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Since priests first raised temples and shrines, the devout have traveled to pay their reverence. Pilgrims cross rivers and mountains, brave war zones and bandit attacks to see relics, hear the word of seers, and feel the touch of the divine, demonstrating their piety through sacrifice and journey. Midgard is no different than our own world in this regard. So take up your walking staff and begin down the trail as we look at many pilgrims, pilgrimages, and holy sites in Midgard.

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Face of an Arachnid

The Clockwork Oracle of Zobeck dominates Crossroads culture. However, devotees to Rava also speak of a lesser-known moving shrine, the Weaver Prophet. This being is an enormous, clockwork spider as large as three stacked trade wagons, just shy of 21 feet long. Each segment of burnished copper and brass is proportionate to the others by the golden ratio. Its articulated legs sport bristling hairs of adamantine wire, each tipped with a wicked spear point.

If the Prophet was crafted by mortal hands, no artisan has claimed it. Its carved crystal eyes burn with a distinct heliotropic fire; its vision unaffected by darkness. Tales say the Weaver’s mandibles and stinger use three poisons, one of which even affects constructs and the undead. The Prophet’s spinnerets fuel a seemingly inexhaustible supply of tough, silken webbing, resistant to fire.

House of the Divine

The Prophet moves about the Ironcrags, crafting a shrine of webbing where it waits to be found and petitioned with a question. Some accounts indicate it will wait at a site indefinitely, if no one approaches.

Before it leaves a site, the Prophet deposits a copper puzzle egg. Extremely difficult to open and unaffected by magic, each egg contains a cipher indicating the Prophet’s next two locations. Rava’s clergy highly values these eggs. Solved eggs can be used to secure documents sent between temples or to paladins or clerics in the field. A few live in private collectors’ hands.

The webbing of the Prophet’s shrine quickly decays after its departure, although those who have collected a portion and treated it with a gentle repose spell report that it can be used to create a cloak of the arachnid. If pursued, the Prophet releases a plume of webbing into the sky, which inflates into a dirigible of sorts, carrying the arachnid swiftly away. Once it departs, it does not appear at the next site for a full cycle of the moon Selles, approximately 30 days.

Judge a Soul by Their Questions

Unlike the Clockwork Oracle, which answers in riddles and portents, the Weaver Prophet tends to speak plainly. Its voice is a deep, melodious choir of voices in unison, permitting a petitioner a single, potentially complex question before it busies itself with readying an egg.

The Prophet has never failed to answer a petitioner’s question. It can provide answers regarding events or moments where it was not present, but does not recount exact dialogue. If no answer exists for the question, the Prophet says so, and this consumes a petitioner’s opportunity.

Nothing prevents a petitioner from approaching the Weaver Prophet multiple times. Those who do claim the title “Woven,” or “Twice-woven,” as an honorific indicating the number of times they found the Weaver Prophet. Circles of Ravan clergy or paladins sometimes form, dedicated to answering a series of questions, sometimes philosophical, sometimes technical, and they hunt the Weaver as part of their quest. A few believe the Prophet’s assistance amounts to Rava’s blessing of their project. Competing circles have skirmished over the Weaver’s unsolved eggs or the cipher inside. Many bitter rivalries have formed as a result.

Circles of the Devout

At least half a dozen circles of pious Ravans seek out the Weaving Prophet. Here are two likely to engage PCs.

Circle of the Long Walk

Sworn to ensure that no one ever frees the great old ones walking the Wasted West, this group of priests, paladins, bards, and rogues seeks the Weaving Prophet to determine who, if anyone, works to release the Walkers from their centuries-long sleepwalks.

The group previously foiled two plots engineered by Enkada Pishtuk, although they failed to learn that the archmage is behind the attempts, due to their phrasing of a question to the Prophet. Both sides sit at the cusp of discovering the other.

Scalebane Circle

Oathbound to ensure the peace and prosperity of the Crossroads, this cabal works secretly, using a cell structure, to dismantle the spy networks of the Blood Kingdom and the Mharoti Empire operating within Zobeck, Magdar, and Perunalia. They feed information to the alliance of the Seven Cities, and work to find a cure for the Black Strangles, hoping to bring the Rothenian tribes down upon the Eastern flank of Morgau or the northern reaches of Kalpostan.

They often use the Weaving Prophet to confirm intelligence of questionable origin, or to explore theories which would dangerously risk assets.

Story Seeds

These intricate story seeds can sprout full adventure in time.

What Did You Win, Ray?

A foolhardy burglar stole a Weaver’s egg recently recovered by a junior priest of Ravan who stumbled onto the Prophet’s. The burglar, in turn, lost the egg to a PC, gambling in a tavern. Unfortunately, the burglar works for the Cloven Nine, and the priest’s superiors know the PC has it via divination—believing the PC is therefore the thief.

Further complicating matters, a wealthy collector saw the exchange. Knowing what the party has, the collector opts to take it rather than risk trying to buy it. Can the party find a way to escape this three-way trap without turning the Cloven Nine, the Church of Rava, and a powerful member of Zobeck’s upper class against them?

Get Them to the Shrine On Time

To receive a potent favor from the Church of Rava in Zobeck, the party is charged with escorting a priest to the Weaver Prophet’s next location. Unfortunately, the site is very close to the Blood Kingdom, in the Canton of Grisal. Worse, several groups of rival petitioners also seek the Prophet’s single question.

They party must evade both griffon-mounted pursuers from Zobeck and imperial, elvish-funded hunters from Dornig, deal with raiding ghoulish ghost knights from Doresh, and brave the unforgiving terrain of the Grisal spur of the Ironcrags while escorting a scholar-priest with no business being outside the cloister.

Black Clouds on the Horizon

A senior priest of Rava approaches the party. The Prophet has confirmed intelligence regarding a Mharoti spy ring in Runkelstad, using barges to relay information to waiting couriers in Orkasa. Unfortunately, the priest and his regular agents are known to the spies.

The party is offered regular access to shadow roads and promised a gearforged transformation for themselves or another, if they agree to help dismantle the operation and sabotage the flow of reports back to Qiresh. This takes them to a midnight rendezvous between spies on barges plying the Argent, dueling operators in the alleyways and warehouses of Runkelstad, before delivering false findings to the waiting frigate captain in Orkasa’s harbor.

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