Blood of Mages

The Rot is spreading.

It spreads as an infection beneath the surface — an insatiable, all consuming befoulment of the earth — until it has grown strong enough that even the light can not fend it away, and so it bursts forth from the depths and into the sun. 

Kaetho looks to Shilen Uul in horror as the great volcano’s obsidian peaks begin to fester. Down the mountainside slides the  insidious darkness, belching and broiling ever closer to the city. With it it brings a feeling of hopelessness so profound it gnaws voraciously at one's very soul. The air grows heavy with fear and despair, so much so that not even the gentle hypnagogic spores of sleep lanterns can quell the intrusion of nightmares.

Many Kaethans begin to flee. Bagio is soon to follow suit.

Guardians Watch is burning.

Night rises in a great plume of smoke over Aslene's sacred city. The first block of masonry to fall tears with it the guardian’s vine clinging to the holy temple, and soon her walls are ablaze as they collapse to rubble. Her streets swell and rupture like veins, and the terrified cries of her people — fighting, running, huddled in doorways — are lost to a cacophony of destruction. Ash and embers fall like snow. Dark silhouettes shiver in a scintillating haze of despair.

An attack on the Aporan temple was not unanticipated. Anti-mage campaigns have been gathering like storm clouds in the north, amassing from every continent and culture across Moren Ezen until their numbers swelled to an inconceivable immensity. And when they descended upon the Watch — their siege stemming from the south, for they had crossed the Kihsh Ocean from Isolon via humble freighters turned warships and ascended in secret over the cliffs cradling the bay below the city — they did so suddenly, as an army unperturbed by the profanation of their action and in such overwhelming numbers they routed what feeble defences rallied to her cause. 

The citizens and asylum seekers looked to the Elders for guidance, but their eyes reflected back only their own uncertainty and fear. Beg Inanke shows us mercy. And if she does not... pray Ükhel comes swiftly.

Apora has fallen. Guardian's Watch is in ruin. And from the dust and debris comes the sound of war drums, beating loud and strong for all of Moren Ezen to hear.

Golden light bursts over the horizon as a new day breaks across the Wriysh Lake. The morning is quiet and still. Fog whirls gently as it rises from the waters' surface.

A lone dinghy — a single pockmark on a rippling canvas painted the colours of the dawn — is drifting leisurely back to shore. She is unmanned. Her mast is gone, snapped above the boom, and the tattered remains of her yard and sail lay flaccidly across her thwarts. Her strakes are cracked on her starboard side — slowly she is taking on water — but she will make it. 

And she does. The wide green eyes of a lemur watch unblinking as she bunts against the reeds crowding a muddy bank just as the sun has risen enough to bake the crimson splashed across her hull to a bister stain. 

The dinghy is the first. Many are to follow...

How does your character react to these latest developments? What do they make of this disease overtaking the landscape? And of Guardian's Watch, are they shocked, saddened, or elated? Are they motivated or discouraged from taking action? Were they present to witness the assault on Apora? If so, did they partake? Did they defend Guardians Watch? Were they perhaps one among the army of anti-mage campaigners? Or did they sit by idly and let her burn?