Location Overview

The Pyre is an isolated, char-blackened hilltop in the Sandpoint Hinterlands where an immense, unnatural fire once raged—and still refuses to fully die. Locals treat it as both cursed landmark and rough wayfinder, pointing to its silhouette on clear nights when a faint, smokeless glow seeps from the stone.

Heat shimmer ripples over black glass, the air carries an acrid tang of burned resin and hot metal, and the hill is unnervingly quiet save for the occasional dry crackle of stone that should not burn. The site functions well as a hazardous battlefield, an occult crime scene, or a staging ground for foes who draw power from fire, fury, and lingering sin magic.

PCs most often come here tracking missing hunters or bandits, following rumors of strange lights and scorched livestock, or seeking a fire-forged relic said to lie somewhere amid the glass. Others arrive pursuing foes who use the site for clandestine rites. Subtle Thassilonian runes and the behavior of the lingering magic tilt the whole place toward wrath, making The Pyre an easy venue to foreshadow Rise of the Runelords themes and villains without requiring it as part of the main plot.

Geography & Environment

The Pyre crowns a low but steep-sided hill a few hours’ hard walk from Sandpoint, near the ragged edge of logged woodland where stumps give way to scrubby heath. Hunters, Varisian caravans, and the occasional Shoanti warband skirt the hill, preferring game-rich cover in the surrounding woods to the sterile slopes above.

Approaching the hill is slow and noisy. The ground shifts from hard-packed trail to loose ash and heat-cracked stone that slides underfoot. Black, brittle shrubs crumble at a touch, announcing movement with audible snaps. Climbing or riding is possible but awkward; mounts spook at hot spots and strange smells. Ambushes are difficult to stage here without foreknowledge, but defenders have clear lines of sight on anyone ascending the open flank.

Even in rain or snow, pockets of ground radiate dry, uncomfortable warmth. In exposed areas, metal gear quickly grows hot to the touch, encouraging PCs to limit prolonged rest or heavy armor use at the very top. GMs can use the hill’s heat to add an attrition element to long combats or extended exploration: resting in the wrong place is simply not tenable.

The air carries a constant smell of burned sap and scorched iron. Sudden gusts kick up stinging ash clouds that obscure vision, foul lungs, and grit into eyes and spell components. These brief “ash squalls” create moments of forced choice: push through blind, risk separation in the haze, or wait out the choking grit while other factions reposition.

Natural life clings to the fringe of the phenomenon. Fire-adapted plants with scarlet leaves and black bark sprout in cracks, and a few tough insects and burrowing vermin skitter under the ash. Birds and larger animals avoid the upper slopes; their absence is a useful way to signal approaching danger or unnatural calm.

At night, the hill becomes stranger. Hairline fissures along the summit glow with a dim ember-light, enough to paint shifting red highlights on glass and stone but not enough to see clearly. Shadows warp and stretch across the basin, making precise distance and footing difficult to judge in combat. Scouts may misread cover and gaps, giving The Pyre a subtly disorienting feel after dark.

Notable Features

The Pyre’s hilltop holds several distinct areas GMs can use as encounter stages, investigation sites, or environmental challenges.

Glassed Crater Rim

The hill’s crown is a broad, shallow basin of fused black glass and fractured stone. A ring of jagged outcrops rises at the rim, creating uneven high ground and shards of cover that arch like broken teeth around the crater. From here, the land falls away toward the forests and the distant glimmer of Sandpoint’s harbor.

The glass itself is treacherous. It spiderwebs with fine cracks over hidden cavities and hot vents. Weight in the wrong spot causes it to splinter, dropping a creature into an unstable pocket or a burst of scalding air. GMs can treat the rim as a dynamic battlefield: a misstep can open new hazards or separate combatants with sudden collapses.

Old scorch-marks pattern the stone in complex layers. Careful examination reveals faint, overlapping Thassilonian rune-work etched into the rim, mostly worn but still legible as sigils of wrath and binding. PCs who study or magically probe these marks can learn that the original blaze was not a simple wildfire but a deliberate, controlled act of high magic.

Ember Fissures

Narrow, glowing cracks spiderweb across the basin floor. Many are hair-thin, mere lines of sullen red light. Others gape wide enough to peer into, revealing slow-moving sparks drifting upward like fireflies trapped in stone.

Crossing or fighting near these fissures is dangerous. Periodically, one vents a rush of superheated air or brittle shards of stone. Combat here can be punctuated by rhythmic environmental triggers: a fissure flares, forcing quick repositioning, or collapses, opening a new hazard or a temporary escape route.

