Cold Thunder: Lia Tara Hill

Lia Tara Hill — The trap points east

Iona rages at an army she cannot drive out of the dark. Greenguard’s Knights and the Fianna have trapped her forces among the trees, but Galanoth, Celestia and Felix are tiring while she seems inexhaustible. The Hero wants to take over the fight. Before Victoria can answer, Brentan spots Greenguard smoke signals to the East: a warning that the dead have risen near Granville’s advance. The apparent victory has opened onto another danger.

Kieran cannot find Caoimhe. Felix reluctantly reports that she was seen taking the staff from Naoise’s Grave and fleeing East, with Henry following. Kieran begs them to believe she wanted to keep it safe. Victoria promises caution and no judgment before they find her. Caoimhe’s repeated insistence on going East now looks like bait, particularly with the Undead threatening allies already there.

Victoria chooses a small party rather than marching her army into the suspected trap. The main force will keep Iona occupied while she, Brentan, the Hero and Kieran investigate, retrieve Caoimhe and personally order Granville to withdraw. A messenger would not overcome his ambition. Felix offers to guide them through the East where he lived with Indradeep. Victoria says that although he cannot exactly die, they need him rested and alert. She entrusts Galanoth and Celestia’s safety to him if the battle changes.

Lia Tara Hill — What a crown demands

Victoria finds a clarity in the Hero and Brentan’s company that her court rarely allows. Her nobles compete for favor or question her decisions, while men like Granville supply the wealth and influence that feed the kingdom. He will not surrender territory he considers won for his house without her direct order. Saving her friends has brought the Queen into a war whose rewards her court already expects to divide.

She recognizes that Skye’s wounds reach back into Greenguard: Duncan’s invasion, the origins of Iona’s ancestors, and now her own army’s demands for land, resources and gold. Muusa traces those ancestors to Camlan and their seclusion after they realized the Avatars no longer favored them. Brittany warned that war abandons the weak and the trapped. Victoria wants to be the one who returns for them. Iona’s polished letters once made her jealous; meeting their author exposed how public concern could disguise a ruler’s use of fear. Even if a threat were real, Victoria now asks, would that justify every means used against it?

Lia Tara Hill — The dead who will not draw blood

At Ease identifies the Undead Garde by their family crests: Greenguard knights left from Duncan’s invasion. Greenguard Daisy finds Wraiths carrying the flowers that Skye’s land grows to mourn fallen heroes, even strangers. In True Nature, Victoria notices something stranger than their resurrection. These dead drive intruders away from the Hill of Lia, remove those who fall, and refuse to draw blood. Whoever controls them appears to be emptying the field rather than feeding it.

Deafly Pride brings the party to Muusa and Granville. The Lorekeeper has already warned him, but he refuses to listen to an Elf. A Dragonlord’s aerial survey found magic circles encompassing the Daisy Fields, with runes resembling Undine’s Drowning Machine. Iona has copied the stolen research and turned the battlefield into her own Sparagmos. Muusa fears the consequences of opposing weapons capable of consuming whole armies.

Granville speaks of conquest as inheritance. His ancestors failed to claim these fields; he intends to make them bear his name and win another Queendom for the Queen of Victory. He praises Duncan’s empire, dismisses Dudley as a builder of roads, and treats the fleeing enemy’s ruined forts as proof that the capital is within reach. Yet even he admits that the dead only push his troops away. Victoria’s direct command finally makes him withdraw. A stronger spirit blocks the party’s route: King Duncan himself.

Lia Tara Hill — The child history concealed

After King of Briars and Smoke, Duncan’s spirit exposes a memory that the present-day witnesses share. Morgana identifies Ingram as the man who entered Balemorale, killed the guards and stole Daphne. Duncan demands his daughter back. Ingram, the Champion of Energy, says Taliesin told him Duncan and his Court Mage had made a monster in a cauldron and disguised it as a baby. Dudley is appalled. Ingram remembers the child crying, but clings to the story that let him believe the abduction was righteous.

Taliesin’s family had taken Ingram in after his own parents rejected him. He says that when he doubts his brother, he takes his medicine; he swallows it during the confrontation and falls silent. Taliesin mocks Duncan’s secret child with a commoner, then announces that he and his legitimate children will mourn the Champion whom Duncan supposedly killed. Dudley protests that they witnessed Taliesin trick his brother into poisoning himself. Taliesin trusts that Skye will believe its own rulers over invading tyrants and admits that the Champion’s popularity threatened his crown.

A younger Iona objects to letting the invaders leave, only to be silenced with a sneer about her embroidery lessons. Taliesin says Daphne was abandoned in the grass days before. Duncan orders his children to leave no survivors, but Dudley reports sickness, dwindling food and Skye’s burning of its own forests and farms. Daphne is gone. She was Dudley’s family too, despite their different mothers, and he insists on going home before more of them die. Brentan understands why the kidnapping vanished from history: conquest was the story that concealed a secret child. Kieran asks Victoria whether the Shadows could show this truth to everyone. She asks for time.

Lia Tara Hill — A prayer buried in the snow

Last Snowfall uncovers a Druid’s scroll beneath the remaining dead. Cathbad of the First Fianna commits his last words to the soil. Tanaris offered his life for his daughter and people, yet his corpse and honor were defiled. Eire and the Guardian Spirit Bananach disappeared, white flowers grew in mourning, and the Elves separated children from their elders. Cathbad expects the Thundersnow Druids to be executed after they crown the dead Champion atop Tanaris’s body, leaving their children without their own history.

