Living History • Blood of the Martyrs

*The long days of peace are ending. The fall of Alyth Loth was only the beginning. Everywhere, in distant corners of the wild or shadowed urban streets, quiet bloodshed and silent wars eat away at the edges of civilisation, and piece by piece, everything starts to come apart. The golden age of Ygdren, at last, has begun to unravel.*
*A little over a month ago, in the lands of Edraxis, a castle fell from the clouds. Wreathe in fire, plummeting to earth from distant stars, this proud fortress of grey stone tore through the heavens, an unmistakable sign that the world was forever changing. It came to rest at the heart of this troubled nation, bringing an unceremonious end to the bloody civil war that had been tearing it apart, and breaking the siege of Invinze in the name of the One True God.*
*Since then, the land has gone quiet.*
*No ships sail from ports along the Adrean Coast, and no merchants travel the amber road to Varais and Samarkhet. Even the border forts along the Ardari have been still. And still the bastion hangs below the clouds, visible from miles distant, and angelic creatures of golden light patrol the sky, acting under the forceful will of some new, unknown, deity.*
*Troubled by this sudden shift in the divine paradigm, and following her mandate to excise the unnatural and unknown like poison from a wound, Eris, the Fey Huntress, led her fearsome Wyld Hunt deep into Edraxis in pursuit of the truth. For a few days, outrunners reported regularly back to the fey realms, until all at once, just before the Spring Confluence, they too went silent.*
*Weeks have passed since then, and there has been no sign of the Wyld Hunt, nor has the Aspect of Eris returned to the Fellwild. Things continue to worsen. A storm boils over the mountains in the north. An insidious plot unfurls in Oblivion. The gods bicker and argue and fight amongst themselves. And far to the east, a young woman reaches for her destiny and threatens to break the world.*
*Desperate to rescue her goddess from whatever has befallen her, Queen Titania sends out a call for aid to any that will answer, and amidst the rising panic, with the threat of calamity looming and the gods preparing for war, a handful of divine champions are called upon to venture into the jaws of this unknown peril, to discover what is truly happening in the shadow of this castle in the sky.*
*This is their story.*
### Tarnished Wastes*(9thth of Allfen, 4E 776)*

Wind howls over the cold tundra of southern Urskaya, sweeping the last of the wet, melting snow over the rocky crags and jagged hilltops. Brown-red grass shifts in waves underfoot, crunching cold as the morning mildew freezes on its tips. A solitary figure crosses the tundra, with a strange gait, as though each foot temporarily rooted itself to the soil before being ripped away to take the next step.

Legion, their destination unclear, follows scents rising and falling on the howling wind, scents only they can taste. Fire and ash, thunder and lightning, blood and bone, and the crisp taste of winter on a summer morn: snowflakes and juniper, something frigid and sharp coiling faintly at the edges of the senses.

By now, the taste of the horn that had woken them from their dream some weeks prior has all but faded, but still it haunts them and drives them forward, seeking and searching for what it meant. All of a sudden, a voice speaks to them on the breeze, the same taste of winter: dry wood and cracking ice.

"*Lost child of the hunt. Answer my call, I beg. Chase the wind. Follow the wild. Bring our mother home.*"
 ― Titania

As though in answer, the wind picks up, howling through the gaps in the roots that make up Legion's twisted body. A circular doorway bathe in a blizzards forms ahead, and through it Legion tastes new scents: brick and stone, sweat and incense, and a horn weakly blowing. Without question, they walk through and follow the call.

### Edraxis Countryside*(9thth of Allfen, 4E 776)*

In a clearing just outside Invinze, the capital city of Edraxis, Legion steps through the snow portal and finds themselves amidst the remains of a fight that evidently happened here some weeks before. There are no bodies, but they find some strangely familiar arrows embedded in a tree, and various other marks of fierce fighting, and of at least one body being carried away.

While they investigate, others begin to emerge into the clearing. Servants of different gods, that had all answered a call to find and hopefully rescue the aspect of Eris, the Fey Huntress, who had gone missing. They come together in the clearing and surmise that the Wyld Hunt had been ambushed here. The lack of bodies or other remains implies they had not been killed, but been taken elsewhere. After some searching they find tracks leading eastwards, towards Invinze.

Leaving the treeline, they catch their first view of the massive fortification that hangs in the sky above the city. A towering bastion of basalt grey stone, in the shape of an equal-sided cross with flared points. Strangely, they note that there is no sign of the angelic golden creatures that some of them had been warned about, and in fact they see no outward sign of life on the bastion itself.

Upon approach towards the city, they notice that the farms and countryside around the city walls are also suspiciously empty. The fields, though still well-tilled, show signs of abandonment and the early stages of being overgrown. They follow the main road towards the city gates, noting them to be open and unguarded. Once again, there is no sign of anyone entering or leaving the city, and all is quiet on the walls.

