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i am a big believer in giving the PCs as many chances to interact with Vorlesh as possible. And the dinner scene was memorable when we had one (earlier in book 3 - it is in the narrative thread) what is her motivation for not killing them? If you go the rumble route and are interested i can post my rules for crowd interactions, environmental effects, etc I made gelderfang another child of baphomet and added him to the inelecuctable prison as a guard
Cutscene XX: The Heart of the Worldwound 10 Gozran, 4724 - Vigil, Lastwall
But for the first time since your mythic ascension you can also sense the flow within your companions, as if you are each a tributary fed from some larger source. You feel your power stretch out towards your companions, seeking to merge, and as the rivers get closer your own senses begin to dim, your perception of reality narrowing, before being replaced by something simultaneously more intimate and expansive. Your sense of the chapel grows wider, as if seeing it from multiple eyes. One heartbeat becomes six, your blood flowing through veins that are not your own. You have brief flashes of memory you do not recognize yet somehow experienced. Nothing you can fully process, yet it is as if you have lived six lives in the span of one. You feel whispered thoughts, emotions rather than words - the existential truth of your companions souls, visible to you for the first time. You marvel at Queso’s confidence, and draw strength from Irabeth’s boundless resolve. There is a thrilling recklessness emanating from Zograthy, tinged with a darkness that feels at odds with the righteousness pouring from Rischa. You almost gag at Wick’s suffocating guilt, before you are swept along the moonlit paths navigated by Kiryn, possibilities that could lead you anywhere.
*** 10 Gozran, 4724 - Threshold Exterior, The Worldwound
The canyon walls are pockmarked with countless caves, most of which vomit out a steady stream of unholy lava, the heat turning the violent rain into a heavy, sickly mist. The sensation of evil in the air is so thick you can feel it on your skin, like a wet, abrasive slime, and for a moment you wonder if you will ever be clean again. The sky is a violent infection unleashing the toxic fury of the abyss, rents in the atmosphere disgorging lightning, hail, acid, and thunder. Though it was the morning when you left Lastwall, it is night in the Worldwound, and what illumination the sky provides comes from stars that are not your own. The canyon bowl writhes and seethes, a sea of vermin constantly consuming each other, though their numbers replenish as fast as they are destroyed, emerging through glowing gates somewhere below the roiling surface. And there, off in the distance, at the center of the canyon, you see it - the tower of Threshold, like a spike stabbed into the heart of Golarion, or a claw rising from a grave. It reaches two hundred feet into the sky and seems to be eighty feet wide, made of a dark stone. Three of Threshold’s four outlying spires still arch up into the sky above the lake of vermin, but the fourth lies partially crumbled into ruins. The central spire of the tower rises up twice as high as its companions. Everywhere the air has a shimmery haze, like the world around you is almost, but not quite solid. There is a deep thrumming screech, almost like the sound you imagine obsidian mountains would make if they were scraped together. Your eyes shift into the spectrums of magic. Exploding from Threshold, you see hundreds, perhaps thousands, of massive strands of magical energy made of the nauseating iridescent colors of the abyss - purple, orange, yellow, green, shot through with darkness. You see them stretch off into the Worldwound, like parasitic tentacles intent on enveloping Golarion - though whether they are sucking its vitality out, pumping corruption in, or both, is hard to say. You can see the abyssal tentacles have latched onto the network of magical ley lines that criss-cross the planet. Every few seconds you can swear you see new strands emerge from Threshold, and the velocity of their manifestation increases before your eyes Circling the tower are four flying shapes – from this distance they look like birds, but that’s probably not what they are. *** A massive gout of vermin erupts from the lake of corruption, and a wedge shaped cloud of insects veers into the sky. As the vermin fall away in crackling, popping sheets, twin intertwining ribbons of fire and ice diverge in opposite directions, the last of the vermin sloughing off their twisting forms, the charred and frozen bodies raining into the endless pool below. One blur resolves into a gargantuan bird of living flame, and you would swear you are looking at a phoenix if not for its vulture-like aspect. Its flames are tinged with purple, burning with an unnatural, unholy heat. It releases a sharp piercing cry, half triumph, half pain, and within it you can feel an undying rage and sense of half remembered violation – unable to fully articulate itself and equally unable to let go. And you know that this is Pyralisia, once a noble phoenix and a powerful ally of the First Crusade – drawn north from the deserts of Osirian to oppose the forces of the Abyss. She was lost at the dawn of the Second Crusade, holding off the forces of Deskari long enough for the Herald of Iomedae to fully invest the wardstones. Her rebirth was corrupted by a combination of the abyssal energies of the Worldwound and some design of Vorlesh, and Pyralisia became the Rain of Embers – for many years a scourge of crusaders who journeyed too deeply into the Worldwound, though not seen at all during the Fifth Crusade. For all the dire tragedy of Pyralisia, your heart truly breaks when you gaze upon her companion. Almost nine months ago, when the earth cracked open during the Storm King’s assault on Kenebras, it was the last act of a dying dragon that saved your life. You were no one important. No songs chronicled your deeds. No prophecy promised your name. You had not stared down demon lords, spoken to Gods, or performed feats that could rightfully be called miracles. You were just a small handful of lives to save, one final act of decency and hope in defiance of the world’s constant assertion of darkness and evil. Almost nothing of that Terendelev remains. The dragon’s elegant silver frame is gone, reduced to a skeleton bathed in sickly green light. As she turns her head towards you there is no trace of nobility and compassion in her gaze – just a baleful stare to match a rictus snarl. Your eyes are drawn to the space in her neck where the Storm King decapitated the great dragon – the ghostly outline of a vertebrae marking the site of Khorramzadeh’s triumph. The phoenix can sense the wardstone energy, and screeches in outrage. “I can feel those cursed stones within you. I gave my life bringing them into being, only to be forgotten by the mortals and forsaken by the gods. Every day since my sacrifice has been constant agony. Finally, after a century of torment. I shall revisit my pain upon its source!” And then Terendelev speaks, the clarion timbre of her voice replaced by a cold, rumbling scrape. “Ahhh, my namesakes have come. I suppose the adoption of my former self as your standard is a tribute of sorts. But that form was weak and afraid. Now there is no pain. Now there is no fear. There is only hunger, and power. Lady Vorlesh prophesied you would come. She has prepared me for your arrival, and my might will grow when I feast upon your souls. My legend will strike terror in the hearts of mortals. There is a place of privilege for me in the world she is creating, where none will have the audacity to stand before me. Welcome, Silver Scale, to Threshold. Welcome to your end.” ***
You gaze down upon the interior of the tower of Threshold as you float at the top of a central shaft stretching four hundred feet down. All along the walls, at regular intervals, are arcane portals, one hundred in total. They cluster in blocks of five, with a new bank appearing in staggered intervals along the opposite wall. The ceiling holds a circular portal, and a portal of similar size lies directly below it, hundreds of feet down, nestled between the interior chambers at the tower’s apparent base. The tower is filled to bursting with swarms of flying vermin, so thick they partially obscure your vision. Adorning the walls of Threshold are complex arcane symbols the likes of which you have never seen before, bathing the tower interior in a dim, eerie, strobing light. They crackle with energy, and purple, orange, yellow, and green bolts of eldritch power zip haphazardly from symbol to symbol. They incinerate the insects in their path, but there is an infinite supply eager to take their place. Your magical sight reveals the abyssal aspected threads of magical energy emerging through the portal below, drawing strength from the symbols throughout the tower, weaving themselves into massive strands before passing through its ceiling and out into the ever expanding lands of the Worldwound. Threshold has been transformed into some kind of amplifier. As you get your bearings, your vision blurs. But no, you realize. Your vision is fine. It is reality that wavers around you, as it struggles to make sense of two separate spaces collocated at the same moment and place in time. You are in Golarion. You are in the Rasping Rifts. You are someplace else. Someplace new. You have journeyed in abyssal spaces, and stood before demon lords, but there is a concentrated evilness to this place, an edge to the chaos that bleeds over into insanity, as if everything noxious and unholy about the abyss is condensed down and forced out through a tiny aperture that focuses and distills its essence. It is all you can do to resist. But the sounds are the worst part. It takes a moment to hear it through the maddening chorus of billions of insects. It is the same tectonic screeching you heard outside, but amplified and focused. It is the sound of a planet screaming in pain, crying out for help. The tolling siren song of the apocalypse. The sound of the end of the world. *** The gargantuan creature that emerges from the portal below you is the stuff of nightmares. It appears to be a large hybrid of a scorpion and crab, a eurypterid, Queso notes with pedantic satisfaction, though vastly larger than the normal versions of its species. There is a humanoid face embedded in its chest, bloody red and screaming with a terrifying rage. It clacks its claws and spits, releasing a stream of foul high pressurized water that cracks the stone walls of Threshold. A noxious poison drips from its stinger. It roars, and places itself between you and the portal. But this creature is less terrifying than the enormous four legged insectoid monster that emerges from the portal behind him. It almost resembles a massive derakni, larger than an elephant except its wings seem to be made of thousands of flying insects. The arms emerging from its humanoid torso grip a massive scythe. It is a shape that has haunted the dreams of northern Golarian for more than a century. The Lord of the Locust Host, the Usher of the Apocalypse. Deskari. But then the reality around the demon lord wavers, and he seems to collapse in on himself before growing back to his full size. In the blink of an eye his form expands and contracts a dozen times, before settling into a smaller form the size of a balor. Galfrey warned you might encounter such a creature. When beings of extraordinary power manifest in a plane that is not their own, they can leave behind echoes of their essence, small reflections of their larger self. Two hundred years ago, an avatar of the god Aroden confronted Deskari in the lands of Sarkoris. Aroden defeated him, and banished the demon lord back to the Rasping Rifts. But the boundaries between the prime and Deskari’s realm are thin here, and Deskari’s echo remained. Aroden imprisoned it, deep within the Lake of Mists and Veils, where the church of Aroden and then Iomedae kept a careful vigil, ensuring its captivity. When Vorlesh fully opened the Worldwound, the surge of abyssal power must have been enough to destroy the integrity of Aroden’s seal. The Echo of Deskari clacks its mandibles in a gesture that manages to convey both smugness and rage, despite its inhuman aspect. “Ahhh, at last. The servants of Aroden’s inheritor. I awoke to find that upstart God is no more, done in by his own self-righteousness and hubris. And now, with your death, Aroden’s failure is utterly complete, and vengeance will be mine. This planet will fall to me. Humanity will be mine to do with as I see fit. And I see fit to do unspeakable things. Use these final moments to contemplate the totality of your failure and despair, you jumped up mortal gnats. I am the mind, body, and voice of the swarm. I am perfection. And I will feast upon the carrion of your body, and bathe in the wreckage of your soul.” ***
At long last, you stand before the abyssal nightmare devouring Golarion. The end of all roads. The heart of the Worldwound. It is nestled eighty feet below you, a swirling vortex of abyssal maggots, crackling with energy in all the iridescent, revolting colors of the Abyss. And deep in this sucking, gurgling whirlpool shimmers a nauseating, pulsating orange light. You can sense its malevolence from here, and something that feels almost like sentience. The room is filled with the constant roiling sound of thunder, thanks to the putrescent pool of billions of wriggling white grubs. The cries of Golarion are louder here, a siren screaming in your head, in vain protest of its intimate violation, powerless to do anything but witness the inevitability of its death. The air has a thickness to it, almost like you are moving through invisible webs. Despite gravity appearing to function normally, maggots flow out of the pool and rain upon the ceiling above, where they either splatter or are immediately set upon by prior survivors. The walls of this immense chamber are made of pulsing, decayed flesh, from which spurs and fragments of worked stone protrude like jagged bones. Masses of vermin crawl along every surface, feeding on the bleeding walls, the cancerous flesh scabbing over as quickly as it is devoured. The vermin shift in color and shape to form sinister runes and odious prayers out of their swarming bodies. It feels like Deskari’s answer to the stained glass windows of Iomeade’s cathedral. The swarms on the wall to the west glow with a nauseating orange light, forming two huge runes that vaguely resemble an insectile face. Underneath the insects, seemingly carved into the flesh of this chamber, are lurid frescoes of vermin devouring the world. The image of a towering demonic insect wielding a massive scythe made of bone looms within each one. Other carvings feature representations of chasms, rifts, and trenches, each depicted with incredible realism. Arueshalae swallows, and speaks. The disgust in her voice is tinged with wonder and awe. “There it is - the heart of the Worldwound, the source of the evil that has been poisoning Golarion these last hundred years. If it hadn't opened, I would not have been here, would not have found Desna, would not have met you.” Irabeth places a hand on Arueshalae’s shoulder. “Iomedae preserve we mortals who stand in the way of chaos. This has been the wellspring of our collective nightmares for a century. It is time for us to wake up.” *** 11 Gozran, 4724 – The Soul of the Worldwound There is a sensation that can only be described as time fracturing and reassembling. You experienced something similar once before, during the moment of your ascension, when you witnessed the wardstone’s past and visions of possible futures. The sensation lasts but a moment, and then you are back in your present. Wick
“Well Wick. You asked for an audience, and now you have it. What do you ask of the Lady in Shadows?” (Wick speaks) “I already have granted you one boon, my champion. I’m afraid I never offer something for nothing, even for someone who has performed remarkably well in my service.” She pauses, considering, and leans forward, tenting her fingers and giving you a wicked smile. “Yes, I think I might find it useful if someone with your talents were to owe me a debt.” She leans back into her throne. “So I agree. I will intercede with Pharasma, and facilitate the release of your brother’s soul. For too long Phineas has been denied his rest and reward. Why Pharasma has seen fit to withhold it from him, I cannot say. After all, you got the job done, even if she disapproves of how you did it. But I can help. In exchange for a favor named later. Nothing a man of your talents can’t handle.” What do you say, Bastion Wick. Hero of the Prime. Do we have a deal?” *** Queso
Fresh from your victory in the Worldwound, the Silver Scale set out to make sure no demon lord would threaten Golarion again. Deskari lives, true, but the Rasping Rifts are sealed off. He is no longer a direct threat. And Baphomet was so vulnerable. The Ivory Labyrinth still reeled from his resurrection. You had ten months to prepare before his plane recovered. You used nine months and seventeen days to get ready. And with time finally on your side, the Silver Scale took their vengeance, and belatedly fulfilled a different promise. So great is your arcane power that even the legendary Runelords fear to ignore your summons. And so Alderpash is here. Ready to assist you. “Very well, Queso. I will share what I retain of the magic and knowledge of Thassilon, for one project, and one project only. Then my debt to you is paid. What secret do you desire to unlock? What do you wish to accomplish with my aid?” (Queso speaks) “This is something I believe we can accomplish. It will be difficult. And there are elements of my methods you may not enjoy. But Vorlesh was right about one thing. Power, true power, requires sacrifice. Shall we begin?” Alderpash offers you a dusty, cracked smile and awaits your answer. *** Rischa
You smile to yourself, in satisfaction. Serving as Herald was not an honor you sought out. It wasn’t even one you wanted. Your dreams were more modest. To delve into the history of your people. To find the lost sky citadel of Jormurdun. To live a life that honors Iomedae. But to act as her chosen agent. To fulfill that role as a mortal. It’s all too much, and you are ready to set that burden aside. But first you must complete this one task. You look around at your companions, grateful that you found such mighty allies, united in service of a great cause, worthy vessels of Iomedae’s gift. But as your eyes land on Wick you can sense something is wrong. The subtlest of nervous twitches. A stance trying just a little too hard to be nonchalant. By the time Wick brings his dagger down you are already in motion. But you know you will not reach him in time. The Herald will die, unredeemed, the Abyss will claim his soul for an eternity of torture, and Iomedae’s divine heart will break. You can sense within you a yet untapped wellspring of power. The true power of a herald. It will give you the speed you need to intercept the blade. To stop Wick. To save the Herald. To fulfill the wishes of your god. Do you reach for it? (Rischa decides) *** Kiryn
Perhaps it was never about you. Maybe this was always about Arueshalae, who saved you. If not for her actions in that moment you would be dead. And without your faith in her, would she have held to her newly awakened core? Or would she have thrown it all away? Crazy, that the fate of the world could swing on one moment like this. One test of character. One act of will. In either case, your heart swells with love and gratitude for the most unlikely of friends, this singular gift. The part of your mind that is not bound to the ritual seeks Arueshalae out, to invite her into this moment. She can sense your thoughts, and you hers. And as you do your heart seizes for a beat. Arueshale’s face is twisted in pain, as she struggles to resist the overwhelming corruption pouring through the gateway. She has only been redeemed for a few months, and the Worldwound is awakening millennia of demonic instincts. She is losing her battle. It is as Galfrey feared. The pull of the Worldwound was just too strong. And should Arueshale turn, the Silver Scale will not even notice until it is too late, defenseless, absorbed by the ritual. Arueshalae looks at you, and she is too lost in her struggle to speak. But you can see the despair in her eyes, the horror of having come so far, only to fail. And you hear her thoughts screaming in your head. “Sister…help me!” You fear for Arueshalae, but your heart remains pure, and strong, your faith in Desna hardened into a spiritual shield, the first paladin of the Goddess of Dreams. And you are intimately bound to Arueshalae through her gift. You can reach out to her, share your faith, and help her through this final test. You just need to open yourself up a little wider. (Kiryn decides) *** Zograthy
As he lay on his deathbed, satisfied he had made good in the end, he remained haunted by the sixty six years that now seemed wasted. He found his purpose, but he was out of time. His mind was clear, and his soul felt young, but his body had just given out, overwhelmed by the effort it took to seal the wound.. It was not right. Not fair. And he was afraid. His last visitors had left for the day. He was alone, in the dark. And he could feel his life fading. He knew, instinctively, that when he closed his eyes they would not open again. And then he sensed someone standing over him, in the dark. He recognized her smell. How could anyone ever forget it? He could sense her calculating, wicked smile. Mocking, yes, but just playful enough to let Zograthy in on the joke. “My magic man, with the magic hands. I dare say I may end up missing you. How do you feel, here at the end?” (Zograthy responds) “You know enough of the cosmology of the planes to know what happens next. Desna will try to claim your soul. I may try to stop her. I am sure I can make better use of it than she can. I might even let you keep your memories. The Amazing Zograthy is too singular to be reborn as just another Azata. You do not deserve to disappear. Far better to remain at my side.” Nocticula sighs, theatrically. “I fear I’ve spent too much time in the company of Iomedae’s champions. I can’t believe I am saying this, and I will deny it if repeated, but you’ve earned more time. And unlike Iomedae, I am willing to bend the rules to grant it to you. If you wish, I can restore your youth, and give you the time you desire. I won’t even bind you to me. You have done enough for that consideration. I daresay those magic hands will find their way back to me of their own volition. What do you say, Zograthy?” *** Arueshalae
That night, when she closed her eyes, she received a visitor. She recognized him instantly. It was the Desnan she killed all those years ago out in the Worldwound. The one whose dreams she invaded. The one who started her down the path that led her here. Arueshalae could not make eye contact. She took everything from this man. Owed him everything. What was there to say? How could she make amends? Sensing her thoughts, the Desnan smiled. “Hello Arueshalae. We meet again, under very different circumstances. You have done well. This is not a path I would have foreseen for you in those moments after you revealed yourself to me. I am proud of you.” Arueshalae’s heart seized in her chest. She felt the return of that old nausea. Her eyes began to well with tears. She tried to speak but before she could make a sound the Desnan held up his hand. “There is nothing to say. Look at what you have accomplished. The lives you have saved. You have balanced your scales. Forgive yourself, Arueshalae. It is time to dream.” And Arueshalae wanted that, so badly it hurt. But she recalled her conversation with Yaniel the night before the final battle of Drezen. And she told the Desnan: “Forgiveness is not something I can give myself. Nor can you forgive me for the harm I inflicted on others. The scales can never be balanced. No good I will do can ever replace the evil I have done, or the lives I have destroyed. Those consequences will linger, a permanent stain upon everything they touched. That is how it must be. Such is the enduring legacy of sin. But this has never been about the past. It is over, and I cannot change that. All I can do is begin each day, grateful for the chance to do good, to bring some light into darkened spaces, and help a lost soul find their path. I can strive to be better. I can make the most of my opportunity. I can make sure I never take the horizon for granted. Perhaps in time, Desna will forgive me. Her grace is a gift I hope to one day receive. But it is not my place to absolve myself of the sins I inflicted on others. No – that guilt made me what I am. It set me on my path. It is mine, and I will keep it. I carry it as a reminder of who I was, and as a challenge to remain who I am.” *** Irabeth
“I don’t ever want to leave this bed, Neve” “Me neither, Beth. But the bread won’t bake itself.” “No, it won’t, but how hungry are you, really?” Anevia thought, for a moment. “Not hungry enough to get up.” Irabeth smiled. “Me neither.” They lay there, quietly, together. Thinking mostly of nothing, enjoying the languid silence. But Irabeth’s mind eventually wandered. She pondered the cosmic immensity of the two of them finding each other, falling in love, and surviving what they’ve survived. It was just a lazy morning in bed. But it felt improbable. Impossible. That such a simple thing should exist was a miracle in itself. Eventually Anevia propped herself up and gave Irabeth a kiss. Gentle at first, but when Irabeth responded it became more passionate, more urgent. And then the knock on the door. “Commander Irabeth, are you there?” Anevia growled in frustration. “What? No she isn’t. Go away. She is busy. F~#~ off!” The messenger responded. “I am sorry. I have a summons from Queen Galfray. Commander Irabeth is needed immediately. It is urgent.” Anevia slammed her head into the pillow and screamed in frustration. She raised her head after a moment, and tears rimmed her eyes. “It’s never going to stop ‘Beth, is it? Someone is always going to need you. But I need you too. Here. Now. I have been so patient. You have done enough. We have done enough. Let someone else take responsibility for once. For me. Please.” Irabeth took Anevia’s head in her hands and looked her in the eyes. She gently kissed away her tears. “Neve. I am so sorry. I want to stay here. More than anything in the world. But this is not about what I want. It is about who I am.” And Irabeth gently set Anevia aside, and reached for her sword. *** 11 Gozran, 4724 – The Roots of the Worldwound You are in an immense chamber, its domed ceiling rising to a height of nearly two hundred feet. Ley lines flow up from the ground and into the Worldwound, like the demonic roots of a great abyssal tree. In fact, along the walls they seem to manifest as actual roots, infested by the vermin filling the space. You swear you can sense the chamber growing larger before your eyes, stretching and cracking as it absorbs more and more power. Above you the Worldwound churns in a miasmic counter clockwise rotation, feasting upon the energy flowing through the roots into the fell gate, and outwards to infect Golarion. Floating in the ceiling below the portal is a fifteen foot wide cage made of sinew and bone. A six armed inevitable lies dead within. There are four portals embedded in the walls, one at each cardinal point of the octagonal space. There are no furnishings of any kind, but every square inch of the chamber is covered in glyphs you have never seen. They radiate neither divine nor arcane magic, but something new. Something ontological. Queso and Zograthy recognize it as a new type of magic drawing upon quintessence – magic grounded in the soul of a plane.
There is a towering humanoid creature with cracked metallic skin, glowing purple eyes, and three sets of frayed wings. It appears to have once been a solar, the mightiest of all angels. There is a gaping, festering, smoking hole in its chest, and the pulsing purple light emerging from within it hurts to gaze upon. The solar appears to have been put through the same ritual that corrupted the Hand of the Inheritor, and you wonder if what happened to the solar was a trial run for him. You are startled to see a night black giant whose arms end in massive blades. You have fought nightwalkers before, when you destroyed the Father of Worms, but this one appears to have been born of the soul of the Storm King. And behind them, standing at ease, is the architect of the Worldwound, the betrayer of humanity - Areelu Vorlesh. You have encountered her multiple times before – but this time her power is fully unveiled, and you can immediately tell that the stories are true. This the most powerful spellcaster in the history of Golarion, rivaled only by the legends of a mortal Aroden, a man who willed himself into Godhood. As the leylines of the chamber feed the Worldwound, you can sense that part of that energy is channeling itself into Vorlesh as well, and you recognize she is well on her way to becoming a full fledged demon lord, the transference of power subtle enough to avoid arousing suspicion, until she has accumulated enough to challenge Deskari for complete control over Golarion and the Rasping Rifts. She looks at you, and the certainty in her smile could transform the planes.
Okay, heading into our final two sessions, I rewrote a lot of the descriptive text around Threshold. A few major changes: 1. Threshold is guarded by Pyrallisia and Terendelev, which should make for an epic opening battle. 2. As I have Vorlesh betraying Deskari, and most of the campaign has been spent with Vorlesh gradually manipulating things so that the PCs are gradually taking out Deskari's principle allies, most of Threshold is empty of all save Vorlesh's inner circle - things she can control or had a hand in creating (like Pyralisia and Terendelev in this story). 3. I basically combined Threshold's interior into three sections, as a room by room dungeon crawl is underwhelming at this point:
4. I added a significant RP section of sorts that I will tie into closing the Worldwound - as they pass through the portal to the 'roots' section the Worldwound will try to corrupt them, pushing their alignments towards evil and making it harder for them to close it. Each PC (plus irabeth and arueshalae) will end up either reliving a moment from their past or projected out into the future (which they will experience as present) where if they open themselves up to the WW's power they can achieve some great desire. They think this is real (as the dangerously malleable nature of time has been a campaign theme) though they will have sense motive checks to see if something is wrong. At the end they will have to make a will save, heavily modified by whether or not they made the RP choice to open themselves up to the WW (unknowingly). Hopefully it goes well. Text is below 5. We are leading off with a ritual they undertake (carried out by former PCs from earlier campaigns) that will link their minds and mythic powers. I need this for the ending, but will allow them to share mythic power with each other as a result (a 1-1 exchange on their initiative, and 2-1 if not).
We have about two more sessions left to go in my campaign - I wish I had kept up a summary like yours. I may post a big one when we're done. Thanks for sharing yours I ended up making Yaniel a more significant character in book VI, in part because I needed to sacrifice someone and wanted to keep Galfrey and Irabeth, but also in Arueshalae's story.
