The Cultists Caverns

The Cultists Caverns open in the flank of the Shiverclaw Mountains like a mouth that has learned to smile politely. Icicles as long as longboats hang from the lip, and beyond them the cold deepens from bitter to reverent. Violet spirals of rune magic glow in the walls, pulsing slowly, like something breathing in its sleep. Candle stubs and iron braziers ring the entrance, and the smell is tallow smoke, wet stone and the clean, waiting nothing of old ice. Overhead the green lights drift across the stars, and they look a good deal friendlier than the welcome below.

This is a home of the Frostborne, who preserve the living in ice. Their faithful are not buried but kept: set into the frozen deep with rune and prayer, sleeping through the years in a stillness that the cult calls patience and everyone else calls a very cold bed. Robed figures tend the altar at the tunnel's heart, murmuring over their charges, and they do not welcome visitors. They have the territorial temper of all zealots, which is to say that a lost traveler is a trespasser first and a person a distant second. Cairn water is not poured here, and the hospitality ends at the icicles.

Why walk into it at all? Because the caverns hold sleepers whom someone, somewhere, would pay dearly to find, and because the runes are older than the cult's manners. Rumor says the deeper tunnels run far longer than the mountain should allow. A wise adventurer brings warm boots, a bold excuse and a good reason to be remembered fondly. Anyone who stays too long is likely to be remembered very, very quietly, from inside a block of ice, with a lovely view of the ceiling.