The Redemption of Brynn - session 24

The Hollow Beneath

If you missed the last session, click here to read The Chains That Bind

Or, if you're new here, check the Campaign Index

---

The Hollow Beneath

Art by Andy ‘onegraydot’ Gray

They stood outside the stone door leading into the rockface. There was no handle and no obvious way to open it.

“Ready?” Brynn asked the others.

Asha nodded. “As ready as I’ll ever be. This place gives me the creeps.” She shuddered.

Keelan said nothing, but stared at the door, unblinking, like it might speak to him.

Brynn stepped up to the stone slab and placed his hands flat against it. He pushed.

Nothing.

He leaned harder, shifting into a crouch, shoulder braced, boots slipping slightly on the moss-slick stone. The door groaned, and moved a hair’s breadth.

“Some help here?” he grunted.

Asha slid her sword back into its sheath without a word and pressed her back against the stone beside him, heels digging in.

“On three,” she said. “One... two...”

“Three!” They shoved together. Brynn let out a hoarse, involuntary roar as the slab gave way with a grinding shriek. Inch by inch, they forced it open, until finally, there was just enough space to slip inside.

Behind the door was a staircase enveloped in an inky blackness. From within it, a foul, ancient stench rolled out. Rotten. Stagnant. Like wet earth and long-dead things that had never been meant to breathe again.

Asha drew her sword again, slowly this time. Marou whined. Keelan took a step forward—toward the dark.

“Wait,” Brynn said, holding a hand out to Keelan. “We’ll need a torch.” He crouched, pulled one from his satchel, and planted it upright in the damp earth. The flint struck once—twice—then caught. Smoke curled upward in lazy spirals. Brynn leaned in, cupping the torch, and blew gently until the flame took, flickering to life with a soft whoosh.

Shadows jumped across the carved stone around them, dancing like nervous spirits.

“Stay close,” he said, lifting the torch and stepping inside.

---

The torchlight spilled into the passage, casting its glow across walls of worked stone—not carved by Ironlander hands. The hallway wasn’t high enough to stand fully upright, forcing them into a half-crouch, the ceiling pressing down like the weight of the mountain itself. The walls were covered in carvings: lines and loops, no obvious pattern, but not random either. They flowed like script, like thought made stone.

Brynn slowed, angling the torch closer. Beneath the carvings were faded pigments—red ochre, black ash, and something dark-green that hadn’t dulled with time. Cave paintings, though more intricate than any Ironlander tradition. They showed figures with elongated limbs, curved horns, faceless masks, standing beside slabs, vessels, or tall, flowering trees that bled.

Asha frowned. “These are Firstborn,” she said quietly.

Keelan stepped forward, unblinking. His hand reached out, but stopped just short of touching the wall.

“They’re waiting,” he said, voice distant.

Brynn looked at him. “Who’s waiting?

Keelan blinked, then shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Delve move: Delve the Depths (+Wits)
Strong Hit: 6 + 2 + 0 = 8 vs 7 | 6
Find the Latchstone: 3/10

Delve move: Find an Opportunity
You locate something interesting or helpful
+1 momentum = 2

They descended in silence, the stone stairs damp and slick beneath their boots. The passage narrowed, then widened again, opening into a low, vaulted chamber carved from the bones of the mountain. The walls here were smooth, worn by time and touch. Ancient reliefs had been chiseled into them: Firstborn glyphs and swirling forms, some of which twisted in ways that made the eye ache to follow.

The room had the feel of a temple, or perhaps a tomb, though for what, Brynn wasn’t sure. Scattered around the floor were offering bowls: some shattered, their contents long crumbled to dust, others still upright, holding brittle sticks of dried herbs or blackened stones. A few were arranged in circular patterns around the bases of cracked statues - figures tall and faceless, their features lost to centuries of erosion.

Near the back of the room, half-shadowed by a broken pillar, rested two sarcophagi, hewn from dark stone and sealed with fitted lids. Neither had been disturbed. Yet. Marou let out a low growl.

“This place has teeth,” Asha whispered, blade half-drawn.

