Things that burn

The Empire is become a crucible.

Forges

Click for audio version

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 of Vigilance, 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 sigh 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 irreparable 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

Click for audio version

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 Valashal 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.

Captain	Nation	Territory	Banner
Andwyn Dunwolf	Wintermark	Hahnmark	Dunhearth Hall
Benny	Wintermark	Hahnmark	Dunhearth Hall
Bitwulf Dunwolf	Wintermark	Hahnmark	Dunhearth Hall
Bronn Dunwolf	Wintermark	Hahnmark	Dunhearth Hall
Horst Dunning	Wintermark	Hahnmark	Dunhearth Hall
Tobrytan Dunning	Wintermark	Hahnmark	Dunhearth Hall
Jorma Steelhail	Wintermark	Hahnmark	Vesalligr
Morcar Sigvardssson	Wintermark	Hahnmark	Vesalligr
Raknar	Wintermark	Hahnmark	Vesalligr
Sigarr Verinen	Wintermark	Hahnmark	Vesalligr
Skaed Faulksdottir	Wintermark	Kallavesa	Vesalligr
Urvakki Taivasbarn	Wintermark	Sermersuaq	Sigehold Hall
Lumi, Harmonist of the Dawn	Wintermark	Sermersuaq	Vesalligr

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 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 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 are 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 military 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 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 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, 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 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.

Captain	Nation	Territory	Banner
Mort	Wintermark	Hahnmark
Aelthrik Dunning	Wintermark	Hahnmark	Dunhearth Hall
Kingu	Wintermark	Hahnmark	The Winter Wolfborn
Iorveth	Wintermark	Hahnmark	Vesalligr
Ovis	Wintermark	Kallavesa
Skjal Shadowbreaker	Wintermark	Kallavesa	Corvenhal
Hadvar	Wintermark	Kallavesa	Hraefnhall
Luddvig MarshWalker	Wintermark	Kallavesa	Hraefnhall
Blaidd Sinan	Wintermark	Sermersuaq	Corvenhal
Ansel the nameless	Wintermark	Sermersuaq	The Winter Wolfborn

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 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 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 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.

To some, the trees of the forest are naught more than a great pile of kindling, waiting for a single spark to turn the world to fire.

Forests

Click for audio version

Varushka has endured the attacks of Cold Sun with a certain degree of pragmatism. The scions avoid the dark woods and the haunted hills, sticking close to the Iron Roads. There have been victories (the defence of Veresk) and losses (like the raid against the Eternal Shafts of Time). Some Varushkans saw the heralds of Cold Sun as being of no greater threat than the wolves that have always haunted their nation. With the unexpected arrival of several thousand well-organised scions in Volodmartz and Karov, however, that complacency has been seriously shaken.

The Shepherds of Ash

In the depths of Volodmartz, in the woodlands of Livardz, stands a peculiar grove of trees. Black-barked, their trunks mottled with peculiar crystal outgrowths, the Sumisev Peegel and the weak regio that lies at its heart, are named for the two-centuries-dead volhov who discovered it and first tapped its weak magic to perform simple divinations for the folk of the surrounding vales. Few people bother to visit. The crystals are nice but not worth the effort to gather them; their glow fades quickly when removed from the grove.

When the power of Day washed over the Empire, at the Summer Solstice, however, the spark of light in the Sumisev Peegel roared up like a bonfire, and the invisible door at its centre gaped wide.

Wide enough to allow three thousand scions of Cold Sun to come through to the mortal realm. They quickly set about refashioning the area to their liking. The trees were blasted to ash, but they wove the crystals into a protective ring of razor-sharp spines. From the regio they began to spread out across Livardz, zealously pursuing the goal of their terrible master: consigning everyone and everything in Varushka to oblivion.

Imperial magicians have done what they can; a black granite fortress sprawls across the hilltops of Opasacari. The forests of Murup and Suvretz are wound around with Spring magic, creating impassable barriers and inspiring the natural beasts who live there to savage violence rather than flight before the unnatural heralds of the Day realm. These potent magical defences provide protection to the warden, and allow those boyar so inclined to risk their schlacta in the protection of their southern neighbours.

The invaders try to avoid the Spring wards and the Summer citadel alike, protecting the rest of Volodmartz from their depredations. This is a good thing for the people outside Livardz; not so good for those who must endure the full strength of the Shepherds of Ash. There are a great many Varushkans in prosperous Livardz; many vales and villages. The scions move methodically out from the Sumisev Peegel slaughtering anyone who crosses their path, razing every building that comes within their reach, leaving behind only pale ash and silence.

While the Shepherds of Ash do not venture north into the rest of Volodmartz, the wealthy region is itself something of a crossroads. While the bulk of the invading force is focused on devastating Livardz, probing strikes are sent into northern Malimorzi, western Nitrost, and eastern Dupadealuri. The scions that compose these scouting parties are no more merciful than the rest of their kind, but they have not come in strength sufficient to do more than slaughter a few dozen merchants and pilgrims and burn a few farms.

There is resistance to the Shepherds of Ash but it is sporadic and disorganised. Individual boyars look to the protection of their own vales before they worry about their neighbours. There are those prepared to fight the scions on the roads, or to defend the vales and settlements they seek to burn, but they are few in number. Without the sell-swords and wardens committed to defend Varushka, without the Dawnish knights drawn to adventure across the dark land, there would have been little to actually stand in the way of the Shepherds at all.

(And on the other side of the Sungold Pass, an army of Thule warriors waits. Blue-clad orcs under the command of a warlock-general. They make no secret of their presence, right there on the liminal line where Varushka becomes Otkodov. They seem to be waiting for some signal; a signal that never comes. As the Winter Solstice draws near, they break their camp and move away back into the lands of the northern orcs.)

The Shepherds of Ash have been contained, but within their confines they have run riot. Nearly a dozen vales and settlements across Livardz have been shattered or razed. Several hundred people have been slain, many more forced to flee, abandoning their homes. When the wind blows from the south, it brings with it the ashes of those the heralds have obliterated, a grim reminder to the rest of Varushka of the fate that awaits them should Cold Sun not be stopped.

Game Information: Volodmartz

The Shepherds of Ash have not conquered any territory in Volodmartz, but neither have they suffered any casualties. The wealthy region of Livardz has gained the ruins quality, and the taxation of the territory as a whole has been reduced due to the loss of so many prosperous vales.

The Blade of Skies

Duzekani is the civilised, tamed heart of Karov, and one of the richest places in Varushka thanks to the prosperous trading town of Delev. Merchants from Temeschwar and Dawn are regular visitors, coming to deal with their counterparts from the northern nation. The first sign that something is amiss comes when the bees across Duzekani suddenly vanish; hives from one end of the region to the other are suddenly found empty to the consternation of their keepers. The second sign comes to a sleepy little southern vale along the road into Weirwater.

Bulgakov was a quiet and shaded vale, mostly a stopping off point for merchants travelling to and from Dawn. It is gone now. Shortly before the Autumn Equinox, the weak Day regio that lay on its outskirts tore open and an army of scions of the Cold Sun emerged.

The valesfolk of Bulgakov were taken completely by surprise. If not for the intervention of a band of Dawnish knights-errant resting at the village on their way north, the Blade of Skies would have killed every single person in the vale. Even with the unlooked-for aid of the Glory-seeking yeofolk, a third of Bulgakov's inhabitants were turned to ash in the course of a single night. The rest fled north to Delev or east to Hawthorn, escaping with little but their own lives.

None of the young knights survived. All that remains of Bulgakov now is a scar, a circle of ash and glass and splintered, burnt wood.

Imperial magicians have done what they can to stop the rest of Karov sharing Bulgakov's fate. The wooden fastness has been forged in Skoremujac; a squat keep of dark blue ice and stone extrudes from a hillside in Wieliczka. Just as in Volodmartz, these protections provide support to the defenders while the Blade of Skies themselves give them a wide berth. The bulk of the defence of Duzekani falls to the schlacta of the individual vales, however, bolstered by warden fellowships, and by a handful of sell-swords and Dawnish knights attracted by the opportunity to adventure in Varushka.