A few larger fissures hum softly when approached, vibrating in response to strong emotion or unleashed magic. Particularly wrathful or destructive actions—rage-fueled attacks, cruel taunts, or excessive spellfire—can agitate them. When this happens, the hill “answers” with intensified heat, brighter glow, or brief surges of dangerous energy, giving the GM a way to tie mood and sin directly into the terrain.

Charred Totems

At the lower slopes, a half-dozen blackened wooden totems stand like burned sentries. Some lean drunkenly; others lie toppled and half-buried in ash. Their surfaces are carved with overlapping motifs: Shoanti clan marks, Varisian spiral designs, and newer, cruder symbols of warning.

The totems frame The Pyre as taboo ground. Depending on campaign needs, they can serve as ancient wardstones, recent curses, or a warning perimeter erected by worried locals. Bloodstains, scrap leathers, and hanging charms suggest that rituals—protective or condemnatory—have been performed here many times.

Close examination reveals differences in age and style. Older Shoanti work is deeper and more precise, often overlaid later by Varisian sigils and finally by settler glyphs. PCs who read these traces can reconstruct a layered history of competing claims and uneasy truces around the hill, and may learn that tampering with the totems risks more than simple bad luck.

Fire-Scoured Shrine

Halfway up the hill, a narrow ledge holds the melted skeleton of a small stone shrine. One side droops and bubbles as if the rock flowed like wax under impossible heat. The other, less-damaged wall still bears faint iconography: stars and butterflies for Desna, stylized waves for Gozreh, or more ambiguous symbols of travel and safe passage, depending on which faith you wish to tie to local devotees.

The shrine offers an obvious investigation point or defensible perch. Hidden niches in the altar or cracks in the partially melted floor can hold burned offerings, divination implements, or personal effects from the last priest, seer, or cultist to use the site. Such clues can point toward new NPCs, patrons in Sandpoint or Magnimar, or missing persons tied to the current mystery.

Ash-Filled Hollow

On the hill’s lee side, sheltered from the worst wind, a natural depression has filled with knee-deep, powder-fine ash. Bits of bone jut from the surface: mostly animal, but with enough humanoid fragments to make cautious explorers wary. The constant dry heat preserves these remains in a disturbingly intact state.

Any serious disturbance of the ash sends choking clouds billowing outward, blinding and suffocating anyone caught unprepared. Under the drifting surface lie scattered relics—charred holy symbols, scorched gear, twisted arrowheads—that can tie this pit to missing NPCs or previous expeditions. Intelligent predators or humanoid foes can use the hollow as an ambush site, springing from concealed burrows or ash-covered pits and turning the swirling dust into both weapon and concealment.

Factions & NPCs

Ember-Wise Hermit (Reclusive seer of fire)

A badly burned hermit—whether Varisian augur, Shoanti exile, or disgraced Magnimaran mage—is obsessed with The Pyre. They inhabit a rough cave just beyond the scorched zone, its walls etched with experimental sigils and sketches of flame-filled visions.

The hermit’s motives center on understanding the hill’s origin and preventing or harnessing its next eruption. Guilt over a past fire-related tragedy drives them; they see omens of similar disaster everywhere. When PCs arrive, the hermit responds warily, testing them with cryptic warnings or controlled displays of fire magic. They may offer guidance, safe paths, or divinations in exchange for help acquiring rare components or confronting specific threats on the hill.

If the PCs attempt to seize The Pyre’s power or deface what the hermit considers safeguards, the seer can escalate into a dangerous antagonist, using their knowledge of the terrain to deadly effect. Conversely, if the party supports their efforts to contain the site, the hermit becomes a powerful, if unstable, ally and ongoing source of Thassilonian and omen-laden lore.

Ash-Scavenger Band (Pragmatic looters)

A small crew of hardened scavengers or light-armed bandits has claimed a hidden camp among the lower rocks, just beyond the charred totems. They strip metal from burned wreckage, raid the ash hollow for valuables, and sell unusual finds to questionable buyers in Sandpoint or Magnimar.

Their motives are simple: profit and survival. They avoid open battle, preferring ambush, intimidation, and strategic retreats up the treacherous slopes. At first contact, they might pose as concerned locals or hired wardens, steering the PCs away from their stash sites. Captured or intimidated members can provide partial truths about deeper threats—strange lights in the fissures, missing comrades, or an unnamed patron paying well for “anything with rune-work or that still feels hot.”

Shoanti Warden (Guardian of taboo ground)

A Shoanti warrior or scout, perhaps with a small retinue, patrols the surrounding hills to watch the totems and keep outsiders from disturbing The Pyre. They answer to their quah’s elders and consider the site both sacred and dangerous—an old wound in the earth that must not be pried open.