Brynn stepped carefully between the bowls, torch held high. And then he saw it: nestled between the feet of a toppled statue, barely visible in the dirt—a dull iron amulet, still looped with the remains of a leather cord. He crouched and picked it up. The metal was cold, unnaturally so. But not dead. It pulsed faintly, like a dying heartbeat.

“It’s afraid,” Keelan murmured. They all looked at him. He didn’t meet their eyes. “It doesn’t want to be here.”

Brynn slipped the amulet into his pouch, unsure if he’d just picked up a key, a curse, or both.

“Let’s keep moving,” he whispered.

Delve move: Delve the Depths (+Wits)
Weak Hit: 3 + 2 + 0 = 5 vs 4 | 8
Find the Latchstone: 6/10

Delve move: Reveal a Danger
Blocked or broken passage

They moved deeper into the underkeep, past the offering chamber, through a narrow corridor lined with fluted stone columns. The air grew colder. Stiller. Then the hallway ended.

The torchlight reached out into a yawning chasm—a massive crack in the earth, too wide to leap, too deep to see the bottom. The sound of their footsteps no longer echoed, only vanished into the void. A stone bridge had once spanned the divide. Now, its remnants jutted from either side, broken like teeth punched out of a skull. Great slabs had crumbled away, leaving a gap impossible to cross directly.

Asha knelt at the edge, tossing a small stone into the dark. No sound came back.

“There’s no telling how far down it goes,” she said. “Or what’s down there.”

Keelan hugged himself, stepping back from the edge instinctively. Marou growled softly, tail low. Brynn stepped up beside her, eyeing the broken ledge. A length of frayed rope hung from one of the bridge posts, snapped and swaying in the cold, still air. On the far side, he could just make out a continuation of the passage, leading down into deeper shadow. They would need to find a way across.

Brynn scanned the edge of the chasm, torchlight flickering against the jagged break in the stone. A rope wouldn’t hold - not with Keelan’s weight. A leap was out of the question. But maybe... He moved back the way they’d come, eyes searching the rubble near the collapsed bridge supports.

“There,” he said, pointing to a massive stone slab, half-buried in rubble. It looked like it had once been part of a support pillar: flat, wide, and heavy. “If we can get that loose, we might be able to tip it across the gap. Like a drawbridge.”

Asha raised an eyebrow. “You planning to throw it?”

“Roll it. Then let gravity do the work.”

They set to it. Brynn wedged a broken support beam beneath the edge of the slab, bracing it with a fallen column shard. He tested the angle - unstable, but possible. Marou helped clear loose debris while Asha stood watch. Brynn grunted as he jammed another shard under the opposite end. Sweat beaded on his brow despite the cold.

“Almost...” he muttered, then placed his shoulder against the stone and heaved.

Adventure move: Secure an Advantage (+Iron)
Add +1 (From Wright asset)
Strong Hit: 2 + 3 + 1 = 6 vs 1 | 4
+3 momentum = 5

Brynn braced his legs, took a breath, and pushed. For a moment, nothing moved. Then the slab shifted—just slightly—then more. Dust and old bone spilled out from beneath it as the weight began to tip. The edge scraped against stone, letting out a teeth-rattling screech before it slammed forward into the void.

CRACK.

The sound echoed like thunder in the dark. Stone struck stone. The slab caught, angled just right, and wedged itself against the far ledge. Bits of rock crumbled from the edges, but it held. A narrow, slanted bridge now spanned the chasm.

Keelan stepped back, wide-eyed. Asha let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.

“Remind me to never play dice with you,” she muttered.

Brynn rolled his shoulder, satisfied. “We go one at a time. Slowly.”

Marou sniffed the bridge, then padded forward without hesitation.

---

“We’re getting close,” Keelan said when they had all made it to the other side safely.

The unease in Asha’s eyes was evident. “Let’s pick up the pace, I can’t wait to get out of here. That sound was loud enough to wake the dead.”

Brynn turned to look back across the chasm. The slab had settled clean but a slow trickle of pebbles still fell into the dark, echoing like whispers.

“Let’s hope they don’t want to be woken,” he said, voice low.

Keelan didn’t laugh. He wasn’t even looking at the bridge—his eyes were locked on the corridor ahead.

“We’re close,” he repeated. “I can... feel it.”

