Termina Temple — Temple Siege

Temple Siege — A Name Used as a Mask

A letter from Gravelyn sends the Hero to a new Temple of Light. Neither she nor Swordhaven’s royalty knew it existed until a call for aid reached Queen Victoria. The news says the Nation has invaded under Nulgath himself, although he mentioned no such plan when Gravelyn last spoke with him. She asks the Hero to discover what is happening before the alliance dissolves.

The Nation’s army parts to admit the Hero. Carnage greets them with fury over the shattered Fiend Shard, calls them Nulgath’s pet project and demands submission. Nulgath interrupts: a pretender has stormed the Temple in his name. The impostor was sealed inside when the clerics evacuated, a blunder the Archfiend considers an insult to his competence.

The Hero observes that invading the Temple still sounds like something Nulgath would do. He allows that he might have done so in the past, or might in the near future, but says he would not attack an ally during the active agreement between the Empress and the Queen. The Hero answers his pointed comparison with an innocent whistle and offers to deal with the impostor in exchange for putting their own offense aside.

Carnage begs permission to kill the Hero, beginning to mention a third insult against the Nation. Nulgath threatens to tear out his tongue unless those incidents are connected to the invasion. The Hero’s attempt to ask about them receives the same threat. Whatever the full tally contains, Nulgath keeps control of when it may be discussed.

Attention turns to the Temple itself. The Hero points out that it was built without Victoria’s knowledge and displays her mother’s statue without permission. Nulgath gives another reason for restraint: Gravelyn is the Champion of Light, and her connection to Celeritas may run deeper than blood. He sees potential in followers who might judge conquest more useful to Light than chivalry.

Nulgath warns that the relationship between Light and Dark is changing, as is Darkness’s connection with the Shadows. Hunting his impostor is already leading toward a larger conspiracy. His willingness to cooperate remains bound to the alliance and to his own ambitions.

With Nulgath directing the army outside, Carnage oversees the work at the Temple. He says the Nation blocks all other entry and reserves the impostor for itself. One Fiend Shard has been shattered and another stolen; when he nearly reveals the remaining insult, he retreats into a conspicuous denial that anything else was taken.

Temple Siege — The Price of the Light

Fairweather Elementals begins with the sealed front doors. Carnage sends the Hero east to inspect the impostor’s handprints and fight the Light Elementals along the way. Eight Solidified Light accompany the investigation. Captured evacuees say the Elementals appeared after the doors were sealed; the Hero’s report that the doors now feel looser gives Carnage his first lead.

In Case of Emergency turns to the glowing paladins already inside the perimeter. According to the Nation’s guards, nobody except the Hero has been admitted. Six sashes reveal runes that let ordinary warriors use spells beyond their own abilities. Carnage compares their radiance to a fraction of Gravelyn’s potential and says the power seems to cost mortals control of their bodies and minds.

In Blind Devotion, Carnage concludes that the paladins and Elementals are themselves part of the sealing spell. Defeating them weakens it. The alliance still constrains him, so the plan is to knock the paladins unconscious and banish the Elementals rather than kill them. The requested five Dented Armor and five Elemental Cores mark another assault on the linked defenders.

The outer seal breaks, but Carnage describes a terrible cost. The Light has left the paladins along with their faculties: they writhe, stare blankly and do not respond when he steps on their limbs. He calls death a possible mercy and blames their willing devotion. His account preserves that cruelty alongside the fact that the party refrained from killing them.

Blessed Visage reveals another sealed entrance, this time to the inner sanctum. Carnage sends the Hero to speak with Jadzia and inspect the statues of Lynaria and Celeritas. The Temple’s layout differs from its predecessor. Its righteous presentation now strikes Carnage as a threat, although he stops short of claiming that the Light is presently conspiring against Nulgath and his allies.

Jadzia places the new Temple near the town where Lynaria was born. She says Noxus ruined the old Temple of Light, while this replacement was constructed without informing either Swordhaven’s royalty or Priestess Celestia. Even the Nation and Shadowscythe, with their networks of spies, had remained ignorant of it. Nulgath has sent her to investigate.

To Jadzia, Lynaria’s unauthorized statue uses a beloved, tragic queen as a symbol of Light beside the grand images of Celeritas. She also reports unusually close dealings between the Temple’s mortals and Light Elementals, claiming they permitted deeper access to Light than other contemporary organizations enjoyed. Her comparison reaches back to the ancient Planar Conflict; it leaves the Temple’s organizers and their reasons to be discovered.

Banging on Light’s Door repeats the earlier approach against the inner seal, with three Engraved Vambraces and three Elemental Bracelets as objectives. This time Carnage sees barely any change. The inner defense is much stronger, and the impostor may have time to find something dangerous before it gives way. Carnage halts the attempt and waits for Nulgath’s return.

Temple Siege — Words That Bind

Nulgath says Light magic alone could not keep him from opening the inner doors. The clerics sealed them from outside, but another entity holds them from within. It has turned the power of his contracts and the Nation against him.