The warden’s motives focus on honoring ancestral obligations and preserving fragile wards. They confront intruders quickly but not recklessly, challenging PCs with sharp questions about their purpose and their respect for Shoanti taboos. If the party listens and compromises—avoiding the totems, assisting in renewing rites, or driving off scavengers—the warden can become a steadfast ally, sharing oral history and a Shoanti perspective on Thassilonian sins. If the PCs desecrate markers or ignore warnings, the warden escalates to implacable opposition, rallying additional warriors or calling in favors with other Hinterlands allies.

Adventure Hooks

• Burning Omens: Strange, fire-shaped lights appear over Sandpoint at night, always hanging low on the horizon above The Pyre. Local clergy or a worried Varisian elder implores the PCs to investigate before the town decides the “Late Unpleasantness” has returned in fiery form.
• Missing Hunters, Scorched Trail: A hunting party vanishes near the hill, leaving behind a trail of blackened footprints and half-melted arrows. Following the path leads through unstable slopes, ash squalls, and signs that something new has begun moving beneath the glass.
• Smugglers’ Fire: Caravans report bandits wielding “ghost-fire” that ignores water and clings to wagons. Magnimaran officials or Sandpoint’s sheriff secretly recruit the PCs to break the gang, trace the source of the unnatural flames to The Pyre, and uncover who is paying for such experiments.
• Rite of Ash and Ember: A Shoanti quah or Varisian caravan intends to perform an old rite at The Pyre to calm restless spirits or seal a widening crack in the hill. Rival groups—cultists, scavengers, fearful settlers—seek to disrupt or exploit the ceremony. The PCs must choose which faction to support and manage tensions atop a dangerously reactive hill.
• Fire-Forged Relic: An old journal or map points to a minor but unique magic item forged in The Pyre’s first blaze. Recovering it means negotiating with current claimants—the hermit, the Shoanti warden, or the scavengers—and then braving fissures, ash pits, and lurking creatures to claim the relic before someone else does.

Secrets & Mysteries

• The original inferno was a Thassilonian ritual meant to burn something out of existence: a bound outsider, a cursed artifact, or a disgraced servant of the Runelord of Wrath. Traces of that target still influence the site’s magic.
• The Pyre’s lingering heat responds faintly to strong emotions, especially anger. When PCs act from vengeance or cruelty, the GM can heighten environmental hazards to hint at buried wrath magic.
• Several charred totems incorporate fragments of old Shoanti ward-rituals that restrain, rather than repel, what lies beneath. Destroying or moving them weakens an unseen binding and can trigger subtle shifts in the hill’s activity.
• The Fire-Scoured Shrine once housed a relic or focus used to bleed off The Pyre’s excess energy via faith or divination. Its theft or destruction explains recent spikes in ash squalls, glowing fissures, and spectral lights.
• Far below the Ember Fissures lies a partially collapsed chamber of red-black stone reachable only if the hill cracks open further or through significant magic. Its carved runes and architecture prefigure later Runelord-era sites, offering early clues to sin magic and wrathful symbology.
• A Magnimaran scholar, noble, or hidden cult agent already understands much of this truth and quietly uses the scavenger band—and perhaps the hermit—as tools to probe The Pyre’s limits before attempting a larger, more dangerous ritual elsewhere.

Ties to Rise of the Runelords

The Pyre offers an early, optional glimpse of wrath-aligned Thassilonian magic. Runes at the Glassed Crater Rim and glimpses of the buried chamber below echo motifs that appear later in Runelord-era dungeons, giving attentive PCs a sense that these symbols and colors matter.

Clues found in the Fire-Scoured Shrine or Ash-Filled Hollow can point toward NPCs and organizations that feature later in the campaign: a Magnimaran patron researching old sins, a cult leaving signature charms, or a scholar whose notes match designs seen in more prominent Thassilonian ruins. Such links turn The Pyre into a stepping stone rather than a dead-end side trek.

An encounter with the Shoanti Warden provides a grounded introduction to Shoanti history and grievances, reinforcing later plotlines that involve Shoanti lands, taboos, and their memory of Runelord atrocities. Likewise, the Ember-Wise Hermit can become a recurring ally or uneasy contact, interpreting omens, identifying runes, and warning the PCs when similar wrath magic stirs elsewhere.

Finally, The Pyre’s reactive magic lets the GM visually tie wrath and anger to tangible consequences. PCs who indulge in cruelty or unbridled rage see the hill answer with surging fire and cracking stone, foreshadowing how the sins that empowered the Runelords still warp the land—and hinting at the price of letting such impulses rule them as the campaign escalates.