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
Its watchtowers broken, its roof breached, its upper halls being fought through room by room. Still enemy-held — a master somewhere ahead, and, far below, a stair the old maps mark only for storage, where they believe the stolen Banner now lies in the dark. 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 presses up the Ahari toward the citadel's gate while the four strike from within.
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. The four are still fighting their way through its upper halls; what matters most, they suspect, lies far below — past a stair the old dwarven maps mark for storage and nothing more.
"A demon met them in a chapel wearing the Inheritor's own face, and holy men knelt to it before the blades came out. Trust nothing inside these walls that wears a kind face or a sacred one — the enemy has learned to forge both."
The Worldwound
Session XV — Sword of Valor
Past the roof-door and down into the citadel proper, the four fought room by room through a fortress that lied with craft. They silenced a gallery of archers raining death on the army below, then opened a chapel door onto a demon wearing the Inheritor's own face — a beautiful, holy lie that had ensnared four crusaders and turned even a sworn paladin's guard against him for a breath, until dwarven blades tore it out of its stolen shape and banished it. Deeper in, the Banner they had climbed a fortress to find proved a decoy — but a suit of gold-and-mithral armor beside it settled onto Korroc as though a master had forged it for him and no one else, and only now, after all these years, brought it home. They cut down a vulture-headed horror and a fire-hooved demon in the ruined great court, broke a knot of the enemy in the halls, and came at last to a chapel of the dwarven Father — its every surface defiled, its statues risen to hunt the two dwarves among them. They shattered the statues; and then Caleth knelt and washed the filth away with the smallest magics he knew, giving a defiled holy place its face back. Deeper into the citadel there is more to fight through yet, and beyond it the way down — a stair the old dwarven maps mark for storage alone, and only guesswork for whatever the enemy has carved beneath it.
Fallen Guardian
Silver Dragon · Protector of Kenabres
“She wore a plain grey face over all her glory and walked among the people of Kenabres because she loved them, and died as their shield. In the enemy's citadel her four survivors met the mirror of that: a thing that wore glory over rot, a holy face pulled across a hunger. They are learning what she always knew — that a face can be a gift or a lie, and telling the two apart is the whole of the war.”
The Painter’s Fury
Paladin / Wizard
Named the demon in Iomedae’s stolen face for the lie it was in a single glance — and learned, when it reached past his guard anyway, that knowing a thing is evil is not always proof against it. He tore a stone-jawed horror off his own chest with a bolt of the wardstone’s own fire, and put holy steel through demons that shrugged off flame. Then, in the defiled chapel of a god not his own, he spent his smallest magics washing the filth from the Father’s house — beauty given back where a demon had only ever defiled it.
The Thunder’s Reach
Monk / Paladin
Plucked an arrow out of the air point-blank and sent it back through the man who loosed it, then found the hidden seam in a wall that opened the way to the citadel’s treasury. When statues rose in the Father’s chapel to hunt the dwarves among them, the monk who fights with nothing but his hands took up a fallen adamantine axe and used it — wordless, exact — smashing the runed stone off his brothers. Every strike a prayer, whatever the shape of the tool.
Shadow of Judgment
Inquisitor / Rogue
Read a fortress built to deceive and opened its every hidden door — the archer-gallery lock that silenced the arrows falling on the army, and the two stone doors behind Nageru’s seam that led to the treasury. And when a demon stood cloaked in the Inheritor’s own holy face, it was Thane’s daggers, driven up under its guard, that tore it out of the stolen shape and forced the truth into the light. A false credential at a sacred door is still a trespasser — and the doorkeeper knows one on sight.
The Wall That Walks
Paladin / Oracle
Knew the Inheritor’s face on sight and named the lie wearing it — then put his own body between the fight and four ensnared crusaders and tried to talk them free rather than cut them down. He carried the ruined great court on his shoulders, drinking his cousin’s wounds down the bond and refusing to fall. And in a demon’s hoard he found a suit of gold-and-mithral armor that closed around him as though it had been forged for him and no one else — a thing he feels, bone-deep, he ought to remember, and cannot yet.
Current Status
The false vision undone · The way down still ahead
Room by room, the four are fighting through the upper citadel — an archer-gallery silenced, a demon that wore the Inheritor's own face unmasked and banished, the crusaders it had ensnared set free, and the defiled chapel of the dwarven Father washed clean. The Banner they came to seize proved a decoy; the true one, they believe, lies far below — down a stair the old dwarven maps mark for storage alone, and beneath it whatever the enemy has since carved into the dark. More of the citadel stands between them and that descent — the master somewhere ahead, another demon of the same stolen-face kind still loose in the citadel — and the whole war may turn on what they find at the bottom.
Retrieving field report...
A visual record of the Worldwound and the souls caught in its wake
End of Record