They are nowhere near enough to stop the Blade of Skies, however. The army moves methodically across Duzekani and Kamienczka, destroying everyone and everything they encounter. It becomes clear fairly quickly that the force moves with almost supernatural speed and surety. Even without the Iron Roads, they seem capable of covering great distances with surprising alacrity. Also, unlike the other armies of scions seen across the Empire, they remain together. They send out no raiding parties, make no probing attacks. Rather they focus their entire force on whatever is in front of them, annihilate it, and move on.

They use this capacity to strike seemingly at random across both Kamienczka and Duzekani; yet there is clearly some wider strategy guiding the targets they choose. Almost every vale or village they turn their attention to meets a terrible fate. Wherever they are victorious, after they have killed everyone they unmake the settlement, destroying every building and leaving a circle of glass and ash similar to that at Bulgakov. These circles are also seen wherever the army has stopped for any period of time, and those who come too close to these blasted zones report a strange dizziness, a feeling of dread. Some of those foolish enough to explore these areas become subject to an awful, lingering curse that burns them alive from the inside out, leaving naught but ash and dust behind.

Not every vale chosen by the Blade of Skies is destroyed. A handful are able to flee to safety before the army is in position to attack. A very small number are able to hold their own, although they suffer punishing losses in the process. A rumour spreads that any settlements that manage to endure an entire day of attacks are spared – at least for now – with the Blade of Skies turning their attention elsewhere.

A month before the Winter Solstice, the Blade of Skies attacks the largest settlement so far. Olvanshka, in Kamienczka, known for the three warden fellowships that call it home. Despite the best efforts of the defenders there, the vale falls. A column of black smoke hangs in the sky above the ruins for three days.

(And from western Kamienczka, an odd tale emerges, carried by a certain ragged-cloaked storyteller who seems unafraid of the scions rampaging across southern Karov. To hear them tell it, they saw a band of scions approach the weird Weeping Stone that lies near the border with Skarsind. When they come within sight of the stone, however, they immediately retreat, and do not return. Perhaps even the heralds of Day are not immune to the touch of fear?)

They do not fear the people of Varushka however, that much is certain. After Olvanshka, the Blade of Skies returns to Duzekani. As the Winter Solstice approaches, as the first snows of a late Winter begin to fall across Karov, the scions finally move against Delev. They march towards the vale many consider the richest in western Varushka, one that could some day rival Temeschwar itself.

A great many of those who have fled their vales have taken shelter behind the walls of Delev. The town is swollen with desperate refugees, most with little more than the clothes on their backs. Delev is the best-defended vale in the south, after all, thanks to the work of Henry Ward. Yet those defences were built to deal with bandits and the occasional pack of wolves, not to turn back an army of scions bent on destruction. If the Blade of Skies can breach those defences, if they can bring upon it the same destruction that razed Bulgakov, and Olvanshka, and a dozen other vales between, then the accompanying slaughter will rival anything that has happened in Varushka in fifty years or more.

Time is running out for Delev.

Game Information: Karov

Cold Sun is around a tenth of the way towards conquering Duzekani. Several hundred people have been slain by the Blade of Skies across southern Karov. The prosperity of the entire territory has been impacted by the loss of prosperous vales, reducing the money to the Imperial treasury going forward.

Unlike Livardz, the region has not gained the ruins quality; the Blade of Skies does not leave enough behind to make this the case. Instead Duzekani has gained the Sun Burned quality. The areas of black glass scattered around the region are dangerous to approach, potentially inflicting a slow death on anyone who approaches them. The damage is potentially reversible if Cold Sun is driven out of the territory, but it will become harder to do so if the Blade of Skies conquers more of the region. In the event the Blade of Skies captures an entire region it will become permanent and not reversible with ritual magic.

Finally, the contested nature of the region and the threat to Delev has impacted the entire Northern trade network. Following the Winter Solstice, the Overseer of the Westward Road will be unable to use their ministry. The other four titles - the Bonesetter of Torfast Trading Post, the Broker of Treji Wayhouse, the Northbound Trademaster, and the Kalpaheim Tradeholder are unable to use the Eastern Route (Karov) ministry. This is likely to continue to be the case as long as the Blade of Skies is in Duzekani; in the event Delev is destroyed then it is likely to be permanent.

The Bargainer of the Iron Tower is likewise unable to use their ministry; the Iron Roundtower is directly threatened by the Blade of Skies, and in the event that Delev is destroyed then the Tower will likely meet the same fate.

There is no sign of the bees returning to Duzekani while the scions are present, or any indication of where they might have gone.

The Devastation of the Trods

Three weeks before the Winter Solstice, an unseen pulse of magical energies surges through Volodmartz and Karov. Most Varushkans are entirely unaware of it, at least to begin with. The first people to realise what has happened are those Navarr stridings travelling through western Varushka, who experience the effects first-hand as the trods are burned out from underneath them. Every trod, in both territories, is ripped to pieces over the space of a dozen heartbeats. It seems that the destruction of the trods in Hercynia last season might have been as much about testing their magic, and understanding their power, as actually ruining them.

There are reports that a few magicians, those responsible for drawing out the power of the vallorn as they move across the Empire, suffer serious burns. The Spring magic that empowers the trods is overwhelmed for an instant by purifying thaumaturgic radiance, pouring through them like flood waters down a narrow streambed. Crafted to slowly draw out the maleficent magic of the Great Mistake, the trods are not made to survive contact with the raw power of the Day realm. They are blasted asunder, with small amounts of that power flowing briefly through those closest to the trod.

Some vates consider this destruction to be a good thing, given the alternatives they envision. The trods can be replaced. If they had channelled the might of Cold Sun then they may have spread a devastating fire across both territories, irrespective of any magical protections, with potentially catastrophic results for a land so richly forested. It doesn't bear thinking about, given how many settlements lie near the trods.

Participation: Navarr

The trods of Volodmartz and Karov have been severed, and will prove difficult to restore. As long as an army of Cold Sun remains in the territory, any attempt to perform the Dance of Navarr and Thorn targeting the territory will fail. Even before the trods are fully formed, the scions will rip them apart again. Indeed, it might be dangerous to restore any of the trods until the armies of Cold Sun are expelled from the Empire. The nature of the Day realm is to study and learn, and the more chance they have to interact with active trods, or if they are able to observe them forming, the more likely it is that they might find some way to spread their destruction more widely.

Any Navarr magician who possesses at least one rank of Spring lore, and whose striding has been in Volodmartz or Karov in the period since the Autumn Equinox may have been harmed by the destruction of the trods. You may wish to apply scar-effect burns, which are slow to heal even with healing magic. If you are such a player and wish your character to have been more intimately affected by the sudden rush of energy that obliterated the trods, you can e-mail plot@profounddecisions.co.uk with your CID before the 18th of April and we will provide you with a traumatic wound. This will represent the lingering effects of exposure to the power of the Day realm, manifesting as serious burns, and as parts of your body turning to ash. Be warned however that if the wound is not dealt with it will prove fatal.

Tread carefully in wild places, say the Navarr.

Leaves

Click for audio version

The Navarr were ready for the coming of Cold Sun. Among the first targets of the scions was the Pool of Silver Clouds, and following that attack the Vigilance of the nation saw them and their allies among the Great Forest Orcs not only drive off an attack on Therunin but offer aid to beleaguered settlements across the Empire. Then, the armies appeared. In Hercynia and Miaren, two forces bent on destruction. The trods of Hercynia were torn asunder, a prelude of what was to come. Now the Still Walkers and the Empty Hands seek to visit further ruin on the mountains and the forests and the gentle plains.

The Still Walkers

In a quiet cavern, reached only by a desperate scramble up a barely-scalable cliff in Northpines, burns an eternal flame. It has been there since Hercynia was Hacynian, enduring the reign of Terunael and the ravages of the vallorn. It's almost a secret, its presence of interest only to a small handful of vates with an interest in using Day magic to purify venom. In happier times, one of the vates might clamber up here to commune with the Flamewarden, a herald of Zie-Who-Was-Ylenrith, and perhaps gain some of the flame-purified water that would aid them in their healing magic. The Flamewarden is gone now, having disappeared when the Imperial Conclave declared Zie-Who-Was-Ylenrith to be a threat to the Empire, they have not been seen since.

