The Fall of Drakkenheim

The city fell in fire. What remains hungers.

Fifteen years ago, a falling star shattered the capital of Westemär.
The impact split towers, poisoned the air, and birthed strange crystalline growths known as delerium.

Now the ruins lie beneath a violet haze.

Monsters prowl where nobles once walked.
Factions maneuver in the shadows.
Faith flickers.
Steel dulls.
Ambition sharpens.

And six souls have stepped into the wreckage.

The Company

The Chronicle

Part One — The Outer City

The party is small, the city is vast, and the walls are still closed. Patrons offer coin and trust. Factions take measure. Survival is the work; reputation is the wage.

Part One ends when the Misfits cross the walls.

Act I — Arrival

Act II — Into the Ruins

The party's first major delve beneath the city revealed an organized ratling presence, corrupted by delerium and guided by strange whispers from below.

A Hooded Lantern lieutenant was rescued.
A delerium specimen was secured.
A lost knight of a forgotten order was recognized.
Something in the dark took notice — and spoke.

Act III — Earning the Walls

The party returned to Emberwood not to rest, but to be measured.

Patrons made offers.
Faiths were quietly tested.
A reclusive hedge mage opened his door because the right word was spoken.
A sister's name surfaced in a four-year-old ledger.
A great-aunt's face stared down from a wall in a house no one in the party had ever entered.

The Misfits made their choices.

Not all of them pleased the people who had been counting on them.

The World Beyond the Fire

Emberwood Village

A frontier town reborn on trade, risk, and rumor.

The Ruined City

Drakkenheim — broken, dangerous, alive with unnatural magic.

Powers in Motion

Each faction claims a different answer to the question of delerium.

None agree.

Faith and History

Present Tensions

The Knights of the Silver Order have formally introduced themselves. Drakzen has been recognized as the last of the Order of Light. An invitation to Camp Dawn stands open — and a messenger from Sergeant Ophelia Reed has arrived in Emberwood to make the matter time-sensitive.
Something the Silver Order calls the Lord of the Feast prowls the cathedral district.
The Chapel of Saint Brenna has surfaced as the next site of consequence. Rumor has it that this is the site that holds a holy relic, the Sceptre of Saint Vitruvio.
The Hooded Lanterns consider the party trusted operators. That trust has not yet been tested by the report the party owes their captain.
The party has entered into an arrangement with Oscar Yoren, an expelled Amethyst Academy researcher with a decade of unauthorized work behind him, in exchange for a formula that protects against the Haze. Delivering on it requires venturing into Queen's Park — a region currently far beyond the party's strength.
The Amethyst Academy has cooled. A second contract was not fulfilled. River has given the party thirty days to make good on their original obligation.
Tough Luck's sister Hazel has been confirmed in a four-year-old quartermaster's log. She signed into the Drakkenheim Garrison. She did not sign out.
A face on a wall at Reed Manor stares back with Augustine's bloodline in its eyes. He has not pursued the claim. He has not forgotten it.
Old Zoya has placed a question in Rustar's hands that the Sacred Flame has yet to answer.
Six has begun to recognize words written by his own hand that he does not remember writing.
Blackjack Mel is still owed an answer about Six.
A duty-desk argument among the Lanterns mentioned the crater. It moved last spring. The captain doesn't send people there anymore.