The Listening Stone is a homebrew adventure set in the world of Eberron. It was made for the Valentine’s Day TRPG event at The Dice Latte on February 10, 2019. I’d like to thank the five awesome players who participated in the adventure and created such a memorable story together.

Player Characters:
Tamior d’Phiarlan, the dragonmarked elf bard (College of Whispers)
Lonesome, the rusty warforged fighter
Kuto, the changeling cleric of war
Khad, the kalashtar fighter
Alhandra, the human monk noble from Sarlona

1.

In the world of Eberron, the Speaking Stones revolutionized communication on the continent of Khorvaire, allowing people to send messages instantly across great distances. Since then, the arcane inventors of House Phiarlan developed the wondrous Listening Stone. Originally created as a means of spying on enemy communications on the battlefield, Listening Stones found continued usage after the war when people realized they could also be used to deliver words and sounds to a mass audience.

After the end of the war, Listening Stones were installed in taverns and inns across the land. Each of the nations that survived the war also had a Master Stone that was used to broadcast programs picked up by the Listening Stones. There were twelve Master Stones known to have survived the war, and one that went missing when the nation of Cyre was destroyed in the catastrophic event known as the Day of Mourning.

Each nation established its own of national corporation to manage state broadcasts. The Brelish Broadcasting Company, also called the Voice of Breland, was known for its evening news program, exciting audio plays, and progressive music broadcasts. Meanwhile, the Thranish National Transmission mainly spread the sermons of the Church of the Silver Flame along with evening broadcasts of classic audio dramas. Sometimes, there were renegade broadcasts that did not originate from the state sponsored companies. The Karrnathi Broadcasting Station, mainly used for state propaganda, was occasionally interrupted when the audio waves were hijacked by political dissidents or goth metal enthusiasts.

One late night Listening Stone program whose origins were unclear was hosted by a mysterious presenter called the Listener. Each night the program was aired, the Listener would read letters submitted by fans, offer some words of support or advice, or play a recording of an obscure song or melody. Often times, it was music that no one remembered or had ever heard before. But always, the Listener’s soothing voice and fitting tunes comforted the lonely heart and gave solitary souls a chance to connect with each other.

2.

In the city of Sharn, the Red Hammer was one of the few taverns where warforged, the machine soldiers built to fight in the Last War, were welcome. Lonesome, a rusty and forgetful warforged, looked around the quiet hall as she nursed her empty mug. Warforged often came to this place and sat with empty mugs in front of them, hoping to feel a semblance of humanity in a world that had built them to fight in times of war, then given them their freedom only to shun their existence in times of peace.

Every night, Lonesome came to this tavern, wishing to run into soldiers from her old battalion in the Cyran army, including one who had taken an arm from her during the war. She had even sent a letter to the Listener, hoping it would be broadcast so that they might find her in the Red Hammer. But so far, none had appeared. Each passing season brought more rust to Lonesome’s metal body and poked more holes in her already porous memory. Still, she hoped to be reunited with some of her lost brothers and sisters at arms before she forgot them altogether.

She was not the only person in the Red Hammer eager to hear the Listener’s broadcast. Several other regulars were always present late in the evening to hear the broadcast, hoping to have their own questions answered.

Kuto was a changeling cleric of war who had served as a combat medic. During the Last War, she had met a rugged older man and had fallen in love, but her heart was broken when he abruptly disappeared. She wanted to get over him, but years later she found that she still could not get the man out of her thoughts. She wrote to the Listener asking how she could move on with her life.

Khad came from the distant land of Sarlona. Khad was a Kalashtar warrior whose mystical connection to spirits from the realm of dreams granted him supernatural abilities, including the power of telepathy. He was also a fighter who had seen many horrors during the Last War. Being a soldier of war, he knew in his heart that he would see another war during his life, and it would only be a matter of time. He wanted to know when his next war would be.

Alhandra, also from the continent of Sarlona, was a human monk from a noble family. He had come to the land of Khorvaire to learn more about foreign cultures and peoples. He wished to find someone to guide him on his journey, and so he asked the Listener to help him find such a person.

Finally, there was Tamior d’Phiarlan, an elven bard from a dragonmarked house. The Phiarlans were renowned singers and entertainers, but in truth they were also spies and agents for hire who operated a shadowy network of information exchange. Tamior was a man of ambition who wanted to strike out on his own. He had acquired some juicy bits of knowledge regarding several important nobles that could result in quite a scandal unless they paid the right price. Tamior sent the Listener a coded message, hoping to spread word about his “merchandise” through the broadcast and find potential buyers who might be interested in purchasing his information.

3.

