Things that burn

The Empire is become a crucible.

Forges

Earlier in the year, the first bouncing pebbles that presaged the coming avalanche were seen. A handful of unfamiliar heralds attacking disparate targets in far-flung parts of the Empire. Then, the casting of Bright Eyes Gleam in the Depths opened the floodgates. Hundreds of scions of the new eternal known as the Cold Sun launched vicious, destructive assaults in every nation of the Empire. Thanks mostly to some timely warnings from the Dawnish and Navarr assemblies, and the priests ofVigilance, there was much less loss of life than there might have been. Some nations weathered them better than others. The people of Dawn in particular were almost untouched - not a single life lost - in part thanks to an enchantment empowering the eternals of Summer to fight alongside the knights and the war-witches. By contrast several irreplaceable symbols of Imperial art and culture were destroyed before the scions could be driven back.

As the magic of the Imperial enchantment began to wane, many breathed a sight of relief. The Empire had been tested, but had endured. Unfortunately it soon became clear that relief was premature. shortly before the Autumn Equinox tens of thousands of scions emerged from regio across the Empire. Disciplined, united in the zealous pursuit of Oblivion, driven to end all life, to stamp out all beauty, they began to spread out destroying everything in their paths.

During the Equinox Imperial heroes had half a dozen opportunities to intervene via the Sentinel Gate, to help deal with some of the attacking scions. Some were able to prevail; the scions moving to unleash the devastating destructive power of the hot springs of Peregro were intercepted, the vale of Veresk in Karsk was defended; the Halls of Worth in Skarsind were preserved; the Augurs of the Opalescent Gloaming were saved. Others, unfortunately, were ultimately unsuccessful. The scions captured a potent regio in Bregasland, seized the White Tower in Bastion, and ravaged the Hercynian trods, cutting the vallorn in Deer's Folly off from the network of magical paths.

They also raided the Cerevado Nets, the slaughtered the workers at the Eternal Shafts of Time, and worst of all did irreperable damage to the Brilliant Star - and in each case claimed large amounts of ilium and mithril. These attacks stand out, even among the general destruction inflicted by the scions. None of the three sites are particularly associated with art or culture, or with human or orc lives. Some strategists are deeply concerned about why the scions were so keen to claim these valuable materials - and what they plan to do with them.

Following the Autumn Equinox the armies of Cold Sun begin in earnest to attempt to destroy the Empire; but the Empire will not go down easily.

The beacons of Wintermark light the night sky, calling heroes home to answer the fire of Day.

Beacons

The scions of Cold Sun are at large in Wintermark. During the Summer Solstice they tried to burn the raven aviaries of Ishal but were turned back. In the months following, under the power of ascendant Day magic they burned Freya's Garden and would have destroyed even more without the Vigilance of the people of the 'Mark. Then, two weeks before the Autumn equinox, thousands of heralds emerged from regio in Hahnmark and Kallavesa, bent on bringing ruin to Valasmark and Rundahl Marsh. The heroes of Anvil managed to stop them from annihilating the Augurs of the Opalescent Gloaming, the allies of the Imperial Seer, but the forces of Cold Sun spreading across Wintermark still remained an immediate and potentially existential threat.

The Silence Arc

Long before there was an Empire, someone carved the image of a door into the exposed rock face of a winding gulley, deep in the hills of Valasmark. Shaped in the image of the Rune of Revelation, the Lantern Gate marked the heart of an unremarkable regio, attuned to the Day realm. There was little there to attract those hungry for power or enlightenment. Over the centuries a handful of mystics and truth-seekers made the arduous journey up into the hills, seeking clarity and meditating on the nature of truth.

A fortnight before the Autumn Equinox, the door opened. The Steinr mystic camped there watched in horror as a legion of heavily-armed soldiers marched through the portal. Three thousand scions of the Cold Sun. They fled, stumbling into Valashall raving and ranting, half their body already crumbling to white ashes. That nameless mystic survived barely long enough to warn of the legion's coming before the terrible curse consumed them. Their warning lit the beacons, and heroes gathered across Hahnmark.

