A bright cerulean flame
On the Move
The Pilgrim's Defiance are on the move. While their fellow Imperial soldiers press south in Redoubt, into the foothills and the mountains, they march east into Zenith. Through Iteri and Clypion, beneath the gaze of those watchers which guard the pass into Morrow. Three great figures, stern-faced, mark their passage. Each represents one of the Highborn armies who fought to defend Urizen from the encroaching tide of Druj - the Valiant Pegasus, the Seventh Wave, and the Granite Pillar. They tower over the pass and the surrounding countryside, a permanent tribute memorialising for all time, the sacrifices the Highborn made in Zenith. The Pilgrim’s Defiance weren’t there - weren’t even thought of at that time. Yet it is nonetheless easy to allow Pride to blossom in the heart at the reminder of everything Highguard represents, here in the mountains of Urizen. Many soldiers seek out priests, in the shadow of greatness, and pledge themselves to the fight to come with liao donated by the congregations of Highguard. In the months to come, this decision will come to seem almost like prescience. As they continue east, the hills ring with the words of the Virtue’s Anthem of five thousand pilgrims singing. “O come o come ye seven Virtues bright. And lead this soul from darkness into light.”
Thence to Proceris, where the rebound waters of the Golden Cascade flow once again, and from there to the dark forests of Lustri. The ruins of the Stork’s Gaze, yet another scar on Zenith created by the cruelty of the Druj, are slowly being reclaimed by the woods. There is no time to visit the remnants, no time to explore the forest. The Pilgrim’s Defiance is an arrow in flight, a flaming bolt, arcing through the dark, aimed at the heart of the vallorn.
For many Highborn soldiers, this is the culmination of a journey that began years ago when they first left their homes and chapters to take on the mantle of the Grey pilgrim. Despite all the politics that have unfolded since, these folk remain committed to the virtuous goal of ending the vallorn once and for all. Uprooting this abominable force, this titanic threat woven with the unconstrained magic of Spring, that corrupts whatever it touches. A challenge unlike any the Highborn armies have faced in decades - in a century. Finally, the brand of virtue against the chaos of the wild.
With them, a force of nearly five-thousand soldiers led by the Empire’s captains. Overwhelmingly, almost, these soldiers are Navarr, but this is familiar ground for the Pilgrims. They walked the trods alongside these people, there is a camaraderie and a shared goal that binds them together. Along with the scattering of Highborn captains, and with the support of Highborn congregations, they leave Zenith and come at last to Therunin.
There is nothing to mark the border between the woods of Lustri and the woods of East Ashes but it is hard to miss the transition between Urizen and what was once Navarr. The soil becomes damper, it’s true, and the great grey expanse of the Feverwater is unmissable, but there is something else. A texture of the air that becomes heavier and heavier with each step taken. There is something in the woods, something fearful. It is not the Druj miasma, but it is an echo of it. Weaker, less intrusive, but also more subtle. It would be easy to see movement where nothing moves, to hear the crack of a twig in the dark where no foot treads, to begin to slip and slide into panic at nothing at all. Yet the shield of virtue is set against such wiles, both in the touch of the priests who march with the army, and in the spirit of those who let the Seven be their guide.
(And if the twelve stars of the Stork shine particularly brightly in the night sky as they march, if it reminds those who mark it of the Decision to be Virtuous, of making the right choice for the right reason, then that is just another thing bolstering their Courage, their Ambition, their loyalty to their allies.)
Pilgrims remember Tian, Paragon of Ambition. Her actions brought benevolence to her people but forever burned her hands in the process. She did what was necessary, pushing Ever Forward in pursuit of her vision. We march armoured by faith into East Ashes, By seasons end its vallorn will force us back to the forests of Lustri. Three of every ten of us will fall. Our souls consigned to the Labyrinth to be reborn again. As Highborn, we are here to show Navarr that we will always work with them. Therunin will return to slumber and in this act the land of Therunin protected so that Navarr may one day reclaim dominion of their home. Remember this vision, this Ambition, no matter the horrors you face this season for it is the armour that will see it came to pass. Rest only in death pilgrims, for that is what Ambition demands.
Eli of the Cenotaph, General of the Pilgrim’s DefianceAll is Ashes
The Druj have been in East Ashes for a long time, now. There has been scattered news that they are doing something in south-eastern Therunin, hidden from Imperial eyes. It seems that what they have mostly been doing is digging in - preparing defences aimed at both the Empire to the south and the vallorn to the north-west. As of last season, they must also worry about the abominations that have overrun Eastring. It is understandable, then, that their attention is elsewhere as the Highborn begin their march along the edge of the great lake, stars glittering in its depths.