At some point shortly before the Autumn Equinox, the hills near the quiet cavern are rocked with a thunderous detonation. Curious Navarr scouts who came to investigate discovered a perfectly circular hole burned into (or more properly, out of) the cliffside where the cave of the eternal flame once was. They also found several thousand scions of Cold Sun, just beginning to fan out through the mountains. Only one of those curious scouts made it to the nearest steading, to bring a terrible warning of what was coming. The Still Walkers had arrived in Hercynia.

It was distressingly easy to track the progress of these scions as they began to spread out. The mountains of northern Hercynia are covered in a thick blanket of pines and firs, and where the heralds went, the trees began to burn. A pall of smoke rose over the Northpines.

In those first few days, the news leapt from one end of Hercynia to the other on the swift-feet of messengers and stridings. The steadings looked to their defences, but those that could spare the thorns sent them north to aid their cousins in the peaks to contain the threat. The first skirmishes with the Still Walkers resulted in painful losses to the Northpines Navarr. The situation looked grim. Grimmer still when a wave of magical energy ripped through the territory, shattering the trods. Normally it would be a simple matter to replace them... but the horror that holds Deer's Folly means the ritual can only be performed from a regio there. A serious undertaking.

Then, just after the Autumn Equinox, accompanied by the first flurries of snow, a potent ward of Spring magic settled over the mountains. That blanket of trees that the scions saw only as kindling began to grow and weave together, fires extinguishing as dark bark took on the strength of the peaks themselves. The bears and wolves turned savagely against the unnatural invaders, in some cases actually fighting alongside the Navarr defenders. A handful of heralds, youths in simple garb but possessed with wisdom beyond their apparent years, began to appear among the trees helping those trapped by fire or scion to get to safety – and where they could not flee fighting as savagely as any beast of the deep woods alongside the Navarr. Imperial magicians had forged the Wooden Fastness over Northpines, calling the power of Irra Harah to directly oppose Cold Sun.

The various bands of Still Walkers immediately ceased their attacks, and withdrew back toward that cliffside from which they had first emerged. Taking advantage of the protection of the living forest, the Navarr defenders cautiously closed in. At sunrise, three days after the magic settled over Northpines, the entire army of the Still Walkers vanished.

Those keen-eyed, stealthy Navarr in a position to observe quickly spread word of what happened. In the early dawn, the scions gathered into groups around their archons, who in turn surrounded the grand archon There was a clear design, a geometric arrangement of three thousand heralds, filling the valley below the blasted cliff. The grand archon began to glow, then the other archons followed suit, then every one of the thousands of scions present burned with an aura of steady blue light that became brighter and brighter as the sun began to rise. With a catastrophic crack, and a sudden inrushing of wind that swept some of the scouts off their feet, the Still Walkers were gone, as was a significant portion of the now-collapsing cliffside. A few keen-eyed Navarr swore that something very like a colossal bolt of lighting leapt up from the grand archon the moment before the heralds vanished.

They did not stay vanished for long. Before the sun had set, the news broke that the Still Walkers were now in Summersend, not far from the Heartwood of the Great Vale. Somehow, the Still Walkers were able to replicate the power of the Sentinel Gate, at least on a small scale, travelling from one place to another as a bolt of force.

Fortunately, the Vigilant Navarr steadings of the south were ready to defend themselves. Several settlements in Summersend are built on a foundation of old Terunael structures; their eyes are turned toward the vallorn of Deer's Folly but their defences are just as efficacious against the scions. The thorns gather at the newly established Great Forest Orcs steading of High Pines, and at Mourning Hollow to protect the Great Library of Hacynian. It takes more than one clever trick to frighten the Navarr.

Courage is not enough, however. The scions of Cold Sun begin once again to spread out, firing the trees, readying to crush any steading in their path, threatening both the weirwood grove and the centre of learning at Mourning Hollow.

Thorns, we now face a new threat in our homelands. We now desperately reinforce Hercynia to halt the advance of Cold Sun where they stand. The Expansion of the Great Library of Hacynian is complete and is now researching how to best end our ancestral foe. DEFEND IT AT ALL COSTS!

Rhisiart Dancewalker, General of the Black Thorns

Then, thankfully, the Black Thorns arrive. They have marched all the way from Madruga in the south, and along the way they have gathered more than thirty Navarr captains and their warbands, from across the Empire. Messengers have already warned the army that the scions have moved, and there is no pause. They smash straight into the Still Walkers from the south, drawing the other defenders together under their banner.

Captain	Nation	Territory	Banner
Pew	Navarr	Brocéliande
Rhian Rootround	Navarr	Brocéliande
Cara Brackensong	Navarr	Brocéliande	Brackensong Steading (Banner)
Balor	Navarr	Hercynia
Dewi Cross i Riqueza	Navarr	Hercynia
Neasa	Navarr	Hercynia
Shay'nah Springwake	Navarr	Hercynia
Caedria	Navarr	Hercynia	Deadfall
Vur Torndal	Navarr	Hercynia	East Riders
Lindir	Navarr	Hercynia	Edgestalkers
Willow Silverfletch	Navarr	Hercynia	The Silver Fletchings
Farenthar Shattersong	Navarr	Hercynia	The Thornborn of Black Scar
Maddoc	Navarr	Hercynia	The Thornborn of Black Scar
Fynn	Navarr	Hercynia	The Waystone Path
Khestra	Navarr	Hercynia	The Waystone Path
Eclipse	Navarr	Liathaven
Alwin	Navarr	Liathaven	Deadfall
Bramble Amaanson	Navarr	Miaren
Gwynn	Navarr	Miaren
Kragan Hammerfist	Navarr	Miaren
Llassar	Navarr	Miaren
Llinos Dawn's Song	Navarr	Miaren
Aelis Broken Bough	Navarr	Miaren	Deadfall
Ambroos Antoon Broken-Bough	Navarr	Miaren	Deadfall
Gaeorg Brokenbough	Navarr	Miaren	Deadfall
Levin Broken Bough	Navarr	Miaren	Deadfall
Torin Swift Hart	Navarr	Miaren	Deadfall
Edirn	Navarr	Miaren	Splintered Oaks
Oak Silverfletch	Navarr	Miaren	The Silver Fletchings
Flavius Emerald Grove	Navarr	Therunin
Gwynedd	Navarr	Therunin	Sunken Hearth
Torna	Navarr	Therunin	The Thornborn of Black Scar

Savage battle is joined; for all their courage the Black Thorns are tired from the long journey from the entire breadth of the Empire. Yet they are no more minded to give ground than the scions are – especially when the heralds threaten the Library where the brightest minds in the Empire are gathered to find a solution to the Great Mistake.

The tide turns almost immediately; the Still Walkers have gone from facing desperate resistance to being outnumbered three to one. The Black Thorns do not have everything their own way – the scions still demonstrate a supernatural clarity and are able to coordinate their forces over great distances more effectively than the Navarr are. Yet at the end of the day, for all the boons of their terrible patron, they can still be slain. Their lines can still be broken, they still fall before a perfectly-placed arrow, still stumble when the Legacy of Thorns pierces their skin, still fall before spear, axe, or sword. The Black Thorns have no shortage of these things.

They are forced to give ground, pushed back not only from the Great Library, but away from the Heartwood of the Great Vale. They retreat west toward Old Ranging, but it becomes clear that while they may be able to travel great distances when the conditions are right, they are no match for the manoeuvrability of the Black Thorns.

Two weeks before the Winter Solstice, caught in a rapidly closing trap, the Still Walkers again pulls its forces together in one place. Smoke hangs in a black thundercloud over Summersend, as the scions clear a great circle of trees with their terrible blue light. As night falls, it becomes clear that the surviving scions intend to try and escape the noose.

This time, though, the Navarr know what is happening. The Black Thorns do not wait for the morning, but take advantage of the light provided by the burning trees and the bright moon. They launch a night assault against the Still Walkers, seeking to defeat them before they can make good their escape.

The scions fight like cornered rats. Or, rather, the scions around the perimeter fight with desperate zeal, and when one falls another steps into the gap immediately. Hundreds of Still Walkers fall to the Navarr, nearly a third of their number, but then as night begins to turn to day... crack.

Gone. Fled, leaving behind a shallow crater of bare earth among the burning trees and the clouds of ash that are all that remains of the fallen heralds.

