SYNOPSIS

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unanun

Child is born, with a heart of gold
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I'm wary of magic with lots of rules.

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Lady Ironblood, high alchemist of Viridos, is sent by the Jade Prophet to investigate a Monolith uncovered in the forest. This artifact has killed thirteen innocents and corrupted the ecosystem around it. She requisitions a naval ship and enlists the help of various healers and forest guardians. They set sail into the Prosperos Sea and retrieve the Monolith after a perilous voyage.

Meanwhile, Ash of the Heartwood, an undertaker devoted to the forest, recovers the corpses of the thirteen innocents slain by the Monolith. He realizes they are in a state of half-life, their souls corrupted by a terrifying darkness. After laying them to rest, Ash makes haste to Edelon to share his findings with the Jade Prophet.
With the Monolith taken aboard the ship, the followers of Lady Ironblood have only just set sail when they are ambushed by pirates. Their defense is hindered by sabotage and treachery from within. It seems the pirates have been planning this for a long time. To spare further bloodshed, Lady Ironblood surrenders the Monolith to the pirate captain. But little do the pirates know that Ironblood has opened her soul to the dark spirit of the Monolith and taken its power into herself.

Back in Viridos, Ash shares his findings with the Jade Prophet and suffers a vision of Lady Ironblood's actions. He alone knows what she has done. But at that moment tragedy strikes. The Avian city, a floating settlement high above the forest canopy, begins to lose altitude and break apart. It is the doing of Kaustir. Someone has paid a thief to steal the geomantic stone that keeps the city aloft, and now it is falling. The only hope lies with the Jade Prophet Kairos... and perhaps with Aerie, an Avian outcast who knows more about the city than she has let on.
The government are left reeling when they discover that the Jade Prophet has vanished. While the elders argue on how to deal with the Aviary crisis, an old general, Tattersal, returns to make his bid for leadership. He puts his plans in motion, while below the city Ironblood and the undertaker Ash venture into a prison to find a dangerous creature who can possibly remove the Monolith Curse.

Elsewhere, two avians make separate plans to save the Aviary. The noble's son Carus seeks the thief who removed the city's navigation stone, but is murdered when his investigation leads to a network of deadly Kaustiran agents. And in the aviary itself, the Valkyrie Faina gathers allies to assist Aerie, an inventor's daughter who carries temporary devices that will keep the city afloat. Together they divert the falling Aviary from collision with Hosia, and stabilize its trajectory over the northern forest.

[Summaries above written by @Asmodeus ]

Lady Ironblood is put on trial for entering the Shartan, Viridos' holy prison, without due process. She does so to acquire the services of Amaltas, a dark unicorn who was once tasked with purifying the poisoned jungles. Before the trial, deals are struck between parties, and a disturbance allows Amaltas to escape.

Meanwhile, a smuggling ring in Hosia is established so that the merchants may continue acquiring their livelihood now that Tattersal has closed the ports.
Amaltas, freed from his bonds, begins to gather the horses and horse-kin of the land in attacks against the merchants. In southern Viridos he finds a parasite attached to the body of Shardis’ deceased father, and he plans to use its power.

Naya and Ash seek out more information in secret after the mysterious events of Ironblood’s trial. They find the librarian Chytrhea, who reveals that a symbol they found is the mark of Moirgut, the aux-eater. However, before they can discuss more, the group is attacked by a Corrupted Kindly one. They flee, and are saved by Ironblood, who had used the powers of the Grievous to break out of prison.

Tamaa and Nassad seek aid from Malachi and Ayanne to sneak past the border and be escorted through Viridos for a business deal. On the way they are attacked by Amaltas, and Tamaa is slain. The horse lord plans to use the remaining three to test out the powers of the parasite, but they manage to escape in time and flee, chased by the wounded Amaltas.

Medwick and his group are forced to stop in Hosia on their way south and are trapped by Teadoir. They use a deed for Dorgard steel in their possession to trade for their lives. They continue south and find Libras in the waters of the Prosperous, which concludes their quest. While they sleep, Libras, the fabled Allsource, combines Aerie and Caoimhe into a single being.