After the first few traps and deadfalls, Imperial soldiers begin to move a little more cautiously. Yet there is a lot of wood to traverse, and the Druj can only create so many pitfalls. Their traps are indiscriminate, they can only set up so many sharp spears, if they need to allow their own armies to move. They can anticipate likely routes of attack, but the best trap in the world cannot move to intercept a foe that walks even an inch beyond its trigger. Vigilance lights the way, and the aid of the Navarr is invaluable in moving through the Druj-fortified woodland.
Initial engagements against the Druj are decisive. The defenders here are no match for an entire Imperial army, even without the enchantment of clarity and foresight that wraps around the soldiers like a mantle of light. The usual tactics of strike and retreat, seeking to lure the enemy into ambushes, into foolish pursuit, are ineffective against an army armoured in virtue, wise to their ways.
The army sweeps slowly north, but the Highborn are implacable. Their advance only slowed by the need to account for traps, and to ensure no major Druj force remains behind to attack the rear or harry the baggage train. At first there is no sign of the vallorn, though, and this causes a rumble of consternation. Have the Druj somehow contained it, as the vallorn of Beantal Dol is contained?
Such concerns vanish when the first patrol is assailed by nearly a hundred vallornspawn husks, erupting from the wooded hills in the west. A mix of orcs and humans, many of them disturbingly fresh, smash headlong into the Highborn scouts. Their virtue is unwavering; armoured in faith they meet that charge and despite being outnumbered hold their position long enough for soldiers from the main body of the army to relieve them. That first engagement heralds the end of the slow advance. Barely six hours later, more vallornspawn are spotted - immense infested beetles covered in flowering thornvines that come scuttling out of the marshy woodlands intent on devouring all flesh before them. More vallornspawn husks - predominantly orc now, many with the signs and insignia of the Druj - follow close behind them. The air thickens further, the stink of the marshes intermingled with the sweet smell of death and corruption, as the miasma drifts in the wake of this vanguard of horror.
At the same time they are fighting the vallorn, the pilgrims must also deal with the remaining Druj. Yet day by day the number of encounters with the orcs of the Mallum declines, even as the vallorn come in greater and greater numbers. The presence of the army, marching toward Mudlark’s Haven, has drawn the vallorn, and day by day the sheer force of its flooding, inhuman might begins to beat against the resolve of the Highborn soldiers and their Navarr guides. As the vallorn overwhelms the Druj settlements, more and more vallornspawn husks are created. Abominations grow fat and bold from devouring fleeing orcs, and turn to feed on Highborn and Navarr with equal bloody enthusiasm. Where the miasma spreads, it warps and infests natural trees and beasts. In the space of weeks, the long hard work of the Navarr over centuries to reclaim this marshy haven from the vallorn, to build Prosperity and safety, are being undone.
Flowers bloom in unnatural colours; the air is heavy with their unnatural attar. The great insects of Therunin are warped and twisted, driven mad by the miasma, becoming engines of destruction. An infested marshwalker - a truly immense example of its kind - attacks an army encampment. If not for the Vigilance of the scouts the defenders would surely have overwhelmed it. Still, there is major loss of life before the thing can be driven off - and in its wake emerge a pair of maddened hydra already showing the signs of corruption. They at least can be defeated, with sword and arrow and burning brand, but it seems there are always more to come.
Rough Beast
When the first report of supernatural entities attacking the Druj are brought to the main body of the army, there is speculation as to whether it might be the work of the Rot lord or perhaps the Prince with a Thousand Foes. It turns out to be the someone else entirely.
The first encounter involves a squad of Pilgrims encountering a ring of vallornspawn husks nailed to trees. Obviously former Druj, once they have been dispatched a cursory examination suggests that they were living orcs when they were crucified, left to be consumed by the vallorn. The rune of hunger is claw-carved into the treebark.
The next encounter is with a gang of a dozen or so hulking heralds who from a distance appear to be Navarr thorns. Indeed, the Highborn soldiers hail them, believing them to be members of an isolated steading. They are engaged in the enthusiastic butchery of a band of hupul, and it is only when the pilgrims get closer that they see these creatures are not using blades, but their bare hands, to tear the Druj warriors apart. One is laughing and hooting while literally beating the hupul leader to death with their own severed arm. The yellow eyes of these marauders are not the eyes of draughir; their protruding fangs are a mouthful of tusks; their unarmoured hides crusty with dried blood under the fresh blood layered atop it. They take no pains to hide their allegiance - some of them are already crouched beside the dying, feasting on their still-living bodies.
