The residents of a well-settled valley has unsettling nights for weeks. From time to time, regardless of day or night, there will be gigantic boom resounding throughout the valley, the echoes pounding from one end to the other. There have even been rock-slides and copses of trees being flatten, with shattered pieces of stone lying all round. What is this thunder without a storm?
- The lord of the fief has just contracted a new architect — not for building manors or such, but in the construction of war-machines. To ensure the secrecy of the design, the architect and the lord’s men have established themselves at the edge of the remote valley. Heedless of the serfs and freemen below they begin to conduct tests on their machines.
- A guild dedicated to construction of war-machines have been operating from an abandoned hill-fort, testing their new designs and experimenting with range and accuracy. They run into a dispute with the nobleman who owes the valley, and decide to flung missiles at the settlement below as a form of threat.
- The stones are launched by an ancient dwarven war-machine and dwarves used to dwell within the mountains that form the valley. The dwarves, master of metal and mechanics, have devised an war-machine which work by some principle similar to hydraulics. The recent damming of a river nearby has cause the water level to sink; this change of water level activates the mechanism, causing the war-machines to activate again. Some may wish to stop the machine; others may want to find out how it work..
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