Into the Chasm - Episode 1

Into the Chasm: in which a storm flings five strangers into Zeyfa’s maze

Featuring: Jrain Fanlish, Finnan Oakstride, Justas Rhostrin, Ekko, Eolo
In Taelgar: Jan 25, 1730 DR
On Earth: Monday, November 17, 2025
Great Chasm and Zeyfa’s Labyrinth

Drawn by omens around the Great Chasm, five adventurers and a terrified Zimkovan woman are torn from the world by an impossible ice storm and awaken on a lone platform in Zeyfa’s Labyrinth, where ice wolves, wind-shaped shades, and chasm wisps test their resolve before they choose to leap into a maze that may be the only way out.

Preludes

1729 DR, August: An orcish horde lead by a fierce orc warrior calling herself the Ravager of Winter roars out of the Sentinels and across northern Zimkova
Aug 28, 1729 DR An army of dwarves from Nidzahar and a substantial Stoneborn company defeat the Ravager in the forests east of the Berze
1729 DR, autumn: scattered remains of the Ravager’s horde spread south and east and plague Breva
1729 DR, fall and winter: strange omens emerge from the Chasm: a summer thunderstorm, a sandstorm with scorching heat, boulder of volcanic stone, aflame with green fire, a rainbow of glass that shattered into a hundred thousand pieces, a living sheet of ice that drifted down the Teft like a predator, leaving dead fish and frozen banks in its wake

Timeline

Jan 02, 1730 DR - Jan 07, 1730 DR: The sky above the Great Chasm turns black during the day, a darkness that spreads and is visible like a smudge on the sky for many miles around
Jan 08, 1730 DR: The Vejo Vaikaigather some of their wisest mystics, lead by Eidrikas, Ekko’s mentor, protected by Pakrinek one of the warriors of Kemeko, to investigate strange happens in the Great Chasm.
Jan 16, 1730 DR: a cloud of superheated steam obscures the Chasm near Kemeko Monastery and fog and mist rises from the depths
Jan 22, 1729 DR: Kalima emerges from Great Chasm, apparently climbing the cliff face near Kemeko Monastery. She is terrified of the kenku and will not speak to them.
Jan 25, 1730 DR, early afternoon: Ekko, Finna, Jrain, Justas, Elo, and Kalima are pulled by an unnatural storm into the Great Chasm; landing on an ice flow, they survive an attack by ice wolves, introduce themselves to each other, and prepare to explore.

Cast of Characters

Jrain Fanlish – Brevan woodswalker and scout, recently hunting orcish remnants near the Chasm.
Finnan Oakstride – middle‑aged halfling bard and collector of stories, speaker of Old Zimkovan.
Justas Rhostrin – human veteran devoted to the Kestavo, bearing Romil the Glacier King’s token.
Ekko – kenku druid raised at Kemeko Monastery, attuned to the Great Chasm’s storms.
Eolo – young kenku warrior from afar, seeking the monks of Kemeko and glory in the Chasm.
Kalima – terrified Zimkovan woman from a hidden people bound to the West Wind and its labyrinth.
Zeyfa – the cruel West Wind, a Kestavo said to rule the labyrinth and demand sacrifices.

Places

Great Chasm – vast rift in Zimkova whose changing storms and omens draw the heroes in.
Zimkova – northern land surrounding the Chasm, home to Breva and the monks of Kemeko.
Zeyfa’s Labyrinth – Kalima’s name for the icebound maze ruled by the West Wind beyond the Chasm.

Narrative Summary

Our session begins as strange omens and mysterious happenings around the Great Chasm have drawn five adventures to its rim: Jrain Fanlish, Finnan Oakstride, Justas Rhostrin, Ekko, and Eolo. An unnatural storm grabs them, along with a terrified woman who emerged from the Chasm only days ago speaking only Old Zimkovan, and flings them into the Chasm. They all awaken with only what they could hold on to in the storm, on a strange ice floe, a storm above, and two ice sculptures of wolves guarding bridges off the platform. Eolo approaches one of the wolves, provoking it, and the group finds themselves fighting for their lives on a slick precipice as the wolves come to life. As the fight proceeds, the wolves are joined by shades, and chasm wisps that emerge from their bodies as they are killed.

In the aftermath, Finnan’s magic and patience win the woman’s trust long enough for her tell her name, Kalima, and to reveal that this place is Zeyfa’s Labyrinth—a maze ruled by one of the Kestavo, the cruel West Wind, fed by sacrifices from her hidden people, and, in her telling, a place from which no one ever truly escapes. As the party shares their own histories and tests the hostile environment, they realize the storm above behaves more like an enclosing spell than natural weather and that a lethal updraft bars any descent from the platform, leaving only the ice bridges that lead to a snow‑choked chamber and four twisting tunnels. With Kalima clinging between Finnan and Justas and warning that the beast of the labyrinth “doesn’t like waiting” and that this is no place to sleep, the companions choose to leap together into the tunnels, seeking a path out by pressing deeper in.

