Living History • The First Chain

*Snow sweeps from the high mountains, bringing with it the first warnings of an early winter. For much of Ygdren, it is a time of peace, prosperity, progress... Wars are distant. Coffers overflow. Even the poor more often than not find comfort in the full bellies and warm hearths of a world that has been free of real calamity for centuries.*
*Only a few have seen the signs; the gathering omens of ruin. The stars of Fenris, the Great Wolf, shine brightly in the sky. Priests gather in the deeper sanctums of their temples, speaking of gods gone silent. Shamans recast the runestones, praying their auguries have changed, looking north to a gathering storm at the edge of the world. Rumours abound of trouble in the ocean, twisted bodies washing up to shore, and villages along the coast set aflame.*
*The world holds its breath, waiting for the peace to finally break, not knowing that it already had.*
*Beneath the surface, in the twisting tunnels and shadowed caverns of the underdark, a hidden war rages, and the proud underground kingdom of Anar draws its final breaths.*
*It began with a sickness, measured and insidious, creeping through the lowest and most isolated depths. Spores carried on the stale air by the unwitting who were already dead, turned upon their kin. One by one, villages went silent, swallowed whole into the dark. Clicks echoed eerily through the tunnels, rising and falling, rising and falling.*
*Those that remained grew fearful. The wisest fled, abandoning their homes. Entire families: men, women, children, braving the underroads, desperate to reach the safety of their king’s walls, walking blindly into a carefully spun web, and vanishing. By the time news reached the twilight throne, the enemy had already dealt the first crippling blow.*
*And when war finally struck, it struck in earnest.*
*Swarms of spiders and blighted creatures spilled from the Jaws of the Earth into the great cavern of Loch Lothrien, an underwater sea blessed by the Eventide, the heart of the moonlit kingdom. For a time, the advance seemed to falter against a brave and stalwart defence, until the earth began to shake, and the next blow fell.*
*From the heart of the earth, where the ground boiled and the air burned, ancient creatures of primordial rock and stone, awakened to new masters and breached the cavern walls, releasing a great flood that drowned entire swathes of the lakeside. King Lothras fell, buried beneath the tide with much of his household guard. The defence shattered, the enemy tore through, and in the ensuing months, the kingdom of Anar was sundered, its villages burned, its people butchered or enslaved.*
*Now, the end is near. Only one symbol of defiance remains. The half-flooded city of Alyth Loth, seat of the twilight throne, where the beacon of moonlight still shines from the Eventide’s Temple, illuminating a cavern choked with smoke, ash, and bone. On its walls, the last defenders of this realm huddle by their signal fires, and look out across the blackened waters to the ruined isle of Blightrock, where the seething swarms of the goddesses of shadow and decay are gathering, turning their gaze towards them the Moonlit City at last.*
*It is here, on these blighted shores, on the eve before battle, that the cruel champions of the enemy, that have made their name in twisted deed and unchecked malice, gather for a council of war. It is here, that the breaking of Alyth Loth will be decided.*
*This is their story.*
### Blightrock*(24th of Hallowfen, 4E 775)*

On the desolate subterranean island of Blightrock, seven champions gather to the grand pavilion for a council of war. Here, through the animated corpse of a freshly executed slave, they receive instruction on their role in the battle for Alyth Loth, the capital of the kingdom of Anar and the last remaining free city on the shores of Loch Lothrien.

Their task is to form the second wing of a two-pronged attack, using an assault by the bulk of the forces as a diversion for them to scale the walls of the city and clear them of the moon priestesses that were powering a forbiddance which prevented many of the lesser monstrosities in the armies of the Sporemother and the Spider Queen from breaching the city proper. The city's defences, distracted both by the preliminary assault and by the festivities on the eve of Hallowtide, would be weakened to a secondary assault led by the group.

"*Move swiftly, show no mercy, and by midlight tomorrow this war will be over and we will feast on the spoils.*"
 ― Voice of the Spider Queen

Having been given their objectives, they make the necessary preparations for the attack and get some rest in anticipation of an attack at the beginning of the next day. Though they know of each other by reputation, there is little trust amongst the chosen group, which is a mixture of zealots who are there in full faith of the cause, and mercenaries who are there for their own gain or that of other beings they may serve.

### Alyth Loth*(25th of Hallowfen, 4E 775)*

Carried inside the cavernous maws of the great coreworms that had proved instrumental in the war for Loch Lothrien, the group and a small contingent of troops burrow towards Alyth Loth, emerging onto the southern beachhead just after twilight. With a collective roar, the assault begins, and the group rushes the walls before the defenders can collect themselves. Climbing by hand, or carried on the backs of giant spiders, they reach the top and begin slaughtering their way north, killing dozens of hapless troops who were too focused on the main attack in the north.

