D20 SYSTEM✦ Normal

The Unearthed Scourge: Echo Valley Quarry

# Undead# Intrigue# Wilderness# Investigation

The ancient limestone of Echo Valley has long been a source of conflict. The Greystone Miners' Consortium, desperate to save their town from economic ruin, has turned to illegal excavation of the cursed 'Fossil Strata' – a paleontological bed forbidden by the Silverwood Circle of druids who believe the fossils are the petrified dreams of an ancient, slumbering beast. Their reckless blasting has shattered the necromantic wards, reanimating the colossal pterodactyl fossil as a spectral horror. Now, the Consortium blames the goblins they were displacing for the sabotage, while the druids see this as a holy reckoning. Trapped between a desperate industrial cabal and zealous nature guardians, the party must navigate a valley where the dead fly again and the living fight over the bones of the earth.

Chronicle Prelude

The player characters arrive at the small, grimy settlement of Gravelton, a boomtown built around the entrance to Echo Valley Quarry. The air is thick with dust and tension. Miners eye newcomers with suspicion, while a single, massive claw mark is gouged into the town's central meeting hall. The local tavern, 'The Pick & Shovel,' serves as the de facto headquarters for the Consortium and is buzzing with terrified rumors of the 'Stone Wraith' that now circles the valley peaks.

Environmental Traits

The spectral pterodactyl, the 'Saurian Wraith,' is systematically destroying mining equipment and attacking anyone who enters the upper quarry, disrupting the Consortium's desperate operations. The valley itself is a layered environmental trap: the lower levels are a muddy, unstable pit of loose rock and exposed fossil beds, the mid-levels are a labyrinth of abandoned goblin warrens and flooded tunnels, and the upper reaches are the wind-scoured, fossil-rich cliffs where the Wraith nests. The core crisis is that the Consortium needs the quarry reopened to stave off financial collapse, while the Silverwood Circle seeks to perform a ritual of re-internment to put the beast back to sleep, a ritual that would require sealing the quarry forever.

Legendary Archetypes

Rayan

HP:45

STR:16

WIS: 12

CHA:11

Key Factions & Autonomous Nodes (8)

Foreman Magnus Ironfist
A stout, weathered human with a thick black beard streaked with grey dust. He wears a heavy leather apron over practical clothes and carries a clipboard and a heavy pickaxe. His expression is permanently set in a weary frown.
Archdruid Lyra Silverwood
An elf of indeterminate age with bark-brown skin and hair like mossy vines. She wears robes of undyed wool and carries a staff of living oak. Her eyes hold a profound, patient sorrow.
Chieftain Skritch Mudtooth
A scarred goblin of unusual size, wearing a headdress of fossilized teeth and bird claws. His skin is mottled grey and brown, covered in mud tattoos. He carries a cruel, serrated blade and a shield made from a miner's lunch pail.
Young Miner Orek
A thin, pale young human with wide, haunted eyes. His clothes are stained with mud and his hands are raw. He flinches at loud noises.
Healer Sister Briar
A middle-aged human woman in simple grey robes, with kind eyes and hands stained with herbal dyes. She wears a wooden pendant shaped like a leaf.
Scholar Raxxus Geargrinder
A gnome with wild white hair and thick spectacles, wearing a stained leather coat covered in pockets. He is constantly scribbling in a notebook or brushing dirt off a fossil specimen.
Spectral Raptor Pack
A flock of small, translucent pterodactyl skeletons, their bones glowing with a sickly green-white light. They emit a constant, keening shriek as they swoop and dive, their clawed wing-tips trailing wisps of necrotic energy.
The Saurian Wraith
A colossal, spectral pterodactyl fossil, easily fifty feet from wingtip to wingtip. Its bones are fused with glowing limestone, and its eyes are pits of swirling, necrotic green light. The air around it crackles with energy, and the constant, unnatural gale emanates from the beat of its massive, insubstantial wings.

Chronicle Prelude

Environmental Traits

Legendary Archetypes

✦ Related Cases ✦

The Whitebear Coast: Tides of the Frozen King

The Toll of Broken-Bridge Market and the Sealed Arch Armory