This time, there's no indication where they have fled. The more optimistic among the Navarr celebrate, believing they have been driven back to the Endless Ocean of the Day realm. Wiser heads are not so sure. The Still Walkers may have been outmatched, may have a lost nearly a thousand scions, but even a reduced force could still inflict unsustainable damage on the Empire, depending on where they had travelled to. How far can they travel?

The Navarr have been fortunate. Between the Wooden Fastness in Northpines, and the Black Thorns, the Still Walkers were kept constantly on the back foot. Forced to focus their attention on the defenders, they had little opportunity to slaughter. They have still scarred the land. Trees that had stood for two centuries or more burned to ashes. Steadings, built hundreds of years before the Empire was even a dream, turned to ash. Yet the people, for the most part, have survived. The death toll is in the tens of human and orc souls, rather than the hundreds or thousands who might have fallen.

The Black Thorns have sacrificed to protect their people. Nearly three hundred thorns fell to the scions. The greatest sorrow is that, for many of them, there will be no funeral, and no chance to rest in the glades beneath the shadows of the trees; the spite of Cold Sun has robbed them of that final honour.

Game Information: Hercynia

The defenders of Hercynia have been bloodied, but the Still Walkers were roundly beaten. They have, however, escaped the territory. They may have returned to the realms, or they may have arrived somewhere else in the Empire. Only time will tell.

The trods in Hercynia remain severed, as does the vallorn of Deer's Folly. They cannot be replaced from Anvil due to the limitations of the Dance of Navarr and Thorn. Rather, a quest through the Sentinel Gate is likely to be required to reach one of the Spring regio within the vallorn itself. No such conjunction of the gate has been noted as yet.

The Empty Hands

The steadings of gentle Oakways are nestled among farms and pastureland, and scattered stands of the old oak trees that give the region its name. There is a quietness here that is rare in the Navarr territories.

Or rather, there was, until ruin came to Tomma's Well. A gentle spring of cool, sweet water, the Well was a minor regio tied to the Day realm. Shepherds would gather there to share songs and stories and to sleep beneath the stars. Now, all that remains is a patched bowl of cracked clay. As the regio waxed under the power of the recent Imperial enchantment, it became a portal for the Empty Hands, who rose from the depths in the last weeks before the Autumn equinox.

The steadings are barely prepared to face the threat of Cold Sun. While Miaren is one of the safest places in the Empire. There are warriors here, of course, thorns and brands who have fought vallorn and barbarian alike in their time. Many of them, though, have not seen battle for years and are ill-prepared. They are little match for the army arrayed against them, and the first steadings in Oakways fall to the scions within days of the Equinox.

Imperial magicians have done what they can to protect Miaren. A ward of Spring magic has been forging over the Goldglades. When the scions came to Miaren during the Summer, they were focused on the destruction of the Pool of Silver Stars, and perhaps there was an assumption this would be their aim again. This time, their attacks seem indiscriminate. The presence of the ward helps a little, freeing the steadings there to send their warriors to help the rest of the territory. It slows the scions attacks, but in the end it cannot prevent widespread destruction across the heartland of the Navarr nation.

Like the other armies assailing the Empire, the Empty Hands demonstrate supernatural coordination, and a terrible insight into the exploitable weaknesses of their opponents. Yet this is not the most grievous thing about these scions. Their channellers and archons are able to evoke a dreadful blue-green radiance that, in stark contrast to the natural light of the sun, has a terrible effect on living plants. Where the light touches, trees and plants begin to calcify. They become hard and grey, each branch, root, leaf, and stem rendered into a substance part-way between bone and soft stone. The soil around the dying plant is poisoned, becoming chalk-like sand that will not sustain wholesome life. This mark of Cold Sun's malign presence is most concentrated in Oakways; whole swathes of woodland killed and remade. The longer the scions spend in a place, the more complete the transformation.

A further indignity: as the Winter Solstice draws closer, the Empty Hands regroup to consolidate their control of Oakways. Shortly before the Solstice, a sudden pulse of magic rips across the entire territory. As in Varushka, the trods in Miaren are rent asunder over the course of a dozen heartbeats. Magical paths that have resisted the passage of centuries, unmade in a moment. The energy goes further than in the north, perhaps because the trods are that much older and that much more stable. It grounds itself through a number of Spring regio. Only the weakest are destroyed, but all touched by the cold fire are damaged. Even Goldglades is not spared, and as in Volodmartz and Karov, several vates are badly burned as the energy surges along the trods.

While the core of the invading army remains in Oakways, they launch assaults into Holtford, Greenfalls and even Serenael. The scions do not attack Seren itself, but all across Miaren steadings are assailed, stridings intercepted, wayhouses burned.

Those who cannot fight seek sanctuary in Goldglades and behind the walls of Seren. Most manage to find a measure of safety, but some are less fortunate, intercepted by the Empty Hand and slain without mercy. Hundreds of humans and orcs are slain, their bodies seared to ashes. There will be no rest in the funeral glades for the victims of Cold Sun.

As well as the cost in lives, there is a more symbolic loss in Miaren. The Empty Hands, like all the armies of Cold Sun, are drawn to places of beauty, art, and culture. Peaceful monuments, colleges, and places of natural beauty across the territory are targeted for destruction. Perhaps the most cruellest loss is the destruction of First Voice Glade, raised in memory of Gerallt Brackensong. The grand archon of the Empty Hand itself leads the force that burns the school there. Most of the staff and students make it to safety, but the structure itself is torn apart and the beautiful trees transformed into cursed stone effigies A painful symbol of the damage being done to the heart of the Navarr nation.

Game Information: Miaren

The Empty Hands are almost a third of the way toward conquering Oakways. The region has gained the Petrified quality, representing the damage done to the settlements and the land itself. It may be possible to reverse the destruction if the Empty Hands are driven out of the territory, but the more of the region they conquer the harder it will be. Should they conquer the entire region, the transformation will be permanent.

The trods of Miaren have been destroyed, just as those in Hercynia and Varushka have been. While the Dance of Navarr and Thorn could replace them the outcome is likely to be the same as in the north. Cold Sun's scions will simply rip them apart again as soon as they begin to form, and may gain further insight into their operation in the process.

The scions have destroyed First Voice Glade. The title of Dean of the First Voice Glade still exists, but with the loss of the sinecure, they no longer receive their bounty of herbs.

Participation: Miaren

As with Karov and Volodmartz, if your character is a magician with at least one rank of Spring lore, you may choose to have been burned by the energy that destroyed the trods. See that earlier section for details.

Life is a fire; vibrant, warm, beautiful, but gone quickly leaving only ashes.

Grass

Click for audio version

When Cold Sun sent its servants to the Brass Coast, they were met with all the passionate fury the Freeborn could muster. Defeated and scattered, the descendants of Erigo, Riqueza, and Guerra breathed a sigh of relief. One that was proved a little premature when, mere weeks before the Autumn Equinox, an army of scions emerged in Segura. The heralds struck fast and with a fury of their own, overwhelming the defenders of the barely established Cerevado Nets and stealing a bounty of ilium for their own inscrutable reasons. As the Equinox came to an end, the folk of the dry grasslands of Segura could only wonder at what the presence of that ominously named army might mean.

The Fire Beacon

The Fire Beacon is in Burnish. An army of Cold Sun scions, issued from an unnamed regio somewhere in the northern hills. They burn with an unquenchable flame, and where they march they leave only ruin and ash. Their progress puts them on a direct line with the Sunsong Ranch, the largest settlement on the plains. It stubbornly resisted the Lasambrians, but it seems defenceless against the forces of oblivion.

Each archon of the Fire Beacon seems to bear an ember of oblivion at their heart. Where they march, flames leap and flicker, a cold blue aura burns around them. Where it touches the grass, the sparse trees, the terrified beasts of the plains, the abandoned homes, it begins to burn them away. Life itself is an affront to the Fire Beacon, it seems. At night the frigid ice-blue flames shimmer across the hilltops, stark against the dark skies, overwhelming starlight and moonlight alike. Pillars of smoke rise from burning settlements and the wind that blows down from the hills is gritted with ash. It whispers of inevitable destruction, of a growing certainty that it is futile to resist. It chills the soul, and makes even the bravest heart skip a beat.

