The Siege of Sunspire and the Fall of Varathrax
Military: Battle
4705
During the Siege of Sunspire, the adventuring band known as The Six confronted Varathrax, Herald of Tynathria, who sought to incarnate his draconic patron through the forbidden armor Exuvia Tyrannis. In a battle that reshaped a generation, Cassia Fidelis sacrificed herself to shatter the armor and sever Varathrax’s ritual, scattering its pieces across the world. The surviving five founded The Crownless Company, a guild devoted to defending Golarion without the constraints of rank or throne.
The Ascension of Varathrax
The tale begins in shadow and fire, with a sorcerer named Varathrax standing at the threshold of destiny within an ancient forge-temple. His quest: to claim a legendary suit of armor and unleash a long-imprisoned goddess upon the world. At the heart of the temple, resting upon a dark altar, was the Exuvia Tyrannis. This was no ordinary armor; it was a living prison forged from the very essence of five powerful dragon disciples who had served the dark goddess Tynathria. Each piece—helm, breastplate, gauntlets, and boots—pulsed with the soul of a different dragon, awaiting a master with the blood and will to command them. The five souls represented five elemental affinities—frost, fire, lightning, poison, and shadow—a dark mirror of the five heads of their monstrous goddess. As Varathrax prepared for his ascension, he was confronted by his brother, Seykel. The plea hung in the superheated air, desperate and familiar. "This path ends in ruin, Thrax. There's still time to walk away." Varathrax dismissed his brother’s fears, his gaze fixed on the armor with religious reverence. Seykel’s voice cracked. "When they burned our village, I carried you through three provinces... If you do this, I won't even recognize what's left of you." Varathrax’s expression softened, but his resolve remained absolute. He was convinced he was the chosen instrument of Tynathria's liberation. Turning his back on his only family, he began the forbidden ritual. Drawing a star-forged blade across his palm, Varathrax let his blood fall upon the armor. Each drop awakened a different draconic soul, causing the five pieces to flare with elemental power as if in recognition. As Varathrax donned the Exuvia Tyrannis, piece by excruciating piece, his body was unmade and remade. When he slid his foot into the first boot, the internal surfaces, lined with what felt like teeth, bit deep into his flesh. His bones snapped with wet, definitive sounds, elongating and reforming into a stronger, inhuman structure as scales erupted from his skin. The gauntlets were worse. Metal struts threaded through his flesh, breaking and multiplying the joints in his fingers. His fingernails did not fall—they exploded outward in wet shrapnel. From the bleeding sockets erupted serrated talons. During the agonizing transformation, Seykel made one final, desperate lunge to pull his brother from the altar. The armor responded instinctively, unleashing a backlash of raw elemental energy that hurled Seykel across the temple, breaking bone and searing flesh. Undeterred, Varathrax slid the breastplate over his torso. It did not break his ribs; it replaced them, fusing with his sternum and creating a new circulatory system that pulsed with chromatic light. The final piece, the draconic helm, merged his consciousness with the five dragon souls. He did not become their vessel; through sheer force of will, he became their master. Now fully transformed, Varathrax was no longer just a man in armor; he and the Exuvia Tyrannis were one. He tested his newfound power, casually unmaking the temple's stone pillars with streams of elemental energy. Fire carved molten channels through stone, lightning left glass webs in the air, and shadow simply removed sections of reality as if they had never existed. Seykel, battered but resolute, made his last stand. He pleaded with the monstrous figure before him to remember their shared past, the brother who had taught him to read by firelight. In response, Varathrax saw only a final weakness to be shed. He justified his coming action with a cold, six-toned voice: "Strength demands sacrifice." The conflict was swift and absolute. Varathrax unleashed a blast of converged elemental energy that consumed his brother, leaving only a crumpled form amidst the ruin. With his final tie to his mortal life severed, Varathrax stepped through a newly opened portal to begin his quest to free Tynathria, leaving his brother's body behind in the collapsing temple. But for every shadow that rises, a light must gather to stand against it. This new threat, born of ancient power and fraternal sacrifice, would soon face a small company of heroes defined not by crowns, but by deeds.The Crownless Company's Stand at the Chelish Outpost
Before dawn at a remote Chelish border outpost, hell breached the mortal plane. Devils poured through sulfurous portals, overwhelming the garrison guards. Amidst the slaughter, the Crownless Company held the line. Their leader, Cassia Fidelis, a pragmatic commander with a battered adamantine shield, directed her team with calm, decisive authority. The company was a diverse and lethal collection of specialists, each engaging the infernal tide with signature skill.- Barus Thunder-Heart: A dwarven berserker, his ancestral tattoos glowed with blue light as he battled a dangerous rage born from a childhood tragedy. He wielded his greataxe Thunder-Caller with the force of a controlled storm.
