The Standing Stone is a carved slab of stone in a forest clearing three miles north-east of the Sisters' farm, and the site the Sisters use to ward the country around them against the Sorrow.1 It is about an hour’s walk from the farm in daylight, and an hour and a half in the dark and the fog.1
Description
The slab stands about twelve feet tall and six feet wide in the middle of the clearing. Cut into the face of it is a pattern of concentric rings of writing in Druidic, twelve or so of them.1 Each ring is an incantation, and each was added outside the last and runs longer than the one before it, because an incantation strong enough to keep the Sorrow back gets harder to compose every time.1
According to Hecate, the stone was left there before Silverthorn and before the Sisters, and has been used for this particular ritual since.1
The Warding Ritual
The ritual must be worked by moonlight and takes three sisters.1 They prepare the ground first: one walks a circuit burning a bundle whose smoke is not to be breathed, another lays a ring of black salt walking the other way, and a third grinds powdered silver into an ink.1 Fresh runes are cut into the outermost ring beforehand with a hooked blade.1 Working it draws creatures afflicted by the Sorrow, which is why Hecate wanted the party there.1
The chant is partly words of arcane power and partly a plea for the light of the moon to burn away the sorrow filling the place and keep it protected from darkness. When it takes, the clouds part and the moonlight rewrites the outer ring in silver.1
History
Session 6
The Sisters worked the ritual here on the night of 27 Coldrise, 1714 PSF, with the party standing guard. Three corrupted dire wolves came out of the trees to the north half an hour in, and were killed.1 The silver light ran halfway around the outer ring and the stone cracked at that point, stopping the ritual. Hecate said she sensed a concentration of the Sorrow’s corruption still in the woods, and that she could not finish while it was there.1
Session 7
Hecate finished the ritual once the party destroyed the Sorrowsworn holding the corruption in the woods. Moonlight came down on the stone in a column, the carved rings flared silver, and a pressure built and released. The dread the party had felt since coming within ten miles of Silverthorn lifted with it.2 Hecate said the work had bought the area protection, and that where such a ritual would once have held for a decade she thought this one might last a year at best.2