These scenes take place the night after the Battle of Drezen. I wanted to give each cluster of PCs the chance to interact with the high level NPC they have the most involved relationship. Two talk to Nocticula, two Iomedae, and one Vorlesh Cutscene XX: Midnight Conversations 6 Gozran, 4724 – Drezen, The Worldwound Wick and Zograthy feel an electric current in the air. The hair on your arms stands up, your heart beats faster, your mouth goes dry. The shadows in the room lengthen as the light dims, before you are plunged into a momentary darkness. The light returns, and standing casually in the doorway of Zograthy’s room, is Nocticula. She looks at you, and slowly smiles. “Good evening gentlemen. Aren’t you going to invite me in?” PCs respond “I’ve always wanted to visit Drezen. So much turns on the fate of this flyspeck village in the middle of nowhere. I can’t say I like what you’ve done with the place.” She wanders over to a tapestry, studying its artistry with a critical eye, though her assessment is unreadable. “I am here to check up on my investment. Certain outcomes in this conflict are more favorable to me than others, and I’d like to ensure they come to pass.” “Zograthy, you have done well, but you are still holding onto Desna. You have always been stricken with a wanderlust and Desna is a goddess of journeys.” She approaches you and runs a perfectly manicured finger down your cheek. You shiver as she purrs into your ear. “But I can offer you a sublime destination.” She turns towards Wick. “And Wick, Optimus Prime, my unlikely champion. You are a man of singular talents. Mortal winner of the Battlebliss. The man who broke into the Ineluctable Prison and walked out having stolen Baphomet’s prize from under his nose. I don’t know that I’ve seen an act that brazen since, well, since Baphomet stole the prison out from under Asmodeus in the first place. Zograthy is a creature of passion but you, Wick, are a creature of will. Your ratfolk friend knew what he had to do, but when the time came, he dithered. He allowed others to dictate his actions. Not you. You had the courage to act. You knew what you wanted, and you took it, regardless of the cost. I admire that, and would extend my patronage to you, should you so desire it.” PCs respond “I wonder if you fully understand the nature of Vorlesh’s relationship to Deskari. If you truly understand her. Tell me, what you do you really know of Vorlesh, and her motives.” PCs respond “I suspect she hasn’t served Deskari for some time. She still performs her obeisances, and that is enough to assuage Desakri’s suspicions. She has played the part of dutiful servant, sharing the lesser versions of her accomplishments with his minions, making herself seem indispensable as she flattered their overinflated egos with the illusion of power. Table scraps presented as princely gifts. In his arrogance Deskari has never seen her for the threat to his rule she truly is. The Worldwound is not folding Golarion into the Rasping Rifts. Not any longer. Thanks to the power she drew from Iomedae through her Herald Vorlesh is building a new Abyssal realm, born of the fusion of the Rasping Rifts and this corner of the prime. You have felt it, have you not. The pull towards Threshold – towards the heart of this new realm. Vorlesh alters the plane, while Pharasma burns with impotent rage. Vorlesh has learned to harness the quintessence of a dying soul, captured in its moment of transition to serve her own designs. It is what powered her ritual – the death and transformation of the energy of 100,000 souls. On a smaller scale, she has captured it in the soul lead that fuels her other marvels. I will fully admit it. I am impressed. This is theft on a cosmic scale that only I had previously managed in the creation of my Midnight Islands. Soon Deskari will realize that Vorlesh serves no master but her own ambition. Her will shall be tested against hiswhen that time comes. I do think she has the power to master him – especially aided by the true power of the crystals she has unlocked only for herself. She has kept all this carefully hidden. But it is difficult to keep secrets from me. Vorlesh schemes like no other.” Nocticula smiles. “Save, perhaps, me. As soon as you established yourself as a piece on her board she used you to her ends. Thanks to your actions, Baphomet is out of the game – at least long enough for her to ensure her own elevation. Look at what just played out here in Drezen. Either Aponavicius claims the Sword of Valor, ensuring it cannot be used to weaken the Worldwound, or you defeat her, depriving Deskari of one of his most powerful weapons. Either way she wins, and thanks to your paladins, she has won twice over. And now, in your search for this Suture, she will pit you against Anemora, the Broodlord, and the Storm King. Should you succeed, when Vorlesh finally moves against him, Deskari will be alone. Since your elevation, you have been her pawns – a weapon aimed straight at the heart of her enemies, its trajectory calculated to achieve her ends. And so I offer you something to consider. What do you know? Why do you know it? Who wants you to know it? And why? Let me leave you with a gift of knowledge. The Suture was once a derakni, the first demon through the unstable gate that would mature into the Worldwound. The energy that powered its opening is trapped within him, twisting his form, forcing him to live every moment in agonizing torture. He is immortal, and cannot be killed as long as his body imprisons this piece of the Worldwound’s essence. And as long as he lives, the Worldwound cannot be closed. The Suture is immortal, but he can be killed. It will require two things of you. The wards that protect the heart of the Worldwound must be overcome, and the Suture must be stabbed in the heart by the nahyndrian dagger Vorlesh used to spill the blood of her allies and create the Worldwound. The same dagger used by the Storm King to destroy the Wardstone at Kenebras. The dagger that is now in your possession. I wish you luck and will follow your careers with great interest.” As Nocticula speaks, the light in the chamber dims, the shadows lengthen, until there is darkness. “Tell that rat to stay out of my vault if he knows what is good for him.” And then the light returns, and Nocticula is gone. *** Rischa, Arueshalae, and Kiryn wander the halls of Citadel Drezen. While the site of Arueshalae’s visitation by Desna has retained its sacred echo, the restored temple of Iomeade was savaged by the demons rampaging through the citadel. The three of you spend some time restoring it as best you can. You find the work comforting, a reminder that even though you move on a grand stage, and that the steps you take reverberate throughout the planes, the planes are but an endless chain of smaller spaces, where quiet actions can still make a difference. You have removed the bodies, both the demons that profaned the temple and the defenders who gave their lives resisting them. The pews are restored to their orderly formation, the few intact tapestries rehung. The altar was knocked aside, and a longsword thrust through a copy of the Acts of Iomeade, pinning it to the altar. The strength it took to drive the sword into the stone is difficult to imagine. Rischa goes to pull it out. As she wraps her hand around the hilt the blade begins to glow. Kiryn and Arueshalae feel the ghost of a breeze blow through the temple, like a quiet exhalation of breath. But Rischa can sense the direct presence of her God. Iomedae begins to speak, her voice clear in Rischa’s head, an audible whisper on the wind to Kiryn and Arueshale. “You have done well, Rischa, and the courage of your friends runs deep and true. Hold to these companions. Trust in their judgement. More than one path leads to righteousness, and others may see a way forward even when you cannot. The road before you is dark and overrun with terrors. You will bleed, and bleed again, before it is over. You have suffered much, and much suffering remains. Tell me, my true champions, what is the state of your heart and hope.” PCs respond “I too knew doubt and terror when I walked the world as a mortal. The Acts of Iomedae were canonized as miracles after the fact. At the time, they were desperate last stands and long shot chances. What saw me through them was not the certainty of my triumph. It was a stubborn refusal to lose, or a desire to take as many of the bastards with me as I could. You have it in you to succeed, my champions, as long as you never back down. Know that you need not see the path in front of you to keep walking it. Place one foot in front of the other, and never stop, and I promise you will arrive. Kiryn, Arueshalae, Desna will not intervene. She waged war against the Abyss once, eons ago, and almost succeeded in uniting them in opposition against her. The memory of demon lords is long. She will not make that mistake again. But know she is proud of what you have accomplished in her name. Rischa, one last great choice lies before you. You will know it when the time comes. And when it does, I bid you to follow your mortal heart, and not try to guess the will of your God. Trust Kiryn’s instincts. Desna know how to chart a path through the impossible and emerge on the other side. I offer you all one final blessing. Go forward in light and combat the darkness. With that the whispers fade, and the air in the chamber settles. Iomedae has withdrawn her presence. But a portion of the resolve that birthed a God remains within you. Rischa falls to her knees, overcome, not just by the visitation, but by the crushing, overpowering sadness and frustration that cannot hide from a herald, even deep within the secret heart of her Goddess. *** Queso closes his eyes, frustrated by his body’s desire for rest even as he recognizes the need. There is much to do, always too much to do, and not enough time in which to do it. If only he could access a timeless demiplane of his own, he could make things right. But time evidently belongs to the gods. Their secret weapon. Their ultimate advantage. And so, he would rest for precisely one hour, wake, and then do what he could with the time he has left, knowing it would not be enough. Never enough. Queso cannot mark the precise point at which he transitions into a dream, but he finds himself back in the halls of Areelu Vorlesh. Her dining room in Undarin. The last time he saw her mother, before Vorlesh stole her soul. But the table is larger, stretching off beyond his sight, every seat occupied by the ratfolk of Chitterhome. The people he could not save in the time that he had. His mother, father, sister. Rosita, his unrequired love. Santiago, his rival. His friends. Even his brother Justino, killed by demons before Queso even set out for Kenabres to close the Worldwound. They stare at him, eyes full of accusation and recrimination. Queso opens his mouth, wanting to apologize, wanting to explain himself, but most of all just desperate to talk to them, to explain himself. To say he was sorry. But every face lacks a mouth to speak and ears to hear. There is only the voiceless condemnation of their gaze. “I just want you to know I did not invite them here. This is your dream. I am simply a visitor.” Sitting at the head of the table is Areelu Vorlesh, a goblet of wine in her hand, her gaze intent on Queso. Calculating. Weighing. Judging. Queso responds “If I can offer some advice, you torture yourself needlessly. These lives were not your responsibility. There is nothing you could have done to save them. They are a distraction. Their insignificance would have held you back. So I removed them for you. And you are welcome, for that. But only you can let them go. So, tell me, Queso Blanco, what will you do?” Queso responds “There is great potential within you. I have told you that before, back in the Yearning House in Alushinyrra. Do you recall what else I said to you that day?” Queso responds “There are some who bask in their own perceived cleverness by imagining that power comes from staying five moves ahead of your opponent. But dominance, true dominance, comes from playing an altogether different game, by subsuming theirs within your own. You cannot win, because you do not know what game we are really playing. You have been scurrying after me since Kenabres, a snarling, spitting rat in a maze of my design. But that ignorance is not your fault. You are young, and new to a great power you did not earn. Everything you have achieved thus far comes from the gift a Goddess, offered so that you might serve someone else’s end. You have yet to learn that true power cannot be given. It is born of sacrifice and suffering. It is not gifted. It is forged in fire and blood, and until you have paid the price you cannot understand its value. I see something of myself in you, Queso, and so I, more than anyone, understand your potential. Reach it and change worlds. Hold back and become a footnote in a story no one will ever read. Tell me, you knew the right thing to do when you faced the corrupted Herald in Baphomet’s prison. You knew what the moment required. But you would not take that step. You would not do what was necessary? Why? You are impossibly brilliant. So am I, even more so. But what separates us is will. I would not have hesitated. I have never hesitated. The path I walk may not always be direct, but it is always purposeful, each foot planted precisely where I intend. Queso, I have let you chase after me because it serves my own designs, but you cannot stop me. I would have ended the game long ago if there was even the slightest risk that you could. It is time to abandon the fiction that things could be otherwise. I believe you are smart enough to see that, to set aside the ego that prevents you from embracing that truth and accept the opportunity I am offering you. Join me. I will have need of champions in the days to come, and you need a guide to help you unlock your true greatness. Look at all I have accomplished in a hundred years, with the plundered resources of a great nation. Imagine what we could achieve working together, with endless time, the wealth of an entire planet and the secret knowledge of all the planes opened before us. Queso responds “You can serve me, Queso, or die in the service of a castrated Goddess. When the time comes, I trust you will make the right decision. Do not disappoint me.” And with those words, Vorlesh disappears from your mind. You stare at her empty seat, afraid to turn your head, as you absorb the deafening silence of Chitterhome’s gaze.
Okay, I set up a LONG (10 fights (some with multiple phases) over two hours so round and minute buffs will expire) Battle for Drezen, that culminates with them confronting Apon in her lair. This was set up for them to lose (the real culmination of the adventure from the PC perspective was a final fight against Staunton Vhane (4th and final time he appears). Aponovicus defeats the PCs, because I wanted the the final battle of the Crusade/End of the Crusades (they are destroyed) to culminate with Galfrey and Irabeth being the heroes. I also wanted to remove the Sword of Valor from the equation, and I like this because of the symmetry with the destruction of the wardstones that begin the 5th crusades. To do this I created a second artifact destruction condition for the sword - it needed to be coated in the blood of a twice martyred paladin and used to smite a demon lord (and I buffed Apon so she was a nascent demon lord). And with Yaniel's death she becomes that paladin and pays off the PCs paying her. this is one of my favorite cut scenes for the campaign. Cutscene XIX: Iomedae’s Sword 6 Gozran, 4724 – Drezen, The Worldwound The battle for Drezen was over. Aponavicius had defeated an exhausted Silver Scale, the last defenders were overwhelmed, and the demon hordes were endless. Ulkreths tore down the remaining curtain walls of the keep as Aponavicius approached the ruins of the gatehouse, ready to claim the Sword of Valor, her prize – the final remnant of the might of the crusades. She approached the Sword, idly dispatching the few remaining defenders. But as she crested the final pile of rubble, she stopped. At the other end of the debris-filled courtyard Yaniel waited for her, holding Iomedae’s banner in one hand, her sword in the other. Flanking her on either side were Galfrey and Irabeth. Three generations of Mendevian paladins, offering the Crusade’s final refusal. A long moment passed, as Deskari’s warlord stared down Iomedae’s champions, who would not blink. In the end Galfrey ignited her blade and broke the silence. “This is my keep, demon. Built by my people, its stones mortared into place by their blood, its ground sanctified by my God. It is in their name that I claim this land. You and your kind are not welcome here. Leave, or I will destroy you.” Aponavicius laughed, almost affectionately. “For over a hundred years you brief, insignificant mortals have been a source of unending delight. How I will miss you, your delicious optimism, your bottomless hope – my favorite playthings.” Irabeth took a step forward. Her sword flared to life, wreathed in holy fire. “My Queen has given you an order,” declared Irabeth. This is your final warning, wormspawn.” Aponavicius turned her gaze to Yaniel. “And you, paladin? Your decades of torture at Minagho’s hands were nothing compared to what I have in mind. If you run now, I may lose interest.” She gestured one of her arms at Irabeth and another at Galfrey. “While my attention is otherwise occupied.” A smile, and the divine light enveloping her blade, was Yaniel’s answer. The paladins did not move, did not back down. Aponavicius, no longer amused, hissed and charged. The paladins rose to meet her. There was a whirlwind of clashing blades, but for all their power and skill they could not defeat Deskari’s champion. Lightning fast, two of Aponavicius’ swords pierced Irabeth’s side and chest, and another two gutted Galfrey. With otherworldly strength, Aponavicius lifted the two paladins overhead, impaled upon her blades, and hurled them each fifteen feet in opposite directions. They crashed to the ground, bleeding, broken, unmoving. Only Yaniel remained, blade in one hand, Sword of Valor in the other, eyes fixed on Aponavicius. “Such a pity, little paladin – to return from the dead only to live long enough to see the final defeat of your pathetic crusade.” Yaniel’s reply was bright and firm. “The arc of justice is long, and it is mysterious, but it is absolute, demon. A day will come when you answer for your crimes against creation, and my soul will be at Iomedae’s side to bear witness. This is not the end.” “But for you, wretched mortal, I’m afraid it is.” Aponavicius lunged at the paladin, and while Yaniel fought with the courage that made her a legend, in the end she was overwhelmed. Profane blades slashed her throat, and the demon’s tail lifted her into the sky, hurling her away. She crashed into the ground, collapsing next to Galfrey, the great spear that held the Sword of Valor cracking in two from the impact. And Yaniel breathed her last as her blood coated the banner that she refused to yield, even in death. Aponavicius slithers towards the banner, eager to claim her prize, when a voice calls out behind her. “We are not finished, demon.” Aponavicius turns, as Irabeth painfully lifts herself onto one knee, her hand pressed against her grievous wounds. She uses the last of her healing magic, enough to grant her the strength to rise. She squares her shoulders, hefts her shield, and rests her blade above it, a one woman shield wall. Aponavicius laughs. “How delightful. It seems you do not know when to die. Perhaps I will keep you alive for when Staunton Vhane is returned. A gift for my pet.” Irabeth does not rise to the taunt. “I am Iomedae’s shield, and I will not yield to you.” Aponavicius glides towards Irabeth, her fanged mouth curling into a malicious smile. Irabeth continues: “I am Iomedae’s shield, and I will deny you”. Aponavicius snarls, and once again stabs at Irabeth with all six blades. And while Irabeth blocks what she can, Aponavicius pierces her flesh over and over. Irabeth stumbles back, and falls. Aponavicius watches, bemused, as Irabeth picks herself up one last time, bleeding out but refusing to give in. “You cannot win, little paladin, and I will bleed you until you understand.” Irabeth smiles patiently through bloody teeth, her dying voice steady despite the pain. “But the role of a paladin is not to win. It is to resist, to endure, to be the light that holds the darkness at bay until the morning comes. I am Iomedae’s shield, and I wait for the dawn. Aponavicius roars, and hammers at Irabeth’s shield, blow after blow, sundering it to bits. “Pretty words, but your shield is shattered.” She gestures around her, at the hordes of demons swarming over Drezen and the final cries of its defenders. “Your cause lies in ruin. Your people are mine to torment. Your world is mine to despoil. And where, brave paladin, is your god now?’ “I am Iomedae’s shield, and here I stand.” Irabeth is defenseless, lacking the strength to lift her sword, but refuses to turn away. Aponavicius raises all six weapons “Not for long,” she hisses. “Not for long”, Irabeth agrees, “but long enough.” Aponavicius brings her weapons down for the killing blow but stops inches from cleaving through the paladin. She looks at Irabeth, curiously, and then her eyes bulge wide as the splintered shaft of the Sword of Valor punches through her chest. Aponavicius drops her weapons and grasps the spear that pierced her heart as Galfrey rises behind her. “I am the tip of Iomedae’s sword, and I will carve the fangs out of the Abyss!” As a sacred light travels up the length of the spear Galfrey gives an anguished cry for her fallen people, and smites Aponovicus with the Sword of Valor. Aponavicius screams in pain and shock as the light glows brighter and brighter, enveloping the banner. The stitches tear apart as a golden brilliance floods out of the Sword of Valor. The banner disintegrates, as the power it contains burns the demonic armies rampaging through Drezen, melting them as they flee, unable to teleport away. There are eleven pulses of divine light, extending further and further until Drezen is purged, and then silence as the light fades. Galfrey falls to her knees, spent, and expends her last healing to stabilize Irabeth and herself. The two of them stare at the bloody shaft that once held the Sword of Valor, and at the glowing purple knife lying amidst the ashes and ruin of the Crusade. Magnetically, they find their gaze pulled southwest, towards Threshold, and the heart of the Worldwound. The once clear skies above Drezen begin to rain fire and acid, a foul wind howls through the rubble of the city, and off in the distance, the chasmic ruins of the Rasping Rifts continue their consumption of Golarion.
I did something similar Treb - a 30 person royal rumble style event, with the PCs, some characters from prior campaigns, and NPCs I either made up or pulled from other modules. It was incredible. I went full WWE. Everyone had entrances with music, there were running feuds, I had a Jim Ross gibrileth demon doing color commentary. PC loved it. I also came up with a few alternate rules I'll post here eventually - every time a new person entered the battle (every 3 rounds) everyone received a random buff, debuff, and an enviornmental change in the arena. The power of the buff/debuff depended on how they worked the crowd and I had rules for that as well. It took us about 14 hours to complete it. Gelderfang was not in the original tournament. the rumble was to fight Gelderfang in a four way force cage match (so the top 3 participants). While that was happening I had that Ankou assassin come after the PCs in the stands. Two other things I'd reccomend 1. I had Vorlesh in the stands with Hepzimiriah 2. I had them meet a team of three paladins in the pregame. They were from another prime world that was going to be destroyed due to some cataclysm and Nocticula had the artifact they needed to save their world. They all agreed to support each other and help the loser after their respective 'campaigns' ended 3. I had Vorlesh kill two of those paladins prior to the start of the tournament so there could be two surprise entrants. One was Staunton Vhane (who will have appeared four times total in my campaign. Book 2, 3, 4, and 6). The second paladin was killed and replaced with a civilian from a PCs backstory so it could add the extra dimension of trying to keep them alive and the tragedy of failing 4. The surviving paladin was invited by the PCs back to Drezen and will help them during the Battle of Drezen. But unbeknownst to them, Vorlesh will get to her while PCs are off in the ivory labyrinth. At this point in the campaign Vorlesh will seem unstoppable, and she will damn her soul to get Vorlesh's help saving her world. She will turn on the PCs when they fight Staunton Vhane towards the end of the Drezen battle, probably by killing aravashinal. It will be great. They do NOT suspect her and the betrayal of Nurah at the end of book 2 is still talked about.
thanks for the plug. :). id love to see what you changed. my players love nocticula. i’ve kept her secondary so she can remain mysterious and otherworldly and Im
we are about 6 sessions from finishing but we play 1/month so itll be a while. we finish the book VI battle of drezen, which I expanded to 10 straight encounters over the course of the day. so breaks between fights but no rests amd buffs expire. its been incredible so far
I made a number of fairly major story changes (to the point that my book VI has basically no overlap with book VI as published, or the video game. If you look at the narrative prologue/cut scene thread on this site I've posted most there with explanations. We are still in the Battle of Drezen part of Book VI so we haven't finished but it's been VERY successful for my players. Vorlesh is their most hated campaign villain after 20+ years of a core group playing together. I'd leave her and just change her motivations slightly. More important than story for 1e Wrath is balance. The mythic rules are irrevocably broken. I HIGHLY recommend the following: 1. Just use the base mythic rules for your players - the level 1-10 bonuses, and swap mythic feats for regular feats. Do NOT use mythic abilities or feats 2. Use the Scorpion revised stat blocks found on this forum for your enemies. That will make the campaign hard, and therefore epic, but manageable I'm happy to post more about some of the larger story changes we made if you'd like
We have begun the Battle of Drezen in book VI, which I have greatly expanded (it will be about 10 separate encounters over the course of the battle to push the PCs, some having multiple phases, and usually one of their NPC allies participating. Before we move over to the closing of the wound I wanted a big climax for the Crusades. I had Yaniel, Irabeth, and Galfrey make speeches to the Crusade before the battle (with PC speeches in between). I've set this up as a battle the Crusades cannot possibly win. They are going to their deaths to buy time for the PCs to lure Aponovicus into the field so they can kill her and get an artificat in her keeping needed to close the Worldwound. Galfrey's speech in particular is meant to be an elegy of the crusade. This is probably one of my top 4 things i've written for the campaign, at least in terms of my own favorites (along with the conclusion to the battle which I'll post in a few months when my players get there, Arueshale's prologue introduction, and her redemption). Cutscene XVIII: Go Forward in Light 6 Gozran, 4724 – Drezen, The Worldwound What is left of the Fifth Crusade, and the armed might of Mendev, is arrayed before you, filling the Drezen courtyard and the surrounding town, now a heavily fortified encampment. It is the single largest gathering of military strength you have ever seen, and it is hard not to feel a surge of pride at the sight of some many soldiers of differing faiths, races, and nations gathered in one place to do what is right and necessary. But your thoughts drift to the near inexhaustible size and power of the forces arrayed against you, and your confidence wavers. Suddenly the crusades seem a paltry and meager thing – weak and feeble mortals playing at soldiers thanks to the indulgent sufferance of demonic masters who have finally run out of patience. With these conflicting thoughts at war in your mind you realize the ability of the Crusaders to hold their ground, to fight to the end in a battle they cannot possibly win, will come down to the story they are told. What can you be made to believe, and is it strong enough to endure the demonic wave that has swallowed the north, and about to break over Drezen? Yaniel approaches the podium, which has been enchanted to carry the speaker’s voice across the courtyard and through the twisting and cluttered alleyways of Drezen. She is no longer the desiccated husk you freed from Minagho in the Midnight Fane almost two months ago, weak and frail from years of imprisonment. She stands tall and strong, and while she does not carry herself with Galfrey’s regal bearing, or Irabeth’s ramrod conviction, she radiates an earthy, playful goodness that drives back the shadows in your heart. In your brief acquaintance with Yaniel you find you feel better about yourself when she is near, especially after your crushing loss of the Herald. She crowds out the spaces where recrimination and regret might take hold, and in the light of her gaze what you previously understood as a flaw or weakness within yourself is revealed instead as a core component of a larger design, necessary imperfections whose contrast illuminates your finest qualities. The greatest hero of the Fourth Crusade has joined the Fifth, and your heart is glad for her presence. She clears her throat, and smiles. “I am Yaniel, paladin of Iomeade and I greet you, my fellow crusaders. I have journeyed here from your past to fight for our future. For almost thirty years I have been tortured by the demon Minagho, rescued not two months ago by the Silver Scale and our mighty warrior Queen. I endured much during my long captivity, and it has left deep scars and weighty regrets. But perhaps my enforced martyrdom was all part of Iomedae’s grand design. Had I remained free, I might not have lived long enough to witness this moment. To these old and tired eyes you are a sunrise after a long night, and I am renewed by the sight of you. Crusaders, look at what you have accomplished! The Sword of Valor flies defiant and proud over a liberated Drezen. Baphomet has been driven from Golarion. Xanthir Vang is dead. Minagho is dead. Jerribeth is dead. The turncoat and coward Staunton Vhane has paid for his treachery. Soon Aponovicus will join him. And Areelu Vorlesh, the great betrayer of humanity, has locked herself in the tower of Threshold, afraid to take to the field. I look at the great host before me, and let me tell you what I see. I see the enduring strength of Iomeade’s armor, and the ever sharpened edge of her blade. I see heroes who understand the simple truth at the heart of Iomeade’s teaching, even if they owe allegiance to other gods. In the face of injustice, be the first into battle and the last to leave. This teaching comes at a cost, but we gladly pay it. We have lost friends, homes, family, but our suffering only hardens our resistance. We fight, because we understand the value and fragility of what remains. We fight because we honor the past that shaped us and will not abandon the future yet to be. Should we be forced to die, we will die as we lived – with pride, as crusaders. It has been a long road we have walked these hundred years and more. But there is no more road before us. Only destination. Only destiny. The day ahead will be difficult, but please know, no matter how arduous the struggle, no matter how far the dawn, no matter how much blood flows from my wounds, I shall stand with you. We fight for our loved ones, for our friends, for the right to live and die free. We shall do everything we possibly can, and after that, we shall find a way to do more. And if the hour should come when our arms can no longer raise our swords we will make of our bodies a shield to cover those who still have the strength to fight. And together, we will win! May Iomedae and all the goodly gods strengthen and preserve we who fight against the malignant chaos of the Abyss. Go forward in light to combat the darkness.” PC speeches Irabeth held up her hand for silence, and the soldiers quieted, ready to hear the words of their commander, last of the crusaders touched by the power of the Wardstones. While the Silver Scale had become living myths, their heroism was the heroism of stories, of great works and towering feats performed elsewhere, in the realm of gods and monsters. But Irabeth had stayed with the people of Drezen. Walked among them. Lived alongside them. Protected them from their waking nightmare. She was Iomedae’s truth made accessible and real. And because of that, the people of Drezen were prepared to fight for her, no matter the odds. Because she would be there alongside them, with her inexhaustible resolve - an avatar of stubborn faith refusing to die. She would not give up on them, and so they would not give up on her. Queen Galfrey was the enduring spirit of the crusades. But somewhere along the way Irabeth had become its heart. She began to speak. “The first time I addressed a group of soldiers it was a much smaller gathering, back in Defender’s Heart, in Kenebras. Eight months and a lifetime ago. I was the ranking officer in the Eagle’s Watch by virtue of outliving my superiors, and we were buying time for a miracle. It seemed impossible, but the Crusades have taught us the impossible is merely the possible starved of blood and will. All who heard my voice were forced to fight that day, whether at Defenders Heart, on the streets, or within the Grey Garrison. Many of us died, but our blood and will birthed a miracle. Together we ensured Areelu Vorlesh could not corrupt the power of the Wardstones, our precious gift from Iomedae’s Herald. Instead, that power was transferred into new vessels prepared to carry out Iomedae’s will. Just ten day later we had liberated this city from the forces of the Worldwound, and the Sword of Valor, Iomedae’s sacred banner, resumed its sentinel watch over Drezen. This was another impossible moment, a miracle secured with the blood and will of heroes. Some of those heroes are with us today. But it was not their might and magic that made them heroes. It was their resolve. Their faith. Their willingness to do what was right and pay the cost of their righteousness. Their refusal to do otherwise. And there is no power in the Abyss that can stand against that. I have witnessed other miracles. The Fifth Crusade has known tragedy, yes, but each of those tragedies has been offset by acts of unconquerable bravery and unbreakable faith, and these are the seeds from which miracles grow. If you do not relinquish your faith I will hold to mine, and if we stand together the darkness cannot win. That is my promise to you. There is one final miracle within us, and we will protect that seed. Go forward in light to combat the darkness.” A great cheer followed Irabeth’s words, an unveiling of oaths and clanging of swords on shields. But gradually the sound died down, replaced by a great thundering off in the distance. While the skies above Drezen were clear, a great black cloud filled the horizon. It was the sight and sound of tens of thousands of demons churning the earth and sky beneath them in a mad rush for Drezen. The sound of an ending. But there is time still for final words, to armor the soul with meaning. Galfrey gazed upon the mass of soldiers arrayed before her. Paladins, clerics, warriors of every faith, drawn north to try and do right by themselves and their gods. The last surviving remnants of the crusades, of the dream that mortal resolve could triumph against immortal sin. Time and again, for over a century, Galfrey had looked upon gatherings like this, and spoke the words that would inspire brave men and women to die for a dream, for a story she told. This would be the final time she has to spin faith into truth, and carry the bloody weight of that transformation. The people assembled here would be the last to die with her words ringing in their ears. The last souls on her conscience. Her war was ending. It was an oddly liberating feeling. For the first time in one hundred and twenty years she did not need to worry about the future. For the first time in over a century she did not have to think about the impact her actions today would have on tomorrow. Here, at the end, she felt free. Maybe for the first time. Galfrey stepped forward, and her step felt just a little lighter. She took a deep breath, blinked back tears, and took in the scene before her. It was tense, and fragile, and hopeful, and scared, and real. It was beautiful. Perhaps the last beautiful thing she would ever see with mortal eyes. She began to speak, honestly and from her heart. Anything less would be an insult to the heroes gathered here. “We are all going to die. That is the bitter truth of morality. But it is also a secret blessing – the source of its power. Mortal minds cannot comprehend the infinite. We are made to fade away, but the brief spark of our lives is the fuel that drives all of creation. And it is in these moments, when we stare into the face of that truth that we discover the secret meaning of love, beauty, and joy. It is not the thing in itself that has value, but its ability to stand, for a brief moment, in defiance of its opposite. To prove that hatred, and ugliness, and misery will always be resisted. It is likely most of us will not live out the day – that this is the moment of our defiance. The time has come for us to offer up the beauty of our lives, the love that sustains them, the joy they create, and in that offering force the universe to recognize and honor our sacrifice, to accept it as validation of the ideals to which we have dedicated our lives. Without this sacrifice, without this gift, our words have no meaning, our values no core, our lives no weight. We are here today to die, to return the life that was given to us. But our journey is not over. Though the facts of our bodies may reach their end, the truth of our souls will continue. Pharasma will weigh what we offer, and none of us will be found wanting. We will go on to our great reward in the life to come, and finally understand the meaning of eternity, and behold the forever mysteries that confound mortality. It will be beautiful, and it will be ours. We come to the end of one story, and the beginning of another. For each and every one of us. But the end is not here yet. There is still work that lies ahead, and we will see it done. I have been blessed throughout my long life. I have seen more than most mortals have seen. I have had the opportunity to stand before my god. To speak with her. I do not have to guess her will, for she has shared it with me. And she commands us to fight. And to keep fighting. For as long as we can. Until no one is left to fight and there is nothing left to fight for. Iomedae is a just and benevolent god. She can be stern. And she can be demanding. But she is not capricious. And she is not cruel. She knows what she asks of us. She knows what it will cost. And she would not ask it of us without reason. There is a greater purpose at work here today. I do not claim to understand it. Such knowledge is beyond my mortal comprehension. But my joyful heart confirms the truth of its existence. We are here because Iomedae calls for it. Because Sarenrae needs it. Because Torag expects it, and Shelyn desires it, and because Desna’s paths have led us here. And together we are the body and blood of our faiths. We are the sword and shield of our Gods. We are their spirit made manifest. Here and now, in this sacred space, for their sacred purpose. Do not lose sight of that today. You are here because your god requires it, and all gods have set aside a place of honor for those who would enact their will. We commit our bodies to their cause, and our spirits to their keeping, and they will reward our sacrifice and our faith. Fight hard while you can. Die well when you must. Sharing the gift of time with you has been the great honor and privilege of my life, and I will see you again, to thank you for that gift and to repay my debts, in this world or the next.” Galfrey draws her sword and brandishes it above her head. The sun still shines over Drezen, and the light catches on the blade. The great masses of crusaders draw their weapons in response, and as the light reflects from blade to blade the air is filled with a mirrored radiance burning brighter than the noonday sky. Galfrey unleashes a primal scream, one final joyful noise, declaring that here and now, she is alive. Her soldiers answer, a celebratory cry of mortality that drowns out the thundering roar of Aponavicius’ approaching horde. Galfrey continues, her voice magically carrying above the wall of sound. “Knights of the Crusade, our destiny has arrived, and we rise to meet it. Go forward in light and defy the darkness.” Spirits bolstered, and resolved to their fate, the warriors of Drezen made ready to join the final battle of the crusades and to die for Golarion.
