Darya gives her a warm smile. "Go have you talk with Commander Irabeth, then get yourself a decent meal and a good night's sleep, gods know you deserve it."
With the excitement over and the remaining garrison soldiers tended to, the army makes camp for the night. Over dinner, you learn from Irabeth that Sergeant Dann will lead her survivors back to Kenabres. Someone needs to get the message to Queen Galfrey, there aren’t enough of them to effectively protect the Ford, and anyone coming this way from the Worldwound would have to get through you, first, anyway. Though the tiefling army here was not mounted, they did have a few horses to carry equipment, and Dann’s group will be taking them so they don’t have to travel on foot.
The night passes uneventfully. In the morning, you break your fast, wish Sergeant Dann good luck on her journey, then set about crossing the river. The supply wagons are sealed and can more or less float across, the rest of you cross on horseback. It takes a little over an hour, and then you are officially in the Worldwound.
You follow the packed-dirt road north for the rest of the day. Though you are barely a quarter mile in, if that, the landscape here has clearly been altered, if only in subtle ways. The air is stagnant, the sky seems dimmer, and the vegetation is dead or dying, even along the riverbank.
You come to within a couple of miles of Keeper’s Canyon before it grows dark. Anevia and Aron return as you’re breaking camp, and they deliver their report of what lies ahead.
Aron says, “We couldn’t get close but it was enough to see what we’re facing. Exorius’s armies are encamped at the confluence of the dry riverbed—what used to be the Ahari River—and the Sellen. There are two groups, just as Sergeant Dann described. The tieflings are out in the open, along the shoreline. It seems to be about the same size as the group that was at the Ford. The dretches are dug in among the ruins of whatever settlement used to be there. We couldn’t get a good count of them.
“And the big problem is, it’s a bottleneck. This Exorius is smart. Or, smart enough. He has the tieflings positioned back such that we can’t take one group on at a time.” He sketches a quick map in the dirt.
“We’ll be in range of the dretches at the same time we’re in range of the tieflings. And if we close with one we could end up fighting both at the same time.”
Irabeth frowns as she considers the situation. “The dretches have no reason to leave their fortifications. They’ll wait for us to come to them.”
Anevia says, “My thinking, too, but they can rain arrows down on us from where they are.”
“How are the tieflings armed?”
Aron answers this. “Unknown. But no mounts.”
“All right, then. We have until the morning to come up with a strategy.”
"If we're afraid of taking them both on at once, could we circle wide and come at one of them opposite to the other?" Kelly suggests as she tries to understand the crude map, "Or is there not enough room for that? I don't know, I've never done strategy before."
Anevia says, "We have the river on one side, and the cliffs on the other. There's no room to maneuver around them. The gorge is just too narrow here."
"Sounds lie we'll be vulnerable to something either way. Being open to ranged attacks by the dretches may be better than facing both forces in the field at once." Darya says, considering the situation. "Any magic available that might thwart arrows from either group?"
Alexa shifts from foot to foot as the more martially-inclined party members discuss strategy.
Nurah says, "Both tieflings and dretches have the ability to cast spells. The tieflings, though...I'd wager they aren't much different from the forces we faced at Vilareth Ford. They probably just divided the army in half, sent one company south, and left the other one here."
Soseil speaks up next. "The dretches are the real threat. They will fight aggressively, much more so than the tieflings. And under their leadership they may even use reckless tactics when in melee to strike hard and fast. But they won't leave their fortified positions to fight us. They don't need to. They know we will eventually have to come to them."
Irabeth thinks for a moment. "OK. Here's what I propose. We start at range, try to take the tieflings down with arrows and ranged spells. The dretches will do the same to us. If we wipe out the tieflings, we can move in on the dretches, or pull back to heal if our losses are too great.
"We'll take a more cautious stance, at least initially. No attempts to outflank. We can't afford to be stretched too thin with the dretches taking potshots at us."
"That makes sense. Focusing on one force exclusively takes away the main advantage of there being two groups. If we hit hard enough and fast enough our odds are pretty good." Darya replies with a nod.
"I think we have our battle plan, then. Everyone get some sleep. It will be a long day tomorrow."
