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AHMUT’S LEGION
Three hundred years ago . . .
The Third Oligarch of the Empire of Ravilla contemplated his scrying pool. “The nomad appears to have won again. Our warriors think themselves above mere humans. ‘Horseeaters,’ they call them. But this Ahmut may yet reach the cities.” “That cannot be allowed to occur,” said the Second Oligarch from her couch. “Should one city fall, the Gateways might open. The Abyss? Let us avoid that path.” “Agreed,” said the Third Oligarch. “I think another bid at assassination is in order.” “The last failed. Why should this be different?”
“This time I will send Prisca.”
“Oh,” said the Second Oligarch. She considered. “It will be
painful, then.”
“She will make it permanent. And unpleasant.”
“Then I declare quorum. Make it so.”
The elven assassin succeeded. Ahmut fell, slain by a magic blade. No magic could recapture his spirit. Despairing of
raising their commander, and not wishing to leave his body for the elven armies that closed in upon them, Ahmut’s
remaining lieutenants buried him in an unmarked grave. Now Ahmut learned what it meant to be an enemy of
Ravilla. His spirit was trapped within his corpse in a fragment of the assassin’s blade, fully conscious but incapable of
occupying his decaying flesh or of moving on to other planes. He was sane for the first twenty years.
Nearly three centuries later, Stratis’s spear plunged from the sky to pierce the earth and what was left of Ahmut’s ribcage.
Three centuries of hate fueled the magic that brought Ahmut surging from the earth. In Ravilla half the children woke at
that moment, screaming.
Through his unnatural condition and the power of the spear, Ahmut maintains extraordinary control of the undead.
He has usurped command of the cult of Nerull known as the Red Scythes, demanding their worship as the Death
God’s emissary. Every battle increases the power of Ahmut’s undead legions. If their supreme commander paid his full attention
to the Godwar, the rest of the Sundered Empire might fall within two years. But Ahmut’s concentration is not perfect.
He is content to spend a day grafting new limbs to a prisoner’s body and then ordering those limbs to mutilate
and kill their new owner. The priests and assassins of the Red Scythe are left to prosecute the Godwar to the best of
their abilities, sometimes even daring to keep artifacts for themselves instead of turning them over to their dread lord.
In truth, Ahmut pursues this war out of a simple desire to slay every living soul that does not worship him. Unlike
other Godwar combatants, he is not troubled by the thought that some rival might seize Stratis’s power first.Ahmut feels he already has enough power to slay the world. The longer the others fight among themselves, the closer
his victory becomes. Life is short; death drags on and on.
DRAZEN’S HORDE
On a high plateau in the blasted lands of the south, twenty-nine hobgoblin warlords answered mighty
Drazen’s call for a parley to discuss confederation. They brought their bodyguards, their shamans, and enough of their
warriors to feel secure. The first night they pounded each other’s chests in greeting, drank, and diced. On the second
night, an hour before the treaty talk, life changed.
The falling star flamed out of the darkness and blew the Snakehold Tribe’s encampment into sparks and dust.
A good place for a star to fall, thought Drazen, looking at the smoking crater where his chief rival’s tent had been. Too good
for luck, they’ll think. He was right. Snakehold survivors, scattered among the milling warriors of the thirty tribes, yelled
that Drazen was to blame, that he had called them to this spot to betray them all.
Drazen kept his sword sheathed and stepped forward to answer. Then he saw what was at the bottom of the pit: an
axe, a giant bloody axe, humming with so much power that he could taste it from the crater’s edge. “With this axe, I will be
unstoppable,” said Drazen, shocking himself by speaking his thought aloud.
The other warlords spotted the axe moments later. Crying in voices ripped by bloodlust and desire, they threw themselves
down the crater walls. They flailed at each other with their swords and screamed as they stumbled into still-molten rock.
Drazen drew his sword and chose his route. “Mordek,” he hissed to his finest shaman, “ward me. Fire. All you have.
Then get away from here.” Mordek cast the spell and scrambled away. Drazen sprinted around the crater along the
path he had marked, veering right at the last moment to throw himself into a knot of adepts casting spells indiscriminately at
the warlords fighting below.
The first adept saw death in Drazen’s sword and blasted him with fire. The fire rolled off Drazen’s ward. The adept’s head
rolled into darkness. The warlord spoke. “The axe is mine.
Follow me down and fight for me, and you will serve me as champions. Fight against me and die now.”
One by one the adepts pounded their foreheads in assent.