Lord of Conflict wrote:
yes, in fact. story wise i had it once belong to Alderpash, though it was created by the aboleth. ties in loosely with the modified cosmology im building the campaign around. - the real truth behind the earthfall. its in the (admittedly voluminous) prologue/cutscene narratives ive bee posting in that thread that will all pay off at the end (and long game center iomedae as a major character and the being that will ultimately close the WW)
Cutscene XVII: Lords of the Ivory Labyrinth 5 Gozran, 4724 – Ineluctable Prison, The Ivory Labyrinth You teleport into a vast chamber and stand upon a fifteen-foot-long ledge extending out over a lake of boiling tar. There is no way in or out. To the east, bone walls are supported by numerous ivory pillars, while a single statue of a goat-headed demon leers at you from the central alcove. It is carved with such uncanny precision its mere gaze feels violating. Two smaller ledges, inscribed with pentagrams, protrude into the tar lake from either side of this central ledge. A ring of pillars surrounds a thirty-foot-wide disc of metal floating ten feet above the surface of the tar, suspended at the same level as the floor in the eastern portion of the room. The disc’s surface is inscribed with thousands of glowing runes and blasphemous glyphs. The air in the chamber stings your eyes and chokes your breath, a foul, reeking mixture of oil and decay whose corruption seeps under your skin and stains your soul. A figure claws its way out of the tar, and strides to the center of the unholy disc. Molten sludge streams off the tarnished golden form of the Herald of Iomedae. As the tar pools to the floor, you see the armor’s once perfect surface is covered in abyssal markings. Even from this distance, Rischa and Arueshalae can see the sigils boast of Baphomet’s great triumphs over the gods of the Crusade, a profane inversion of the Acts of Iomedae. The Herald’s once lustrous wings have atrophied into a sickly approximation of a bat, almost skeletal if not for the frayed leather flesh barely clinging to them. Twin curling horns bore their way through his golden helm, and the faceplate has melted away. As you gaze into the rotting, rictus visage of the Herald, you realize this is the first time you have ever seen his face. His eyes glow a sickly yellow, a perversion of their once golden radiance. He carries no weapons, though you recoil in horror at the sight of his hands. The skin has been completely flayed off, the wounds burbling and suppurating in response to the burning tar. But the ghastliest feature, the final proof of his fallen state, is the gaping, crumpled hole in his chest. A sickly purple light glows from within, and the wound is covered in rot grubs and other abyssal pestilence. You can just barely make out the thinnest golden strands deep within the recess of his chest, strangled by the purple tendrils oozing from the nahyndrian crystal that replaced his heart. Despite his twisted, suffering form, he moves with an effortless grace and boundless confidence, wearing his corrupted armor like a second skin. He stares at you, and as you look back you can feel the room around you bending and twisting. The sensation makes you want to vomit, and it takes all your will to force reality to hold its shape, to avoid getting pulled into the maddening passageways of the Herald’s tortured mind. He begins to speak, his voice, once deep and rich with a noble, comforting resonance, is now a hollow, grating rasp. “My friends and kindred. My would-be saviors, sent by the child-goddess. You have arrived too late. I am the Herald of the Ivory Labyrinth, champion of Lord Baphomet, and you have been sent here to die.” PCS speak “Iomedae has no use for me. You have been led here like puppets convinced they have escaped their strings, and your arrogance will see you dead. This is my master’s domain, and he has promised surcease from my endless pain if I gift him your lives. I have been waiting for this moment. Let us begin.” And with those words, unholy glaives, facsimiles of Baphomet’s great weapon Aizerghaul, appear in each of the Herald’s hands. Combat dialogue “Iomedae cannot find you here. She has abandoned you, as she abandoned me. Surrender to the Lord of Minotaurs, and partake of his mercy.” “I was Iomedae’ s favorite servant and she did not think twice about sacrificing me. And you think she cares for you, insignificant pawns in a game whose timeline beggars belief.” “Your Herald is gone. What remains is a clot of insanity and torment. There is no coming back from what he has endured. What are you even trying to save?” He turns to Rischa. “I can sense Iomedae’s cheap stench on you. The whore goddess moved on to another plaything before my body was even cold. Tell me, did the b&&!+ even mourn me before she sank her talons into your soul.” The Herald staggers under the shock of that blow, and for the briefest of moments his features soften and a faint aura of majesty pushes through the stench of corruption that surrounds him. “Please, champions. Rischa. Don’t abandon me!” he cries in a voice that is almost familiar. And then the Herald shakes his head, and snarls to himself. “Your deaths are the final step towards my ascension. There is no mercy for the lamb awaiting its slaughter. No salvation for the condemned.” Saving the Herald With that final atonement the Herald’s body seizes. In his chest a golden light begins to smother the purple corruption. His eyes roll into the back of his head, and he vomits up a seemingly endless stream of abyssal rot. Eventually it is purged, and he looks at you, eyes wild with terror and endless guilt. And then he collapses, limp. His body and soul ravaged, but alive. Killing the Herald The light leaves the Herald's eyes, the quintessence of his soul joining the Abyss to be reborn. But in those final moments, you can sense that a piece of the Herald’s soul still lingers. Just a tiny spark, but within it an infinite well of horror, pain, and fathomless guilt. You reach for it, hoping to draw it back to you, to save it from eternal torment. As you stretch out with your power, your head is full of the roar of rushing water, and the deep crushing pressure of limitless potential forced through the tiniest of apertures. You wrap your mythic energy around the one pure ember that remains. But you are too late. It slips through your grasp, and as it is absorbed into the Abyss you can swear you hear the sound of the Herald’s forever scream. And for Rischa, the endless, impossible grief of a god. Baphomet Arrives The Ineluctable Prison thrums with power, as if its walls pulse in sympathetic vibration with their approaching Lord. The air is heavy with the paralyzing dread of cornered prey realizing there is no way out, an ancient and primordial terror. Baphomet is coming. A muffled roar echoes throughout the Ineluctable Prison, everywhere at once and yet somehow getting closer. The air is thick with rage and anticipation. You are overwhelmed by dark sensations. The taste of raw meat, the coppery smell of blood, the bright clarity of fear, the heavy rutting musk of an animal in heat, the sickly sweet rot of a recently abandoned kill. And then Baphomet is before you, here in the heart of his realm. He stands fourteen feet tall even with his stooping posture, his midnight blue wings folded tightly against his back. Though his form is emaciated, there is no denying its feral strength. A flame burns between his elongated horns, and he holds Aizerghaul, Labyrinth’s Final Edge, in one hand. His eyes betray a deep cunning and speak to a stunning intelligence that belies his bestial features. And you realize that what you faced in the Midnight Isles was only a fraction of the power he possesses here at the seat of his power. “I HAVE DEFIED THE MOST ANCIENT BEINGS TO WALK THE PLANES. I HAVE OUTWITTED GODS AND EMERGED THE VICTOR. AND IN YOUR ARROGANCE YOU WOULD CHALLENGE ME, LORD OF THE IVORY LABYRINTH IN MY MOST SACRED OF PLACES? YOU DO NOT HAVE YOUR STRUMPET PROTECTOR WITH YOU THIS TIME, FOOLS! YOU WILL DIE HERE, ALONE, SO FAR FROM THE LIGHT OF YOUR HEAVEN.
Baphomet Retreats “ENOUGH! YOU HAVE EARNED A REPRIVE THIS DAY. I AM PATIENT, AND YOUR FATE IS SEALED. TO ME YOU ARE NOTHING MORE THAN MAYFLIES, AN IRRITANT NOT WORTH THE TROUBLE OF SWATTING. YOUR LIVES ARE SO BRIEF IT IS AS IF YOU ARE ALREADY DEAD. GO, AND LIVE OUT THE REST OF YOUR TIME IN FEAR, KNOWING THAT YOU WILL BE MY VICTIMS AT A MOMENT OF MY CHOOSING.” He waves his arm, and you are violently ejected from his prison, hurtling back towards the prime. But before you can manifest there some other force grabs hold of you. Baphomet Killed Baphomet stares at you in shock and hatred, and then the Abyss claims his soul. A violent tremor rocks the Ineluctable Prison, and cracks emerge in its walls as the bones begin to splinter and powder. You can feel the Ivory Labyrinth start to destabilize, its abyssal quintessence no longer given shape and focus by Baphomet’s will. Walls flicker in and out of existence, and the terrain flashes from biome to biome as the various mazes of the labyrinth overlay themselves one atop the other. Zograthy can sense a vacuum, and already there are powers moving to assert their will and dominance, to seize the Ivory Labyrinth that was once Baphomet’s, and turn it into something wholly their own. But there is a curious, deeper shifting within the prison itself, and with a start, Zograthy realizes what is happening. Asmodeus is moving to reclaim the territory Baphomet stole from him countless eons ago. Before he can share this horrifying realization, there is a flash of white light. Iomedae-Herald Killed You are back in Iomedae’s cathedral, in its central knave. Her avatar awaits you. The rest of the Silver Scale is here, but Waxberry and Alderpash are gone. The Herald’s broken and corrupted body lies lifeless on the stone floor. Iomedae’s human mask is stern, tense, watchful, but Rischa can sense a coldness within her, a protective wall sheltering you from the weight of her crushing disappointment, the bitterness of her unrewarded faith, and the endless clinging guilt that accrues when others bear the consequences of your actions. She is not angry, and that is somehow worse. You realize in this moment she reminds you of no one less than Queen Galfrey. Rischa may serve as Iomedae’s Herald, but Mendev’s queen is her true mortal avatar. “Tell me what happened.” Her voice is flat and level. She asks the question despite knowing the answer, having sensed Rischa’s thoughts the moment she left the Ivory Labyrinth. PCs Respond “It is one thing to try and fail. There is no shame in reaching your limit, only to find your limit is not enough. There is even honor in it. But to serve and then openly defy me, or obey only because you were outnumbered… I am well aware of Jingh’s concerns, and he will answer to me. I am not ignorant of the cosmic laws, though some of you, in your hubris, accuse me of just that. But it is I, not Jingh, not even Pharasma, who is the God of Justice.” She faces Wick, and an uncharacteristic rage swells within her, barely contained by her avatar. Wick begins to bleed from his eyes and ears, the pain driving him to his knees, and though Iomeade does not shout, you can still make out her words over the deafening cacophony of tolling bells that emanate from everywhere and nowhere. “It is not your place to dispense this justice, and now my Herald will pay eternally for your arrogance and my failure. But another has laid a claim on you, Bastion Wick. One you carry freely, if unwittingly. She will answer for her machinations later. For now, I have need of you.” Iomedae masters her anger, the bells fade, and the crushing pressure abates. Wick rises shakily to his feet, as she folds you all into her gaze. “Much remains to be done, and there is little time in which to do it. You are the weapons before me, and a general goes to war with the army they have. Rischa Cadesh, I remain in need of a Herald for the coming conflict. You have held to your faith in the face of doubt and temptation. Your soul remains valorous and true. Will you continue to shoulder that responsibility until a permanent Herald enters my service?” Rischa answers “As for the rest of you, there is value in failure if we allow it to forge us from who we are into who we ought to be. This is a lesson I learned as a mortal, and have carried into Godhood. Knights of the Silver Scale, champions of Golarion, while you could not return my Herald, you defied a Demon Lord in the heart of his domain. I call upon you to do it again. Areelu Vorlesh has finally thrown open the Worldwound. This is no longer an infection, an abyssal taint slowly corrupting a prime world. Vorlesh’s portal is consuming Golarion in its entirety, pulling the entire planet into the Rasping Rifts. Such an act will magnify his power tenfold, to say nothing of Deskari’s dominion over Rovagug’s prison or an artifact of the Starstone’s power. And I need not tell you what it means for the people of Golarion. Will you answer this final call? Will you serve, and will that service be faithful and true?” It is only a matter of days before the abyssal roots of the Worldwound run so deep they can never be severed. I cannot interfere. The work of preventing this falls to you, my champions. Even as we speak, your enemies surround Drezen, and you lack the tools to close the portal. You are out of time. But I am not. There is so much I cannot do, but perhaps I can do this one thing. As my Herald would remind me, I am not the god of law. I am the god of justice. And on certain rare occasions, justice may require a bending of the rules. You are my avatars in the battle for Golarion. Protect the Sword. Secure the knife. Find the Suture. Close the Wound.” There is a flash of white light, and you find yourself in a dining hall with a long oak table and six comfortable chairs. The air is suffused with tranquility and stillness. The frantic stress of the last eight months has lifted, and while your purpose remains carefully fixed in your mind, it has lost its immediacy. You realize with a start that you are not breathing. You touch your bare skin, and there is warmth, but no pulse. Your first thought is that you’ve died, but you do not feel dead, and this matches no description of any afterlife you know. And then you realize. You have been taken outside of time – that this space, wherever it is, consists of one frozen moment stretching out into infinity. Curious, you explore. There are eleven doors leading out of the lab. Six open to comfortably appointed bedrooms. There is a laboratory, complete with forge, a gymnasium, a sitting room with a small recreational library, bathing room, and a well stocked kitchen. You are not hungry, and suspect your body requires no nourishment or rest in this place, but you cannot remember the last time you truly enjoyed a meal at peace, or slept in true safety. Before you left for the Midnight Fane, at least. Possibly before the fall of Kenabres. Iomedae has gifted you sanctuary, and with it time to rest and prepare. There is much to be done, and you are the only ones who can do it. The last hope for Golarion’s present, and the architects of its future. There is a twelfth door you somehow missed in your earlier exploration. It bears no unusual markings, and looks, by all accounts, to be an ordinary door. But you instinctively know as soon as you open the portal, this space will collapse in on itself, and you will be returned to Golarion to decide its fate. You hear Iomedae’s voice in your head one final time. ‘You must open one door to close another. Go forward in light to combat the darkness.” Herald Saved You are back in Iomedae’s cathedral, in its central knave, before her oracular well. The rest of the Silver Scale is here with you, along with the Herald, but Waxberry and Alderpash are gone. An avatar of Iomedae waits for you. Iomedae’s human mask is stern, tense, watchful, but Rischa can sense through their connection that something within her melts, a deep inhalation the moment before suffocation. She reaches for the unconscious form of the Herald, and cradles him in her arms. Some of her divine power flows into him, and his wounds close, the rent in his chest sealing, excised of the last remnants of nahyndrian blood. You watch as the skin on his face regenerates, but before you can take your first look at the Herald’s true form his golden helm reforms around him, a mask of impartial, implacable justice. He turns his head to Iomedae and speaks. His voice is weak, tentative, but it is his. “My lady, the power that Vorlesh stole…The Worldwound. I have failed you.” Iomedae gently shakes her head, and smiles through her tears. “My Herald – you have fought bravely, and held on long enough to return to me. You have come home. There can be no greater victory than that.” “I am not worthy…” “It is I am who am not worthy of you,” she quiets him. She then turns her gaze to the Silver Scale. “Of any of you.” The Herald disappears, and Iomedae stands and straightens. “It will be a long time until he has recovered from his ordeal.” She looks at Rischa, and in a single instant absorbs the events of the last month. Her features darken. “Jingh will answer to me in short order. But there is much that remains to be done, and little time in which to do it…
The scene below is a few different bits of text that formed the introduction to the fight against the Herald (which I had spent most of the campaign gradually setting up, with the conflict as to whether or not saving him as Iomeade asked would have terrible consequences (see earlier cut scenes). In the end they decided to save/redeem him, though the wizard and rogue thought they should kill him. They were outvoted by the Desna ranger/paladin, the Desnan Arcanist, and the Iomedean herald/inquistor. But the rogue (who worships Pharsma) ended up getting the Torc of the Heaven, and given how much the party made him pay for it, I decided that it was powerful enough to pierce the veil in the Ineluctable Prison that blinded the Gods, and let him ask questions of Phrasma. This conversation convinced him that the saving the Herald would come at a terrible cost to Iomedae. The fight against the Herald was excellent, but in the end they dropped him into negatives. They were preparing to redeem him when the rogue went, well rogue, and murdered the Herald. Before they could process, Baphomet began his manifestation, and the session ended. We pick up Saturday with this and the start of book VI and the Battle of Drezen (which probably has my favorite stuff I've written for this campaign excepting maybe Arueshale's redemption). But anyway, this is the introduction of the Herald, some scripted Herald dialogue I used during the fight, text for whether they saved or redeemed him, Baphomet's entrance, Baphomet potentially dying or being forced to flee (though I think the PCs are just going to use the Stole of the Inheritor and bail since a few are in tough shape and they aren't in a cohesive party state at the moment), and then their reckoning with Iomedae and the transition into book VI (I have some different starter text if they saved the Herald but it eventually transitions to the same conclusion). I have kept a relentless pace for the campaign (start to finish it will be about 8 months of Golarion time) and for story purposes forbid spells like timeless demiplane. The crafter has been begging for an extended break, and that's what this reward is.
When you get to book IV two recommendations 1. I greatly increased the Battlebliss size and scope, turning it into a WWE Royal Rumble style event. Probably their campaign highlight. a 70+ round 16 hour combat. I invented rules to constantly buff and debuff the combatants every few rounds, and a constantly shifting terrain, and depending on how well they worked the crowd they buffs were more or less powerful and the debuffs more or less painful. Had a Gibrileth doing commentary Jim Ross style, and modeled a few of the combatants after wrestlers. Great fun. Also a chance to introduce a handful of folks they would fight later. Winner gets a boon from Nocticula which is how they won their audience 2. Since the card was already filled, they had to get Velexia (who had leverage over the owner of the Battlebliss) to let them enter. I moved the brothel encounter from book VI (where it doesn't fit well) into book IV and she had them destroy the brothel, controlled by a rival who slighted her.
I created a legendary item for each of my PCs, focusing on things they could not otherwise create for themselves and PCs love them. It also gives me additional moments to reward them for story beats where their artifacts can charge. I souped up Radiance for the character using it in part because they are not a full paladin (and so it lets them use an increasing percentage of their character levels as paladin levels for smite, dispel, lay on hands) The person who has the trait where they descend from a god is related to the Herald in my campaign (who is a much larger character presence to increase the emotional resonance of book V). I gave her the armor the herald used as a mortal (discovered in the temple with the summoner in book 3). I also reskinned Radiance to be the Herald's sword, which she got in book V The person with the Riftwarden background (a pure arcanist) got a staff that gradually confers all the riftwarden prestige class bonuses (enhanced by the spirit of his dead parents who were riftwardens killed by a mortal Xanthir Vang - he recovered this in the ivory sanctum. It was corrupted and needed the redeemed corruption forge to make it usable) My transmuter wizard had an item from his background I turned into a latent powerful artifact that he needed to learn how to unlock that predated Earthfall that gave him a bunch of abilities to enhance his transmutations and increase his base attack bonus when he used knowledge checks to identify foes My rogue who worships pharasma received a dagger from Nocticula that she claimed had the soul of a powerful pharasmite. Among its other abilities it confers all the domain powers of pharasma's various domains. If fighting a demon 4 HD or more it grants a bonus attack if the demon is below 50. A sufficiently powerful (think CR 20 or above) killed in this way actually creates a small midnight isle, as the dagger is an avatar/echo of Nocticula (in case I need to use her as a deus ex machina at some point)
We finished Book V last weekend (pending the Baphomet encounter). The cut scene below was given about a day before their fight with the Herald. One of my characters experienced this as a vision - the one who was rescued from the Azverendus rites. I've had that character linked to the ritual. In my campaign, Vorlesh powers the ritual to expand the Worldwound by sacrificing 100,000 souls to the Rite, except instead of turning their souls into demons they are binding them to the Abyss. The interlude with two prisoners is related to PC family/backstory. I also made the opening much more powerful, with abysal energy immediately infecting all of Golarion. I also have Vorlesh betraying Deskari (though he doesn't know yet) by fusing GOlarion and the rasping rifts into a new plane, one that she then becomes the demon lord over. Cutscene XVI: The Worldwound Expansion 5 Gozran, 4724 – Undarin, The Worldwound Over one hundred thousand mortal souls huddled in Undarin’s central plaza, prisoners from all the nations bordering the Worldwound. Since the collapse of the Wardstones the demons had waited for the harvest, and the time had come to reap. The surrounding buildings were leveled weeks ago to make space for the sheer size of the gathering. Interspersed throughout the starving and terrified masses were demons charged with keeping the slaves docile. Over ten thousand mortal cultists of Deskari and the mercenaries in their employ ringed the teeming throngs, their scythes cutting down those who tried to run. But not many did. By now the will of the prisoners was thoroughly broken. And where would they go? Only the newly imprisoned cultists of Baphomet showed any signs of resistance – but their demonic allies had been purged, either murdered by Deskari’s forces or recalled to the Ivory Labyrinth. Former masters of the Worldwound, now chattel imprisoned by broken promises. The sky was full of countless vrocks and derakni, while swarms of vermin blotted out what anemic sun managed to pierce the abyssal clouds. The rooftops of the remaining buildings overlooking the plaza held thousands of demons, here to bask in the glory of Deskari’s final triumph. A stone platform rose one hundred feet above the crowd below, and at its summit Areelu Vorlesh was in the final stages of her ritual - an alteration of the Azverindus Rites on an unimaginable scale. Her features were ecstatic, exulting in the power she channeled. Bearing witness were Deskari’s mightiest servants – Khorramzadeh the Storm King, the warlord Aponavicius, the Broodlord, and the drider Anemora – high priestess of Deskari’s cult. The poisoned skies above Undarin crackled with electricity, and the ground surrounding the city began to shake. Several buildings collapsed as the tremors intensified. Orbiting Vorlesh was a massive cloud of large black prismatic gems, over one hundred thousand in total. Her hand held an even larger black gem, glowing with corrupted golden light drawn from the Herald of Iomedae. Anemora gazed upon Vorlesh with her magical sight, and was nearly blinded by what she beheld. In the masses below, a swarm of ratfolk, maybe a thousand strong, huddled together. A young ratfolk girl began to cry. “Papa, I’m scared.” Raul Blanco took her hand and squeezed it hard, offering her the bravest smile he could. “So am I, Poppy, but if we just stay together everything will be okay.” “Do you promise?” “I promise.” “I miss mama, and Justino, and Queso.” Raul kept his voice steady, a final act of heroism in defense of his daughter. “Me too, my little doodle. But we will see them again soon.” Atop the stone platform, Vorlesh cried the ritual’s final words, her voice rising above the apocalyptic thunder in the toxic sky. She crushed the black gem in her hand, and a great scream erupted from the hundred thousand souls gathered below her, before it was strangled into silence. A hundred thousand silver strands flowed from the plaza, up into the sky, filling the massed soul gems surrounding Vorlesh.
The hundred thousand gems began to rotate around Vorlesh, faster and faster, a shadowy radiance rising within them as they fed upon the mass sacrifice. And then, as one, the gems shattered, their dark light coalescing into a massive beam that surged through the sky, called home to Threshold, where it plunged into the miasmic swirling heart of the Worldwound. Abyssal energy flooded into Golarion. The sky was torn open, and massive bolts of lighting, freezing hurricanes, sheets of fire, and acid rain pummeled the lands that were once Sarkoris. Hundreds of new portals spontaneously opened throughout the Worldwound, at every place the planer boundary had thinned, ley lines connecting these gateways to the heart of the Worldwound beneath Threshold. Uncountable billions of insects swarmed through the gates, and the demons followed. There was a thunderous rumble, as the ground opened beneath Undarin, swallowing the wreckage of Areelu Vorlesh’s city, before the devastation slowly began to spread, fully transforming the blighted Golarion landscape into the chasms of the Rasping Rifts. Vorlesh’s eyes were bright with triumph, and Anemora could swear a portion of the Abyssal power pouring into Golarion flowed into Vorlesh. The rumblings were felt throughout the world, the dark swirling sky visible as far south as the southern shores of the Inner Sea. The navigators sailing Golarion’s waters stared at their instruments in dumbfounded frustration as compass needles shifted their true north, towards Threshold. Across the planet people felt a strange, distant wrongness, and they stared off in the direction of the Worldwound, seeking the disturbance that lay just beyond the horizon. Within Drezen the air grew heavy, as if some implacable force was pressing down against the zone of purity created by the Sword of Valor. In Kintargo, a mother cried in relief as she welcomed her new child into the world, until the midwife recoiled in horror at the tainted monstrosity that emerged from the womb, part human, part insect. The scene played out across the world, as every birth was corrupted by the Abyssal energy surging across Golarion. The demons roared in victory, the sound drowned out by the cataclysmic transformation of the ground beneath them. Deskari’s generals stared at Vorlesh with something close to awe, as she basked in the aftermath of her triumph, a feat that eclipsed the mightiest works of Azlant and Thassalon. Anemora prostrated herself before her master’s greatest servant, Architect of the Worldwound, who ushered in the apocalypse that would consume Golarian. Under his breath the Storm King rumbled “She actually did it.” Vorlesh turned to face them, her features once again composed into an expression of serene competence, a craftsman surveying the outcome of a particularly satisfying and challenging project. Anemora looked past the mask, into Vorlesh’s eyes, which burned with an ambition that would rip the secret of fire from the Gods who dared withhold it. But what truly frightened Deskari’s priestess was the utter disgust and contempt that Vorlesh had for the demons surrounding her, the most powerful of her master’s servants. Anemora could sense her taking their measure and finding them wanting. Vorlesh offered them a predatory smile. They grinned in return, sharing in this moment of dark joy and anticipating the great feast that lay before them – alpha predators unaware of their danger. She gestured expansively at the carnage surrounding them. “Welcome, my friends, to the end of the world.”
