Nulgath's Circle I: Carnage the Bloodfiend

Carnage the Bloodfiend — A wellness check

Gravelyn’s wound still will not stop bleeding, but her meeting with the Hero and a Paladin concerns another vulnerability. Ana immediately offers healing, prompting Gravelyn to complain that the Paladin’s compassion lacks any instinct for self-preservation. She has decreed that Dage will take temporary leadership of the Shadowscythe if she must be absent from the throne. His openness and treatment of her as an ally have earned her trust; she knows far less about Nulgath and expects the choice to provoke him. Her proposed wellness check on the Nation is therefore Empire business, not simply another intervention in the Legion’s quarrels.

The Paladin is Ana, an Ascendant of the Lightguard. She reports that Advocatus Carcano violated a Nation contract long ago, then stole a weapon and fled when discovered. The Lightguard learned this through an interrogation whose prisoner died. Ana is sickened by the work of its new Iudices, specialists in hunting the Nation: she joined to save and redeem, not to torture and execute. Her personal connection to Carcano has led her to seek Gravelyn’s help despite her opposition to what the Empress represents and the risk of expulsion from her own order.

Gravelyn asks where the Hero stands. Four answers frame the same journey differently: Good seeks ways to break Nulgath’s contracts and redeem souls; Evil offers solidarity and an investigation of the Nation’s secrets; Legion distrusts an old enemy and wants warning before retaliation; Nation trusts that Nulgath has a calculated reason and intends to prove it. All four authored controls lead to the same approving reply from Gravelyn. They offer perspectives on accompanying her, rather than four different outcomes for the meeting.

Ana knows the fugitive’s destination: her childhood home. The stolen weapon is described as a dying star. When the Hero asks whether Gravelyn can leave unnoticed, she says the matter is covered; the silent cut reveals a red-haired, skull-faced stand-in being arranged in the fortress. The joke contrasts the Empress’ effort to conceal her absence with the scale of the danger she is leaving to investigate.

Carnage the Bloodfiend — A home under siege

The Lightguard reached Carcano’s hideout first and has orders to strike even Ana. Newbie Boom and Tears Like Honey put the Hero against inexperienced recruits and Ascendants. Gravelyn finds complicated explosive Light spells on the recruits’ talismans and asks whether their superiors are using them as expendable shields. The Ascendants’ gold ornaments melt like warm sap and leave her hand cold when dropped, a familiar substance she cannot yet place. These are her observations and suspicions, not a solved account of Astero’s magic.

Work Fiends brings the Hero through Nation Casters to Jadzia, who knows how to stabilize the supposed star. Rewritten Signatures reveals former Nation members fighting for Nulgath again: the Outriders wear the skulls of other traitors while hunting Carcano. Gravelyn suspects that their return reflects forgiveness offered for service. Where the Heart is then checks another Lightguard assault and gives Ana the lead through the ruined house. Neither faction’s fighting makes the place safe for the people caught between them.

Ana welcomes the destruction of the house she remembers as a cage under the ArchFiend’s gaze, but is less certain that its warmth was always an illusion. She joined the Lightguard to resist the Nation and discover why she existed. Service during the Alliance exposed her to honorable enemies and disturbing comments from Fiends who knew she might have become one of them. Her commitment to protecting life also makes Astero’s gifts troubling: she says blessed Paladins increasingly live only to serve Light, their sense of self burning away.

Jadzia cannot simply dismiss the Nation’s attackers. Carnage commands the operation and has ordered her to keep Ana—whom she calls Miss Anarky—away. Capturing Carcano will win the Blood Void a place in Nulgath’s new inner circle; failure could cost much more than rank. Gravelyn, meanwhile, says Dage suspects the star was Nulgath’s last resort for destroying a Lore he could no longer possess. She also fears the Lightguard may intend to seize it. Both suspicions motivate her intervention before either has become an established explanation.

Carnage the Bloodfiend — The brother behind the contract

Ana takes the Hero deeper in Rip Space. The Casters’ tattooed spells are containing cracks caused by the stolen object below, rather than causing the danger themselves. In Permanent Record, branded Outriders guard the old bedroom under Carnage’s orders. The drawings, tally marks and notebook found in Blood and Water turn the hideout into evidence of the children’s confinement. The early notebook is visibly torn and incomplete; its clearest declaration is the older brother’s wish that Ana would disappear. Ana reads it with anger, knowing more pages are missing.

