Chains of the Ancients — The Chronicles

Setting

The World of Nonera

The Ridian Empire has fallen. In its ruins, three powers have risen — each with a claim, each with an army, and each willing to burn Isandor to the ground to prove it.

The continent of Nonera was once united under the Ridian Empire — a political order that provided stability, law, and a shared identity across dozens of fractious peoples. Its collapse left a vacuum that no single power has yet been able to fill.

The campaign begins in the aftermath of a previous conflict — a war that already left the land scarred and exhausted. Now, with a fresh succession crisis tearing at what remains, the party finds itself embedded in the Myridon army as it marches on Isandor, capital of the Stormwatch Duchy.

But the siege is only the surface of things. Beneath Isandor, something older stirs — guarded by the Stonewardens, touched by the mad god Tharizdun, and connected to the contracts and debts that bind several members of the party.

Key Locations

Isandor — Capital of the Stormwatch Duchy, under siege
Eryx — City in the Myridon Dynasty; seat of a religious order
Himari — Southern region; homeland of Aelthar
Epithon — Aelthar's family home
Myria — The imperial capital, where a new emperor will be crowned

The Party

Known as The Crimson Cloud, the party operates as an elite unit within the Myridon army — trusted enough for special missions, independent enough to make their own choices.

The Conflict

Three Powers, One War

The War of False Emperors has no heroes. Only survivors.

The Myridon Dynasty

The Aggressor

Led by Emperor Sauntes Myridon, the Dynasty claims rightful inheritance of the Ridian Empire. Sauntes rules through a mixture of charisma, fear, and the cult of his own image — projecting his likeness across the continent while the Emperor's Irons eliminate dissent at home.

Notable figures: Emperor Sauntes Myridon • General Thavis D'Vaelan • Maxori "Maxi" Stillbrook • Qiran

The Stormwatch Duchy

The Defender

Loyal to what remains of the old Empire, the Stormwatch Duchy holds Isandor against overwhelming odds. Led by the legendary General Belldam Bhaston — whose name alone is a battlecry — and Duke Orvil Rekrihk, who would sooner die as a soldier than surrender as a lord.

Notable figures: Duke Orvil Rekrihk • General Belldam Bhaston • The Wavebreakers • The Bloodsworn (decimated)

Liberty

The Opportunist

A third force, forming temporary alliances with whoever benefits them. Led by General Nahiri Danance, who commands several converted fire giants — a power that makes Liberty far more dangerous than their numbers suggest.

Notable figures: General Nahiri Danance • Askavar (fire giant ally)

Rival Adventurers

The Black Clover Swords

Elite unit — Myridon-aligned

The only other adventuring group that operates at the same level as the Crimson Cloud. Formed within a religious order, led by the quiet and deadly Selwyn Naemaris — a dragonmarked swordsman with a faith that borders on frightening.

Members: Selwyn Naemaris (leader, dragonmarked) • Harman Bronzegrip (scarred fighter) • Khalia Faertala (exiled drow, teleporting assassin) • Daephne Hekan (illusionist, orphan) • Meiavor Highoak (mind-meddling half-elf)

The Crimson Cloud

The Party

Five people who found each other in a war. Not all of them were soldiers to begin with.

Aelthar Doryu

Dragonmarked Summoner • Follower of Shar

Dark-skinned, with orange eyes that catch the light like embers, Aelthar grew up on a farm in southern Himari. Marked young by a dragonmark he didn't ask for, he became a bounty hunter before the war claimed him and made him a soldier.

He sends his earnings home to his family. He doesn't talk about Shar.

Read backstory

Aelthar Doryu comes from a family of farmers in Epithon, a village in the southern region of Himari. The dragonmark appeared when he was young — a mark of summoning that made him dangerous in ways his family didn't know how to handle, and in ways the wider world was happy to exploit.

He worked for years as a bounty hunter, a solitary occupation that suited someone who had learned not to want too much. When the war began, he was folded into the Myridon army, his talents too useful to ignore.

He carries an infernal debt — a contract that caught up with him — and the shadow goddess Shar, goddess of darkness and loss, has an interest in him that goes deeper than he lets on.

Thalia Elitzi

Pallid Elf Cleric of Helm • High Warden

A cleric of Helm, the god of guardians and watchers. Thalia came to faith through a family wound — her father Michaelis made a deal with the devil Azazel, trading her soul for power to fight goblin raiders.

She trained with a religious order in Eryx. She carries a Last Will and Testament that she has rewritten more than once.

Read backstory

Thalia's mother Caria is dead. Her father Michaelis became a warlock — the Band of Lions, his adventuring company, fell apart after a betrayal involving a woman named Emilia and a celestial named Garcius.

The infernal contract Michaelis signed is explicit: upon Thalia's death, her soul belongs to the devil Azazel. The clause that nullifies it is also explicit — the contract becomes void if the goblin raiders that prompted it are eradicated. Whether they have been is a matter of interpretation.

Thalia entered the religious order at Eryx and emerged a cleric. She watches. She remembers. She does not look away.

