Inside Calebais

The interior of the covenant shows evidence of incredible destruction. Rubble, scorch marks, broken weaponry, and bones litter the floors. Nearly all of the wood in the covenant, including doors and furniture, has been burned or smashed apart. The stone walls and even sections of the ceilings bear many cracks and holes, especially in the lower levels. Pools of water have formed in various depressions throughout the rooms.

In most areas, the ceilings are between eight and ten feet high, though some of the corridors are only seven feet high. There is about five feet of solid rock between levels, with magical reinforcement where necessary. While many of the walls were once covered with beautiful tapestries, their deterioration causes voices to sound hollow and echo ominously. The dank air is laden with moisture and heavy with rot.

Originally, the covenant was heated and lit by magical devices that made sections of the ceiling glow like the morning sun. Carved periodically along the tops of the walls in most areas of the covenant is the shape of a flaming phoenix, set seamlessly into the stone, the rock bright with inner fire. These engravings still shine in many of the rooms of the covenant, though moss also grows over them and blocks out some of the light. Smashing apart these devices ends their effects.

The major denizens of Calebais are the Hrools, and evidence of them is everywhere. In most rooms where Hrools travel, there is a powerful odor of musk, and trails of them walking or crawling through the dust. Characters might find clumps of their droppings buried in piles of rubble. The Hrools only travel to the first few levels to hunt, so there will be no more than glimpses of them until the explorers go deeper, but characters might repeatedly hear shuffling footsteps or sniffing ahead or behind them, and on the lower levels the characters will be brazenly approached and challenged.

Magical, gray-green moss grows almost everywhere, covering the walls and ceilings. In areas where magic was practiced often, such as wizards' laboratories, it grows profusely. It is an excellent source of Herbam vis, though the amount that characters must gather to produce one pawn (about five rooms' worth) is prohibitive for exploratory expeditions. An armload of moss is an adequate meal for a human-sized creature, tasting a bit like dry bread or mushrooms when compacted into a solid loaf.

On the upper levels, the rats eat as much of the moss as they can reach, leaving clear a small stripe along the bottom of the walls. On the lower levels, the Hrools collect it to feed their livestock. Because of this, it is found growing most densely in areas where small animals cannot reach, such as high along the ceilings and in labs that are still guarded. Be sure to point out the abundance or lack of moss in different rooms so that you can appreciate the players' attempts to fathom its significance.

The vermin of the tunnels can also be heard if one listens quietly. Bats flutter about in the well, and there are many rat warrens dug into the rubble along the walls of the upper levels. Cobwebs hang in undisturbed areas or cover unused doorways. The aura and their magical diet has affected many of these creatures, making them preternaturally large and vicious, and the Hrools have basically abandoned the seventh level to those creatures that have grown too large for them to handle.

Hrools are ferret-like creatures about the size of toddlers or small dogs that inhabit the ruins of Calebais and possess human intelligence. The maga Ierimyra brought them to the covenant years before the Sundering and enhanced them with specialized magic (see the Appendix). For a time, they served as her personal guards, much to the disgruntlement of the other wizards and grogs, and in fact Ierimyra had grandiose plans (or a fateful vision) that one day her children would "rule" the entire covenant.

Hrools sleep a long time, about fifteen hours a day, and therefore many of them may be taken by surprise if caught in their dens. They post guards for this reason. When frightened, or just after they wake, Hrools tremble visibly. They make interesting clucking, chuckling sounds when excited, and hiss loudly when angry. They also spray a thick, foul-smelling scent to mark their territory or to scare away enemies, and characters fighting them or traveling through their living areas should make periodic

Stamina checks against an Ease Factor of 3, or 6 in particularly strongly-smelling areas, or suffer penalties to their actions because of the powerful odor. In general, those penalties should not exceed -1, unless a character botches the Stamina roll.

Like most animals, Hrools can sense The Gift and it disturbs them. Magi quite literally make their fur bristle and set their teeth on edge. While they might revere some wizards as benevolent, like Ierimyra, they know of others like Pitsdim who are capable of great destruction and evil. If they sense The Gift, or especially the Blatant Gift, they will naturally assume characters fall into this second category and attack immediately, or bolt in terror if battle seems hopeless. Under no circumstances will they help or trust magi who do not have the Gentle Gift.

When Calebais fell, the Hrools forgot most of what they had learned about civilization and reverted to their more feral nature. Many Hrools were slain out of malice by the grogs and magi, and many more died trying to protect Ierimyra. Enough remained, however, to repopulate the covenant after everyone else had died or fled. They retain their ability to reason, they still use tools and weapons, and a few have limited magical powers, all of which appear to be hereditary. A Hrool's lifespan is short — usually about twenty years — and several generations have been born and died since they were introduced to Calebais.

A few of the Hrools can speak Latin, though it has become garbled by years of isolation and their limited vocabulary. The rest of them speak Hrool when they speak at all, which sounds something like growling and barking in the local language. Characters fluent in that language might understand a few words of their chatter, but will find it almost impossible to speak their dialect understandably.

Due to their increasing numbers and their violent, scrappy nature, the Hrools have split into several semi-autonomous groups, usually led by the albinos ("ermines"), who have white fur instead of brown or black, and inherent magical powers. The main group of Hrools remains in the warrens that Ierimyra built for them, where they raise domesticated rats in a sort of primitive stockyard community. Another smaller group has set up camp in the banquet hall on level three, from which they hunt the rats on the upper levels and make occasional forays into the wood. A final group broke away to occupy the indoor garden on level five, and lives on the bats that nest in the cracks of the well. About a dozen independent Hrools keep the remaining vermin under control, ranging throughout the covenant individually or in small groups, and all groups occasionally make foraging sorties to the other levels.

Combat is a matter of status among the Hrools. Small groups of satyrs from the faerie forest occasionally raid the covenant, and the Hrools take great pride in slaying them. The ermines fashion totem necklaces for the warriors, and they attach the satyrs' horns to these as a symbol of their prowess. Thus, the strongest warriors among the Hrool have the most satyr horns, and while most have only one or two, a few have as many as four or five. These champions usually claim any magical heirlooms that the Hrools have scavenged through the years.

The ermine Hrools do not wear necklaces. Most of them wear diadems connected to the Bell of Ibyn, and they use these to