Family Feud breaks up fighting so frenzied that both sides lash out at their own. Twisted Helix then follows Carnage toward Carcano, with Ana asking the Hero to stop her if she is about to kill the Blood Void. The encounter ends in a flash and another attempt to keep her away. Jadzia tells Gravelyn to leave Nation business alone, while the basement itself is becoming a star-filled space and the floor seems to look back at the intruders. The secrecy can no longer contain the visible consequences of the stolen weapon.

Jadzia explains the bargain: Carcano was promised immortality and strength for his second-born child, Ana, whom Nation Oracles expected to become an exceptional weapon. His firstborn entered the Nation instead. Ana supplies the accusation Jadzia had not considered: Carnage is her brother, and he switched places with her at the last moment. Sending him after their father gives the person who altered the contract an opportunity to destroy its proof. Ana wants to know whether he saved her, wanted the Fiend’s life for himself, or had another reason.

Gravelyn’s native closing report says Carcano stole the object to make Nulgath listen, while the original substitution was not his doing. Why, then, has the ArchFiend entrusted Carnage with the pursuit? The optional Carnage Delenda Est holds the fighting in check while she speaks with Ana and Jadzia, emphasizing that even loyalists may not know their master’s intentions. Her question is not whether Carnage serves Nulgath faithfully now, but why that loyalty has survived the deception on which his service began.

Carnage the Bloodfiend — What the star really is

At the next confrontation the Hero lays out the contradiction for the Nation’s own soldiers: Carnage substituted himself without Carcano’s knowledge, and the Hero insists that Nulgath cannot have failed to notice. A Caster suspects a plan to destroy both men; an Outrider wonders whether this is another test. Gravelyn refuses to leave a potentially world-destroying object alone. Jadzia finally agrees to call off her Casters, though Carnage still commands the other forces, and treats the party’s arrival itself as something her master must have allowed.

There is no literal dying star, Jadzia says. It is a Fiend Shard, created by Adimonde and used to siphon Mana into Nulgath’s power. The Nation uses many, yet she says Lore shows no damage from their appetite; the Hero jokes about the world’s extraordinary supply of Mana. A full Shard has a limit, however, and can collapse like a star into a black hole. Jadzia’s original orders were to wait for Carnage, recover it and neutralize it with the Casters. Her explanation replaces one dangerous comparison with a more specific danger, without establishing an unlimited source of Mana.

Light Headed and Forgiveness of Debt clear Ascendants and Outriders still obstructing the pursuit. In Hyperspace-Plasia, the Hero tests spatial tears while keeping Paladins away; Gravelyn feels the Shard’s influence enter her skin but notices Ana’s stronger resistance. Tangled Aortas retrieves the childhood notebook discreetly while she questions Jadzia, and Nation Code opens the way into the transformed cellar. The evidence that Carnage hated Ana now sits beside the Fiends’ effort to keep her safe, a contradiction Gravelyn wants examined rather than erased.

Jadzia describes earlier Shards reaching capacity, usually being neutralized and fused to exceptional Fiends; one intended for Nulgath’s promising student was sealed away after Dage’s betrayal. She believes Carnage received Nulgath’s personal training when he was about ten or twelve, because he seemed the prophesied weapon. Ana, meanwhile, feels almost unchanged in Adimonde’s Void while Gravelyn senses it trying to twist her body. The affinity raises questions about the fate originally intended for her, but does not make Carnage equally resistant or explain all the Nation’s powers.

Carnage the Bloodfiend — What the Void keeps

Snake Ears reveals that the monstrous Void Fangs rely on sight and smell because they have been magically deafened. Jadzia confirms that only Carnage may hear what lies deeper in the Shard’s influence. Faustian Leftovers then introduces the Hushed: scraps and memories of consumed beings rather than ordinary lost souls. Their claim to have had a Nation and their remaining horns make the defenders wonder whether Nulgath had predecessors. The question remains a question.

