Book II: The Sword of Valour
The ruined chapel held more than carrion and broken stone. Pressing deeper into its shadowed halls, the party uncovered its master—Nulkineth, a foul ghoul-priest, attended by a hulking undead bodyguard. The fight was short and brutal, blades flashing in the tight nave as divine magic clashed with necrotic rot. When the creatures fell, the chapel seemed finally still. Yet as they turned to leave, the beat of heavy wings split the air. A nabasu swooped down from the orange sky, drawn perhaps by the slaughter or the taste of souls. The demon’s arrival was sudden and savage, but the heroes, battle-hardened now, cut it down before it could feed. With the threat ended, they returned to the waiting army.
The rest of the march passed in wary quiet until they reached the mouth of the Ahari Gorge. What first appeared to be greenish fog soon revealed itself as something far worse—a churning, living cloud of vescavors. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of the Abyssal vermin writhed together in a vast swarm, their droning wings filling the air like the buzzing of some monstrous hive. To send the crusaders through would be suicide; blades and armour meant nothing against creatures that slipped between steel and flesh alike. Climbing the cliffs was no better. It was Aron Kir who recognised the truth: such numbers meant a queen nearby, spawning endlessly. Kill the queen, and the swarm would collapse.
They made camp and prepared. Yet even before the assault began, another problem surfaced. Aron began acting strangely—irritable, distracted, hollow-eyed. Pressed by the party, he confessed to discovering a vial of shadowblood among his supplies and succumbing to its lure. With Sosiel’s steady guidance and healing prayers, the poison’s grip was broken. But the question lingered, sharp and unsettling: who had planted it?
There was no time to chase answers. Cloaked in MotoGP invisibility and moving with care, the party slipped past the drifting edges of the swarm and descended into the vermin’s tunnels. The air grew thick, the walls slick with chitin and rot. Avoiding smaller clusters, they pressed onward until they reached the heart of the nest. There, the vescavor queen waited—vast, pulsing, and hideous. The battle was fierce, wings and mandibles thrashing in the dark, but at last the creature fell.
Above, the great cloud began to thin and scatter. The path to Drezen opened.
Yet as the dust settled, a strange abyssal light seeped from deeper within the cavern, faint and unnatural—something older than the swarm, still waiting in the dark.
Rewards:
Exp: 5400 each
Quests:
- March to Drezen, take the Citadel and reclaim The Sword of Valour
- Find the source of the eerie light
Sjoe those MotoGP lads be chooching