Tribulations of Wrath, part VIII: Repent or Burn
It was the Hammer of Dawn that scored first blood against the Asura, for Drowned Woe was the first to begin her assault.
Realising the Light’s faithful would suffer the brunt of Vorostran wrath, Celezor and Slyphe – the Hammer’s twin radiant benefactors – imbued some of Their essence into the three glyphs established by Illuminai ritual and the studious scrawlings of Devereux, a budding Ascendril aquamancer. Conducting a prayer there by the harbour, Enorian’s defenders discovered that new, powerful magic kindled in their grasp, granting them an anointed edge against the tides of darkness crashing against their proverbial shores. Deeming the first raid a failure, Shvatahi cursed Enorian in her native tongue and performed another foul rite the following night, daubing new powers upon some of the Gajatman dead she deployed against the city guard. In the ensuing raids throughout the weeks of their tribulation, Enorian laid countless Vorostran dead to rest.
Realising she would need to shift her tactics, Drowned Woe sought new pawns.
During a particularly bloody raid, the Naga Asura deployed crews of reanimated sailors; waterlogged, bruised, uniformed in the tatters of Enorian’s drowned ‘Hydra’, these new threats fought with unholy skill. Casting defenders aside, flailing ghostly chains, and calling down ghastly forces alongside the Naga commanders, the presence of these desecrated dead incensed the Hammer’s avengers to great heights of fury. The city called for the Sea Witch’s head as the price for her necromancy, deeming her unfit for any justice aside from that of cleansing fire. Even as her hordes ravaged the docks and surrounding streets, the Templars detected a mysterious presence – a saboteur of some kind attempting to interfere with the magic of the glyphs, to no avail. Attempts at approaching this presence proved fruitless, though one particular knight of the Vigil felt a degree of horrified familiarity when looking upon that secretive agent: Benedicto Silverain. Though the elusive silhouette managed to stay a step ahead of the Templar, their pursuit kept his nefarious plans at bay, buying more time for Enorian to enact a defensive plan.
As the city fended off the hordes of briny dead, its citizens sought disparate answers.
Worried that the invaders would eventually overrun the harbour, the Ascendril called an impromptu meeting of the minds and rapidly implemented a new plan to protect the city: a vast defensive matrix of explosive skylanterns hanging over the bay. Under the keen eye of Rhulin Glintspear, once more forced to come out of retirement for the sake of civic safety, the magi imbued more than two-thousand skylanterns with barely-stable elemental magics, primed and ready to detonate with the proper trigger. The engineer personally departed for the harbour shortly after, retooling several ballistae for proper stability for firing harpoons and winding large chains with air magic. These new defensive measures came not a moment too soon, for the Tide Witch soon mustered forces far more eldritch – those horrible things lurking in the sea and her dark, seductive depths, to places fearful and fantastic. From that place of trembling sanity and heavy trenches came writhing, tentacular protrusions of some distant beast, laying siege to the harbour from a distance. Employing their new preparations, the Dawn’s warriors beat back countless incursions by their horrifying entity throughout the ensuing weeks, reducing tentacle after tentacle to bitter ash on the wind.
Hoping to put a stop to the madness, Captain Tredin wrote a request for a ceasefire and submitted it of his own accord. Though the attempt remained a secret for a few days, Drowned Woe ensured her reply sharply contrasted that subtlety. Employing foul curse magic, she sent explosive skylanterns swarming into the Hammer’s streets, inflicting structural damage and slaying defenceless citizens amidst profane detonations. Through quick thinking and nimble fingers, Enorian’s finest managed to disarm a great many of these dangerous payloads, and Shvatahi soon sent them into the city during her harshest raids.
Later that season, the Tide Witch made an attempt to capture land from the Hammer of Dawn – she dispatched the bulk of her risen ‘Hydra’ crewmen towards Jaru, led by the reanimated revenant of Maelo Silverain, Grand Crusader Benedicto Silverain’s fallen son. Wielding sacred miracles and sanctified steel, Enorian turned the Naga Asura’s forces back and laid to rest the last of their zombified comrades. When it came time to vanquish Maelo, the city stepped aside to allow a father to bury his slain child, and the Akkari hero delivered the Light’s peace one final time to his wayward descendant – a mercy that he would not show Shvatahi in the coming days. As ‘the Hydra’ set sail on her final voyage, the Dauntless and Accordant Righteousness saw to cleansing her of the evil indignities she suffered at the accursed hands of Drowned Woe; purged of profanity by the Lord’s golden fires and taken into the loving embrace of the Beryl’s Raging Queen, the ship sank below the depths, never to be seen again. Howling to the wind and storm, Shvatahi promised ruin to the Hammer at large, swearing that she would engage them directly and that the hour of tribulation’s greatest horror was nigh.
The very next week, Drowned Woe made good on her promise.
Commanding the bulk of her forces into the fray, Shvatahi expended what remained of the Drowned Dead and the raging tentacles of her captured horror in an all-out assault on Enorian’s port and streets. Though blood slicked the cobbles and profane explosions fouled the air with dark magic’s noxious fumes, the Promised Dawn’s defenders fought her to the bitter end. Utilising chains and harpoons in their modified ballistae, the city dragged the tentacles down and built a bridge to engage the Sea Witch and the colossal horror wreaking havoc at the centre of the bay. The Naga brought to bear all she could with her enchanted palms and accursed hands, casting Enorian into magical storms and manifesting poisonous novae to deter their assault.
When one of the Light’s crusaders managed to cut free both of Shvatahi’s hands, however, she exerted a burst of magical energy to disorient her assailants as she recovered. Hoping to convince them to spare her life, the Naga explained that all the tribulations were of two purposes: justice by brutal vengeance, and a means to find and judge proper allies against a much greater foe. When this truth did not stay the Light’s retribution, Drowned Woe spoke once more. Desperate to survive, she made several enticing offers in hopes of buying safe passage out of the city’s harbour. Deaf to Shavtahi’s pleas, the Hammer demanded the Naga’s head for her crimes against the crew of the ‘Hydra’. Denouncing her as a heretic and a necromancer, the Light’s avengers closed in and culled her once and for all, casting her remains into the fire. With the Tide Witch slain, Kshetraghan and Sholayu ‘714’ declared the end of the Hammer of Dawn’s tribulation, and congratulated them upon their ruthlessness. Though neither Asura seemed concerned with this turn of events, the former did make mention that their Goddess would need to select a new Asura, so as to keep their appointed number of thirty-three.
With three tribulations brought to an end, the realm looked at last to the north, where rests a Theocracy now promised obliteration as the remaining subject of Vorostran tribulation.
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Summary: Shvatahi launched weeks of escalating raids upon Enorian’s harbour, deploying the drowned dead of Vorostra’s coastline – including the reanimated crew of the city’s own lost ship, the Hydra – alongside a colossal horror dragged from the deep. The Hammer of Dawn, bolstered by blessings from Celezor and Slyphe, fought back every assault and laid the Drowned Dead to rest before confronting the Sea Witch directly in the harbour. Deaf to her offers of alliance, Enorian slew Shvatahi outright, and the remaining Asura declared the city’s tribulation ended.
Penned by my hand on Tisday, the 21st of Omeian, in the year 17 AC.