### Invinze*(9thth of Allfen, 4E 776)*

Cautiously, the group enters the city proper, to find it just as abandoned as the farmland outside. However, Legion continues to hear the faint notes of a ringing horn from up ahead, where upon a hilltop rises the proud shape of the Valiant Cathedral, the centre point of the Church of the Vigil that still rules Edraxis, or at least had done before the civil war.

Coming from the cathedral, they also hear the sounds of song: rhythmic, vaguely melodic choir music, chanting of a sort, almost a call to prayer or a prayer in itself. Before moving on, they spend some time investigating nearby houses, finding them to have a thin layer of dust that had seemingly not been disturbed in some few weeks, and noting that the houses hadn't been abandoned in a panic or a hurry, nor forcibly evacuated.

They press forward up the main road to the cathedral proper. As they progress, the prayer song gets increasingly more audible. It sounds haunting, almost alien, and even though none of them speak Edraxan they can tell there is something more to the words that is beyond mundane language. Something far older, that is mingling with the chanting to create an elevated incantation of some kind.

Coming to the doors of the cathedral, which are unguarded, they push inside. A curious sensation has taken over them by this point, a sense of assurance, and of obligation to a higher cause, that replaces the extend of divinity and calling they previously had in their chests. The sensation also drowns out any feelings of unease or apprehension they would normally have in this situation, as the cathedral seems to welcome them, and fill them with a sense of authority that emboldens their steps and strengthens them.

Moving inside, they pass between statues of towering priests, all dimly lit and bearing vague expressions of scorn or kindness or stern anger. Nothing stops them from proceeding. At last, they enter the nave of the cathedral, where the passageway widens into a grand chamber. The smell of incense here is intensely overpowering, cloying at nostrils and mouths, and the air is almost uncomfortably warm.

Here, something gives them pause. The interior of the church, already grandiose though austere in decoration, has been completely taken over by a strange crystalline bone-white material, seeming both living and crystal at the same time. It seems to have grown along the floors and pillars and vaulted ceiling, forming hexagonal patterns around perfect slabs of basalt grey stone.

Along the flooring, a fractal pattern of cerulean blue crystal lined with gold spreads outward like roots to lines of stoups arranged along the length of the nave, bowl-shaped stone podiums that would normally hold holy water, but now seem to hold a thick, viscous, glowing liquid, sap green and brown in colour. Next to each bowl, rhythmically chanting and softly swinging censers that pour clouds of burning incense from their depths are hooded priests, heads stooped low in prayer.

More importantly, kneeling inside each bowl, are what look like normal people. Humans, largely. Old, young, men, women, children. Dozens of them, one in each stoup. They’re all naked and unmoving, hands clasped in their laps, kneeling, sitting on their heels, completely still amidst the sounds of prayer. None of the people in the cathedral, priest or otherwise, seem to notice them enter, or care.

From up ahead, a warm golden glow emanates from a much larger figure kneeling where the altar and sept would be. A creature of light, with manifold tendrils of gold twining from its back and idly reaching to either side. It too seems in prayer, still and waiting, but as they begin to move down the nave towards it, it speaks, with a loud voice that echoes over the chant.

"*Have you come to offer prayer, or is there only sin in thine hearts?*"
 ― First Spear of the Creator

It turns to face them, standing to its full height and hovering some distance above the floor. The light that pours from it diminishes a moment, and they see that, though its shape is somewhat humanoid, it is most definitely *not* humanoid. A thin sheen of glistening silver metal seems to encase its form, thin enough that the internal light of its being still glows through. Its head has no eyes or nose or any of the features one would normally expect. Instead, a pattern of gold seems to emerge from it, forming a cross with equal flared sides, the same shape of the bastion that floats above this city.

"*Be not afraid, many who enter his divine gaze are sinful. It is only in the seeking of his forgiveness that we may experience the Creator's mercy.

I know of those that have sent you. Long have they perched above this world; vultures, circling a corpse. Perched, and done nothing, while rot festers in its heart. But they too, still, can find redemption. This world faces great danger, children of sin. A dark power seeks to turn it to its own twisted ends, seeks to turn its people against each other, against even your gods. It promises salvation, but brings only war and ruin.

But, the Creator, in his infinite mercy, has ever granted us the strength to face such evils. We have fought a holy war against this creature and its servants on countless worlds, and defeated it on each one. We will do so again, here, and build in its carcass a Kingdom of Heaven, pure and clean. Your gods too have a place, if they wish it, we are ever all his children. They need only take the Creator's hand in friendship, offer themselves to be baptised in his name, and by their strength and ours, we shall burn the rot from this world in holy light.*"
 ― First Spear of the Creator

As the being speaks, Legion, who has remained within the shadows at the edges of the nave and made their way around to the side, tastes once again the sound of a hunting horn on the air, and the taste of arrows flying straight and true. Past this creature, as it turns, they catch a glimpse of what stands now in place of the altar at the heart of the sept.

