Antarctica Hexcrawl: Sad Rock
Another one for the Antarctica Jam. See my first entry here.
Sad Rock
Hex: 381.395
In the middle of the fields, lying at the center of a shallow depression, is a giant grey-white boulder the size of an overstuffed wagon and as tall as a house. On its east side, there are a couple of shallow, smoothed impressions that seem like a melancholy face. This glacial erratic was torn away from its mountain-family and deposited here thousands of years ago. From the rock's perspective, it was carried away for weeks and has been stuck away from its home for months. When the glacier retreated, it hoped it might return, but it doesn't know how.
Recently, it has realized the "quick ones" (normal people) who pass it by might be able to get it home. It has learned to speak very quickly (from its perspective), and will call out to those who pass by, in what quick ones hear as a soft keening near the stone. Those who speak the language of stones can converse with it; anyone who sits and has a full conversation will be told the rock's story and asked to bring it home. This takes a week - the rock speaks as quick as it can, but the language of stones is geologically slow.
The rock's true name is the sound of a sudden wind change on a high peak followed by the sound of a mountain spring carving stone, but it will happily respond to any "nickname of the quick ones" given by its interlocutor, or to Friend Stone. It is a kindhearted, peaceable, but lonely being. Its home, which it remembers, is the Fuecalto Volcano in hex 391.380, on a particularly perilous facing of the northern side. However, because it was carried here by a glacier, it does not know any paths, merely the distance and direction as the crow flies.
Friend Stone requires thirty men and some fancy ropework to lift off the ground. It will crush any normal wagon it's placed on, though a special wagon could be built for it.
If the players successfully get the rock back home, it will grant each of them one Wish, no strings attached.