Corson Campaign – Fall of Corson
Written by Chiz

Though out history the tides of darkness has threatened to consume the good lands. Countless stories tell of heroes fighting back the darkness and saving the just and fair kingdoms. This is not one of those stories. It starts the same, but this time the hero’s strength faltered, and that was all it took for the ending to change drastically.

A thousand years ago the elven Kingdom of Corson was the jewel of the Sword Sea. The hub of trade and power for half a continent. The three towers of sorcery in the city of Corson were one of the highest seats of magic in the known world. King Thorete IV had already over seen five hundred years of peace and prosperity; it looked like he would reign over five hundred more. He was grooming his son, the mighty Prince Larith, to be another great leader. The prince had become a adventurer and was himself gaining in power and skill.
That changed one crisp fall morning. King Thorete had just taken his throne for court. The golden sun streamed in through the vaulted crystal ceiling. Striking his platinum crown, making it shine just slightly less dazing then the king’s steel gray eyes. The platinum smith had worked for eighteen years to get the finish on the crown to do just that.

The first order of business was a peacocked merchant from the port city of Morik. He had come all the way himself to argue that the storm season had been particularly bad this year, and that he needed a few percent tax leniencies. The king knew of the bad season. He had even given the druids a few hundred hectors of forest to quell some of the worse storms. The noise made by the merchant’s rings and necklaces clicking together as he approached the thrown did not help his case.

The merchant cleared his throat but something seemed to stick. The merchant’s cough was joined buy a sniffle coming from the court mage Baracan. Thorete looked over to his long time friend, and his kingly visage broke when he saw blood trickling from the mage’s nose. The golden light became hot and white. Then two things happened in rapid secession.
The light came from one of the merchant’s rings. Eyes cracked with green lines and body limp the merchant was anchored in place by his glowing bobble. The light became searing and harsh. Even those who put their hands up, felt the energy penetrate their hands then there eye lids and finally their minds.

To each came their darkest thought. A duke from the island state of Yhan felt the cold see water embrace him, and rush down his throat As the water that had surrounded him and terrified him sense birth snuffed out his life. A knight of the Sun, Coran's highest order, was three again. Hidden under his dead mother’s body as the orc that had fallen her deprived her of any dignity she might have had in death. Their combined weight crushing the ability to scream out of his young body. Baracan watched from his high tower as the magic he had summoned flooded out of control and destroyed his beloved kingdom.

The king’s was a special vision. It was real. He stood in a snowy valley high in the mountains. The smell of blood and ash was thick on the wind blown snow. The sound of combat made him spin around, his arm reaching for a sword that had not joined him in this place.

The king saw a familiar sight, his family crest, the stag in a field of stars, on the back of his son’s armor. Every thing else took a second to become recognizable. The blood and mud covered form wearing his son’s armor was in fact his son. His hair wild and singed. Holes and rents perforated his breastplate, leaking crimson life blood. His breath was visible in the small and rapid puffs of steam. Shield long broken, the prince grasped his sword with both mailed hands.

He was on a single knee amongst his fallen comrades. The king first recognized the beautiful sorceress Gentral, turned in to a alabaster stone statue. The clever rogue Rathen, who had made the king laugh so easily, lay in position hinting that none of his bones were still whole. The islander Yahhender was no where to be seen, but his crack war club laying in large crater was evidence enough.

They had not gone easily. The field was strewn with enemy dead. Perhaps a hundred black cloaked figures mixed in with various monsters and humanoids. The only moving forms left were his son and the enemy before him. His son’s foe was a gray skinned giant that made the prince look like a child.

The giant brought down a massive long sword. The prince brought up his sword to deflect the giant’s blow. Like a vision in a vision. The king remembered the endless hours of drilling when the prince was younger. He had taught the prince everything he knew of swordplay. One of his proudest memories were of him and his son fighting side by side against illusionary villains in the practice yard. The king even felt the beginning of a smile when he saw his son’s form, no wasted movement, perfect angle and coverage, beautiful. The smile and his heart left him when he heard a metallic “tink”.

The giant’s sword had completed its arc. The tip of the giant blade was now sticking out from stag’s head on the breastplate. An amazing amount of blood flowed from the viscous wound, melting the snow, forming a puddle of bright red. The broken sword dropped from the prince’s limp hand.

With a shimmer of light another black robed figure appeared. The robed man approached the lifeless prince and pulled a curved bejeweled dagger from his sleeve. With a thrust, that seemed more viscous then need be, he plunged the dagger into the prince’s chest. A large sapphire on the pummel of the dagger pulsed for a second then went dark.

As the king tried to rush to his fallen son the black robed mage with drew the dagger and started to draw a quick symbol in the red stained snow. The kings hands passed through his son’s body, then his fist past through the mage's face. As the mage chanted a tare appeared in the air before him. Hot dry air poured out of the hole in reality. A black talloned arm reached through the rip and extended it’s up turned hand toward the mage. The mage pulled the sapphire out of dagger’s pummel and placed it in the demon’s palm.