The torchlight flickered against damp stone. The hallway ahead angled downward again, the floor slick and uneven. Old roots pushed through the walls, like veins too long buried.

Marou’s ears perked. Then she growled—low and sustained.

Delve move: Delve the Depths (+Edge)
Weak Hit: 1 + 1 + 0 = 2 vs 7 | 1
Choose one: Mark Progress or Find an Opportunity
Mark Progress
Find the Latchstone: 9/10

The tunnel narrowed again, sloping downward, the walls slick with cold moisture. The air was thicker now, heavy with something sweet and rotten beneath the stone, like flowers left too long on a grave.

Then the corridor opened into a vaulted chamber. The torchlight revealed a high, circular space. Arched alcoves lined the walls, each holding statues—or what remained of them—figures broken at the waist, heads long since tumbled into dust. At the center of the room stood a raised stone dais, and atop it, something small. Unremarkable. A black stone, dull as ash, carved into a shape that seemed to shift slightly when you didn’t look directly at it.

Keelan stopped in his tracks. “It’s there,” he whispered. “That’s it.”

Asha stepped past him slowly, blade still out. Marou growled but didn’t bark, ears flattened against her head.

Brynn narrowed his eyes at the object on the pedestal.

“So that’s the Latchstone.”

But even as he said the words, his hand dropped to the pouch at his belt, feeling for the cold iron amulet.

Delve move: Locate Your Objective
Strong Hit: 9 vs 6 | 1
+1 to next move
Track: Find the Latchstone (completed)

Quest move: Reach a Milestone
Recover the Latchstone from the Hollow Beneath: 4/10

Brynn stepped slowly onto the dais, each footfall echoing like a drumbeat in the silence. The Latchstone sat atop a narrow plinth—smooth, dark, and somehow deeper than stone should be. It didn’t gleam. It didn’t hum. But it pulled at him all the same. He reached out, hand steady.

“Wait,” Keelan said.

Too late.

Brynn’s fingers closed around the stone. The moment he lifted it, the room breathed. Air sucked inward as if the mountain itself had gasped. A deep, rattling groan rolled through the floor beneath them, and the carvings along the walls flared faintly: an ember-bright pulse, then nothing.

“Brynn!” Asha shouted. She’d already turned back toward the corridor.

Marou barked sharply, once. Keelan stumbled backward, clutching his head. “Something’s coming,” he whispered.

Brynn shoved the stone into his satchel and leapt down from the dais.

“Then we run.”

Delve move: Escape the Depths (+Edge)
Add +1 (from Locate Your Objective)
Miss: 1 + 1 + 1 = 3 vs 9 | 9

Fate move: Pay the Price
A new danger or foe is revealed

They ran.

The flicker of the torch cast wild shadows as they fled down the corridor, the walls seeming to twist inward with each pounding step. The ground shook—no, not the ground, but something beneath it. A rhythmic pulse, like a heartbeat buried in stone.

Marou barked again, louder this time. Behind them, from the chamber they had fled, came a sound not meant for the living; a long, ragged exhale, as if some ancient tomb had just drawn breath for the first time in centuries.

“What did you wake?” Asha growled, not looking back.

“I don’t know!” Brynn shouted. “But we’re not stopping to ask it!”

Suddenly, the corridor ahead shuddered, cracks split the stone, and the floor gave way beneath Keelan’s feet.

“Keelan!” Brynn dove, catching the boy by the wrist as a section of the floor collapsed into a yawning pit. Dust and echoes surged upward as more of the corridor began to buckle.

“We’re not going to make it,” Asha said grimly, dragging Keelan up with Brynn’s help.

“We have to—there has to be another way out!”

But the path behind them was gone, swallowed by a jagged maw of darkness, and ahead, a cold wind began to blow. But they were far below the open air. As they scrambled across the crumbling ledge, a chill swept through the corridor—not wind, but something colder. Older. Brynn’s breath fogged in the torchlight. So did Asha’s. Keelan’s... did not.

“It’s here,” he whispered.

Then the torch dimmed, its flame burning low, guttering as if choked by unseen hands. From the collapsed chamber behind them, a figure emerged: at first just a shadow, then more. Its form was vaguely human, but twisted by decay. Skin drawn tight over hollowed bones. Eyes empty but watching. It moved like smoke riding wind that wasn’t there.

