The wishes unleashed over the ages by two genies in particular, the efreeti Jhavhul and the djinni Nefeshti, have warped the Pale Mountain region, twisting fate and contorting coincidence to keep alive both a terrible beast and a heroic protector. Not far from Jhavhul’s old temple, these tangled strands have ensnared a young merchant princess named Almah, who seeks a new future for the ruined battle market village of Kelmarane at the foot of the Brazen Peaks. Most importantly, the wishes have subtly warped the weave of the world to put a handful of adventurers on a trail to Kelmarane. It is these adventurers—not any genie—who will tread the path of fate at its most treacherous juncture, and it is they who will ultimately chart the course of history.
The mysterious Pactmasters of Katapesh, masked rulers of this mercantile desert kingdom, desire to bring the abandoned battle market village of Kelmarane back into the economic fold. To this end, they recently assigned Almah the task of scouting out the village, clearing it of malign influence, and getting it working again. The PCs are to serve as Almah’s agents in this affair.
In the years since Kelmarane was left to ruin, the little town has become a haven for gnoll slavers, human bandits, and disreputable brigands from the rough-and-tumble northlands. The gnolls pose a particular problem, as all of the local packs cower under the claws of the Carrion King, a legendary gnoll sovereign who rules from a stronghold on Pale Mountain—the ruins of Jhavhul’s ancient House of the Beast. This unity of purpose poses a significant threat to the Pactmasters, who rely upon open trade from the neighboring nation of Osirion to thrive.
But the heart of Kelmarane’s darkness lies not in the breast of its gnoll occupants, but instead in the tainted soul of their most unlikely leader. This stranger came to Kelmarane in the shape of a man, but he was something more than a man. Wielding a massive axe of alien design and bearing a haughty demeanor that hardly acknowledged the gnolls, the stranger slew the previous chieftain in single combat, more out of absent curiosity than to neutralize a worthy foe.
The stranger was Kardswann, one of Nefeshti’s Templars of the Five Winds. Drawn to the region on a circuit of sites monitored by his genie mistress, Kardswann soon became bored with the tribe, opting instead to explore the rest of Kelmarane. The ruined church at the edge of the village intrigued him almost immediately. Behind a curious magical seal that held no power over a creature capable of becoming ethereal at will, Kardswann found an unanticipated evil that corrupted even his righteous soul, just as it had corrupted the entire village of Kelmarane decades earlier, before it was sealed within the crypt by the agents of the Pactmasters who secretly pacified and abandoned the village when its citizens fell under the sway of a cruel cult dedicated to an ancient evil—an insidious daemon called Xulthos Kardswann is now controlled by this evil, and has fallen from the graces of his mistress. Now mortal, he leads his adopted gnoll tribe in service to the Carrion King of Pale Mountain, attracting bandits from throughout the north to a reborn bazaar in the run-down battle market of Kelmarane.
Meanwhile, in an abandoned monastery consumed by the same darkness that swallowed the village, the remnants of another Templar of the Five Winds—sustained through the ages and through two deaths by his loyalty to Nefeshti—bides its time until it can act in its own subtle way, bending probability, chance, and reason to ensure that the genie’s wish of eternal loyalty comes true.