<strong>The Darkest Sky Part 1: The house under the hill</strong><br/><br/>There was nothing really special about Dunn Vale, it was a small farming village in the southern provinces with barely a hundred people living either in or near the village. There wasn't even any large, strange numenera in or near the village, the oddest things being the glass domed hill, the old man (an abstract statue in the center of the village which either predicted or controlled the weather, no-one was quite sure) and the brothel totally staffed by feline-humanoids.<br/><br/>So, when a group of bandits who had come into possession of a numenera which allowed them to summon several 30 foot tall golems from the world around them, set up camp on the major road into the village. This made it too dangerous for the traders to travel down and cut them off from the vital supplies the village couldn't grow for themselves, they had to do something.<br/><br/>That something was hiring a group of mercenaries to clear out the bandits with the most valuable thing they had, the supposed numenera building, the house under the hill. This is where our heroes entered, of course they cleared the bandits, along with their monstrous constructs but the artifact responsible for the golems was broken during the fight.<br/><br/>Returning to Dunn Vale, the group were treated like heroes. Their wounds were healed and their hurts soothed before a huge celebration was thrown with the best food, the best local drink, music and entertainments which lasted from dusk until the very, very early hours in the morning.  Naturally it took longer for the small village to wake up the next morning, despite the few automatons working the Rana seed fields and the Ambrose orchards.<br/><br/>The village elder, an very old man with skin the colour of walnut, almost bent double, wearing a long woolen robe, belted at the waist and wearing a pair of heavy goggles over his eyes, was ready to reward the group with their prize. He offered a heavy metal key and a short rod, which was enscribed with strange symbols dully glowing orange-yellow as if from within.<br/><br/>This was the key to the house under the hill.<br/><br/>The elder shuffled, almost interminably slowly, and pointed to the glass-topped hill and told them of a large metallic door which would lead them inside, before turning and closing the door behind him as he headed into his cottage, to nurse his hangover.