Combat Summary

Ice wolves, shades, and chasm wisps on the platform: Eolo’s approach wakes two ice‑sheathed wolf guardians; the party battles them on treacherous ice as they try to drag victims over the edge. When the wolves shatter, wind‑formed shades and chasm wisps lash minds and vision, but are driven off before they can hurl anyone into the void.

Detailed Bullet Points

Into the Chasm

The Great Chasm in Zimkova yawns like a wound in the world, spewing impossible storms, lights, strange vegetation, and other anomalies that different traditions interpret as either a place of refuge or a seat of elemental power.
After the orcish Ravager of Winter is defeated north of the chasm, scattered warbands ravage Breva while the chasm itself grows ever stranger: a summer thunderstorm in October, a searing sandstorm in November, a green‑flamed volcanic boulder floating downriver, a rainbow that shatters into glass and falls into the rift, and a living sheet of ice that swims down the Teft.
When a five‑day curtain of darkness settles over the chasm, the mystics of the Vejo Vaikai and warriors of the Kemeko Monastery descend to investigate and vanish; weeks later, a new band of heroes is swept into the same mystery.
Those heroes tumble through a blinding white storm, separated from almost all their possessions and forced to choose what to clutch: Eolo keeps his quiver and twin crossbows, Ekko his armor and amulet of the Moon, Justas his axe, shield, and battered backpack, Jrain her bow, cloak, and a scant handful of arrows, and Finnan his fiddle, clay pipe, and cherished writing case.

Strangers on the Ice

The group awakens on a roughly circular platform of ice floating in blackness, with only Finnan’s glowing clay pipe to light the scene and a roaring, unnatural snowstorm churning just above them like a false sky.
Two wolves stand motionless at the mouths of narrow ice bridges leading off the platform, their bodies encased in thin shells of ice so complete they resemble sculptures guarding the only visible exits.
The companions size one another up: Finnan Oakstride, a middle‑aged halfling bard and collector of stories; Eolo, a young raven‑like Kenku with rune‑etched quiver and twin crossbows; Ekko, another Kenku with striking mismatched eyes and a druid’s calm; Justas, a heavily armed and armored human veteran devoted to the Kestavo; and Jrain, a local scout and archer recently fighting the orcish remnants.
A lone Zimkovan woman lies terrified on the ice, babbling in an ancient tongue only Finnan and Justas understand; Finnan sings in Old Zimkovan to cast Calm Emotions, briefly soothing her even as the wind itself seems to claw at his words.
Ekko, who knows the upper layers of the chasm well, reads the sky and the wind and feels that something is fundamentally wrong here—the white cloud presses down like a hostile presence, more like a spell than any natural weather he has ever seen in the chasm.

Ice Wolves Attack

Eolo, impatient to wait, strolls toward one of the ice‑sheathed wolves, triggering both statues to stir to life and lunge from their frozen stances.
One wolf barrels into Eolo, knocking him flat and savaging his throat with icy fangs; the bites leave a jagged shard of ice embedded in his neck that throbs with killing cold even after the jaws withdraw.
Eolo’s first telekinetic shove fails to dislodge the creature from the slick platform, and his initial volley of fire‑tipped bolts from his magic quiver goes wide, revealing how treacherous the footing and the fight will be.
Ekko swells into a massive polar bear and hurls himself into the melee, his glowing claws cracking the wolf’s icy shell as exploding shards slice back at him with numbing frost.
Jrain marks the wolf with a hunter’s curse and sends carefully counted arrows into the fractures opening in its armor, while Finnan teleports away from the scene, and summons illusory duplicates of himself to distract the enemy.
The battle with these unnatural guardians plays out on the narrow ice, with every misstep threatening a fatal plunge over the edge as the wolves try to drag their prey down.

Shades, Wisps, and the Precipice

As the wounded wolf staggers, dark, wind‑formed shades streak in from the surrounding blackness, lashing Finnan and the others with spectral gusts and unleashing a shrieking psychic gale that batters minds but cannot inspire fear while Calm Emotions still lingers.
The Zimkovan woman collapses under the assault, bleeding onto the ice, while the second wolf charges Justas; he meets it with shield and axe, weathering its attacks even as icy teeth lodge painfully in his flesh.
When one wolf finally shatters, four tiny Chasm Wisps—glimmering shards of living ice—burst free from its remains, darting toward sources of light; one snuffs out Finnan’s Light spell, plunging the battlefield into darkness broken only by their eerie glow.
Wisps explode in blinding flurries that leave Jrain sightless for a time, and the shades repeatedly slam Finnan toward the lip of the platform until he is literally teetering on the brink of the void.
Ekko’s polar‑bear form, empowered by hist magic, tears into a shade despite its resistance to mundane claws, while Justas summons a glowing spiritual axe that hacks apart one shade and mauls another.
Finnan restores the dying woman with a quick Healing Word and speaks a curse at the enemies, while cloaking himself in illusions that draw some of the wisps’ icy blasts; Eolo, regaining his composure, riddles the remaining wolf and several wisps with psionically guided, fire‑wreathed bolts.
Working together, the party finishes the last shade and Chasm Wisps, until only scattered shards of melting ice and fading eddies of dark wind remain on the precarious platform.

