Better Dead Than DeresfordIn many ways the village of Deresford is a strange place. The kind of village where people just end up. Travellers, traders, transients, even the odd outlaw. And not just 'people', Halflings from the Learstir Shire, Elves from the Charmwood Forest, and Dwarves from Coal Village. But in all the ways that count Deresford is a very ordinary village. A very ordinary and dull village.
In fact it is such a tedious hive of petty gossip, turnip talk, and constant arguments about how the gods think a sheep should be sheared - head to tail or tail to head - that the most exciting thing to happen in the last six summers is the imminent death of the village's misanthropic headman Rodrick Weasel Bane.
The younger, feckless, and more morbidly inclined of the village have gathered around his bed now that he is too feeble to chase you off. For Three days he has done little more than fart and grunt, but today as the sun sets his rheumy old eyes bulge and he sits bolt upright. He looks around the faces gathered, gurns, then in a weak and wheezy voice begins to speak . . .
"Ware my words the Empty Star rises again," he says. "Near fifty summers ago to this very day it did rise afore, rise it did above the elder stones on Burymound Hill!" He points, the wrong way, but you assume he's pointing to Burymound Hill. "Go!," he says, "Go there and witness when the Empty Star rises above the elder stones a portal opens, a portal to other worlds, a portal to glory, a portal to riches!"
He lets that last word lingers in the silence. Hanging there in a silence as heavy as the fug of flatulence that fills his fetid, tatty little roundhouse.
"Look at this shitehole," he says. "I saw the portal, but dared not pass through and this is where I end my days, in a rancid little hut in a village full of arseholes!" He sighs. "The others, those that dared go through the portal, why I bet they're kings and queens now, heroes, lords or war, those that lived, no weeding turnip patches for them in their dotage."
He looks at you all, his glare scanning from one face to another. "Go," he whispers, "through the portal ohh there may be perils, maybe even death, but better dead than Deresford." With that final missive Rodrick Weasel Bane, seventy summers old (and bitter) lies down, closes his eyes, and dies.
You gather up all that you own, not because you think you might need it or that you'll never return, but becasue you know all your friends, family, and fellow villagers are thieving bastards. So carrying everything you own you find yourselves standing on Burymound Hill.
You stand before the monolithic rocks of Burrymound Hill, under the dark light of a starry sky. The Empty Star is clear and bright above you. Three of the large stone blocks lean haphazardly together to form an upright rectangular
portal about the size of a man. They seem to be placed directly
beneath the star’s path. As the Empty Star ascends to its brightest point, its light catches in the portal, and a shimmering stonelined corridor is visible through the stones, but only from one side of the opening.
Even though the hallway is visible from only one side of the portal, you tread on solid flagstones. The starlight fades as it reaches into this hallway, which dead-ends ahead at a stout iron-banded door. Jewels or crystals in an odd assortment of star shapes are inscribed on the door.