It takes only minutes for them to rendezvous with the main army. With the forbiddance all but broken, a swarm of spiders, fungal zombies, and spore drones are pouring into the city past the broken corpses of countless others. The slain defenders, those whose bodies remain intact, are already beginning to rise to join the fray on the opposite side.

Here, the group regroups with the Sporemother's General, who points a blood-splattered war sickle towards the highest point of the city, where the Eventide's temple stands. Unmistakeably, bursting from the topmost spire of the temple, is a column of soft, silver moonlight: the light which earned Alyth Loth and the moonlit kingdom their name. And that light is beginning to pulse and flare, growing brighter and brighter.

"*It's the Princess. Go. Stop her. Kill her.*"
 ― The General

With savage glee, the group rushes towards the temple, cutting their way through the panicked, fleeing crowds that had been gathered in the streets for the Hallowtide feast. Up ahead, the moonlight at the temple continue to pulse, each gap between flares growing faster and faster. Before long, they reach the marble footsteps of the temple, but are barred from entry by a trio of temple guards accompanied by a hulking moonstone golem.

"*You go no further, betrayers. This temple will not be sullied by your unholy footsteps.*"
 ― Temple Guard

A brief struggle ensues, during which the group slaughters the temple guard and raises their corpses to join the fight, and eventually breaks the golem's central powering light, reducing it to rubble. Stepping past the corpses, they continue into the temple, with an invisible Germain and Zygomites scouting ahead.

They reach the heart of the temple, a large circular chamber with walls of a strange basalt grey stone. Both the raised walkway and the walls, though weathered and worn, are built of tiny, interlocked, hexagonal bricks placed neatly against each other. Strange circular platforms of cerulean blue crystal are suspended in mid-air all around the chamber, at a height with the walkway, with seemingly nothing keeping them afloat.

In the middle of the chamber is a raised platform of the same basalt grey, the floor lined with spiral patterns of gold, at the centre of which rises a massive obelisk of glistening obsidian that glows with an internal pale blue light, lined with rings of radiant gold, a haze of arcana steaming off it.

Four crisscrossing arches of white moonstone surround it, clearly built later than the rest of the chamber, forming an armillary sphere design. And these seem to be catching the arcana steaming off the obelisk and emanating moonlight upward into the beacon that pours out of the ceiling far above you. Just past them, at the base of the obelisk with her hands raised, chanting loudly through the growing hum of magic, they see the Princess Alva, and whatever ritual she is incanting appears to be rising into a crescendo.

Hoping to end things before they began, Germain takes a kill shot at the princess, but finds it blocked by an invisible barrier that erupts into moonlight just around the arches. Alerted, two of Alva's Twilight Guard retaliate, seemingly intent on buying the princess as much time as possible.

With the moonstone arches beginning to spin and accelerate as the ritual continues, the group hurriedly tries to disable all four of them, while fending off the Twilight Guard. One by one, they dispel three of them, breaking the barrier that prevented entry to the central platform. With her guard fallen, Alva herself joins the fray, twin blades of mist in hand, desperately trying to prevent the ritual from failing.

Drawn inexplicably to the obelisk by the creature writhing beneath their skin, the Brothers make a dash for the central platform, pursued closely by Alva. They reach a hand for the beacon, the droning in their head rising into screeching ecstasy, but only touch it for a moment before Alva catches up to them and knocks them back.

In a frenzy, they turn on her and strike her down with a blow of their cruel war hammer. But before they can finish the job and reach back for the obelisk, Germain makes a split second decision to stop them, fearing their motives may be outside their objectives, potentially with dangerous consequences. With a single precise shot, he fells the Brothers, the blow jolting a single moment of lucidity from Gorum, who can only rasp out two pained words before the writhing beneath his skin and the droning in his mind wrests back control.

"*Help...me...*"
 ― Gorum, the Godless

Falling away from the stumbling, mortally wounded mutant hulk, the dying princess crawls towards the obelisk, whispering a prayer to the Eventide, calling for her intervention.

Time slows. From the princess’s chest, where the Eventide's holy symbol is inscribed, moonlight erupts outward in a blinding surge, and all other light in the chamber seems to dim in comparison. The light steaming off the armillary arches gets sucked inward, into a pinprick. Space folds in on itself, a vortex of moonlight and stars, like a tear in reality, and Alva is consumed by the moonlight. In her place a figure three times as tall begins to rise, shaped out of swirling twilight, a crescent moon across its face, moonlight cascading from glowing fingertips, a form outlined in fractal stars. When it speaks, it speaks with a powerful ringing voice, underlined by the sound of  cracking glass.

