In the times after Bahamut defeated the primordial Nihil, all was (for a time) growth and birth, rebirth and prosperity. The planes danced their staid waltz throughout spacetime peacefully, unhindered by any who would undo all. Life throughout the multiverse was, overall, pretty darn good. Death rates were way down, life expectancy was way up, and interest rates were, on the whole, rather fair and equitable.
But Nihil was far from destroyed. Vestiges of primordial intelligences can be nurtured and grown back into their formidable former power, and the creature Pandora did that with Nihil; which now called itself Annihilation. While the nature of the servant, Pandora, has never been fully explored, the consequences of those actions are now come to light, and will here be shared.
Annihilation consumed everything within the Chaotic Plane of Dragons. Everything. Every molecule, every atom, every mote of light, gone, and still it hungered. And yet, it was smart enough to know that Bahamut would come for it again. That the Platinum Dragon would unmake Nihil, this time, in the same way Nihil himself consumes matter, was a fact not lost upon the roiling evil intelligence behind the primordial. Nihil could not let this be. It began to make plans, and caused to be a very special box. One that could shield it from even Bahamut's prying eyes. The problem was, that it was as shielded from the outside of the box as the outside of the box was shielded from it, and so it grew to depend upon it's servants.
Pandora being one, and another being
Vekheteshaynaralax-Shayna. It had easily drawn the red dragoness into its webs of lies and deceipt with promises and teases of great knowledge and power...power enough, even, to finally bring her headstrong husband
Vekhettebærdolax-Bayard, and rebellious son
Vekhetstevyparalax-Stevie, to heel.
This led to the events of
Shayna's Tantrum, and
Shayna's Rift, and to the appearance of the mighty dragon
Travelers who came here, to this place, to oppose her.
The intital battle took place in the sky over
Taisha, and its fury formed the
Glaine Cuan. Once Shayna and Annihilation had been defeated, the dragon travelers held each other tight, and fell to
Tellus, forming a crater in the center of the still molten glass of the Glaine Cuan.
We know now that the
Singers found the wounded creatures near death and nursed them slowly back to health, an act that solidified the dragon travellers' commitment to protect this world from Shayna and Annihilation. For a time, the Travellers tried to provide wisdom and help to the peoples of Tellus. But over the course of a few thousand years they all faded from view, and then from memory. Shortly after that (only a couple of thousand years, give or take) was the
Impact and all of the toils and struggles it brought with it. Research strongly suggests the presence of these dragon travellers during these times, and indeed were it not for them, life on the planet may not have survived. This time, however, they did it by disguising themselves as one of the humans, or dwarves, or elves...anyone who needed assistance. We know now, for instance, that it was the traveller
Vekhetstevyparalax-Stevie that rescued the
Tabaxi. That
Vakshetnessaralax-Nyssa took the elves under her wing, and that
Vekhetkitarminparalax-Kitt saved most of the northern tribes of humans.
Vekhetsinyrmalax-Nermil expended almost all of his own personal reserve of power to shield the entire continent that would come to be known as
The City of the Lights.
Vekhetmiradonalax-Myra saved the
Singers and
Humans living in
Taisha from almost certain destruction.
Vekhettebærdolax-Bayard took it upon his mighty shoulders to delay the impact of the second sun as it hurtled out of space and began to burn bright in our atmosphere. He bought the rest of them as much time as he could, but even the god of Time can only do so much linearly, and in the end millions died that day. Nermil never forgave himself for not saving more, for not being able to do more, and he faded away to dig himself a lair under the
The City of the Lights. The destruction and death also deeply effected Stevie, who took it upon himself to form a vast surreptitious intelligence network so they could be armed with knowledge. Kitt trained soldiers to protect their homelands; Myra (of course) taught the healing arts. And Bayard began operating as a pirate named Icra O'Phoe, in time opening a bar he called the
The Gilded Goose, and changing his name to Igle Icraophoe.
Throughout all this time, the cosmos spun, and wove together all the strands of the multiverse into an ever greater tapestry. And, when suddenly a rip would appear in that tapestry, certain individuals would come to light who had the power to affect change to the pattern directly, with their actions. Called the
Weavewalkers, the travellers became very interested in them, Bayard opining that they would be the salvation of this prime Material Plane in some way. And, so it seems to be, as the events swirling around the Weavewalkers drew in every power from all corners of the multiverse.