XXXX XXXXX, 4724 - Ineluctable Prison, The Ivory Labyrinth An ancient human emerges from the doorway to the north, old enough to have a distinctly pickled appearance. He leans upon a staff, and several small gems orbit his head. His robes are resplendent under the heavy layer of dust that clings to them. He appraises you with a calculating eye, and Rischa and Arueshalae can sense he is impressed, jealous, and bitter, though he hides it well. He offers you the sour smile of one put upon by demanding guests who are tolerated because they may yet prove useful. “So this is the Silver Scale, is it? The adventurers who drove Baphomet into hiding. The mortals daring or foolish enough to take on the Ineluctable Prison. Welcome to my home. I am Alderpash, first and greatest of the Runelords of Wrath, peer to King Xin, and “guest” of our esteemed Lord Baphomet. To what do I owe the pleasure of such esteemed company?” How did you end up imprisoned here?
I was delighted to see Earthfall punish Thassilon, but I have been here a long, long, long, long time, and part of me thinks outliving my accursed colleagues was perhaps not such a blessing after all. But recent events have opened new possibilities, and I suspect there is much we can offer each other. Although I am a prisoner here, I know much that may be of value to you, and I am happy to offer it. All I want in exchange is your help in fleeing this accursed prison. Do we have a deal?” We can just force you to talk
How can we help you escape?
However, when Nocticula destroyed Baphomet’s avatar, the wards were disrupted – just for the briefest of instants, too fleeting for me to take advantage of the opportunity. But should Baphomet be killed, I believe the binding will fail – at least long enough for me to escape. We just need to draw him to the Ineluctable Prison. And though he hides in his tower, recovering, I suspect the humiliation of losing the Herald, however you achieve this, will draw him out. That will be your moment. Should he die again, he will be gone forever, and you will have eliminated a terrible threat to Golarion, with some vengeance thrown in for good measure.” What information can you offer us?
The orb I knew of was in possession of Xin, and then Kaladurnae, the first Runelord of Greed and a master of transmutation magic. Does your control over the orb strengthen that school? We do not know how many of those orbs were created, just that they were created by the alghollthu Veiled Masters, and traveled with them from world to world, repositories of their knowledge. They saw themselves as guardians of reality. They first arrived on Golarion during the Age of Creation, and the humans they raised from barbarism would become the Azlanti. When Xin fled Azlant to Avistan and founded Thassilon, he brought the orb he had stolen from the aboleth. The aboleth failed to recover the orb, and while most histories of this period posit the aboleth called down the Earthfall to punish Thassilon and Azlant for their theft and appropriation of aboleth magics, that story is a lie intended to obscure a very different truth. The aboleth are among the oldest creatures in existence. They claim to be the first to achieve sentience in this iteration of reality. But there have been other realities that predate ours. Tell me, Silver Scale, what do you know of the Dark Tapestry? The Dark Tapestry is nothingness, the void that resists creation. It is a force of cosmic entropy that has warred against reality since before there was time. It is older than Pharasma and the gods. And it has succeeded in destroying reality, more times than any can know. It is resisted by the cosmic force of creation that called forth the Gods and empowered them to serve as stewards of existence. When the aboleth awoke and began to explore the universe, they learned of the Dark Tapestry, and the eternal, cosmic struggle between creation and entropy. And they saw themselves, the first creatures to achieve consciousness, as defenders of this iteration of reality. You are familiar with the two commandments that constrain the gods, correct? The gods must not manifest their full power within reality, and they are not to manipulate or alter the flow of time. As a result, all but the weakest of time magics are forbidden, and the Gods act through their servants, or demi agents like Heralds, Empyreal and Demon Lords, Arch Devils, and other nascent divinities. These prohibitions exist because any divine manifestation weakens the border between creation and the Dark Tapestry, as does the manipulation of time. There are exceptions, of course. The Gods manifested to imprison Rovagug, a corrupted divine agent of the Dark Tapestry, within Golarion’s heart. They will use avatars, sparingly. And in exceedingly rare instances they have been summoned into reality, a loophole that requires access to power on such a cosmic scale as to be functionally impossible. The temptation for the Gods to use their power must be nearly irresistible, and so there are rules embedded into reality, hidden so deeply that only the most ancient and powerful of beings are aware of them. Should anyone willingly violate these cosmic strictures and inch open the doorway to the Dark Tapestry, the entity responsible is annihilated and unmade. There is always a cost, and actions have consequences. Should they find a way to avoid them their debt is transferred to another. A horrific example must be made, to serve as a cosmic deterrence. And so, it was not the use of rune magic or the theft of an orb that caused the aboleth to call for a conclave of Veiled Masters from across the cosmos. The Azlanti were close to unlocking the secrets of time magic, and had to be stopped. Earthfall was the mechanism the Conclave chose, though they underestimated its destructive potential. Two of the Gods worshiped by the Azlanti manifested in their totality to try and preserve Rovagug’s prison, though our myths say this was to prevent the complete destruction of humanity. Their deaths were the price they had to pay for their willful violation of cosmic law. Even then, Azlant and Thassilon were destroyed, as was much of the aboleth’s civilization, and no God has manifested since. Unsurprisingly, this was not a lesson Aroden, the last Azlanti and God of humanity, bothered to learn, and his death at the moment of his prophesied return was likely the elimination of another cosmic threat to reality.” What do you know about the Herald?
What do you know of Areelu Vorlesh?
There is a change in Alderpash’s tone and affect. The otherwise haughty and endlessly confident Runelord seems genuinely impressed, and more than a little intimidated, by Vorlesh. “She is a truly remarkable creature. She possesses what may well be the greatest mind in the history of Golarion. She eclipses Xin, the Runelords, Geb, Nex, Tar-Baphon – perhaps even the greatest of the Azlanti. But it is not just her intelligence. What makes her unique is her breathtaking ambition and the singular focus and will she commits to that ambition. We all have something we are afraid to lose, something we refuse to relinquish. A risk we will not take, a line we will not cross. A fear that masters us. But there is no barrier she will not shatter, no sacrifice that can deter her, nothing she cannot endure, in the service of her ends. She will pay any and every price to succeed. This is why she is greater than me. Why she will always be greater than you, no matter how much of Iomedae’s power you leach. I do not know her end game, but I know she does not serve Deskari. She aims to succeed him, though nothing short of true divinity will satisfy her. I’m not even sure that will be enough.” How can you help us free the Herald?
If you can destroy Svendack and sanctify her temple, you can disrupt the dark blessing that Baphomet has bestowed upon this prison. But Ylleshka is the most dangerous of his servants. If you can free Igramalash Ylleshka will be forced to reimprison him, and in his blind rage he may well attack her. Who is Igramalash?
Will you help us fight Baphomet?
XXXX XXXXX, 4724 – Ineluctable Prison, The Ivory Labyrinth The body of an astral deva lies chained to one of the torture beds. The light has left its eyes, and you recognize this as a mercy. Each of its limbs has been twisted in unnatural directions and many of its bones are flattened into powder. The skin has been flayed from most of its body. Rot grubs writhe within the gaping wounds that cover him, devouring him from the inside. There are residual signs of powerful healing magic used to keep the angel alive so the torture could continue. You feel bile and gorge travel up your throat, and with effort you swallow it down. Whoever this poor angel was, they suffered a horrid, excruciating fate, one you would not wish upon your worst enemies. You are the
Who are you?
Why are you here?
Who is your message for?
Who sent you?
Why did you have to come here to deliver the message?
Why would Iomedae try to stop us?
What is your message?
What greater tragedy?
What will happen if he dies without being redeemed?
Can we raise you?
Do you have proof?
Malakia’s lifeless head turns towards Rischa, and the deva stares at her with his unseeing eyes. “I pray you trust Jingh as I trust him. Enough to defy the express command of our God. A choice lies before you, champions of light. I pray you make the right one. I bid this life farewell and return to the planes to be born again.” The astral deva’s eyes close a final time, his soul departed, to rejoin the cosmic cycle of renewal.
Below are three conversations from the Inelectuable Prison setting up the decision to save or kill the Herald. A lot of the cosmology of my campaign gets shared by Alderpash to set things up. I also made Waxberry a character much earlier (I killed off Sosiel and Aaron Kir in book 2 so Wax become the priest). They rescue her, and she was aware of an angel that attacked the prison. When they rescued the prisoner he was dead and learn through speak with dead that he came her on a suicide mission from one of Iomeade's advisors saying they had to kill the Herald even though it would damn his soul (this was all set up with Arueshalae's experiences earlier. But Iomedae wasn't thinking clearly given her own history with Arazani - the human part of her personaltiy was controlling. They are to seek out Alderpash to learn more - the oldest prisoner in the prison (technically not true because of Ingramalesh). A lot of information dumps with Alderpash, but it began to tie together all the things I had been seeding throughout. Conversations From the Ineluctable Prison 30 Pharast, 4724 - Ineluctable Prison, The Ivory Labyrinth Having dispatched the cellblock guardians, you turn your attention to the closest cell, and its unexpected occupant. A halfling who very much appears to be Waxberry stares at you through the wall of force that traps her within the bone white cell. Thought lost at the Battle of Raliscrad, she is dressed in a tattered blue and gray shift and clutches a small holy symbol of Iomedae. Her short hair is a tangled mess, and she looks a little thinner, but otherwise intact – at least physically. There are none of the tell-tale signs of the torture you would expect to find. She stares at you, incredulously. “How…how is this possible?” she asks, before bursting into tears of desperation, hope, and relief. What are you doing here?
Where did you get that holy symbol?
“The head torturer was this obesely swollen creature – he looked like a human toad with bat wings and obsidian skin. They called him Plorig-Stagul. I was…with him, when a barely conscious angel was dragged into the room. An astral deva. They rushed me out to make room for him. As we passed each other he slid me this holy symbol, and I was able to hide it as they brought me here.” I never saw him again. They’ve been torturing him ever since. I don’t know for how long. Nothing changes here to mark the days. But it has been days at least. Maybe weeks? The jailers would occasionally describe his torture to me. They called him Malaika, and say he single handedly assaulted the prison in a mad fury trying to free the Herald. But I’ve had nothing but time with little I was willing to think about. It doesn’t make sense! Why would Iomedae send just one angel? There’s no way he could have been successful. It’s suicide. It’s beyond suicide. I don’t understand…” Do you know where the Herald is?
I never saw him again, but my captors have been taunting me, saying he fell.” Waxberry shudders and her voice cracks as she continues. “That he is no longer serves Iomedae. That he’s become the Herald of the Ivory Labyrinth.” Can he be saved?
Are you able to help us?
Thanks :) I have a few more coming - The final expansion of the Worldwound (end of book V/start of 6), before and after the battle for drezen (maybe my two favorite pieces other than Arueshalae's redemption), closing the Worldwound, and two Epilogues (based on whether or not they redeem or damn the Herald - right now they are leaning towards saving which will, in the cosmology of my campaign, end up sacrificing Iomedae - though they don't know that yet) I had 6 players for most of the campaign (down to 5), and one is a Rogue so Anevia receeded to the background (as did Aravashinal and Yaniel - Arueshale, Horgus, Galfray and Irabeth were the PCs that popped). Given the ending I have in mind I wish I had done more with Anevia - I lean into her relationship with IRabeth and missed some chances to develop it further. So it's smart that you are working her in more. Ohh, reading what's here i'm behind on a post. Incoming
i am running a large party (5 pcs plus arueshale ) currently with a modifed set of mythic rules against the fully mythic upgraded monster statblocks abailable in thse forums and it has worked great. PCs feel epic but less powerful than monsters so all combats feel scary and desperate. experienced players and we have been a group for over a decade so there is trust The pcs have; 25 point buy
overall (with 1.5 books to go) my players have said this is the best campaign we have done - and i have been playing with some of these folks for close to 30 years. it can work great in 1e ditching full mythic rules for players without much adjustement - assuming you use scorpion’s alt stat blocks which was heroic work on his part
I wrote this piece to show the forces of the Worldwound on the move, and to continue to develop Iomedae as a character since she will play such a key role in the finale. I am planning to have the forces of the WW basically steamroll the north of Golarion - a set of unstoppable armies that no one can realistically oppose (the fallout of which will be addressed in book VI). I am also having Vorlesh expand the worldwound through the sacrifice of a hundred thousand prisoners, and this explains where they come from. PCs got this at the start of an Ivory Labyrinth session to help give them a sense of urgency. Cutscene XV: Past Belief 30 Pharast, 4724 – Proelera, Heaven Iomedae stared into the oracular well at the heart of her cathedral, surrounded by her inner court. Jingh - eldest of the iophanites who have served the rulers of Heaven since the dawn of creation. Saint Lymirin - the eagle headed high priestess of her faith. And Peace Through Vigilance, the normally irrepressible celestial gold dragon – far from the most powerful of Iomedae’s servants but a trusted confidant and advisor who offered important counterpoints to the stern judgements of the priestess or Jingh’s cosmic logic. The Herald was conspicuous by his absence, a missing presence that defined the space. The stained-glass windows reflected Iomedae’s inner thoughts, cycling through images too rapidly for mortal eyes to follow, though the Herald and Arazni recurred with enough frequency to be visible. Although time passes differently in the seat of Iomedae’s power, their vigil had lasted weeks by Golarion reckoning, silent observers of long-anticipated fears finally arisen. The armies of the Abyss were on the march, rampaging through northern Golarion with a devastating ferocity honed to a razor’s edge by Deskari’s vaunted generals, unleashed in all their terrible power. Their legendary cruelty and focus imposed a horrifying discipline on the chaotic and fractious demons – forging them into a world devouring force. Iomedae had manifested as an avatar to stay grounded in this moment, the physical form helping her screen out the noise and interference of a celestial consciousness. She needed to be present. To act if she could find a way. To bear witness if she could not. She winced, occasionally, at the stabbing migraine pains and clenching tightness in her chest. But if this was the cost of preserving her Herald she would gladly pay it. The vast nave was silent except for Peace Through Vigilance’s breathing – the sound of a deep, rumbling furnace. Normally Iomedae found it soothing, but now its cadence seemed to urge on the demonic armies. The demons were loyal to Deskari, Baphomet’s troops recalled to his abyssal labyrinths to protect their vulnerable master. But this was not a cause for celebration. There was still no force powerful enough to stand against Deskari’s might, and the distant hope that the demons would turn on each other was no more. The demons’ nature was, along with the wardstones, Golarion’s principal protection against their rapacious destruction – and both defenses were gone. With uncharacteristic patience, Deskari had waited to unleash his true war, and that patience was richly rewarded. Diurgez Broodlord swarmed into Numeria without warning, vast numbers of demons falling upon Starfall and the hidden treasures of the Silver Mount. The demons stayed focused on the horizon line – teleporting en masse as far as they could see, remaining in formation, and teleporting again. They covered vast distances at inconceivable speed, resisting the distraction of isolated tribes and small villages, fixated on their larger prize. The Technic League fled with what secrets and treasure they could gather in their brief window of warning, abandoning the capital and its people. Starfall was crushed in a matter of hours, but what truly frightened Iomedae was the aftermath. The demons did not scatter, did not get lost in the joy of destroying a city and tormenting its citizens, as they had during the sacking of Kenebras. Civilian deaths were shockingly light. Deskari wanted prisoners, and while demonic warbands scoured the countryside for smaller settlements, the Broodlord returned to Undarin with tens of thousands of survivors. The inhuman pace proved far more murderous than the assault, and over half the prisoners dropped dead on the death march to Areelu Vorlesh’s city. Khorramzadeh The Storm King moved through the counties of Ustalav with astonishing haste, deploying the same tactics as the Broodlord, focused on the major population centers and avoiding the distraction of its countless villages and hamlets. Karcau and Lepidstadt offered only the most token resistance, their citizens marched north as the Storm King moved south. The natural defensive barrier of the Hungry Mountains offered no protection, barely slowing the Storm King’s relentless onslaught, and within days a demonic tide engulfed the capital of Caliphas. For the first time since the opening of the Worldwound, demons stood on the shore of Lake Encarthan. But the rampage halted there, and while warbands began to depopulate the smaller settlements, the Storm King returned to the north with his mortal prizes. The greatest armed resistance was in Mendev, the heart of the crusade against the Worldwound, and Aponavicius descended upon it with the largest of the demonic armies. Galfrey had spent a hundred years preparing for this moment, and when the Bothan network warned of the imminent attack she was ready to evacuate Nerosyan and save her people. The bulk of its citizens journeyed along the Egelsee River, skirting the Estrovian Forest, towards the costal city of Egede. There a mass exodus began, and the people of Mendev made their way across the Lake of Mists and Veils, towards Brevoy and the promise of sanctuary in the nation of Verdant, their passage and settlement negotiated in the days after the destruction of the Wardstones. Galfrey sent the majority of her strength northeast towards Drezen, under the command of Yaniel, who absorbed the soldiers stationed at Kenebras and Valas’ Gift and escorted the remaining civilians towards what safety the Sword of Valor offered. To protect the diaspora, Nerosyan had to be a target, and so Galfrey stayed behind, too tempting a prize for Aponavicius to ignore. Ten thousand crusaders volunteered to remain with her, prepared to lay down their lives in defense of a city they could not possibly hold. But they did not have to hold. They simply had to resist the inevitable, to draw the marilith’s attention long enough for the civilians to make it to Egede, and the army to reach Drezen. They fought bravely, for the glory of the Crusade and for the honor of their gods. For the memory of Mendev and the safety of their families. For the love of their warrior queen, and the people of Golarion they would never know. They forced Aponavicius to pay in blood for every street, every building, every life. But if this was the price of revenge the demon would gladly pay it. Blood, after all, was in endless supply. Galfrey fought to the bitter end, and saw the mighty Woundward Tower fall, Mendev’s banner disappearing within its smoking wreckage. It was her last image of Nerosyan before Aravashnial teleported her to safety, the final survivors of a doomed last stand. Iomedae’s court witnessed the collapse of the nations surrounding the Worldwound. The resistance, where it existed, was heroic, but futile. Tens of thousands of innocent souls were dead, and tens of thousands more were marching to Undarin and the ghastly fate awaiting them. It was clear no armed force could stand against the disciplined, unstoppable leaders driving these demonic armies. More than a century of conflict and bloodshed, generations who have known nothing but war, and all it did was delay the inevitable. The north was lost, and the rest of Golarion would follow. As Iomedae watched the people of Mendev flee towards Brevoy, and the temporary sanctuary it offered, she sensed a great darkness stirring within the depths of the Lake of Mists and Veils. Iomedae no longer thought victory was possible. But what is left, when you have journeyed past belief? Faith belongs to mortals. No one hears the prayers of the gods. She turned her attention north, towards Drezen – a small and solitary light within a black and oppressive night. She grimaced at the stabbing pain in her heart, desperate to act, powerless to do anything but watch. So much lay beyond her sight. But the Herald still lived and though she could only distantly sense them, her champions were coming. They would save him, and redeem her great failure. The Sword of Valor maintained a silent protective vigil over the remnants of the Crusade. She had not lost yet. If there was resistance, there was a chance. It would have to be enough. Iomedae had not spoken for two weeks. Finally, she broke her silence, whispering words of comfort - for her court, and for herself. “They will be my answer.”
I have a few more narrative scenes to share that are hopefully useful. This first one takes place in Threshold (I moved the initial removing of the Herald's heart to Threshold so Vorlesh was involved, with the body then moved to the Ineluctable Prison Cutscene XIII: Choices 3 Pharast, 4724 – Threshold, The Worldwound The bleeding walls of the Chapel of Wounds pulse like a heartbeat, the raw flesh twisting and throbbing, each contraction and expansion dislodging the millions of ravenous vermin feeding upon its cancerous flesh. In the domed ceiling, thirty feet above, a vortex of miasmic orange energy swirls in a counter clockwise rotation. A fifteen-foot-wide cage made of sinew and bone hangs in the air below it. A six-armed creature, an amalgam of stone and metal, lay upon the floor of the cage, barely conscious and incongruously moaning. The lhaksharut inevitable is pierced by dozens of long thin barbs of raw chaos that emerge from the bones of the cage. The barbs feed upon the essence of the inevitable, and the cage is illuminated by a soft silver glow as the parasitic harvest travels along the network of chaos tendrils that wreath the inevitable’s prison. The energy is drawn to a glowing purple Nahyndrian crystal affixed to the top of the cage. A second stream of corrupted power flows from the crystal into a larger prismatic black gem floating above it, refracting the inevitable’s essence into dozens of thin, nearly invisible purple strands that flow up into the orange void. No one in the room below spares a glance for the inevitable, their focus instead on the prisoner strapped to the stone table before them, bound by Nahyndrian shackles. A sickly burning smell wafts up from the wounds where his great golden wings are pinned by two Nahyndrian spikes. The table is covered with an array of runes and wards glowing in iridescent purple, orange, green – the colors of the abyss. Given their complexity, they must have taken days to prepare. Though his features are obscured by his great golden helm, the Hand of the Inheritor’s body is tense and taut, wracked by the intense pain and enervating corruption he struggles to resist. Standing on opposite sides of the room, their gaze alternating between hungry, almost lustful glances at the Herald and angry, suspicious glaring at each other, are two hulking figures. Although it is hard to make out the balor’s features through the cloud of locusts surrounding him, Diurgez Broodlord eyes the room possessively, not sure if he should be honored to host such esteemed guests or resent their presence in what should be his tower. Plorig-Stagul turns her focus from the Broodlord back to the Herald. A noxious drool drips from the shaggy demodand’s mouth and onto her putrid, perpetually damp gray-brown fur. Her fists unconsciously open and close, and she found herself leaning in towards the Herald, as if to snatch her prize before someone else could steal it. But she keeps her distance, not wanting to anger either figure looming over the Herald. Areelu Vorlesh finished the final castings of her ritual, a modification of the Azverindus Rites of her own design. The Herald grimaced, and a soft, involuntary moan escaped. She gently stroked his helm, and spoke in a soft, soothing voice. “There is no need for either of us to waste time with unnecessary posturing. This only ends one way. We both know it. It will go so much easier for you, and for her, if you simply let go. You will surrender. Your only choice is when. The last choice you will ever make.” She lingered for a few moments, not expecting a response but committed to the form and shape of the exchange. She took three steps back and nodded to her companion. “Lord Baphomet, at your pleasure.” Baphomet grinned, and the depths of satisfaction within it highlighted the deep intelligence otherwise obscured by his bestial features. “YOU HAVE FAILED THE CHILD GODDESS, HERALD, AND NOW SHE WILL PAY THE PRICE OF HER MISPLACED FAITH IN YOU”. And with that, Baphomet drove his hands into the Herald’s chest. There was the sound of screeching metal, and then a wet tear as he punctured flesh and armor, and ripped out the Herald’s heart. Baphomet held it above his head, and roared in triumph. And though the Herald gasped and moaned, he did not scream. The heart pulsed in Baphomet’s hand, the beat strong and steady. The thinnest of golden lines, invisible to the naked eye, trailed from the heart into his chest cavity, which glowed in bright golden defiance of the horror surrounding it. Vorlesh reached into her robes, and drew out a purple Nahyndrian crystal the size of her fist and an even larger black gem of similar design to the one floating above the inevitable’s prison. She spoke a long arcane phrase, the sound of beautiful music shattering into irretrievable pieces, and thrust the crystal into the hollow of the Herald’s chest. The Herald did scream, then – a harrowing, hopeless cry that seemed to stretch forever. Divine worshipers of Iomedae across the planes were stricken with a flash of blinding pain, and though it quickly abated a distant sense of wrongness remained. Vorlesh watched as the radiance within the Herald flared and enveloped the crystal, and for a brief moment the purple glow was swallowed by a golden light. Vorlesh waited, patient and still, until small purple flecks began to appear within the golden haze, and the black gem in her hand was illuminated from within by a tarnished golden mist. She nodded to herself, and only then did she allow a small smile to grace her perfect features. Baphomet turned to Vorlesh. “HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE?”, he rumbled? “His will is strong. Days, at least. Perhaps longer.” Vorlesh offered Baphomet a patient smile. “But we want him to resist. She will wait, as long as she believes there is a chance he can be saved.” Baphomet laughed, “AS ALWAYS, THE WEAKNESS THEY PERCIEVE AS STRENGTH WILL BE THEIR UNDOING.” Vorlesh pocketed the black gem. “Enjoy your hard-earned prize, my lord.” With your leave, I shall begin preparations for the expansion.” Baphomet gave a distracted nod, and Vorlesh exited the chamber, though the Broodlord remained, keeping a wary eye on his unwanted guests. Baphomet took the Herald’s head in his right hand, and forced him to look at the still beating heart the demon lord held in his left. Baphomet gave it a vicious squeeze, and golden blood ran down his fingers. “YOUR RIGHTEOUS HEART IS MINE. YOUR SOUL IS MINE TO RESHAPE AS I DESIRE. BUT I AM NOT A CRUEL MASTER, HERALD. YOUR LONG JOURNEY IS JUST BEGINNING, AND I HAVE ARRANGED A GUIDE. NO ONE SHOULD HAVE TO WANDER ALONE.” Baphomet turned towards Plorig-Stagul, who offered his master a wet, noxious smile. “IT IS TIME THE HERALD CAME HOME.”
Book III does slow down time a fair bit, as does stretches of Book V, but when all is said and done my campaign (we are a few sessions away from finishing book V) will take fewer than 9 months. I've emphasized throughout that the demons are basically toying with humanity, and that once Vorlesh and Deskari are ready to make their moves they work fast. This is a story that works much better with a sense of back footed urgency. Even if PCs are moving fast, they can be moving fast (from Books IV-VI) in response to provocations from the Worldwound.
Mightypion wrote:
i do plan to have a large portion of numeria nuked - it would be interesting to have broodlord leading those troops - i could buff his swarms. ill think on it. i am writing that cutscene this weekend players just entered ivory labyrinth
thats really good. I’ve dramatically accelerated the timeline in my campaign - making it clear that the end of the world is underway, that the demons have been toying with the crusades, etc. As the players enter the ineluctable prison deskari’s armies are about to obliterate numeria and nerosyan. by the time of the book vi assault in drezen it will be the last free population center in the larger region
my players missed nurah and were devestated when she betrayed them at the Staunton Vhane fight. Great moment In the basement i had kiranda (i moved her there) pretending to be that lost awashbucklerly crusader. the players were eventually convinced and brought her back to camp. i had her murder sosiel and eacape to raise stakes (amd make them
I had eustoryiax kill Sosiel’s partner as well. too many npcs. Irabeth, Galfrey, Waxberry, Horgus, Avenia, Aravashinal and Arueshale were plenty If you ever have your pcs use the planetar summoning ability of the Sword of Valor I highly reccomend having it summon the herald glad people are still playing this. If you use scorpions alt stat blocks and just use the very basic mythic rules (no feats and paths) it is well balanced and a terrific story. we start book V in two weeks (my group plays 1/month for marathon sessions)
I use a lot of music as a DM, and often script cutscenes to particular songs and musical cues (language flourishes matching musical moments, etc). I wanted to go with music that felt a little more percussive and alien than the typical brassy music used for epic moments. These have worked really well thus far. All these songs are available on Spotify Many characters have musical themes 1. Main Title - The Terminator (Terminator Soundtrack): Theme for Book 1
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2eJz2N1e18gcM7uQ1GXayk?si=9183115855714df 2 34.
