It's Getting HOT

The party splits for the first time in this campaign, and the three adventurers heading to the mining village of Caley quickly discover that the desert heat is the least of their problems. Bjork, Lenore, and Poppy set out west toward a canyon settlement that has stopped sending weapons shipments to the Order of the Chrysalis, and what they find is a town paralyzed by fear, a mine system rigged with traps, and a mystery that involves six dead miners, a beast nobody has actually seen, and a body with two pinprick wounds in its neck.

The Heat Defense System

Caley is built into a canyon and uses geothermal vents to keep resonance at bay. Piping systems spread heat through the rock walls, creating an environment so hot and dry that the supernatural threat the party normally deals with cannot survive there. The tradeoff is that the village is nearly unbearable for living creatures. Every resident carries a lantern that produces a pocket of magical darkness, swallowing light rather than emitting it, and these lanterns make the heat tolerable. The party borrows two lanterns from a tired elven man named Martin, who gives them a used one engraved with the name "Tavius." When Lenore asks whose it was, Martin simply says, "No one's anymore." The lanterns become essential equipment, and the party learns that the darkness they cast can be manipulated — a torch lit in