As the party has heard it described, by The Baronet Sorrel in Session 1 Recap - The Baronet’s Commission.
A strange reach of the Divine Desert. Compasses don’t work there. The sun rises in the north and sets in the east, and moon and sun come and go in no sensible order. Time is unreliable. The Baronet calls it “a bit of a magical apocalyptic wasteland” and doesn’t know what happened to it.
The Dungeon of Lost Things
A vault of the misplaced, which tends to collect things that have been lost for a long time. It can only be found by people who have suffered a great loss. The Baronet’s rod is supposed to be inside.
Bitter End
The working town at the mouth of the Bitter Market, one watch southeast of the valley’s edge. Now has its own page: Bitter End. Lady Rose Larkspur’s late brother had business interests there.
The Mad Monk Alistair’s verse
Read aloud by the Baronet from the monk’s journal and written down by Lucia:
Three to the dawn and two to the star,
three to the dusk from where you are,
two to the south — and walk it true,
and the valley will hand you back to you.
Now you have drawn the edge of the door;
now you know what the walking was for.
Close your eyes on the moon and sun,
lose the count of the steps you’ve run.
When you can’t say where you have been —
look up, lost one. You’re already in.
What the party has heard
In Bitter End, Session 2 Recap - Three to the Dawn.
- From The Innkeeper of the Stewpot: people who cross it seldom come back. One came back younger. Others have wandered out after what must have been a hundred years. “It’s like the land has been wounded.” A band in green cloaks walked in a few weeks ago and hasn’t returned.
- From a vulture: flying over it makes birds sick and scrambles their sense of north, so wild animals avoid it. It has been there as long as the vulture has been alive.
- From a caravan horse: caravans that stray in tend not to come out.
What the party has seen
Walked in Session 2 Recap - Three to the Dawn.
- The edge. One watch northwest of Bitter End stands a signpost from the Order of the Priests of Avandra: Beware. Do not travel beyond this point. Unnavigable terrain. Avoid at all costs. Beside it is a little shrine with a cup of silver coins. Lucia left one. Beyond it the sky turns purple-blue, the air feels thin, rocks float in midair, and seams in the ground glow an angry blue. Lightning flickers over the desert in the distance.
- Directions drift. On the second morning the sun rose somewhere other than where east had been the night before. The North Star stood in the southwest that night, and the next day hung in the daytime sky to the west. The party now walks by dawn, star and dusk as the verse words them, not by fixed compass points.
- Weather. A sandstorm built on the southern horizon and broke up. Then came cold rain and hail, the first in a long while. The wadis flooded, and frogs and small life came up out of the sand.
- Terrain. Dunes for the dawn legs. On the second leg toward the star the dunes give way to a salt flat, the hard bed of a long-dried sea or lake, where water seeps up through cracks and something moves under the crust.
- Things met: The Hooded Procession; The Dead Guildsman; a field of lost things (a mirror, a pocket watch, a child’s toy, a button, and things the party themselves had lost: Lucia’s workshop tool, and the toy horse Sandy’s sister broke); and a caravan water barrel on the salt, marked by the The Nameless Ledger.
- Progress on the verse: three legs to the dawn and two to the star walked, one watch each. Next: three to the dusk, then two to the south.