Words Bind explains the restraint. Nulgath is bound by his own contracts: unless followers violate their terms intentionally or through incompetence, he cannot strike them. The Nation members behind the doors have kept their vows but are being controlled. Investigating six Dark Cloth Scraps and the handprints leads him to recognize an otherworldly creature exploiting his promises. What he first took for a nameless necromancer’s impersonation has become a personal attack on him and his Shadowscythe allies.

Doomed Darkness sends the Hero against the Doomed Beasts for six Pulsating Shadows. Nulgath identifies the creatures as denizens torn from the Plane of Darkness by a familiar power. He remembers the Empress’s Doomblade cutting his palm and recognizes the same power in the curse that took Voidstar’s Elementals. The connection rests on his recollection and interpretation of the creatures.

Shady Costuming follows the dead trolls that once served among Oblivion’s guards. Nulgath calls them dead but not undead; Shadows inhabit their bodies as protective suits against Lore’s natural light. Eight Congealed Darkness help expose this use of flesh as clothing. Nulgath concludes that the pretender wanted a suitable cloak more than his reputation.

For The Emperor’s Shadow, the Hero gathers six Beast Eyes and six Troll Tusks. Nulgath will wear the creatures’ essence so the entity inside mistakes him for one of its own and allows the doors to open. He wonders whether Voidstar fears the Shadows or benefits from the fear they inspire, leaving that question for a discussion with Gravelyn. The immediate concern is the attack he expects when his deception is discovered.

The doors open onto Oblivion. Throat Sores names the concealed third insult: a clone’s corpse, which Oblivion had been guarding, was stolen. A Shadow has overtaken him. Nulgath orders the Hero to defeat Oblivion and pull the shade from his throat. The single victory ends with the Shadow fleeing into the Temple’s cracks, beyond Nulgath’s immediate grasp.

Temple Siege — The Stolen Vessel

After the fight, the Hero reports that the thing attached to Oblivion has slipped into a crevice. Nulgath demands an explanation. Oblivion apologizes: the attackers resembled their Shadowscythe allies so closely that he did not recognize the ambush until too late. They took the clone’s corpse before its dissolution could be completed.

Nulgath admits that he too failed to foresee the threat. He had initially suspected Dage, but reasons that Dage would not revive his clone only to surrender the credit, nor so openly endanger the alliance. He starts to dismiss the ability of other necromancers before the Hero interrupts to ask about the clones themselves.

When Dage trapped him in another realm, Nulgath explains, he sent a clone to lead the Nation on Lore. Making a perfect copy is difficult and costly. Oblivion had been guarding a defective clone’s corpse, whose remains required a long, specific process of destruction.

According to Nulgath, an inadequately destroyed vessel could let Adimonde possess it temporarily and interfere with his plan to replace the Fiend God. Instead, a different entity has worn the clone as a shroud. Through that corpse it has even gained ownership of the Nation’s contracts, explaining why Nulgath found his own promises turned against him.

The Hero asks whether Oblivion saw his attacker. His memory is hazy: he cannot remember a face and wonders whether there was one. He remembers a hooded cloak concealing a Mysterious Stranger. His uncertain recollection identifies the kind of threat without supplying an individual name.

The interior dims and gives way to blackness. The Hero asks who turned out the lights. Oblivion screams that the thing has returned. The Hero complains of a hurting throat, and Oblivion cries that it has them, that it is inside them. Nulgath addresses the Hero and orders them not to move. The conversation ends in darkness, with the danger turned inward.

Carnage’s later greeting records the aftermath from outside: he heard screaming and laughter, and says Nulgath dragged the Hero back to the gates before returning inside. Nulgath’s own later account names a Mysterious Stranger as the impostor and calls for a deeper search through the Temple, while explicitly leaving its reason for invading unknown.

Temple Siege — Shadows Under Examination

In conversation, Nulgath distinguishes Shadows and Doom from Darkness. He calls Voidstar cowardly and argues that mortals associate Darkness with fear caused by Shadows and Doom rather than with its Avatar. His remarks mix classification, contempt and unresolved history: he says the reason for the Plane’s great power has remained hidden since the Planar Conflict.

He also says there are many Mysterious Strangers. One led Sir Valen toward becoming Emperor of the Shadowscythe, setting off events that eventually brought Gravelyn to rule. The Shadows now seek to recover their lost hold. Nulgath remembers briefly fighting Sepulchure as a man rather than their puppet; to him, the theft of his clone and shard shows how little they respect beings whose origins were mortal.

After Throat Sores, the optional Enlightened Shadows turns the creatures into a research task. One Oblivion’s Gem, seven Dark Remnants and seven Paladin Armaments yield a Shadow Extract for further study. Nulgath asks whether Shadows and Doom really are the same and how Light enters the relationship. For now he declines to call them elements, comparing them to cave worms burrowing through Darkness. His comparison remains provisional.

Nulgath expects Jadzia to welcome the material and believes other Loremasters will readily share what they know. He warns that some Necronomicon copies are inaccurate or out of date, and that its information will not serve in Lore’s present circumstances. The investigation continues into the Temple’s depths with the threat identified more clearly and its purpose still undisclosed.