Upon a desolate hilltop, its summit stripped bare by the howling wind and the merciless rain, stands seven tall, pale grey stones. To the eyes of the imaginative, those look like humanoid figures frozen mid-stride. There are credulous claims that the stones “danced”, especially during nights of thunderstorm when the rain lashed at the hilltop and thunder resounds in the valleys…
A strange tale accompanies the circle of stones. It was said that a dark one, of Demonkinds, once hosted a gathering at the very stroke of midnight on what was once a verdant and green hilltop. Men and women came alike, curious about the mysterious stranger who had promised them their every wishes and would erase their hurts. The party included strong wine, and soon the party-goers were dancing, and when the sun rose and the rays of the dawn struck the dancers, they all were turned to stone.
- In a fashion, the stones do dance. A demented scholar who had spent his life studying the stones has set up intricate measurements proving that the stons do move from time to time (such as strings tied to a pole dug into the ground and so on). The scholar maintained that on certain dates, a devil from the arch-fiend would come and those people would dance once more, and if one is astute enough he could grab one of the devil’s dues away, freeing him or her of the curse. Based on his projection and observation, he would know when the next “dance’ would be. A NPC which the adventurers may be seeking may be frozen among the stones (the scholar would insist that new victims were added to the circle regularly, when ‘old souls’ are finally devoured). Yet when they come at the night of the scholar’s prediction, a strange glow fills the stones…
- Astute adventurers or those following a mystic profession would observe that those stone are metallic in nature. When lightning struck the stones, an ancient mechanism would be activated – the stones would ‘turn’, revealing a spiral staircase which lead underground. The activating of the mechanism gives the impression of the ‘stones’ dancing, and as electricity is required, it would only happened during heavy storms. What is hidden beneath these dancing stones which would require such intricate set-up? Perhaps a cult or a religion built around the power of storms and weather once worshiped here. Those very stones itself may be also responsible for the storm that is now coasting a stretch of the coastline…
- The “standing stones” are actually a primitive form of gargoyles, a pure form of the element of earth, summoned to earth and unable to return. In their own plane, they moved naturally but on earth, without being fed with the energy of magic and sorcery, they are slowed and move slowly. They also are beginning to draw in life from the surroundings, leading to the dying of wildlife on the hill-top. The adventurers, if noble, would be able to find a way to send those elementals back to their world of origin – this would require them to disable a warding pentacle which trap the elementals there, hidden in the bowels of the hill. Meanwhile, a group of sorcerers, having come to learn of this fact, seek to dominate those earth elementals for their own nefarious purposes.
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