The Silver Highlands are carved by countless mountain gorges and fast-flowing streams. Many of these dramatic gorges have small caverns etched by their streams.

About a day’s ride from Glen Alder is Lost Falls Gorge, so named for the cave at the head of the gorge with its pair of hidden waterfalls. A group of footpads has been camping out in the cave when not preying on travelers on the road to Paxton’s Crossing.

​The Hook

The players come across the site of a recent ambush. A carriage with a heraldic device on the door sits in the middle of the road, doors open and luggage ransacked. All bear sword cuts and arrow wounds. The bodies are still warm.

An obvious trail of broken branches, dropped loot, and scraps of silk leads up the mountain.

Lost Falls Hideout Key

Map A

Map B

1. River Gorge: The 10-foot-wide stream rushes down the steep gorge floor with tremendous force. Walking along or crossing it requires a medium-difficulty agility check.
   1. The gorge is 30 feet deep. The south wall can be climbed unassisted with a medium-difficulty agility check. The check has advantage if proper climbing equipment is used.
2. Lookout’s nook: A young ogre named Burka guards the path to the hideout. He is sleeping off a night of heavy drinking; only loud noises or physical harm will wake him up. Burka is gullible. An easy Charisma check convinces him the players are recruits; a medium check or bribe recruits him instead.
3. Waterfall chamber: The waterfall produces a deafening roar. Conversations require shouting or close proximity.
   1. An unfinished statue of a dancing elven maiden is embedded in the wall. It is animate and sentient.
      • The bandits bribe her with beer to serve as another lookout. She hates the taste. She is desperate for wine or engaging conversation.
      • Wine, whiskey, or engaging conversation (medium Charisma) earns safe passage. Otherwise, she starts screaming for the bandits out of spite.
      • Alternatively, if the players swear a faerie oath to move her to somewhere with more people, she will let the players pass. She is worth 100 gm to a noble in Sliberberg as is, or 130 gm if finished.
        1. Breaking the oath petrifies the oathbreaker’s feet
   2. The pool at the foot of the waterfall is waist-deep and freezing cold.
   3. The bandits keep their loot in a small waterproof coffer beneath the fall. The coffer has 20 gm in coins.
   4. The cave wall here is just barely climbable. A player who succeeds at a hard agility check can clamber up to location 6. Using climbing equipment such as grappling hooks or pitons will alert the bandits at location 6.
4. Storage alcove: The bandits keep their supplies in this small chamber: barrels of beer, boxes of rations, bundles of arrows, whetstones, and other assorted supplies. Connie’s luggage is stashed among the boxes.
5. The Bridge: A crude scrap-wood bridge crosses above the falls. It can support only three characters at a time; any more and it will break.
6. The Bandit Camp: Five bandits occupy a gallery overlooking the pool, arguing over stew. They are arguing about what to do with their prisoner. Three have longbows, and two have broadswords and bucklers. If they hear noise not associated with their camp or the waterfall, three of them go to 6.1, and two rush the passage down to the Waterfall chamber. The bandits have 5gms worth of coinage and small loot items on them.
   1. The bandits have a good vantage point to shoot down at players in the Waterfall chamber.
7. Gloomy Cell. Lady Connie is imprisoned here, wearing a ruined noble dress. She promises that either her father or her future husband will pay well if the players can deliver her safely to Dun Rowan.
8. Squeeze Shaft: A narrow chimney connects the surface to the Storage Alcove. The chimney is a tight squeeze requiring a hard agility check to make it through. Anyone wearing medium or heavy armor or carrying a backpack cannot squeeze through.
9. Shaft: A large shaft in the ground leads down from the surface into the Gloomy Cell. Anyone can climb down without difficulty.
10. Upper entrance. The upper falls drop from the surface to the stream above the bridge through a broad hole in the ground. The walls of the shaft are impossibly slick, requiring a very hard dexterity check to climb without the use of rope.

Ending the Delve

If the players deliver Lady Connie to Dun Rowan, her future husband rewards the players with 20gm each and invites them to the wedding feast. He may or may not ask them to deal with a troubling inheritance from his ancestors in the dungeons, but that is a delve for another day.