Termina Temple — Siege Fortress
Siege Fortress — The Scorned Scion
The story turns to a remembered siege, presented from Gravelyn’s position. She asks whether the night Evil nearly vanished from Lore is still remembered. The narration places it in the years before the Shadowscythe invasion of Swordhaven: Nulgath tested the Empire, clashed with Sepulchure and declared him an equal.
That declaration affronted Nulgath’s former student. The narration frames the Legion’s attack on the flying fortress as an attempt to save Dage’s pride during the struggle for the Underworld. Sepulchure, still recovering from his duel, withdrew into the inner sanctum, leaving his young daughter to defend against the undead.
Shakaz reports breached walls and a skeleton crew against the strongest Legion forces. The recommendation is to take Sepulchure and retreat. Gravelyn instead demands to be called Empress: she leads while her father is indisposed, and refuses to consider Shakaz’s advice until the refusal to recognize her authority is explained.
Shakaz says that long before Valen became Emperor, he was a peerless warrior and leader. Someone close to him ruined his life in ways Alteon could not. Gravelyn resembles that person in appearance and action, Shakaz claims, and many servants therefore see her as weak and weakening her father. Some have joined Dage; others hope he kills her. The accusation leaves the person who allegedly harmed Valen unnamed.
Gravelyn thanks Shakaz for being honest but refuses retreat. She insists her father is not weak and promises to destroy Dage and his Legion, sending that message through her loyal guards’ blades. Her attempt to threaten disobedience falters. Shakaz declares loyalty to the Emperor alone, then agrees to follow her orders out of respect for his wishes until retreat becomes unavoidable.
Siege Fortress — The Defenders and the Turncoats
Shakaz says the Archfiend’s duel with Sepulchure took place less than a week before the siege. Both suffered; the Emperor’s mind seems shaken, and he heals faster in an unnamed woman’s former bedroom. Shakaz gives Gravelyn provisional command but threatens to take over and order a retreat if her leadership fails.
Vile Vanguard begins with the flying fortress pinned to the ground by Legion ballistas. Infantry search its halls after finding the throne empty, closing on the place where Sepulchure rests. Eight Dreadmarch Weaponry are requested as Gravelyn directs the defense. Shakaz contrasts the Nation’s restrictions on advanced weapons and dark arts with Dage’s versatile infantry training: effective, but dangerous if soldiers turn against their master.
Fell Fealty brings decorated Legion Dreadknights into the hall and requests four Knight’s Insignia. Shakaz repeats a story that Dage was a king who abandoned his kingdom for fiendish power shortly after his coronation. The knights’ scarred insignias come from multiple dead kingdoms, yet even dismembered they fight with their teeth. Shakaz cannot understand their loyalty to someone regarded as a born traitor.
Infestation Signs interrupts the battle with an investigation of four claw marks and a scout through the hallway. The defenders are bottlenecking the Legion in narrow passages, but something has scratched at the walls. Shakaz rules out the Legionnaires and their absent beasts, judging the marks too small. The scratched bricks suggest a creature trying to get through; whether this is a pest problem is still a question.
Banal Barrage returns to the fighting with six knights and six Dreadmarch to demolish. Shakaz had hoped mounting losses would force a withdrawal, but reinforcements instead trample each other. On Gravelyn’s order, the Emperor’s guards will fight and throw the remains from the windows. Shakaz praises Sepulchure’s distinction between expendable minions and valuable loyalists while accusing Dage of never learning it, or of forgetting it.
Bluebirds identifies former Shadowscythe soldiers serving as Legion DoomKnights. Gravelyn is to capture six rather than kill them. Shakaz attributes their betrayal to jealousy of Sepulchure and resentment of his daughter’s assured rank. In the completion reply, Gravelyn is said to have known of their spite but lacked a way to address it without asking her father for help.
Anatomical Example requires six traitors subdued and four wall-skeleton examinations in the captured native quest. Shakaz reveals that the displayed skeletons remain sentient, enduring as warnings to future rebels. The newly captured false Legion DoomKnights are threatened with the same fate. Asked about loyalty, Shakaz credits Sepulchure’s charisma and again tells Gravelyn that she is not her father.
Siege Fortress — The Enemy’s Warning
Bloodless Daisy exposes a new danger: Dage has captured Light Elementals and sent them against the Shadowscythe. Their power could maim most defenders, yet Shakaz questions why that would not also endanger the Legion. Eight Light Runes are requested, along with a conversation with the enemy general who has approached Gravelyn on one knee.
Rand introduces himself as the Legion’s First General and addresses Gravelyn as Empress, recognizing the skill of her soldiers. He wants hostilities ended in Dage’s own interest and offers to stall his warriors while sharing information. He says the Legion and Empire are both in danger.