I want to offer my attempt to revise the Iomedae encounter to make her relatable and justify why the PCs would put the crusade on hold to save her Herald. Cutscene XIII: The Twelfth Act of Iomedae 4 Pharast, 4724 – Proelara, Heaven Without warning, the council room in Drezen fades out of existence. The world turns white, and you are enveloped by a cocooning pressure as you are transported somewhere by an overpowering magical force. You have been summoned like this before, with Areelu Vorlesh, and while you are equally powerless to resist, there is not the same experience of violation. It feels instead like you are gently gliding along currents you sense but cannot see. The air is rich with the sound of distant murmuring – words just beyond your comprehension. You find yourself in the center of a vast cathedral whose dimensions extend beyond your sight, its walls covered in stained glass. You look around and see your fellow members of the Silver Scale are here with you, along with Galfrey and Irabeth. Soft golden light streams in through countless windows, illuminating the images within their frames. As you watch, the glass scenes animate and transform into moving records of history. You recognize them as moments from the great crusades against the Worldwound, stories you have only read about that come alive before you in the glass. You watch as an avatar of the god Aroden defeats the Sarkorian cult dedicated to Deskari, banishing its remnants, including the demon lord’s ruined avatar, deep into the Lake of Mists and Veils. The light darkens as a still human Areelu Vorlesh throws open the Worldwound within the bowels of the tower of Threshold. A young Queen Galfrey, paladin of the now dead Aroden, kneels before an altar. She rises as a paladin of Iomedae and takes her place as leader of the Crusades. You watch as Iomedaen knights and Sarkorian survivors drive back the first wave of demons to emerge from the Worldwound, before the great phoenix Pyralisia falls to a demonic horde, her sacrifice granting the Herald of Iomedae time to call the wardstones into being. The windows do not shy away from the darker moments of the crusades, as Minagho unleashes her Red Morning Massacre and a young Lord Hulrun orchestrates the witch trials of the Third Crusade. As innocents within Kenebras burn, Templars of the Ivory Labyrinth watch from the shadows and smile. Elsewhere, Staunton Vhane places the Sword of Valor into the waiting hands of Jerribeth, as Aponavicius’ forces flow over the walls of Drezen. You see Yaniel’s last stand in Raliscard, an indomitable beacon of light illuminated against the tide of darkness crashing over her. You watch Irabeth defend the Wardstone of Kenebras against Staunton Vhane, while on a different window Terendelev beats back the assault of the mighty Khorramzadeh before the glass shifts and you witness the great dragon’s beheading at the hands of the Storm King on the day that Kenebras fell. You feel a compulsion to approach the cathedral’s central nave. As you do, the history of the 5th Crusade unfolds before you, its story told in the glass. You watch Queso touch the rod of cancellation to the wardstone fragment and witness its power flow into you. Curiously, the Herald is nowhere to be found within the image. You see Irabeth raise the Sword of Valor over a reclaimed Drezen and behold the redemption of Arueshalae before the Gods of the Crusade. You watch as Cyrus holds back Jerribeth’s elite agents in the Ivory Sanctum while Zograthy casts down Xanthir Vang and claims his birthright. You see the forces of Drezen repel demonic invaders, while elsewhere Rischa kneels before the Herald of Iomedae, and Kiryn awakens Radiance from its slumber. You are with Galfrey, who barely aged a day since her ascension to the throne, as you close the gate in the Midnight Fane, and Wick is declared the champion of the Battlebliss. As you enter the nave of the Cathedral, a space simultaneously vast and intimate, the images on the window change once more, as the Hand of the Inheritor bows before Iomedae, who declares him her Herald. And while you watch him turn the tide at the last desperate defense of Drezen, the stories widen their focus, and you bear witness to nearly a thousand years of the Herald’s loyal service to Iomedae across the planes. The pressure intensifies, becoming painful – the light that pours in from the windows blindingly bright, the distant murmuring now a thunderous cacophony. You begin to bleed from your eyes, nose, ears. The very fabric of reality vibrates around you as you feel yourself melting away – your soul stripped of all armor, all pretense, just the exposed core of who you are remains, feeling impossibly small and insignificant in the face of the scouring light. And just as you are about to be consumed the pressure abates – the light dims – bright, but no longer burning – the sound present but no longer deafening. Your wounds healed. Standing before you is a is a tall woman with piercing eyes, angular features, and short black hair. She wears clean but well used silver plate, and a blood red cloak flows behind her, a long sword sheathed at her side, its handle ornate but functional. The Wardstone energy within you rushes to the surface in greeting as you behold the avatar of Iomedae the Inheritor – Light of the Sword, Lady of Valor, goddess of Justice and Honor– patron of the Crusade against the Worldwound. You find it hard to look directly at her, as if some incomprehensible power is barely contained within this corporeal form. She radiates an overpowering sense of righteousness, resolve, and the peace that comes from absolute certainty of purpose. As you stand before her, you feel a clarity you have never experienced before, a feeling you will never forget all the rest of your days. *** PCs react*** “Welcome, crusaders, to my cathedral. Please, I bid you rise: Young Queso, who would hold the world’s knowledge in his hands so that he might finally put things to right. Cyrus, your actions honor the blood that flows within your veins, a lineage that understands the cost and nobility of sacrifice. Wick, who knows well the value of a second chance, and the need to do right by it. Kiryn, paladin of Desna, so strong and resolute in your faith. There must be the dream of justice before it is made real. It must be sought before it is found, and so followers of the goddess of seekers and dreamers are always welcome in my halls. Arueshalae, yours is a grand experiment in redemption. A dangerous road lies before you, and you must hold to your path. Zograthy, you have walked long and far to find your purpose, but you have proven yourself worthy of your legacy. Irabeth, my loyal paladin. Time and again you have held the line, stalwart shield of my faith. Rischa, my indomitable champion, kin to my Herald – I see his dignity and resolve in you, and through your actions you honor us both. And Queen Galfrey, your leadership has held the Crusades together and kept Golarion safe for all these long, grueling years. For over a century, you have been the tip of my sword. As Iomedae speaks, you realize that her voice lacks the dark music and seductive notes of Nocticula and Vorlesh, or the commanding tenor of the Herald. And while Iomedae’s face is handsome, you would not call it beautiful. And yet you realize that you would follow anywhere she led, undertake any task she gave, knowing that if she believes in you then anything is possible. It is uncomfortable to gaze upon her, a light burning too brightly, and so you find yourself looking around the immense chamber. A great stone well sits behind Iomedae, its marble wall five feet high, a soft multicolored light glowing within it. The cathedral stretches to heights beyond your sight, though about two hundred feet up you see a vast projection of stars – the celestial immensity of the prime material plane. You wonder which world is Golarion. The stained glass windows now depict the eleven miraculous acts of a mortal Iomedae, when she was a paladin of Aroden – the slaying of Nakorsho’mond, and the freeing of her circle of paladins from the stomach of the beast. The First Act of Iomedae. On another window you observe her Second Act as she frees the city of Senghor from the tyranny of a witches coven. You watch the Whispering Tyrant shatter her sword, which Iomedae instantly reforges with a prayer and oath to end his evil, creating the artifact Heart’s Edge in the Sixth Act of Iomedae. Elsewhere she calls forth the Undenying Light from the Starstone, banishing the darkness of a terrible storm so that the city’s defenders could find and slay the ghouls rampaging throughout Absalom, Iomedae’s Seventh Act. You thrill as you watch the sacred texts of Iomedae’s faith come to life before you – the Third Act where she slew Segruchen the Iron Gargoyle, King of the Barrowwood, or the Fourth Act, where she called upon Aroden’s herald Arazni, and the two of them stood with a mortally wounded regiment of knights against a horde of wraiths, holding the line until the dawn. The Fifth Act saw Iomedae smite Erum-Hel, the Lord of Mohrgs, at the Battle of Three Sorrows - inspiring the Shining Crusade to fight on despite the Whispering Tyrant revealing the now broken and ruined body of the slain Arazni to the crusaders. Not every scene told a martial story. The Eight Act, where she allowed the graveknight known as the Black Prince to be redeemed and judged in the Halls of Aroden, spoke of her mercy. The Ninth Act, where she gave her own blood to free nine righteous knights from the vampire-mage Basilov, demonstrated her willingness to sacrifice. Or the Tenth, where she ruled the Chelaxian city of Kantaria for a year and a day, bringing prosperity to the war-torn region as she showed her capacity for wisdom and judgement. And her Eleventh act, a final miracle before her ascension to Godhood, as she cast her cloak into the Pit of the Starstone, which transformed into the walkway that granted access to the cathedral, and the test that would elevate her into a divinity, the last of the new gods. Your ears adjust to the sounds permeating the cathedral, as the incomprehensible noise slowly crystalizes into a celestial choir chanting the Acts of Iomedae. The hymns are intercut with prayers from innumerable faithful across countless worlds. You cannot make out every prayer, but those you can, you realize, are not asking Iomedae to intercede or solve their problems. Instead, they call upon her to grant them strength, wisdom, and courage so they might solve those problems themselves. Iomedae continues. “I have brought you here for a purpose and have done so only under the most dire of need. But before I lay this task before you, I must know that you are champions worthy of undertaking this great work. You have been bold in your war against Deskari and Baphomet, and I favor boldness. Justice requires it, But the line separating boldness from arrogance is thin, and the greatest heroes suffer the longest falls. This has been true of the crusades in which I fought, and those fought in my name. So, tell me, what makes you worthy of carrying the legacy and values of my faith into the darkness of the Abyss, and how can I know you will return them untainted?” PCs answer “You have a hero’s bravery and have proven you can survive the horrors of the Abyss. None would doubt your courage. But you have also learned that not all those in the Abyss are your enemies. Some are creatures whose wicked nature can be used as a tool to defeat greater evils. And still others may yet strive to transcend who they are – to prove that just as one might fall, another may rise. One such story you know intimately well. And so, I ask you, are the wages of sin always death and oblivion? When is terrible evil due mercy? Who deserves death, and who deserves a chance at redemption? Which option is the path of justice, and how will you recognize it when more seductive roads lie before you?” PCs answer “Ours is work that never truly ends. The righteous are forever beset on all sides by the malevolent and wicked. And sometimes we are little more than a tiny candle burning in the midst of impenetrable night. And so I must know, how does justice triumph against overwhelming evil? How do you maintain light at the heart of darkness? How does one outwit and defeat a demon lord in his own domain? For I ask no less of you than this. PCs answer I am grateful for the honesty, wisdom, courage, and humility of your responses. You each possess a valorous soul. Are you worthy of the task I will place before you? That cannot be known. There is no such thing as destiny, and no conclusion is prewritten. None can read the chapters to come until the page is turned, and each of us must craft the ending to our own story. What we have is a chance to act. That is all we are ever given, but that is enough. Who we are, and what we are worth, is defined by what we do with that chance. When we fall, can we find the courage to rise again? When hope is lost, can we find the resolve to stand our ground until it is found? Every moment of our lives is an opportunity to live up to our ideals. And every failure affords us the chance to do better next time. If justice required perfection we could never achieve it, for we are all flawed and imperfect beings – even the Gods.” As Iomedae speaks, you notice a new image among the ever-shifting Acts of Iomedae. You see the knights of Ozem once again call upon Aroden’s Herald Arazni to do battle against the forces of the Whispering Tyrant, her summoner obscured by the smoke and carnage. But this time was a trap, and the Tyrant captured Arazni, who he would torture, mutilate, and destroy. The tragedy is known to church scholars, though the summoner’s name is lost to history. “Let us come to the heart of the matter. As you have learned, the Exalted Army of the Fifth Crusade was routed in Raliscard – a cunning trap set by Areelu Vorlesh, one that took advantage of the chaos and confidence caused by your victories. Nearly the entirety of that army was destroyed, but the most bitter loss was the capture of my Herald. His fate is only partially known to me. I know that he lives, as I still feel him through our connection. I know that he suffers greatly, and he struggles to resist some consuming and terrible corruption. And I know that he is losing his battle. It is only a matter of time until he falls. What’s more, I can feel something feeding off his connection to me, drawing upon my divinity to fuel some dark purpose. I could end this by severing the connection. But to do so would consign his soul to the Abyss, forever. He would be lost to me. AND HE DOES NOT DESERVE THIS!” Iomedae is angry now, and the force of her words shatter the stained glass windows – their shards rain down, but before they strike you they disappear, and the windows reform. “I will not lose another Herald,” she whispers. This time each window shows the capturing of the Herald Arazni. As you watch the scene unfold, the smoke dissipates, and the lost summoner is revealed – you gaze upon a young female paladin with short, black hair, wearing a long red cloak. Iomedae stares at the glass for a long moment before continuing. “Behold, the 12th Act of Iomedae. My greatest failure. I was the favored champion of Aroden, sword-sister and friend to his mighty Herald, granted the blessing to call upon her in an hour of need. And whether it was arrogance, complacency, or fear, I abused that gift. The Whispering Tyrant set a trap for Arazni, and I delivered her to it. The truth was covered up shortly after my ascension by the church of Aroden and my own fledgling faith. The Acts of Iomedae are stories – eleven myths that valorize and over simplify the very messy and imperfect efforts of a mortal doing the best she could under difficult circumstances. To build my faith, it was decided, I had to be divine even as a mortal. And so the truth was suppressed – known today not even by the most devout and loyal of my church. This is a secret possessed by only a handful of immortal beings. My herald has been taken because he saw me grieve the impending doom of my mortal home and resolved to intercede on my behalf, as he understood I could not act on my own. I am a god – it is my role to give shape and focus to the power of belief that is at the root of life and creation, and to keep it contained – to allow others access to what they need, but always an infinitesimal part of the whole. No world, not even the planes, can hold our true selves for long.
And so, Order of the Silver Scale, my inadvertent champions, I confess that I did not choose you to receive the wardstones power, but you have proven yourself worthy nevertheless – and now I AM choosing you to undertake a sacred task in my name. Somewhere in the Abyss, within Baphomet’s Ivory Labyrinth, is my Herald. This I know. Beyond that he is hidden from my sight. I charge you with affecting his rescue. Find him and return him safely to me. Will you accept this charge?” (PCS respond) “I would not send you into Baphomet’s realm unprepared. He has many prisons, and you may need this.” Appearing in her hands is a goblet, made of mithril and studded with dozens of rubies. “This is the Chalice of Ozem, an artifact sacred to my faith – it has many abilities, and can safely hold any liquid, including the caustic blood of the Father of Worms, a beast that may be found somewhere within the Ivory Labyrinth. It is said that his blood can melt any lock, and it may be the key to entering whatever prison holds my Herald.” Iomedae offers the chalice to Queso. “Baphomet’s layer is dark and dangerous, and many temptations await you within its twisted labyrinths. I grant each of you the power to cast atonement one time in my name. Use this for yourselves should you fall but resist if you can so that the gift of a second chance can be given to those who may need it.” Iomedae raises her hand, and your heart swells to near bursting with a sense of righteous mercy, before receding into something small and secret you carry within you, ready to be called forth if needed. Iomedae then plucks a single red thread from her cloak, and as she pulls it free it turns into a long red shawl. She hands it to Zograthy. “With the Stole of the Inheritor you will always be but a step away from home, yet know that you can only open this pathway once – save such a flight for a last resort. We fight a war on many fronts, and not everyone is meant to wander the dark passages of the Ivory Labyrinth. Irabeth Tiribade, you must return to Drezen and defend the Sword of Valor. Areelu Vorlesh schemes within schemes within schemes, and we cannot know if she might seize the chance to reclaim the Sword, and to what fell purpose she might subject its power.” Irabeth draws her sword and drives its tip into the stone floor of the cathedral. She grasps its pommel and kneels before Iomedae. “My Lady, there can be no greater glory than to carry out your will. I shall do as you ask, and my heart will be glad for it.” Iomedae nods, and turns her attention to Galfrey, who stares back, meeting the gaze of her goddess, tears running down her face – clearly in great pain, but unwilling to look away. A long moment passes, a space filled by a lifetime of questions no longer requiring an answer, and unspoken words no longer in need of a voice. Iomedae continues, her tone conveying respect for the mortal who stands before her – a kindred soul despite the vast gulf between them. “And you, Queen Galfrey, my loyal, patient champion. For a hundred years and more you have kept the fire of resistance burning in the face of impossible odds. I know your heart yearns for the field, and the clarity of battle, and an ending. The final war is coming, but it is not a war that you can win. Let us be under no illusions. The Abyss will not be defeated through strength of arms. But I do not ask you for victory. I simply ask that you fight to save your people, as many as you can, for each life saved is my answer to the horrors of the Abyss. I know that you are tired, and that your soul longs to set aside the burdens you have had to carry for far too long, but you must endure. I have asked much, but not more than you can handle, for you, Queen Galfrey of Mendev, Paladin and Champion of Iomedae, have a soul made of cold iron, and that iron does not break.” Like Irabeth, Galfrey drives the tip of her sword into the cathedral floor and kneels before it, her face radiating a renewed spirit. “My Lady, though my sword may grow heavy, within you I shall always find the strength to lift it, until the day comes that there is no longer a need.” (Pcs ask questions) “Rischa, my faithful servant – I have one final question to ask of you alone. My Herald has been taken from me, and the fate of the Mendevian Crusade, and all Golarion, is soon to be decided. A Herald serves as my voice, and walks the paths forbidden to me. Until such time as my Hand is restored, I offer you the opportunity to assume his responsibilities. Before you accept, Rischa, know that to be a Herald is surrender your own interests and ambitions and to serve as an extension of my will. It will make you a target for the forces of Desakri and Baphomet, as your light will be a beacon that draws the darkness to it. Nor will you immediately possess his great power, as it takes many years to learn how to properly wield it. This is not a responsibility to be taken lightly, and no honor is lost in refusal. Will you shoulder this burden?” (Rischa speaks) “Then kneel, Rischa, and affirm what oath you deem appropriate.” (rischa completes her oath) As Rischa finishes, the blinding pressure you felt upon first encountering Iomedae builds again, along with the roar and sensation of rushing water. You can feel it flooding into the Cathedral, squeezing you, crowding out your mortal frame, until the pressure eases, its force drawn into Rischa. Rischa begins to glow from within, a radiant light that confers a transparency of the soul – her very being laid bare before you. Her faith, and her doubt that she is not strong enough to do what Iomedae requires. Her implacable certainty, and her shame at the times she was deceived. Her desire to find the great sky citadel Jormurdun, and her secret guilt for harboring ambitions not connected to Iomedae. But above all you see her desire to live up to her god’s example, to embody within herself the lessons of the Acts of Iomedae. A bright golden tether emerges from Iomedae – not from within her avatar, but from the space between reality that is the true home of the Gods. The tether enters Rischa’s chest and wraps itself around her heart – and through it Rischa can sense Iomedae’s goodness and patience, her nobility and forgiveness, her courage and will. But the connection reveals Iomedae’s hidden truths as well. Her anger at what has been done to her Herald, to her home world – her grinding frustration at the loss of her agency. The need to put others at risk while she remains safe. Knowing that with a thought she could right the wrongs of the world, but that doing so would invite destruction on a cosmic scale. There is a wild, caged eagerness within her – a woman of action forced to be a bystander. Her divinity a blessing and a prison. There is more – Rischa experiences the memory of the fierce joy Iomedae felt as a mortal, the way she found glory and purpose in the pursuit of justice, and her wonder at the way an otherwise shy and modest woman could so effortlessly inspire others. Rischa is awed by the deep well of her faith and devotion to Aroden, and the desolate space left by his absence. She feels the intimacy of the kindship Iomedae felt with Arazni, and her totalizing guilt over her loss and mutilation. It is that guilt, Rischa realizes, that caused Iomedae to undertake the test of the Starstone – the need to right a wrong, to offer up herself in Arazni’s place. Burning brightly is her fear that she would not be worthy of that legacy. That even as she ascended to true Godhood, far eclipsing Arazni’s powers, her place was still at Aroden’s side so she could honor the empty space left by his lost herald. An absence she caused – a death she could never repay. Rischa experiences the endless prayers, the noise, the need, pulling at her in infinite directions across the endless expanse of the prime material plane – even if they know her by a different name, there is no world that fails to cry out for justice to balance the horrors creation inflicts upon its subjects. And yet, underneath that cosmic awareness, Iomedae has held on to part of her human, mortal soul – refusing to let go of what it means to be vulnerable, impermanent, to have hopes and dreams without the power to achieve them, to know that time is always your enemy. She understands the day she loses that feeling is the day she loses her empathy, and that without it her justice will be cold, sharp, and clinical. Rischa’s soul swells at the intimacy of the connection, marvels at the sacrifice Iomedae has made, and is overcome by a sense of gratitude and purpose. And then the connection closes, the raging river of power reduced to a tiny, steady stream. And Rischa felt like herself again, though something new grows within her. And though Iomedae keeps a respectful distance, granting Rischa the autonomy of her mind and the freedom of her actions, her presence remains. Iomedae stands back and gazes upon Queen Galfrey and Lady Irabeth, before turning her attention to her new Herald, and the Order of the Silver Scale. She nods to herself, satisfied. “Know that you are worthy to champion me against Baphomet, for mandate prohibits the willful intercession of the divine even in such matters as personal as the loss of a herald. Though I lay no geas or compulsion upon you, I charge you to go into the darkness of the Abyss, into the heart of the Ivory Labyrinth of my enemy and seek out my herald. If he is imprisoned, rescue him. If he is dead, bring him home. Should he have fallen, redeem him. Find a way to save him, so that I do not need to surrender his soul to the Abyss forever. But you must act, and act quickly. Something feeds upon me, and the longer I hold onto my connection to the Herald, the stronger it becomes.” The church begins to fade out, and you experience the same gliding sensation that brought you to Iomedae’s cathedral. You find yourself back in Drezen, mere moments having passed, Aravashinal, James Bothan, and Yaniel staring at you, looking perplexed and wary. Within each of your hands is a small holy symbol of Iomedae, and you understand that it contains the power to transport you, just once, into the Ivory Labyrinth.
Last one - I haven't used this yet (next session at the end of July). This is Iomedae's introduction, and it hopefully establishes some characterization including her frustration at not being able to intervene directly - all will be necessary to justify the finale I have in mind. I also came up with the idea of the 12th Act of Iomedae as a way to really establish why Iomedae would risk the crusades to rescue the Herald. I also have Vorlesh using him as a battery - drawing power from his connection to her, to give this a bit of a timeline. I think this is some of my better work. I also decided to make a PC the new Herald before they went in, so that transformation is in here Cutscene XIII: The Twelfth Act of Iomedae 4 Pharast, 4724 – Proelara, Heaven Without warning, the council room in Drezen fades out of existence. The world turns white, and you are enveloped by a cocooning pressure as you are transported somewhere by an overpowering magical force. You have been summoned like this before, with Areelu Vorlesh, and while you are equally powerless to resist, there is not the same experience of violation. It feels instead like you are gently gliding along currents you sense but cannot see. The air is rich with the sound of distant murmuring – words just beyond your comprehension. You find yourself in the center of a vast cathedral whose dimensions extend beyond your sight, its walls covered in stained glass. You look around and see your fellow members of the Silver Scale are here with you, along with Galfrey and Irabeth. Soft golden light streams in through countless windows, illuminating the images within their frames. As you watch, the glass scenes animate and transform into moving records of history. You recognize them as moments from the great crusades against the Worldwound, stories you have only read about that come alive before you in the glass. You watch as an avatar of the god Aroden defeats the Sarkorian cult dedicated to Deskari, banishing its remnants, including the demon lord’s ruined avatar, deep into the Lake of Mists and Veils. The light darkens as a still human Areelu Vorlesh throws open the Worldwound within the bowels of the tower of Threshold. A young Queen Galfrey, paladin of the now dead Aroden, kneels before an altar. She rises as a paladin of Iomedae and takes her place as leader of the Crusades. You watch as Iomedaen knights and Sarkorian survivors drive back the first wave of demons to emerge from the Worldwound, before the great phoenix Pyralisia falls to a demonic horde, her sacrifice granting the Herald of Iomedae time to call the wardstones into being. The windows do not shy away from the darker moments of the crusades, as Minagho unleashes her Red Morning Massacre and a young Lord Hulrun orchestrates the witch trials of the Third Crusade. As innocents within Kenebras burn, Templars of the Ivory Labyrinth watch from the shadows and smile. Elsewhere, Staunton Vhane places the Sword of Valor into the waiting hands of Jerribeth, as Aponavicius’ forces flow over the walls of Drezen. You see Yaniel’s last stand in Raliscard, an indomitable beacon of light illuminated against the tide of darkness crashing over her. You watch Irabeth defend the Wardstone of Kenebras against Staunton Vhane, while on a different window Terendelev beats back the assault of the mighty Khorramzadeh before the glass shifts and you witness the great dragon’s beheading at the hands of the Storm King on the day that Kenebras fell. You feel a compulsion to approach the cathedral’s central nave. As you do, the history of the 5th Crusade unfolds before you, its story told in the glass. You watch Queso touch the rod of cancellation to the wardstone fragment and witness its power flow into you. Curiously, the Herald is nowhere to be found within the image. You see Irabeth raise the Sword of Valor over a reclaimed Drezen and behold the redemption of Arueshalae before the Gods of the Crusade. You watch as Cyrus holds back Jerribeth’s elite agents in the Ivory Sanctum while Zograthy casts down Xanthir Vang and claims his birthright. You see the forces of Drezen repel demonic invaders, while elsewhere Rischa kneels before the Herald of Iomedae, and Kiryn awakens Radiance from its slumber. You are with Galfrey, who barely aged a day since her ascension to the throne, as you close the gate in the Midnight Fane, and Wick is declared the champion of the Battlebliss. As you enter the nave of the Cathedral, a space simultaneously vast and intimate, the images on the window change once more, as the Hand of the Inheritor bows before Iomedae, who declares him her Herald. And while you watch him turn the tide at the last desperate defense of Drezen, the stories widen their focus, and you bear witness to nearly a thousand years of the Herald’s loyal service to Iomedae across the planes. The pressure intensifies, becoming painful – the light that pours in from the windows blindingly bright, the distant murmuring now a thunderous cacophony. You begin to bleed from your eyes, nose, ears. The very fabric of reality vibrates around you as you feel yourself melting away – your soul stripped of all armor, all pretense, just the exposed core of who you are remains, feeling impossibly small and insignificant in the face of the scouring light. And just as you are about to be consumed the pressure abates – the light dims – bright, but no longer burning – the sound present but no longer deafening. Your wounds healed. Standing before you is a is a tall woman with piercing eyes, angular features, and short black hair. She wears clean but well used silver plate, and a blood red cloak flows behind her, a long sword sheathed at her side, its handle ornate but functional. The Wardstone energy within you rushes to the surface in greeting as you behold the avatar of Iomedae the Inheritor – Light of the Sword, Lady of Valor, goddess of Justice and Honor– patron of the Crusade against the Worldwound. You find it hard to look directly at her, as if some incomprehensible power is barely contained within this corporeal form. She radiates an overpowering sense of righteousness, resolve, and the peace that comes from absolute certainty of purpose. As you stand before her, you feel a clarity you have never experienced before, a feeling you will never forget all the rest of your days. *** PCs react*** “Welcome, crusaders, to my cathedral. Please, I bid you rise: Young Queso, who would hold the world’s knowledge in his hands so that he might finally put things to right. Cyrus, your actions honor the blood that flows within your veins, a lineage that understands the cost and nobility of sacrifice. Wick, who knows well the value of a second chance, and the need to do right by it. Kiryn, paladin of Desna, so strong and resolute in your faith. There must be the dream of justice before it is made real. It must be sought before it is found, and so followers of the goddess of seekers and dreamers are always welcome in my halls. Arueshalae, yours is a grand experiment in redemption. A dangerous road lies before you, and you must hold to your path. Zograthy, you have walked long and far to find your purpose, but you have proven yourself worthy of your legacy. Irabeth, my loyal paladin. Time and again you have held the line, stalwart shield of my faith. Rischa, my indomitable champion, kin to my Herald – I see his dignity and resolve in you, and through your actions you honor us both. And Queen Galfrey, your leadership has held the Crusades together and kept Golarion safe for all these long, grueling years. For over a century, you have been the tip of my sword. As Iomedae speaks, you realize that her voice lacks the dark music and seductive notes of Nocticula and Vorlesh, or the commanding tenor of the Herald. And while Iomedae’s face is handsome, you would not call it beautiful. And yet you realize that you would follow anywhere she led, undertake any task she gave, knowing that if she believes in you then anything is possible. It is uncomfortable to gaze upon her, a light burning too brightly, and so you find yourself looking around the immense chamber. A great stone well sits behind Iomedae, its marble wall five feet high, a soft multicolored light glowing within it. The cathedral stretches to heights beyond your sight, though about two hundred feet up you see a vast projection of stars – the celestial immensity of the prime material plane. You wonder which world is Golarion. The stained glass windows now depict the eleven miraculous acts of a mortal Iomedae, when she was a paladin of Aroden – the slaying of Nakorsho’mond, and the freeing of her circle of paladins from the stomach of the beast. The First Act of Iomedae. On another window you observe her Second Act as she frees the city of Senghor from the tyranny of a witches coven. You watch the Whispering Tyrant shatter her sword, which Iomedae instantly reforges with a prayer and oath to end his evil, creating the artifact Heart’s Edge in the Sixth Act of Iomedae. Elsewhere she calls forth the Undenying Light from the Starstone, banishing the darkness of a terrible storm so that the city’s defenders could find and slay the ghouls rampaging throughout Absalom, Iomedae’s Seventh Act. You thrill as you watch the sacred texts of Iomedae’s faith come to life before you – the Third Act where she slew Segruchen the Iron Gargoyle, King of the Barrowwood, or the Fourth Act, where she called upon Aroden’s herald Arazni, and the two of them stood with a mortally wounded regiment of knights against a horde of wraiths, holding the line until the dawn. The Fifth Act saw Iomedae smite Erum-Hel, the Lord of Mohrgs, at the Battle of Three Sorrows - inspiring the Shining Crusade to fight on despite the Whispering Tyrant revealing the now broken and ruined body of the slain Arazni to the crusaders. Not every scene told a martial story. The Eight Act, where she allowed the graveknight known as the Black Prince to be redeemed and judged in the Halls of Aroden, spoke of her mercy. The Ninth Act, where she gave her own blood to free nine righteous knights from the vampire-mage Basilov, demonstrated her willingness to sacrifice. Or the Tenth, where she ruled the Chelaxian city of Kantaria for a year and a day, bringing prosperity to the war-torn region as she showed her capacity for wisdom and judgement. And her Eleventh act, a final miracle before her ascension to Godhood, as she cast her cloak into the Pit of the Starstone, which transformed into the walkway that granted access to the cathedral, and the test that would elevate her into a divinity, the last of the new gods. Your ears adjust to the sounds permeating the cathedral, as the incomprehensible noise slowly crystalizes into a celestial choir chanting the Acts of Iomedae. The hymns are intercut with prayers from innumerable faithful across countless worlds. You cannot make out every prayer, but those you can, you realize, are not asking Iomedae to intercede or solve their problems. Instead, they call upon her to grant them strength, wisdom, and courage so they might solve those problems themselves. Iomedae continues. “I have brought you here for a purpose and have done so only under the most dire of need. But before I lay this task before you, I must know that you are champions worthy of undertaking this great work. You have been bold in your war against Deskari and Baphomet, and I favor boldness. Justice requires it, But the line separating boldness from arrogance is thin, and the greatest heroes suffer the longest falls. This has been true of the crusades in which I fought, and those fought in my name. So, tell me, what makes you worthy of carrying the legacy and values of my faith into the darkness of the Abyss, and how can I know you will return them untainted?” (PCs answer) “You have a hero’s bravery and have proven you can survive the horrors of the Abyss. None would doubt your courage. But you have also learned that not all those in the Abyss are your enemies. Some are creatures whose wicked nature can be used as a tool to defeat greater evils. And still others may yet strive to transcend who they are – to prove that just as one might fall, another may rise. One such story you know intimately well. And so, I ask you, are the wages of sin always death and oblivion? When is terrible evil due mercy? Who deserves death, and who deserves a chance at redemption? Which option is the path of justice, and how will you recognize it when more seductive roads lie before you?” (PCs answer) “Ours is work that never truly ends. The righteous are forever beset on all sides by the malevolent and wicked. And sometimes we are little more than a tiny candle burning in the midst of impenetrable night. And so I must know, how does justice triumph against overwhelming evil? How do you maintain light at the heart of darkness? How does one outwit and defeat a demon lord in his own domain? For I ask no less of you than this. (PCs answer) I am grateful for the honesty, wisdom, courage, and humility of your responses. You each possess a valorous soul. Are you worthy of the task I will place before you? That cannot be known. There is no such thing as destiny, and no conclusion is prewritten. None can read the chapters to come until the page is turned, and each of us must craft the ending to our own story. What we have is a chance to act. That is all we are ever given, but that is enough. Who we are, and what we are worth, is defined by what we do with that chance. When we fall, can we find the courage to rise again? When hope is lost, can we find the resolve to stand our ground until it is found? Every moment of our lives is an opportunity to live up to our ideals. And every failure affords us the chance to do better next time. If justice required perfection we could never achieve it, for we are all flawed and imperfect beings – even the Gods.” As Iomedae speaks, you notice a new image among the ever-shifting Acts of Iomedae. You see the knights of Ozem once again call upon Aroden’s Herald Arazni to do battle against the forces of the Whispering Tyrant, her summoner obscured by the smoke and carnage. But this time was a trap, and the Tyrant captured Arazni, who he would torture, mutilate, and destroy. The tragedy is known to church scholars, though the summoner’s name is lost to history. “Let us come to the heart of the matter. As you have learned, the Exalted Army of the Fifth Crusade was routed in Raliscard – a cunning trap set by Areelu Vorlesh, one that took advantage of the chaos and confidence caused by your victories. Nearly the entirety of that army was destroyed, but the most bitter loss was the capture of my Herald. His fate is only partially known to me. I know that he lives, as I still feel him through our connection. I know that he suffers greatly, and he struggles to resist some consuming and terrible corruption. And I know that he is losing his battle. It is only a matter of time until he falls. What’s more, I can feel something feeding off his connection to me, drawing upon my divinity to fuel some dark purpose. I could end this by severing the connection. But to do so would consign his soul to the Abyss, forever. He would be lost to me. AND HE DOES NOT DESERVE THIS!” Iomedae is angry now, and the force of her words shatter the stained glass windows – their shards rain down, but before they strike you they disappear, and the windows reform. “I will not lose another Herald,” she whispers. This time each window shows the capturing of the Herald Arazni. As you watch the scene unfold, the smoke dissipates, and the lost summoner is revealed – you gaze upon a young female paladin with short, black hair, wearing a long red cloak. Iomedae stares at the glass for a long moment before continuing. “Behold, the 12th Act of Iomedae. My greatest failure. I was the favored champion of Aroden, sword-sister and friend to his mighty Herald, granted the blessing to call upon her in an hour of need. And whether it was arrogance, complacency, or fear, I abused that gift. The Whispering Tyrant set a trap for Arazni, and I delivered her to it. The truth was covered up shortly after my ascension by the church of Aroden and my own fledgling faith. The Acts of Iomedae are stories – eleven myths that valorize and over simplify the very messy and imperfect efforts of a mortal doing the best she could under difficult circumstances. To build my faith, it was decided, I had to be divine even as a mortal. And so the truth was suppressed – known today not even by the most devout and loyal of my church. This is a secret possessed by only a handful of immortal beings. My herald has been taken because he saw me grieve the impending doom of my mortal home and resolved to intercede on my behalf, as he understood I could not act on my own. I am a god – it is my role to give shape and focus to the power of belief that is at the root of life and creation, and to keep it contained – to allow others access to what they need, but always an infinitesimal part of the whole. No world, not even the planes, can hold our true selves for long.