“Best not to leave them for the vallorn,” bellows one cheerily when they spot the Highborn. “And there’s good eating on a hupul, if you fancy some? All the venom gives them a nice…”
Their greeting is cut off as one of the pilgrims shoots him between the eyes. There’s no doubt who these creatures answer to, and the Highborn response is almost instinctual. The heralds seem to welcome the chance to fight the Imperial soldiers, erupting in savage violence once it is clear there will be no parley and no mercy.
Servants of the Agramant. Without the dominion of the Conclave they can move freely in Therunin, as they can in the Mallum. In the past they have fought alongside the Druj; now it seems they have turned on them enthusiastically, killing and devouring and terrorizing those more used to being the source of fear than its victims. The creatures make some attempt to talk to the Highborn and the Navarr, and they claim they have been sent here to “help the Navarr in Therunin.” The Howler in the Pines has an interest in the marshy woodlands, having declared them “fair game.” They’re not interested in the vallorn, only in slaughtering the Druj. The Pilgrims give them no mercy, of course. These are servants of darkness, inhuman horrors at least as dangerous as the vallorn. Enemies of the Empire, enemies of all sapient beings, and worthy of no quarter.
Fortunately there are not many of them - after the encounter with the hupul-eating heralds there are only a few other sightings and each one ends in the servants of Twigcrack being destroyed. They mostly avoid the army after that, and as the tide of the vallorn rises its pretty clear that the abominations do not distinguish between humans and orcs and heralds of the Agramant.
The Siege of Mudlark’s Haven
The Pilgrim’s Defiance know they will not win here. Not because of the Druj, who are in all honesty no great threat. The orcs of the Mallum are scrambling to survive. As the tide of the vallorn rises, more and more of their outposts are consumed by a force they cannot trick or terrify. It is the vallorn that will ultimately triumph in East Ashes. The point, though, is to slow it, to contain it, to cut away the roots and branches that reach out across the marshes. The Pilgrims fight to keep it from consolidating its hold long enough for the uncoiling spring at its heart to wind down. Imperial heroes have prevented the ghulai from reinvigorating it and this assault on the shores of the Feverwater is the last gasp of its year-long expansion. The Navarr are not alone, the Pilgrims will ensure that there is a Therunin to come home to. They will defy the enemy and show that mortal spirits can overcome any challenge even one as seemingly immense and unstoppable as the vallorn.
As the weeks run by like water - as the Pilgrims fight and fight in a seemingly endless nightmare of twisted flesh and constricting vines - the army comes at last to Mudlark’s Haven. The main body of the Druj occupation has fallen back here, to the docks of the Feverwater. Columns of thick black smoke point the way to the former steading. It is packed with orcs, caught in their own desperate battle against the abomination of the Sweetglades. They are besieged on two fronts - a flood of vallornspawn husks comes washing down from Eastring, swallowed by the vallorn last season. There are great piles of smouldering corpses and broken trees surrounding the fortified Navarr town, signs of the battle that has been raging here for weeks ever since the presence of the Pilgrim’s Defiance attracted the attention of the vallorn.
East Ashes likely represents the last place in Therunin with any significant population. This is the last place with any meaningful number of inhabited settlements, and Mudlark’s Haven is the heart of it. It appears that while their twisted engineers were busy placing traps along the southern border, the Druj ghulai were taking steps to protect the main settlement. Obelisks of grey stone, carved with unsettling glyphs stand in a rough semicircle around Mudlark’s Haven. They might be mistaken for miasma pillars, but they serve a very different purpose. Clearly based on the design of the warding stones of Bendol they seem to have been designed to hold the vallorn out in the same way those ancient Terunael monoliths hold the vallorn in.
The problem is that these monoliths they have plainly spent months carving and placing and enchanting… do not work.