"Not for title or power, but because the burden must be carried." — Thalia, crowning Emperor Metilles

Alexei Rustborn

"The White Fox" • Wood Elf Rogue • Former Criminal

An orphan raised by a dwarven crime lord named Tazna "The Boar" Rustborn, whose name she took as her own. For decades, Alexei was the Bestial Enclave's finest asset: thief, assassin, and decoy, behind a featureless white porcelain mask.

She got caught. Then she got recruited.

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Alexei's parents were double agents — Wood Elven mages in Enya who played both sides and paid for it with their lives. The Boar, whose operation they'd served, took the infant Alexei in. The Bluejay, a grizzled Elven agent, brought her to the Enclave. The Puma called her "soft one." Crickets taught her how to steal.

For forty years she was The White Fox — performing heists and assassinations in a white mask, earning a reputation that preceded her into every room she wasn't supposed to be in. When the Myridon government finally caught her after fifteen years in prison, they offered a deal: work with the military or die.

She chose the former. The rest, as they say, is history she doesn't talk about.

Arani

Celestial • Sword of Zariel • Founder of the Order of the Seraph

Celestial in origin, Arani carries the Sword of Zariel and a stone arm cracked with glowing blue fissures — a scar left by a Spellplague flare. She has lived among mortals long enough to love them more than the heavens she came from.

She does not believe she belongs here. She is slowly being proven wrong.

Read backstory

Arani was trained in the celestial plane, sent to walk the mortal world alongside her siblings. Unlike them, she found it difficult to leave. The Order of the Lost — which she later transformed into the Order of the Seraph — became her project, her purpose, and eventually her home.

Her stone arm is both wound and symbol. She flexes its fingers absently in quiet moments, feeling the hum of unstable magic still trapped inside.

Her deal with Tyr, the God of Justice, took years to finalize. When it went through, it created the Seraph Accord — a formal framework for training Judicars, mortals reborn through celestial power to stand between the world and the darkness.

Mika Ironwall Haldovons-dottir

Dwarf • Crimson Cloud

Mika carries the weight of her family name — Ironwall, a lineage that does not bend — and the suffix of her mother's blood. She is the Crimson Cloud's steadiest presence, remembered by Arani in her quietest moments, years after the war ends.

Allied & Opposed

Notable Figures

Emperor Sauntes Myridon

Leader of the Myridon Dynasty

Rules through image and fear. Projects himself across the continent via magical sending. His personal execution force, the Emperor's Irons, eliminates dissent before it can organize. To his soldiers, he is destiny personified. To those who know him, he is something more dangerous — a man who believes it.

General Thavis D'Vaelan

Myridon's Field Commander

Lighthearted where the Dynasty is ruthless, optimistic where the war demands grimness. He favors the Crimson Cloud and grants them unusual latitude. What he knows about the Emperor's true intentions is unclear.

Maxori "Maxi" Stillbrook

Court Mage • Suspected Diabolist

Hired directly by the Emperor. Rumored to have made deals with devils. Maintains a network of teleportation circles across the warfront and keeps an imp familiar named Mir. Irreplaceable. Untrustworthy. Necessary.

Qiran

Angel of the Mist • Reluctant Ally

An agent of the criminal guild "Angels of the Mist." Provides stealth, traversal, and occasional assassination. Once saved by the party; owes them a debt that sits uneasily with someone who makes their living in shadows.

General Belldam Bhaston

Defender of Isandor • Legend

One-armed. Wears a beast skull on his shoulder. His name is a battlecry. He commands the Wavebreakers from behind Isandor's walls and has held the city longer than anyone believed possible.

Duke Orvil Rekrihk

Duke of Stormwatch • Target

Loyal to the old Empire to the last. Respectable, polite, founder of the Bloodsworn. He does not want to survive a defeat. He wants a warrior's death — which makes him both admirable and a problem.

Rehael

Captured Scholar • Connected to Arani

Found in a crypt beneath Isandor, where he had been captured while researching the locations of the Crimson Cloud's companions. His calm voice steadies rooms. His knowledge of what lies below the city is dangerous.

The Stonewardens

Secret Order • Extraplanar Guardians

A hidden organization that guards the mortal world from extraplanar threats. Found guarding a crypt beneath Isandor — alongside devils and something connected to the mad god Tharizdun.

The Story

The Siege of Isandor

The Crimson Cloud is given a special mission during the main Myridon assault on Isandor: kill Duke Orvil Rekrihk. Not just to end his command, but to break the spirit of Stormwatch's resistance before it can outlast the siege.

They enter the city through the sewers — guided by Qiran and aided by Askavar, a fire giant who has chosen an unlikely allegiance. The city above is chaos; below, there are older things.

A secret crypt. Devils. The Stonewardens. A captive named Rehael. And a psychic attack — the Madness of Tharizdun — that strikes as they approach the High Hall.

General Belldam Bhaston waits at the gates of the High Hall. The mission has not gone as planned. Very little about this war has.