- Eresyn Dawnstar: A cheerful and deadly cleric of Sarenrae, she wielded divine sunlight and her warhammer, the Dawnfire Hammer, turning devils to ash with righteous joy.
- Yessandra of the Shifting Veil: A half-elf operative who moved through shadows like a ghost, delivering surgically precise strikes with her twin daggers to disable and eliminate key targets.
- Harvoth Flamebinder: A tiefling artificer whose arcane gauntlets unleashed engineered spells, treating the battlefield like a high-stakes field test for his inventions.
- Corthyn Greywind: A half-orc ranger who provided lethal covering fire from high ground, his arrows finding their marks with the quiet efficiency of grim necessity.
A New Mission in Westcrown
Upon returning to their headquarters in Almas, the company was met by a dying Pathfinder messenger who stumbled through their doors with a world-altering crisis. With her last breath, she revealed that Varathrax had stolen the Chrysalis of Tynathria—a potent artifact containing the goddess's core essence—from a secure vault in Absalom. His goal was nothing less than the full resurrection of the Dark Queen. The return of Tynathria, a goddess so ambitious that the other gods had conspired to imprison her, would mean a catastrophic reshaping of Golarion. After a tense strategy session, Harvoth used a scrying ritual to locate Varathrax in the city of Westcrown. The company teleported immediately, arriving to find the city in a state of active collapse. Buildings warped under chaotic magical energies while a massive white dragon, Krivaxis, rained destruction from above. In the plaza of the Asmodean Cathedral, the company fought their way through legions of Crimson Hand zealots. During the battle with the dragon, Cassia deliberately shielded Harvoth with her own body, taking the full force of a claw strike. The blow shattered her arm but saved the artificer's life, a defining act of a leader who put her team's survival above her own. The battle culminated in the company's first direct confrontation with the fully armored Varathrax. Their best attacks proved utterly useless against the Exuvia Tyrannis. Yessandra’s enchanted daggers burned away on contact, disintegrating into molten stumps, and Corthyn’s specialized dragonbane arrows shattered harmlessly against the armor's chromatic plates. Having completed the necessary stage of his ritual, Varathrax showed no interest in finishing the fight. He calmly opened a portal and departed, leaving the battered and defeated heroes in the ruins."You fought well, Fidelis. But well has never been enough." — Varathrax's parting wordsDefeated and injured, the company was forced to retreat. Their new objective was to return to Almas, regroup, and discover the location of Tynathria's first altar—the likely site of the final ritual.
The Last Hope
Back in the Almas headquarters, the weight of their failure fueled a hostile atmosphere. The simmering conflict erupted in an explosive argument between Barus and Harvoth, with the dwarf blaming the artificer's lack of preparation for their inability to counter the armor's power. As the two came to blows, Eresyn, Yessandra, and Corthyn intervened. It was Cassia, however, who pulled the team back from the brink. Despite her splinted arm, she addressed each member, reminding Barus that his rage needed direction, not just a target, and telling Harvoth that self-recrimination was a luxury they couldn't afford. She unified them by acknowledging their shared failure and reminding them that they would face this threat together, or not at all. Just as the company reaffirmed its unity, Archmage Edindol materialized in the war room. The cosmic being provided them with a final chance, revealing three critical pieces of intelligence:- Location: Varathrax was at Sunspire Cathedral, a site built directly upon the ruins of Tynathria's first ancient temple.