Tonight began as a night like any other as the Listener’s broadcast was played in the Red Hammer. But the listeners in the tavern noticed that something was different. As the barkeep stepped out for a brief break, the voice in the usually staticky broadcast became crystal clear. It gave an usually direct and cryptic message to the people who had sent in questions, but the listeners in the Red Hammer almost felt as if the voice was addressing each of them personally.

“To find the answer to your question, seek out one of the mad sages in the forest.”

When the message had ended, the barkeep returned to the tavern and the normal static in the broadcast returned. A few of the patrons had left, perplexed by the strange message, until only five people remained – Alhandra, Lonesome, Khad, Kuto, and Tamior.

The five remaining listeners who had heard the message all looked to each other. In that moment, they all knew that they were thinking the same thing, though perhaps for different reasons. They needed to find one of these “mad sages” from the Listener’s message. But they couldn’t do it alone. They would need to band together to solve this riddle and find the answers that they seek.

Already, Tamior had begun to scour the Korranberg Chronicle for any mention of a mad sage in a forest. What he found piqued his interest. In fact, there were numerous reports of self-proclaimed sages and gurus in the Eldeen Reaches, the largest forest on the continent, who claimed to have extraordinary powers.

Doctor Morris, druid, claims smoking leaves enable travel through time

Madam Ruth, apothecarist, offers potions of everlasting love for a price

Foresters say local sage, Mossmantle, has lived for a thousand years

The listeners in the tavern were mostly intrigued by the last headline. They wondered who this “Mossmantle” might be and whether he truly had lived for a thousand years. If so, what insights might such an ageless sage have to offer?

Alhandra used his family’s resources to procure Lightning Rail tickets from Sharn to the Eldeen Reaches so that he and his new companions might venture into the woods in search of this famed Mossmantle.

As the Lightning Rail left the station with the five adventurers from the Red Hammer on board, Alhandra was excited but also oddly content. Perhaps he knew that his question to the Listener had already been answered. After all, he was traveling with a changeling, a kalashtar, a warforged, and an elf bard from the House of Shadows. He could not imagine a more diverse group of individuals to guide him on his journey through an unfamiliar world. While the others were all searching for answers to their questions, the young monk already knew that the journey was the destination.

4.

As they traveled from the edge of the forest to its interior, Khad made good use of his soldier’s training and survivor’s instincts to lead the party through the dangers in the woods. In time, they arrived at a small town called Wolf’s Paw, not far from where Mossmantle’s cottage was reportedly located. This was a community of shifters, those who had the power to take on animalistic forms. People often associated them with werewolves which led to an irrational fear of shifters across the lands, forcing many shifters into desperate lives as rogues and vagabonds. The shifters of Wolf’s Paw had come together to form a permanent settlement far from the hateful reach of mainstream society.

When the adventurers came to the outskirts of the town, they saw that something was amiss. A large crowd had gathered in the town center. They appeared to be local villagers, everyone from the children to the town elder. They were all staring at something on the ground.

The party saw that it was the body of a dead human adventurer. His heart had been ripped out of his chest! Upon closer inspection, the party realized that he was one of the other guests in the Red Hammer from the previous evening. Clearly, he had come to the Eldeen Reaches on his own with the same goal as the party. But some misfortune had befallen him before he had gotten very far.

Despite their curiosity, the villagers kept the party at bay and carried the body into the large hut which belonged to the town elder. The visitors were invited to stay, provided that they keep their noses out of local business. The villagers did not want to bring unwanted attention to their remote community, perhaps for fear of being blamed for an outsider’s gruesome death.

Khad reached out with his psychic powers and sensed that something else prompted these villagers to secrecy. The party grew intent on discovering the villagers’ secret before moving on to Mossmantle’s cottage. They decided to camp outside the town and sneak back inside under cover of night. Lonesome remained alone in the camp. Being a rusty warforged, her creaking joints made too much noise and would easily give the party away.

5.

Alhandra, Khad, Kuto, and Tamior quietly entered the town after all the villagers had gone to sleep. The twelve moons shimmered in the night sky. The orange disk of the moon called Olarune, also known as the Sentinel, shined most brightly, this being the second month of the year.

As they approached the large hut belonging to the town elder, a group of villagers who were out patrolling the village came upon them. Despite their attempts to hide in the shadows, the villagers saw them.

“Who goes there? Show yourselves!” they demanded.

Kuto, being a changeling with the power to transform her appearance at will, took the shape of the town elder she had seen earlier that day. She presented herself and took charge of the situation.

“No need to worry, my friends. I found these adventurers sneaking around town. I have the situation well in hand.”

