Introduction: Lord of Ruin

The introduction to the D&D campaign I'm currently plotting, which also happens to be a sequel to my last one.

Lord of Ruin:
The True History of the Darkened Reach Crisis
By Faros Mazarain

There are few in the Five Nations, I am sure, who remain ignorant of the events that swept across the face of Khorvaire ten years ago like the Divine Broom of Fate – events easily as notable, and as disastrous, as the tragic Day of Mourning. However, there are far fewer who know the truth behind these events, about the hideous evil that ultimately linked them together, about the heroism of the few individuals who prevented a far darker fate from befalling Khorvaire…and about the lingering shadow that threatens us still. The purpose of this treatise is to put an end to the wild rumors flying about in the Great Halls of History like donkey dung at a country fair, befouling Truth with the taint of Hearsay and soiling Clarity with the loathsome touch of Speculation. What follows, therefore, is a first-hand account of what many have dubbed, in their puerile fashion, The Darkened Reach Crisis.

It would be futile attempting to place a beginning to the event – the roots of the Great Disaster stretch back into the beginning of Time itself. Events truly came to a head, however, at the end of one blisteringly hot summer in 1000 YK. The city of Erlaskar, jewel of the Eldeen Reaches, was struck down by a legendary and mysterious figure known as The Endbringer. Only the intervention of an adventuring group called the Guardians of Kessindra, assisted by my own humble invention, the Sanctum Quickening Device (or SQUID, for short), that the city of Sylbaren was able to avoid a similar fate. The Endbringer rampaged across the Eldeen Reaches, cutting a path of destruction which would eventually become the Decaying Scar before vanishing as quickly as he appeared.

Scant weeks after the Endbringer laid waste to Erlaskar, catastrophe befell The City of Sharn. Unbeknownst to all, a fell creature lay trapped beneath the sprawling metropolis – an ancient daelkyr, lord of aberrations and monsters, sealed into the dark depths of Khyber by the druid hierophant Rajavek. Aided by an insane Cult of the Dragon Below, the creature plotted to unleash the full force of its psychic might upon the world above. Only the Guardians’ timely intervention prevented it from engulfing all Breland in a tidal wave of nightmares and madness. With its death throes, however, the daelkyr lord’s potent energies unraveled the manifest zone of Syrania that sustained Sharn’s magic, and the floating city came crashing down.

Even while Breland – and indeed all of Khorvaire – staggered from the loss of its greatest metropolitan center, sinister forces seized the opportunity to take hold of Thrane. The so-called Silver Inquisition, a year-long venture ostensibly meant to purge the nation of demonic taint, had been marked by incidents of increasing intolerance, even outright cruelty. Before the dust had even settled in Sharn, Keeper of the Flame Jaela Daran mysteriously vanished, and High Cardinal Krozen – the self-styled Grand Inquisitor of Thrane – declared himself de facto ruler and sealed the nation’s borders. Although the Council of Cardinals aligned itself behind Krozen, those few cardinals alarmed at the turn of events appealed to the Guardians of Kessindra for aid.

The Guardians infiltrated the nation and uncovered the horrifying events taking place behind closed doors. Thrane was caught in the grip of an unnatural religious frenzy. Suspicious individuals, which included anyone who did not proclaim life and soul to the Silver Flame faith, were rounded up and imprisoned. Torture and witch-hunts ran rampant through the nation’s villages, and inquisition squads – Krozen’s executioners – roamed the countryside passing summary judgment upon nonbelievers. Yet things were still worse in Flamekeep, if such a thing could be imagined. Perverse magical energy gathered in Thrane’s capital, churning clouds turning day to night, bathing the city in a hellish scarlet light. Here, the Guardians of Kessindra discovered the source of Thrane’s madness – none other than the High Cardinal Krozen himself. No longer remotely human, the High Cardinal had surrendered himself not only to vile lichdom, but to the influence of a malign entity named Jashin-Suuvat. Jashin-Suuvat was a prince of Dal Quor, the dream plane, who had been imprisoned in a Khyber dragonshard since the glory days of Xen’drik. That same dragonshard now served as Krozen’s phylactery, granting Suuvat full dominion over the corrupt clergyman.

Although the Guardians of Kessindra ultimately proved victorious over the quori prince, it was a bittersweet victory. The Silver Inquisition had claimed over a hundred thousand innocent lives, and in its wake the faith of Thrane was left broken, shattered upon the jagged edges of atrocities committed in its name.

