Part 3: Starry Refuge - Adventures in the Forgotten Realms: Deepest Night

Part 3: Starry Refuge. Once through the portal, the fullness of Kyrilla's refuge becomes apparent-as well as a terrible price she has paid in her cursed form. 12. Deepest Night The ground is low grass that looks to have been nibbled by sheep or goats. The soil is good, strong dirt. The horizon seems to reach as far as you can imagine. The sky is deep and vast and brilliant, filled almost to bursting with stars undimmed by moonlight and glittering in a sea of colorful, stellar clouds. This extradimensional space is a peculiar variation on a magnificent mansion, conjured into existence by Kyrilla and her linked keystone. Despite appearing to be outdoors, the space is actually an enclosed dome with a grassy floor. The ceiling of the dome is an image of stars-the night sky of another world, without any city or moon to disrupt the light of the stars. The "mansion" consists of a single, cozy cottage in a wide meadow. The air smells like wheat in autumn but is utterly still. It is all an easy illusion to see through, no ability check required. Any creature that walks to the outer edge of the refuge can touch the sky-that is, the dome encasing the extradimensional space-and finds it smooth and solid. The stars twinkle and the clouds drift about, but they are merely imagery. This place was never real and represents only a fantasy that Kyrilla shared with Kathikon for a time. Alas, about 30 feet from the cottage door, a statue of Kathikon kneels amid the grass, petrified by Kyrilla's gaze. 13. A Cozy Cottage From outside, it appears to be a cozy cottage with stone walls and a roof of sod. Smoke rises gently from the chimney. Here Kyrilla and Kathikon pretended they were whiling away eternity in some tranquil plane of existence, taking turns seeing for each other, or existing solely by touch. Everything they truly valued was here. Inside, the cottage is mundane-even quaint. It's made of a single, long room with a fur-covered bed at one end and a large cooking hearth at the...