Longboat Mountain – The Cold Stones

The trail up Longboat Mountain splits in several places – the first is between the Silver Vale and the Drop Falls where another path takes travellers along the west face of the mountain towards Red Eagle Tower. The second split occurs up past Reflecing Lake where the main path follows the stream coming down the mountain from the valley at the top, but a side branch heads up to a relatively flat area set with standing stones of Brobdingnagian proportions (the largest being 25 feet across and slightly over 60 feet tall).

The stones are used by a small circle of druids who ignore the other creatures and hazards of the mountain, arriving in bird form to this ritual site.

The brave folk who have explored the mountain (and those who listened to their stories in the taverns for years after) call this circle “the cold stones” as the stones are always chilled to the touch (and surrounded by a ground mist around them as the cold interacts with the mountain air) and they say that magics that produce either heat (or flames) or cold seem to be pulled into the stones harmlessly instead of manifesting as normal.

The stones protect a magical portal through to a small dungeon deep beneath them. The portal opens up under the table / lintel stones on the upper right side of the circle – and can only be opened by casting (and the stones absorbing) two fire spells and two cold spells. This opens the shimmering blue portal for fifteen minutes before it closes again.

The small space beneath the stones has no other human-sized access. Travelling through the portal lands one on the very small island in the centre of the root-filled caves below. Also on this island are five small stones in a circle around the portal – if the portal is closed (as it does after fifteen minutes) casting any fire or cold spell at or within this small circle of stones will reopen the portal for one minute.

From the tight entry cave, one can squeeze around stones at the ends of two of the five points in the cave to enter a slightly larger cave that has been set up as a refuge and vigil for the druids of the Longboat Mountain circle. There are rarely any members of the order here, as they only come up to the circle on the full moon.

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 10,200 x 13,200 pixels in size (34 x 44 squares). To use this with a VTT you would need to resize the squares to either 70 pixels (for 5′ squares) or 140 pixels (for the recommended 10′ squares) – so resizing it to either 2,380 x 3,080 or 4,760 x 6,160 pixels, respectively.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2024/10/25/longboat-mountain-the-cold-stones/