These three assaults upon the Five Nations were terrible individually and catastrophic in series, but even they proved to be only precursors of something far worse. Beyond the mountains of the west, a demon god broke his chains and rose like a vast, malignant cloud in the Demon Wastes. Called Nahaz-Muram; Whisperer; the Lord of Nightmares, Corruption, and Ruin; he led an army of horrors out of the Demon Wastes and swept over the Eldeen Reaches like a pestilent tide. This, then, was the source of the woes that had so plagued Khorvaire, the architect of its immeasurable misfortunes. The Endbringer, the daelkyr lord, and the quori prince, mighty as they were, had all been but pawns to this most puissant, most supreme of evils. It was the servants of Nahaz-Muram who had unleashed these other evils as a distraction and a vanguard, that they might neutralize the armies of the Five Nations. Breland was to have fallen to the daelkyr’s madness, while Jashin-Suuvat, in his guise as High Cardinal Krozen, kept both Aundair and Karrnath pinned down with the armies of Thrane, even as the Endbringer cleared the Eldeen Reaches of any who might prove a threat to the rising demon lord. Nahaz-Muram’s armies would have marched across the Five Nations with barely a token resistance, and hope would have fallen. As it was, hundreds of thousands were slaughtered as the demonic army marched through the Eldeen Reaches.

Unified by this singular threat, the armies of the Five Nations rallied and confronted the demonic invasion at the edge of the Dawnshroud Vale. What they saw waiting for them upon that haunted plain freezes the blood and chills the soul.

A sea of ravenous horrors – hags, ogres, demons, devils, and other indescribable things – stretched from horizon to horizon, their numbers vast and unknowable as the tears of the undeserved dead. They surged with unrestrained violence, all teeth and rending claws, eyes that blazed with hellfire and voices like the grinding of millstones, promising eternal damnation. The sun hid itself behind a veil of clouds, drenching the plains in a thunder-filled night, and over everything, its fearful form larger than mountains, floated the shadow of Neth Naggaroth, Nahaz-Muram’s dread fortress of whispers.

The clash of the two armies could be heard from countries away, and the thunderclouds glowed with prismatic light as magic pulsed across the battlefield like a living, breathing thing. Arcane fire clashed with netherworld darkness, sword and axe met hellborn claws, and the stalwart hope of man stared into the very face of evil. From the first it was clear that even the assembled armies of the Five Nations could not hope to stop the infernal horde. But then, such was never the intent. The confrontation was a gambit, a desperate ploy by the leaders of man to sell their lives dearly in exchange for time, opportunity, and a thin sliver of hope. Hope that six men might slay a god.

Aided by dragons from enigmatic Argonessen, the Guardians of Kessindra flew against the walls of Neth Naggaroth, breaching its defenses to strike at the very heart of Nahaz-Muram’s inner sanctum. No one knows exactly what transpired in that vast, dark bastion of all unholiness, but shortly thereafter a great light split the sky with a concussion like the death of worlds. Neth Naggaroth was torn apart by a ball of argent fire, pieces of it arcing across the heavens to land thousands of miles away. Of either Nahaz-Muram himself or the Guardians of Kessindra, there was no sign. With its leader gone, the demonic army quickly fell to internecine squabbles, and the forces of the Five Nations easily scattered them to the winds. The gambit had succeeded – the crisis was over.

Although the threat from the Demon Wastes had been defeated, the face of Khorvaire was irrevocably altered by the invasion. The Eldeen Reaches was ravaged beyond recognition, with much of the Great Forest burned to cinders and its druidic orders decimated. The Dawnshroud Vale, scarred by the titanic battle that had taken place there, fell under a strange gray pall, and has assumed a new name in recent years – the Demonshroud Vale. Breland, hobbled by the loss of Sharn, virtually retreated from the world to mind its own affairs, while Thrane remains even today a shadow of its former self. Worse, I have heard stories of a taint spreading from the lands where pieces of Neth Naggaroth fell to earth, of horrors that wander the unhallowed night, and of aberrant things that should never see the light of day. Drought and famine, pestilence and death run rampant through once fertile fields, and whispers of war reverberate like thunder through Aundair and Karrnath, the two nations least scathed by The Darkened Reach.

This is a time for heroes, my countrymen, my friends. The Guardians of Kessindra, may the Host guide their souls, proved to us the power and the inspiration that a few exceptional men and women may represent, the good that but six of us can accomplish. We have lived through dark and dire days, and though more lie ahead, we must remember that good folk, stout and hardy folk, still inhabit our lands. It is up to them to light our way through the night, to become the beacons of hope that cheer our hearts and our spirits, and to lift us from the clutches of despair. These heroes, these burning brands against the powers of darkness, live within us all. We have but to believe, to persevere, to try.