Ritual of Cendriane's Heart
The city was large. The eladrin who had built the city had done so on a scale that was unsurpassed by any who had followed them. The traveler walked silently along the Avenue of the Gods and mourned upon seeing all of the empty pedastals where once there had stood statues to all of the gods, good and evil. He mourned to see the wild and uncontrolled growth of the Central Glade, once a place of peace and beauty, now inhabited by vicious dryads. He looked up at the graceful spires and mourned to see the webs of giant spiders and the half towers where a spire had partially collapsed. All of these things only made him more determined to restore Cendriane to her former glory.
For days the traveler wandered the city, searching every building and palace without finding what he was looking for; for Cendriane was the only city that could be entirely tied to one person through a ritual. It was this ritual that the traveler searched for, but in vain. He had almost given up all hope of finding the ritual, when, suddenly, he was set upon by a group of vampire assassins. Little did they know that the traveler was an archfey, one of the most powerful of the eladrin race. As the vampires closed in on the traveler, his entire body started to shimmer with an eerie glow. The vampires paused, and turned to flee as the glow transformed into lightning that coursed over the traveler's entire body. The lightning flew to where he pointed and he methodically slew each and every one of the vampiric assassins.
This encounter led the traveler to delve into the catacombs of the city. There he found a seething nest of undead led by the vampire lord Kannoth. He sent his lightning before him, destroying any undead in his path. He slew Kannoth and found, hidden amongst all of his pillaged treasures, the scroll upon which the ritual had been transcribed at the founding of Cendriane. This was what Kannoth had sent the assassins to protect and had lead to his downfall.
The weary traveler slowly made his way out of the catacombs, and by the light of the setting sun, read what he would have to do. The ritual, he read, was to be performed in the room at the top of the tallest tower of the city, aptly called the Room of the Heart. There he was to chant the words of the ritual for a year and a day, starting at sundown on the day of a new moon. At noon of each day, he was to pound three times the floor of the room with the Staff of the Heart.
Upon reading this, his spirits fell. Where was the Staff of the Heart to be found? But his determination did not waver for an instance, and he began his search anew.