One day it came to be known that Shayna had usurped the lower Planes, and that the great Asmodeus was a bartender, now, in
Stilton Head. This was troubling to those who knew of Shayna and her treachery, and who knew she was still in possession of
Pandora's Box, with the Primordial Annihilation hiding away from Bahamut inside of it, and they sought out Bayard for answers. They were informed that Shayna had made a deal with Asmodeus, and that she was using his ne'erending supply of souls to rebuild her body, broken from her fight with the Travellers eons ago. Broken so badly she had been little more than a malevolent spirit. Yet somehow, she discovered Asmodeus' true name, and used it to force a deal with the devil. Thus, she began to heal quickly, regaining power as her body regenerates using the innate power of the souls of the dead.
For decades she has been gleaning power among the mortals on
this Prime Material Plane, in particular. As the place of her 'fall', she sees it as the place of her greatest vengeance; and she sees the seat of Bayard's power, his lair, as her biggest strategic target. This lies below the
Old Keep in
Craysilt.
On 26 Fedus 5427, armies from hell began to gather so that they could converge on Craysilt from the four cardinal directions. At the same time, three disparate groups of people converged in a few seemingly random ways. For one, two of them were in Craysilt fighting invading Kobolds. Led by zombie
V'peef Sujo, who had been enlarged to a gargantuan size, the dragon rats came into the city howling and lighting fires. The kobold armies were driven back, but not before much of the lower city had been ransacked.
As 27 Fedus dawned, the armies of hell finished gathering to begin their overland march, with Arch-devils leading the boiling masses of imps and spined devils from clouds above. The would arrive the next morning. Shayna even has the devils playing music on horns and drums; her own theme music, if you will. But those were not her only plans. She had her kobolds attack once more, but this time it was more of a feighnting manouver. For, just after noon, ballistic missiles began to rain down on Craysilt.
Craysilt's gathered defenses were heroic, and their griffon cavalry destroyed many of the incoming bombs while they were still in the air. In a rainbow colored flash of power, the Travelers destroyed dozens more. But, twelve made it through; just in time for them to eject huge, barrell-shaped cannisters that had been housed in the missiles' bellies. Four of
those were destroyed by various party members and members of the Craysilt military as the barrel shaped troop carriers deployed parachutes and floated down softly as the warhead wreaked havoc upon the city. By now, a full two thirds of the city had been destroyed.
Exactly as Shayna had hoped.
The cannisters touched down, and opened up to reveal invasion parties of green skinned, tusked orcs, who so far had not been seen in Tellus since they were
from the moon! Having outgrown their resources on Tellus' smaller moon, Luna, these orcs decided that invading just at that moment would be perfect timing. They came to that conclusion because Shayna coerced and massaged that conclusion into every orc she could find. And in the ensuing chaos, Shayna's assassins began stalking Craysilt, slipping thrugh its beleaguered streets like malevolent shadows.
The head of the shadows,
Corrine Cotnor, was in her element. She was tearing apart a party of adventurers who just couldn't find the knack of seeing her, and enjoying herself thoroughly, when suddenly all of her assassins fell to the ground, finally obliging their responsibilities to Death.
Their souls screamed the whole way to Shayna.
Corrine had to flee, to her mistress, for the necrotic energy holding her together to keep her alive. She took up residence with an Archon of Shayna, but almost immediately found herself up against the same people, with much of her former power stripped away. You see, another group of Weavewalkers destroyed her tower, and the headquarters of
Ravelous Nil, utterly. One of those adventurers, an amnesiac skeleton named
Xander Grimm, turned out to be the undead skeleton of
Good King Justinian, who was murdered by his mother Corrine centuries ago. He faded away as their magic carpet-the one that they stole from the tower-touched down. His robes falling flat, and his essence flying to paradise with a sigh.
Also on the 27th day of Fedus, Weavewalkers
Cryptic and
Sarathina Jaelryn Nar used a little known portal to hell to get there and perform an important function; they were to interrupt a ceremony being held at the top of Mephistopholes' glacier palace. They were triumphant somehow, and stopped an army of
Gwythaints from flying through a portal and attacking Craysilt. And they stopped an arch devil from following them through it.