Perhaps they did at first, given that Mudlark’s Haven has weathered the storm for this long. Now, it is clear that they have failed. Several have already been torn down, shattered chunks of rubble. Others are completely overgrown with brambles and ivy, creaking and groaning under the constriction of the insatiable flora that is in many ways the body of the vallorn. The inhabitants of Mudlark’s Haven are clearly fighting a losing battle, and they have nowhere to go. They could in theory escape by boat across the Feverwater but… where would they go? They will find no welcome in Sarangrave, only Imperial steel or the spears of the Nesustak rebels. They might try and escape up the river to the Salt Flats of Sanath, but to do that they would need to pass through a different vallorn and the awful beasts that throng its shores. Their own hubris has trapped them in Therunin, and now they are gathering the bitter fruit of their mistakes.
They aren’t without allies. Forward scouts identify at least three large handmaids around the outskirts of Mudlark’s Haven. These massive guardians are the servants of Rootwinder, the Green Mother. Yet it seems that they are here to observe, rather than participate in, the fight between the Druj and the vallorn. The vallornspawn ignore them, and they in turn seem content to watch as the orcs of the Mallum struggle against wave after wave of abominations and ettercaps and husks.
There’s some talk of the Pilgrims Defiance doing the same, but in the end the decision is made to attack rather than allow the vallorn to swell its numbers by claiming the Druj here. Fighting on multiple fronts, with nowhere to flee, the Mallum forces are utterly outmatched. If it were just Druj versus Empire, the outcome here would be unquestioned. The protectors of Mudlark’s Haven are in a defensive position but their numbers are depleted, their morale shattered, and their tactics ill-suited to fighting behind walls or facing the advancing Pilgrims in open combat.
What saves them, in the end, is the vallorn itself ironically enough. It is a known fact that vallornspawn are drawn towards concentrations of untainted folk, and the Pilgrims’ Defiance draw them like iron filings to a lodestone. The initial attack by the Highborn sees them tear down the ramshackle southern gate the Druj have erected in their weirwood palisade and push into the town. Before they can do much more, though, the marshes to the west and north erupt with thousands of vallornspawn. A great cloud of fog, tinged faintly green in places, washes east over Mudlark’s Haven instantly burning the blood of defender and attacker alike. A terrible ululating howl erupts from hundreds of unnatural throats, a wailing unlike anything even the Navarr here have ever heard.
Almost everyone here recognises the venomous stench of the vallornspawn miasma but there is something different here. The choking fumes and drifting spores kindle something akin to panic in the hearts of the mortals exposed to it, like being plunged into freezing water when the ice cracks, like that terrible heart-racing moment when one awakens sweat-soaked from an unspeakable nightmare. A rush of pure terror, pounding in the veins of the Highborn and their allies that threatens to overthrow reason and send even hardened veterans fleeing in disarray.
Fortunately, this is the Pilgrim’s Defiance and they are armoured in faith. Turning aside from Mudlark’s Haven they focus all their efforts on the foe they are here to fight. Those who have received anointing take to the fore, while their comrades fight to master the waves of fear that come with the miasma. The ululating wailing of the spawn is met by a ragged roar of fury and wroth from the Pilgrims of changeling lineage who in some cases must be held back from charging the advancing enemy single-handedly. Those who have fought down the rush of fear rally those whose spirits falter, and urge them to meet the charge of the abominations. As the Druj run in terror, even as their defences splinter and collapse, the Highborn stand.
Battle is joined, and it is terrible, like nothing else encountered in this campaign so far, like nothing else the Highborn pilgrims have encountered even with their experience of the vallorn. While the main body of the attacking force is composed of orc husks and furious ettercaps, there are a great many unique and terrible abominations here. Some of the largest seem more focused on breaking the walls of Mudlark’s Haven, fortunately, but the rest arrow in on the Highborn army.
Even as the battle rages, the magisters in the army struggle to understand the waves of fear and dread that are surging across the battlefield as the miasma ebbs and flows. While their fellows fight to prevent the inhuman horde overwhelming them, they scan the enemy force in conjunction with some of the Navarr vates. It seems an impossible task, to determine the source of this terror even as it beats against the walls of their spirits, but they are equal to the task.
In the midst of the chaos, in the heart of the vallorn force, there is a creature that does not quite belong. It bears qualities of tree, and beetle, and a misshapen mockery of humanoid form. It appears bloated, and twisted even for a vallornspawn abomination. Lurid pink and purple swellings distort its form, occasionally rupturing to release clouds of spores as thick as smoke. Buried in its back is a monolith of black stone.
A miasma pillar.
