Brazen Wolfe Tabletop

The Blank Citadel

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As the party gathers their belongings and prepares to leave the hidden temple to the forgotten deity the air grows colder. An unsettling presence wafts over them causing their vision to blur around the edges and them to momentarily lose the sight of their comrades. The guardian spirits that they conversed with seem to sense the change in the room with their forms flickering with unease and them looking around as if pained.

Suddenly, the quiet atmosphere of the few moments before a storm is shattered as new guardian spectres materialize in the hall. These guardians are different, more menacing, ancient and dark, their spectral forms cloaked in shadow and their eyes burning with an intense, hostile cold light.

One of the new guardians, a towering figure with a jagged spear, steps forward the sound of its footfall the sound of breaking glass. It’s voice is neither male nor female but the sound as if heartbreak had a voice and with it speaking it echoed with an otherworldly resonance. ‘Intruders, you have defiled this sacred place and the forgotten one. You shall not leave here alive.’

The party braced themselves as the guardians attack without warning, their movements swift and deadly putting the masters of their age to shame with masterful use of their weapons. The grand hall erupts into chaos as the party engages in a fierce battle as they test their will to live against the opposing force that wishes them to fail. With each swing of the smoke-hewn weapons the party experienced a flash of a memory where they were alone, banished from the warmth of people and friendship.

As the ancient spectres fight the ground and ruins around them start to shift and float apart taking the party away from each other. The floating platforms and shimmering dark energy fields make the battle more dangerous as the creatures seem to be at home with the terrain, as if the realm between realms, the hidden temple of isolation is where they have always existed.

However, the guardians they had befriended lash out in coordinated attacks with the party and together they fell the spectres one by one. As the battle reaches its climax, one of the dark guardians, a spectral figure with a crow-like helm, speaks in a cryptic tone. ‘The Blank Citadel holds the last light of the Red Lord, none can stop it from turning black.’

With those final words, the guardian falls, his form dissipating into wisps of dark energy and with the remaining guardians laying defeated, the party is left with a new and crucial piece of information. One of the surviving friendlier guardians explains that ‘the Blank Citadel is located far up north and that the setting of the sun reveals where it is within the Darkstone Mountains when you show ultimate reverence to the ancient stone’. With its cryptic message delivered it fades from existence, its oath broken and its fate sealed.

With the hidden temple’s secrets unveiled and a new lead pointing them to the Blank Citadel far to the north, the party must decide their next course of action. The stakes have never been higher, and their quest to clear their names and save the Red Lord now takes on a new and dangerous dimension. The journey ahead will be fraught with peril, but the party is determined to uncover the truth and restore hope to their world.

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