It also allowed weavewalkers
Cora Thornleaf, Raquel Pliny,
Kat'chka , and
Ashryn Nightwind, with a militia wizard named Altair, to try to mitigate or deter the armies to the North entirely. Of course, this allowed the Fateweavers from Kowloon to decimate the armies from the west using a lighthouse lens as a radiant energy concentrator; and when the arch devil leading them went down, the rest fled back to their own plane of existence.
Shayna's armies not working out the way she planned, on Fedus 28th she decided to try a different tack and had her archons attack the weavewalkers directly, thinking that if she could remove them from the battlefield, it would be hers. The archons began to fall like dominoes; and then, Shayna broke the rules yet again, using her own power to directly influence results. This time, the travellers (rememeber the travellers?) were waiting for it.
Vekhetstevyparalax-Stevie joined
Cryptic,
Sarathina Jaelryn Nar, and their new friend Galvar as they did battle with an archon. This archon had been armed with
Pandora's Box, and as tendrils of nothingness began to seep out of it like sentient fog, Galvar was annhilated utterly. It was then that Stevie went ballistic, literally, and destroyed the box with a "whoop!" while he was simultaneously flipping it off. The resulting mushroom cloud nearly killed our heroes.
But Stevie was gone.
Cora Thornleaf's
Vekhet Sphere grew colorless, and fell from the air.
Then,
Vekhetmiradonalax-Myra denied the arch-devil Totivilius the wife he had been promised by Shayna, and denied him the chance to try again by destroying him utterly, not just returning him to hell. She, herself, perished to do so. Shayna's archivist and second in command was destroyed. Shayna had promised much to Totivilius.
And another
Vekhet Sphere,
Ashryn Nightwind's, turned colorless. But, she didn't know it because...
...Ashryn was in Avernus, stuck in a cage, in an anti-magic field, and had thrown her orb out of the cage she was imprisoned in hoping it would do...something. It did not. It seems Shayna had decided keeping them out of the way would be easier than killing the Weavewalkers, and had archduke Zariel imprison them.
This would keep the Weavewalkers from joining in the fight at Craysilt, when she would appear and claim her glorious victory. She had it all planned out! There would be trumpets, and an angelic choir, and banners lining the road to the Old Keep. But, of course, Shayna hadn't planned on Zariel having the bald-headed
temerity to design a means of escape into the dungeon that she had been ordered to imprison the weavewalkers within. And as of the first day of March, the Weavewalkers are in the midst of escaping Shayna's trap.
Kitt has sacrificed himself destroying his lair and its collection of 'Outsider Objects'; items such as the
Vekhet Spheres and other extra planar objects all have to go for the plan to work; he made sure of the end result in a blaze of glory that burst forth like a rainbow star from the side of a mountain, taking out another Archon of Shayna's in the process, leaving four. When
Vakshetnessaralax-Nyssa denied Shayna the gateways within the
Llank-Ryu library in
Greynor, Shayna's Archon count dropped to three.
Shayna pulled the last three of her servants back, to power her infernal creation, the Archon Juggernaut. Through an unholy combination of
The Galbrok Tamarind's technology and the efforts of her dwarf slaves, Shayna's colossal construct came to be. Powered by a minimum of two of her Archons, the crust of Tellus will crack as the Juggernaut rises from the lower planes, filling with boiling magma. Up through this the Archon Juggernaut rises, feet and calves still submerged in the molten stone as it makes its first attacks.
The juggernaut's sole purpose had been to crack open Bayard's lair below the Old Keep, which was carved out of the bedrock of the planet itself. Shayna, in her hubris, planned on having all seven of her Archons available to power the siege weapon. Now that there are only three left, she has had to pull the trigger on her plan earlier than she had hoped, and that infuriates her. Now, she wants to crush these bugs putting up such staunch opposition, and she figures the Archon Juggernaut is a great way to kill two birds with one stone. She is stinging at the loss of
Pandora's Box, and somewhere deep in her shriveled heart she is sad that her son (Stevie) died fighting her. She doesn't have a history of great decision making, and now is no different.
Nihil, sensing Bahamut becoming vaguely aware of it, hides in the only place with enough metal for it to evade bahamut's divine senses. The Archon Juggernaut.
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