constant presence of violent death, now more jailer than shepherd.\n\nThese entities can serve as adversaries, uneasy allies, or reluctant sources of information. Bargains struck at the Execution Tree should feel weighty, with clear costs.\n\n#### Laying Spirits to Rest\n\nResolving the haunt may require:\n\n- Proper burial or consecration of bones hidden in shallow graves near the roots.\n- Public acknowledgment in Sandpoint that an innocent died here unjustly.\n- Destroying or sanctifying the ropes and gallows remains that anchor the spirits.\n- Defeating or convincing the rogue psychopomp to release its claim on the site.\n\nSuccess can transform the clearing. Birds return to the branches. The oppressive chill lifts. The Execution Tree remains a grim landmark, but one no longer actively hungry.\n\n### Bramble‑Blight Groves\n\nIn certain depressions and hollows, the brambles appear thicker than elsewhere, weaving into disturbingly humanoid shapes. These are Bramble‑Blight Groves: places where accumulated terror has awakened the undergrowth itself.\n\n#### Appearance and Behavior\n\nFrom a distance, a bramble‑blight looks like a man or woman crafted from thorn and vine—arms spread, head bowed, rooted in place. Closer inspection reveals that many actually conceal:\n\n- The remains of victims encased in living thorn.\n- Rusted tools, shackles, or hooks entwined with roots.\n- Trophies from more recent kills snagged on the outer branches.\n\nSome blights remain still until disturbed. Others slowly, almost imperceptibly, shift their posture over days, turning to face trails or clearings as if watching.\n\nIn play, bramble‑blights present both **combat threats** and **investigative opportunities**:\n\n- They lash out at those who trespass in their groves, driven by echoes of the fear that birthed them.\n- Their sap can carry visions or emotions from the final moments of the deaths that fed them.\n\n#### Groves as Witnesses\n\nIf the party approaches cautiously or uses magic or diplomacy appropriate to plant spirits, the groves can act as grim “witnesses.” Possible interactions include:\n\n- Touching or tasting a drop of sap to experience short, disjointed flashes of a killing: the sound of a voice, the angle of a blade, the smell of the killer’s sweat.\n- Learning the approximate direction or appearance of a lair, accomplice, or ritual site.\n- Receiving half‑formed impressions of symbols or words associated with cult activity.\n\nFrame these impressions as incomplete puzzles. The heroes may need to visit multiple groves—or cross‑reference with clues from Shank’s Lair, the Execution Tree, or survivors—to piece together the full story.\n\n#### Cleansing or Harnessing the Groves\n\nParties inclined toward healing or restoration may wish to cleanse the groves. Options include:\n\n- Performing **rituals of atonement or release** that acknowledge the pain stored in the blights and invite the dead to move on.\n- Carefully **freeing entombed remains** and providing proper burial.\n- Calling on powerful nature spirits or local deities to **reclaim the warped growth**, turning thorns to blossoms or letting the grove wither peacefully.\n\nConversely, darker groups might exploit the groves:\n\n- Harvesting their thorns or sap for use in fear‑inducing poisons or magic.\n- Bargaining with whatever animating spirit dwells in the grove for guidance, accepting a taint in return.\n\nAny attempt to use the groves without understanding their suffering risks provoking a violent reaction.\n\n### Hidden Encampment(s)\n\nThe fear surrounding Shank’s Wood makes it an attractive refuge for those who wish not to be found. A few clearings and ravine shelves serve as ideal sites for hidden encampments.\n\n#### Common Templates\n\nYou can adapt a single mapped campsite to several different occupants, changing details to suit your campaign:\n\n- **Bandit den.** A ring of rough tents or lean‑tos around a central firepit, with watch posts in nearby trees and quick‑release rope bridges over a ravine. The bandits rely on the wood’s reputation to deter pursuit, and may stage fake “Shank” attacks to amplify the fear.