Wrapped in a dome of golden chains, a small figure is hunched, wracked in pain, shards of white crystalthorn skewering it in a hundred different places and pulling from it strands of sap green and brown light, that pools and coalesces into liquid. A figure Legion barely recognises, but seems to know more deeply than any other. A young woman, with skin of beautiful summer bark, and hair of curtained leaves, dressed like a huntress.

At the same time, Squeak feels blood rushing to her head, ink black and cold. Her frigid heart stirs faster and faster, beating against her chest like drums in the deep abyss, and she hear "the Tidecaller" speaking to her, an ink black being stirring far in distant depths, as she's heard it ever before, booming furiously in her head, in a wash of intense rage.

"*LIES. LIES. LIES. HE MUST DROWN. DROWN. DROWN.*"
 ― The Voice in the Deep

Legion lets loose a flurry of arrows from where they are hidden, slamming attacks into the angelic creature, and Squeak follows suit with a barrage of attacks of her own. Seeing no peaceful concourse, the others join battle as well, and a desperate fight ensues, where the group of divine champions attempts to break through a line of defence and get through to the dome imprisoning the aspect of the Fey Huntress. The angelic being, describing itself as an Archangel, the First Spear of the Creator, attempts to stop them, using a godly spear of celestial gold, the Spear of Enoch, as a deadly weapon.

In the fighting, they strike down several of the priestly figures fighting them, that rise again and again with burning golden light in their eyes, seemingly obligated beyond death to continue the fight by some powerful divine magic. Flair is struck down by the Spear of Enoch, and his unconscious body joins the other people within the stoups, some of which, closest to the alter, appear to be lost members of the Wyld Hunt.

The others, badly injured but continuing to fend off the intense assault of the First Spear of the Creator, manage to break through the golden dome encasing the aspect of the Fey Huntress, noting how it seemed like her arcane blood was being drawn from the aspect by the crystalthorn skewers and passed out to the manifold stoups in the cathedral along the network of crystalthorn that encased the floor.

Now freed, the aspect drops unconscious to the floor, and the mission becomes a frantic one of trying to protect her from being destroyed before she can return to the Fellwild. Squeak, still driven by the intense rage in her freezing heart, is pushed to destroy the aspect, betraying the others and launching a frenzied rain of spells upon the aspect in a bid to destroy it and thereby cripple the Fey Huntress as a whole.

At the same time, between the surge of destructive magic that broke the golden dome and seemed to severely damage the First Spear of the Creator, and the general damage of battle, the Archangel is damaged badly enough to fall from the sky. Its badly injured form lands upon the floor of the sept, where it draws in a divine breath and seems to draw upon the life force of every creature within a stoup in the cathedral, Flair included, which are atomised in a burst of radiant flame. The release of arcana from dozens of creatures being instantaneously raptured in this way reconstitutes the Archangel, which rises back into the sky burning brighter and intensely more powerfully than before.

"*Thou have fought bravely, but sin can never overcome the faithful.*"
 ― First Spear of the Creator

Legion, seeing things collapsing around them, attempts to convince the exalted form of the First Spear of the Creator to first destroy Squeak, a common enemy, as she repeatedly assaults the aspect of the Fey Huntress, severely damaging her. Though the plea gives the First Spear of the Creator some pause, it is unsuccessful, and a three-way battle continues in which Legion manages to barely strike down Squeak before she can do irrevocable damage, being forced to do it twice as ink black magic reconstitutes her broken form temporarily to return her to the fight.

As Squeak falls, the First Spear of the Creator speaks a singular exalted word, that banishes Dresk from the material plane, and instantly kills Faugr, who was badly injured already. Their allies dropping quickly, Legion and Kaelani, struggle to preserve the aspect for long enough, until at last Kaelani manages to banish the dwindling form, forcing the aspect to return instantly to the Fellwild.

Seeing that it had failed despite its great efforts, the Archangel strikes down Legion and Kaelani in a fit of righteous fury, felling them upon the Spear of Enoch, and swearing that they would never know redemption in the eyes of the Creator. With his last breath, Kaelani sees the hazy figure of the Wayfarer beckoning him away, to one last journey, and finds peace in death.

### Elsewhere*(???)*

Dresk, having been banished back to Elysium, but otherwise alive, is met by the Earthmaven, who assures him that he had done all he could. Faugr's spirit finds its way to the eternal blizzard of the Frostweald, where the Wintershard takes him into her cold embrace. Likewise, Flair, returns to Laeryndwell to wander the dream pools alongside the Emberveil in death.

As the others find peace in the arms of their divines, Squeak instead drowns. Admonished angrily for her failure, the voice of "the Tidecaller", which in truth is that of the Kraken Queen, drags her down to the abyssal depths, and promises that her form would be turned to other purposes once it had been taken apart and remade.

Though his physical body was slain, Legion's essence returns to his tree far in the distant north, where his bitter dreams at last shift to ones tinged with hope, free of the nagging call of a hunting horn and the nightmare of a broken hunt, given some measure of peace by the Fey Huntress that they had successfully rescued from a dire fate.