In exchange for getting to use her secret basement for a smuggler’s meeting, Zovalias shows Shekar a prism door which acts as a portal to Riven. Various merchants from Hosia gather in secret to plot their smuggling, but are interrupted briefly by a representative from Teadoir. Belphebe hands over maps of the Naval blockade stolen for her by the thief Chelena, and Shekar questions Zovalias’ motives. Teadoir uses the deed for Dorgard steel he received from Medwick to bribe Tattersal into allowing the smugglers’ ships past the blockade. The first smuggler’s ship departs the harbor.
Tattersal fights a multi-front war. At home, he has to deal with the growing corruption of the Cinnabar Clad, who are poisoning the forest again under the direction of the aux-eaters, an ancient malefic form apparently from the Deadlands, who have been keeping the Jade Prophet from directing Viridos. Hosia grows frustrated with attacks on their merchants, and begin to take matters into their own hands, smuggling and growing more and more distant from the inland theocracy. Across the Sea, Tattersal senses that the Mad Nocturne from the west is about to make his move. He sends Mikael, a forest guide, to retrieve an ancient artifact from the Shartan, that he placed there many decades ago for safe keeping ...
Tattersal is a wily fighter. Drawing on old favours and old friends, he dips into many separate plans. Unfortunately, the questors in the labyrinth prison will succumb to its wiles, and the clueless kin he sent to the Riven tree are lost. When negotiations with the Old Nocturne fail, Tattersal turns to ancient rites not seen since the Cataclysm - he sings to the giants slumbering in the trees and they awaken, moving forward to completely block out the Viridos coastline, but not before the entire city of Hosia packs up and moves onto ships, a fruition of a plan held by K'Larr and Zolvalias. Viridos slips into silence, and turns inward.
All hope is not quite lost, as a band of herbologists, fungolists, and dendrologists make their way to the top of the Riven tree. Up there a microcosmic community of spider-kin dwell, who record the motions of stars as dew on their webs that carpet the canopy. There, stories of the moirgut dwell, creatures from the Deadlands that awaken in response to maturing races and magic.

Perhaps a virus left behind by a dying God, Modakra and Vydus discover that the moirgut have a rich, shared history with the inhabitants of Sunne, a connection with their aux that they would gladly share if given the chance. But by speaking choice divine words, the moirgut are precipitated, beyond their control, into killable forms.

As they battle the infection on the Riven tree, an old spider-soothsayer sends them into dreamtime, where they find Kairos drowning in a tar pit in the Deadlands.
 
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Medwick, a wizard on a quest for one of the divine weapons, sends a message to the three cities of Pegulis. He warns of a rival spellcaster, ancient and terrible, who has crossed his path in the search for the Weapon. This monster is known as the Ghoul Sage - a lord of golems, dragons and ice magic who seeks to destroy the Blue Nation.

Word reaches Captain Ilsa of the Aldus Watch. She organizes an expedition and sets out to carry the warning to the capital. But her party is intercepted by one of the Ghoul Sage's ice golems. In the fighting, an avalanche decimates her caravan and Ilsa is stranded underground with a handful of survivors.

With the capital cut off from the other cities, the Northern Archon is ill-prepared for the Ghoul Sage's next attack. The villain sends a magical servant into the heart of the capital and steals a clutch of dragon eggs from the vaults of the city.
Recovering from the Ghoul Sage's attack, the Northern Archon orders General Coul to set out and find Medwick's group. She fears the wizard may be corrupted or may know more about the Ghoul Sage than he is letting on. Coul begins preparations for the journey.

To the west, Captain Ilsa struggles to survive with her stranded caravan. The survivors move through an ancient cave system, and at its centre locate a mysterious device known as the Utandis Cradle. It appears to be a coffin of some kind, in which a parasite has incubated. The entity attacks Captain Ilsa's group and is narrowly defeated. Further investigation of its lair reveals that the coffin was one of two devices, the second belonging to the Ghoul Sage and facilitating his immortal lifespan.
As survivors of the Ghoul Sage attacks finally reach Barvelle, a council of High Sages and regional governors is convened. Their arguments end with a terrifying appearance by the Ghoul Sage himself, who threatens the nation with the loss of its thermic gems should they continue to meddle in his affairs.

Meanwhile, the isolated city of Tavark is invaded by raiders from the northern ocean. Leading them is Eimund Rath, a former hero of the city believed dead at sea, who returns bearing an ancient and powerful corruption. He tightens his hold on the city and tries to tame a dragon that is imprisoned there. But the intervention of a few heroic hostages leaves his dragon dead and the walls breached. Eimund now prepares to hold the city through force.

[Summaries above written by @Asmodeus ]

The Aviary's fall to Sunne, and the disappearance of the Alate, trigger a massive arcane storm that sweeps eastward through Pegulis over many days. Aldus is hit the hardest, and the structures in the city seem to respond to energies swirling above. The Ghoul Sage moves through Aldus, putting the city back to sleep.