Cathbad turns his desperation into a prayer to Haeos, the Avatar worshiped by the conquerors. If their land, children and crown now belong to him, they too must count as his people. He names his plea a prophecy: Haeos will bring the truth to light on Lia Tara Hill and end cruelty and lies. Muusa identifies the crowned Champion as Gaheris, raised posthumously to kingship by his children, and the hill itself as Tanaris’s body. The document preserves a conquered people’s appeal; it does not prove that the Avatar answered it. The scroll ends in a different script with a message that, even if Haeos ignored the plea, “we’re here now.” It asks the reader to find its writer in the Royal Palace and carry the land’s wishes. No signature names that writer here.

Spring Melt brings the party to Henry’s boat. He saw Caoimhe put on a Warden’s garb and identifies the missing Southern Warden as Illaria, but believes her care for the Fianna was real. He also noticed the surrounding ice vanish around the time the Hero emerged from Naoise’s Grave. He suspects someone is guiding their route, without knowing whose purpose the weather serves. Henry also reports that the hill twitched under lightning strikes and sent ripples through the lake, although it is still now. Knowing it is Tanaris’s corpse makes him hope it stays dead. Crossing the lake means fighting Illaria’s Cailleacha in Connla and clearing the hill in Dumha na nGiall. Victoria orders restraint: separate Illaria from Bananach’s staff and try to reach the person who cared for Kieran.

Lia Tara Hill — The daughter behind the mask

When the party confronts her, Illaria says she has no name and is no one’s daughter. Iona once blindfolded her and ordered her strongest Energy spells; when the blindfold fell, gagged bodies lay at her feet. Iona asked whether her father would accept a murderer, then embraced her, named herself her mother and gave her a new identity. Even painful experiments could not drive Illaria away when she believed she had nowhere else to belong.

Illaria turns the accusation toward Victoria: has she too matched lonely exiles with orphans and frightened scholars into abandoning their morals? Victoria protests that Song and Noelle face real threats, but Illaria asks whether there were no other choices. Brentan admits the crown could tempt him the same way and trusts Victoria to do better. Victoria points to the dead who refused to kill: Illaria has been resisting Iona from within. Kieran retracts his belief that the Queen’s children were beyond saving. Illaria asks whether he would let a murderer home, and he finally recognizes his lost daughter. She had hoped he would see her through white hair and purple eyes; his failure left her believing she was only a weapon.

Lia Tara Hill — A field made into Sparagmos

Victoria tells Illaria it is not too late. Iona interrupts: not for long. Lightning engulfs Illaria and the party. When the glare clears, Skye’s soldiers hold Victoria and Brentan captive. Once Victoria is awake before her, the Queen complains that Illaria was meant to lure an army into the fields, though a smaller prize will do. Indradeep notices her altered arm. She says Galanoth’s fire forced her hand, that Abel called the change normal, and that her body is approaching the gods. Her claim that her enemies fled does not explain what happened to each of them.

Iona explains her family’s failed attempts to make another Champion by draining Tanaris and Volgritian. The stolen Undine research let her transform the field into a Sparagmos. Abel has since persuaded her to aim beyond becoming a Champion. The Hero’s unusual nature offers a substitute for the army she intended to sacrifice: she speaks of feeding a guest into an input and redirecting the output. Victoria begs her to stop, but Iona resents the crown and Champions that she believes fate handed her rival. The Queen’s public claim of selfless protection has narrowed into a demand for what she thinks she deserves.

Lia Tara Hill — A friend stays behind

Brentan breaks into Iona’s speech, blinds her and tells Victoria to take the Hero and run. Indradeep hesitates over Illaria after seeing their mother strike her. Brentan warns that she must not wake alone and urges him to go with her, allowing him to repay his friends for the last time. The unresponsive Illaria is carried away with the escaping party. They cannot reach the boat directly; Victoria and the others must risk the lightning-struck water. She orders Brentan to catch up.

Brentan remains among fallen Skye soldiers and strikes the obelisk. He discovers that blunting his sword has only dented it. An Executor assures Iona it still works at close range. Brentan knows he will not leave alive, but the alternative was watching the Hero die before Victoria. He wishes he had thanked the friend who helped him share his happiest years with Brittany, and told Victoria and Tara they were family. They will do more than defeat Iona, he says; she will be a footnote in their adventures. Iona threatens to erase his soul with Sparagmos so that Brittany’s ghost will weep forever. Brentan answers that his wife would be proud.

Lia Tara Hill — Silence on the water

Henry receives the escaping party at the boat. Victoria hands over the others and says she must go back for Brentan, but attention turns to Sparagmos. A white glare overtakes the scene. Henry asks whether Victoria heard it. She says she did not: everything went silent. The rescue has cost a friend whose final conversation took place beyond their reach.

Victoria imagines Brentan climbing from the water, then admits that she knows he is gone. She fears her nobles will turn his name into a reason to destroy Skye, and cannot yet face Tara or Brittany’s memory. Granville immediately gives that fear a voice: no survivors, the heads of Iona’s children on the walls, the capital burned by Dragons. Muusa instead names Brentan’s sacrifice as the act that kept the Hero from becoming the machine’s fuel and saved an army from charging it. Grief has not ended the struggle over what this war will become.

Lia Tara Hill — Who is brought home

Henry’s grief is different. Brentan’s family took his youngest brother hostage to deter former Dethrix loyalists, much as Iona took Kieran’s child. He resented Brentan and avoided his eyes. Now he offers sympathy only for the pain of those who loved him. The truth Brentan had promised to explain does not grant every survivor the same loss or erase the harm his family did.

The optional, repeatable Pushing Up Daisies turns from advancing armies to those left behind. Illaria’s command has broken, but Duncan’s knights still roam the battlefield. Victoria asks that they be given rest and their bones returned to Greenguard, regardless of the dynasty they served: a crown led them here, and they should not remain trapped far from home. She promises to find Brentan and bring him back too. Changeling’s hope of reuniting stolen children with their families survives beside her new demand that Greenguard be heroes rather than invaders.