"The weight of history is not yours to carry, but you carry it anyway. That is what it means to stand watch." — Session Notes, CotA

The War's End

The conflict ends. A new Emperor, Metilles — neither Myridon nor old Ridia — is crowned in the Temple of the Everwatch in Myria. Thalia places the Crown of Reforging on his brow. The bells ring slow and steady. The Empire does not feel broken. It feels whole. For the first time.

Army at the walls of a besieged city — Vassily Maximov, 1870s — Public Domain

After the War

Epilogues

What happened to the Crimson Cloud, after everything.

Aelthar Doryu

"Mine" & "The Wake of Light"

Shar hid him from Asmodeus. Two years in the deep shadow, beyond time and reach, while she searched for the Lord of the Ninth's true form — the Serpent's Coil, a secret buried in forbidden ink that no one who knew it lived to speak of twice.

She found it. Aelthar walked to Nessus alone. He negotiated with Asmodeus himself — quietly, politely, with one card: she knows where it is. The contract broke. His soul returned to him.

Four years later, he built a temple from the mountainside. Windowless halls, obsidian columns, candlelight flickering violet. A sanctuary for those the light had nothing left to offer. He taught the Shadow Weave — forbidden, but not corrupt, not in his hands.

Then four Solars came through the roof.

His followers stood between them and him. Not because he asked them to. Because he had given them something no one else had — purpose. They fought with shadow-imbued blades and unfinished spells and trembling courage. It wasn't enough. Aelthar was taken. Imprisoned in a sphere of pure radiant light where no shadow could reach, where Shar could not follow.

Twelve years. Then a figure in a cloak — black as void on red as blood, eyes shimmering like oil on water. Cyric's aspect. A crack in the prison wall. And the darkness breathed again.

He walked out of the light. Shar whispered everything into his mind — Antael, Cyric's betrayal, the Cyrinishad. The stolen Staff of Azuth pressed into his palm.

"Finish this task. And when the time is right — then you may have your revenge."

Thalia Elitzi

High Warden of the Empire

The Temple of the Everwatch is built from pale stone and dark marble, at the highest point in Myria. The Crown of Reforging — mithral and blackened steel, a single engraved line symbolizing unity through fracture — rests on the altar.

Emperor Metilles kneels alone at the top of the steps. Thalia steps forward. Her voice is calm. Clear.

"Do you come freely, not for title or power, but because the burden must be carried?"

"I do."

She places the Crown on his brow. There is no flash of light. Just the weight of the moment. Then someone shouts his name. Then another. The sound builds like a wave.

Four years later, in a tavern in Bardford that smells of citrus and rum, Thalia finds Verrix behind the bar — hair pulled back the same way, eyes still sharp. Four years of duty, diplomacy, border disputes, and temple disputes, and still: a quiet pull, a half-finished sentence.

"I'm still here. Same tavern. Same bed. You don't have to stop moving. But you don't have to forget where you can rest."

Alexei Rustborn

The Deathwalker

Over the years since the war, Alexei built a life from what she was good at — which was finding things and ending them. Undead, specifically. Vecna's agents: death knights, rogue vampires, advisors sitting in councils behind human faces. She didn't bother with courts or tribunals. Justice through official channels was too slow. She found proof. She dealt with it. Quiet and clean.

She wore the white mask. She earned a name: The Deathwalker.

On a morning with mist curling over the hills near Mardahn, she found Arani running a final test with her initiates — and a monster that had been tampered with. Alexei appeared on a ridge with a gun still smoking in her hand.

"Need a hand?"

They fought like a storm. They always had.

That night, trancing at Arani's window, the Raven Queen showed Alexei what Velkaarn's dying mind contained: a fortress of obsidian in the Shadowfell. A vault of endless twilight. A resurrected primordial. And within it — Vecna.

She rose slowly, fingers trailing over Whisper against the windowsill. The hunt was far from over.

Arani

"First Light" & "The Shape of Legacy"

The Order grew faster than Arani expected. Refugees arrived with ash on their clothes and fire in their eyes, seeking purpose rather than rest. She took them in. Within months, the Order of the Seraph had outgrown what she had built.

Esme went into labor in the night. Taman stood outside the door, hair a mess, tunic half-buttoned, eyes red. Arani stood in a high corridor with a scroll addressed to Tyr — her formal request for a Seraph Accord, rewritten at least a dozen times, held in shaking hands.

Three months later: a child with dark curls and eyes like a sky just beginning to brighten. He glowed faintly when he was excited — joy or frustration just couldn't be contained within him.

The Seraph Accord went through. The first Hunter's Bane was held in the grand hall. A young woman named Lyra — who had lost her brother to demons — stood in the center of the runes and let a deva of Tyr press its hand against her chest. She fell to one knee. Then slowly stood, gasping, glowing, changed.

The first Judicar of the Seraph. And Arani, at the edge of it all, let herself believe: this was where she belonged.

When Esme and Taman left for their fiefdom near Wintergard, Arani stood in the courtyard and watched until they disappeared beyond the mountain path. That night she sat at her desk, uncapped the ink, and wrote at the top of a clean sheet:

The Seraph Accord: Next Steps.