In Tavark, the defense force finally manages to recapture the city from Eimund. The storm arrives just in time, and just weak enough, to dampen the kegs of whale fat he has placed around the city as a dead man's switch. As the city recovers from Suvius' unholy ministrations, the residents discover to their horror that the squid parasites have replaced the children's aux. A deep evil begins to reveal itself in Sunne.
Pegulis reels from the passing of the arcane storm. As it loses intensity, passing over the frozen white from west to east, Aldus devastates itself by calling down pillars of incinerating fire from the sky. Barvelle sparks and injures its inhabitants, who set off chasing old stories of Divine Weapons. In Tavark, a group of warriors sets out to track down the source of Eimund's madness. They find that the evil appears to have spawned from a giant skeleton-cum-island, an eldritch remnant of creatures that walked Sunne before the Cataclysm. Even its remnants are enough to affect their aux, attacking the one thing that everyone assumed to be safe from all harm and interference.

Aldus hurries to quiet the city. Dane, an Aldus Watch recruit, is bestowed powers by the Ghoul Sage to quiet the giant metal habitat down. He finds out that Aldus is in fact a Divine Weapon, a tool leftover from Aldus Starspeaker. But who was trying to awaken such an unstable tool? It appears to be Azareth, who has driven the town mad and even convinced them to execute a child. Dane is unable to complete the job, his ego crushed under the city's sentience, and he is taken away, the key to the city extracted from his heart.
Medwick returns home with the Libras sphere - the mythical alchemical allsource. He suffers from a crisis of identity as a scholar. But he does not have time to dwell too much on it, as the Archon is attacked by a blossoming cult inside her own secret city. Caoimhe has hatched her dragon, and its followers, its dung and carrion beetles the khasidim are intent on revenge, moving to take apart Barvelle from the inside with their generational, oral knowledge of civilization and logistics. In the North West, a band of Pegulis' most famed rebuild broken Tavark and seek to go even further into the dark cold to find a divine weapon .. and the truth to Sunne. Captain Ilsa returns to Aldus to find it rotting from the inside. She alone must undo the madness that Azareth has wrought on the entire city.
Eydis spots the dustclouds and feels the tremors of Kaustir's million man army before she hears it. Rushing back home, she informs the General Assembly of the imminent danger. A delegation is hastily assembled and dispatched. Meanwhile, Captain Ilsa returns to find the neglected Aldus in a state of psycho-magic turmoil - Azareth's subtle madness has finally borne fruit, and on a preconceived stroke of cunning, he steals the keys to Aldus, which is a Divine Weapon. Meanwhile, the Ghoul Sage's continuing interference in Barvelle matters completely upsets a young clocksmith Ophanim, who after being deceived by the Inner Sages decides to find out the truth of the Blue Nation, buried somewhere deep inside the mountains.
Feeling slighted by everyone and everything, Ophanim endeavors to descend deep into the Barvelle mountains, following his unease deeper into the mountain to unearth the secrets behind kept from him. He is joined by a very grumpy Medwick, and travelers Amara and shit-cleaner Ethelwen and shit-talker Artorious. They quickly become lost and wander the caverns and tunnels, counting away their breaths into death overtakes them. Whether it be from dehydration or the claustrophobic walls, they chance upon a deeper laughter, and follow it.

The laughter appears to be coming from the Ghoul Sage, who has been trapped and nullified by something-or-other arcane. It appears the traitorous merchant K'Larr has been keeping himself busy. On top of forming a floating city of iron ships, he has amassed more knowledge from the Cataclysm, and seeks to immobilize the Ghoul Sage so that he can establish a new hegemony with Divine Weapons.

At the Pegulis-Kaustir border, a lone officer does his best to prepare the first line of defense against an incoming invasion.
 
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With the passing of Kaustir's first general, Czar Lukesh orders a week of gladiatorial games. He intends to choose a new general from amongst the common people. The games culminate in the election of Amalia, a naive and weak-willed healer who could barely lift a weapon. The choice of general astounds and infuriates the nation, but the Czar is adamant in his decision.

Meanwhile, a conspiracy is afoot. The master merchant and manipulator, K'Larr, has come into possession of a stone tablet that marks the resting place of a divine weapon. He orders a forgery be made and sent to the Czar, while keeping the real one for himself. He is joined in this heresy by the mayor of Avarath and other public and underworld personalities.
The Czar sends Amalia on her first mission as general, to investigate the stone tablet that has been gifted to him. The fake tablet takes the expedition to Dorgrad, where a secret cult is operating in service to a hive of giant insects. The trap costs many lives, and unveils a religious heresy infecting the Red Nation. But by this time, the traitor K'Larr has already fled across the Prosperos Sea, and his link to the mysterious Queen of the Insect Hive remains a mystery.