They followed Drazen as he cut through the melee, charging and tumbling over the molten rock that boiled other warlords’
flesh inside their armor.
Drazen took hold of the axe. His roar shook the plateau.
He spoke no words, but all understood: “You are MINE!”
Drazen’s gifts of strength, tactical insight, and force of personality have been supercharged by the power of Stratis’s
axe. Other hobgoblin warlords measure success by how many orcs, ogres, and savage beasts they can kill. Drazen has
overpowered these chaotic rivals of the hobgoblin peoples and forged the whole alliance into a mighty kingdom. Out of the
grim lands of the south, across the Blazing Desert, they cut into the soft belly of the Sundered Empire like an axe swung
by ten thousand thousand hands.
KILSEK
The spider-thing’s scuttling claws scraped horse-sized divots from the baked clay floor of House Kilsek’s
arena. Standing naked at one end of the arena, two drow waited for the creature’s judgment. The giant head swiveled
toward Morit, the fourth heir of House Tormtor. Poison dripping from the monstrous fangs boiled a long swath of red
clay as the fiendish thing took an eightfold step. Morit’s bladder emptied.
From her stance forty feet to Morit’s right, Venrit, Mistress of House Kilsek, smiled and hummed a song she had
thought forgotten since childhood. Betrayed by her allies, sacrificed for political expediency because the civil war had
been harsh to her people, Venrit had been ordered to disband House Kilsek. They were too weak to resist. They were lost.
Was this Lolth’s will, she wondered? With this ordeal, she would find out.
She had descended to the House arena, dragging along Morit, whom she had captured early in the war. Dropping her
captive onto the hard clay floor, she had walked away from him and summoned Teela, the largest spider fiend she could
call. As the arachnid shape formed across the hall, Morit had risen to his knees and spoken. “I thought you the type to kill
me yourself.”
“Am I killing you, Morit?” replied Venrit. “Teela has no instructions. She will act according to her nature. Which, I
have no doubt, will be to cross this floor and kill one of us.
As Lolth wills.” Teela’s eight eyes blinked in unison, adjusting to the darkness. Morit shivered.
“Oh, don’t be scared, Morit,” said Venrit. “Try some of those oratorical tricks that work so well on the other Houses.”
Teela moved then, and both drow grew silent.
Teela jumped. For a moment she disappeared in the space above the arena. She landed with force that knocked Venrit
to her knees. Venrit watched as one fang plucked Morit high into the air. The fiendish maw closed, and Morit’s
scream died.
Venrit stood still as the spider demon shuffled about the hall.
For a moment, the monster’s eyes locked on Venrit’s own.
Teela blinked first, then backed off down the hall, chittering and cleaning her mandibles.
Venrit stood silent on the clay. She took the spider amulet around her neck in both hands. It was the spider’s nature to
slay all available prey, not to choose one small kill. So she had meant to die, then, and had concealed it even from herself.
Lolth had truly answered her prayers.
“I will not fail you, Mistress,” said the woman who knew, now, that Kilsek was part of Lolth’s designs.
Venrit led House Kilsek and the inhabitants of its slave pens into exile. They wandered the Underdark until an illithid ally
showed them the way to an ancient, abandoned gith city beneath the Sundered Empire.
At first Venrit had no intention of entering the Godwar, but the battle came to the drow thanks to the corrosive qualities
of Stratis’s blood. The smoking ichor blasted holes into the ancient gith tunnels, exposing House Kilsek’s new territory to
encroachment from the surface dwellers. And the more of Stratis’s blood Venrit acquired, the more she knew she
wanted. If Venrit can seize one of Stratis’s major artifacts, as Ahmut, Drazen, and Jangir have already managed, those
other warlords will have cause to fear.
MORDENGARD
“The motion has been moved and seconded. Shall the Republic enter the great conflict, colloquially
known as the Godwar, and prevent the other combatants from raising one of their own as the new God of War?
Brewers, you have the first vote.”
The representative of the Brewers’ Guild took his feet at the round table. “Aye. What needs to be done.”
“Crafters?” asked the scribe serving as moderator of the meeting of the Workers’ Council.
“Aye.”
“Engineers?”
“Aye, though we have reservations, as these three days of debate have indicated. I will not repeat them now. But yes, we
vote for war.”
And so on, through the various guilds: farmers, miners, priests, scholars, soldiers, wizards, and artists. Only the
Soldiers’ Guild representative voted against the motion, to everyone’s surprise.
