Landmarks: The Cabin

Far enough from civilization to be lost to time this cabin’s original owners are far gone. It stands secluded in a clearing within a forest or other wilderness built savvily but not professionally with nearby wood. Outside the cabin stands a fire pit, a single small tree and firewood piled against one side of the cabin. Within the structure is a single room containing a bed, a barrel and chest (both empty), a table with a pair of chairs, a few (empty) shelves, and a richly decorated rug. The cabin is comfortable, a clear improvement on the housing of the average peasant, however there are no tools, valuables or supplies to be found except for the rug, a genuine prize for a group of adventurers worth around 100 gold pieces to an interested buyer. The rug also conceals a trapdoor that leads to a dugout basement. The soil walls of the basement are coated in red ink derived from local plants. The writing is ideogrammatic, meaning the letters symbolize concepts and a basic sense of their meaning may be interpreted easily enough and with some time and effort they may be translated with no past exposure.

Possibilities

Possibility	Description	Origin
Vile	Along with the writings the central room contains a humanoid figure wrapped in canvas and bound with chains. The writings are ritual bindings keeping the creature in place. They convey the concepts evil, god, binding, eternity, and related ideas. Someone who interprets the language will find that there is not consistent story, simply repeated words imbued with the power to bind evil. The creature is a powerful demon that can speak and will smell the PC’s when they descend. It will try to parlay or manipulate the PC’s into disturbing the writing and releasing it from the spell that bind it. If this happens it can easily tear canvas and will be held only minutes by it’s chains. Once free the demon will thank the PC’s and offer them an opportunity to serve it, if refused it will ask for directions to people and if refused again (and not bound by promise) it will devour at least one of the PCs.	The creature is a demon that menaced the area devouring villagers several decades ago. Right now the demon takes a human form but in truth it is a  tremendous, many-mawed crimson ogre with an insatiable appetite for human flesh. Though not stupid it is tremendously hungry and will eventually tire of conversation or plotting and devour the nearest creature. The creature was bound by a priest who watched over the cabin until they grew complacent or were called away by their god and left the cabin believing that in the unlikely event that someone found it they would miss the secret basement.
Neutral	The writing is a family history. As such the PCs may notice the most often repeated symbol is an encircled knot representing family. If a character translates the writing they will find a chronicle that goes back hundreds of years, detailing the lives of generations of peasants. It describes wars, famines, festivals, bizarre occurrences, births, marriages deaths and finally a plague that slays the whole of the family. It is possible that the writers ghost still lingers here, if this is the case recording the story and/or telling it allows them to let go and ascend to the afterlife. They will however defend the writings from damage.	Over a century ago the owner of this cabin survived a plague that decimated their village. Believing themselves infected with the plague they traveled miles into the wilderness and lived alone until they could not stand the loneliness and set off to see if a monastery could cure them (they likely died on the way). While living out their life of seclusion they painted a history of their village and family so as to keep it from being lost forever to time. Having never been taught to write they developed their own system of pictorial writing.
Beneficent	The walls describe a vast system of caves. One of the walls describes the location of the caves and the other three describe the plants and creatures that live within, the geology of the caves and other observations. The floor is a map of the caves with an X marking a cavern deep within the system. The caves are within a day's journey of the cabin but the small entrance the walls detail is unlikely to be spotted by someone not looking for it. There are many miles of maze like caves containing a host of oddities (giant worms, seemingly bottomless pits, forests of roots as thick as trees) but the X marked cavern can be reached with under four hours of spelunking. It lies within a village of hideous mutants who enslave surface worlders into carving new tunnels in hopes of finding more territory.	Decades ago the owner of the cabin was captured by a group of degenerate man-things and spent years forced to dig out further caves for the vile creatures. Even after they escaped they stayed close enough regularly travel to the caves, for they had seen a great hoard of gold in their captors tunnels and committed themselves to stealing some of it. In pursuit of this they built a cabin near enough to the caves to scout them and eventually attempted to sneak in and retrieve some of this treasure. They were however caught and killed, leaving their residence empty. And their coded notes behind.