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The Skillet and the Dragon Priest

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  The Skillet and the Dragon Priest Here—pull your chairs closer to the hearth. The wind snakes under the door on nights like this, and the stones hold the cold if you let them. There’s stew enough for all, cider warming gentle in the back of the fire, and bread on the board. You’ve come a fair way to reach Suncrest, and you’re welcome at the Golden Apple Inn. Do you see that skillet hanging on the hook over the flame? Black as a storm cloud, handle still wearing a stubborn stripe of red lacquer despite a lifetime of scrubbing? Aye. That old pan has turned more suppers than I’ve had birthdays, and I’m an honest man about my years. It’s iron and it’s memory, and it’s the reason I still believe a shared meal can turn despair into courage. If you’ve a mind for a story, I’ll give it to you whole—no chapters, no breaks, the way a long winter evening ought to be filled. It begins when I was a boy with a scarf twice ’round my face to catch a cough I could not shake. We were three: my fath...
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The Haunted Fairground of Cobblecrest

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The Haunted Fairground of Cobblecrest Prelude: Echoes in Iron and Warning Whispers The biting chill of Alturiak, the Claw of Winter month, clung to Cobblecrest like a shroud. Frost spider-webbed the cobblestones, and the air, sharp enough to sting the lungs, carried the rhythmic clang of hammer on metal. It was a sound of stubborn life in the late winter gloom, echoing from Ironhand’s Anvil and drawing the four adventurers – Seraphina Goldlight, Darian Stonesworn, Naivara Moondream, and Kaelen Duskwalker – towards its source. The forge radiated a welcome heat that pushed back the morning’s frost. Sparks erupted in fiery constellations as Balin Ironhand, his face grimaced in concentration, brought his heavy hammer down upon a glowing horseshoe resting on the anvil. The muscles in his bare arms bunched and corded with the effort, sweat beading on his brow despite the cold seeping in from the street. Around him, the tools of his trade lay in ordered chaos – tongs, hammers, files – and rac...
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