You awake in darkness, unable to breathe.
Blind, frantic, you twist your body and raise aching hands to claw at the numb expanse of your faith. Broken stone grates under your shifting weight and you grunt in pain, a litany of aches and pains exploding across your awareness like stars amid the black. There is dust in the air, rasping against your skin and filling your mouth with tar, and desperately you hack and choke and vomit forth a tide of bloody sludge that stains the ground with a chorus of dampened claps.
Your lungs burn, but you know better than to breathe in now. Instead you reach for your neck, groping blindly for the ragged scarf you know to be there and trying not to think about how badly you want to breathe. Your mind wanders, desperately casting around for some kind of distraction, and you remember…
You remember the smoke; great clouds of it, all across the city, each reaching up like coal-stained fingers to claw at the yellow sky. It lashed at you as you ran through familiar streets made alien by death and war, pricking your burning eyes and adding a harsh edge to the stench of burning meat. At your back, the thunderous clamour of the gods at war roared in fury…
Your hand closes around the ragged scrap of fabric, and with a surge of relief you tug it up to cover your mouth and nose. Only then do you inhale, drawing in a single shuddering breath that tastes sweeter than the finest wine. You can taste the bitter tang of smoke upon your lips, flavored by the copper edge of blood, and in that moment start to grasp the enormity of what must have happened.
You hear nothing, save for the faint ringing of a distant bell that tells of some powerful blow you must have taken on the way here, but now that fear has sheathed its claws you find that vision is not so lost to you as had been supposed. This is good, you think, though in truth what you can see of your current situation is far from encouraging.
You lie at the bottom of a mighty pit, half buried in lumps of stone and chunks of rubble, and even at a glance it is plain to see that whatever passage brought you here must have collapsed quite suddenly in your wake. The space above you is not large, and perhaps half a dozen feet above your head a thousand tons of stone has fallen in and formed a crude roof that seals you away from the outside world. Motes of dust glitter like embers in the pale shafts of sunlight that descend to touch you from on high, and in their glow you can see no shaft or passage big enough to admit your form anywhere across the ceiling.
You remember the light, as harsh and vibrant as a newborn star, rising sharply in the west. You looked for the Kite, that stalwart bastion of stone that had protected the city for as long as you had known, and found in its place a great pillar of purple flame that danced and sang like a living thing. The shadows it cast were long and hungry, pools of night at the feet of every man, and when those shadows grew teeth and began to feed there was little anyone could do to stop them.
Wincing, you lever yourself upright, chunks of rubble clattering to the ground as you go. The ceiling above groans alarmingly at the disturbance, but you dare not stop; you are no mason, but even your uneducated senses know that something so crude and fragile could choose to settle or collapse at any moment. God has seen fit to spare you thus far, but it would be a poor end indeed to linger here in silence and die crushed beneath a falling stone.
Your hand comes down on something rough and leathery, and with a frown you look down to see what it is you have found. The answer, it seems, is a scale; a section of reptilian hide, polished to a mirror shine and splattered with pale blood, buried amid the dusty rocks like a piece of discarded trash.
You remember the dragon; a hero clad in silver hide, very near the size of the tower she coiled around. Terendelev was her name, greatest champion of Kenabres. Her breath was as a blizzard, her claws were sharp as blades, and in the shadow of her great wings you had almost begun to hope that you might yet live out the day.
You remember the demon, that great lord of smoke and ash, three times the height of a man and clad in armour wrought from the living storm. Khoramzeddah, he was named, the Storm King, and where he walked the land itself cried out in pain.
You remember their duel, what brief glimpses of it you could snatch between the madness and the chaos of battle. You remember the sight of the Storm King's blade descending, and the sound it made when it cut off the dragon's head. You remember the roar of triumph, and the sound of a thousand despairing moans as the dragon fell and with her a city's hope.
"May God welcome you, Terendelev," you say in a voice made thick by grief, lifting the scale from its resting place and tucking it away into one of the ragged pouches that yet hang from your waist, "and may the angels bear you to a better place."
It is a blessing that you yourself might have need of soon enough, but such thoughts are of no worth and so you push them aside once again. The ringing in your ears has faded, and with its absence you can hear the sounds of movement and pain from the crude tunnel up ahead. It seems you are not the only one to have survived the fall into this place, and while even one of God's children yet cries out in pain your work is not yet done.
