12 - 10/16/25 : Mens Agitat Molem
"For every knight in shining armor, there are a hundred warriors whose souls are maimed with fear, suffering, and cruelty. Many have forgotten why they're here, and now know only war. When there's a break in the fighting, they drink themselves into oblivion and wallow in the mud. They're rotting alive and they don't even seek help. They gave up on themselves a long time ago."Sosiel Vaenic
The time had come to put the plan into motion; Regill and his Hellknights rode out into the field with Sosiel alongside them, and the vescavor swarm took the bait. Meanwhile, the Knight-Commanders and Woljif entered the canyon and found an entrance to the vescavor queen's lair, where they began searching for their prey. The party encountered a few vescavor swarms until coming across the remains of the caravan that had been rumored to have gone missing in the area. The aravan consisted of mostly ruined barrels and bags and a destroyed wagon, but also contained a reinforced chest that the agitated vescavor swarm was sure to chew through eventually, ruining whatever was inside. The party stopped for a moment to try and unlock the chest as quickly as they could without losing too much time, having Woljif combine his lockpicking talents with Hilda and Satomi's magics to break through the heavily warded lock. Eventually Woljif broke through, revealing the chest's contents; an ancient manual of bodily health written in High Boros, making it a very old and valuable relic regardless of its magic. With the manual tucked away, the party pressed forward farther into the caves, encountering another agitated pocket of the swarm led by a chasme and a deadly apocalypse locust. Enduring both the chasme's life-draining proboscis and the locust's balefire breath, the party emerged victorious and carved a way through to the largest cave chamber, where the vescavor queen laid in wait. The party did battle with the vescavor queen, who spewed clouds of her own spawn that she commanded telepathically to attack her foes or to protect her from harm. Combined with her blade-like claws, acidic bite, and her ability to spit highly corrosive bile, she was a deadly enemy that pushed the party to bring their full mythic might to bear. Eventually the beast was brought low, and the swarm began to dissipate into nothingness just as Anevia had suspected. The party stayed for a while to let Hilda harvest some of the queen's digestive acid for use in some kind of experiment, and then burned the queen's body to ensure that one of her spawn would not feast on her corpse and become a new vescavor queen. Satomi contacted Sosiel with sending to inform him of their triumph and to ascertain his survival. Thankfully, he and the Hellknights had survived, with Regill's unit taking some bracing, but ultimately manageable losses to the vescavor swarm. The Knight-Commanders and a traumatized Woljif returned to the camp victorious, and after being welcomed as heroes, the decided to get some much-needed rest before proceeding through the cleared Leper's Smile. Regill requested a moment of Hilda's time, referring to her as "Knight-Commander Grimm" - a name she did not expect to hear, as she had not once shared it with anyone since arriving in Mendev. As they spoke in private, Regill revealed that he had spent some time on the mainland while investigating a rogue order of Hellknights known as the Order of the Scepter, which he did for a time in the company of an adventuring guild known as the Fairhaven Frontier. It was there he met another Hilda Grimm - one created from her excised soul and copious amounts demon ichor. The paralictor explained that he had been recalled to the Order of the Godclaw's headquarters when news of the attack on Kenabres broke, and he was intrigued to have met yet another Hilda Grimm who was not only far away from the mainland, but was a leading figure in the historic Fifth Crusade. Regill made sure, however, to inform Hilda that he was watching her. Although he did believe that people were capable of defying the circumstances of their heritage - he held no prejudice for abyssal tieflings, for instance - he was also not blind to the fact that Hilda was suffused with abyssal energies, and such a situation warranted his sharp eye. Hilda did not object to this, affirming her mission to close the Worldwound as testament to her ability to resist the pull of her demonic half. Regill was satisfied with this, and let the Knight-Commander go in peace. Sosiel spoke the Elseth while the army was on the march some days later, asking the former cleric for advice on how to shepherd the faithful of Muir in his capacity as spiritual advisor for the crusade. He understood why Queen Galfrey, a chosen of the Muse herself, selected a devotee of another god to serve in such a capacity, but he still wished to understand his Muiran brethren to best keep their spirits up in the face of the grim realities of war. Elseth advised Sosiel to lean on motivating them to rise to the occasion, to meet the challenges of the crusade and to use their struggles as an opportunity to grow and become stronger. In the pursuit of triumph and victory, she reasoned, the crusaders would find hope and resolve. Satisfied, Sosiel thanked Elseth for her time. He mused for a time on the harsh realities the crusaders faced, but he remained confident that there was still beauty in the world that was worth suffering and fighting for - a sentiment fit for a servant of Shelyn such as he. As the army proceeded through the canyon, Drezen drew ever closer on the horizon…
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KNIGHT-COMMANDERS OF THE FIFTH CRUSADE
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