The scions of Cold Sun moved cautiously at first, but with dire purpose. They fortified the Lantern Gate, scouting and raiding parties radiating outwards in all directions. They slew everyone they encountered, no quarter, no mercy, no remorse. Those in their path faced a hard choice; flee or fight. Any hall that could not repel them burned. A twisted mirror of the beacons of Wintermark blossomed on hillsides across Valasmark and the downs of southern Kronemark.

The heroes of Valashal centred the defence. The champions seeking a name, fought fiercely, aiding their neighbours, securing opportunities for flight at the cost of their own lives. It was inevitable that the scions would eventually turn their alien eyes towards the hall built by Brigid daughter of Guntherm. A place dedicated to training the greatest warriors of the nation in memory of a beloved father. A place where scops gather, to celebrate the deeds of heroes. A place anathema to the principles of Oblivion.

The seemingly unstoppable scions assembled in their thousands in the hills around Valashal. Yet the true beacons had done their job and done it well. Thirteen heroes of Wintermark, bringing nearly one and a half thousand warriors between them, answered the call and gathered at the beacon towers before making their way to the southern border. They too came to Valashal, gathering like storm clouds ahead of the inevitable battle. Outnumbered more than two to one, they made preparations to resist Cold Sun. To defend Valashal, to protect the halls of the scops where the names of countless generations were preserved and celebrated. It seemed the battle could only end one way, but not one champion baulked at the price to be paid. As the sun set on the last day, the scops sang the sagas of heroes great and small.

In the first hour of twilight, a cold mist descended and swirled around Valasheim. The first snows of Winter billowed down from the hills, touching everything with frost. The voices of the scops crystallised into clouds as they sang. Heroes clustered close around the campfires before the halls of Brigid Gunthermsdottir. And when the first rays of the morning sun touched the snow and the mist, it solidified with a creaking roar into a girdle of glacial ice, thirty feet high, ringing Valasheim with towers and ramparts, with a single gate of crimson wood hung with banners of ice bear and frost wolf, As the walls shimmered into being, the defenders of Valashal were bolstered by a thousand warriors from the court of Cathan Canae.

Great bipedal bears in heavy crimson robes with hooked polearms stand beside Steinr in heavy armour. Rangy wolfborn warriors with fur of snow-white and ice-blue, armoured in chain and scale, and bearing wicked ashwood longbows join the Suaq. Three ice giants tower above the doors of the Galenhall, furious sentinels standing beside the Kallavesi, ready to protect the scrolls of saga and song stored within.

A cheer, ragged at first, and then growing like thunder, rises from two thousand throats, echoing across the hills as the sun rises.

If the scions are surprised by this development, they do not show it. They launch their assault against the frozen citadel with preternatural precision. The first probing strikes to test the defences culminate in a vicious, focused assault on the redwood gate. As scions fall left and right around them, the grand archon of the Silence Arc touches the gate with their blue iron rod and the scarlet iron-bound planks explode into splinters. No portal can stand against the archons of the Silence Arc.

The attackers pour through, to slaughter and burn. There is something profoundly unnerving about them. Most warriors cry out when they are hurt, threaten and jeer at their foes, chant war songs, pound drums, cheer their victories, groan when they are driven back. Not the Silence Arc. They give voice to no hymns of battle, do not waste time goading their foes, do not cheer or groan. They simply fight, to kill and to break, to reduce to ashes.

A hero has a name.

By contrast the heroes who stand against them, bolstered by the heralds of Cathan Canae, roar with the fury of the blizzard and the storm. Those scops who have not joined the ice giants to protect Galenhall roar the heroes song, calling the names of those past and present. The walls of ice ring with the rage of the Winterfolk, unleashed against these unnatural invaders. A cry is taken up "For Freya and Brigid! building their anger at the destruction of the herbmaster's garden, invoking the memory of the founder of Valashal.

Battle rages back and forth for the better part of a day, but as the sun starts to drop towards the horizon, the scions of Cold Sun are forced back through the broken gates of the circling citadel. Valashal is damaged, but still stands. The doors of Galenhall have been broken, two of the ice giants slain, but not a single scroll has been destroyed and not one of those given refuge within has been harmed. Drums and falcon-horns cry out in victory.

