The Destroyer: Rift Opening and Neverglades Camp

The Destroyer: The Warning from the Rift

After Swordhaven's fall, the survivors wait in Gravelyn's flying fortress for another wave of Infernals. None comes. For a time, they dare to hope that the enemy has exhausted its numbers. Then a rift opens, and the land around it begins to die. People, plants and animals sicken as the blight spreads outward. The pause in the invasion has ended with a danger they do not yet understand.

At the Neverglades battle camp, Lord Brentan wants answers. Victoria and Gravelyn consider an army's advance too dangerous without more information, so scouts are sent to investigate. They do not return. Baldric the Brave, one of their strongest warriors, goes after them and disappears in turn. Brentan now asks the Hero to find the rescuer who has himself become lost.

Baldric has not found the scouts. Near the Rift, he fears he cannot survive if he continues. He struggles to get a warning back to the camp, writes a letter and sends it with an arrow. His plea is that no one come after him or let the same thing happen to anyone else. After firing the message, he collapses. The Hero's search brings back that warning, rather than the warrior Brentan hoped to recover.

The message makes the danger clearer without giving them a way through it. Brentan wants to find a means of entering the Rift and destroying what lies beyond before it crosses into Lore. Victoria and Gravelyn favor waiting to understand what might emerge. He remains eager to fight, but recognizes that their forces must act together and survive the fumes first. Baldric's warning has turned reconnaissance into a question of whether anyone can approach the source and return.

The Destroyer: The Neverglades Camp

Warlic suspects a tear in the fabric of their universe, leading to another plane, perhaps the Queen of Monsters' own. No one has yet approached closely enough to report thoroughly. His wards hold the creatures and toxic fumes outside the camp, but sustaining them takes energy. He asks for poison samples in the hope of developing something like a magical vaccine, along with arcane resources to recharge the defenses and help reactivating wards that fail. Protection is temporary, and a way to close the Rift remains a hope.

Loremaster Emily has come as Shadowfall's liaison and monster-lore specialist. She understands the tragedy, but also sees a new plane as an opportunity to learn. The scouts' disappearance need not mean losing all their research: loose journal pages may have blown toward camp, while other pages have been swallowed by the creatures nearby. She asks for their recovery and proposes placing data readers around the perimeter to record the Rift monsters in battle. Knowledge, she hopes, will help them resist without destroying themselves.

Khargryn offers a different ambition. Rather than killing every monster, he wants to tame them and turn their strength against the Queen. His certainty that power can conquer danger leads to experiments, not an established method. He asks for tainted food to test on the creatures, materials for a device inspired by Tara's dragon-controlling ring, and samples of bile and fumes to try disguising armor with the creatures' scent. Even he ends one request by hoping the experiment will not kill him.

Torque, Dragonfarce's lead singer, sees the gathering of Lore's defenders as material for an extraordinary saga. His last visit to Crownsreach left him eager to chronicle Drakath's rage against the Queen as well. Around camp, that enthusiasm becomes requests for music to inspire him, dark cosmetics for his performance and battles worth singing about. His supplies and drinks are part of a bard's effort to prepare for the story he expects to witness.

Dewlok brings the perspective of someone who has already lost a home. A refugee from Granemor, he hopes it might one day be rebuilt into a fortress. For now, travelers need protection from the monsters in the surrounding forest. He offers the Hero work clearing plague spreaders, healing for those who need it, and a route to the Void for anyone seeking a greater challenge. Those offers do not change the danger gathering around the camp itself.

Aria and Lucky have followed a disturbance they feel in the air and the earth. It grows stronger toward a new camp of Darkblood travelers, and Warlic suggests that the Hero accompany them to investigate. It is another lead, rather than an answer to the Rift. Across the Neverglades camp, eagerness, fear, curiosity and hope have brought people together. Baldric's warning remains the measure of what they have not yet learned to survive.