The villagers were surprised to see the elder at first, but they soon returned to their homes. Strangely, they repeatedly asked Kuto if he had eaten already and wondered that he had returned from his evening trek so soon. They seemed unusually concerned with the elder’s appetite and wished to make sure that he was not hungry.

When the villagers were gone, the adventurers breathed a sigh of relief and continued into the elder’s hut.

What they found inside was a gruesome scene that looked more like a butcher’s shop or a kennel than the home of a town elder. The walls were lined with meat hooks, and the floor was caked with splotches of dried blood. The only furniture they saw was a low pallet covered with straw that passed for a bed and a long wooden table on which the body of the dead adventurer was laid out.

Kuto conducted a close examination of the corpse and the cavity where the heart had been removed. She found that the organ had been torn out as if by the claw of a ferocious beast. There were bits of hair stuck to the blood caked around the wound, which matched hairs from the pallet inside the elder’s hut.

Based on the clues in the hut and the strange behavior of the villagers, there was only one explanation that made sense to the adventurers. The town elder was a werewolf, and the villagers were trying to protect him.

Their moment of realization was interrupted by the shrill, piercing howl of a wolf. The beastly cry came from the direction of their camp where Lonesome the warforged was left all alone.

6.

Lonesome did not know how much time had passed since the party had left. Time mattered little to a warforged whose body did not age, but Lonesome did count the seasons for the changes that they brought to her body. The warm, wet summers brought humidity which added rust to her limbs, and the cold, dry winters made her joints stiff with frost. But right now, she could only guess that it was some time after midnight when she heard the wolf’s howl.

Not long after hearing the beast’s cry, she saw a pair of glowing eyes in the darkness. How had it reached her camp so quickly? She hardly had time to ready her axe before the ferocious werewolf pounced upon her. Though her composite plating was rusted with age, Lonesome was a hardy warforged, built and trained for battle. She locked the blade of her axe in the werewolf’s maw and held it at bay until help arrived.

When Alhandra saw that his friend was in danger, he bravely rushed toward the werewolf. Summoning the power of his ki, he struck the hulking monster with his flying kick and sent it sprawling on the forest floor. Lonesome’s companions helped the warforged to her feet. But when they searched the woods for the creature, it was nowhere to be seen. However, it left behind tracks that led away from the village.

As the adventurers followed the wolf’s tracks, they were alarmed to discover that they led toward the cottage of Mossmantle! It was a simple hut made of stone and wood. The front door was closed, but a sliver of light shined through the cracks in the door frame. Fearing the worst, the adventurers burst through the door with their weapons drawn.

A young girl who was standing inside the cottage screamed in fright and hid in a corner. She ran behind an old man who was napping in an arm chair. He wore a green robe covered in – or perhaps made entirely of – bright green moss and leaves. At his feet, the werewolf that had attacked Lonesome was curled up in a ball. The creature was sound asleep and snoring loudly.

The old man was roused from his sleep and finally took notice of the adventurers.

“You again,” he said simply, the light of recognition entering his eyes.

The adventurers were perplexed. They had never met this old man before. Or had they?

When their confusion became evident, the old man laughed and said,

“Ha, I see what’s going on here. Very well, allow me to introduce myself properly. I am Mossmantle, as you may have guessed from my attire. And though you may not know me, I remember the five of you quite well. Here, gather around my hearth. Daughter, fetch us some tea.”

The daughter came out of her hiding place and began to brew some tea in the kettle above the hearth. The adventurers continued to stare at the wolf beside the old man.

“Oh, do not fear him. He is quite harmless as long as you do not provoke him.”

“But… he killed a man,” said the adventurers.

“Would you bring down the wrath of the King’s army and leave Wolf’s Paw without its elder, just to see the King’s justice served? That is rather short sighted of you. We must always look at the longterm consequences of our actions.”

“If you are so wise, then are you truly a thousand years old?” the adventurers asked.

“Not I,” the old man replied. “I am an old man, but not so old that I remember the years before the Last War. However, this cloak which you see upon my shoulders is older than you can possibly imagine. It is the cloak of the Mossmantle, handed down over generations, and it bestows all the knowledge and memories of its wearers through the countless aeons of time.”

“Then did one of the previous wearers meet each one of us in the past? But how could that be when we five only met recently?”

Mossmantle made a sound like leaves rustling in an autumn breeze. He was chuckling to himself.

“I can see that you have many questions. but the answers remain for you to discover on your own. I can only set you on the path. Ah, the tea is ready.”

The young girl brought the kettle in which she had brewed a heady tea. Handing out five small cups to the adventurers, she carefully poured the tea into each cup. Mossmantle continued.