And so, Order of the Silver Scale, my inadvertent champions, I confess that I did not choose you to receive the wardstones power, but you have proven yourself worthy nevertheless – and now I AM choosing you to undertake a sacred task in my name. Somewhere in the Abyss, within Baphomet’s Ivory Labyrinth, is my Herald. This I know. Beyond that he is hidden from my sight. I charge you with affecting his rescue. Find him and return him safely to me. Will you accept this charge?” (PCS respond) “I would not send you into Baphomet’s realm unprepared. He has many prisons, and you may need this.” Appearing in her hands is a goblet, made of mithril and studded with dozens of rubies. “This is the Chalice of Ozem, an artifact sacred to my faith – it has many abilities, and can safely hold any liquid, including the caustic blood of the Father of Worms, a beast that may be found somewhere within the Ivory Labyrinth. It is said that his blood can melt any lock, and it may be the key to entering whatever prison holds my Herald.” Iomedae offers the chalice to Queso. “Baphomet’s layer is dark and dangerous, and many temptations await you within its twisted labyrinths. I grant each of you the power to cast atonement one time in my name. Use this for yourselves should you fall but resist if you can so that the gift of a second chance can be given to those who may need it.” Iomedae raises her hand, and your heart swells to near bursting with a sense of righteous mercy, before receding into something small and secret you carry within you, ready to be called forth if needed. Iomedae then plucks a single red thread from her cloak, and as she pulls it free it turns into a long red shawl. She hands it to Zograthy. “With the Stole of the Inheritor you will always be but a step away from home, yet know that you can only open this pathway once – save such a flight for a last resort. We fight a war on many fronts, and not everyone is meant to wander the dark passages of the Ivory Labyrinth. Irabeth Tiribade, you must return to Drezen and defend the Sword of Valor. Areelu Vorlesh schemes within schemes within schemes, and we cannot know if she might seize the chance to reclaim the Sword, and to what fell purpose she might subject its power.” Irabeth draws her sword and drives its tip into the stone floor of the cathedral. She grasps its pommel and kneels before Iomedae. “My Lady, there can be no greater glory than to carry out your will. I shall do as you ask, and my heart will be glad for it.” Iomedae nods, and turns her attention to Galfrey, who stares back, meeting the gaze of her goddess, tears running down her face – clearly in great pain, but unwilling to look away. A long moment passes, a space filled by a lifetime of questions no longer requiring an answer, and unspoken words no longer in need of a voice. Iomedae continues, her tone conveying respect for the mortal who stands before her – a kindred soul despite the vast gulf between them. “And you, Queen Galfrey, my loyal, patient champion. For a hundred years and more you have kept the fire of resistance burning in the face of impossible odds. I know your heart yearns for the field, and the clarity of battle, and an ending. The final war is coming, but it is not a war that you can win. Let us be under no illusions. The Abyss will not be defeated through strength of arms. But I do not ask you for victory. I simply ask that you fight to save your people, as many as you can, for each life saved is my answer to the horrors of the Abyss. I know that you are tired, and that your soul longs to set aside the burdens you have had to carry for far too long, but you must endure. I have asked much, but not more than you can handle, for you, Queen Galfrey of Mendev, Paladin and Champion of Iomedae, have a soul made of cold iron, and that iron does not break.” Like Irabeth, Galfrey drives the tip of her sword into the cathedral floor and kneels before it, her face radiating a renewed spirit. “My Lady, though my sword may grow heavy, within you I shall always find the strength to lift it, until the day comes that there is no longer a need.” (Pcs ask questions) “Rischa, my faithful servant – I have one final question to ask of you alone. My Herald has been taken from me, and the fate of the Mendevian Crusade, and all Golarion, is soon to be decided. A Herald serves as my voice, and walks the paths forbidden to me. Until such time as my Hand is restored, I offer you the opportunity to assume his responsibilities. Before you accept, Rischa, know that to be a Herald is surrender your own interests and ambitions and to serve as an extension of my will. It will make you a target for the forces of Desakri and Baphomet, as your light will be a beacon that draws the darkness to it. Nor will you immediately possess his great power, as it takes many years to learn how to properly wield it. This is not a responsibility to be taken lightly, and no honor is lost in refusal. Will you shoulder this burden?” (Rischa speaks) “Then kneel, Rischa, and affirm what oath you deem appropriate.” (rischa completes her oath) As Rischa finishes, the blinding pressure you felt upon first encountering Iomedae builds again, along with the roar and sensation of rushing water. You can feel it flooding into the Cathedral, squeezing you, crowding out your mortal frame, until the pressure eases, its force drawn into Rischa. Rischa begins to glow from within, a radiant light that confers a transparency of the soul – her very being laid bare before you. Her faith, and her doubt that she is not strong enough to do what Iomedae requires. Her implacable certainty, and her shame at the times she was deceived. Her desire to find the great sky citadel Jormurdun, and her secret guilt for harboring ambitions not connected to Iomedae. But above all you see her desire to live up to her god’s example, to embody within herself the lessons of the Acts of Iomedae. (play Newton’s Law) A bright golden tether emerges from Iomedae – not from within her avatar, but from the space between reality that is the true home of the Gods. The tether enters Rischa’s chest and wraps itself around her heart – and through it Rischa can sense Iomedae’s goodness and patience, her nobility and forgiveness, her courage and will. But the connection reveals Iomedae’s hidden truths as well. Her anger at what has been done to her Herald, to her home world – her grinding frustration at the loss of her agency. The need to put others at risk while she remains safe. Knowing that with a thought she could right the wrongs of the world, but that doing so would invite destruction on a cosmic scale. There is a wild, caged eagerness within her – a woman of action forced to be a bystander. Her divinity a blessing and a prison. There is more – Rischa experiences the memory of the fierce joy Iomedae felt as a mortal, the way she found glory and purpose in the pursuit of justice, and her wonder at the way an otherwise shy and modest woman could so effortlessly inspire others. Rischa is awed by the deep well of her faith and devotion to Aroden, and the desolate space left by his absence. She feels the intimacy of the kindship Iomedae felt with Arazni, and her totalizing guilt over her loss and mutilation. It is that guilt, Rischa realizes, that caused Iomedae to undertake the test of the Starstone – the need to right a wrong, to offer up herself in Arazni’s place. Burning brightly is her fear that she would not be worthy of that legacy. That even as she ascended to true Godhood, far eclipsing Arazni’s powers, her place was still at Aroden’s side so she could honor the empty space left by his lost herald. An absence she caused – a death she could never repay. Rischa experiences the endless prayers, the noise, the need, pulling at her in infinite directions across the endless expanse of the prime material plane – even if they know her by a different name, there is no world that fails to cry out for justice to balance the horrors creation inflicts upon its subjects. And yet, underneath that cosmic awareness, Iomedae has held on to part of her human, mortal soul – refusing to let go of what it means to be vulnerable, impermanent, to have hopes and dreams without the power to achieve them, to know that time is always your enemy. She understands the day she loses that feeling is the day she loses her empathy, and that without it her justice will be cold, sharp, and clinical. Rischa’s soul swells at the intimacy of the connection, marvels at the sacrifice Iomedae has made, and is overcome by a sense of gratitude and purpose. And then the connection closes, the raging river of power reduced to a tiny, steady stream. And Rischa felt like herself again, though something new grows within her. And though Iomedae keeps a respectful distance, granting Rischa the autonomy of her mind and the freedom of her actions, her presence remains. Iomedae stands back and gazes upon Queen Galfrey and Lady Irabeth, before turning her attention to her new Herald, and the Order of the Silver Scale. She nods to herself, satisfied. “Know that you are worthy to champion me against Baphomet, for mandate prohibits the willful intercession of the divine even in such matters as personal as the loss of a herald. Though I lay no geas or compulsion upon you, I charge you to go into the darkness of the Abyss, into the heart of the Ivory Labyrinth of my enemy and seek out my herald. If he is imprisoned, rescue him. If he is dead, bring him home. Should he have fallen, redeem him. Find a way to save him, so that I do not need to surrender his soul to the Abyss forever. But you must act, and act quickly. Something feeds upon me, and the longer I hold onto my connection to the Herald, the stronger it becomes.” The church begins to fade out, and you experience the same gliding sensation that brought you to Iomedae’s cathedral. You find yourself back in Drezen, mere moments having passed, Aravashinal, James Bothan, and Yaniel staring at you, looking perplexed and wary. Within each of your hands is a small holy symbol of Iomedae, and you understand that it contains the power to transport you, just once, into the Ivory Labyrinth.
I am fairly proud of this one. I had been setting up Waxberry as a character (I killed off Sosiel in book two through a shape shifted kiranda that convinced the party she was a prisoner) and their primary NPC healer (no party cleric), and set up Raliscard as the largest Crusader mobilization since the First Crusade, led by the Herald. I had the four scenes interspersed throughout the back half of book IV, with the capture of the Herald being revealed shortly before their final fight with Hepzimiriah. He has been dropping in and out of the campaign as an Iomedae surrogate and all around noble and inspiring figure, so his loss was rough and should raise the stakes for book V, especially given some of the choices I am going to ask them to make based on the campaign cosmology I created. This went well - PCs were devastated. Cutscene XII: The Liberation of Raliscard 1 Pharast, 4724 – The Outskirts of Raliscard, The Worldwound Waxberry stood outside her tent, watching the Exalted Army of the 5th Crusade prepare for battle. The assault would begin upon the Herald’s return. There would be no rest. The ruined city of Raliscard, seat of Baphomet’s power in the Worldwound, stood a few short miles away – smoke rising from its many prison camps, its screams and laughter carried on the wind. Scouts reported the city was heavily guarded by Baphomite forces, but intelligence indicated that Minagho had been banished, Hepzamirah was elsewhere, and Desarki’s generals were in Iz, far to the north, gathered for some dark, unknown purpose. There was a great gathering of demons, but it could not be called an army. There were an estimated 20,00 abyssal servants in the city, guarding even more captives slated for transport to Undarian and whatever dark fate awaited them there. And these were not just dretches, schirs, brimoraks, and babau. There were thousands of hezrous, vrocks, kalavakus, glabrezu – the elite strength of Baphomet’s abyssal forces in the Worldwound, supplemented by formations of minotaurs and everywhere cultists of Baphomet and the mercenaries in their service. Succubi roamed the camp, pacifying prisoners who might cause trouble. But Jerribeth and Xanthir Vang were dead. The Templars of the Ivory Labyrinth were destroyed. Focused as the demons were on preparing for the mass migration of prisoners, and hardly organized in the best of times, the barely controlled chaos of Baphomet’s forces would fall apart under a sustained assault. That was the plan. That was the hope. There was a soft popping sound to Waxberry’s left as Aravashinal appeared beside her. The Rift Warden practically trembled with excitement, drawing a sharp contrast with Waxberry, who was very much afraid. The usual pedantry in his voice was softened by his almost childlike glee. “Just think, Waxberry, before us lies the grandest army assembled since the Second Crusade, nearly 100 years ago. 40,000 strong, with soldiers from across Golarion, drawn to the Crusades by our victories in Drezen. And a second army, even larger, forming in Nerosyan.” Aravashinal took a deep breath, savoring the moment, before he began coughing on the foul abyssal air. It broke the tension, and Waxberry smiled. “I share your enthusiasm, ‘Vash, if not your confidence. It’s just that something feels wrong.” Aravashinal looked down at Waxberry, and took her hand, squeezing it, an extraordinarily affectionate gesture coming from the normally reserved elf. “It is the air, the ground, the water.” He turned and stared at the turgid, fetid Sarkora river. He gestured expansively, taking in the horizon. “It is this scar upon Golarion. And today, we will strike a great victory against it. The scholars have nearly finished interpreting the Lexicon of Paradox. Soon our friends will return from the Abyss. Deskari and Baphomet will be isolated, and no more empowered demons will join their ranks. Our armies will be the shield that delivers the Crusade’s silver sword straight into the heart of Worldwound. Mark this day well, Waxberry. It is, finally, the beginning of the end!” Waxberry nodded, drawing strength from his certainty. They watched the troops assemble. The mercenaries the Crusades had relied on for decades were gone, replaced once again with true believers rallying to the cause. Paladins of Iomedae, Sarenrae, and Torag, druids of Erastil, scouts from Desna, bards from Shelyn, reinforced by the martial faithful, innumerable clerics, and arcane casters of all types – the various goodly churches sending every available resource north to support the war. But it wasn’t just the followers of the Crusader gods. The nation of Brevoy had sent a legion of Aldori swordlords. Elven archers from Kyonin, rangers from Nirmathas, imperial phalanxes from Molthune, Knights of Ozem from Lastwall, Taldoran cavalry, barbarian tribes from Numeria, dwarven infantry from the Five Kings Mountains, border guard from Verdant, Griffon riders from Andoran, a detachment of riders from the Realm of the Mammoth Lords, even Hellknights from Cheliax and orcish shock troops from the Hold of Belkzan, seemingly all of Avistan was represented. The sense of momentum was palpable. At the vanguard, in a place of honor, were the Knights of Kenebras, berated into position by the familiar bark of Frederich von Frederich. He alternated between screaming at his soldiers and inventing new invective to hurl at demons, his breathless ranting oddly comforting – a taste of home. Waxberry waved at him. Frederich scowled back and returned to reprimanding one of the Knights for some minor infraction or another. “I’ve never seen him so happy,” Waxberry observed. “Happy? He looks as miserable as ever”. “Yes, but it’s his joyful misery, not his angry misery. There’s a big difference”. Throughout the camp the air practically crackled with magical energy. A great host of wizards from as far south of Absalom worked to shield the army from scrying eyes. As far as the Crusaders knew, their march went undetected. The enemy’s eastern forces were depleted from the war on Drezen. The Baphomite command was disrupted, reeling from the destruction of their templars. Soon the druids marching with the host would call up a great fog to hide their final march. They simply awaited the Herald’s return. *** Aravashinal left Waxberry to her thoughts, joining the other wizards to begin preparations for the assault. Aravashinal was to lead the team charged with teleporting away prisoners too weak to march out of the ruined city. She would join the Knights of Kenebras at the vanguard. Paladin formations did not require much clerical support, but since her arrival at Drezen these warriors had become her friends. Waxberry knew every name, and every history. She would see them return to their families, to their home. But she was not ready to join them just yet, unable to shake the quiet melancholy that had taken hold of her. She stood there, alone, thinking about her life, the choices that led to this moment. She pondered the second chance Queen Galfrey gave her, the faith they now shared, the good Waxberry had done its name. She felt blessed to be a part of such a monumental moment in the history of Golarion. Should they succeed here, should the Worldwound be closed, she might flatter herself worthy of a footnote in the histories, a background note in the songs. But the odds were long, and she was afraid to hope. The air around her changed, its foulness dissipating, its sounds receding, and as a golden light infused the space she felt a great surge of confidence – the fear drifting away. She looked up, and the Hand of the Inheritor, Herald of Iomedae, stood at her side, his armor gleaming despite the muted sun struggling against the gritty sky. “My lord” Waxberry exclaimed, quickly bowing. The Herald gazed down at her. “Rise, young Waxberry. Your courage makes us equals.” “Thank you, my Lord, but if it is all the same to you, I will feel a lot better if our leader has more to offer than another Waxberry.” The Herald chuckled, a deep, rich sound that reached into Waxberry’s chest and soothed her heart. “You are stronger than you know, Waxberry of Iomedae’. Know that I in turn draw strength from you. So let us allow that we might support each other, in this holy endeavor in our Lady’s name”. Waxberry drew up a little straighter. She stared out at the soldiers, a question on her lips she dared not ask. The Herald gave her space, waiting, until it was clear she was resigned to her silence. “Speak, Waxberry, for you have earned that right, as has every brave soul joining us here”. “Lord, are you afraid?”, Waxberry blurted out, before looking away, reluctant to meet his gaze. “I’m sorry, Lord. You do not need to answer that.” The Herald crouched down and placed a hand on Waxberry’s shoulder. “It is a fair question; one you have earned the right to ask. Truthfully, I am not. I have stood in the glory of our Lady’s light, and once you have beheld it, you are blessed knowing that while she reigns the universe inexorably marches towards justice. But even before I entered the service of the Lady it was not fear that threatened to master me in the moments that mattered most. It was rage.” “Rage, Lord?” “Yes – a deep, violent rage at the injustice of the world, of the ways its systems and structures protect the wicked and harm the good. It drove me as a mortal, and when my soul joined the armies of Heaven I sought to channel that anger. For millennia I served as the Herald of Ragathiel, the Empyreal General of Vengeance. I was the manifestation of his righteous fury. And that fury was a fire I could not quench. A hunger I could not sate, no matter how I quested, no matter how I killed.” “Apologies Lord, but you hardly seem wrathful. Stalwart, implacable, and fearsome, but patient and kind. What changed?” “I met the Just Queen of Heaven, and in her presence the fires of wrath cooled. She calmed the storm within me, and for the first time I knew peace. Ragathiel understood I could no longer serve him as I did, and he released me to act as her Herald, the role the Inheritor once played for Aroden after the loss of his herald, Arazni, in the crusade against the Whispering Tyrant a thousand years ago. Waxberry of Iomedae and Mendev, know that as long as our Lady reigns in heaven, her faithful will find the strength necessary to do the great and valorous things she requires of us. When the time comes, you will not let her down”. And with that, the Herald disappeared. The clammy air, noxious smells, and howling winds returned, but this time Waxberry did not notice. Standing tall and proud, she left to take her place among the Knights of Kenebras, to do what Iomedae required. *** The vast assemblage of the Exalted Army of the Fifth Crusade was massed into its battle columns and ready to march. The Hand of the Inheritor, Herald of Iomedae, floated fifteen feet above the ground, a massive golden angel surrounded by a halo of spinning blades. Sunlight emanated from the Herald, rays of hope illuminating the formations of troops standing at attention before him. He lifted his sword, and a golden light enveloped the army, sweetening the air and silencing the moans of the Worldwound. He began to speak, and while he did not raise his voice it carried to every crusader in the vast assembly. “My valiant brother and sisters in arms. I look upon you and I am truly humbled by your bravery, your valor, your righteousness. Humbled, but not surprised. For a thousand years ago, a different mortal walked among you. Armored in her faith, shielded by her valor, armed with her commitment to justice, she never turned away from the task before her, no matter its impossibility. It should have been impossible to slay the King of the Barrowood, but from the back of a griffon she hewed the wings from his body and drove him from the sky, striking him down before he could rise from the impact crater. It should have been impossible to destroy the great beast Nakorshor’mond, but this was done, and the circle of paladins that were cut out of its belly survived to fight another day. It should have been impossible to inspire the mortally wounded knights at the Second Battle of Encarthan to stand their ground against an endless horde of wraiths, but under her leadership they survived the dark night long enough to be relieved by the dawn. It should have been impossible for a mortal to defeat Erum-Hel, but at the Battle of Three Sorrows she crippled the Lord of Morhgs even as the forces of the Whispering Tyrant closed in. As a mortal, our Lady of Valor achieved many impossible things – not because she was the God of justice, but because it was what justice required. She did not fight for power or glory. She fought without the assurance of victory. She fought because the warriors at her side, and the innocent they protected, needed her. Because she made a promise to do what is right and necessary, and because she understood the sacred value of a promise. Each of you has made a promise. To use your strength justly. To stand as a shield against the onslaught of the Abyss. To bar the way as long as the Worldwound remains open. To stand and fight so that others may live. Knights of the 5th Crusade, somewhere in this city are 30,000 souls in need of your protection. Somewhere in this city are wrongs only you can right. Somewhere in this city is the promise you have made. Warriors, defenders, champions, crusaders – will you keep that promise?” No sound could escape the bubble of golden light, but the answering roar reverberated within, each crusader’s affirmation buttressing the others, the sound an indomitable cacophony of righteous certainty. Soldiers stamped their feet, clanged swords against shields, and cried for justice and revenge. Prayers were invoked to all the gods, but above all to Iomedae the Inheritor. The Herald waited until the noise reached its climax, and then raised a hand for silence. He continued. “Let me make one final promise to you. While any crusader stands, while there is anyone left with the will to fight, I will be there alongside you. To victory! To the end! Go forward in light to combat the darkness”. As a fog rose to hide their intent, the Exalted Army of the Fifth Crusade began its assault on the slave pens of Raliscard. *** 2 Pharast, 4724 –Raliscard, The Worldwound “Stand your ground, men!” Frederich Von Frederich screamed as another wave of unholy blight coursed over the Knights of Kenebras. Waxberry called upon Iomedae’s healing light one final time, restoring the paladins in her care. “Shit!” she cursed. She was out of spells, out of channels, out of potions. She was of no use in the center of the paladin’s formation. As the Knights wheeled to meet the incoming charge of a horde of minotaurs, Waxberry extricated herself from the line and disappeared into the rubble strewn plaza. A lifetime ago she was a halfway decent thief. She would find a place to hide, and figure out a way to be useful from the shadows. It was going so well. Baphomet’s forces were taken unaware, the righteous tide of the Crusade washing over them, cleansing Raliscard with demonic blood. Thousands of demons fell before the army, individuals overwhelmed by the disciplined columns and unified tactics of the Crusade. The Exalted Army fought its way deeper into the city, closing in on the great slave camps at its center. Waxberry could just make out the confused cries of the captives housed within, a sound halfway between hope and fear. But it was a trap – the demons sacrificing their own to lure the crusaders further and further from any egress, until they were fully committed to the attack. Just as it appeared the crusaders would win the day, the rest of Baphomet’s armies teleported in behind them – thousands upon thousands of fresh demons, supported by massive ulkreths, each capable of smashing through a formation of knights. At the head of the horde were Baphomet’s marilith and gallu commanders, keeping the demons focused and disciplined. The Herald’s voice entered the minds of the crusaders, his practical calm soothing their rising panic. “We cannot get to the prisoners. We must save as many of our comrades as we can. I will draw their focus while you retreat. Fight on, crusaders – this battle is lost. We act now to preserve the war”. The Herald took to the sky, leaving behind the vast circle of demonic bodies that had fallen to his wrath. He landed on the ruined ceiling of an ancient temple, desecrated beyond recognition long ago. The Herald raised his sword to the sky and a beam of golden light cut through the gloom, a beacon to crusader and demon alike. His voice boomed across the city. “I am here, wormspawn! Who among you dare to claim me for your master?’ Almost as one, the massed hordes of the Worldwound turned their attention towards the Herald, their commanders unable to hold them in formation. The crusaders used the chaos to retreat down Raliscard’s ruined boulevards, fighting their way free. Acting on instinct, too weary for any rational thought, Waxberry began to pick her way through the rubble, making her way towards the Herald. She mumbled the Acts of Iomedae under her breath. He was not far. She could make it. She could help him. She would keep her promise. She could not recall how long it took, or even how she got there, but Waxberry found herself hidden in the shadows atop the ruined temple, the Herald not twenty feet away. The roof was littered with the bodies of demons, but the three who faced the Herald were the stuff of legends and nightmares. Waxberry marked the drow as Svendack, high priestess of Baphomet’s faith. The red minotaur in charcoal gray half plate held a mighty axe and tower shield – Inger-Maggor, Baphomet’s Ivory Hunter. Standing between them was the two headed, twelve armed Ylleshka – among the most powerful mariliths to walk the planes. The Herald’s golden armor was caked in blood and gore, but he stood tall and strong and tireless as Baphomet’s champions closed in. Waxberry looked away, out over Raliscard. From this height she could see the surviving crusaders in their thousands picking their way through the city, almost to the outskirts – where they could flee in organized squads and regroup at their rendezvous. Miraculously, the demons remained concentrated in the city center. But Waxberry’s heart broke when she saw why. Holding a key bottleneck, beset on all sides, were the Knights of Kenebras – refusing to give ground, keeping the demons occupied – buying the precious time the survivors needed to escape. Over the sound of battle and screams, she could make out the stentorian voice of Frederich von Frederich calling to his troops. “Crusaders, light the way to your eternal reward. We serve The Inheritor, in life, and in death!” The Knights called back “In death!” and held their weapons aloft as holy light sheathed their blades, illuminating the darkness one final time. And then the light died, as the Knights of Kenebras were swallowed by an irresistible demonic wave. Waxberry shut her eyes, her stinging tears a reminder that, here and now, she was alive. Svendack called columns of unholy fire down upon the Herald, but he resisted. He held his shield before him, searching for an opening as he protected himself from Ylleshka’s endless hammering. He did not see the Ivory Hunter approaching from behind, but Waxberry did. She looked out over the city. The crusaders had fought their way free. Some, at least, would make it home. She wondered if Aravashinal was among them. She felt a brief surge of hope, quickly snuffed out by a deafening crack of thunder. An enormous bolt of lightning struck the center of the massed crusaders. Rising from the smoke was Khorramzadeh, the Storm King. A swarm of derakni and apocalypse locusts descended from the sky and began devouring the left flank of the crusaders. Within the cloud she could just make out the shape of Diurgezv Broodlord. A dozen balors appeared along the right and began to carve away at the panicked troops. And then, appearing before the fleeing crusaders, at the head of a fresh army, was Aponavicius. With a grating, sibilant cry Desarki’s great general, former master of Drezen, rushed the front line of the Crusade, her demonic soldiers close behind. Hope died then, for Waxberry. This was the end. There would be no song. No story. But she could keep one promise before it was over. As the Ivory Hunter closed in on the unsuspecting Herald, Waxberry picked her way over the rubble, her approach unseen. As the Hunter raised his axe she swung her mace hard against his ankle. The Ivory Hunter grunted – more in surprise than pain. He looked down and kicked Waxberry hard. She flew back fiteen feet and cracked her head against the stone. Her vision dimmed, but she saw the Herald duck Inger-Maggor’s blow and twist away, putting all three foes in front of him. He took several cautious steps back and began to teleport away. But before he could finish the spell, a sickly green ray washed over him, anchoring him to this space. Grimacing against the pain, Waxberry lifted her head, as a final demon emerged from a rent in the sky. Though they had never met, Waxberry recognized the voice – placid, conversational even, with an iron confidence that gave each pronouncement the force of cosmic law. “Leaving so soon, Herald? But we are barely acquainted, and I have a use for you.” Areelu Vorlesh cast another spell. The magical protections enveloping the Hand of the Inheritor winked out of existence, and Baphomet’s champions closed in. As Waxberry’s vision darkened, the Exalted Army of the Fifth Crusade was consumed in dust and blood beneath the shadow of Raliscard.