\n\n- **Escaped‑prisoner hideout.** Ramshackle shelters built from stolen carts and planks, half‑hidden under camouflaged tarps. The fugitives are desperate, malnourished, and paranoid. They may see the PCs as a way out, bargaining information or labor in exchange for clemency.\n\n- **Cultist camp.** Tents arranged in a ritual pattern around a crude altar of piled stones and bones. Symbols of sin or ancient Thassilon are carved into nearby trunks. Incense or alchemical smoke masks the camp’s scent. Chanting and distant screams occasionally drift through the trees.\n\n#### Monitoring and Defense\n\nWhoever uses the encampment understands that survival depends on awareness. Typical precautions include:\n\n- **Scouts on rotating watch**, stationed in elevated blinds or hidden among brambles along likely approaches.\n- **Noise traps**—strings of bones, bells, or shell rattles—that warn of intruders.\n- **Escape routes**, such as concealed ladders into ravines, collapsible rope bridges, or pre‑packed bundles ready to be carried into the trees at a moment’s notice.\n\nWhen the party approaches, the encampment’s inhabitants might:\n\n- Hide, hoping the heroes pass by.\n- Attempt to mislead them with false directions or planted clues.\n- Stage an ambush, driving the PCs into prepared kill zones or toward known haunts.\n\n#### Social and Tactical Opportunities\n\nHidden camps provide excellent opportunities for **roleplaying** and **moral choice**:\n\n- The bandits might be more pathetic than evil—former farmers and laborers turned to crime by desperation.\n- The escaped prisoners might include wrongfully convicted individuals who could become allies.\n- Cultists may believe they are averting a greater evil by their dark rites, offering the PCs a troubling bargain.\n\nMechanically, the camps can serve as temporary safe havens if cleared and claimed. The PCs may use an old bandit den as a base for deeper forays, or convert a cult camp into a forward operating post once its foul symbols are scrubbed away.\n\n### The Hag’s Hollow or Rogue Psychopomp’s Shrine\n\nDeeper in the wood, where brambles grow so thick they form living walls, lies a place of deeper malice: either a Hag’s Hollow or a rogue psychopomp’s shrine, depending on the flavor of horror you prefer.\n\n#### The Hag’s Hollow\n\nThe Hag’s Hollow is a subterranean warren beneath a huge, toppled tree. Its roots arch overhead like ribs, and faint, phosphorescent fungi shed sickly light. The air is heavy with the scents of stew, herbs, and something rotting.\n\nWithin, a hag—green, annis, or some unique local variant—plays at being the **true author** of Shank’s legend. Perhaps she whispered in his dreams, traded him charms in exchange for trophies, or merely fed upon the fear his killings generated. Now, with new murders echoing the old, she grows bloated on renewed terror.\n\nShe may:\n\n- Offer to “help” the PCs catch a copycat killer—at the cost of one of their names or faces.\n- Claim ownership of Shank’s soul, producing twisted “memories” of his crimes.\n- Lure the heroes into bargains that turn them into future boogeymen.\n\nHer lair is cluttered with grisly curios: bottled screams, shrunken heads, fetishes woven of hair and thorn. Strange, half‑completed constructs or enthralled victims lurk in side chambers, testaments to experiments in crafting the perfect killer.\n\n#### The Rogue Psychopomp’s Shrine\n\nAlternatively, the heart of the wood might shelter a **desecrated shrine** to a deity of death and judgment, or a stone portal once used by a psychopomp to guide souls onward.\n\nCenturies of misuse and neglect have twisted its guardian. Once a neutral shepherd of the dead, the spirit has become obsessed with **punishing wrongdoers**—and its definition of guilt has grown increasingly broad.