Session 48 - Where Heroes Bleed

General Summary

Midday over Tymon, but the light was a lie. Overhead, a cyclone of roiling green storm clouds spun in slow agony, laced with sickly veins of lightning. Below, in the blood-soaked streets, the Ruinlords moved through back alleys like ghosts trying to outrun the inevitable. Ekalim Smallcask led them, whispering directions, one cautious step at a time. Alfie, the cleric of Erastil with his owlbear companion Potato, followed close by. Dunner, warpriest of Gorum, walked as if through water, each heartbeat fainter than the last. Tike Myson, once a juggernaut in the arenas, now stumbled like a man made of brittle sticks. His strength didn’t just leave him—it was stripped away, piece by trembling piece. They passed the corpses first. Twisted bodies, faces locked in the moment the wights found them. No healing magic here. Only silence and a sky that edged closer to darkness. And then, looming ahead through the blood and ruin: the Iron Baptistery. Once a temple built for war itself. Now, a corpse. Its iron pillars lay shattered. The blackstone floor was cracked open like a ribcage split by a giant’s hand. In the center, the Iron Font still bled its stubborn magic—alone, furious, refusing to die. Inside, the Ruinlords found Declan, a bard with nothing but his name and a lot of fear. He claimed to be famous. Tymon had no time for fame anymore. Worse waited by the Font. Two Ebon Triad cultists knelt in dark prayer, carving sigils into the very bones of the temple. Guarded by what should have been impossible—Zalrynn the Stormcaller and Jylen the Inferno, once Silver Flight, now hollowed out and filled with worms. Zalrynn struck first, Lightning-Stepping behind the heroes, her arrival crackling with the scent of burning ozone. Jylen followed with a roar, searing Dunner and Ekalim with his Infernal Optics, flame pouring like a broken dam. Tike surged forward, throwing fists at Jylen, while Dunner, battered and smoking, shielded the rear. Not because he thought he would survive. Because someone had to. Dunner didn’t fall easy. His armor was scorched black from Jylen’s infernal blast, smoke rising from the cracks in the plates, but he stood anyway—shield up, jaw clenched, eyes locked on the thing that used to be Zalrynn. When the storm came—lightning flashing, rotting fists hammering down—Dunner didn’t flinch. He planted his boots in the blood-slick stone, braced for the hit he knew he couldn't survive, and made himself a wall. Ekalim was behind him. The bard, bleeding, gasping, would have died there, one more forgotten corpse in a forgotten temple. But Dunner caught the blow meant for him. Took the full weight of Zalrynn’s rage across his battered chin. And when the second strike came—faster, meaner—he caught that one too. The third crushed him. It drove him to his knees, then to his back, shattering the last stubborn breath from his body. But it bought Ekalim the moment he needed. It bought the Ruinlords a chance to survive. It bought Tymon one more heartbeat of defiance. Dunner died the way he'd lived: Facing the enemy head-on, too stubborn to bow, too proud to run, bleeding steel and fury until there was nothing left to give. Not a prayer. Not a plea. Just a final grunt, a last broken smile, and the sound of a war god welcoming one more soldier home.

Alfie felt them first. A wriggling itch under the skin, sharp and cold, a wrongness that no prayer could soothe. The Kyuss worms burrowed deep, seeking the meat and marrow of him, and with every heartbeat they crept closer to his heart. Magic couldn’t save him. There wasn’t time for spells, or blessings, or hope. There was only the arrow. He snapped it free from the quiver, gritting his teeth hard enough to crack them. The steel tip gleamed for a heartbeat under the sickly green light—and then it sank into his own flesh. One cut. Two. Digging through the meat of his own arm, fighting against the bile clawing up his throat, fighting against the scream that wanted to tear itself loose. The worms writhed beneath the skin, furious. Desperate. They had picked the wrong man. Blood poured hot down his arm. Alfie didn’t stop. He found the first worm and ripped it free, its body twisting and snapping like wet rope. He found the second. Then the third. Each breath grew harder. Each heartbeat louder. But he kept going. There was no triumph when he was done. No roar of victory. Just a bloody arrow, slick with gore, and a man too stubborn to die.

Tike, half-dead, half-eaten, dove into the Iron Font. The basin answered. It purged the worms from his blood, burned the weakness from his limbs. It made him something more than alive. It made him angry. He rose, dripping red, and smashed the cultists, crushed the risen Silver Flight with fists like falling hammers. And then the ground shook.