The scions have been driven back, but their army is not defeated. It is impossible to say with certainty how many of them have been fallen before the fury of Wintermark; when life flees their bodies fall to ash. What is certain is that two hundred warriors of Valashal have found their names in death, and each one will be celebrated by the scops for their sacrifice.

For now though, there is still work to be done. The heroes regroup, count the fallen, and give chase. Childer of Wintermark and chosen of the Blizzard Queen together give chase to the servants of the Cold Sun, who have dared to invade Wintermark from their bitter realm. Normally when a Frozen Citadel is raised in a place, the heralds that accompany it remain behind the walls of ice and granite. Not this time; the wolf-folk and bear-folk, roam across southern Hahnmark alongside the Winterfolk. When they gather at a beacon the flames leap high and fierce and burn pale blue in honour of their mistress.

Wherever there is Cold Sun, they are there, mortal and unmortal alike. As the Winter Solstice draws near, the Silence Arc are driven out of the hills of Valasmark. Their camp at the Lantern Gate is abandoned, and the scions forced back to the north-west, into Kronemark.

The Battle of Valashal is won, but the war is by no means over. The invaders from the Day realm are battered, their numbers clearly reduced, but they are not defeated. Unlike the halls of Valasmark, those of the downs are less fortified, less ready to face the threat of an army of scions. There are no hills here to support a Frozen Citadel, and while the beacons still burn, those in the path of the Silence Arc are forced to flee their homes, heading north as the weather worsens and the Winter snow begins to fall in earnest.

Game Information : Hahnmark

The warbands who answered the call to oppose Cold Sun, coupled with the Frozen Citadel of Cathan Canae, mean that the Silence Arc has been defeated. Unlike a mortal army, however, the scions are not forced to retreat out of the territory. They have been damaged, and driven out of the hills of Valasmark, but they have not left Hahnmark and remain a threat.

Thanks to the military units, the death toll has been comparatively light but the Winterfolk have not escaped unscathed. Several halls in Valashal were overcome before the fateful attack on Valasmark. Several hundred defenders and non-combatant Winterfolk have lost their lives.

The situation could have been significantly worse. Thanks to the blessing of Cold Sun enjoyed by the scions it required a combination of a magical fortress in just the right location and warbands of Wintermark heroes to turn Cold Sun back. If they hadn't been forced to deal with the Frozen Citadel of Cathan Canae in the region they were attacking, or if the miliary units had not been there, they would have begun to take control of Valasmark in the name of their terrible sovereign.

Participation : Hahnmark

Any of the Wintermark characters who sent their military unit to support the Beacons of Hahnmark is assumed to have taken part in the Battle of Valashal, and fought alongside the heralds of Cathan Canae.

As well as the gratitude of Valashal, each defender has received a gift in recognition of their heroism from the red-robed bear-folk warriors of the Summer realm. Each character receives a Golden apple with the injunction that they use it to seek out a boon from Imperial magicians, one that will help them continue to fight the invaders of the Day realm.

There is also an opportunity for some heroes of Anvil to pass through the Sentinel Gate and face scions of the Silence Arc: The Hammer.

By salt, by dice, by meal, by mice,

The Exigent Span

The Swanmere in Rundhal Marsh is a place of quiet contemplation. A stand of ancient willow trees dragging their long green hair in a mirror-smooth lake frequented by swans that sometimes speak with human voices. Before things went bad with Ylenrith-Who-Was, an occasional Icewalker would visit to seek counsel from the swans. After the extent of the corruption consuming the eternal was recognised by the Imperial Conclave, the place was shunned.

Unfortunately, this made it easy for the scions of the Cold Sun, the soldiers of the Exigent Span, to pass through the regio in force. Before anyone knew what was happening, they had slaughtered the swans, burned the trees, and were practically at the gates of Rundahl.

