The Salt-Iron Crown

Hollowmere is the last free harvest town before the land turns wrong. This season a grey blight spreads through its fields in widening rings, and the only story anyone agrees on is that it started the week rumours of a buried crown came back to the taverns. The crown is real. Four generations ago Lord Corin Ashwrack bargained with the fey lord Aurelic Thane, who loved Corin’s sister Maren, to bind Aurelic’s power into a crown of salt and iron shared between fey and mortal lines. At the rite Corin broke the bargain and trapped Aurelic alone; his garrison killed him before dawn. Now three claimants converge on the vault: a council that wants the crown’s power for the harvest, a free company that wants it for a distant duchess, and a hedge-witch who hears a grieving voice in her sleep and believes her bloodline owes it a debt. The vault’s only ward is an oath. What is inside is a person. What the party decides to do about him is Hollowmere’s last word on what happened here.