\n\nThe shrine is a ring of worn stones around a shallow depression, perhaps with a cracked statue at its center. Offerings of bone, blood, and crude effigies clutter the base. Ghostly chains hang in the air, visible only at certain angles or to those with second sight.\n\nThe rogue psychopomp may:\n\n- Judge the PCs based on their past deeds, projecting visions of their sins, real or perceived.\n- Demand that they deliver specific living individuals to the wood for “trial.”\n- Serve as the unseen force animating haunts and bramble‑blights, keeping souls from moving on.\n\nRoleplaying this entity means balancing cold, cosmic detachment with madness. It does not hate; it merely **insists** on its warped idea of order.\n\n#### Bargains, Boons, and Consequences\n\nBoth the hag and the rogue psychopomp can offer potent but troubling assistance:\n\n- Information about Shank, his victims, or current killers.\n- Protection from certain haunts or creatures within the wood.\n- Temporary control over bramble‑blights or other local spirits.\n\nIn exchange, they might demand:\n\n- A living sacrifice, or at least some portion of the PCs’ life essence.\n- The performance of a future act of cruelty or judgment.\n- A cherished memory, name, or sense.\n\nAgreeing to such bargains should have ongoing narrative consequences, shaping how the wood and its denizens respond to the party.\n\n### Hunter’s Overlook and Old Trapper Routes\n\nAlong one of the forest’s higher ridges, a rocky outcrop breaks through the trees. From its edge, the canopy falls away, revealing a rare view over Shank’s Wood: the distant glimmer of the sea, the faint line of the Lost Coast Road, and a green ocean of leaves between.\n\nThis vantage point, known to a few as **Hunter’s Overlook**, is ringed by the remnants of old trapper craft:\n\n- Weathered wooden blinds lashed into the branches of nearby trees.\n- Rusted hooks and cables suggesting once‑busy game hoists.\n- Faint, narrow paths along the ridge, with rope handholds in steeper sections.\n\n#### Uses and Corruption\n\nOriginally, local trappers and rangers used this network to observe migrating herds, track predators, and move safely between trap lines. Over time, as Shank’s legend grew, others repurposed these assets.\n\nEvidence of this corruption might include:\n\n- Freshly cut sightlines not toward game trails, but toward known human paths.\n- Spent crossbow bolts or arrowheads embedded in trunks at head height.\n- Chalk marks or carved symbols indicating prearranged ambush positions.\n\nThe Overlook and its routes now serve as:\n\n- **Sniper nests** for bandits or killers.\n- **Surveillance posts** for cultists keeping watch on the Lost Coast Road.\n- **Secret campsites** for rangers and hunters who refuse to abandon their old grounds.\n\n#### Benefits to the PCs\n\nIf the party gains control of the Overlook and deciphers the web of old paths, they gain:\n\n- A **safe, defensible campsite** with natural escape routes.\n- A **navigation advantage**, allowing them to move quickly above particularly dangerous bramble tangles.\n- The ability to **flip ambushes**, turning the killers’ own blinds against them.\n\nClues found here—old journal entries, carved notes from past trappers, or coded symbols—can reveal:\n\n- The locations of Shank’s lair, the Execution Tree, or hidden encampments.\n- The existence of newer structures, like a cult shrine or smugglers’ cache.\n\nHunter’s Overlook embodies the theme that the wood itself is not evil; it is how people choose to use it.\n\n### Transitional Trails to Other Hinterland Sites\n\nThough Shank’s Wood feels self‑contained, it is not isolated. A handful of **transitional trails** link it to other key locations in the Sandpoint Hinterlands. These routes let you move the party between sites while maintaining the wood’s tense atmosphere and seeding future challenges.\n\n#### Smugglers’ Trail to the Coast\n\nA narrow, partially concealed path winds west from the heart of the wood toward the coastal bluffs. Originally cut by poachers seeking unobserved access to the sea, it has since seen use by smugglers and fugitives.