The army moves out early in the morning. The soldiers are all on edge, knowing that a large battle looms just a couple of miles ahead of them. There is not much talk, just the sounds of horses and clinking of armor at the head of the column, and the creaking of support wagons at the end.
The valley narrows as you near the confluence of the rivers, or what would be the Ahari River had it not dried up. Keeper's Canyon, Nurah explained, was formerly a small settlement and holding of Drezen. It primarily functioned as a port, loading and unloading ships that were too large to navigate the smaller tributary. Today, it's just ruins. It was abandoned even before Drezen fell.
Aron and Anevia bring the army to a halt before rounding the last bend in the canyon. Anevia comes back to Irabeth and says, "We may be able to surprise them. If they know we're coming it probably won't work, but if we don't try..."
Irabeth nods and says, "Do it."
Nurah takes the Horn and heads to the front of the column with Anevia. There are long, tense minutes while nothing happens, and then the column resumes again, this time forming a thin line of mounted soldiers that moves slowly and quietly. They don't get far, however, before they start rushing forward and then the sound of Nurah blowing the magical Horn rings out across the valley. The implication is that the enemy forces were on alert, and the battle has begun.
As you clear the bend, you can see the ruins of Keeper's Canyon. Only stone shells of a handful of buildings remain, and a number of pilings stick out of the water at the edge of the Sellen river which runs to the northeast. You can see the dry riverbed of the Ahari to the north. A few pilings remain there as well, but most have fallen over into piles of decaying wood.
The tiefling army is exactly where Aron and Anevia said, just outside the remains of the town. They are charging forward on foot as you approach. You only catch a few glimpses of dretches among the ruins, but they make their presence known with volleys of arrows that fly your direction.
Your paladins split into two main groups, forming offensive and defensive lines. The latter deploys shields to protect the former from the dretches' arrows. The shooting line launches it's first volley of arrows towards the advancing tieflings as shields go up.
The dretch arrows fall short at first, and the few that make it into the ranks are easily deflected. Your arrows come down with devastating impact, however, and a number of lead tieflings fall. The next volleys follow the same pattern, and the tieflings collapse as arrows find their targets. The dretches improve their aim slightly, but the shields provide the necessary cover and those arrows that make it past either fall wide or are deflected by armor.
As the remaining tieflings close, the paladins switch tactics to individually aimed shots, and each one seems to land. The first charge is shattered and the tieflings try to reform, but this provides a ripe target. More tieflings fall, and this is the turning point. They never recover.
Meanwhile, the dretches realize their arrows are not sufficient, abd a small group of them emerges from the ruins and charges forward. As the last of the tieflings goes down, clouds of some sort appear on the battlefield, some within your paladins' ranks and others among the ruins to provide additional cover. Your paladins prepare for melee combat, and a small cavalry moves advances through the fog to meet the dretches head-on.
The first wave of paladins meet the advancing dretches in the field and crash through them, leaving only broken bodies behind. The rest of the army charges into the ruins of Keeper's Canyon, and despite the dretches' hardened positions they are no match for the mounted warriors. The dretches attempt a reckless strategy that exposes their positions in an attempt to counter the heavily-armored paladins, but in the end it's just not enough.
Over the course of a half hour, the dretches fall, one by one. Several attempt to summon reinforcements, and a few more do appear to bolster their ranks, but they, too, are quickly dispatched. When it's clear it's all over, the paladins mount a search to ensure there are no survivors hiding among the fallen.
Alexa starts sweeping the town, looking for any innocent survivors.
Darya joins the search, letting her halo manifest in the hopes of drawing the attention of any hiding or lost among the carnage if at all possible.
Alexa starts sweeping the town, looking for any innocent survivors.
Arloric follows with Alexa, aiding her search.
You meticulously work your way across the battlefield and into the ruins of Keeper's Canyon, but do not turn up any living creatures. All the dretches and tieflings were felled in the battle. Inside the remains of the ruined town, however, you do find one thing of note: laying in a patch of blackened earth is the headless body of a brimorak. You find its head a few feet away.
