Aethra's Cairn

Sometimes, to add a bit of flavor to my campaigns, I slip in the lyrics from any of many deserving death metal bands. Below is a song by Be'lakor, "Outlive the Hand" - it recently featured as an inscription on a lonely cairn on a barren hill, the burial place of one Aethra.


In death she spoke of waiting;
Her final days were long.
These fields have changed since last she wept
Before the silent throng.

She sits where childhood memories lie:
Above, beside, within them.
These carvings have outlived the hand
Which bled to first begin them.

As features of the landscape merge,
The oldest trees are falling.
Awareness sweeps the view aside;
She stares as if recalling.

Seen first beyond the canopy,
They soon had reached the borders.
The clouds, infused with burning breath,
Arrived from coldest corners.

The windswept valley hastens now
As dying words are uttered
From lips of earth and sapling’s strain,
Like leaves, her last thoughts fluttered.

Again it darkens overhead;
The knowledge of it stills me.
And, when the water starts to fall,
Preserve the drop that kills me.

Player reaction was favorable. This will not be the last (nor is it the first) such experiment.