While the bulk of their force advanced toward the capital of Kallavesa, raiding parties fanned out in all directions, bringing ruin to anything they could find. Normal fire does not burn on the water, but the radiance of the Cold Sun is something else. It sears the life from the land, and it purges the lakes leaving them pure and still and dead, empty of anything save water. Where previously a warband of heralds had failed to burn the aviaries of Ishal during the Summer Solstice, an army of three thousand scions bound in perfect harmony sought the destruction of the heart of Kallavesa, perhaps even of Wintermark itself.

Fortunately, the marshes are not undefended. The foresight of Imperial magicians has seen three enchanted wards raised across Kallavesa. Shortly after the Autumn equinox, mists rise in West Marsh, Kallavesa Marsh, and the Rundhal Marsh itself. The Winterfolk are familiar with these wards; barely a season has passed in recent years where there has not been at least one region of the marshes shrouded in protective fog drawn from the Night realm.

Travellers have become familiar with the odd creatures that sometimes issue from them; the long-legged lantern-folk, the sable herons, the great eight-legged lizards that surge from the waters to devour foolish invaders. This time, there is something different. The mists seem to be... empty. When night falls, the beacons of Rundahl Marsh, and Kallavesa Marsh, and West Marsh burn with a dancing, unnatural emerald hue... but beyond that nothing. Some pilgrims passing through the shrouded regions swear they can hear the distant echoes of a thunderstorm, or perhaps a great voice roaring with anger, in the creaking of the willows and the gulping drone of the frogs.

For all that they are uninhabited, though, they still work to confuse and misdirect the scions of Cold Sun. To buy time for the defenders of Kallavesa to gather, to come to Rundahl to protect the heart. Ten heroes and their warbands come to the flaring beacon-call. Over a thousand warriors answer the threat of the Cold Sun.

Scarcely in time, they arrive to support the defenders of the place some say is the oldest continuous settlement in the whole of the nation. They are barely enough, a third the size of the forces gathering against the approaching storm.

When they come, the Exigent Span drive like a spear toward the very heart of the marshes. Their entire force united to strike a single devastating stroke not against the walls of Rundahl, but against the Sovevann itself.

The grand archon of the Exigent Span bears a beacon of its own; an eye of blue crystal the size of an ogre's skull. Standing on the very edge of the lake, on the humble wooden quay from which so many heroes of the 'Mark have made their journey to their final sleep, the leader of the scions unveils the crystal, invoking the power of its grim master. As the sun begins to set, a terrible liquid light starts to flow from the beacon, blue-white as mithril under moonlight, forming a beam of radiance that sears through the mist and fog, burning it away. Where it touches the waters of the Sovevann, in the gaps between the fog, the waters begin to boil, purified by the terrible illumination.

The Exigent Span means to burn the heart from the people of Wintermark. Once the last strands of fog conjured from the Forests of the Night have been seared away, the light of the Cold Sun will blaze across the waters of the lake and end the slumber of the heroes who rest beneath the Sovevann.

A desperate band of heroes break from the walls of Rundahl and attack the flanks of the Exigent Span but they are massively outnumbered. There is no hope that they will be able to reach the quay in time.

But the heart of Wintermark is protected; the mystics have kept watch over the marshes of Kallavesa longer than anyone can remember. Before the Steinr fell from the heavens they were there, before the desperate union with the Suaq to resist the trolls, before the ancestors of the Ushka came down from the north, before the Urizen raised their spires, before the Terunael built their cities, they watched over the marshes. Watched the birds. Read the omens.

The force from Rundahl is a feint, falling back almost immediately. The scions give chase, brutally cutting down anyone who falls behind. While their attention is focused to the north, a second group of Winterfolk attack from the south. Forewarned by the mystics arts, they have spent the last three days hidden from the sight of Cold Sun by the dripping echoes of the fens. Hiding amongst the willows, waiting for the sign, ready to strike the Exigent Span at the moment of their triumph.

A thousand champions of the 'Mark, supported by bear- and hawk-masked Kallavesi warriors, strike the scions' weaker flank, the one turned away from Rundahl. They push through, taking the heralds by surprise despite the blessings of the Cold Sun. Hard and fast, against the grand archon and its guard. A small number of Kallavesi with skiffs, defended by shield-proud champions, launch an attack across the waters themselves, hitting the invaders from the one direction they could not have expected.