"Well, I suppose the Abyssal hordes have a very low tolerance level for failure." Alexa remarks with a bit of a grin.
Uriel will stay with the army's command group, just in case any dretches were hiding and hoping to attack later.
"I'd be more concerned with HOW he got hacked like this," Arloric comments. "Whatever did it could still be close...and even if it's not what with teleporting and Abyssal rifts and sh!t, it knows we're on the move and now knows to put tougher or smarter minions in our path if it wants to break our stride. We should be wary like a hare..."
Darya spends a bitof time inspecting the Brimorak's corpse, trying to determine how the demon died.
Another half an hour of searching fails to turn up any surprises. Irabeth approaches you after it's done and say, "The tieflings had some food and water stores which we can use, but not a lot. It looks like they were getting regular supply runs from Drezen.
"There's no sign of this 'Exorius' person. The command post here was empty when we got to it. So it's a fair bet that the forces in Drezen know we are coming.
"As for us...it is still early in the day. We can put in a good 20 miles or so."
"So not only should we be wary like a hare, but fleet like one too. An army like this wasn't going to stay hidden for long anyway."
He nods to Alexa.
"I'll go help Horgus with integrating those supplies into our own, and making sure they're not messed with."
Uriel tries to remember what he knows of Worldwound geography and whether there might be alternative, unexpected approaches to Drezen.
"This looks like an execution. A clean strike through the ribs, followed by beheading, so clean that it looks like the demon was restrained for it." Darya says standing up.
With the supplies collected and packed away, and the wounded attended to, Irabeth gets the column moving up the Ahari riverbed. Though the soldiers were excited from their easy victories at Keeper's Canyon, the knowledge that they are now headed into the Worldwound instead of along its periphery keeps the mood somewhat solemn. They pass the crumbling ruins of the former port mostly in silence.
When the Worldwound first opened, huge rifts appeared in the earth throughout Sarkoris as though the world were cracked open by a hammer blow. Many of them hid, and still hide, portals to the abyss, giving the demons the easy travel to and from the material plane that they needed to stream across the continent. They also cut across the lost nation's natural waterways, sending its rivers and lakes plunging into the depths of the earth, and leaving behind intermittent streams that run only during the storms that form in the Worldwound's unpredictable and chaotic weather.
The Ahari is one of these, a flow of rock and sand that reveals no hints of when they last touched water.
Six miles in, the riverbed turns west. The cliffs of the gorge still tower above you, but not quite as high as they did along the Sellen. According to your maps, by the time you reach Drezen they will disappear entirely.
As you make your way to the west, Anevia returns with a report that there are ruins of an old, stone structure atop the cliffs. It comes into view shortly after, and you see crumbling walls atop a ridge on the north side of the gorge. As you get closer, the structure falls out of view but stone steps carved out of the cliff face climb to the very top, about where you expect the structure to be. The riverbed here is slightly wider, and there are signs of an old road that ran from here along the river and, presumably, into Drezen.
Irabeth brings the column to a halt, and calls all of you, Nurah, and Sosiel in for a quick meeting.
Taking note of the reports, and looking up at the stone structure, Darya joins the others in meeting with Irabeth, curious as to the subject.
Alexa follows soon after, her face as stony as ever.
"I'd like to check out whatever it is up on the cliffs back there." Kelly pipes up as her companions gather, "Could get a better view of the land around this gorge, if nothing else."
Irabeth says, "That is what I was going to ask. This isn't strictly our mission, but Aron and Anevia some something fly out form there. Also, I don't like unknowns, and this isn't on our maps."
She studies up at the staircase that ascends the cliff in a series of switchbacks. The walls of the gorge are a little over hundred feet high at this rocky outcropping, though the hills behind it climb higher. "Nurah, you're the historian here. Is there any record of what this is?"
The halfling was already digging into her bag of holding and quickly produces a couple of old tomes. "These are from the First and Second Crusades. Collections of journals and such, transcribed from the originals. This couldn't be much more recent than that or we'd have heard about it."