It makes little sense; there has never been any talk of anything like this in all the long centuries of fighting the orcs of the Mallum. A miasma pillar that moves? One that causes almost palpable waves of terror on the battlefield? Unprecedented. Yet there’ll be time to discuss and ponder after the immediate threat is dealt with. The thing needs to be destroyed… but it shows no sign of leaving its position deep within the enemy ranks. It almost seems to be unaware of its surroundings, simply shambling slowly from place to place as if in a daze.
There’s no suggestion that the Pilgrims retreat before it, leaving its threat to fester. Vigilance demands that the virtuous seek out and expunge poison even in their neighbour’s field. Courage demands that the virtuous do what they know is right. This thing cannot be ignored, its challenge must be met. It is likely a suicide mission, to strike so deep into the enemy ranks, under the terrible weight of the sick miasma of the vallorn.
With the clarity granted by Day magic, everyone quickly learns what needs to be done. Two dozen volunteers step forward, without pause for thought. Their bodies armoured against the miasma with magic or precious talismans, their spirits bolstered by Virtue, their resolve armoured with faith. This unit of Pilgrims accepts the task of bringing down the abomination and breaking the miasma pillar it surrounds. Horns blare, and the Pilgrim’s Defiance pushes against the foe, a spearhead designed to open as much distance toward the target as possible. As soon as the charge starts to falter, the volunteers erupt toward the abomination. Eight of them fall before they reach the beast. Six more die at the talons of the vallornspawn surrounding it. Four more, wrapped in mithril plate, bring the beast down before they themselves succumb to the venom it pumps out. The last two clamber desperately up onto the fallen creature even as their comrades fall to buy them time, and with great shattering blows smash the stone before they are overwhelmed.
Not one of the volunteers makes it back to the Highborn line, but there is no doubt that their passage through the Labyrinth will be swift.
With the unique abomination felled, the waves of panic weaken. The Druj rally, strengthening their defence of their steading. They ignore the Highborn outside their walls as they fight their own desperate battle for survival. Even with the fear broken, it is clear the Pilgrims need to retreat. The force of the vallorn does not ebb. When one is broken, another steps in to take its place. Worse, the miasma infests those who succumb to the fangs and claws of the spawn. There is little time to deal with the fallen before they are turned into living weapons against their former comrades. Pilgrims weep freely as they are forced to kill these mockeries of friend and ally, roused from the brink of death by the corrupting touch of the vallorn.
Defiant to the end, even as they retreat the Pilgrims fight. The last vision of Mudlark’s Haven is of the vallorn pressing against its walls, and the handmaids of Yaw’nagrah still immobile, still observing, not deigning to lift a branch to protect the Druj who die in droves around their skirts.
The Price of Ambition
Everyone knew that the Empire would not win in Therunin. After Mudlark’s Haven, an orderly withdrawal south, along the shores of the Feverwater, back toward Lustri. Not a rout, but a fighting retreat. There are still vallornspawn to fight, swarming in the wake of the Defiance as they march. At first it would be easy to lose hope, to assume that the Highborn sacrifice was for nothing.
Yet as the days lengthen, as Spring unfurls in the marshes of Therunin, the fury of the vallorn begins to wane. Attacks become more sporadic. The miasma hangs heavy, but breaks apart in the morning sun and the wind off the lake. Twisted trees still reach out with coiling limbs, but they are increasingly sluggish. Ettercaps chitter their challenges, but fall back in the face of any concerted resistance.
The army is battered, but not broken. They reach the borders of Lustri, and make camp in the Night-haunted woodlands, keeping a watch to the north as they regroup and count the cost. One and a half thousand of the Pilgrims who marched east under the watchful gaze of the Three Soldiers are unaccounted for. Dead in the marshes, or worse than dead. Yet if any other army had fought the vallorn, the losses would have been catastrophic, perhaps even half again as many people would have been lost in pursuit of this victory.
And it is a victory, albeit a bitter one. The Pilgrim’s Defiance has prevented the vallorn claiming East Ashes. Its unnatural lust for expansion has slackened and faltered. As winter fades into spring it is once again quiescent - or as quiescent as an awoken vallorn ever is. It has expanded into Eastring, but while there are parts of East Ashes that are now warped and twisted by its presence the land and the lake as a whole remain relatively untouched. In particular, it seems that Mudlark’s Haven has weathered the attack of the vallorn, remaining in the hands of the Druj. The orcs of the Mallum still maintain a weak toehold in Therunin, scattered warbands isolated from their homeland by Imperial forces and the vallorn. Nominally, this is Druj territory. In reality it belongs to nobody except the insects and the beasts of the marsh.
