Previously…

Battered from Tymon’s fall and haunted by sacrifice, the Ruinlords fled down the Sellen aboard the Sandfly. Captain Lorune, desperate and indebted, planned to sell his prized iron golem armor in Salisgrad to keep his ship afloat. Wounds festered, both old and new—Tike’s soul still scarred, Alfie’s healing stretched thin.

At dusk beneath a ruined bridge, shadows struck. Ebon Triad cultists ambushed the ship, joined by a worm-ridden Seer and the devil Arnyx—now branded with the Triad’s mark. He demanded Voragon Drakon’s head. He got steel and fire instead. Cal’s flames tore through the ambushers. Potato silenced a fleeing cultist. Alfie bled, Oathgar struck true, and Tike crushed the devil to ash.

By dawn, only questions remained—etched in worm-script and blood—as the Sandfly drifted toward Salisgrad.

What’s all this then?

Want to know what happens when the devil’s debts come due and the worm-prophets scream louder than the gods? Follow our Age of Worms Pathfinder 1e campaign right HERE, where fire answers prophecy, death isn’t final, and the river runs dark.

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23 Erastus (July), 4725 

Rain slicked the deck of the Sandfly as it drifted into Salisgrad’s harbor, the stormlight making the city’s magical runes pulse like veins beneath stone skin. The sky spat mist as two city watch and a pair of ironclad sentinels boarded the ship in silence, steel helms gleaming dull under cloudlight. Then came the Blessed Angel, wings of smoldering flame trailing smoke as she descended onto the gangplank without a word. 

Captain Joseph Lorune spoke first, eyes still tired and haunted. He admitted having fled Tymon as the city fell. The party mentioned their delivery for Bishop , Senior Officer of the Black Gauntlet, and interest shifted sharply. The name opened doors. The death of an Ebon Triad High Councilor—revealed, perhaps unintentionally, through Lorune—sealed their appointment with the Black Gauntlet. 

The Ruinlords were led through corridors of metal and warding runes to a chamber paneled in steel and veined with blue abjuration crystals, humming with restrained power. Bishop waited. Cold. Precise. He wanted to question the relic they carried: the skull of Voragon Drakon. When told of Dunner’s death, he nodded once and began arranging the retrieval of the body, belongings, and honors befitting one who had struck at the Triad’s core. 

What followed was not conversation. It wasn’t a ritual. It was an interrogation of the dead.

Damaris Glimmerstone—formerly known as Thistlefoot Glimmerstone—took the conduit’s seat beneath the arch of the Vox Eidolon, a device that blurred the lines between the arcane and the occult. Brass thorns pierced his skull as his soul and mind became one with the dead. Voragon’s voice returned, hollow and resentful, echoing through the halfling. From his withered skull, truths spilled like black water: prophecies still unfulfilled, the Triad’s unholy relics, and of the Faceless One—the architect threading the darkness between them. The Amulet of the Worldbreaker, shattered by the party, had crippled the Triad’s progress. The end goal was to use the three magic items possessed by the High Council once the prophecies were fulfilled. Now, one of the items was destroyed. The heroes rejoiced at potentially stopping the coming of the Ebon Triad’s Overgod known as Malgorath.

Then the rift opened, and the celebration died on the spot.

Ash boiled from the tear, and from it came the Emberwrought Shade of Dahak—a skeletal wyrm wreathed in fireless heat, its breath an entangling storm of iron chains and scorched memory torn from Voragon’s divine connection to the evil dragon god. Bishop sealed the chamber with a pulse of force, a protection protocol to keep the creature from escaping. 

It also meant the Ruinlords would be unable to retreat. Not that the option was ever on the table anyway. 

Declan’s voice rose like a battle hymn, magic and fate coiling in harmony. Alfie used his healing magic to undo the damage dealt by the shade while his owlbear Potato, wide-eyed but unyielding, darted through the fray. Cal, ever precise, whispered the syllables of Boneshatter and collapsed ribs with surgical cruelty. Oathgar drew blood, blade flashing through the smoke. Tike, bruised and growling, took the final steps, driving his fist into the Shade’s core. It exploded in soulfire. 

Silence. Then Bishop lowered the seal. 

Moments later, the door opened—no knock, no permission. A woman entered, skin pale, lips crimson, wrapped in a red negligee that defied armor and dared defiance. With a smile that wasn’t a smile, she informed Bishop that Prince Eli Voronov had summoned the party for a personal audience. Bishop started to protest, but he caught his tongue. The word of Prince Voronov was final. 

She took the skull. She took the broken Amulet. She took the party. 

And just like that, the balance shifted again.