As news of the coming doom spreads across Segura, carried on the ashen wind and the terrible aurora over the hills, it kindles a numb inevitability in the Freeborn. This army of heralds might be the one final thing, the one dreadful thing, that breaks the spirit of these unbreakable people. It would be easy to give into despair, to fear that this is just another intimation of the end of the Freeborn. How can passion, how can joy, how can hope, endure against this unrelenting tide of oblivion?

But hope still lives. As the Fire Beacon begins its inevitable approach to the Sunsong Ranch, to that place that has become for many a symbol of Seguran defiance, two Imperial armies come to stop them.

An Enemy rises before us that must set. Segura is Freeborn. It will remain freeborn. The Power of Summer graces us with its splendour. I invite Janon to stand with me again to inspire us against an enemy that sees us as nothing. I will bring the night to this Cold Sun. It shall understand the flame.

Aracelis i Erigo, General of the Burning Falcon

The ancient cultures of the far north share a long history and many stories of Courage, Ambition and Heroism. New threats, new alliances, new stories. We stand proudly together with our Thule guests, to beat back the forces of oblivion. We have read the omens. Cold Sun cannot be reasoned with or bargained with. Destroy these heralds.

Kindra Surefoot, General of the Fist of the Mountains

Army	Captain	Nation	Territory	Banner
Burning Falcon	William Fletcher	Dawn	Astolat
Burning Falcon	Torag Meliora	Dawn	Astolat	House Meliora
Burning Falcon	Roberte i Guerra	The Brass Coast	Feroz	DelToro
Burning Falcon	Razek i Erigo	The Brass Coast	Feroz	Flames of the Coast
Burning Falcon	Kindra Surefoot	Wintermark	Hahnmark
Burning Falcon	Kaisa Denmother	Wintermark	Hahnmark	Fellowship of the Broken Willow
Burning Falcon	Trencher	Wintermark	Hahnmark	Fellowship of the Broken Willow
Burning Falcon	Mattias i Guerra	The Brass Coast	Kahraman
Burning Falcon	Salim i Erigo	The Brass Coast	Kahraman	Flames of the Coast
Burning Falcon	Talshir	The Brass Coast	Kahraman	Flames of the Coast
Burning Falcon	Witold Stefanovic Petrov	Varushka	Karov	Wulfen Reavers
Burning Falcon	Danza Pathfinder	Navarr	Liathaven	Pathfinders
Burning Falcon	Líovani í Vella í Erigo	The Brass Coast	Madruga	Flames of the Coast
Burning Falcon	Juan-Diego i Erigo	The Brass Coast	Madruga	The Blue Flames
Burning Falcon	Fortun i Guerra	The Brass Coast	Madruga	The Burning Sails
Burning Falcon	Aagni	Navarr	Miaren	The Thornborn of Entwined Paths
Burning Falcon	Uzbek Perune Kostka	Varushka	Miekarova
Burning Falcon	Byzantum	Urizen	Morrow
Burning Falcon	Edd	The Marches	Mournwold	Happiston Volunteers
Burning Falcon	Leoric Hudson	The Marches	Mournwold	Happiston Volunteers
Burning Falcon	Reaghan i Guerra	The Brass Coast	Segura
Burning Falcon	Velasco i Guerra	The Brass Coast	Segura	Bloodgold Jackals
Burning Falcon	Aracelis I Erigo	The Brass Coast	Segura	Flames of the Coast
Burning Falcon	Ehmrys i Guerra	The Brass Coast	Segura	Flames of the Coast
Burning Falcon	Torwynn	Dawn	Semmerholm	House Wolfborne
Burning Falcon	De'Kere Maison	Dawn	Weirwater	Amber Lance
Fist of the Mountains	Reidarr Blood-Letter	Wintermark	Hahnmark	Byrchenhal
Fist of the Mountains	"Axehind" Aedric Dunning	Wintermark	Hahnmark	Dunhearth Hall
Fist of the Mountains	Emil Speaker-for-the-Quiet-Voiced	Otkodov	Skuld

From distant Wintermark, the Fist of the Mountains approaches the unknown threat of Cold Sun cautiously, but alongside them blazes a fire to answer anything an eternal might spark. The Burning Falcon roar into Segura, barely pausing to catch their breath before charging into the scions' eastern flank.

Alongside the Fist of the Mountains, a battalion of Thule war-wizards, far from their northern home. Allies secured by diplomacy, the blue-clad orcs are accompanied by packs of lean, savage bear-wolves drawn from some eternal realm. There is an uneasy peace between them and the other warbands of Wintermark that accompany the Fist. They keep themselves apart – until battle is joined when they unleash their beasts and their magic as furiously as any Steinr, or Suaq, or Kallavesi.

The Burning Falcon have with them a host of elfin knights, in red and gold, armoured emissaries of the Sovereign of the Pennants, called forth by the echoing horns of Imperial magicians. There are also two dozen heralds of the Shadowed Fire, accompanying the passionate Freeborn warriors and rousing them to face the twisted zeal of the Fire Beacon with the flame that burns in their own hearts. The servants of Night, with midnight-blue skin and raging crimson eyes and hair, avoid the knights of Eleonaris, who are more than happy to return the favour. They are always found where the fighting is thickest, battling beside the kohan, urging them every onwards. A few warriors have adopted their garb - scarlet robes over iron scales. with a sword in either hand. Mortal and unmortal alike, all revel in the opportunity to test themselves against the cold-hearted, blue flamed scions of Day.

The Falcon and their Summer allies meet the Fire Beacon in the foothills; the speed and ferocity of their initial assault overwhelms the heralds.

Yet Cold Sun's chosen soldiers are not foolish. They possess a supernatural clarity that allows them to react to circumstances with uncanny speed and effectiveness. Battle is joined – the smaller force compensating for the overwhelming numbers arrayed against them with cunning strategy and a unity of purpose the Freeborn and their fey allies cannot quite match. It seems that they might hold their own, and battered but unbowed, reach the fences of the Sunsong Ranch and shatter what the Lasambrians could never breach.

The delay, though, buys time for the Fist of the Mountain to arrive, and while they may have resisted the Freeborn alone... they cannot stand against them when Wintermark fights by their side. Three hours of vicious fighting, and the heralds are pushed back into the low, rolling hills, back towards the Kahraman borders.

The peripatetic nature of the Freeborn of the plains ensures that in the weeks before they reach Sunsong Ranch, the damage the scions are able to cause is minimized. People flee rather than stand and burn – buildings can be replaced much more easily than family.

It's not possible to guess how many scions fall to Freeborn bhuj, to golden greataxe, to the swords of Wintermark, to the wicked spells of Otkodov. The air becomes thick with ash and flickering embers as the Fire Beacon retreats. Scion and human and orc alike burned to nothing, to coarse ash on the winter winds.

Game Information: Segura

Exact numbers are difficult to calculate, but it seems the Fire Beacon has lost roughly half its strength to the combined might of the Burning Falcon and the Fist of the Mountains. The army remains in the territory for now, regrouping in Burnish, although it remains to be seen whether they remain here in the face of such passionate resistance.

The destructive nature of the Fire Beacon means that any opposing campaign army or fortification that takes casualties from the army will break if their military strength falls below 1,500 (or 2,250 if they are large). This represents the devastating effects of the cold blue flames that accompany the scions of Cold Sun; an army that disbands will see many of its remaining soldiers eaten alive by cursed flame, while a fortification that collapses under their onslaught will leave nothing behind save an area of glass (there will be no opportunity to rebuild the fortification).

Participation: Segura

Just as when the Burning Falcon fought the Jotun in Kahraman after the Spring Equinox, any character whose military unit was assigned to fight alongside the army this downtime may choose to have been impacted by the experience of battling in close proximity to heralds of both Eleonaris and Janon. If you possess hero points, you may choose to gain an additional temporary hero point which, once spent, is permanently gone. It will have faded entirely by the end of the Winter Solstice regardless.

We have deep roots, and long memories.

Rushes

Click for audio version

The Marches saw off the first wave of invaders after the Summer Solstice, and while there were deaths it was nowhere near as bad as it might have been. Then, shortly before the Autumn Equinox, a large group of scions in Gravenmarch were able to seize control of a powerful regio despite the best efforts of the heroes of Anvil. Using some combination of dark sorcery, they began to force that regio open, creating a way for thousands more of their kind to boil into Bregasland.