It wore something familiar. A tattered sash, an insignia of one of the Firstborn clans long believed extinct. And it bled light: pale blue, leaking from cracks in its chest.

Keelan let out a gasp and clutched his temples.

“It’s not angry at us,” he managed, voice taut. “It’s... bound. It wants something.”

“Then tell it to want something somewhere else!” Asha hissed, blade trembling in her grip.

The Haunt raised its hand—and the torch snuffed out.

“Find another exit,” Brynn growled, pulling the satchel’s flap open. “Now.”

“What are you—” Asha started, but the look in his eyes made her stop.

Keelan’s face twisted with fear, but he turned, grabbing Asha’s hand, and they began to move down a narrow passage that angled off from the ruined corridor.

Marou stayed. Low growl in her throat. Unwilling to leave.

Brynn stood his ground as the Haunt drifted closer. Its face flickered in and out of clarity, sometimes skeletal, sometimes young, sometimes wracked with pain. With slow hands, Brynn reached into the pouch and pulled free the dull iron amulet. It felt cold—not physically, but in the soul, like touching old sorrow. He held it up.

“I don’t know who you were,” he said, voice low but steady. “But I found this. Among offerings. Among the dead. I think it was yours.”

The Haunt paused, its shape shivering, flickering like flame in a high wind. It stared at the amulet—not Brynn—and its hand dropped, the gesture of reaching now something else.

Recognition.

For a moment... silence.

Adventure move: Face Danger (+Heart)
Strong Hit: 6 + 2 + 0 = 8 vs 2 | 7
+1 momentum = 6

The Haunt floated closer, drawn to the amulet like a moth to the flame. Brynn didn’t move—just held the thing steady as the spirit reached out, fingers curling like smoke. Then, a single whisper escaped its mouth, the first true voice it had given.

“Aelira…”

The air shifted. The chill eased. The pale blue glow in its chest dimmed. Then it bowed, just barely. The motion awkward, painful.

Brynn lowered the amulet, placing it on a nearby stone. A kind of offering in return.

“Rest,” he said.

He turned to leave, then saw a flicker of torchlight further down the corridor. Asha. Keelan. A passage opened by time or faith. Or luck. He didn’t care which.

“We found it!” Asha called. “Let’s go!”

Marou whined, then followed close at Brynn’s heel as he stepped away. The Haunt remained still.

And did not follow.

---

As they crossed the threshold back into the first chamber—the one with the stone bowls and the statues and the lingering stench—Brynn’s torchlight flickered against something new.

Asha stopped dead in her tracks. “Wait. That wasn’t like that before...”

One of the sarcophagi, the smaller one, marked with faded carvings and a half-eroded relief of a Firstborn priestess—was no longer sealed. The lid had been shifted, not fully removed, but cracked open, just enough to show a darkness within deeper than shadow. There was no dust on the lid. No trace of movement. But something had moved.

They all stood still. Even Marou didn’t growl. She simply turned toward the exit tunnel, ears back, body taut. Brynn stepped closer. The air coming from within was cold and damp. Wrong in a way he couldn’t describe.

“Something’s missing,” Keelan whispered, his voice barely audible. “She wasn’t ready yet.”

Brynn turned to him. “Who wasn’t?”

But the boy only looked at the stairs leading up and out from the depths.

Quest move: Reach a Milestone
Recover the Latchstone from the Hollow Beneath: 6/10

---

Afterthoughts

After finishing up the last session, I figured, Brynn has no choice but to go down here, and do what Thorne asks of him. I was worried that this delve would be the end of him, not gonna lie. But the dice gods are fickle—every delve he seems to roll immaculately well, whereas every fight seems to be a neverending string of misses and weak hits. This ended up being probably among my favorite sessions yet.

I decided to use the opportunity found at the very beginning of the delve to deal with the complication of the miss on Escape the Depths, but as it were, it was a miss with a match...

So stay tuned for next week’s session to find out if they make it back to Thorne’s spire or not. Click the button below so you get notified when it’s up!

Read the next session here: Marked By the Dead