Alaztaşı mine

The Alaztaşı mine is a mine a few hours' journey from Aquila in the campaign Yeni Dünya ("New World"), reached by turning off the main road. It supplied the Coalition of Enlightenment with samples of the warming Alaztaşı stone. The miners themselves saw the stone as a nuisance that overheated their workings; the Coalition paid for carriage and guards, and the mine had only to bring the stones to its gate.¹²³

The workings

The mine has more than one entrance, rail carts and huts. A wooden lift, worked by wheels turned by hand, goes down about fifty metres to a lower level.⁴⁵

In the early years of the settlement, before the governor came, some mining ventures drove native people from their land by force; this mine was not among them.⁶

The mine belongs to a noble house, the Romanfeld house. A mounted woman, a lieutenant, guarded the site; she was searching for a valuable thing that a noble had lost there.⁷⁸⁹

The darkness

When the stone samples stopped arriving and the Coalition was told only that the mine was not in use, the researcher Miro sent a band of adventurers to see what had happened. They found the carts outside covered in dust. The foreman told them that the mine had been closed for a week and a half because of a darkness the miners spoke of, though he had not gone down himself.¹⁰⁴¹¹

With a man of the foreman's as escort, the party met a black area like a wall that lantern light could not brighten; an instrument pushed into it met nothing solid, and once they were through, the lantern could be seen again. The escort said that experienced miners found their way out of such darkness by knowing the tunnels by heart. On the lower level there were further dark patches without a clear shape, and the tracks of a large four-legged animal with paws like a cat's.^121314151617

That night a red moon was seen from the mine, and the next morning the miners came to work together with about twenty of the house's soldiers, more than an ordinary mine would keep.¹⁸¹⁹

The source of the darkness was a darkness panther, a great panther-like beast with small horns and two tails, which had given birth in the depths. The party ended the wounded adult's life, carried its body and a stillborn cub out, and told the foreman that they had found only one cub, while Sticks took the living cubs out by a hidden way. They reported to Miro that the darkness made by the beast had stopped the work and the shipments.^2021222324

Goods in the yard

When the covered carts were opened, they held wooden barrels sealed with wax; what was inside was not seen. In a strongbox the foreman opened were purses bearing the arms of the Coalition of Enlightenment.²⁵²⁶

Spoiler: The ringRevealSpoils: Yeni Dünya #2 · Say what you have read

Sticks had been inside the mine the day before the party came and had taken the noble's ring, leaving by a secret way: an air shaft narrow enough to crawl through. Called in to join the search, Sticks left the ring hidden elsewhere so as not to be carrying it, and later used the same shaft, without showing it to the others, to carry the living cubs out.^27282930