(And if those who fight on the shores of the Sovevann are to be believed, there are stranger beings fighting alongside them. In the silence before dawn, after the battle, they might speak of the shapes they saw, the barely-there sentinels that guided their hands, that struck where they struck, that whispered warnings, that stirred the anger in their blood, that turned aside the enemy blade at the crucial moment. Perhaps they were just figments of the fog, the hopes and fears of the defenders of Rundahl given shape by the Night magic glamour of the wards. Perhaps they were something more, here on the edge of the Sovevann, where the heroes sleep.)

Nobody knows who strikes the fateful blow, cuts down the grand archon of the Exigent Span, and shatters their blue-white beacon. But they are slain, and the eye is broken. The light snaps away instantly, the warding fog comes pouring back in. A cry goes up from the walls of Rundahl – the ravens of Ishal are in flight. A contingent of mystics and masked warriors, and a war party of hylje from out of the Rikkivesi have come to aid in the defence. From across the lake, from Westerhal, a small fleet of fishing vessels emerge from the fog, carrying the warriors of the West Marsh halls.

They might have arrived too late, but the mists speed them on their way, and together with the exhausted defenders of Rundahl they fall on the Exigent Span and they drive them before them, back from the weed-choked shores of the Sovevann.

Over the succeeding months battle rages back and forth across Rundahl Marsh, and in the end the Exigent Span is put to flight. They retreat northward, into Skymark, with the heroes of Wintermark close on their heels.

The loss of the grand archon seems to have had little effect on the scions. Immediately after the battle on the quay below Rundahl, a new grand archon is seen at the heart of the Exigent Span. The blue-eye beacon however does not seem as easily replaced; while the scions continue to fight viciously and kill anyone who comes within their reach they no longer seem to wield the power to purge the marsh waters of life. Hopefully, Cold Sun will not be able to provide them with another beacon. Hopefully.

If the visions of the mystics are to be believed – and why would they not be – had the light of the Cold Sun been allowed to penetrate the Sovevann it would have spread through the marshes, purifying the waters, destroying the bones that rest there, and burning the heart from the nation. Such an unthinkable outcome has been avoided, for now, thanks to the forethought of the magicians and the courage of the warbands.

But nobody in Kallavesa should rest easy while scions remain in Skymark. If the dead in the marshes had been defiled, such an act would have echoed back and forth across the nation changing it forever, and had dire implications for the armies in particular. What can be tried once might be attempted again. Cold Sun's forces may have been driven back, but they are not defeated. As any mystic knows, even after the darkest night, the sun still rises.

Game Information: Kallavesa

As with Hahnmark, the combination of military units and conjured wards helped to thwart Cold Sun's forces. They have been beaten for the moment, but unlike mortal armies they have not been driven from the territory. They are regrouping in Skymarch.

The wards and warriors, and the singular focus of the Exigent Span on the Sovevann, have meant that the death toll here is lower than it was in Hahnmark. Still, at least a hundred Winterfolk, both warriors and non-combatants, have been slain by the scions in Rundahl Marsh and at the battle of the Sovevann.

Participation: Kallavesa

Each character who sent a military unit to Kallavesa to fight alongside the beacons is assumed to have been at the battle of the Sovevann. It is up to you what role you played – as part of the desperate feint to distract the scions, as part of the ambush from the quays, or as part of the skiff-riders who attacked across the lake itself. You may choose to roleplay an encounter in the fog – a brief glimpse of what might have been the spirit of a dead hero, or might have been part of the magical glamour that accompanied the Night wards.

Likewise any mystic character is free to roleplay that they were one of those who saw the visions of the coming threat, and helped warn the defenders of Rundahl. Details vary, but the meaning is the same; a terrible blue fire spreading across the Sovevann and burning the heart out of the people of Kallavesa and Wintermark.

There is also a conjunction during the Winter Solstice that will allow some Imperial heroes to travel to Kallavesa and face scions of the Exigent Span: A Hero in the Night.