(Sea Season 1615 - Fire Season 1615)
They emerged on the side of a hill and looking down into a valley having experienced the unnerving feeling of moving slowly but travelling swiftly. The valley was full of thick mist, and visibility was limited. They were on a trail however, and decided to follow it as it led down into the mists.
A supernatural and oppressive aura was exuded by the fog that unnerved everyone in the group apart from Aransar who was immune to fear after his earlier adventures. After several hours in the chilling fog, the group began to smell a harsh burning odour, and as they continued, they came across the seared corpses of warriors, at first a few, and then many, many more. Those bodies not charred beyond recognition were wearing ancient armour and weapons, and all appeared to have been fleeing in the same direction before being burned alive. Their flesh was the source of the smell. As the party continued through the swath of bodies clearly numbering in the hundreds, they began to hear whispering voices in the mist. They were attacked by Spirits of Fear, and both Orstanor and Orlkensor were possessed.
As they reluctantly rode on for several hours, they discovered ruins within the mist, and they met a strange and enigmatic shaman who introduced himself as Tulaak. He said that he lived in Ormsgone valley and that the strange, terrifying and apparently very real visions that had greeted them were the manifestations of the great Red Dragon, Krisa Yor, who had been dreaming of the Dragonkill for some months now. Tulaak seemed friendly enough, and offered to rid the group of the fear spirits that had possessed them. He said that the group should stay with him until the dreams subsided, although he had no idea how long that might be.
The party settled in for a few weeks, and in that time found no reason to mistrust the strange character. He painted spirit matrices on their bodies and summoned spell spirits for them to battle. He fed them and brought them water, and introduced them to the other inhabitants of the strange, ruined village in which they lived. The other inhabitants were distant and taciturn, and tended to mind their own business.
Eventually the mist cleared, and Tulaak told them that before they left, they should explore a cave in the upper north valley above the village. He told them of a sacred spring inside the cave, where the party were bid to ‘drink the tears of the Dragon’. They proceded into the cave after a hefty climb, and beyond a first, larger cave they found the spring, each drinking their fill of the warm and slightly salty water. When they returned, the first cave was now occupied by three strange individuals wearing only loincloths. They did not respond to any questions from the group, but presented a cloth sack which contained a clear crystal for each character. Orstanor sensed that his crystal was chaotic and threw it aside wiping his hands, but the others all seemed fine.
They left the cave, and in the light of day each noticed that the others had changed. In the centre of their foreheads were subtle tattoos of a staring, lidless eye of red hue. They went back down the trail where Tulaak was waiting for them, and he gestured behind them, “Behold, Krisa Yor!” Looking back, they could now clearly see that they were stood upon the side of a truly immense Dragon. The cave that they had entered was nothing less than the eye of the Creature, half closed as if dozing. Once they could make out the eye, the rest became more visible, with its body stretching in a half circle for several miles, trees and rocks growing upon its back. Searching for clues to their apparent transformation, they looked for the symbol of the eye on Tulaak’s forehead, but he bore none. They asked him the relevance and he smiled and shrugged. Confused and awed they bid farewell and thanks to Tulaak and left Ormsgone Valley heading over the hills to the east in the early days of Fire Season, 1615.
To the north were the forbidding dense forests of the Hydra Hills, and to the south were the northern valleys of the Grazelands. From their high vantage point they could see that all was not well in Maregraze Vale. To the east could be seen rising columns of smoke, and as they reached the lip of the plateau they were on they could make out a large and ragged group of people at the bottom of the slope. These people were fleeing to the safety of the very plateau on which the group now stood, and paying no heed to what lay up the slope. Several hundred metres behind this group were the focus of their attention: about thirty mounted figures bearing down on them, most on horses, but one riding a sable.
Aransar and Orstanor tried to advise caution from the party, but Orlkensor, driven by his own demons and memories of slaughtered kin, gave no thought to restraint and spurred his horse down the slope. Branduan followed his brother without a second thought, and Kenstral followed his lead. Kulbrast saw the peril, and looked back to Aransar and Orstanor before spurring his horse down the slope after the others. As the charge begins against apparently hopeless odds, the group is sundered…