Kalima’s Story

With the immediate danger passed, Finnan uses the tail end of his calming magic to question the woman in Old Zimkovan; she reveals that they stand within “Zeyfa’s Labyrinth,” the domain of the cruel West Wind from ancient stories.
She speaks as someone who has been trapped here before: no one truly escapes the labyrinth, she insists, and though she somehow reached the world above once, being pulled back means she is lost.
In broken phrases she recounts how her people fled an age‑old, half‑forgotten war—when swamps dried, lizardfolk empires crumbled, and the land itself shifted—and sought refuge generations ago in or near this hidden maze.
Finnan weaves her fragments into a wider tale of the Oakstride lineage, the lizardfolk realms, and a catastrophic war that may have birthed the chasm, concluding that her community has dwelt in or near the labyrinth for “seven by seven by seven” generations and believes the only way out lies through a deadly maze.
The woman explains that here the usual spirits and Kestavo cannot hear prayers, deepening the sense that this place lies outside the ordinary world; Justas counters her despair by invoking Romil the Glacier King and causing his glacial token to blaze with divine light in her hands, proving at least one Kestavo can still reach them.
Clutching the glowing relic and singing an old lullaby in a style unlike any song Finnan has ever heard, the woman—who will soon give her name as Kalima—remains fearful but begins to trust these strangers who speak her forgotten tongue and offer her hope.

New Allies

In the lull after the battle, Ekko apologizes for the chaos his friend Eolo started and ended, and the group trades proper introductions: Jrain explains she is a Brevan scout who had been fighting orcish remnants before being tasked to escort the strange woman from the chasm to someone who could understand her.
Finnan and Justas were summoned because they can speak Old Zimkovan; on their journey to the chasm with Jrain and the woman, a magical storm tore open and dragged them all into this strange place.
Ekko describes his own deep connection to the chasm and the monastery at Kemeko carved into giant‑sized terraces far below the rim, while Eolo proudly represents the Kenku warriors whose status is marked by blood‑stained feathers taken from chasm beasts.
A careful reading of the winds convinces Ekko that, despite those ties, this environment is wrong: the storm above behaves like a static, constricting spell rather than living weather, suggesting they may be in a magical pocket or adjacent realm rather than the chasm proper.
As Finnan muses on stories of the Deno’qai and how mortals once mistook trickster fey for gods, the group wonders whether Zeyfa and her “children” might be something akin to fey spirits rather than a simple elemental wind.
Kalima, still huddled on the ice, slowly accepts Finnan’s explanation of his halfling heritage and wandering people, begins to see him as a harmless traveler, and—though she still flinches from the kenku—answers further questions about her people’s grim pact with the West Wind.
She explains that when the sun sets and a new cohort of youths comes of age, the West Wind demands a sacrifice: one of her people is chosen and sent alone into the labyrinth, because “the only way out is in.”

Scouting and Prepartions

The companions take a cautious short rest on the ice platform while Finnan ritually casts Detect Magic, discovering that only Justas’s shield, Eolo’s quiver, an amulet of Ekkos’s, and Jrain’s cloak carry enchantments—the storm, bridges, and platform do not register as simple magical effects.
Over the course of their rest, the white cloud above slowly descends and the wind grows harsher, occasionally sending narrow whirlwinds of snow down to brush the platform; Kalima curls into herself and whispers that the beast serving Zeyfa in the maze “doesn’t like waiting.”
To probe their surroundings, Finnan chips ice into small chunks, enchants them with Light, and hurls them along each bridge; the glowing pieces skitter a short distance before dropping out of sight, their lingering glow hinting at a snow‑filled chamber not far below the bridge ends.
When Justas drops an illuminated shard straight off the platform, a violent updraft blasts it back upward to shatter against the ice, prompting Ekko and Eolo to leap from the edge to test the wind; Ekko is flung painfully back onto the platform by the gale while Eolo manages to hover and ride out the buffeting gusts.
Concluding that the void below is a lethal wind‑choked drop while the bridges lead toward the labyrinth proper, the group decides they must move rather than linger; Kalima quietly warns that this is not a place where anyone should sleep.
Jrain’s hawk companion Rala is revealed to have survived the fall into this realm; sent ahead to scout, she finds that a bridge leads into the ceiling of a snow‑packed chamber from which four narrow tunnels twist away into the depths, with no immediate creatures in sight.
Reluctant to leave Kalima alone on the exposed platform, Justas and Finnan persuade her that she will be safer between them than waiting for the beast; despite her fear of the kenku, she agrees to come if they swear by the absent Kestavo not to abandon her.
Together with Kalima, the party leaps from the bridge into the waiting snowbank and its four branching tunnels, choosing to go into the labyrinth since there appears to be no other way out.