The three Hushed voices attack different forms of certainty. One remembers cleverness, might and a Nation that did not save its possessors. Another calls itself the remains of a meal kept as a trophy. Those two are explicitly sensed to be addressing someone else. The third asks whose bones support the listener’s life and says someone paid their price. Their shifting references do not securely identify every person addressed, or prove that the Hero is physically rotting. They make power look dependent on older, obscured losses.

Broken Lives follows the pages Carnage tore from his notebook. The native task asks for four torn pages among the obstacles, and Call of the Fiend explicitly asks that the completed notebook be read before confronting him. This matters to the story: the fuller Chasm book supplies what the damaged version could not say. Ana’s reaction—she must be seeing things—marks a challenge to the explanation of her brother she has carried for more than a decade.

Carnage the Bloodfiend — The pages restored

The complete notebook keeps the older brother’s resentment intact. Ana has the training, good food and attention; he is punished for borrowing her weapons and wants her to disappear. Yet the next entry records her covering for his secret practice. She asks for scrambled eggs to make repayment ordinary and gives him drawings he calls clutter while leaving them on the wall. He also keeps a lantern burning against their father’s wishes because it protects her from nightmares. Care and hostility occupy the same voice.

The brother seeks the six-eyed Gentleman in their father’s mirror, hoping to be noticed as Ana has been. She smashes it and injures herself while shouting that the figure must stay away from her brother. He drags her away, promises he is not leaving, washes out the glass and bandages her because neither knows healing magic. She calls the mirror another cage rather than an escape. His ambition has brought them toward the thing she fears, but the entry records him tending the consequences.

When their father returns, his impressive claws become a threat aimed at the brother. Ana interposes herself and is struck against the wall. The diarist has to care for her, barricading the door because he believes their father’s attempts to fix her would do more damage. Exhausted, he hears her admit that she does not want to become a monster and asks why nobody will save them. Her last birthday as herself is approaching. The notebook’s final response to that wish complicates the earlier desire for her disappearance, without explicitly stating the motive for the later substitution.

Carnage the Bloodfiend — A conversation through the tear

Carnage blocks the way, saying Nulgath wants the channel to the Fiend God closed. Ana’s demand for answers erupts as a threat to tear him apart, while he mocks the Lightguard for raising a bloodthirsty obsession. Gravelyn tries to obtain the practical answers before the siblings destroy the chance to ask them. Meanwhile the Hero mutters about Primordials conversing in their head, prompting her to ask whom they are whispering to. The family dispute is taking place inside a larger contest for access to the Hero.

Gravelyn links the deafened troops to the Hushed and suspects that their words concern Nulgath. Carnage calls the accusation slander and insists his master need not deal with trivialities. The Hero urges caution about attracting notice, then says Hush. The voices fall silent. Ana says that breath shook her soul; the Hero reports reaching an understanding with the Fiend God on the other side of the tear. The separately encountered Adimonde addresses the Hero as his favorite’s favorite and notices another presence he calls Tentacles, entertaining the possibility of backing off rather than being devoured himself.

With the Hushed quiet, the Hero says Nulgath can now intervene. The Fiend God has also indicated Carcano’s location, reached by doubling back and jumping from the other side of the ledge. Gravelyn wants Nulgath present when the siblings ask their questions. Ana agrees to postpone her quarrel with Carnage: she will not put her wants before her companions or Lore. Famiglia di Carcano begins with that temporary truce, not with a reconciliation or a decision that her brother is good.

Carnage the Bloodfiend — The edge of the Shard

Carcano blames his son while the Shard approaches collapse. Carnage identifies the threatened black hole as Adimonde’s maw, capable of devouring Lore, and refuses to let that happen before Nulgath’s ambitions are fulfilled. Ana turns on her father: he favored her only because he meant to sell her to the Nation, while leaving her brother unwanted. The party divides its work, with Gravelyn and the Hero attempting to neutralize the Shard as the siblings confront Carcano.

Carcano tries to shame Ana with the idea that a Paladin would not shed family blood. She wants the simplicity of destroying evil, yet remembers a night that resists it: someone carried her to the Lightguard with a blanket around her shoulders, while the beasts were silent in the rain. Sigrid and the others taught her that the rescuer was pure evil. She asks Carnage whether she has come for revenge or stands as evidence of hope. The account leaves that question open rather than turning her memory into his confession.

