> [!infobox|wikipedia] > # Ruby Falls Goldmine > [![[Ruby_Falls_Goldmine_small.webp|cover hsmall]]](Ruby_Falls_Goldmine.webp) > ###### Location Information > Attribute | Details | > ---|---| > Type | Point of Interest | > Location | [[Val Miriel]] | > Defining Feature | Abandoned gold mine claimed by an ancient drider | > ###### Status > Attribute | Details | > ---|---| > Status | Abandoned (entrance sealed) | Ruby Falls Goldmine is an Imperial gold working in the rugged hill country north-east of [[Val Miriel]], named for the cascade of crimson-mossed water that falls beside its entrance and seems, at sunset, to run with liquid ruby. Once a productive mine worked under the [[Valtorran Empire]], it fell silent when its diggers broke through into a hidden cavern network and woke what slept there. Today its main shaft lies deliberately collapsed, and the truth of what claimed it is known to only a handful of souls. ## Location & Geography The mine lies a short way north-east of [[Val Miriel]], in the band of broken, rising hill country that climbs between the city and the eaves of the [[Darkwood]] to the north. It is reached by a road that leaves the city and winds up into the hills, switchbacking on itself as it climbs through stands of tall dark fir that thin as the way gains height. The final approach is overgrown and little travelled — high and cold enough that snow lingers on the path in the colder seasons — before it crests into a sheltered hollow folded among the hilltops. The mine announces itself first by sound — the constant crash of falling water. A river spills over a cliff at the head of the hollow, and the rock the cascade pours across is thick with a deep red moss or fungus that glows in low sun and gives the place its name: at sunset the whole waterfall appears to bleed ruby light. Below the falls stand the buildings of the works. A scatter of small timber huts where the miners lived marks the lower edge of the camp; higher up sit the larger structures — an ore-processing yard and a wheelhouse driven by the river — and near the foot of the waterfall, a dark cave mouth opens into the hillside itself. Within, the mine is a warren of timber-shored tunnels, rail tracks for the ore carts, staging chambers, and bridges that span over natural voids in the rock. The deepest of the old diggings broke through into something the miners did not make: a humid, lightless cavern system of natural caves, glowing fungi, and far older inhabitants. ## History The Empire worked Ruby Falls for its gold as it worked every other seam it could wring from the lands it had conquered, hauling raw ore down out of the hills to be refined and sent on toward the capital. For a time it was an ordinary, productive mine: a camp of labourers, a wheelhouse turning day and night, carts of ore running the tracks to the surface. Its end came underground. Driving a new tunnel deep into the hillside, the miners breached the wall into a natural cavern that had lain sealed since long before the Empire — a humid, fungus-lit world that was already home to an ancient and territorial being. What the diggers took for a fresh seam of stone was in truth an intrusion into another creature's domain, and that creature answered it. The miners were taken one by one, drawn down into the dark and cocooned in webbing deep in the caverns. The camp emptied without a battle: no bodies were left on the surface, only overturned furniture and long, shallow, irregular scratch marks gouged across the floors and walls of the abandoned huts. By the time anyone came to investigate, the mine had been silent for some while. The wheelhouse still turned and the ore yard still held its raw stone — untouched, the gold never carried off — but of the people who had worked them there was no trace at all. ## Current State Ruby Falls is abandoned and, to the wider world, finished. Its main entrance has been deliberately collapsed, and the official account — carried back to the Empire's local agents — is that the shaft caved in naturally and was found empty of gold. That story is a lie, maintained to keep the Empire from sending a second, larger expedition into the hills. The truth is that the mine was never empty. Its depths remain the home of [[Nelfandriss the Banished]], the ancient drider-like being whose domain the diggers blundered into, along with the timid mushroom-folk who dwell in the [[Bioluminescent Forest]] of caverns beyond, and the great hoard of gold and treasure stripped from the dead miners and gathered into a glittering chamber far below. By the bargain struck there, the mine is no longer the Empire's to take — and the red waterfall now stands sentinel over a sealed door and a secret the Empire is not meant to learn. ## [[The Bloody Nails|Campaign: The Bloody Nails]] #### [[Session 23 - Ruby Falls Goldmine]] After fleeing the chaos of [[Val Miriel]] and travelling north into the mountains, the party reached Ruby Falls to find the camp abandoned and unnervingly silent — empty huts, overturned furniture, long shallow scratch marks, and an ore yard full of raw gold no thief had bothered to take. Descending into the mine, they lit a minecart and rolled it flaming down the tracks to scout the dark, then followed a side tunnel to where the diggers had breached into a natural cavern of luminescent fungi and strange white "stalagmites." The party realised too late that the pale shapes were webbed cocoons holding the preserved corpses of the missing miners. As a flaming arrow lit the depths, the dark answered with the skittering of thousands of legs rushing toward them. #### [[Session 24 - Nelfandriss The Banished]] The party broke the spider swarm with fire and moonlight, then pressed deeper through the fungal caverns, past shy mushroom-folk, hallucinogenic spores, and the mysterious [[Pool of Reflection]] — where [[Vaeleran]] offered his blood and learned that a magical block sealed his lost memories. In a chamber glittering with the mine's stolen gold they came face to face with [[Nelfandriss the Banished]], the ancient drider whose home the miners had violated. Rather than fight, the party negotiated a treaty: they would report the mine inaccessible to the Empire, and she would permit their chosen allies to mine quietly in exchange for her privacy. Nelfandriss sealed the pact with the gift of the *[[Amulet of the Arachnid Queen]]* and a dark revelation about [[Empress Morganna Eventide]]. #### [[Session 25 - The Chimera]] Departing the depths, the party sealed the bargain by sealing the mountain: they identified the structural weak points of the main entrance and brought it down with a dynamite arrow, burying the way in and the secret with it. The descent turned violent when a three-headed Chimera fell upon them mid-skirmish; they killed the beast and hauled its carcass back to sell. Reporting to the [[Green Gryphons]], they swore the mine had simply collapsed and held no gold — securing their payment while keeping the truth of Ruby Falls buried. ## Trivia - The mine takes its name from the band of blood-red moss that grows on the cliff behind the waterfall, which catches the low sun and makes the cascade appear to run with liquid ruby — an apt omen, given how many of its miners were drained dry in the dark below. - For all the killing that emptied it, not a single coin was taken: the attacker had no interest in gold, leaving the ore yard's raw stock and the miners' refined takings exactly where they lay. It was the first sign the party had that they were not dealing with bandits.