Voragon Drakon—member of the Ebon Triad's High Council—descended through the broken oculus, a burning titan draped in Dahak’s fire, clutching the Medallion of the Worldbreaker like it was the key to the end of everything. Which, if the rumors were true, it was. At least, it was one part of it. Tike didn’t wait. He hurled himself at Voragon, fists flashing, beating the warpriest against the walls until cracks spread like spiderwebs through the ironstone. But Voragon wasn't done. One did not ascend to the High Council by being less than. He called on his magical discipline and cast a spell, coating his hand in necrotic energy before driving it into Tike's chest. Everything tore away. The instant Voragon’s magic hit him—cold, wrong, hollowing him from the inside out—he knew. The world narrowed into one sharp, perfect moment: breath ragged in his throat, worms writhing beneath his skin, his heart hammering like a war drum that would soon fall silent. But Tike wasn’t the kind of man to wait for death. He threw himself forward, every tendon and bone screaming, every drop of strength burning like dry tinder. His fists, battered and bloody, became hammers. Each punch slammed into Voragon’s armored chest, fueled not by rage, not by fear—by defiance. Tike hit him again. And again. And again. Voragon staggered. Another blow. Another break. The dragon-priest’s body gave way, splitting open under the final assault. Voragon collapsed against the blackened wall, sliding down in a smear of blood and fire, still smiling. Still laughing. With shaking hands, Voragon lifted the Medallion of the Worldbreaker—his final curse. His final triumph. He crushed it between his fingers. The Medallion of the Worldbreaker shattered, but the cataclysm it promised never fully arrived. The explosion ignited in a violent surge of fire and force, a scream of ancient fury meant to erase everything in its path—but something, whether the lingering power of the Iron Font, the resistance of the Ruinlords, or the final breath of Dunner's blessing, clamped down on the blast. The eruption collapsed inward, its strength muted, the devastation contained. Heat rolled through the baptistery like a living thing, but the stone walls held. The Iron Font endured. The city of Tymon, though scarred and crumbling, refused to fall. Voragon’s final weapon failed him. Almost. Declan dove for cover, tumbling through dust and fire. Alfie, Potato, and Tike stood firm, shielded by some last desperate flicker of magic—but for Tike it wasn’t enough. The blast hit like the fist of a dying god. The shield around Tike cracked, buckled, and finally shattered. The fire rolled over him, through him, stealing the last ounce of life he’d fought so hard to keep. He fell without a sound. No scream. No curse. Only the silence a warrior earns when he’s given every last piece of himself and asks for nothing in return. Tike Myson died standing. Tike Myson died fighting. For a heartbeat, the world held its breath. Then Alfie moved. There was no time to think. No time to pray. Only the memory of a spell—a desperate prayer carved into magic—the last thread between life and whatever comes after. Alfie knelt beside Tike’s corpse, pressing bloody hands to his chest. He called on Erastil, on life, on hope, on anything that still listened to this crumbling city. The words spilled out of him, not polished or perfect, but real. Raw. Breath of Life flared to life between Alfie's palms. The magic punched down through Tike's battered flesh, found the guttering ember buried somewhere deep inside. Found it—and fanned it. Not into a blaze. Not into a roar. But into a stubborn, shuddering gasp. Tike’s body jerked once, twice, a ragged breath tearing itself free of his ruined lungs. His fingers twitched, curling instinctively into fists. The fists of a man who wasn't finished yet. Alfie didn’t smile. Didn’t weep. He just stayed there, breathing with him, refusing to let him slip away again. Tike Myson lived. Bloodied. Burned. Hollowed-out and half-dead—but alive. Alive because a friend refused to let him go. Because Tymon wasn’t done with its champions yet. Quickly they gathered Dunner’s body. Proof of the Ebon Triad’s treachery. Proof that heroes still walked the ruins of Tymon. Together, they fled to the docks, slipping aboard Captain Joseph Lorune’s ship alongside Vaz’non and Cal, the city behind them burning, the storm still boiling above. The Ruinlords were not defeated. Not yet.

Rewards Granted

From the Iron Baptistery:

+2 Unholy Flaming Greatsword
+3 Breastplate
Cloak of Resistance +3
Ring of Fire Resistance (Major)
Potion of Cure Serious Wounds (1) (the second was used)
Remains of the Amulet of the Worldbreaker (Declan picked it up)
Apostolic Scroll in a mithral case covered in worm iconography
Two masterwork scythes
The skull of Voragon Drakon (human skull with a hybrid draconic face)
Two holy symbols of the Ebon Triad

XP

Each character earned 12,000 XP for this session.
LEVEL TEN
Current total: 80,700/105,000 XP.

Missions/Quests Completed

The destruction of the Amulet of the Worldbreaker and the death of Voragon Drakon shatter the Ebon Triad’s grand design. Without the Amulet—the Heart of the Worldbreaker—the Mantle of the Overgod cannot be completed, and Malgorath’s ascension grinds to a halt. Voragon’s death, once meant to serve as the final sacrifice, leaves the Triad leaderless, demoralized, and splintered. The dream of uniting domination, secrecy, and destruction into a single divine force collapses into ashes. Now, the surviving cultists face a broken prophecy, a faith in freefall, and the grim truth that their greatest weapon against the gods is lost forever.

Campaign

Age of Worms

Protagonists