Campaign 1 • Chapter 09

"*There are a hundred thousand people in this city alone. A million more in Sol Kalahar. Who knows how many else in this desert. An army that size...it would wipe us off the face of this earth. If I allow even one person to leave, it could doom us all.*"
 ― Julius Vex

## Cleansing by Fire

On their way to Al Salah, they are attacked by a warband of mordael rebels in a small canyon. The rebels take them by surprise, and seem to be assisted by some elite warriors from the Mordael Emirate. They kill a lot of the inquisition soldiers before the party, Julius, and the remainder of his men manage to drive them off. Understandably upset, Julius has to be persuaded to continue towards their destination instead of chasing down those that escape.

When they reach the mill town, Namfoodle sneaks in first to investigate, finding the town filled only by hooded and cloaked figures, that seem to be packaging grain into crates identical to the ones they found. He also finds that some of the buildings seem to be locked and barred, with some thing or some things alive rattling inside. A leader or supervisor of some sort seems to be overseeing the process and giving instructions. Namfoodle causes a distraction, then attempts to begin attacking, going straight for the leader.

A chaotic battle ensues, with the rest of the party and the remaining Inquisition forces charging into the village to fight the hooded figures. From the locked houses break out a wave of more sporelings, released by one of the cultists. The leader, wounded by Namfoodle, escapes into a canyon at the far end of the village, leaving behind a trail of blood. Ordering his men to kill or round up the remaining cultists, Julius takes the party and goes in pursuit.

In the canyon, they fight their way through more sporelings and a few more cultists, following the trail of blood up a path to a ledge on the side of the canyon. There they find the wounded leader, who is revealed to be Curate Calius Durio, the supposed religious overseer of Imrafel.

Julius confronts him, and the curate explains how he had recieved a vision from the gods of an angel, a servant of the shade, sent by thegods to purge this world of the unworthy. An angel, he says, of shadow, with eyes of fire. Julius sentences him to death by hanging, but the curate scornfully tells him that it was too late, that the grain had already been shipped to Imrafel days earlier. In a week, every elf in the city would be infected or dead. The curate, in his ravings, takes a step too far back and falls off the ledge, landing at the bottom dead.

In a desperate panic, the party and Julius rush back towards Imrafel. When they arrive they rush to the city's quartermaster who informs them that the grain had already been handed out and would have started to be consumed by now. Seeing no other option, and knowing that the plague had so far only infected elves, Julius orders that the city is to be purged, and all elves are to be executed. He sees this as the only way to avoid the plague spreading far and wide with nearly a hundred thousand potentially infected citizens who regularly travelled away from the city. He warns the party that if the plague reached Sol Kalahar, the capital of Samarkhet with a population of over a million people, the resulting army would be large enough to wipe out huge swathes of civilisation. Better to sacrifice the relative few in this city than to bring about that devastating future.

Reluctantly, the party comes around to his point of view, seeing that there was no way to develop a cure in such a short time. Namfoodle, choosing to act upon the dreams his bow had showed him to destroy evil wherever it may spread, joins the culling, while the rest of the party abandons the city to its fate. They wait for Namfoodle to return at the camp they had established earlier, and when he does so he is covered in ash and blood.

Dejected, broken, and defeated, the party spends the night in the desert, deciding to find some way home the following day, while in the distance the smoke from the burning city of Imrafel covers the sky.