Keepers, and the bottom of the Mine

Hello and welcome to the official CritFail.Press Newsletter!

Checkout what’s been happening at CritFail.Press this week in the Map Monday and Weekly Article below!

If you have any suggestions or comments feel free to send them to mike@critfail.press.

The Archive of Realms: The Keepers

An organization as large and long-served as the Archive requires a ready and willing force of individuals who maintain, preserve and expand the archive and its collections.

This role is filled by a group known as The Keepers.

The Keepers are made up of sentient species drawn from across the multiverse.

Oftentimes, the people who end up becoming Keepers are individuals who accidentally stumble on a way into the Archive from their own world.

Once at the Archive, they may choose to stay on as Keepers to learn and maintain the ancient institution.

Others travel the multiverse for a time, using World Books and other means of transport to explore the far-flung corners of existence.

Many retire to their home world with riches and stories while others feel drawn to reside within the Archive to protect and grow this unifying nexus.

Life of a Keeper
Keepers live a fairly spartan life. They are each cloaked in the standard issue off-white robes. The daily tasks of Keepers’ within the Archive are many.

While some hold the glamorous job of being scribes for the Observer, there are many less illustrious and far more mundane positions that Keepers tend to occupy.

Chefs, custodians, caretakers, and repair personnel make up a small subset of the Keeper’s jobs. The vast majority spend their time within the archives reviewing material in the collection, preserving it and repairing it if damaged, adding cataloging and returning items to their appropriate places as their job dictates.

To be a Keeper is to live a very monastic life. Many of them are extremely friendly and sociable but the permanent Near-Silence spell covering the main collections of the Archives can make it hard to speak with them. Often times when non-Keepers interact with Keepers they do so in hushed and hurried tones.

But for the Keepers, their Residential Chambers which are off limits to visitors of the Archive, is the place where they can engage in open conversation and more social activity.

Many amongst the Keepers are considered great musicians, game players, and storytellers in turn, and it is here in their private residence where they can show off these talents.

The Residential Quarters are also home to many workshops and kitchens. The workshops focus on the fabrication and repair of the tools, equipment, and furniture that the Keepers need to live. The kitchens keep them fed with a diverse menu composed of delicacies from across the multiverse.

Within the Archive proper are specialty workshops where paper, bindings, ink, and more are made for use in scribing and cataloging efforts.

When a new individual joins the Keepers, they agree to work within the Archive for no fewer than ten years.

At that time, they can decide if they wish to leave or if they wish to renew their contract for another ten.

One perk of being a Keeper is that for every completed term, they are permitted to take one non-World Book volume from the archive and keep it in their personal collection.

This has been one of the primary mechanisms for distribution of knowledge about both the Archive of Realms and other worlds over time. As Keepers, especially those who species have naturally long lives, work for a few terms and take the rewards elsewhere information is slowly disseminated outward from the Archive.

Whether this was the original goal or not is completely unknown.

The Keepers are always interested in inducting new members who have a diverse set of talents and skills. To be a Keeper once is to be a Keeper always. It is an order that’s purpose is to catalog and remember.

And it does so as well for those who have served within its ranks.

That’s it for this week.

See you next time!

– Mike

Map Monday

Last week, we shared the fourth level of the Dwarven Mine from our adventure Depths of the Dwarven Mine.

This week we finally reach the source of the terror that has driven the dwarves from their mine.

The bottom of the mine is home to a secret chamber not even the dwarves knew about. In the written adventure, this chamber was the ancient lair of a bronze dragon named Kharix. She would access this secret refuge through the submerged sea tunnel and felt safe enough to hatch her eggs here. In time, her ancient enemy, the aboleth Ogrorlo found her lair and corrupted the developing dragons within her eggs.

Discovering this treachery, Kharix abandoned the nest, but didn’t have the heart to destroy her own eggs.

When the dwarven miners discovered the eggs, they were psychically dominated by the now alien intelligence of the corrupted egg mass. The miners cut and fused egg and shell matter to their bodies becoming Dragonflesh Grafters (Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons) and started terrorizing the rest of the mine.

You can download the map here.

-Mike