The nursery floor hums with a fading golden light as Kalazan grips the cold, stone tablets. Brann stumbles into the chamber, his armor dented and slick with fresh gore.
Unit Captain Brann
Commander, the Crag is buckling. The main wards are shedding light like broken glass. Something massive is smashing the causeway.
Kalazan
The tremors were not for the nursery at all.
A sudden shadow stretches across the tunnel entrance. A tall, gaunt figure clad in rusted chainmail and bearing a jagged obsidian spear steps into the light, their eyes glowing with a sickly, pale luminescence.
The Pale Stalker
You waste your final breaths on nursery trinkets, Minotaur. The gate is a lie. The mountain already belongs to the hunger.
The Pale Stalker
Their pride will make the harvest so much sweeter.
+ Scene Quest Added
Defeat the Pale Stalker
+ Story Quest Added
Protect the Hold from the encroaching hunger
“I summon 3 skeleton warriors”
SUCCESS (Legendary Conjuration arcana, rolled +1)
Kalazan raises his staff, the dark wood pulsing with a rhythmic, necrotic heartbeat.
Kalazan
The nursery soil is rich enough to bind them.
Three pale, calcified hands erupt from the dirt around The Pale Stalker, dragging themselves upward with grinding bone joints.
The Pale Stalker
Puppets. You call forth the dust of your ancestors to defend a cage of mud.
Unit Captain Brann
Steady, Commander! They are surrounding the creature, but that spear... it keeps glowing brighter.
The skeletons lock their bony fingers around the intruder, but the obsidian spear pulses with an oily black mist that begins to erode the summon's very substance.
“I cast a very powerful nulify evil on the obsidian spear”
SUCCESS (Legendary Conjuration arcana, rolled -1)
Kalazan plants his feet firmly, the obsidian sigils on his palms igniting with a blinding, sterile white radiance.
Kalazan
The corruption clinging to that obsidian is a rot I will not abide within these walls.
A wave of nullifying energy crashes outward from the staff, slamming into the black mist like a tidal wave hitting a harbor wall.
The Pale Stalker
No. My blade... it drinks the void! You cannot unmake what the shadows have forged!
The obsidian spear shudders violently as the light strips away its oily veil, leaving the weapon dull and brittle.
Unit Captain Brann
The mist is gone! The creature stumbles, Kalazan, strike now while it loses its grip!
“I cast his chainmail burning with faith”
SUCCESS (Legendary Arcana, rolled -2)
Kalazan chants a low, rhythmic incantation, and his chainmail surges with a sudden, searing heat. The metal rings turn white hot, casting long, flickering shadows against the nursery walls.
Kalazan
The divine sparks in the steel will force its hand.
With a thunderous stomp, Kalazan releases the energy. A flare of pure, holy fire erupts from his armor, washing over the Stalker like a cleansing tide.
The Pale Stalker
Agh! It burns! Your iron reeks of celestial filth, Minotaur!
The Pale Stalker
I am being unmade from the inside out.
The Stalker collapses to its knees, smoke pouring from its tattered rags as its skin begins to crack like cooling lava. Behind them, the nursery floor shudders.
Quest Complete
Defeat the Pale Stalker
New Gift: Pale Moon Bane