She starts with the older of the two, thumbing through its pages. After a couple of minutes she stops and says, "Here. And here." She flips a couple more pages, scanning their contents quickly. "I think this is it. These writings are from the 4630's. Right after Drezen was founded, priests and paladins from the First Crusade built a number of chapels in the lands around the city. They served as field hospitals and waystations. Each was devoted to a different deity or empyreal lord." She thumbs back another page and scans it using her finger. "This one was Ragathiel."
Arloric glowers at the sight of the dry river.
"I can FEEL the damage of this place...of my people's home. I cannot WAIT for the day we take it back, and can begin healing it."
He listens to the conversation about the stone structure and his eyebrow raises at the mention of Ragathiel, giving Darya and Uriel a knowing look.
Darya looks up in the distance, before looking back the page Nurah indicates, from over the halfling's shoulder, thinking on what she knew of the history of the area.
"Thay makes sense." Darya says after thinking for a moment, "Definitely worth looking into."
Alexa looks at the records Nurah produces. "Where'd you get these?" She asks.
"Long before I joined the army to live the glamorous life of a soldier, I lived the glamorous life of a servant to Lord Axilar Trezbot of Isger. This was back in the late 4690's, during the Fourth Crusade.
"Axilar was obsessed with the Crusades, and saw them as a path to greater fame and glory back home. He acquired these and others, though where from I don't know. House Trezbot is not a particularly notable House, but Axilar had enough influence and money to do that much, it seems. That, and to fund his own private army to march on Drezen and fight for the glory of his name.
"Being his servant, naturally he brought me with him, to serve as his scribe and later as his tactician. When he died, his army—mercenaries really—cut and ran. Not wanting to be left out there alone, I did the same. Fortunately, as his scribe, I was quite literally left holding the bag."
"If it's a shrine to Ragathiel, I really want to check it out." Uriel says, looking toward the cliff tops.
"Especially since Ragathiel's shrines are reputed to also have served as fully equipped outposts. We might even find the odd weapon or another item to use in the fight." Darya agrees enthusiastically.
You ascend the switchback to where the chapel sits high above. The stone steps are wide enough to accommodate horses, and when they were first built and still maintained they were probably safe. Years of exposure to the weather, especially under its abyssal influence, have made things a bit more treacherous. About a third of the way up the stairs have crumbled, and you have to watch your steps carefully to make it safely across the unstable stonework. Another patch of steps is in worse shape near the top, but again, you are able to help each other over the rubble without incident.
Looking down, you have an astounding view of the landscape. The outcropping here is lower than the surrounding hills, but you can see all the way to the bend to the east, and to where the riverbed exits the hills to the west. Drezen is, presumably, somewhere beyond.
The shelf that the chapel sits on juts out from the rock face of the cliffs. Rock walls ascend behind it from the northeast to the southeast, but elsewhere it drops off to the gorge below. Surprisingly, there is a thick layer of soil here. Though most of it is dry and rocky, patches of grass and even a few trees—the first healthy ones you have seen since entering the wounded lands—have managed to survive.
The two main buildings of the chapel stand side by side, surrounded by a thick stone wall. The smaller structure to the north looks like it might have been a stable. The other is likely the chapel proper: it's larger and has several doors, as well as stained-glass windows that are coated with dirt and muck. Atop it are a number of pious statues.
The gates to the courtyard lie smashed and broken, and the wall there has crumbled with tall grass grows among the rubble. An alleyway leads between the two buildings to what looks like another courtyard beyond with smaller buildings behind it.
Once they reach the top and take a moment to surveythe scene, Uriel looks to Darya and gestures to the buildings. "Shall I lead the way, sister, or would you prefer to take the front?"
Alexa moves forward without waiting for the others. "I'll scout ahead."
Alexa quietly and carefully approaches the collapsed walls of the lower courtyard, managing to step around the rubble without making a sound.
You can see the statues above the chapel building a bit more clearly from here. They appear to be weather-worn, which is not surprising given their age.
Alexa starts to maneuver her way through the debris to reach the nearest door.
The doors appear to be wooden with metal banding.
"You take the point, to watch Alexa's back." Darya replies after a moment of thought. "I won't be far behind"
With a nod, Uriel moves up to cover Alexa, with Radiance in hand.