\n\nFeatures along this trail might include:\n\n- **Rope ladders** down to sea caves or hidden beaches.\n- **Caches** of contraband—wine, spice, exotic creature parts—hidden in hollow trees.\n- Signs of recent use: boot prints, extinguished campfires, scraps of foreign cloth.\n\nEncounter seeds:\n\n- A tense stand‑off with smugglers who mistake the PCs for rivals.\n- Evidence that cultists have begun using the sea route to bring in forbidden texts or allies.\n\n#### Haunted Patrol Route to The Pyre\n\nTo the south or southeast, an **overgrown patrol route** once used by Sandpoint guards and local militias winds toward a lonely hilltop or ruin associated with The Pyre.\n\nNow, the trail is choked in places, and rusting helms, broken spearheads, and old camp markers testify to abandoned watch posts.\n\nAlong this route, the heroes might encounter:\n\n- Faded banners or insignia linking past patrols to current town authorities.\n- Haunts replaying a disastrous last stand against bandits, goblins, or something far worse.\n- Carved symbols of sin or Runelord iconography that show how long the area has been under subtle influence.\n\nThese scenes foreshadow the greater threats connected to The Pyre, while grounding them in personal, local tragedies.\n\n#### Overgrown Hunter Path to Tickwood\n\nTo the east, a **winding hunter’s path** climbs toward the more fey‑touched wilderness of Tickwood. It begins as a simple trail through thinning brambles, then gradually shifts character: trees grow taller and stranger, undergrowth more vibrant, birdsong more varied.\n\nMarkers of transition include:\n\n- **Fey signs**, such as braided grasses, arranged stones, or trees whose bark patterns resemble watchful eyes.\n- Unusual animals, like oddly fearless deer or foxes that seem to understand speech.\n- A gradual lessening of Shank’s oppressive influence, replaced by a different, more whimsical or alien unease.\n\nEncounter seeds:\n\n- A fey creature using Shank’s Wood as a shortcut, offended by the crude violence of its human horrors.\n- A lost child or traveler who strayed from Tickwood and now fears both directions.\n\n#### Using Transitional Trails in Play\n\nThese routes let you:\n\n- **Foreshadow future arcs** by hinting at dangers and factions before the party fully engages with them.\n- Offer **alternate approaches** to key sites, rewarding players who seek local knowledge or maps.\n- Provide **breathing space** between the most intense horrors of Shank’s Wood, as the environment subtly changes.\n\nAs the party travels these trails, remind them that Shank’s Wood is part of a larger, interconnected Hinterland. Its shadows touch many paths, and the choices heroes make here reverberate far beyond the bramble walls.']
INFO:__main__:Result for task 'save_pyre_md':
INFO:__main__:  Output types: ['string']
INFO:__main__:  Outputs: ['/home/sean/src/github.com/sesopenko/task-decomposition-spike/output/2025-12-13_17-56-13/sandpoint_hinterlands/the_pyre.md']
INFO:__main__:Result for task 'save_three_cormorants_md':
INFO:__main__:  Output types: ['string']
INFO:__main__:  Outputs: ['/home/sean/src/github.com/sesopenko/task-decomposition-spike/output/2025-12-13_17-56-13/sandpoint_hinterlands/the_three_cormorants.md']
INFO:__main__:Result for task 'save_old_light_md':
INFO:__main__:  Output types: ['string']
INFO:__main__:  Outputs: ['/home/sean/src/github.com/sesopenko/task-decomposition-spike/output/2025-12-13_17-56-13/sandpoint_hinterlands/the_old_light.md']
INFO:__main__:Result for task 'save_tickwood_md':
INFO:__main__:  Output types: ['string']
INFO:__main__:  Outputs: ['/home/sean/src/github.com/sesopenko/task-decomposition-spike/output/2025-12-13_17-56-13/sandpoint_hinterlands/tickwood.md']
INFO:__main__:Result for task 'save_shanks_wood_md':
INFO:__main__:  Output types: ['string']
INFO:__main__:  Outputs: ['/home/sean/src/github.com/sesopenko/task-decomposition-spike/output/2025-12-13_17-56-13/sandpoint_hinterlands/shanks_wood.md']
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