Meanwhile, the Czar returns to the capital of Zirako, where rumours abound of a Viridosi agent poisoning the water springs. But this is not the only espionage underway. Czar Lukesh seems to know, before word reaches him, of the disaster afflicting the Avian City on the other side of the world. It is clear that he has caused that very calamity in order to further his ends. Yet as a series of terrorist acts rock the city of Avarath, the problems within his nation are far from over.
With the insect cult, the Draken rebellion and the plots of the merchant K'Larr discovered, the Czar orders Lut Sar (the officer who brought the fake tablet to his attention) to redeem himself as High Inquisitor of a national witch hunt. The Red Purge begins, and officials in all three cities are brought under scrutiny by Lut Sar. His investigations lead back to Avarath, where K'Larr's associates are apprehended.

Meanwhile, Genera Amalia and her allies lend their aid to putting down the draken rebellion. But they are themselves arrested when the merchant guilds suspect that K'Jol, the famous war-hero who serves Amalia, is in fact the rebellion's leader. A showdown ensues at the mayor's mansion as a nocturne death squad targets K'Jol. Amalia's allies fight back and clear their names in a bloody struggle. K'Larr is identified as the true enemy of the nation, and the heroes are left to tend their wounds.

[Summaries above written by @Asmodeus ]

The Czar calls the Nocturne dynasties to Zirako for a decadent blood soiree, where old ties are forged anew and new alliances made. He appears to have secured certain deals with the Viridos and Pegulis nocturne houses, the Solmyr and the Vonsoon. He ends the Soiree by smoothing over the wrinkles in Kaustir before he can begin his next campaign in earnest.
1st General Amalia is sent to rid the shipping lines between Dorgrad and Zirako of the Turbatus Cult. Inside the active lava pits, they find the nest of the Mother Queen, whose children appear to be blending iron and insect carapace together. The expedition appears to be a testing ground for the Czar's artillery, who are able to dispatch the insects with ease. Her party makes it way into the caverns, and discovers a Divine Weapon that is converting the metals into form that can merge with life. The General touches the Divine Weapon and goes mad. The rest of her party is apprehended by Ipari guards or presumed dead to cannon fire. It turns out that Lut Sar was controlling the movements of the Mother Queen, using it as a trial for Amalia and as a way to test unconventional weapons of war. Strange things are about to happen in Kaustir.
The Czar's intentions are clear: he will begin his conquest of Sunne. The entire nation of Kaustir uproots itself from the desert, and marches north into more verdant lanes. Amalia's group and her upbringing have been scattered far and wide; her band has been dispersed, and Lut Sar, her guardian in the shadows, has been appointed head of the secret police to keep order for the coming conflict.
The Czar bucks all all geopolitics, and uproots his entire nation. Countless lives and livelihoods in Avarath are thrown into complete disarray. His nation-cum-warband marches from the desert sands and takes over the Chersonese in a blink of the eye. The other two nations send their delegations ... but against a nearly infinite wave of soldiers, their demands are mewling and pitiful. Tattersal presents his tribute, including a young Nocturne girl for the Czar, and makes his way back home, and Pegulis leaves some of their soldiers in the camp ... undeclared.
Czar Lukesh is poisoned. The Nocturne courtesan from Viridos has poisoned blood, and it withers away the Burning Sun. Lut-Sar is forced to take his place, using a hidden advent to completely assume the appearance of the dying Czar. The former logistics-turned-spymaster-turned Czar now must play two roles to prevent his empire from disintegrating, although he is unknowing of the Lukesh's motivations, designs, or purpose.

He finds a conveniently placed cause for war when the Pegulis delegation crumbles, exposing their mission as saboteurs and spies. Using this fresh information, he spurs his soldiers into a frenzy and drives them north into Pegulis.

On the way, they are confronted with the Black City, which lays along the easiest path to Peguligs. However, K'Larr's merchants have filled the entire city with a virulent disease that halts their progress. Wasting no time, the Lut-Lukesh calls up the engineering group's hidden creations, windfishes, large blimps fueled by the stolen Alate from the Avian City. They rain oil down upon the city and torch it, and the rest of Sunne glimpses the feverish pace at which Kaustir has been developing.
 
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