With a laugh that sapped the strength from the king’s back, the hand retracted and the portal disappeared. And with it the king knew his son’s soul would find no rest in the afterlife.

The vision was over and the broken court was back under the crystal citadel. Their sight returned as if they were just entered a dark cave from the noon sun. While the congregation stood stunned, the evil magic that had attacked their hearts attacked their bodies.

Only a few of the court were aware enough to notice the high pitched sound. The king didn't hear it but he felt the effect. For the first time in years his armor felt heavy, as the magic that made it feather light left it. The mage Baracan fell to the ground as the liquid metal leg that was badge of his adventuring days dropped into a useless puddle on the ground. All the magic in the great room had been suspended.

From his vantage point on the ground Baracan saw the cracks start to form in the ceiling. The once magically steel hard glass began to fall on the crowd, in shards of near invisible razor sharp death. The high pitched hum spiked in an ear wrenching finally. Exploding All the glass, crystal and some of the bone in a half mile radius.

In an instant the elven high court had been reduced to mass of moaning bleeding rages and shards. Some were still trying to figure out if the blood covering them was their own. Others tried to stanch the bleeding of fallen friends and loved ones. The sound of clerics of different gods merged into one desperate chorus, but the gods all seemed too far away. One blank eyed young squire shredded the fingers on his left hand searching through a pile of shattered glass, to find his right arm that was hidden beneath it. Many simply failed to move at all.

The king still sat on his thrown. Staring at his court. Knowing that a dark and powerful force had just declared war on his lands. This declaration was an attack at the heart of the kingdom. What the king would soon learn was this was not the only attack.
Through out the kingdom large armies of orcs and goblins appeared out of no where. The great port city of Barnith was attacked by hundreds of years of drowned mariners, as an army of undead came out of the surf. Morik fell silently, a dozen assassins destroyed the town’s leadership as poison gas pumped through it’s barracks and more then a few neighborhoods. Only a few navel vessels survived the ravages of a pack of giant sea serpents.

With-in three weeks the kingdom had shrunk to the inner castle walls of the city of Corson itself. Baracan had managed to raise a mighty spell shield around the inner city. After the attack on the court they had found many of their defenses sabotaged. Poisonous mold had been introduced into the army food supply. Over the next few days far too few of them could be saved. Fire elementals ran rampant through the city’s supplies. Most of the magical defenses were either missing or destroyed.

The enemy had done such massive amounts of damage and over such a large area that what ever victory they did score was quickly overshadowed. The usually unruly and chaotic forces of monsters were systematically destroying the kingdom. It was like some evil power had decided to wipe the Kingdom of Corson off of the map. It looked as if that evil power was about to succeed.

Baracan knew that he could no longer protect his city. Through the orange energy of his shield he could see forms circling out side the walls. He looked back at his young apprentice, busy checking and rechecking the glowing symbols on the floor of the chamber. A month ago he was four hundredth in line for the throne, but to day he was third.

The shield would hold for about an hour more. The remaining elven forces were in position for their final stand. Children to weak to pull a bow or left a sword stood by with bundles of arrows. Housewives wore their husbands practice armor and made sure their daughter’s daggers were sharp and ready. He saw Wender the Younger turn Wender the Elder, blind for the last two hundred winters, towards the flickering shield and putting his free hand on the extra arrows before him.

The king sat strait back upon the silver dragon Salamoe. Baracan had tried to convince him to leave. But even while he was speaking to the king he knew that the king would never leave if his people could not.

Baracan had decided that he would do what he could to save at lest a memory of his once great kingdom. He had collected the great library and put it into a small leather satchel. He then added his most powerful rings, wands and other magical items. Left over from his adventuring days were his trusted sword and bow, and a small enchanted pouch that always had a few gold in it.

He took his apprentice and gave him all this. The boy looked too young to carry a nation with him. The last thing he gave the apprentice was a necklace. This simple copper chain was one of the most powerful items Baracan had ever crafted. It would make the wearer undetectable by magic of any form and would cloud the minds of those that met him. People would remember the young man but never his face or name.

The apprentice looked at his master with tear filled eyes as the city’s shield failed and the teleport spell took effect. Then it was night, and he stood in a field on the other side of the world. He stood amongst the wild flowers and lush green grass of the peaceful vale and swore oaths. To the stars, he would undo these wrongs. To the air he breathed, he would reap terrible vengeance on those who had attacked his home. To the sun that would always rise again, he would not rest until he had made this unknown evil beg for mercy under his knife. To his ancestors, he, Taragon of Corson, would rebuild Corson and crush its enemies. With that he began to walk west.

Fast forward 1000 years.

Taragon walked the planet and adventured on his way. He gained prodigious power and connections in many kingdoms. He also accumulated wealth. Wealth that he now plans to build an army to take back his ancestral lands. A mercenary army consisting of any and all that would fight under his banner. He would build a nation with out race or religion but with law and order. He would take anyone that could live under such rule. For the first time in the west lands any creature could own land.
Entire orc tribes begain to arrive.

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