The fighting in Therunin has also raised questions. What exactly was the cause of that strange abomination, that creature part vallorn and part pillar? The spores it released kindled terror, transforming the creeping threat of the miasma into something worse than even the Navarr had ever encountered. There is no chance this is a coincidence, that some vallornspawn “accidentally” grew around a miasma pillar. This is something that has been done, something that has transformed an already twisted abomination into something else. The Druj Buruk Tepel are masters of herb-lore, of twisting life to their own ends. Is it possible one of their number is in Mudlark’s Haven? That they have found a way to merge their own sick arts with the horror of the vallorn? And what role do the handmaids of Yaw’nagrah play in this - why were they content to simply watch rather than defend their "allies"?
Questions without answers. Perhaps the Wise will be able to tease some meaning out of this, glean some greater victory out of what the Pilgrim’s Defiance has managed here in East Ashes. For now, though, the army rests, girding itself for the battles to come, and mourning those whose sacrifice have saved Therunin.
Game Information
- The vallorn has failed to claim East Ashes, but the region now has the infested quality
- Highborn congregations can continue to support the Pilgrim's Defiance until Summer 389YE
- The Druj nominally control Therunin
| Supported Pilgrim's Defiance |
| Ehud |
| Neri |
| Sabella of the Silent Tide |
| Nira of Cantiarch's Hold |
| Nina of Cantiarch's Hold |
| Dagon Barossa |
| Silas of the Cenotaph |
| Hazelelponi |
| Sister Micah (who was Earna) of the Navigators of Virtue |
| Rinnah |
| Olyvar of Esther's Sanctum |
| Tabris, Son of Armisael |
| Eli of the Cenotaph |
| Kish of the Flame Beneath the Earth |
| Nim of Ebon's Hall |
| Ardeniel |
| Melchior of Adina's Charge |
| Lysimachus |
| Nekoda of the Shattered Tower |
| Leliel, Daughter of Armisael |
| Nicodemus of Balthazar's Vineyard |
| Amos of Tian's Return |
| Ilai |
| Mael |
| Sychar of Ebon's Hall |
| Sister Elysium |
| Damian of Nakir's Haven |
The vallorn is seven-tenths of the way towards claiming the region of East Ashes, but the intervention of the Pilgrim’s Defiance has prevented it claiming everything. The vallorn of Tharunind has now subsided into relative quiescence again - it is still "awake" but it will not attempt to spread further without another stimulus to do so. The threat the Druj unleashed has ended.
This first engagement against the vallorn by a Highborn army in recent years has proved inspirational to the people of Highguard. The opportunity for Highborn congregations to actively support the army, outlined in the Banners and bells wind of fortune, will now last until the Summer Solstice 389YE.
The region of East Ashes is now infested with vallorn. Miasma hangs over its western and northern reaches, and there are numbers of vallornspawn in the region that will need to be dealt with. Yet, unlike a region fully claimed by the vallorn it is not invulnerable to attack. The infested quality will mean that any Imperial army or armies that try to conquer the region will need to deal with the vallornspawn there; these function as a battalion with a strength of 4,000 that both defend the region and inflict casualties, similar to the effect of Forge the Wooden Fastness. Claiming the region will disperse this force and remove the infested quality.
Nominally, Therunin remains a Druj territory. Realistically, they have little control over the marshes, being mostly isolated in captured steadings in the north and concentrated in Mudlark’s Landing in the south. They will present no obstacle to any Imperial force that seeks to reclaim the territory.
Obviously, the fact that Eastring has fallen to the vallorn creates challenges. It is not possible to travel from East Ashes to the Lower Tarn Valley without passing through the vallorn and suffering casualties in the process. The Lower Tarn Valley also still has the poisoned quality.
Participation
- The fighting in Therunin has been particularly fierce
- Anyone whose military unit supported the Pilgrim's Defiance may request a traumatic wound
- Anyone who requests a traumatic wound may request a durable anointing aura
- This opportunity is also available to Highborn congregations who took the Support the Pilgrim's Defiance lecture after the Winter Solstice
Between the Druj and the vallorn, the fighting in East Ashes was particularly fierce. Any character whose military unit supported the Pilgrim's Defiance this season, the general of that army, or any character who undertook the Support the Pilgrim's Defiance lecture and accompanied members of their congregation into Therunin, may have suffered a serious injury at the hands of the abominations. Those who did so were likely to be at the forefront of the battle in the siege of Mudlark's Haven, and disproportionately likely to have received an anointing during the march east.