Gritting your teeth, you bow you head and advance to meet your kin. And should it turn out that the voices ahead come not from allies but foes akin to those who cast you down into these depths… well, they would not be the first such fiends to meet their ends at your hands.
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What is your name?
[ ] Write in (QM veto reserved, and it's worth considering the race/class choice when casting your vote)
What is your sex?
[ ] Male
[ ] Female
What are you?
[ ] The Hunter. When you came down from the mountains, it was not with any great principle in mind; your people had never cared for the folk of the lowlands, and to see them slaughtered by demons was a thing that inspired no pity. You sought only the pursuit of glory, the ecstasy that comes from hunting and slaying the most dangerous of beasts, and to your mind the legions of the Abyss would make for worthy prey.
You were wrong, and the horrors of the Worldwound nearly broke you. It took a good man, a priest of the lowlands, to guide you out of the dark and mend your broken will. He taught you the strength that can be found in faith, and helped you to match the ancient traditions of your people with the higher truths of his church. For this you owe him greatly, and if you must slaughter your way through an army to find him in this war torn ruin, then that is what you must do (Half-Orc Totem Warrior).
[ ] The Veteran. When Sarkoris fells and the Worldwound opened, the nations of the world did not stand idle. A Crusade was called, one comprised of men and women from every land, seeking to push back the fiendish hordes and make the world safe once more. They were heroes, those first crusaders, and eighty years ago you counted yourself among them. That you are still here, all these decades later, says quite a bit about the type of person you have found yourself to be. Not all of it is complimentary.
You have earned yourself no small amount of fame, over those eighty years, and certainly your skill with axe and blade is nothing to be discounted… but eighty years of war is more than any mortal mind was meant to take, and now your spirit is scarred as much as your flesh. You have grown bitter and sometimes maudlin, but your faith remains a comfort, and if this is to be your doom then you shall face your end with steel in your hand and pride in your heart. (Half-Elf Battle Master).
[ ] The Mystic. Those of fiendish blood are not welcome in Kenabres, which has suffered at the hands of demons and their ilk for so long, and as such you spent most of your early years on the streets or on the road. You survived as best you could, did what it took to see another sunrise, and probably would have been dead by the end of your first decade were it not for the intervention of a proud paladin of Iomedae. She took you in, showed you kindness and respect for the first time, and arranged for you a place in a nearby monastery where you might learn and live without fear of persecution.
For this, you owe her everything, and in truth were on your way to deliver some small thanks when the demons began their attack. Now you must find a way to return to the surface, track down your benefactor, ensure her continued health… and, of course, do your best not to be mistaken for one of the enemy as you have been so many times before. (Tiefling Monk, Way of the Open Hand).
[ ] The Warden. Your land is far away, a realm of sand and spice and wealth beyond measure, and for many years you gave no thought to what lay beyond its borders. It was your honour and your duty to guard the caravans of trade and tribute as they plied their routes, and to offer guidance and succor to the faithful pilgrims who followed in their wake. It was only when you encountered a group of crusaders, returning home to nurse their wounds and muster new recruits, that you finally knew doubt. Could you truly be said to be doing your duty, simply watching over shrines and watering holes, when in the north the legions of the Abyss yet clashed with armies of the fateful in search of the destruction of all?
You took your concerns before your liege, and having consulted the wise men he elected to heed your request. When the Crusaders turned back north you went with them, your bow in your hands and the light of god in your heart. So far your experience of the Crusade has been… unfortunate, but that is no excuse to falter. You will wage holy war against these beasts and protect the world from their evil, or you will die in the attempt. (Human Ranger [Revised Edition])
[ ] Write-In (QM reserves veto. In general, I would suggest avoiding prepared casters who have a spell list of significant size, since that massively inflates the book-keeping and OoC debates necessary to run a character in a quest format. Beyond that your proposed character needs only a viable motivation to be part of the Crusade, and ideally should make mention of personal faith in a non-specific deity.)
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Note - The Class/Race vote will be determined via approval voting. You can cast votes for as many different options as you like, and the one with the most votes at the end of the process is the one I will take with me to run the quest.