The Fifth Crusade
For over a century, the demon-haunted wasteland of the Worldwound has bled into the world of mortals. As the magical Wardstones that hold back the tide begin to flicker and fail, a new generation of crusaders must take up the sword. But this war requires more than steel; it requires the power of Myths.
Paladin / Wizard
Monk / Paladin
Inquisitor / Rogue
Paladin / Oracle
Intelligence Report: The Drezen Approach
Upper halls cleared, master dead, and the company now four levels beneath it in cells and forges that appear on no dwarven map. A ritual meant to level half the city has been broken. The Banner hung at the bottom of the deepest hall was a fake. Still not taken. The war ends here.
Cleared. Four chained beasts meant to drop the span are dead; engineers shore the piers. The road west is open.
Some two hundred prisoners freed. Many now carry bows for the crusade.
Taken and held. Paradise Hill sealed at its back — nothing reaches the hill now but wings or magic.
The towers are down and the signal given. The army has the upper hand on the field below while the four cut the citadel apart from inside. A bound prisoner waits here for the Queen's judgment.
The curse is broken and the tomb re-hallowed. The dead of the First Crusade sleep clean at last.
Seventy-five years in demon hands. The citadel is not a target in the war — it is the war. Above, it is a fortress. Below, it is something else: prison rows, an interrogation block warded against magic itself, a forge built to strip the holiness out of captured relics, and halls of murdered gods. None of it was drawn by dwarves. All of it was cut into their work afterward.
"We found his book. Seventy years of it, in his own hand, and he kept a ledger of every holy thing he ever fed to that forge — a blade, a shield, a breastplate with the family filed off it. He wrote down all of them. He invited us to read every name. Understand me: he did not write down ours. Whatever else this fortress owes us, it will not be an answer."
The Worldwound
Session XVII — Sword of Valor
Standing over the body, they found the traitor's journal — seventy years of it, in his own hand, honest in a way no one was prepared for. He took the Sword of Valor himself. He wrote that Minagho gave him the opportunity and that the choice was his. He kept a ledger of every holy thing his brother's forge unmade, page after page of them, and he invited whoever found the book to read every name in it. Two names are not in it. Then the way down: prison rows where murdered paladins still stood in their cells; warded jail cells sunk in dead magic; and one of them carved floor to ceiling with a thousand butterflies and a prayer, by something out of the Abyss that had spent years asking to be made clean — and had gotten out. Below that, a vampire in a library, a forge tended by salamanders, and a tiefling conjurer six words into a ritual meant to level half the city of Drezen. They killed her. The great crystal cracked and fell and shattered. The candles went out. And the whispering that had followed them through every room since the cells did not stop.
Fallen Guardian
Silver Dragon · Protector of Kenabres
“She could have been anywhere in the world. She chose a city, and a plain grey face to walk it in, and a long ordinary life among people who would never once look up and know what was standing beside them. When the sky finally opened, she did not leave. She spent the last thing she had slowing four strangers' fall. They are a long way underground tonight, in a fortress that has not heard her name in seventy-five years, and they are still carrying her scales — and still spending them, one at a time, the way she spent herself.”
The Case for Mending
Paladin / Wizard
Argued against destroying the corruption forge — because if the ruin it worked can be run backwards, it is the only thing in the world that can give a hundred families their stolen steel back. Thane wants it broken. The argument was cut off mid-sentence and has not been finished. He walked wide around a cell warded against magic and would not say why, even as Radiance dimmed in his hand near the door. Ended the ritualist himself, with two draughts of mythic reserve poured into one white sheet of lightning.
The One Who Makes Sure
Monk / Paladin
Walked out of a side room reading the traitor’s journal, and gave the day its only prophecy in four words. Tumbled under a hostage to reach the thing drinking from him. When the vampire burst into smoke and fled to its coffin, he followed it down and did the whole grim liturgy in order — stake, then axe, then holy water, poured slow over both pieces until the steaming stopped. He does not leave things half-killed. His first blow at the forge threw a demon into the great crystal hard enough to crack it, and nobody noticed.
The Name Not Written
Inquisitor / Rogue
Wanted the traitor alive for his answers and got his diary instead. Found in it a ledger of ruined relics — a warhammer, three shields of an order that once hired him, a breastplate of Torag with the family markings filed off — and no way on earth to learn whose they were. Read the invitation to know every name and understood exactly which two were missing. Below, the doors began beating him: a snapped pick at the forge, then a trap he crawled the floor for and could not find until it went off in his face. He opened the last one anyway.
The Smith’s Patience
Paladin / Oracle
Stopped his own cousin from burning a prisoner’s holy book, because you do not begin by breaking the man you mean to mend. Carried the traitor’s journal across the room and offered it to the brother it insulted. Told a dwarf sworn to the Dark Smith that Torag was waiting for him — and tied a death sentence to the offer, so it would be honest. The man came back down the stair on his own to help them. Then a ritualist’s claw went into his back, and when he reached for his god to close it, nothing came.
Current Status
The city saved · The Banner still missing · A door nobody was meant to find
Half of Drezen was to be destroyed today and was not. The conjurer running the ritual is dead, her guards with her, her crystal in pieces on the floor. But the low whispering that has run under every room since the prison rows was never the ritual — it did not stop when she did, and nobody can find where it comes from. Deeper still, at the end of a hall of murdered gods, the company found the Sword of Valor hanging in an iron frame — and it was a joke. The trap fired, the cloth went black, and Iomedae's sunburst turned into the mark of the Locust Lord in front of them. So they searched the room again, and found a seam twenty feet up a blank wall, and behind that door another door. Nobody builds that to guard a storeroom.
Retrieving field report...
A visual record of the Worldwound and the souls caught in its wake
End of Record