Beside the Shard, gravity, color and definition begin to break down. The Hero considers the emergency and hears an offer of a bargain without fine print; Gravelyn orders the intruder out of their head and threatens to sever the connection even if it tears her apart. Before the Hero gives a recorded acceptance, Nulgath arrives and rebukes both them and the Fiend God for assuming he could not handle Nation business. This interrupted offer is distinct from the earlier understanding that quieted the Hushed.

Nulgath tells Carnage that the party has helped him pass his test. Ordered to rid the Nation of its parasite, the Blood Void faces a father still trying to offer Ana as payment. Nulgath says he had been willing to listen, but Carcano stole from him to force an audience. Weapons can be found elsewhere; the loyalty revealed by the altered fate is rarer. The battle again places Ana in a protective position beside her brother before she later describes their father as forcibly laid to rest. It does not end in the execution of the siblings Nulgath’s soldiers had feared.

Carnage the Bloodfiend — Loyalty and loose ends

Once the danger has passed, Nulgath reminds Carnage that he still owes his sister an answer. Even the change from Karnage with a K to Carnage with a C becomes a bitter aside before Ana returns to the real question: why was she left alive to hunt him? He says the cramped cage and she were his entire world, which he traded for blood, conquest and a peerless master. He refuses to interpret the exchange for her and tells her to work it out herself. His words do not erase the notebook’s care or settle which motive finally moved him.

Ana decides that the absence of a clean answer will not hold her still. She has made peace with trusting her own instincts and has larger questions for the Lightguard. Nulgath, meanwhile, treats the surviving family connection as useful: without that loose end, Carcano would not have been dealt with so smoothly. His willingness to preserve it shows a priority he wants others to recognize, not a general promise that the Nation’s contracts are harmless or that loyalty has become kindness.

Nulgath offers Ana half of the now compact, stable Shard, saying it was always meant for her and could help if the Paladins misbehave. He still entertains a chance of recruiting her, but she rejects that fate while saying she repays favors. Jadzia’s later report says the Shard was neutralized and given to its intended hosts. The gift leaves Ana with power outside the institution she intends to question, while preserving Nulgath’s interest in what she might become.

Carnage the Bloodfiend — Partnerships and appetites

Gravelyn suspects that her involvement was another calculated message, especially given the siblings’ circumstances. Nulgath points to restored contracts for Outriders and Carnage’s elevation as signs that his priorities have shifted. He assures her there will be no retaliation against her for trusting Dage, while reserving what that means for Dage himself. His comparison of the Fiend God to the Shadows in her own life reveals a shared problem without dissolving the older rivalry between their allies.

Afterward, Gravelyn has learned Nation secrets through dangerous exposure rather than a straightforward conversation and remains wary of how the encounter was arranged. Ana plans to question the Lightguard under Astero instead of abandoning her chosen family or declaring every enemy beyond hope. Jadzia calls the outcome a success and wants to return to Termina Temple and Hans’ smoothies, despite her joke that she has tempted fate by declaring Carnage’s personal life finished. Their differing conclusions preserve the imperfect partnership through which they survived.

The optional Uprooted Veins examines what remains while the spatial tears are expected to repair themselves. Gravelyn reports that neither Carcano nor Carnage has Ana’s resistance to the Shard: prolonged exposure would have changed the Blood Void drastically. Nulgath calls the process digestion, turning life into something the Void can consume. The postscript keeps the danger of Ana’s unrealized fate material, rather than treating the stable gift as proof that every use of a Shard is safe.

The final unnamed exchange widens the bargain beyond the family. One voice claims the Depths as its domain and refers to the Empress’ debt to the Eternal Sovereign. The other calls Nulgath its ArchFiend. They discuss permission for the Dragon to hush former favorites and a proposition motivated by a new taste of sustenance; one then becomes curious about the other’s formless state. The conversation exposes another appetite behind the apparent resolution, while leaving the speakers’ full terms and the consequences of their arrangement unstated.