The Ending Tide

During the Autumn Equinox, a band of brave Imperial heroes used the Sentinel Gate to try and intercept a company of scions in Bregasland. The heralds attempted to claim the Still Rock, a potent Day regio not aligned to any known eternal. Despite their best efforts, the heroes were forced to retreat, and the scions claimed their objective.

The Still Rock is a stone pillar, shot through with veins of quartz. Positioned like the gnomon of a sundial, it is somehow connected to the working beneath Graven Rock. More importantly, perhaps, it represents the single most powerful regio under the control of Cold Sun's forces. Under normal circumstances, the enmity of the Imperial Conclave would prevent more heralds entering the Empire, but it soon becomes apparent that the scions have the capacity to force the portal at the heart of the potent regio wide and allow more soldiers of Oblivion to enter Bregasland. Many more. An entire new army; the Ending Tide begins to gather in Gravenmarch.

Again, Imperial magicians have taken precautions. The Dripping Echoes of the Fen settle over Grey Fens, creating a powerful protective ward of cunning mist and confusing fog. As in the north, however, there is something off about the ward. No creatures of the Night Forest accompany the invocation, but rather the tendrils of seething mist extend in pockets across the entirety of Bregasland, slowing the spread of the Ending Tide. This is something of a mixed blessing however, as the mists appear to be almost as tricky for Marchers to navigate as they are for the invaders. They don't impede those fighting the scions, and indeed they help the beaters and yeomen move quickly and secretly into position to harry the ranks of the Day heralds. Rather, they cause mild trouble for good folk going about their business, turning them around and occasionally causing them to wander lost for hours on end. They present particular difficulties to the magistrates and militia dispatched by the Imperial Senate to investigate the recent troubles in the western marshes. It's not clear if this is intentional, or just the magic responding to the resentment of the Bregas.

Peculiar Night magic aside, the threat the Ending Tide represents is very clear. There are no fortifications whose garrison might oppose the invaders. For a fortnight or so it begins to look as if the Bregas might be in real trouble. The scions of the Ending Tide seem broadly unconcerned about the mud and the marsh; they are supernaturally adept at exploiting paths and shallows mostly known only to the locals. The unnatural clarity of their terrible lord, perhaps.

In another world, the Ending Tide achieve their full strength – a great host of scions larger than any currently in the Empire. They sweep through Graven March slaughtering as they go. They burn Graven and spill west into the Rushes. Sallow falls. They transform Graven Rock into a terrible fortress and from there continue to despoil not only the southern Dour Fens, but assault southern Mitwold and northern Mournwold as well.

Bounders! We stand in Loyalty with our siblings in the Strong Reeds with a Solid Defence of Gravenmarch in Bregasland. To Stop the Cold Sun & in support of the magistrates who are rooting out the traitors left behind by Fisher & the Jotun, who intend to murder our friends and families.

Bobert Thatcher, General of the Bounders

Drakes! We fought off the Predations of Siakha, and their heralds are now composting the winter crops. But our fellow Marches are under threat. We will enact a Solid Defence of Gravenmarch in Bregasland against the forces of the Cold Sun.

Tancred of Meade, General of the Drakes

Queen Fisher is defeated! Years of War have now ended and Bregas will forever remain marcher. But Loyalty calls. The Cold Sun seek to murder our families, we folk heroes will never let that happen. Now and forever we answer the call of Bregasland. Loyalty calls. Lets Go!

Amberlaine Black, General of the Strong Reeds

Isaella's Dance we move to Bregasland into Gravenmarch. We will mount a Solid Defence against the newest threat to the Empire, the Cold Sun. We have rested, we have trained, we will stand. We do this so that Navarr can defend Hercynia and liberate the great forest orcs. Strength to the Empire, Strength to Navarr. Your Generals will do what is needed.

Ioan Longshadow, General of Isaella's Dance

Captain	Nation	Territory	Banner
'green' jack woodruff	The Marches	Upwold	The Applewood Levy
Aelfric Woodson	The Marches	Upwold	The Applewood Levy
Trevor Woodsman	The Marches	Upwold	The Applewood Levy
John of Meade	The Marches	Mitwold
Arthur Payne	The Marches	Mournwold	The Company We Keep
Edmund Hook	The Marches	Bregasland
Cedric of Greywater	The Marches	Bregasland	The Black Vigil
Ulrich Tyrelias	The Marches	Bregasland	The Black Vigil
Willem Tarne	The Marches	Bregasland	The Black Vigil
Tod Grouse	The Marches	Mitwold	House Mudd
Amberlain P. Black	The Marches	Upwold	The Unbound Union
William Guildenstern	The Marches	Upwold	The Unbound Union

In this world, however, things go very differently. Two weeks after the Autumn Equinox, the armies of the Empire arrive in Bregasland. Three Marcher armies – the Bounders, the Drakes, and the Strong Reeds – supported by Isaella's Dance. More than fifteen hundred yeomen, the entourage of a dozen Marcher captains, join the fray. They throw a ring of steel and yew around the Ending Tide, and they refuse to take so much as a single step back.

The Marchers know this territory intimately and they take every advantage the marshes have to offer. They choose where to engage carefully, ensuring that they fight with defensive advantage wherever possible. For the first month they let the Ending Tide crash against them, an irresistible sea of heralds against an immovable rock. And then, step by step, they start to move forward, closing in toward the Still Rock.

As the Ending Tide are compressed, they fight all the more fiercely. The Marchers and their Navarr allies, however, take no chances. They make use of the enchanted mists emanating from Grey Fens wherever possible, so that even when they are forced to pull back they make certain to leave nobody behind to be destroyed in Cold Sun's cruel funereal fire. The landskeepers and vates, the physicks and chirurgeons ensure that anyone who can be saved, is saved.

Given time, the Ending Tide would have risen to a torrent, a sweeping ocean of scions that might have overrun the Marches. But thanks to the swift actions of the Marcher generals and their armies, they do not get that time. Three weeks before the Winter Solstice, the steel ring closes around the heart of the army. A vicious fight in the shadow of the Still Rock, ends with the grand archon pierced by arrows, their forces broken and shattered. With an almighty crack, so loud it felt to some as if the sky itself were breaking, the pillar of stone-and-quartz imploded. A rush of force swept out, hurling everyone within a hundred paces to the ground, accompanied by a burst of blue-white radiance. When it cleared, there was no sign of the unnatural army; every remaining scion still fighting was gone, dragged back to the realm of the Oblivion that spawned them.

In the still moment after that thunderous detonation, it began to rain. A cold, lazy rain that quickly soaked through every Marcher and every Navarr. The kind of rain that made the Bregas smile, a promise that things might finally, finally get back to normal perhaps.

The regio around the Still Rock, and the Rock itself, was gone, but so was every single scion of the Ending Tide. All that remained were the signs of their passage; the bodies of the fallen, the wounds they inflicted on those who courageously stood against them, the spilt blood and the burnt willows and the baked ground.

The rain of the fens is already washing even these mementos away.

Game Information: Bregasland

The Ending Tide has been decisively dealt with. It quickly becomes apparent during the campaign that control of the Still Rock was sufficient to have allowed the army to continue bringing new heralds to the Empire – and it is possible that had they been able to dig in their initial 3,000 strength force might have swollen to rival the Drakes in size with potentially catastrophic implications for the Marches. They won't get that chance, however.

The presence of the army has prevented the Keeper of the Dour Fens from claiming their usual bounty of crystal mana this season, and the destruction of the Still Rock has had a peculiar destabilising effect on the magical flows in the area. The weltsilver that runs through the rock has taken on a particular blue-white sheen, and the echoes of the past seem much louder than normal. The three menhirs that anchor the mana flows of Gravenmarch now weep a faintly glowing rainbow-coloured liquid. All this means that the production of the sinecure has also been affected; rather than 10 crystal mana each season it now produces only 5 crystal mana but also three measures of prismatic ink.

We are bound by spirit.

Zeal

Click for audio version

Highguard has suffered at the hands of Cold Sun's scions. First the Unbound Hall of Lost Chapters was destroyed, then the heralds of Day slaughtered their way to capturing the White Tower in Bastion. Now aided by a newbuilt fortress, the scions threaten the heart not only of the Highborn, but of the Way itself.

