The Stony Stare

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 The Stony Stare 

The Heads of Tafelicor have stood on Dereth's shores for eons, remnants of an ancient culture known in Empyrean history as the Falatacot. Their exact purpose remains shrouded in mystery, though some sages have suggested they served a variety of mystical uses: as sentinels watching over land and sea, as tombs for fallen kings and heroes, and as the sites of arcane, sometimes bloody, rituals. It is perhaps best that their purpose is not known, for whatever slumbering powers they were sacred to would likely not be friendly to those who woke them.

In civilized places, the local heads seem truly quiet, though they command a certain dread, but many adventurers say that in the Direlands, whose very soil pulses with malignant energy, the heads rest only lightly, if at all. Did mere coincidence arrange this battle under the idol's stoic gaze? Or perhaps the warrior and Mattekar have been magically drawn, to amuse or somehow even feed the local powers with their contest to the death.