The Fifth Crusade
For over a century, the demon-haunted wasteland of the Worldwound has bled into the world of mortals. As the magical Wardstones that hold back the tide begin to flicker and fail, a new generation of crusaders must take up the sword. But this war requires more than steel; it requires the power of Myths.
Paladin / Wizard
Monk / Paladin
Inquisitor / Rogue
Paladin / Oracle
Intelligence Report: The Drezen Approach
Taken. The Banner came down the side of the tall tower and every road out of this place closed at once; the gates went in within the hour. Seventy-five years ended in an afternoon. The forge beneath it has been cleansed and given a new name.
Cleared. Four chained beasts meant to drop the span are dead; engineers shore the piers. The road west is open.
Some two hundred prisoners freed. Many now carry bows for the crusade.
Taken and held. Paradise Hill sealed at its back — nothing reaches the hill now but wings or magic.
Emptying. The companies have moved up into the citadel and the prisoners with them, into cells cut for the purpose. One prisoner never made the walk — she chose to run, and then chose to fight.
The curse is broken and the tomb re-hallowed. The dead of the First Crusade sleep clean at last.
Seventy-five years in demon hands, and taken in an afternoon once the Banner was over it. The work now is the unglamorous kind: room by room, drain by drain, cultists talked out of granaries or not talked out of them. Below, the relic-corrupting forge has been argued back into an honest tool over four days and given a new name. Two shrines on two sides of one courtyard are being scrubbed by two sets of hands, and nobody gave the order.
"Enjoy tonight. Tomorrow I want every room, every crate, every loose flagstone in this rock turned over. There were five vials of the stuff that made the traitor what he was. He drank one. I do not know where the other four are, and until I do, nobody in this army eats, drinks, or pockets anything they find in Drezen. Say it to every company by noon."
The Worldwound
Session XVIII — Sword of Valor
Past a second hidden door, past a six-armed idol looming over a pit that was four times deeper than it looked, they came to a room where light went in and did not come back. Six purple crystals stood in six alcoves and every one of them was a cheap carved fake — and things came out of them anyway. Something reached into Korroc and pulled at his soul before it ever took a shape. A shadow demon came out of the floor, and it could not be reliably hit, and it could not be held, and when the four of them had finally cornered it, it poured itself into Thane's mouth and stood up wearing him. What followed was the ugliest three minutes of the war: a dwarf turning his cousin's knives on his own shield, an aasimar pulling every strike, and a warhammer coming down twice on the crystal that held a friend's soul on nothing but a wizard's word. Then Caleth put his hand on a heap of red cloth left on a marble slab, and the true Sword of Valor went off like a dam breaking. Every fake in the room shattered at once. The dark came apart. And the whispering that had run under every room for a day — that was never the ritual, that nobody has ever found the source of — stopped, and no one can tell you why.
Fallen Guardian
Silver Dragon · Protector of Kenabres
“She was the oldest thing in Kenabres and she never once said so. A silver dragon who took a plain grey face and a small ordinary life and kept them for longer than most kingdoms last, because being known would have cost that city more than it ever gave her. She died in the same street she had walked in that face — not on a wall, not over the wardstone, but spending the last of herself to slow four strangers' fall. There is a banner over Drezen tonight. It is up there because those four went on falling in the direction she pointed them.”
The One Who Picked It Up
Paladin / Wizard
Named the six crystals as fakes and was right about the stone and wrong about what it was doing. Worked out, on nothing but reasoning, that a friend’s soul was inside the seventh — and was believed, because of who had been asked. Then found a heap of red cloth that told him nothing at all, said so plainly, and picked it up anyway. He unfurled it from the tall tower himself. He never did finish the argument about the forge; a commander took the decision off him before either side gave an inch.
The One Who Said No
Monk / Paladin
Fought a thing his fists mostly passed through and kept finding the parts of it that were there. When it opened its mouth to draw his soul out of him from three feet away, he looked into it and shook his head once — “Not today” — and that was the whole of his answer. Struck a possessed friend with every blow pulled short and apologised while doing it. Landed the killing blow the instant the demon was torn loose. Later, six caged crusaders who had died a long time ago got the full liturgy, in order, one after another, and he did not hurry any of them.
The Blade He Wiped Clean
Inquisitor / Rogue
Opened the second hidden door, and was nearly put down a forty-foot pit by a trap that picked him out of four because he was the one reading the floor. Then the demon poured itself into him and used his hands on his own cousin. When it was finally torn out and he came back to himself, he did not say anything at all. He picked up his mother’s blade, took out the rag, and wiped a knife that had not touched a thing. No Stonevein has ever sheathed a wet blade. It was how everyone in the room knew he was back.
The Smith Who Stood Aside
Paladin / Oracle
Something reached past his armour and his skin and took hold of his soul before the fight even started. He cut every thread binding him to his cousin rather than let a demon walk down them, then broke the crystal holding that cousin’s soul on a wizard’s word alone. At dawn he knelt in a ruined chapel and found Torag’s hammer and anvil cut into the gold over his heart, where another god’s mark had been — armour that reads the man inside it and decides. And when the cleansing of the forge came down to arcane hands or holy ones, he wanted it to be his, weighed it honestly, and told them to do it the better way.
Current Status
The Banner recovered · The citadel held · Four vials unaccounted for
They carried it up to the tallest tower in the fortress and let it fall down the side, and the sound that came off the field was not a cheer to start with — it was a hole in the noise, and then it was weather. Below, every escape-road the demons had simply closed and the shield wall stopped grinding and started running. The gates went in a quarter of an hour later. Seventy-five years, ended in an afternoon. What followed was a week of the unglamorous work: room by room, a debt gone back for in the dark, six caged crusaders finally given their rites, and four days of argument and chalk-marks that turned a relic-corrupting forge into an honest one. It has a new name now. Somewhere in this rock, or out of it, there are still four vials of the stuff that made a traitor into what he was — and nobody knows what was whispering, only that it stopped.
Retrieving field report...
A visual record of the Worldwound and the souls caught in its wake
End of Record