I played the end of book IV pretty straight - based on the description in the text and partially inspired by some text earlier in this thread.
Cutscene XI: Mistress of the Midnight Isles 3 Pharast, 4724 – The Mines of Colphyr, The Midnight Isles The ground begins convulsing, and Hepzamirah's face is split by a silent scream, followed by a wet, horrifying crack as her body is torn asunder. A dark, fetid smoke pours out of the cavity in her chest as she collapses in a heap of corruption. As you stare in shock, the ghostly image of a towering demon emerges from her rapidly decaying flesh. To your horror, the image solidifies into a massive, bare chested, emaciated minotaur. Instead of a bull, it possesses the head of a goat, one with unnaturally large blazing horns and glowing red eyes – its forehead marked with an inverted pentagram. Baphomet, Demon Lord of Beasts, Labyrinths, and Minotaurs, stands before you, wielding his dark glaive Aizerghaul. You are paralyzed with terror, unable to move, as the walls of the chamber buckle under the strain of his manifestation. "THAT WAS A MISTAKE, WORMS. THE TIME FOR YOUR ACTS OF REBELLION IS AT AN END. NOW YOU FACE NOT THE DAUGHTER OF BAPHOMET, BUT THE LORD OF MINOTAURS HIMSELF. NOW YOU SHALL KNOW WHAT IT IS TO BE JUDGED AND FOUND LACKING." Baphomet steps out of the puddled remains of Hepzamirah and advances towards you. His wrath pours from him in waves, so bright and sharp it is almost tactile. You will yourself to move, and unbidden, you feel the distant sensation of rushing waters. The Wardstone energy within you surges to the surface in response to Baphomet’s presence, and your fear borne paralysis breaks. You take a step back as Baphomet closes in, dragging his glaive along the floor, the blade cutting a groove in the stone. "YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY VICTIMS OF MY WRATH TODAY. YOU SHALL JOIN THE HERALD OF THAT JUMPED-UP MORTAL B++@# IN ETERNAL AGONY AND SERVITUDE TO THE LORD OF THE IVORY LABYRINTH.” It is clear now that though Baphomet speaks to you, he is addressing someone else. “DO YOU HEAR ME, GODDESS? YOUR SERVANT IS NOW MY LATEST PLAYTHING, AND HE WILL BE THE ARCHITECT OF YOUR SUFFERING. LET THIS BE A REMINDER TO YOUR SO-CALLED CRUSADERS THAT MY REACH IS BEYOND MEASURE. I CAN STRIKE ANYWHERE, I CAN TAKE ANYTHING YOU HOLD DEAR AND I CAN CRUSH THOSE YOU CONSIDER GREAT HEROES WITH A MERE THOUGHT!” Baphomet turns his focus back to you, and offers you a wicked, possessive smile. “YOU ARE MINE, AND YOUR BONES SHALL JOIN THE BONES OF MILLIONS MORE WITHIN THE WALLS OF MY IVORY LABYRINTH" "Ahh but it is my realm you invade, 'Lord of Slain Daughters’. And these are my guests you threaten." As her words echo across the chamber with a silken edge, Nocticula emerges from the shadows behind Baphomet, beautiful and seductive despite her cold anger. She holds no weapon, and maintains her perfect, terrifying ease. Baphomet turns to face her, raising his glaive before him in a defensive posture. He opens his mouth to speak, but Nocticula raises a single finger, silencing him. "Let THIS be a reminder that your reach is not without measure, and that you have not been invited into my home." Nocticula snaps her fingers in a casual gesture and the ground beneath Baphomet vomits forth abyssal fire. Its flames engulf the demon lord, searing his flesh. He lets loose a twisted, guttural cry of agony and disbelief, as his corporeal form shatters with a thunderous roar, the stone he stood upon now a splintered, scorched ruin. Nocticula's intoxicating, musical laughter fills the silence that follows. You watch, transfixed, as she strides towards the smoking crater where Baphomet once stood. She kneels and lifts a severed horn. She turns it over in her hand, smiling at her trophy, and then with a flick of her wrist it vanishes. She rises and faces you, satisfied.
Your business on my isles is now complete and you will depart immediately… unless any of you wish to stay a while longer and keep me company? No? Such a pity.” Nocticula sighs theatrically, and traces a long fingernail over the cavern wall, leaving behind glowing purple lines that sketch out a complex arcane sigil. She finishes and steps backwards, as the symbol forms a gate wreathed in violet flames. On the other side of the gate, you gaze upon a room dominated by the wreckage of an immense machine, and you recognize the Midnight Fane and the space that held the gate you closed with the Lexicon of Paradox. As Nocticula fades from sight, her voice echoes throughout the chamber. "Perhaps we will meet again. Until then, your way home lies through the fire. I would hurry back. Much has transpired in your absence, and I do believe you have been missed.” Her triumphant laughter lingers in the cavern, far beyond her absence.
This next scene is the PCs meeting with Nocticula. To give book IV more focus I really expanded the Battlebliss to a two part 30 contestant royal rumble style death match (it took two sessions and lasted 70 rounds) with the top 3 winners facing off against Gelderfang. The winner received a boon from Nocticula, and the PCs asked for an audience (I scripted the hell out of that - entrances for all the demons, introduced some folks from chapter 5, and had a great time reliving my Attitude Era WWE fandom) I did have her ask for a night with a redeemed Arueshalae - she tempted her and she resisted and then they talked - Nocticula was interested in her journey, and in the postscript Nocticula will ascend to her CN divine status, and it will be heavily implied Arueshalae helped inspire it Dangerous Liaisons 2 Pharast, 4724 –Vault of Graves, The Midnight Isles Izmaria gestures, and the ornate wooden doors open silently before you. You say a quiet prayer to your gods, and cross the threshold, entering the Library of Souls. The doors slam shut behind you with a hollow, thudding finality. There is an electric tension in the air, feelings of overpowering desire and illicit surrender. Arueshalae shudders, and Kiryn reaches for her hand. Arueshalae takes it and squeezes hard. Bookshelves run the length of this long chamber, extending upwards into a misty purple haze that occludes your sight. They are full of thick, gilded tomes, endless thousands, each with a name inscribed in abyssal along the spine. Legend tells that each contains the life story of a person slain by Nocticula, from the moment of their birth through their death at her hand. Gliding through the purple mists is a map of the Midnight Isles, drifting upon the endless seas of the Ishiar. Your eyes travel down the chamber and linger on an onyx dais, upon which sits an empty throne. A lush black and pink carpet runs down the center of the room, carving a pathway to the throne. To the left of the throne a large pool sits inlaid in the marble floor, its surface a shimmering reflective pool of unholy mercury, still and unbroken. You feel a compulsion to approach the throne, and as you do your eyes are drawn to a solitary lectern standing to its right. Upon it lies an open book, its pages filling with words faster than your eyes can track, the language some arcane cypher you have never seen. You stand before the throne as shadows rise and fill the room, strobing the light and creating an eerie sensation of half movement, as if time is slowing down. The air gets heavier, as reality struggles to make space for a presence it cannot fully contain. The hair on the back of your neck stands up, and you feel the sensation of someone placing gentle kisses along your neck, whispering in your ears – words you cannot fully comprehend that terrify and arouse. The book slams shut as a finger traces its way up your spine, and Nocticula, Demonic Lord of Darkness and Lust, materializes on her stone throne, a vision of perfect ease, irresistible temptation, and menacing power. Her hair is wrapped around an ornate headdress, the seven-pointed star of Nocticula – she is nearly naked, the barest hints of strategically placed cloth all that separates you from your most breathless fantasy. She leans back on her throne and crosses her legs, her stony hooves barely containing the abyssal fire that lies within. Her body seems to disappear into the shadowy alcove formed by her wings, which glow red from the thousands of arcane runes covering them. She radiates a captivating aura, a perfect admixture of lust, fear, and submission. Without even realizing it, you kneel. She licks her lips and takes you in, a crooked smile making its way across her features. If Areelu Vorlesh smiled like she was enjoying a joke only she understood, Nocticula’s makes clear the joke is at your expense, and yet you want to laugh anyway. She holds no weapon, and as she tents her fingers, her long fingernails make a hypnotic clicking sound. “Welcome, Silver Scale, champions of purity. You have been hoping to speak to me, and now that hope lies before you. Pray tell, what have you to say.” Conversation with the PCs (Will you ally with Deskari and Baphomet?) “With the bull and the bug?” She laughs. The sound is darkly musical. “No of course not. There is a delicate balance of power preventing the forces of the goodly planes from invading the Abyss. Should that day happen, I have no doubt we will prevail – there is an endless capacity for sin within mortals, ensuring an infinite supply of fodder for the war. But such a war would be costly and disruptive to my own ambitions. Watching them try to absorb a prime world has been an amusing distraction, but I would prefer they not succeed, especially a world that happens to house the prison of one God, and the quickening heart of another. That would be messy, and I prefer chaos of my own design.” (Will you oppose them?)
(Will you ally with us?)
(Where are they mining?)
(Will you grant us access?)
(Thoughts about Areelu Vorlesh)
(What do you want in return?)
(pcs respond) Arueshalae is frightened, but resolved. “My faith has been tested since the moment I entered the dream of the Desnan priest. You were there at my transformation. I have not yet earned my forgiveness or redemption – merely been given the opportunity to do so. What is the value of my faith, what purpose is there in the chance I have been given, if not to help us succeed in this cause. Kiryn, sister – I will carry your resolute passion in my heart. I can endure this.” (Gifts for PCs)
To Zograthy: “Would that you came before me in your prime, master Zograthy. Would you care to rekindle what age has so cruelly taken from you?” To Wick: “As for you, my dear Optimus Wick, I have a token that might be of interest.” A dagger appears in her hand, the steel sharp and well-tended, the symbol of Pharasma etched into the handle. A faint purple glow rises from within the blade. “I acquired it, long ago, from a sacred assassin of the faith, charged with hunting down those who escaped their fate, and preventing others from meeting theirs prematurely. It is a lovely blade, and perhaps both of our interests would be best served if you were to wield it. And who knows how Lady Pharasma might reward you for recovering it from my demonic hands and restoring it to the faith.” (PCs Wavering)
(Farewell)
She waves her hand, and the placid mercury waters of her reflecting pool begin to churn. Gazing into its surface, you see a mighty rushing waterfall and great cliffs, the sky teeming with vrocks and other demons, and everywhere the fetid humidity of dense, ancient jungle. “You must simply step into the pool, and you will find yourself exactly where you need to be. And fret not, dear Kiryn – I will return your precious Arueshalae to you. Her condition depends entirely upon her faith and will.” You prepare yourselves and step into the pool -as you fall through the surface you hear a familiar sound of distant rushing water, like a river raging just beyond your sight. The sound gets closer and closer, until the sensation envelopes you like armor.
Okay, back to the narratives. I forgot I already included the Nocticula introduction. This next scene was from chapter 4. I wanted to give the PCs an additional meeting with the Herald, and give him a chance to share some plot details. I also wanted to make the Raliscard battle where he is captured a big deal. In my campaign post the fall of the wardstones demons have been rampaging in all the bordering lands kidnapping people that Vorlesh will sacrifice at the start of book VI to throw open the WW and start the countdown to the end of the world. This includes the entire village of Chitterhome, where my ratfolk PC was from. So in this scene the Herald promises to free his family while the PCs complete their mission. A Role to Play 1 Pharast, 4724 –Alushinyrra, The Midnight Isles You gather in the common room of your suite, resting, checking gear, making plans, when a familiar, peaceful warmth envelopes you. Your head clears, as the ever-present maddening whispers of the Midnight Isles go silent, and the room is quiet, except for a faint, distant sound of water. There is a flash of golden light, and the Herald of Iomedae stands in the center of the room, his nine-foot frame towering over you, wings furled, sword sheathed. His faceless helm takes in each of you, and while you cannot tell for certain, you would swear he is smiling as he gazes upon Rischa. “Well met, champions of Iomedae. You have done well in the Abyss. Has it come at a cost? Tell me of your trials, and if there is weight you carry allow me to shoulder some of that burden.” PCs Share story “I come with tidings. I confess there was great debate as to whether to share these truths with you, but in the end, I insisted. The war marches on, and you have a right to know what is at stake. Since the destruction of the wardstones, the demons have not been idle. The eastern forces of the Worldwound have thrown themselves at Drezen, and the stories of how the crusaders of Drezen repelled those armies, time and again, are already becoming legend – points of light in the gathering darkness. For all our success on that front, the demons are no longer penned in. While they have not attacked Mendev beyond small forays into the lands once protected by Kenebras, they have sent hundreds of war parties into Numeria, Ustalav, the Realm of the Mammoth Lords – even the Hold of Belkzen. They are not trying to conquer lands, find allies, or gain converts. They do not even seem interested in despoiling beyond the impact of their incidental presence. They are taking prisoners. Slaves. Every living being they can find. Even the direct slaughter seems minimal. They appear to be depopulating these lands. The prisoners are being sent to Raliscard - a great massing of people on a size and scale we have never before seen. There are tens of thousands of these benighted souls. We do not know Deskari’s intent, what stratagem is in play. But we know we must not abandon them to their torment. A great army has already set out from Nerosyan, and will reach Raliscard in a matter of hours. Support from across Golarion has been converging upon Mendev for months, inspired by your victories, and this is the largest show of crusader might since the second crusade. We are finally back on the offensive. We will take the fight into the heart of the Demon Lords’ power, and we will bring these people home!” (Is this a trap?)
(Can the PCs come?)
(Should the troops march under the Sword of Valor?)
(Who will command the army/how will they counter mythic demons?)
The Herald pauses, and you can sense his hesitation, some internal conflict raging. Finally, there is resolution, and he kneels before Queso, laying an arm on his shoulder. Despite the gesture of respect between equals, the Herald still towers over him, and Queso feels the enormous weight of the Herald, the pressure, as if the Herald is a bottleneck beyond which lies an endless stream of power. For a moment all Queso can hear is that sound of rushing water, but the sound fades. “Queso, you should know that among the prisoners are a great many ratfolk. When this was learned, scouts were sent to Chitterhome. The town is completely empty. Not despoiled, though the tell-tale signs of struggle we have seen in other communities are present. The entire community appears to have been captured. I am sorry.” I know full well the rage you must feel. It is what Vorlesh wants. It is what Deskari wants. It is how the Abyss takes hold of us, by feeding upon that desire for vengeance. We have survived this long by resisting those passions. By mastering them. By not allowing ourselves to be governed by our impulses. We all have a role to play. You must continue to play yours. But I swear, in the name of the Inheritor and all that is good and righteous in this and all other worlds, I will not rest until your people are free. I must go. A great task lies before all of us. We must not fail. Prepare well. Fight well. Hold fast to your faith and your heart. They will guide us through the black days ahead, and back into the emergent light. I am proud to fight alongside you, and to name you ally. Go forward in light to combat the darkness.” With that there is another flash of golden light, the sound of rushing water, and then the unscratchable itch within your mind returns, the mad, corrupting whispers of the Abyss.
Thank you very much! We just started book V so there are a few more scenes to add 1. Nocticula behind the scenes
I can post these tomorrow. I really like the Iomedae and Raliscard scenes
I had invested a fair bit of time in Arueshalae, a character concept I really loved when I first read the campaign. I like what they did with her in the WOTR video game, but I set her up in my game more like a former addict going through decades of withdrawal symptoms and losing faith that she will ever be clean. There was enough betrayal in the campaign (using Eustoryiax multiple times, really fleshing out Staunton Vhane's story, the PCs took Nurah's betrayal really hard) that there was a lot of initial suspicion towards Arueshalae, even with the Desna connection to a PC and the backstory text. They eventually embraced her and one PC was planning to have her as a cohort (a Desnan paladin who has really taken her redemption to heart). I wanted to make her final redemption a campaign moment, and not have it dropped into the middle of Book IV, so I was planning for this at the end of book 3. The players have had her in Drezen in disguise so as not to upset anyone (Irabeth knew but wasn't thrilled about it). When Galfrey gives them the mission to go the abyss they told her they wanted to bring Arueshalae. Galfrey initially forbade it but she eventually relented to having a trial to determine her fate. that is what is scripted out below (less the moments where the PCs spoke on her behalf). It ended up being a fairly powerful moment in game. One player cried a little bit. For full effect, I started playing the song 'Leaving Jordan' from the His Dark Materials soundtrack on spotify as the Sarenrae priest starts talking, and the music synchs up beautifully with a patient out loud reading. Other advantage - this helped endear Waxberry to the PCs even further. I had sosiel killed by Kiranda in book 2 (too many NPCs so Sosiel and Aaron didn't make it) and Waxberry has been the primary Drezen cleric. When she gets captured with the Herald in book V her rescue should be a little more impactful. Cutscene X: That You May One Day Dream 22 Calistril, 4724 – The Restored Temple of Desna, The Worldwound You gather at the Bell of Mercy. Arrayed before it, standing at attention, are Queen Galfrey and a group of priests in full ceremonial vestments. You recognize Waxberry, but the rest are strangers. Each stands behind an alter consecrated to their Gods. Torag, Abadar, Shelyn, Sarenrae, Erastil, Desna, and Iomedae. The mood is somber. The priests are resolute, though taut with a barely suppressed, simmering anger. The casters among you sense that this space has been very carefully prepared, spell layered upon spell. Zone of Truth, Consecrate, and Hallow, seven of each, colored by the divine signatures of the gods gathered in attendance. You take your place opposite the assembled clerics and wait. Before long Arueshalae enters, stripped of her weapons and magic, clothed in a yellow and purple tunic – the colors of a Desnan initiate. Irabeth follows behind, her sword drawn and burning with holy fire. Arueshalae looks at the assembly before her with a resigned uncertainty. “Step forward, and kneel”, Galfrey commands. Arueshalae does so, without flinching. Eager for an ending, even if it is to be the cold endless clarity of death. You notice that she does not seem affected by the holiness infusing the space – the comingled power of the Gods of the Crusade. Galfrey continues. “Arueshalae – you are called before us to answer for crimes too innumerable to list. You have lied, cheated, stolen, desecrated, raped, and murdered. You have sinned against the flesh, and you have sinned against the soul. You have waged war against the present, and the future. You are a corruptor of life, and a destroyer of hope. Your very being is anathema to all this holy crusade fights for. What have you to say in your defense?” Arueshalae looks up and meets the Queen’s gaze. “Queen Galfrey, I cannot deny any of the charges you have laid against me. If anything, you have vastly understated the crimes I have committed. I am born of sin, the incarnation of the lustful excess and unrestrained passions of mortals. I am the embodiment of the darkness within all of you. And for more years than I can count I have reveled in this existence. I came to this plane with a smile upon my face and malice in my heart. No matter how deeply I drank, my thirst could not be quenched. It defined me, as it defines all my kind. And yet, the Tender of Dreams sought to make an example of me. Whether it was punishment, mercy, or both I cannot say. But she quickened something within me, something that is revolted by who I am. Since then, I have known only war within myself. I stand before you a broken thing, crushed under the weight of the dreams I have ended, forever haunted by the possibilities I have destroyed. Every night I dream. I dream of the hopes and fantasies I took from others, granting them what meager life I can within my own mind. But I do not dream for myself. I am not worthy of it. I do not think I ever will be, so great is the harm I have caused, so black the darkness of my soul. Every good deed I will ever do is a grain of sand lost against the endless shore of my sin. I carry a debt I can never repay, no matter how much I desire to. So, great Queen, I will not offer a defense, and I submit to your judgement.” Galfrey turns and addresses you. “If Arueshalae will not speak for herself, will anyone here speak for her?” (The pcs speak in Arueshale’s defense). You finish speaking, and the silence lay heavy and oppressive in this sanctified space. It is difficult to breath. Eventually Galfrey continues. “Your crimes transcend mortal comprehension, Arueshalae, and so it is not for mortals to decide your fate. It is the Gods who must answer.” With that, the priest of Abadar steps forward. “Arueshalae – through your actions you have tarnished the light that civilization brings. You would have had mortals crawling in the darkened muck, surrendered to their base impulses, little more than animals. And so as penance you will spend the rest of your immortal life in defense of civilization. Will you accept this punishment?” Arueshalae looks up, confusion on her features, uncertain about what is happening. Her eyes lock on Kiryn, and she seems to draw strength from her. “I will”, she replies. “Do this, the priest continues, and you may be forgiven.” And with that, he casts two spells upon Arueshalae – a geas, and an atonement. He steps back, and the priest of Erastil steps forward. “Arueshalae – at the heart of nature is balance, an equilibrium between all things. Through your actions you have destroyed that equilibrium, your ravenous appetites devouring everything that tried to take root. And so, as penance you will spend the rest of your immortal life nurturing the seeds that might one day flower. Will you accept this punishment?” This time Arueshalae answers more confidently. “I will.” “Do this, and you may be forgiven”. And with that, he also casts two spells, a geas, and an atonement. He steps back, and the priestess of Shelyn steps forward. “Arueshalae - through your actions you have made of laughter, joy and beauty something toxic and poisonous. But worse, you have waged war against love, the binding power that makes all things possible. And so as penance you will spend the rest of your immortal life in defense of joy and laughter, beauty and love. Will you accept this punishment?” “I will.” “Do this, and you may be forgiven.” The priestess casts her spells and steps back. The priestess of Torag steps forward. “Arueshalae - you have spent your existence working to undo the islands of creation that exist within a sea of chaos. And so, as penance you will spend the rest of your immortal life protecting the fire that burns in the forge’s heart from those that would snuff it out. Will you accept this punishment?” “I will.” “Do this, and you may be forgiven.” The priestess casts her spell, and the ceremony continues. The priest of Sarenrae steps forward “Arueshalae, you are born of sin but Sarenrae teaches us that no one who reaches for redemption is truly beyond it. Will you bring compassion and healing to those who seek it, and protect them from those who revel in being lost?” “I will.” “Do this and you may be redeemed.” And with those words, a crack emerges in Arueshalae’s composure. The priest casts her spells, and the air in the room begins to lighten. She steps back, and Waxberry steps forward. “Arueshalae, the Inheritor and her followers are the sworn enemy of your kind, those whose predations cause people to grasp for privilege because they cannot hope for justice.” And Waxberry turns to Galfrey and smiles. She looks back to Arueshalae, and her words lose the ritualistic cadence of the other speakers. “I know this well, because that was once me. Sometimes we are lost and cannot find our way without a guide. Sometimes someone needs to give us the chance to find our way home, and prove that we are worthy of it. Arueshalae, will you be worthy of that chance? Will you use it to return justice to the places it has been banished. Will you devote your existence to protecting the light against the devouring darkness?” “I will.” And there were tears in Arueshale’s eyes. “Do this, and there will be justice.” Waxberry steps, back and the priest of Desna steps forward. “Arueshalae, you have spent countless lifetimes destroying the dreams of others. In you their journey ended. With you their freedom died. And yet our Queen of the North Star has seen fit to lay another path before you. Will you walk it?” Arueshalae takes a deep, shuddering breath, and barely whispers ‘I will’ “Do this, and you may one day dream.” But the priest cast no spells, for the Goddess of freedom will not bind another. She will sing her song and welcome others into her chorus. And the priest raised his voice in wordless song. His voice was melancholy, and the sound spoke of loss, and gratitude, and new beginnings. Arueshalae rose to her feet and lifted her voice to follow his. Kiryn joined in; their twining harmonies held aloft by the strong foundations laid by the priest. And then the song ended. The priest turned and lifted the mallet lying next to the Bell of Mercy. He struck the bell once, twice, three times. Its tones echoed through the space, and then there was silence. You expected something. A beam of light. A shower of butterflies. The heavens opening up in song. But there was just the lingering silence. And then Arueshalae gasped and fell to her feet, a look of shock and near terror on her face. She stared at Kiryn, dumbstruck, until she finally managed to speak. “The weight. It’s gone.” And with that, Arueshalae began to weep, a deep, cleansing sadness, coming from some ancient and distant place but made pure by the journey. Kiryn approached Arueshalae and gently took her in her arms and the two of them stood there, crying tears too complex for words. The rest of the gathering quietly filed out, lost in their own thoughts, not wanting to disturb the miracle
This one is a little less consequential, but since I wanted to share some campaign metaphysics about the Worldwound (which I have messed around with a bit) I scripted out the encounter where Galfrey sets up the Midnight Fane mission Cutscene IX: Should You Choose to Accept It 17 Calistril, 4724 – Drezen, The Worldwound Galfrey arrives in a secure face with Maddigan, her chief wizard. Awaiting her are Irabeth, Anevia, Waxberry, Commander Brad Bradson, Aravashinal, and the Silver Scale. Waxberry runs over and gives Galfrey a hug before stepping back and bowing. The rest of the gathering offers their own bows, and Queen Galfrey gestures for everyone to seat. Once settled, she begins. “Thank you for coming. I have much to share. On the 20th of Abaidus the Bothan brothers returned from a scouting mission deep in the heart of the Worldwound – all the way to Iz, chasing rumors and legends. And there, within the citadel of the Storm King himself, they found it – the Lexicon of Paradox. The Lexicon is an ancient text, dating back to the time shortly after Earthfall – an attempt to capture some of the lost magic of the mighty civilizations destroyed in the cataclysm. The book was written over centuries by many different hands. Thassilonian, Hallit, Aklo, Abyssal, even the druidic tongue of the Green Faith. It is more a scrapbook than a single text. The book is bound in bark and stamped with Sarkorian pictograms. Its pages are a mix of parchment, strips of bark and leaves of hammered copper. It is believed that Areelu Vorlesh possessed the Lexicon, and that it was her work with this text that saw her imprisoned in Threshold. Her own rituals likely have their origins in this text. The Lexicon was thought destroyed when Vorlesh threw open the gate, and created the Worldwound. But by some miracle it has made its way to us.” Galfrey pauses, somber. “Several Bothans died to bring us this information. The book is currently in a secure location in Lastwall, with some of the top minds among our allies. The team is lead by King Christian Heavenly of Verdant and Ren Kinney of Ravounel. The Lexicon is as much a discourse on metaphysics as it is a spellbook, but as near as we can tell, the book describes parasitic rituals that draw upon the energy of one plane to bind another, as if calling upon one to replace the other. This is not the conjuration magic we normally associate with gates, which may explain the Worldwound’s size, permanence, the planar leakage, the secondary gates that seem networked to it. Vorlesh did not create a passageway between planes. Instead, she found a way to bind the core ontological energy of the Deskari’s realm to Golarion, and is somehow pulling it through, transposing one plane on top of another. We have been thinking about this all wrong. The Worldwound is not a gate. Instead, it is the largest summoning ritual in the known history of the planes. One she was unable to finish, possibly because she was denied access to the Lexicon during her imprisonment within Threshold. We have two pieces of good news. One is that the completion of such a ritual requires tapping into vast, nearly unimaginable power. Her first casting likely fed off the death of Aroden. So, it’s not clear that she can do it again, hence her other attempts at conquering this plane and taking her revenge. The other is that within the pages of the Lexicon we may have discovered a way to reverse the ritual and permanently close the gate. We need time for our scholars to continue their study of the text. Our intelligence tells us that the demons are rebuilding their armies, and this time there will be no wardstones to stop them, no divine miracle to wipe them out. We will prepare our forces to resist that tide for as long as we can, but we will not be able to stand long against their massed forces, especially if they are supported by Nahyndrian demons. You have disrupted the flow of the elixirs into the eastern reaches of the Worldwound. But unless we can shut down their entire operation it is only a matter of time before we are overwhelmed. We have found the location of the Midnight Fane. Within it is one of the smaller gates that have branched off the Worldwound. Adapting the rituals within the Lexicon, our scholars have devised a counter ritual they believe may be able to permanently close this lesser gate. If it works, they believe they can refine it to the point that it is capable of closing the Worldwound itself. Aravashinal interrupted. “Wouldn’t that require an obscene amount of power. Where will we find it?” A momentary flash of annoyance crossed Galfrey’s face – the long-suffering exacerbation of someone surprised to learn they survived another day and for whom worrying about the future is a luxury she hopes to one day enjoy. “Lets first address the challenge that lies immediately before us.” She turned her gaze to the Silver Scale. You are the inheritors of the Wardstone’s power, and the greatest weapon to fall into my hands since this war began over 100 years ago. Thanks to you, for the first time in a long time, I have hope. Not just hope that I might die well and bring glory to my goddess, but that we might actually win. That my nation might survive. That there may be a life for its people beyond this war. I have asked much of you, Crusaders, and I have more to ask of you still. You are to enter the Midnight Fane, destroy the refinery, and execute the ritual that will close the gate. The ritual requires participants on both sides of the gate. When it closes someone will be stranded in the Abyss. But I trust you are resourceful enough to find your way home. That’s the easy part. Once there, I task with you finding the source of the Nahyndrian crystals and destroying Baphomet and Deskari’s operation. But that is not all. These reports of overtures to Nocticula are deeply disturbing. Her power dwarfs that of Baphomet and Deskari, and she must not enter this conflict on their side. Find a way to drive a wedge between them. Only then can you return home. Irabeth stands up. “My queen, when do we set out.” Galfrey smiles. ‘We leave in a week. But not you Irabeth. With the Silver Scale gone I need some remnant of the Wardstones power here. Irabeth frowns. “My pardon, My Queen, but I urge you to reconsider. By your own words you said that there needs to be participants in the ritual on both planes. And even though we have weeded out much of the Templars’ rot, who else can you trust with such an important mission?” Galfrey nods. “You raise an important point, Commander. I need to send someone I trust implicitly - who I know will never betray me.” She turns and looks each of you in the eye. “And that is why I shall accompany you myself.”