If you wish your character to have suffered such an injury, you can email plot@profounddecisions.co.uk before midnight on the 29th of May with your CID and we will place a suitable lingering traumatic wound in your pack. These wounds will require treatment, and it is possible that some of them will prove fatal if they are not addressed by a physick before the end of the event. Anyone who does take a wound may also have received an anointing in the shadow of the Three Watchers, likely with liao donated by the congregations of Highguard. Unlike a normal anointing, which would have expired before the start of the Spring Equinox, these anointings prove somewhat - but not completely - durable. They are not permanent, but will instead expire just before the Winter Solstice 388YE. You can request the Seeds of Loyalty; the Strength of Pride, the Calling of Ambition, or the Proof of Courage. Apart from the fact that they are somewhat durable, which can be determined by the insight ceremony, the auras are otherwise quite normal.
You can request the lingering traumatic wound without an anointing, but you cannot request the anointing without a lingering traumatic wound.
Opportunity: Reikos Influx
- Forces of Agramant have apparently “helped” a number of Imperial citizens trapped in Therunin by the Druj escape to High Chalcis in Reikos
- The hospital there is overwhelmed by the number of patients, both these newcomers and those already here following the evacuation of the territory
- The healers at High Chalcis have asked the Medical Officer of the Pegasus Respite to assemble a team to assist them
- The current Medical Officer is Doctor Lysimachus of Highguard
- A conjunction of the sentinel gate has been identified at 18.15 on the Friday of the summit
- There is also an opportunity for player volunteers to participate in this encounter
Last season, Agramant declared to the Empire that he was finished waiting to save those abandoned in Therunin. The outcome of this has been a steady stream of refugees escaping into Reikos over the last three months telling takes of nightmare-inducing monsters tearing into their hiding spots. Not to eat them as they immediately assumed, but to point them down the path through vallorn they had just cleared for them and let them escape. While there have been concerns over the legal consequences over taking advantage of this, most Navarri have little choice but to risk it to escape the horrors of the slow, painful deaths they would experience if captured by either the Druj or the vallorn.
One result of this is that the hospital at High Chalcis is completely overwhelmed with patients, and has had to resort to simply filling nearby fields with ad hoc encampments of the injured. Many escaping Therunin have Green Lung or similar ailments that need time with a trained physick. They do not need to be taken back to Anvil, temporary accommodations are being arranged, but making sure these patients aren't going to die from their injuries in the meantime is the priority.
The hospital has asked the Medical Office of the Pegasus Respite to assemble a team of physicks to help them work through the sheer number of people that need treatment. There is a conjunction of the Sentinel Gate that has been identified for 18:15 on the Friday of the coming Spring Equinox. The healers of High Chalcis suggest that the situation may need a broad range of skills and herbs and suggest that the Medical Officer consider recruiting among apothecaries, magical healers - perhaps from the Silver Chalice - and a few priests versed in liao ceremonies in case there are any particularly pernicious conditions that need dealing with.
We would like to invite any player who would be interested, to play one of these Therunin refugees at the start of the coming event. You would need to be in basic Navarri kit, ideally looking quite injured by use of bandages and fake blood, and report to monster for briefing at 17:45 on the Friday of the event. You can have any lineage trappings, for example those of your regular character to speed your return to the game. We expect you to be done and back at Anvil playing your normal character shortly after 19:00 (depending on how quickly you can change).
If you are interested in taking part in this, please email plot@profounddecisions.co.uk by midnight on the 28th of May to confirm your interest so we can give the conjunction itself the appropriate number of players.
OOC Note
- We have updated the rules for the vallorn miasma
- No army would have taken additional casualties fighting the vallorn this season
When we updated the information for the vallorn at the start of the year, we neglected to include the rules for the vallorn miasma. As we had not published any rules for the vallorn miasma (and had previously confirmed that armies would not take any additional damage from the vallorn), then that would have been the outcome regardless of which army was sent into Therunin this season. However, since it was the Highborn army whose Virtuous nature provides them with special defences against the vallorn, we have focused the IC narrative on this.
We have put the rules for the vallorn miasma alongside the rules for the vallorn. In the future, armies will face the full effects of the vallorn miasma when on campaign if they encounter it, unless they have suitable protection.