The Winnowers

In eastern Woodbury is a ring of seven white granite statues, each depicting a magister who demonstrated the power of the human spirit over that of one of the eternals of the Day realm. The ring is two centuries old, or more, and their names and deeds have mostly been forgotten. Perhaps it once served a greater purpose, but that too has faded into history. It marks the perimeter of a small regio of the Day realm. No paths approach it through the rough woods; the nearest chapter is half a day's hard hike away.

The first heralds to arrive in Bastion assault Sybella Cross but are handily defeated. In retrospect, however, their attack may have been as much a distraction or a violent scouting mission as a serious attempt to destroy the Physician's Hall. A fortnight before the Autumn Equinox, with the nameless regio still empowered by the powerful magics laid over the entire Empire, the scions of Cold Sun erupt into the heart of Highguard. The statues of nameless magisters are shattered, and the purification of Bastion begins.

The Winnowers have learned from their earlier attack; even as the army gathers strength they send an assault force east into Sybella Cross. They do not head for the prosperous town in the south, but rather to the ruins of the White Tower in the north. Destroyed by the Druj fifteen years or more ago, the tower kept an uneasy vigil over the trods running into Reikos. Despite the best efforts of a group of Imperial heroes during the Equinox, the scions assault the ruins and quickly overwhelm the lone watchtower there. Worse, for some, during the attack the shield Oath-heart, the Shield of Loyalty|, was lost during the attempt and is now in the possession of Cold Sun.

The rest of the army arrives less than a day later. With supernatural speed they set to work reinforcing the hill. Their channellers draw on the power of Cold Sun to support the building effort, fusing broken stones together and raising hard rock from beneath the nearby hills, but most of the work is done by groups of scions. A new fortification rises, a keep whose harsh angles and strange proportions grate on mortal eyes, topped by a dome of blue-white metal that glows with a dim azure light.

The chapters of Sybella Cross are ready for more attacks from Cold Sun, but not for the scale of the forces arrayed against them. They fight as best they can, but the defenders closest to the White Tower are soon overwhelmed, forced to retreat or be slaughtered. The scions move methodically, spreading out in a widening ring with the new White Tower at its heart. They possess the same supernatural ability to work together over distance shown by other armies, and the same inhuman zeal for destruction and death.

Worse than their supernatural clarity though is the effect the Winnowers have on the land around them, or rather, on the air. Wherever a hundred or more scions are gathered together, they are surrounded by a strange localised weather effect. A warm dry wind that always blows outward, and kills wholesome plants and vegetation that it touches. It seems specifically virulent against those that help preserve life, and turns them to a vile ash-like substance that poisons the soil and spreads the withering taint wherever the wind blows it. At night, gardens wrecked by the famine-wind glow with a faint, baleful bluish glow until purified with fire or clean water. Herb gardens in Sybella Cross begin to suffer the touch of the foul wind, and as the army begins to launch attacks into Woodbury, Stoneside, and the Elms, the touch of the famine-wind begins to spread across all of Bastion.

Captain	Nation	Territory	Banner
Mirella Warden	Dawn	Astolat	Amber Lance
Mal` Lassal Scethos of House Cordraco	Dawn	Astolat	House Cordraco
Ector Meliora	Dawn	Astolat	House Meliora
Mordrain Sepulchre	Dawn	Astolat	House Sepulchre Banner
Melkior of Balthazar’s Vineyard	Highguard	Bastion
Abathar	Highguard	Bastion	Cohort of the Winter Bear
Atara	Highguard	Bastion	Cohort of the Winter Bear
Brother Isaiah	Highguard	Bastion	Cohort of the Winter Bear
Eve	Highguard	Bastion	Cohort of the Winter Bear
Miguel	Highguard	Bastion	Cohort of the Winter Bear
Nathaniel	Highguard	Bastion	Cohort of the Winter Bear
Titus	Highguard	Bastion	Cohort of the Winter Bear
Solomon	Highguard	Bastion	Shattered Tower Banner
Deacon	Highguard	Bastion	The Sepulchre of the Red Sun
Icarus of the Sepulchre of the Red Sun	Highguard	Bastion	The Sepulchre of the Red Sun
Ardeniel	Highguard	Casinea
Balaam	Highguard	Casinea	Cantiarch's Hold
Ezekial of Adina's Charge	Highguard	Casinea	Daintree Survivors
Zephaniah	Highguard	Casinea	Felix's Watch Banner
Silus	Highguard	Casinea	The Sentinels Tower
Towlen	Navarr	Hercynia	Nighthaven
Vincente i Zayden i Guerra	The Brass Coast	Madruga
Ioan Longshadow	Navarr	Miaren	Long Shadow
Adamah	Highguard	Necropolis
Dubidai	Highguard	Necropolis
George	Highguard	Necropolis
Thomir, Son of Astion	Highguard	Necropolis	Banner of the Cenotaph
Jericho	Highguard	Necropolis	Drusilla’s Resolve
Cilicia	Highguard	Necropolis	The Riven Blade
Decimus	Highguard	Necropolis	The Steel Tide
Mathayus	Highguard	Necropolis	The Steel Tide
Solomon of the Silent Tide	Highguard	Necropolis	The Steel Tide
Enoch	Highguard	Necropolis	Wayfaring Order of Suriyel’s Tome
Saul	Highguard	Necropolis	Wayfaring Order of Suriyel’s Tome
Alexios	Urizen	Redoubt
Aletheia, Daughter of Carmen	Dawn	Reikos
Tselem	Highguard	Reikos
Zadok	Highguard	Reikos
Baraos	Highguard	Reikos	Drusilla’s Resolve
Asarok	Highguard	Reikos	Ebon's Hall
Cyrus, of Ebon's Hall	Highguard	Reikos	Ebon's Hall
Levi	Highguard	Reikos	Ebon's Hall
Leximus	Highguard	Reikos	Ebon's Hall
Pippin	Highguard	Reikos	Ebon's Hall
Abraham	Highguard	Reikos	Order of the Basilisk
Ivanbrok	Highguard	Reikos	Order of the Basilisk
asche	Highguard	Reikos	Order of the Basilisk
Aenea	Highguard	Reikos	Shattered Tower Banner
Vashti	Highguard	Reikos	Shattered Tower Banner
Tristan Longstone Castellan	Dawn	Semmerholm	House Castellan
Richard de Carsenere	Dawn	Semmerholm	House de Carsenere
Samantha Barossa De Tassato Regario	The League	Tassato	Company of The Red Fox
Caius Aurelius	Dawn	The Barrens	House Aurelius
Archavion Wolfborne	Dawn	The Barrens	House Wolfborne
Casey Lonestrider	Navarr	Therunin
Lady Eve Orzel	Dawn	Weirwater
Ser Claudia Lovelorn	Dawn	Weirwater	The Whelps of Sorin

Sisters, Brothers, Siblings, I call upon every citizen of Highguard to join us in a Heroic Stand to defend the Religious Centre of the Empire against the depredations of the Day realm. Look to the words of the National Assembly for Inspiration. Look to Solomon of the Shattered Tower who brings the banner of the Thundering Tide, legacy of our lost army, hallowed with True Liao to Loyalty. Look to the courage of Asher, Miracle that shines on your general's soul. Look to the skull of Susa, relic of the horse ridden by Perseus son of Permion. Look to the virtue within yourselves. The Cold Sun believes that all sentient life is a disease to be eradicated. They have seen NOTHING yet. Virtue is contagious. Our Hearth magic is built to confound them. The Red Eye of the Basilisk is open and sees all. Be the Example the Empire needs you to be and the lesson the impudent realms will never forget. My Heart swells with Pride for tomorrow, together we ride.

Asenath, General of the Granite Pillar

Had the invaders been left unchallenged, it is likely that the herbalists, physicks, and apothecaries would have paid a terrible price. It's fortunate then that barely a fortnight after the Autumn Equinox, the Granite Pillar marches into Sybella Cross from neighbouring Casinea.