This one served a few functions. I wanted to introduce Minhago and Yaneil prior to the Midnight Fane. But as the PCs had grown attached to Arueshalae, and knowing her 'trial' was coming up, I also wanted a reminder that she was once terrible. I have had Radiance have an aversion to her, which the PCs had assumed was because she was a demon. But here we establish Arueshalae as directly complicit in Yaniel's capture. Prologue VII: Small Miracles in Dark Places 18 Sarenith, 4695, - Raliscard, The Worldwound The last surviving nalfeshnee rose to its full, towering height – twenty feet tall and over 8,000 pounds. It lunged forward and pummeled Yaniel’s chest with great crushing blows. The flat, ringing sound of their impact on her embossed plate echoed across the plaza and she fell back, winded but still standing. Resisting the unholy aura emanating from the demon, she charged back in, Radiance glowing with the light of a noon-day sun, illuminating the shadowed courtyard. Calling upon Iomedae, she infused Radiance with divine power, and swung with all her might. Somehow, she missed, and stumbled past the demon, who landed a vicious bite against the overbalanced paladin. Her wounds closed with a thought, but now she was spent. There would be no more healing. “Displacement”, she sighed to herself. The demon snorted, a foul reek emanating from its boar like features, and pointed a massive finger at Yaniel. She felt an intense suffocating pressure in her head, as if her brain was undergoing a massive compression. She gritted her teeth and shrugged it off. Her face lit up in a grim smile, her piercing brown eyes shining. “My turn.” She pointed Radiance at the demon and called upon its power. The demon shimmered for a moment, and now stood several feet to the left, his true position revealed. “There you are.” Yaniel charged. The demon thundered towards her, but Yaniel was quicker, and with a devastating thrust ran her sword through the demon’s bulging stomach and up into its vile heart. There was a great puffing exhalation, a quiet squeal, and the mighty nalfeshnee feel to the ground, dead. Yaniel quickly assessed the situation. The great temple Ivyfane towered behind her – once the seat of Pharasma’s worship in all Sarkoris, Minagho had claimed it for her own decades ago. Its majestic artwork had long been desecrated and replaced with murals and carvings of her many fell deeds, the Red Morning Massacre adorning the entirety of the wall behind the throne room Yaniel had fought her way out of minutes ago. The final resting place of so many of her companions. Little got past Yaniel’s keen senses, and she noticed the old ivy engravings that tracked the cycle of growth and decay were still visible on the temple’s façade - Minagho’s additions obscuring, but not eliminating, the remnants of that older worship, the curious hybrid of Pharasma and the Green Fatih once practiced in this part of Sarkoris. Raliscard is the primary prison transfer center in the Worldwound. Here captured crusader and civilian were subjected to Minagho’s dark sermons and given a choice – pledge fealty to the Abyss or become fuel for the soul forges. No one stayed here for long. The converts were sent to Undarin for their re-education, or to Iz, fuel for the Storm King’s infernal machines. According to Staunton Vhane’s intelligence, there should have been imprisoned crusaders. She had liberated people from Raliscard before. She knew where to look. She wasn’t too late. But the prison camps were empty. And in the great temple, a terrible ambush. Most of Yaniel’s followers were dead. A few turned and ran at the start of the ambush, and though she was distracted by the chaotic melee, she saw some had made it to the edge of the plaza fronting the temple and leapt into the Sarkora river. She did not judge them for fleeing. Despair makes cowards of even the strongest wills, and the mortal instinct is to save the life you have. She prayed the current carried them to, if not safety, any fate other than this. Looking around, only Sumerin, her squire remained, holding off a pair of vrocks near the temple entrance. Yaniel raced to her side and, Radiance blazing, made short work of the demons. She embraced her squire for a fierce moment, before releasing her grip and stepping back to assess her wounds. Sumerin seemed winded, but strong. Thank the gods for small miracles in dark places. “Did you see anyone else fight their way free?” Yaniel’s voice was strong, resolute, a rock amidst the crumbling foundations of their world. “No, Yaniel. These were the last of them.” Sumerin was clearly alarmed but drew confidence from Yaniel’s strength. “No sign of Minagho?” “No. The lives of your followers extracted a heavy toll. Perhaps they are regrouping?”, Sumerin asked, a not quite desperate hope coloring her voice. Yaniel looked around; her brow furrowed in concentration. Every dark corner, and there were many, loomed with malice and dark intent. “She isn’t here now. We’ll take what blessings we can. Minagho will not be far. We must go.” Sumerin was insistent. “But what of the prisoners we came for? Sir Vhane’s intelligence?” Yaniel recognized in Sumerin’s voice the reckless and destructive need for the world to be something other than it was – as if it could be refashioned through mad conviction alone. The kind of thinking that would see them killed. “Vhane’s intelligence was no good. They were waiting for us. Our priority is to get out of here alive. We can discover the source of the corruption in his networks when we are safely back in Kenebras, but only if we make it back to him.” She rested a gauntleted hand on Sumerin’s shoulder, as if through that gesture she could transfer her resolve. “Follow me.” Yaniel turned and began making her way towards the poisoned river that rushed past the courtyard of Ivyfane, its current swift and its waters deep. The demons never patrolled the Sarkora. The paladins’ divine protections would safeguard them from its toxicity. Their water breathing magics would keep them below the surface and out of sight. It was how they got in and would be how they got out. The crusaders had suffered a grievous defeat but would endure and fight another day. Yaniel’s sharp eyes were fixed on the shadows before them. Nothing snuck past her gaze. There would be no ambush from the front. But the horrific burning heat in her side came from behind. She wrenched forward and spun around, shield and Radiance at the ready. Sumerin stood before her, her dagger dripping red with Yaniel’s blood. Already Yaniel could sense a powerful poison coursing through her veins, her body struggling to fight it off. Sumerin’s stance had changed – she no longer stood with her customary ridged posture and taut features. Instead, she seemed relaxed, fluid, even languid. She smiled, and in she found mirth and joy, but no warmth. “Sumerin…how could you’?” Yaniel gasped. Sumerin laughed. “Oh don’t worry. Sumerin couldn’t. But she died days ago.” And with that, Sumerin changed, two horns emerging from her forehead, batlike wings unfolding from her back, the glamour over her plate falling away to reveal a lithe, sinuous body covered in a diaphanous wrap. Her piercing red eyes starred at Yaniel, as one perfect eyebrow arched itself inquisitively. “I’ve been at your side since. Perhaps you didn’t know her as well as you thought?” Yaniel backed away from the succubus, Radiance held defensively before her, howling in anger, a voice only Yaniel could hear. She called upon her healing, before remembering it was spent. Still, her strength did not leave her, and her faith was strong. She had suffered deeper wounds and fought past worse odds. “I have killed many of your sisters, demon. You cannot hope to defeat me.” The demon smiled again, her teeth a perfect, inviting white. “My dear Yaniel. I’m not here to defeat you.” A series of popping sounds echoed across the square as demon after demon teleported into the plaza, their ranks forming a broad circle around Yaniel: babaus, vrocks, kalavakus, and a few glabrezu. “I’m just here to delay you.” And behind the succubus, a final pop, as the air rushed in to fill the hole in space left from the final demon’s arrival. She was not much taller than the succubus, and almost as beautiful, with shimmering golden hair, goat horns, hooves, and a serpentine tail. But her most disturbing feature was the blank, empty space where her eyes should be. “Minhago”, Yaniel snarled. “Ahh, Yaniel, Great hero of the Fourth Crusade” she purred. “We have been expecting you.” She nodded to the succubus. “Well done, Arueshalae. You have lived up to your reputation.” “Well, I would hope so” she replied lightly. “At the end of the day a girl’s reputation is all she really has.” Yaniel assessed the situation. There were too many. She was too spent. Best to be realistic. She had lost. But they would not get everything. With a great yell she spun and hurled Radiance over the heads of the demons. It landed in the river with a satisfying splash and sank below the black water. As the current carried it away, Yaniel smiled in grim satisfaction. The last smile that would ever grace her face. Minagho shrugged. “Your spitting defiance is of no consequence, little paladin. I enjoy playing with my dolls, even when they are missing some of their accessories. She barked an order in Abyssal, and the demons moved in. Her heart overflowing with gratitude for the blessing of her life, Yaniel, last hero of the Fourth Crusade, took a deep breath and closed her eyes…
I wanted to introduce Nocticula prior to the start of Book IV, so here is here intro. Allusions at the end to her eventual transformation to CN, which I may include in the campaign post script Prologue VI: Our Lady in Shadow 2 Arodus 4723, - Alushinyrra, the Midnight Isles The immense moon began to crawl its way above the horizon line, hanging low in the sky over the black ocean of Ishiar. As what passes for day in the immense archipelago known as Midnight Isles banishes the deeper darkness of the evening, shadows come out to play. Moonlight shone down upon Alinythia, largest of the isles, the remains of an ancient rival and would be claimant to the Lady’s title. The great city of Alushinyrra barely registered the change. Within the sprawling metropolis of almost seven million souls, the regal purple and deep crimson stone that formed its towers, domes, spires, twisting alleys, and maze-like streets glowed with an eerie beauty in the transitory light. Its canals are thick with traffic, as visitors from throughout the planes crowd its streets, markets, and alleyways. In the Porphyry City almost anything can be found, and possessed, for a price – its uneasy peace maintained by Shamira, The Ardent Dream, and her mistress, the Lady in Shadow. Shamira stood before her mistress’s throne, deep within the House of Silken Shadows. The bright red of her wild mane was matched by her wings of fire. A slender bow of flame was slung over her shoulder. A daughter of Sarenrae, some speculated, though never in her presence. She was supernaturally beautiful, striking enough to seduce the gods themselves, and legend has it, even her mistress. Her light stood in sharp contrast to the cool, otherworldly shadows enveloping the woman on the throne. The room was shrouded in midnight clouds, concealing its treasures, parting just long enough to tempt those who gazed upon them with the fleeting promise of incalculable, otherworldly value. Or, depending on the mood of the mistress, the lure of indescribable sensuality or terrifying threat – though those who earned the Lady’s displeasure rarely learned of it until it was too late. Above the throne, a massive seven-pointed crown, wrapped in thorny vines, was mounted upon the purple stone wall. The crown was carved entirely from a colossal shadow ruby, the vines from a single dark emerald. The craftsmanship was beyond exquisite, a gift from an ancient, now discarded suitor, its value dwarfing that of mighty kingdoms. She sat upon her throne, the shadows emanating from her rune covered wings obscuring her nude form. She wore her hair up in an elaborate headpiece that mirrored the crown on the wall. She sat with a languid, graceful ease. Her legs were splayed over the arm of the chair with an air of casual indifference that only a fool would take for inattentiveness. Her stony hooves, weeping molten iron, clicked idly against the side of the throne. Despite her own incredible power and will, Shamira could barely contain her lust, and she wondered if her mistress had dampened her aura, half disappointed if she had. Her gaze turned to Shamira. “What news of interest?” she inquired, her voice a silken purr that sent shivers down Shamira’s spine. “Hepzamirah seems to be speeding up production in the mines, my Lady.” “Is she, now? And she never even sought my permission.” “Would you have granted it if she had, my Lady?” “Well, no, of course not. But a girl likes to be asked.” “Shall I prepare a force to remove them.” The Lady waved her hand, dismissively. “It’s not worth an open confrontation –What she is doing is relatively harmless. There are other deposits, and there is no need to make an enemy when I might someday prefer a friend. Still, should the time come, perhaps sanctuary for a select few. The alchemist may be ready to turn. Should he flee, have an agent ready to scoop him up. What news of Golarion?” “Our agents have reported that a massive mobilization is underway, under the direction of Aponavicius. There are rumors of a great work nearing completion, thanks to your crystals. Some action related to the Wardstones that fence them in. We do not think they’ve obtained the power to throw open the gate. Not yet…” she added pointedly. The Lady frowned, and began clicking her teeth with a long, perfectly manicured fingernail. It was a seemingly unconscious habit when her mistress was lost in thought, though Shamira knew that nothing the Lady did was without purpose and intent. “I do not care for how serious this is getting. Deskari is dangerously close to achieving his goal, and that planet houses both Rovagug’s prison and the Starstone. There is value in a certain degree of stability, and it may be in our interests to ensure that things do not get too out of hand.” She sighed. “And if that upstart has reason to think any more highly of herself she’ll become positively unbearable. It may be necessary to drive a wedge between the Bug and the Bull.” “Frankly I can’t believe their alliance has held this long.” “Your words to the gods’ ears, my friend.” “If they are close to achieving their goals, perhaps a reconsideration of their offer to join?” “Slaughter on that scale is brute, crude, lazy, and beneath me. There are other paths…” The Lady went quiet, her mind running through possibilities, and as Shamira waited patiently, she noted that the shadows surrounding the throne grew in size until they swallowed the great hall, reducing her flames to a dull, distant glow. Then, without warning, the shadows returned to their mistress, the ambient light returning to its normal seductive haze. “Is there anything else,” the Lady asked? “The heretic seems to have made her escape. Shall we retrieve her?” A fond smile crossed the Lady’s lips. “Ahh, darling, ambitious Arueshalae, one of my most talented daughters. No need to bring her back just yet. She is most resourceful, and attempting something new. Let her show us what might be possible.” Shamira nodded. “There is much movement on the board. If you play this right, there may be two more islands in this for you, my Lady.” At that, the Lady sat up straight, leaning forward as dark shadows seemed to consume her, leaving only her face visible. There was a hunger in her eyes, as wild and terrifying as the Abyss. She smiled, and behind that smile lay something deep and ancient. “If I play this right, there may be so much more.”
It's been a little while since I posted in here. There have been a few more of these scenes since the summer. This first one is quick. During the final battle for Drezen shortly before the players set out for the Ivory Sanctum I had a little moment where Irabeth activated the summon planetar ability) calling the herald. I also went through a round of mass combat where the PC armies weren't equipped to overcome DR - a power I was going to give to the Sword of Valor that was activated here for the first time. Cutscene VIII: Summoning the Herald 3 Abadius, 4724 – Drezen, The Worldwound Although the defenders in your immediate vicinity hold their ground, it is clear you are losing the battle. This is the mightiest horde you have yet to face, their flight negating so many of your defensive works, and far too many of your soldiers simply cannot pierce their fell hides. Your weapons aren’t strong enough. You look around, trying to assess how the other soldiers are faring, and you see that Irabeth has mounted Citadel Drezen’s main gate tower. In one hand she holds her longsword, in the other the Sword of Valor. She is shouting something, though you cannot hear it over the clang and pounding of the battle - the terrible war cries and wrenching screams. The Sword of Valor begins to pulse with a golden light, and a low thrum makes its way across the battlefield, a noise you do not hear as much as feel. There is a kinetic frission in the air, and your eyes widen as the blade of the solider next to you suddenly slices into the demon’s skin, the hide parting before the weapon like it was normal flesh. He withdraws it, and you notice his sword glows with a faint silver energy. Spinning around, you see shock on the faces the demons as they find themselves suddenly and unexpectedly vulnerable to the weapons of Drezen’s defenders. Irabeth continues yelling, words you cannot make out, and she stabs her sword up into the air, the weapon flaring to life, shooting a bolt of golden lighting into the sky. There is a loud crack, a roll of thunder, and the air is split open – a streak of gold shoots out of the rent directly into the mass of drake riders harrying your cavalry. A triumphant cry rises throughout Drezen, as the Herald of Iomedae has come.
And we have finally arrived at the moment where the PCs meet Arueshalae (our last session finished with the big fight to save her. We start with the RP next session). I've been setting her up for a while and while the players themselves are excited, this will be an interesting encounter for the characters (the PCs were burned real hard by Nurah, by Kiranda (who killed Sosiel), and by Eustoriayx possessing Jesker (a great idea that came from these forums - don't recall who. Scorpion, maybe?). I have a ranger who worships Desna who is all in, and the rogue she saved as a child. Everyone else is tired of being fooled and lied to by demons, and its' been made clear that theoretically a risen demon should be impossible, as demons are literal incarnations of sin and devoid of free will in a moral sense- acting on instinct/compelled to fulfill the designs of their nature. Following forum advice Arueshalae figures in three backgrounds. She saved a PC from the Azverindus rites, rescued another, and I wrote her into the demon blooded trait as well. That was all chronicled in another post. This cut scene was a dream two of the players had that basically replays the scene from the earlier dreams from their perspective, rather than arueshalae's. If I had it to do over again I would have swapped the stories since it makes more sense that this one would have been the one from Arueshale's POV. Alas... Our campaign timeline is altered because we run our campaigns sequentially and this one started in world after our last one (so old PCs can become NPCS). It is currently 4723, a few months after the Wardstones were destroyed (the whole campaign will likely take place in less than a year). The two relevant PCs were each younger than 10 when these events took place. Cutscene VII: The Demon’s Heresy 4708 - North of Kenebras, the other side of the wardstones
Looming over her was that terrifying eyeless woman, chanting in some horrid language that hurt her ears. She knew when it reached its end the still, silent, hooded figures at her side would bring their daggers down, and her story would be over. She saw their faces before. They were both incredibly beautiful, like characters in a fairy tale – a handsome prince and his beautiful princess. The kind of people she imagined doing great deeds, protecting the weak and vulnerable, having grand adventures exploring strange and wonderful new places. She was just a little girl. None of this was fair. She wanted to weep for the injustice of it all, but her tears had long dried up. She felt a formless rage well up within her, a profound hatred of her captors, but she swallowed it down, afraid to draw any more attention to herself – a child’s fantasy that if she just closed her eyes and lay still, the monsters couldn’t find her. She lay there, bound and terrified, praying to no one in particular for release, for a quick and painless death, for her lost childhood, for second chances. Droplets of blood dripped slowly off the daggers, occasionally spattering onto her face and chest. She stared at the blood, wondering when the next drop would fall, trying in vain to distract herself from her impending death. It was then that a butterfly landed on the blade of the woman’s dagger. It was breathtaking – colored the bruised purple of the deep night sky and the radiant yellow of the stars – bold, fragile, somehow eternal. Kiryn found herself comforted by its presence – a reminder that uncorrupted beauty still existed, and would exist after she was gone. The butterfly fluttered away from the dagger, and landed on her forearm. She strained her head to look at it, and the butterfly stared back. It seemed to look beyond her eyes, deep within her soul, awakening something within her. To her astonishment, the butterfly seemed to melt into her arm, and as it did a comforting warmth spread throughout her. For the first time in days, she was not afraid. More than that, she felt free, confident in the knowledge that though her body was chained, her spirit was free to roam, and could never be caged. The chanting reached its crescendo, and she stared at the daggers, ready to meet her fate. At the faintest edge of her hearing a soft, feminine voice whispered “I can’t.” And then, to her astonishment, as the male brought his dagger down, the female thrust hers into his neck. He dropped his dagger, the blade falling, scoring a cut across the ribs, but missing her heart. The woman grabbed the man by the shoulder and in a puff of brimstone, the two disappeared. The eyeless woman howled in rage as the door to the barn burst open and a group of crusaders rushed in, swords blazing in a golden, avenging light. Kiryn closed her eyes, overwhelmed, and in her mind a cloud of purple and yellow butterflies carried her off towards the stars. 4710 - North of Kenebras, the other side of the wardstones
Lost in his own private mantra, it took Bastion a moment to notice the commotion. The prisoners had stopped moving. The cultists were forming a circle in front of them – long spears braced for impact. What he thought was the pounding of his exhausted heart he now recognized as hooves. He spun around, and a cloud of dust thundered towards them. They were saved. Phineas had come! There was a violent crash as the horses barreled into the cultists, and tortured screaming that made his teeth vibrate - the pleading whinnying of dying horses and the bellowed, gasping cries of defiance of the men who rode them. The fight rolled over them, a violent wave the prisoners could not stand against. A few fell, dead. The rest of them ran, but Bastion stood there, transfixed. If he ran, how would Phineas find him? “If we get separated, stay where you are, Bastion.” Phineas would always say. “I will always come back for you.” Best remain right here, as he was taught. One of the big blue demons stove in the chest of one of the knights, her dented armor shattering the ribs beneath. As the crusader fell, the demon grabbed her with two clawed hands and, with a massive heave, hurled the body overhead. It crashed into Bastion, and he fell to the ground hard, head cracked, air forced from his lungs. He lay there, pinned, struggling to see straight, struggling to breath, unable to move the heavy weight that trapped him. Suddenly the blue demon towered over him. With one hand he lifted the body and tossed it to the side. He licked his lips, spraying a foul-smelling spittle over Bastion’s fate. “Time to die, mortal, he growled.” Too terrified to move, Bastion lay there transfixed, as he chanted without hearing. “Phineas is coming. Phineas is coming.” Suddenly a delicate hand grabbed the demons face and yanked it to the side. A woman appeared from the shadows and kissed the demon passionately. She pushed it away, and as it staggered back she plunged a dagger into its chest. The demon fell to the ground at Bastion’s side. It did not move. The woman stared down at him. She was so beautiful. The most amazing creature he had ever seen. It took him a few moments to notice the leathery wings folded behind her. Finally, she spoke. “Get up boy. It isn’t safe for you here.” Entranced, Bastion rose to his feet. “Get away from him, demon!” a harsh male voice shrieked from in front of him. The final blue demon was dead on the ground. He looked like a crusader, but on his face was a mask of rage and anguish as violent and hateful as any he had ever seen on a demon. “I will kill you for what you’ve done!” he bellowed. The beautiful woman screamed back. “I am trying to help you! I sent the warning!” The man yelled something back, but Bastion’s head began spinning, and he bent over and threw up. When the retching stopped, he wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve, and rose unsteadily to his feet. The woman with the wings stood over the fallen crusader. She had dropped her dagger, and just started at him, not moving. She seemed lost, lonely, and Bastion wanted to help her, to somehow repay the favor. He shuffled towards her, reaching out. As he tugged on her leg she spun around, claws bared, her face twisted in a feral snarl. Wick jumped back, startled. But she did not attack. She just stood there, her features at war with themselves. She needed something, and all Bastion had was himself. Carefully, he reached out for her hand, squeezing it. Her skin was soft, warm, smooth. She smelled like the honey cakes Bastion’s father would make for celebrations. She stared down at him. Something Bastion did not understand flashed across her eyes, and she let go. Phineas wasn’t coming. And yet somehow Bastion felt safe. She could help, he just knew it. “Can you take me back home?” he asked. She stared down at him for a long moment, and then shook her head. It was somehow the saddest gesture Bastion had ever seen. She spoke, her voice like music, like the songs the living sing for the beloved dead. “Where you must go, I am not permitted to follow, little one. Your people are that way. Find them. They will keep you safe.” He stared back at her. Surely she wasn’t going to leave him. She would take him to Phineas. And then they could help her find whatever it was she had lost. But then she turned around and walked off into the wastes, alone. Bastion watched her for a long while, before turning to run after the other prisoners. 20 Kuthona, 4723 – Somewhere in the Worldwound
He sees several derakni and drake riders circling the belltower, though they seem unable or unwilling to get too close. He hears voice behind him, a harsh grating sound, and a large woman, in a dress that would be flattering if she was not so hideous, stylish if not covered in mud, was talking to a second Hezrou. For some reason, there was no sound. The woman absent mindedly fingers an amulet around her neck, a symbol he did not recognize – two feminine hands, palms out, with slashes running across them. Kiryn continues to stare at the tower, transfixed. Out of the window of the bell tower flies a tiny object, gently weaving towards them. As it gets closer, Kiryn recognizes it as a purple and yellow butterfly, matching the brand she received the night she was almost sacrificed to the Azverindus Rite. Entranced, she holds out her hand, and the butterfly lands, softly. It looks at her, expectantly, and Kiryn brings the butterfly towards her, holding it up against her ear. A soft, feminine voice whispers “Find me.” Wick and Kiryn snap awake, and bolt out of their rooms. They meet in the hallway, each on the way to the other.
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