Ten Thousand Milk-Churning Strike

About the adventure

These words are uttered by ancient sages and priests — and only to fellow priests. Of course, some scoundrel-sages spread this knowledge far and wide, and now even the Realm knows of this song: “In an age unnamed, when the gods thundered across the sky like mortals would walk upon puddles, there was a distant sea of infinite milk. This milk was sweet like honey, thick and viscous like cream, and intoxicating like wine. This Milk of Immortality was once the favored drink of the gods and is what caused the gods to be immortal. Unbridled and raw essence bounding across the world. The violent earthbound gods would constantly challenge the administrative sky-blessed gods to take draughts of this Immortal Milk.” To share it among themselves perfectly, the far western sky and earth gods of Kiliran decided to take a great mountain — taller than Creation itself — and turned it into a pestle, and then they reached out to Vandr, the Serpent That Encircles the World and mount of the Lord Luna, and wound them about the mountain pestle. They stabbed the Sea of Milk with the mountain-turned-pestle and churned the Sea of Milk. From there arose wine and nectar. Drinking the wine gave the greatest of the gods immortality for as long as they are worshipped, while drinking the nectar gave the earthbound gods power, but they lived for as long as the oldest human, which is to say, 800 years. This did not ease their conflict, however. In fact, this delineation caused a great rift, and now the gods wage war with the Forbidden Gods. This war has become a staple reason for many god-vs-demon tales in the West, though the Forbidden Gods are now conflated with demons. The Sea of Milk still exists, though ancient tides have pushed it far away and out of reach, past the Pillar of Water to the West. However, pirates, sea raiders, and seafaring cultures still sing of it, of that ancient infinite Sea of Dew, whereupon the Demon Mountain Pestle lies, which houses a thousand-thousand kings and untold treasures. Kiliran-folk and mendicants from Kiliran say that the sea gods — distinct from the sky gods and the earthbound antigods — actively stop mortals from finding the Sea of Milk in hopes of preventing another cycle of overwhelming violence from ever happening again. To the sounds of this siren song, the Exalts arrive at the seaport of Kiliran, upon the edge of the Wheel of Creation, the farthest mortal port. Here, would-be adventurers and danger-seeking sailors congregate to sail deep into the West Sea, endangering themselves with the near borders of the Wyld, just to find that Sea of Milk.