The Second Saga - The Fields of Asphodel

 

PLAYERS/CHARACTERS

Brenda/ Chief Engineer Vorena Arcadia, Imperium Artificer

Tony: Centurion Quintus Antius, Imperium Paladin

Brent: Jurgan Ostara, Orkan Rogue

Jen: Sigi Thorillsdottir, Dvaergur Fighter

SEGOVIA - LATE SUMMER

Demoted to Engineer, and banished to the distant port-city of Segovia to build sewers, Engineer Vorena Arcadia discovered even more problems. Her workers, it seemed, kept disappearing in the tunnels beneath the city.

 Meanwhile, in Laudanum, Centurion Quintus Antius discovered that the artifact he stole in the Tomb of the Ice Ogre carried with it a curse that inflicts a strange disease on whoever touches it. After two of his servants die and he is himself infected, he travels to Segovia to see Vorena Arcadia, hoping she knows something about the curse.

 Also moving in on Segovia was Sigi Thorillsdottir, a dvaergur envoy of Red Beryl sent to establish connections in Segovia. She was assisted by the Orkan rogue Jurgen Ostara, Heilwig Ostara's ne'er-do-well brother, representing his Master Merchant sister's interests. The two were charged by Evoallah Sweetsong, who has just survived an assassination attempt by the Iron Mongers after she exposed their slave-trading to the Imperium, with finding two of her missing folk in order to secure her help.

 The dvaergur and orkan descended into the sewers, encountering Vorena and Quintus, as well as a strange man with the features of a rat named Virgillius. The creature, a novix, guided them to a hidden chamber where the two missing workers were about to be sacrificed by a cult hoping to open an ancient sarcophagus hidden beneath the city. They arrived in time to prevent the Imperium agent Lucia Nero from completing the ritual and summoning whatever horror lied in the sarcophagus.

 Virgillius convinced them to help him return to his home, deep beneath the earth, in the ruins of the ancient civilizations of the Third Epoch. The plague that has seized Segovia, he says, has but one cure - and it is in the hands of the Novix's vile regent, King Hadesius.

 In Asphodel, the heroes helped Virgillius rescue the Novix hero Arex from the dreadful prison Tartarus. Then, with Arex and the rebellious Novix, they stormed the Palace of Hadesius, where they recovered The Purest Vessel.

 They also discovered that the Black and White Speakers of the Novix were working with a group of Grey Eldren, attempting to retrieve the Purest Vessel themselves in a bid to immunize themselves from the necrophage before unleashing it on the Magisterium. Betrayed, the heroes fought not only the Grey Eldren Warlock Nuare, but his other accomplice, Lucia Nero. In the fight, the Purest Vessel was lost (taken by a group of Grey Eldren), and while Nuare was slain, Nero escaped to return to whoever her true dark masters are.

 The heroes returned to Segovia, intent on bringing the dire news to Laudanum.