The Lorebook of Taiatha Windrunner: It’s our third day in the wastes and the heat is oppressive, reflecting off the hard, dry ground and draining what little strength that remains in us. The water is gone or nearly so. In this heat, we can’t last much longer. Two more died last night of either wounds we could not heal or despair for all that was lost. Less than a hundred remain and many of those are badly hurt. I fear most for the children; their world has been shattered with parents and siblings killed before their eyes or taken into slavery. They are very brave, trying to remain strong and not be a burden, but you can see they are always moments away from tears. Even if we survive this ordeal, they will never recover their innocence and joy.
    We continue our travel west, into the dry waste, away from the watering holes. It was our only choice, as the slavers will be watching all the known watering holes and we don’t have the strength to fight our way to the water. Our only hope is in the lore passed down to me by my father, which tells of a final refuge in the wastes. The fate of nearly a hundred souls rests heavily on me. If the lorebook is wrong or my reading of it mistaken, we will all die in this wasteland. I can see that our scouts are returning, please let their news be good.

    Two dusty and tired scouts ride their wogren toward the front of the column of refugees. One of the scouts, little more than a boy, tries to wet his lips before asking “is there any water?”
    The loremaster shakes his head “I’m sorry, we gave the last of the water to the children this morning. What word do you bring.”
    “We’ve ridden almost ten miles to the east and there’s no sign of pursuit.”
    While reaching out to scratch the dust from one of the scout’s wogren, the loremaster tries to smile, “my thanks, go see to your families. The orcs believe us to be either dead or not worth tracking through the wastes. I won’t waste your strength on another patrol.”
    As the refugees struggle through the day, they enter an area that, in the very distant past, may have been a lakebed. At the far end, sheltered from the burning sun and recessed into the rock, is what they’ve come for, the refuge as described as the loremaster’s book, the Font of Tears.
    The font is not what the young loremaster had expected. It is little more than a crudely carved face of a wogren with a large stone basin spreading out from beneath its mouth. Around the basin is a short verse carved into the stone, ‘if you have come seeking the font, our people will have suffered much and shed many tears. Gift the font with one more tear and the power within you will lead to your salvation.’ Thinking through the horrors of the last four days, the young loremaster falls to his knees, gripping the edge of the font and begins to weep. As his first tear touches the font, his body convulses as the font takes what little energy is left in him. A low rumbling sound begins and then as if it too was crying, water begins to flow from the eyes of the wogren slowly filling the basin with life giving water. Exhausted, the loremaster sends a prayer to his departed father, thanking him for saving his people.

    The Font of Tears is a ritualized rune of Control (raise) Water. The rune needs a single tear and spell power/energy to be activated (total of 9 points of spell energy, 6 for the spell +3 for the ritual/enlargement). The ritual pulls water from an ancient aquifer under the wastes and will fill the font with water. The font holds several thousand gallons of water and can be refilled every five days without depleting the aquifer.