“The Soldiers’ Guild votes nay. No, no, hold yourself together there. We of the guild are in favor of this war, and
we advanced arguments in support of it. We wish only to make one thing clear: We will win, but in winning, we do not
wish to raise one of our own to be a god. The power that was Stratis’s can be gathered and controlled, but then the
Workers’ Council as a whole must decide what to do with it.
Not the soldiers who happen to achieve the victory. It is not a matter for a . . . battlefield promotion. The Comrade-General
agrees with me on this, I believe.” He nodded to a grizzled, one-eyed dwarf in plate at the back of the room, the soldier
named Baruk who led the People’s Legion that term. “We will win the war, but we will not let victory cost us our
revolution. Long live the Republic!”
And so the People’s Republic of Mordengard went to war.
A century ago, the dwarves of Mordengard overthrew a tyrant king. Most of the nobility was slain along with him,
thrown down by a revolution from below, a final attack by the aggrieved masses. Instead of setting up a new king, the
dwarves have invented something new: a republic of the people, by the people, and for the good of the people.
Every citizen of Mordengard belongs to a guild, and the Workers’ Council are elected every five years from the guild
rolls. Members of every guild serve in the People’s Legion, though most of the commanders are from the Soldiers’ Guild.
Traditional dwarven virtues of duty, perseverance, toughness, pride of craft, and bashing in orcs’ skulls have survived the
transformation of the government. In fact, Mordengard is stronger than ever as the new soldiers, commanders, and
heroes of the people strive to show that they are every bit as capable as the nobles who used to lead by virtue of their
blood. Allies from the Elemental Planes add to the Republic’s confidence, as do elemental weapons crafted by the artificers
of the Crafters’ and Engineers’ Guilds.
“An elf started this war,” say the people of Mordengard, “but we will end it.”
NARESH
The Demon War opened gateways from the Abyss into western Oerik, through which swarmed hordes of
fiendish troops alongside minotaurs and gnolls. When the gray elves defeated the Abyssal forces, sealing the portals,
the surviving gnolls scattered into the mountains. There they nursed their wounds, and their grudges.
Yeenoghu, demonic patron of the gnolls, still nurtures red dreams of power. Fiends yet mingle with his children, whose
numbers have grown again in their remote mountains. And forty years ago, a mighty demon fathered Jangir with a gnoll
woman. The half-fiend rose to become high priest of Yeenoghu—and now he wields the flail of Stratis.
Jangir, self-styled Priest-King of Naresh, sees two paths to victory. The first is to win the game the rest of the factions are
playing: Collect more of Stratis’s divine panoply and attain thepower of the god. The second is uniquely available to Jangir:
Achieve Yeenoghu’s favor by opening the Abyssal Gateways within the elven lands once more and letting chaos loose upon
the world in a full-scale demonic invasion.
Since Stratis’s flail came to him as a gift, brought by a gnoll child who had seen it fall from the sky, Jangir thinks of
himself as chosen by the gods. He was already an exceptional warrior and commander who led his followers against the
elves of the former Dragon Empire. Victory comes naturally to him. Now all the gnolls and most of the demons follow
his banner and that of his deadly patron. Some other warlords possess Stratis’s weapons, which makes them
troublesome, but Jangir expects to acquire more of the dead god’s panoply—if not as gifts from commanders, then as
personal spoils of war.
Invading Ravilla directly has been a thornier problem.
Jangir’s demonic allies are ferocious but undisciplined.
Instead of massing to attack Ravilla’s weak spots, they tend to prefer the short-term satisfaction of hunting individual
elves and slaying them messily. So for now, Jangir follows the first strategy, attempting to increase his personal power until
he can guide masses of demons as effortlessly as he motivates tribes of gnolls.
RAVILLA
Ravilla knows what is best for the world. The equation is simple, despite what other races and
nations like to believe. What is best is that the Abyssal Gateways remain closed. Each gateway is locked
and buried deep in the heart of a gray elf city. The cities have grown into great (and sometimes) urbane metropolises,
but at heart, each exists only as containment for a portal to the unspeakable horrors of the Abyss.
One thousand years ago, Corellon Larethian charged the elves of what is now Ravilla to defend the Abyssal Gateways,
to keep them from opening and their evil from consuming the world. The elves followed their deity’s orders by ensuring
that no enemies, or potential enemies, could grow strong enough to challenge Ravilla and smash a path to open a
portal. For hundreds of years, the hegemony of the elves’ Dragon Empire was a necessary burden, a duty imposed by
Corellon’s sacred trust.
