Aelorean’s Crossing
Early Spring 212 (months before the Swans arrive)
When Lumotu’s father had his job at the mine, he would always tell him tales about the lucky trinket he wears down to the mine. When he started working as a gravedigger, Roux had just gotten a job in the tin mines. Lumotu gets permission to gift his friend his father’s trinket.
When he delivers it, Lumotu tells Roux about what they’re really looking for in the mine: some kind of glowing orbs. His father had told him so!
After a while working in the mine, Roux finds a glowing cracked golf-ball sized orb on a strange pedestal in the mine and gives it to Lumotu. His father tells him to hold onto it until it glows again…
Outskirts of Aelorean’s Crossing
Winter of 212 (about a month before taking back AC from the Swans)
Lumotu finds himself descending into the tin mines of Aelorean’s Crossing like his friends and family have done in years past. He asks aloud, “So how do you know where to find the tin down here? A metal dousing rod? Casting of lots? Does it vary by season?”
His eyes dart from floor to ceiling, taking in this fascinating underworld for what feels like the first time. “And how do you get all the dirt and rocks out of here? Do you ever find any ancient relics down here?”
Water quietly drips off the wooden supports of the tunnel as Lumotu spirals deeper and deeper into the cave.
He doesn’t seem to mind that his questions have gone unanswered, but is stopped by what appears to be a caved-in passageway. His normally jovial demeanor begins to wane as his most recent adventure seems to have come to an abrupt dead end.
Staring at the debris, his focus narrows. He grows silent and places a hand on the nearest human-sized boulder, dwarfing his tiny halfling frame.
“Ahh, now I see, you just have to follow what you know is true and ignore what stands in the way of that truth…”
Pushing forward, he passes through the wall of rubble as if it was a curtain, parting on either side and fluttering back into place softly.
He emerges into a room of strange-colored light, just barely reaching the edges of its rounded walls. In the center, a statue stands alone, holding a small bowl up to the source of the light.
Lumotu seems to glide over to the statue, certainly not aware of how he was getting there. He climbs up on the knee of the sculpture and reaches over the rim of the bowl, feeling around inside it. His tiny fist closes around something cool and hard as he retrieves the small glowing orb from the bowl. It feels exactly like the one Roux had given him, but that one had been cracked and didn’t glow. His father had told him to take care of until it glowed again.
He hadn’t had a chance to retreive it the day he left.
This one shone bright enough to light up the whole room, its brilliant light streaming through the gaps in his fingers. Too bright to stare at directly, he winces and turns towards the statue, which he now realizse bears his father’s face.
With a gasp, he drops the orb, nearly falling off the statue. The sound of a glass globe shattering echoes throughout the chamber as he sees the orb cracked on the ground. The light of the room shifts from… wait what color even was it before?
Now surrounded by a rapidly fading icy-blue light, he looks up to its new source, directly above him. Two sets of tiny pale circles, almost like eyes, staring down at him.
“Sireli? Sor’rel?”
The eyes snap shut.
Lumotu awakens in a cold sweat, head on a swivel. The first light of day is just about to break. As he catches his breath and tries to make sense of the dream, Talith arrives back in camp. As the last scout of the night, he gives his report on the Swan movements.
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