“In order to answer your questions, you must acquire a powerful artifact. You must find a Master Stone.”

“A Master Stone! But how could we ever get our hands on one of those? There are only twelve in the world, and each is heavily guarded by a state broadcasting company.”

“There is a thirteenth stone,” said Mossmantle. “It vanished in Cyre during the Day of Mourning. You could risk exploring the Mournland to find the missing stone. However, there are untold dangers in that barren wasteland. Even if you survive, you would not return unscathed. Those who return from the Mournland always come back… changed.”

Mossmantle paused briefly and breathed in the aroma of the tea. Looking satisfied, he went on.

“There is an alternative. This tea comes from a place called Greenheart, deep within the Eldeen Reaches. It was given to me by Mossmantle’s old friend, a druid named Morris. It has the power to transport a person into another point in time. You need only imagine the time and place you wish to visit, and you will arrive there.”

“Will this tea allow us to travel into the past?” the adventurers wondered.

Mossmantle nodded slowly. “It may be in the past that you will find the thirteenth stone and the answers you desire. But be warned! Time is like a river. You may cast a stone into it, but you must take care not to be swept away by the current.”

The adventurers looked to each other as if searching one another’s hearts and their own. After a long silence, they drank the heady tea. Each of them thought of the question that they had asked the Listener. They began to feel drowsy. They closed their eyes, and darkness enveloped them.

7.

When the adventurers awoke, they were no longer in a cottage in the middle of the forest. Instead, they found themselves lying inside a trench at the front lines of a battlefield. They were dressed in the uniforms of the Cyran army. All around them, frightened soldiers steeled themselves against explosions that drew nearer. The trenches were being bombarded from a great distance by spell staves. Great balls of fire engulfed large swatches of the trenches on either side of the adventurers, incinerating the men within.

The adventurers quickly realized that they were in the middle of a battle that had been waged during the Last War. Faraway in the distance, Lonesome saw the banners of her former battalion marching toward enemy lines. They went to face the undead armies from the kingdom of Karrnath, Cyre’s warmongering neighbor.

The adventurers wondered what answers they would find in the middle of a battlefield. But they had more pressing concerns. They would need to survive this battle first!

The shadows of enemy troops could be seen through the ash and smoke. A squadron of undead Karrnathi warriors approached their trenches. The skeletons and zombies were led by an undead knight mounted upon a skeletal steed. Spurred on by the sound of their army’s grim warhorns, the Karrnathi charged the trenches.

The adventurers leaped out and met the undead creatures in the field! Khad raised up his sword and Lonesome her waraxe. Kuto’s warhammer fell upon her foes, and Alhandra faced them with his fists. Tamior, the last to leave the trenches, assailed the enemies from a distance with his shortbow. When the smoke had cleared, the adventurers were victorious. The undead soldiers of Karrnathi had been laid to rest.

The adventurers were greeted by a lieutenant from the Cyran army. To their surprise, they saw a young Mossmantle, or rather the man who would later don the cloak of the Mossmantle. The young man did not seem to recognize them. From his point of view, he was meeting these adventurers for the first time. But he would remember this encounter years later when he saw them again in Mossmantle’s cottage in the Eldeen Reaches.

The lieutenant saw that Khad had been injured in the course of the fight. Kuto and Alhandra accompanied him to the medical tent. Meanwhile, he was startled by Lonesome’s rusted condition and sent her to the warforged battalion to receive repairs.

Finally, the lieutenant saw the dragonmark on Tamior and recognized him as an elf of house Phiarlan. He ordered Tamior to report to the command pavilion where the Master Stone was located. This Master Stone was being used to broadcast commands and reports from the front lines back to the Cyran army’s headquarters. Since it was a dragonshard focus item from House Phiarlan, only members of the house who possessed the Mark of Shadow could operate the device. Tamior would relieve the current Phiarlan scion and take the next shift manning the Master Stone so that broadcasts from the front lines could continue.

As Khad passed through the scorched battlefield and saw the horrors of war once more, he knew that his question had been answered.

“My next war wasn’t in the future after all… It was in the past.”

8.

Khad was treated by a young female medic. She was a cleric of war whom Kuto instantly recognized.

“Hello, my name is Kuto,” said the young woman. “I am the field medic in charge here. Let me take a look at you.”

This was Kuto’s younger self in the past, went she served on the front lines of the Last War. It was only then that Kuto remembered she was still in the guise of the town elder from Wolf’s Paw.

“What is your name, sir?” said the younger Kuto. Her eyes were drawn to the older man, whose rugged appearance fascinated her in a peculiar way. She had never seen this man before, yet he seemed strangely familiar.