Rand connects the siege to Dage’s history with Nulgath. His master escaped the Archfiend’s contract but remains measured against his former teacher, so the declaration that Sepulchure is Nulgath’s equal cuts deeply. Dage wanted to prove both of them insignificant. Rand calls him the strongest contemporary Lich, yet finds him exhausted and fears that something sinister entered with the captured Elementals.
Dage has spent decades in a low mood, Rand says, refusing rest in his forge and acting erratically. Even his first general’s advice no longer reliably reaches him; he lacks an equal who could sway him. Shakaz distrusts the offer, but Rand’s relaxed speech recalls Valen as a rough Champion of Good, gifted in combat rather than etiquette.
Shadows of Espionage asks for five traitors interrogated, five Elementals subdued under the objective Light Strangled, and two spy holes found. Dislodged bricks reveal spaces behind Sepulchure’s chambers from which someone could watch and listen. Gravelyn suggests the claw marks came from spies who knew these hidden ways. Shakaz’s question about rats does not identify the intruders.
Foul Duke of Light makes the stronger Elemental the immediate priority. Shakaz takes its appearance as evidence that Dage has found Sepulchure. The objective is one Enslaved Astero defeated. The reply describes Shakaz feeling as if flesh is melting and rotting through the armor, while Gravelyn seems unharmed. The victory feels suspiciously easy, and Dage’s approaching footsteps force another decision.
In Evil of Humanity, Dage walks past the wounded Shakaz without a glance. Unable even to stand, Shakaz begs Gravelyn to save her father or buy him more time. The quest requires Dage fought once, without declaring him dead. Its reply breaks into alarm: the Elementals are changing colors, Rand has rushed in, and Shakaz begins an unfinished question about whether someone staged the siege.
Siege Fortress — The Light Turns
Dage taunts Sepulchure over the Archfiend’s declaration of equality. Calling the Shadowscythe a sham, he mocks the fleeing servants and the Emperor’s reliance on a child. Sepulchure answers with a remark about Dage’s freckles, then condemns the siege as a tantrum that sacrificed his best warriors and risked the Legion by enslaving higher Light Elementals.
Dage rejects the accusation of fragile pride. He declares himself the Endless and Master of the Undead Legion, boasting that he broke Nulgath’s contractual chains and now reaches for the Underworld. Gravelyn interrupts his speech with “Dork the Evil” and asks whether he will finish today. Dage’s laughter turns into a threat to kill the child first.
Rand arrives with a warning: the Elementals are rampaging, their Light is changing colors, and the Legionnaires cannot control them. Dage tells him to handle it and then calls him Wilhelm, refusing his advice. Rand protests that this is not his name and urges a withdrawal because Dage is unwell. The exchange does not explain the mistaken name.
A luminous figure appears near Dage as Gravelyn calls a warning to her father. Dage looks at the disturbance and breaks off in confusion over his soul. The view then shows a brilliant yellow beam extending across the scene. Gravelyn is pictured as a dark silhouette within it while Sepulchure cries, “Gravelyn! No!” The image gives way to white, without a spoken explanation of her immediate condition.
Against the white field, Astero describes the supposed threat of an age of Darkness as a mangled soul, rotting remains and an abomination. He declares that their humiliation ends here, calling for eternal Light to sweep wrongdoing from the world. His contempt is an accusation against those he opposes, not an impartial account of their worth. The remembered episode closes with his declaration rather than a resolution of the attack.
Siege Fortress — The Account Reconsidered
After Evil of Humanity, Shakaz admits to misjudging the real threat. The greater Elemental hid its strength; Shakaz now suspects that it allowed itself and its kin to be enslaved so neither faction would treat them cautiously. That is a retrospective explanation for the infiltration, with the Elemental’s full plan still uncertain.
Rand’s later greeting contains another uncertainty. He remembers opposing the march and being angry; then Dage said something, and his anger disappeared. He questions whether the argument happened and whether his master did something to him. His account supplies that sequence without explaining the memory gap or proving a method of control.
The optional Funeral Asters follows Evil of Humanity. Shakaz wants the Elementals subdued and proposes using captured traitors to test their effect on those aligned with Darkness. Eight Traitorous Specimens, eight Elemental Runes and one Colossal Light Rune yield a Rune of Doom. The task carries the investigation forward through an openly cruel choice of subjects.
The completion reply says the Elementals carried runes for a spell that floods them with power from their own domain at the cost of their minds. Shakaz connects such surrender to anger, desperation and despair, then starts to say that even Valen gave everything for someone described only in a bitter, unfinished remark. The words leave that person unnamed.