- Timeline: The resurrection ritual would be complete in less than six hours.
- Limitation: Edindol could not intervene directly due to a cosmic pact that prevented him from interfering with Tynathria's potential return.
The Sacrifice at Sunspire
The assault team fought through waves of mutating Crimson Hand cultists to reach the cathedral. Inside, they faced Varathrax as the portal to Tynathria's prison yawned wide above the altar. The final battle was a showcase of the Exuvia Tyrannis's terrifying power, as each piece of the armor systematically dismantled the company. The helm unleashed a psychic scream that crippled Barus, dropping him to his knees. The breastplate absorbed and reflected Harvoth’s arcane missiles, leaving him severely burned. The gauntlets animated stone gargoyles that harried and cornered Yessandra, while the boots granted Varathrax impossible speed, allowing him to evade every attack. As the company was broken, the true, five-headed form of Tynathria began to push its way through the portal, her claws tearing at the fabric of reality. With her team defeated and the world on the brink, Cassia took the arcane bomb from a wounded Harvoth. To prevent the enraged Barus from sacrificing himself in her place, Harvoth trapped the protesting dwarf behind a wall of force. Cassia charged. She absorbed devastating injuries from Varathrax's claws, but her desperate tackle succeeded. The collision sent them both to the ground, and in the impact, the Chrysalis shattered against the stone floor. With her final ounces of strength, she planted the bomb on the armor's central fracture point and held it in place with the burning fragments of her shattered shield for the three seconds it needed to activate. The bomb did not explode; it triggered a "cascade failure." The device sent a harmonic resonance through the Exuvia Tyrannis, shattering the soul-binding enchantments. The detonation shattered the armor, violently released the five captive dragon souls, and instantly killed both Varathrax and Cassia Fidelis. With its power source destroyed, the portal convulsed and collapsed, sealing the partially emerged Tynathria back within her prison. The battle's end was punctuated by the total structural failure of Sunspire Cathedral, which fell in on itself, burying the altar and the fallen under tons of rubble. Across the ruined city, the only sound was Barus's roar of grief.A Legacy Forged in Adamantine
In the solemn quiet of the guild's crypt in Almas, the five surviving members held a memorial for Cassia. At a shrine made from her cleaned armor and the largest fragments of her shattered shield, each member offered a tribute. Most poignantly, the stoic Yessandra knelt and poured a small vial of her own tears over the metal, a silent testament to the depth of her grief. Seeking to transform their grief into a tangible symbol, the five companions took the remaining adamantine fragments of Cassia's shield to a forge. There, they melted down the pieces and, working together, forged the molten metal into five identical rings. This act created a new symbol for their company, allowing each member to carry a piece of their fallen leader's protection with them always. The company made a final decision: they would honor Cassia's mission by scattering across Golarion to establish separate but connected operations, continuing their work on a global scale.- Barus: Returned to the dwarven citadel of Highhelm to establish Highhelm Hall, a training ground dedicated to forging true defenders of the innocent.
- Eresyn: Traveled to the bustling city of Katapesh to create Katapesh Hall, a sanctuary offering both healing and self-defense training to the vulnerable.
- Harvoth: Moved to Absalom to found a research facility dedicated to creating safer protective magic, ensuring no one would have to pay the price Cassia did.
- Corthyn & Yessandra: Established a mobile intelligence network in the River Kingdoms and Riddleport, operating from the shadows to identify and neutralize threats before they could escalate.
"Kings of no land, bound by no nation—our deeds are our crown."