Now, the Kuto from the future realized that the older man who had broken her heart had been none other than her future self. She had traveled back into the past to seek answers to a heartbreak that she herself had caused.

Meanwhile, across the battlefield, Lonesome was being checked out by the warforged battalion’s artificers. They were shocked that one of their own warforged could have rusted so quickly. They commanded the other warforged soldiers to perform repairs upon Lonesome. They even ordered one of the younger warforged to give up their arm as a replacement for Lonesome who had performed acts of valor in the most recent skirmish.

Lonesome recognized her younger self as the warforged who was forced to give up their own limb.

Growing excited by this revelation, she tried to tell her younger self about the end of the war and the future emancipation of the warforged, and bade her to spread this awareness to the other warforged so that they may prepare for the future era of peace. The younger warforged seemed not to comprehend, but since she was given an order by a superior, she obeyed to the best of her ability.

However, when the human artificers of the battalion received word that one of their own warforged was spreading ideas about emanicipation and liberty among the machine soldiers, they grew alarmed. The artificers had Lonesome’s memory modified to remove all such subversive thoughts. Thereafter, Lonesome would suffer from boughts of amnesia and wonder about the holes in her memory.

9.

Tamior entered the command pavilion. Inside, he spotted the large Master Stone under heavy guard at the far end of the pavilion. A weary House Phiarlan elf stood up from the seat in front of the stone and stretched his aching back. When he noticed Tamior, he breathed a sigh of relief and gave up his post to take a much needed break.

As Tamior sat down in front of the Master Stone, he felt a familiar drowsiness wash over him. The effects of Mossmantle’s tea were wearing off! Tamior grew alarmed, but there was little he could do to fight the weariness overtaking him.

Working quickly, he devised a secret message containing the scandalous information that he would use to blackmail the nobility of the future, using a code that only he could decipher. The message would be documented in the wartime records of Master Stone broadcasts, which would survive even after the destruction of the nation of Cyre where it had originated. In the future, an elf bard of House Phiarlan would stumble across this record and find the precious knowledge hidden within, locked away by a code of his own making. He would be momentarily perplexed by the discovery, but he was a pragmatic elf who would try to use the information to his advantage.

Having ensured the predestination paradox that would provide him with an edge in the future, Tamior was utterly exhausted. It was all he could do to keep his hands weakly on the Master Stone. His eyelids were heavy and seemed to close of their own accord.

But this time, instead of darkness, there was a bright light. When the elf opened his eyes, he had been transported once more to another place.

10.

Tamior looked around and saw that his four companions from the Red Hammer were beside him. They were inside a large chamber whose floor, walls, and ceiling were made of knotted oak that seemed to flow together, as if grown rather than built. Sunlight and the music of birds streamed in through the tall windows which looked more like the hollows of an ancient tree.

When they looked outside, they were high above a vast, endless forest that stretched as far as the eye could see. They wondered if they were somewhere deep within the Eldeen Reaches, so far from the border between nature and civilization that it could no longer be discerned. Perhaps they had arrived somewhere in the distant past or far future when nature had overtaken the world, or maybe this was another dimension that existed outside of time and reality.

In the middle of the chamber, there was a wooden pedestal that seemed to grow up from the floor. The center of the pedestal was grooved. The indentation looked like it was just the right size for the Master Stone.

The Master Stone! What had become of it? Tamior looked around but saw that the others were all staring at him. It was only then that he realized he was holding the Master Stone in his own hands!

Tamior placed the Master Stone on the pedestal and stepped back in anticipation. But nothing happened. The adventurers were puzzled and wondered what they would have to do next. But the others were surprised when Alhandra gave the stone a solid knock with the palm of his hand.

A staticky noise was heard as the stone began to glow, dimly at first but soon more brightly. They began to hear voices and music coming from the stone. If they concentrated hard enough, it seemed to them that they could make out the words of each voice and the sounds of each melody. If they chose, they could even reply by conveying their own voices or the unearthly music that came from the stone, and somehow they knew that their words and songs would be received by countless Listening Stones somewhere on the other side.

It was when they heard their own questions to the Listener among the cacophony of voices that the adventurers realized the truth. They were the Listener, standing in a chamber beyond the walls of time, hearing the countless voices of lonely hearts and souls reaching out to the ether for someone to listen to them. Perhaps all of the voices that they heard did not belong to someone else, but were their own voices echoing across a million lifetimes.

In that moment, as they replied and told their other selves to seek out one of the mad sages of the forest, the adventurers understood that only when we listen to our own hearts can we truly learn to listen and understand the hearts of others.

The End