The first Highborn army does not march alone. They provide vital support to seven and a half thousand independent soldiers, many led by captains who had only recently been attending the autumn summit at Anvil. Mostly drawn from Highguard and Dawn, several bear major enchantments that further enhance their power. As soon as they see the first signs of the Winnowers, they make a stand, drawing up a battle-line between the invading scions and the people of Bastion, telling them “enough!” and “no more!”.

Following the banner of the fallen Thundering Tide, the soldiers of the Empire seek every opportunity to engage the enemy. They meet the zealous madness of oblivion blow for blow, inspired by Courage and Loyalty. The Winnowers are forced to pull back to their fortifications at White Tower, or see them entirely overwhelmed. Forced to deal with the Imperial champions and the soldiers of the Granite Pillar, they are unable to ravage Bastion in the way their compatriots have devastated other parts of the Empire. Their famine-wind is contained, and while it wreaks a terrible ruin in Sybella Cross, it doesn't extend to the hospitals and herb gardens elsewhere.

The Granite Pillar pay a steep price for this virtuous act. Despite the best efforts of the healers that accompany the army, by the time the Winter Solstice draws close, three hundred soldiers have fallen to the scions. They sell their lives dearly; three heralds are destroyed for every Imperial slain. The battlefields of Sybella's Cross are dusted with grey; both dead humans and the broken heralds reduced to fine ash, whipped up by the winds that blow out from the Winnowers.

Two-thirds of the army remains, however, camped around the White Tower. The tethered winds that surround them seem undiminished; some magisters speculate that the tower itself somehow enhances or empowers the turbulence in the air. For now, though, it's contained, and the soldiers of Cold Sun along with it.

The Winnowers' assault has faltered before it has truly begun. A handful of chapters have been assaulted and only a small numbers of Highborn citizens have lost their lives. Any threat to the Grand Project at the White City has been minimized; labourers from across the Empire inspired by the words of the Granite Pillar's general, throw themselves into the task of transforming Bastion into the new Sacred City. Some tell themselves that if Cold Sun opposes it, it is just a sign of the fear that the eternals have for the spiritual Truth of the Way.

Game Information: Bastion

The White Tower still stands; a unique structure similar to a fortification that supports the Winnowers, providing them with an additional 1,000 strength. The army of scions is battered, but does not appear to be in a hurry to depart the territory.

While the foul wind that emanates from the army has ravaged a number of gardens in Sybella, it has done nothing to diminish the need for healing herbs. Quite the contrary; Highborn herbalists are more keen than ever to send their bounty to the war-zone, to support the heroic soldiers fighting the invading heralds. As such the High Herbalist of Sybella sees no reduction in the bounty of herbs they can acquire.

The same cannot unfortunately be said for the Kruidenkenner. The herb-traders of the Sarcophan Delves are loathe to visit an active battlefield, especially one involving unnatural horrors from beyond the mortal world. As such, until the Winnowers are driven from Bastion, the High Herbalist will not be able to purchase herbs imported from the Delves.

Participation: Cold Sun

Any character whose military unit supported an army or fortification (including the beacons of Wintermark) that fought against the scions, or is the general of one of the armies, is welcome to use scar-effect burns to depict the aftermath of that fight in a similar manner to the Navarr in the Participation: Navarr section. It is not possible to request a traumatic wound from taking part in this action; that is still only available to Navarri magicians with at least one rank of Spring lore. This is in no way a requirement - you should use however much phys-repping of injuries as you are comfortable with - nor is it expected that characters who are generals or own military units fight in a campaign.

Heroes (Conjunctions)

Half a dozen opportunities for the heroes of Anvil to use the Sentinel Gate to face the scions of Cold Sun have been identified as the Winter Solstice draws closer. For the moment they are little more than teasers, but more information will be provided before the summit.

The Hammer (Hahnmark)

• A force of scions from the Silence Arc have broken away to threaten New Dunhall
• The Sentinel Gate will open at 17:00 on Saturday to Dun's Hurst, Kronemark
• This skirmish is a combat highly likely encounter
• The Caretaker of New Dunhall is responsible for stopping the heralds

As the Silence Arc is driven out of the hills of Valasmark north into Kronemark a small force moves instead eastwards into Wood Heath. The walls of New Dunhall serve well against bandits or the fell creatures of the deep earth, but they will not stand against the scions of Cold Sun if they make it that far. The town, under the care of the Caretaker of New Dunhall, also serves as the home of the keystone of the Legacy of Vigilance.

Into the Stone (Upwold)

• A breakaway force of the Empty Hands have launched a raid into Upwold, to attack Sutton Stone Quarries
• The Sentinel Gate will open at 17:30 on Saturday to Sammy's Paling, The Heath
• This skirmish is a combat highly likely encounter
• The holder of the Sutton Stone Quarries is responsible for stopping the heralds

Even as the Empty Hands are busy methodically claiming Oakways a small force is dispatched west into Upwold, to the Heath and the white granite drawn from the Sutton Stone Quarries. It is uncertain what use the scions could have for the precious stone, but what is certain is that if they make it to the quarry then they will not only slaughter the workers but also claim the bounty of white granite for some nefarious purpose.

Visitations (Astolat)

• A band of scions from the Empty Hands have crossed the border into Astolat
• The Sentinel Gate will open at 18:00 on Saturday to Coppice of Roses, Groveyard
• This skirmish is a combat highly likely encounter
• The Knight-protector of Autumn is responsible for liaising with a herald of that realm to stop the scions

The peaceful settlement of Brightway is quiet; a place of recovery and rest that rarely sees excitement. Just a week before the Winter Solstice a peculiar looking herald of the Lictors arrives at the town. The herald is polite when explaining that they are here with a request for the Knight-protector of Autumn and a warning from an undisclosed resident of the Autumn realm. A force of scions of the Empty Hands is making their way to the Castle of Thorns. The herald, an odd looking fellow with a greenish hue about them, makes clear that the scions clearly have no chance of destroying the fortification but warns that if even a single channeller or archon manages to get to the garden they will be able to replicate what they have done in Miaren: leaving nothing of the renowned rose garden but a grim reminder.

A Hero in the Night (Kallavesa)

• Scions from the Exigent Span threaten the healers of Hufi's Glen
• The Sentinel Gate will open at 20:00 on Saturday to Road to Masi, Kallavesa Marsh
• This skirmish is a combat highly likely encounter
• The Woundbinder of the Mark is responsible for stopping the heralds

The Exigent Span moves northwards into Skymark, and as it does a small force advances ahead of the main body towards Hufi's Garden. This place of inspiration for the grimnir and healers of Wintermark is a tempting target for the scions and it will be down to the Woundbinder of the Mark to stop them from destroying the garden and slaughtering the herbalists and apothecaries that reside there.

The Bite of the Thorns (Miaren)

• A force of Empty Hands are converging on a certain point at the heart of Miaren, their intention unknown
• The Sentinel Gate will open at 20:30 on Saturday to Golden Meadow, Goldglades
• This skirmish is a combat highly likely encounter
• The Spear of the Seven is responsible stopping whatever it is the heralds are planning

A small force of scions has been seen separate from the rest of the Empty Hands in Oakways. This group is making its way towards the centre of the region in a slow, methodical manner and - according to a small group of thorns that were able to escape - channelling the radiance of Cold Sun into seemingly random trees along their path. It is uncertain what the scions might accomplish if they reach the end of their path, but it is the responsibility of the Spear of the Seven to stop them.

Scouting and Discoveries (Bastion)

• The Winnowers have Oath-heart, the Shield of Loyalty, and the scions plan to turn it somehow to their terrible purpose
• The Sentinel Gate will open at 21:00 on Saturday to Tamar's Stand, Sybella Cross
• This skirmish is a combat highly likely encounter
• The Champion of Loyalty is responsible for recovering the shield (or perhaps destroying it)

Last summit the heroes of Highguard journeyed through the Sentinel Gate in an attempt to stop the scions from claiming the ruined White Tower. Sadly they were not successful and the Winnowers were supported in their campaign this season. But Oath-heart, regalia of the Champion of Loyalty, was lost during the attempt and an unconquered has reported seeing the shield being borne towards the grand archon where it will be reforged into some terrible weapon of Cold Sun.

Further Reading

• Cold Sun
• To the last syllable - Autumn 385YE Wind of Fortune
• Ruin - Summer 385YE Wind of Fortune