Although the Chaos Well has been discussed
elsewhere, it’s now time to take a deeper look and see what lies beneath its
slow-churning waters...
Of foremost importance is the fact that the
Well is a water-filled cavity that is far deeper than its surface area
indicates. The Well’s rock walls are marked with undulating grooves, as if a
giant screw had been used to excavate a pit. Varicoloured weeds now grow in the
grooves, and odd-looking fish dart here and there amid the sluggish stirring of
the weeds. When first capped, the Well did not have an earthen floor – simply a
wall of translucent energy beneath which the stuff of Chaos swirled violently.
Now, however, a century of Chaos-enhanced erosion has allowed a silt floor
approximately five feet deep to form. It is mostly level but prone to emitting
small puffs of radiant bubbles as Chaos energy forces itself up and out. The
cavity is approximately 110’ deep – at least to the silt floor and the
festering force wards beneath. Beyond that, its depth is unknown.
The most significant feature of the Well is
the narrow spire of rock that rises up from its centre. This contorted circular
pillar is 50’ across at the base and tapers almost imperceptibly to its summit
as a small island some 40’ in diameter.
This stone spike is hived with tiny tunnels and crevices wherein fish
flit about and other, stranger creatures also dwell, including a few
particularly noxious oozes. At the base, however, is a larger cave, wherein the
primary denizen of the Well is usually to be found. This is a Chaos-mutated
Giant Freshwater Crab. It has been granted a limited, but deranged, sentience
by its immersion in the Well. The Crab was placed there by a secret member of a
cult attached to the Well and the worship of Chaos twenty years previously as
an experiment (of this cult, more will be revealed at a later time). It
survives on a diet of small fish and the occasional dead livestock animal
(provided by the cultist).
Eighty feet from the floor of the Well there
is another opening in the eastern face, but this is somewhat different, being
clearly the product of humanoid labour. The rusted remains of a heavy door hang
crazily from failing hinges, and the space within the opening is dark and
preternaturally cool. This door opens out onto a broken arch of natural stone,
heavily encrusted with red and russet barnacles. The middle third of the arch
is gone (there is a pile of rubble on the Well floor far below, wherein the
bones of two Paladins of Jureus lie (in the unlikely event someone should
reach the Well floor, the shades of these unfortunates will rise up to attack,
still fighting the battle in which they died). The arch originally spanned 30’
to another opening in the rock wall. Here, an iron double door has been blasted
inwards by some frightful power and a waterlogged hall slopes off into the
darkness.
Of this place, little is known: shortly
before the Well was capped, two dozen Chaos cultists fled across the arch,
breaking it as they went – and sending the two Paladins plummeting to their
deaths on the newly-formed force wards below. The door was blown apart by
wizards aiding the operation against the Cult, but this merely released a young
but dangerous Umbral Dragon. This mighty creature slaughtered the wizards and
those guarding them. It was then sorely wounded by several Clerics and driven
back, but with the ritual to cap the Well complete, the leaders of the expedition
were unwilling to take further losses, as they had few combat-ready forces
left. Instead, they began the filling of the Well with blessed water, hoping to
drown their foes, or at least isolate them. So the Well was filled, and its
mysteries locked away. Rangers and Inquisitors attached to the mission scoured
the lands around Chelmsey for signs of any concealed exit from the Cult’s
subterranean hideout, but found none (there was but one exit, and it was
destroyed by the Cultists after two of their number made their escape).
The centre of the spire above the arch is
hollowed out with a long, rough-hewn spiral staircase ascending to the surface
of the now-island. Here the cultists would climb to bathe in the stuff of Chaos
and work rituals to absorb or otherwise manipulate the energy streaming upwards
from the font far below. They sought to resist the ritual that ultimately
capped the Well from here, but failed, primarily due to the fact that none of
them could quite bring themselves to die in defence of the Well – a limitation
their foes did not share.
The cult was headquartered in a large cave
complex that filled the middle third of the large hill directly to the east of
the Chaos Well. This haven was a secret unsuspected by those who came to cap
the Well – they did not expect to be opposed by anything other than the
insensate will of the Chaos Well itself – but so grievous were their losses in
combat with the cultists that they lacked the capacity (and, indeed, the will)
to gain access and clean out the cult once and for all. Instead, they left a
small squad of warriors leavened with Clerics and Paladins for two decades to
watch for any sign of activity. There was none, and under pressure of many
competing demands, the squadron was withdrawn, and Church officialdom decided
that the cultists – if any yet lived – were unable to leave the haven that had
become, effectively, their tomb.
This was not so: although sealed away, some
among the cultists have survived, sustained by magic. Although they could
choose to leave – they have magic enough for that – they prefer to wait,
unsuspected, while the cap on the Well weakens and their agents abroad (brought
into the cult by those who escaped) slowly seek to undermine and confuse those
who seek to maintain the watch on the Well.
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