NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lylandra" data-source="post: 9686611" data-attributes="member: 6816692">To the icy end of the worldAfter our proclamations in Ber are done, we say goodbye to Bruse and head back to Flint.We leave Xambria Meredith to continue her research on the Leviathan, enter RHC HQ and summon Flying Spark, Margit, and Asrabey. We tell them all about what happened in Ber and mention that there is more work to be done as Heid the philosopher has sent out an urgent call for help. Therefore, we'd take the three of them with us on our journey to Drakr. Luckily, all of them are pretty free to leave their current task and so we  teleport to Trekholm. After arriving there, we then use our wind spell again to fly towards Bhad Rhyzhavdut.Near the city of Trekholm, we spot a large fleet anchored seemingly, just waiting for the order to set sail. As we ask Margit what this might be all about, we learn the unsettling truth. A new interim chancellor has been installed in Drakr's seat of power, sympathetic to the Obscurati, and willfully blind to the rotting danger growing in the north. As if ignorance were a shield.So the task falls, once again, to us. Not just to protect a city, but perhaps the last sane minds in a fractured nation.When we arrive at the city in the north, the first thing we see is... well, nothing, as the city seems to be buried in a blizzard and only a lone spire is visible from above. The blizzard cuts off sharply just above the rooftops, as if obeying some cruel architect. We descend cautiously, and as we near the tower, Auryn's expression darkens."This isn’t weather. It’s... alive."Indeed, as we scan the swirling snow, we detect the weave of consciousness within it just like a hivemind interwoven with a storm.We land atop the tower and are quickly escorted inside. Once warm and walled in, we announce ourselves.“We come at the request of Philosopher Heid,” Gabriel says, “to assist in the defense of this city against Komanov’s cult.”At first, the locals regard us with suspicion. But word spreads fast. So we learn that Komanov, once merely a fringe figure turned deadly terrorist, appeard to be now a real prophet of the apocalypse. She has recruited villages full of zealots, and worse, the Five Horsemen, ancient warlords reborn by necromantic ritual. As if summoned by the mere mention of her name, the tower shakes. A booming explosion rips through the tower's structure and we rush outside to see what's happening.We rush outside to check on the situation and see that something powerful and magical must have broken through the fortress wall. We take a closer look at the impact and see a trail of dark energy, as well as a white-haired dwarf with a gigantic floating cannon in the distance, who retreats shortly afterwards.From the dark trail behind rise ghostly figures, who threaten the city's inhabitants. So we leap into action, helping the panicked civilians push back the invasion. When the streets quiet again, we return to the fortress to meet up with philosopher Heid and learn what in the name of the Gods has happened here. His face is drawn and pale, his voice lined with urgency.“You came,” he says. “I feared none would. It may already be too late.” Heid explains what little he knows. Days ago, Komanov appeared with her Final Army, a force pulled from tiny northern villages, whipped into fervor by promises of salvation through annihilation. She doesn’t lay siege in a traditional sense, he explains. Instead it appears as if she was searchingfor something. What she found was the Eye of the Voice of Rot, an artifact of immense ruin. With it, she performed an unspeakable rite and raised five ancient warlords from the Pre-Demon Age—the fabled Horsemen.“They patrol the outer ring,” Heid says grimly. “No one leaves Bhad Rhyzhavdut now.”The city is sealed in an apocalyptic madness, he explains: inside, a terrified populace; outside, cultists feasting and dancing in the snow, awaiting the world’s end like a party finale.„Just like an apocalyptic hivemind...“, Auryn whispers with dread.We promise Heid that the Horsemen will fall. That this is not Drakr’s last day. That we will not allow the Voice of Rot to feast on a nation’s despair. After all, we cannot allow Drakr to be depopulated, nor can we allow the Voice of Rot to sacrifice so many souls.So, first we sneak invisibly around the huge army camp of the Army of the End and find that they seem to be in a frenzy, indulging in various excesses and euphoric madness as if there were no tomorrow. They toast to “the end,” and the phrase becomes a chant, a shared delirium that moves through the campsite in wave after wave.. We also discover one of the horsemen, a huge undead giant with a yellowish steaming beard, who wields a musical instrument as a weapon. Where his heart should be, a frozen dwarf floats in suspended animation, entombed in his ribcage like a parasite or prisoner.“That’s no decoration,” Gabriel mutters. “That is the warlord. The body is the vessel.”“And perhaps,” Auryn adds, “his prison.”(okay, so an undead giant horseman of the apocalypse who wields a musical instrument for a weapon? That surely sounds metal as hell)A little way from the camp, next to the other warlords, we also find a cave entrance guarded by people dressed in black. Unlike the crazed peasants chained in the blizzard, these people seem to be actual followers of Komanov. And if the peasants are the storm, these guys are its still eye. .So we decide to take a closer look inside the cave.We make our way through several corridors into a cave dominated by a gigantic mass of ice. A massive glacier dominates the chamber, half-swallowed by the cave’s bones. Strange shafts and boreholes have been carved into it, leading deep into the frozen mass like a failed archaeological dig. Within the ice, something moves, something very much  alive. A worm, or something like a worm tunnels in loops through the glacier.We are not alone, as Grandis Komanov is sitting on an ice bench next to one of the warlords, while a servant watches them. She tells the latter about her origins as a dwarf from an impoverished family descended from the great warlords, who had been inspired by Heid's philosophy more by chance than anything else. She worked as a cleric in caravans when one day she was surprised by a blizzard that almost cost all her employers their lives. And somehow, in the process, she ended up eating her employer's tongue. Ultimately, she also encountered the old Titan, the Voice of Rot, her master, who promised to make her a goddess if she served him accordingly and brought about the icy end of the world. She also mentions that the Voice might have already ascended to the Gyre, so this might be why he was missing from his usual hideout in the swamps of Risur.We decide to take advantage of the situation and try to get hold of Komanov...(a short addendum to end this session, as we just started the Komanov part after finishing Ursalina. We didn't get too involved with Drakr, so this won't take as long as the Gidim shenanigans and we'll actually start with our surprise mystery plot halfway into the next session)</blockquote>

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