"*YOU HAVE DEFILED THIS CITY LONG ENOUGH. I WILL CLEANSE YOU FROM THIS WORLD. YOU AND ALL YOUR ILK.*"
 ― Princess Alva

With a shout, the massive swirling vortex creature plunges both moonlit hands at the obelisk, and where the magic was pulsing and flaring erratically, now it ignites. The obelisk explodes with inner light. Instead of streaming out of it in cascades, arcana begins to swirl towards it, sucking in moonlight, heat, sound, and shadow alike. The creature that was once the Princess Alva staggers in shock, but seems unable to release its grasp on the obelisk.

"*WHAT IS THIS? WHAT DID YOU DO?*"
 ― Princess Alva

The blue crystal platforms arrayed around the room in their odd pattern come to life. Tethers of magic, clear blue and bright, begin to link them, forming a unique pattern that almost seems like a constellation. The walls of the chamber begin to fade and disappear, replaced by an abyss of stars, an astral void spreading and eating away at the edges of reality, like the entire chamber is shifting to somewhere else. Somewhere beyond.

The twilight creature lets out a long scream of pain, the entirety of its form unravelling, sucked into the obelisk at the centre of the chamber. Faster and faster and faster, light flaring, noise surging, until just as quickly as it had begun, the light around the obelisk freezes into a glowing beacon of solid golden light. Abruptly, the rush of air stops. All the noise, all the howling wind, the hum of energy, the crackle of power. Goes silent.

### Elsewhere*(???)*

All of a sudden, the weight of the world lifts away. They begin to float, eerily, their feet losing purchase on the ground. Around them, reality has disappeared entirely, the abyss of stars replacing everything but the constellation of cerulean blue platforms. The air begins to disperse, the breath in their lungs sucked away by the vacuum, and unconsciousness begins to creep in.

With the edges of their vision turning black, they see the now golden obelisk let out two beams of golden light, shooting past, piercing through the void. Silent, but streaming heat and arcane power beyond anything they had ever seen. The beams streak away into the abyss of stars, moving at the speed of light, reaching out towards two distant pinpricks of gold, that by comparison to the obelisk behind them seem dull, faded, and incomplete.

The beams of gold hit the pinpricks of light, and falter, finding no purchase. Within an instance, they blink out, dispersing into clouds of golden dust. The stars disappear. The void vanishes. The survivors drop back to solid earth, weight settling back on their shoulders and spines. Air rushes back into their lungs, and the complete empty silence they were in is replaced once again by the echo of the chamber, which now sits empty, except for the obelisk bathe in solid gold light.

### Alyth Loth*(25th of Hallowfen, 4E 775)*

"*Well done.*"
 ― Warbringer

Through the echoing silence, a voice speaks out. Standing in the archway leading into this final chamber, a black silhouette against the molten orange flames of a city dying beyond, is a figure dressed in armour of burnished steel, painted with twisting woad markings that seemed to turn the reflections into wisps of smoke. And across his head and shoulders, fluttering in the wind caused by the surging heat outside, is a silken veil of black and red.

They all recognise the figure, though none had seen him before. They had heard the stories, the tales of the creature that had directed this war from the side-lines. A creature that had moved armies like pieces on a board, intervening personally, an army of one man, when the tide threatened to shift and the enemy dared to hope. Crushing the defiant. Ordering the deaths of thousands. A creature whom even their generals and masters seemed to fear. A creature referred to only as Warbringer.

"*You should be proud of what you have accomplished here today. By your savagery, you have unshackled the first chain that binds us. You have set us on the path to salvation.*"
 ― Warbringer

He strides idly down the walkway while he speaks, moving past the injured group, coming to a stop at the radiant obelisk. He pauses, then sets one hand against it, and a tremble runs through his entire body, with anticipation, excitement, or joy. When he speaks, its almost to himself, like he was reciting a prayer.

"*When Truth descends upon them...when they face the final test, they shall look on what pride has wrought, they shall cry out to their false idols, and find only silence.*"
 ― Warbringer

The words hang on the air, and for a moment, each of the group feels the temperature of the room drop. A sudden chill sweeps through it, and with it faint whispers, hushed, insistent, reaching from the dark corners of the chamber. It lasts only for a split second, but in that time, they see the shadowed edges of the dark seem to form hands and fingers, reaching out for the obelisk at the centre.

And then the stranger takes his hand from the glowing black stone. The whispers quieten. The shadows recede. And he turns to look across the group, his expression impossible to see beneath the veil.

"*Inform your masters. The third disciple has been found. She goes now to Stillwater. The next stage of our work can begin.*"
 ― Warbringer