That was the theory, in any case. In practice, the distinction grew fuzzy between guarding the Abyssal Gateways and
playing the game of empires for its own sake. The “Empire” was governed by a Grand Council of Oligarchs who
maintained the Empty Throne for Corellon Larethian, against the day when he would return to commend them for their
sacred dedication. Many Oligarchs exercised power for its own sake rather than as a necessary evil. There is scarcely a people,
tribe, or nation that has not been invaded, betrayed, or dominated at some point by the Dragon Empire or its current
Ravillan heirs.
Consequently, the new potentials of the Godwar come as a major threat to the people of Ravilla. The Dragon Empire is
long broken, limping along as a collection of gray elf citystates, wood elf strongholds, and draconic allies. The
Oligarchs still rule, and the Abyssal Gateways remain closed, but even the good-aligned nations of Thalos and Mordengard
have reason to despise the elves. And to Ahmut, the onceslain lord of undeath, and the demonic gnolls of Jangir’s
crusade, the elves are a most hated enemy who must be slain at any cost.
With so many enemies, it is a wonder that Ravilla endures.
At this moment in the Godwar, the reasons for its survival are two. First, the chaotic conditions make full-scale invasions
and sieges difficult: The elven cities endure constant harassment and raids, but no death blows. Second, there is
more power in Ravilla than the Oligarchs themselves realize. A young elf named Tarquin, son of an ancient and illustrious
family, possesses Stratis’s sword. Tarquin’s plans are not known, and he has not yet revealed his full power. But in the
streets, in the academies, among the Oathbands of the forest, there are whispers that what the ancient Dragon Empire needs
is a true emperor at last.
THALOS
Queen Almira I founded the island nation of Thalos to unify human tribes fleeing from the
advance of Ravilla’s armies. When Almira I was an old woman, the elven empire sent a fleet to take back the slaves
that had sought to escape its control. In five days of combat, the Thalish defenders took a heavy toll on the
superior elven navy, then repulsed the invasion, fighting hand to hand and spell to spell on the beaches.
Thalos has never forgotten the Battle of the Bloody Tide, the moment of their ultimate liberation from elven
domination. An elf slew Stratis, who was the son of Stern Alia the Shield Mother, the goddess whose countenance peers
out from every Thalos shield and ornament. Now Queen Almira XXI has chosen to meet violence with violence.
Popular mythology in Thalos has built up a cult of heroism, starting with Almira I. Thalish soldiers think of
themselves as bands of heroes fighting the good fight. The presence of aasimars and even celestials amid their ranks
reinforces this idea, as does the organization of their warbands. Thalos does not favor homogeneous assemblies of
troops, but rather groups of specialists. Joining Almira XXI and her paladins’ crusade are gnome engineers, the
automatons they create, and an established school of sorcery whose power rivals the wizardry of Ravilla. Each member in
a warband has a role, and by combining their specialized abilities they become stronger. Though most Thalish
warriors would not appreciate the comparison, the composition of their warbands recalls the party of mortal
heroes who slew Stratis and touched off the Godwar in the first place.
Thalos could try to stay out of the Godwar. It might be able to remain isolated, hoping that the eventual victor
would have other islands to fry. But Queen Almira XXI is a paladin of action as well as a woman of ideals. Since she and
her subjects are all the Shield Mother’s children, Almira XXI knows that one day, the people of Thalos will replace the
child that the Shield Mother lost with another she can recognize as her own.
MERCENARIES
The seven great factions of the Godwar are not the only powers in western Oerik. Other peoples control
sections of the Sundered Empire but lack the numbers, organization, or ambition to impose their will upon
the conflict. Members of these races and nations do, however, find frequent opportunities for plunder and advancement by
serving in the warbands of the main combatants.
In contrast to previous major wars, the Godwar tends to be fought as an endless succession of small-scale battles and
clashes of champions. Therefore mercenaries with magical talents or supernatural powers are at a premium. The most
dangerous among them are the medusas, the salamanders, and the lycanthropes. The medusas and salamanders will work for
any evil faction, while weretigers fight for all combatants.
Werebears fight so well for the good-aligned factions that some of Mordengard’s citizens would love to give them
honorary membership in the People’s Republic.
One potential force in the Godwar, the Free Cities to the south have so far proven too disorganized to muster any type
of coordinated response to the conflict. Odds are that this loose assembly of city-states will not unify in time to make a
play for Stratis’s post, but it’s possible that larger forces of Free Cities mercenaries will join the conflict.