The Queen is Dead!

[GloryRhodes]

The Queen is Dead!

 

by Spahro Llorn

 

For years the Voidknight Citadel has loomed over the landscape of Outer La Noesca like a beacon of torment to the poor souls caught in its shadow.  Once ruled over by the necromancer known only as Queen, adventurers have braved its cyclopean depths never to return.  But now the danger has passed and the people of Outer La Noesca can once again sleep in peace thanks to the efforts of Arcadeus, a band of knights and  other brave souls whose courage is matched only by their might at arms.  Led by Sultansworn Anelia Sadowyn and Ser Inessa Hara, the party entered the dark citadel with only their wits and their blades to protect them.

 

"Three years after the Calamity, the necromancer built a citadel and raised an undead army," Ser Hara said after the deed was done.  Hara herself was there on the day that the Queen was defeated three years ago.  "She was brought down off her Dragon by a stray arrow and was thought dead.  I knew she was not dead. Her undead did not turn into ash even as she plummeted from the sky. I hoped she would stay in her citadel forever and never come out, but I could feel powerful dark magics welling up from deep within the Citadel."

 

So the party ventured forth, entering the citadel through the sewers where they stumbled across the rotting, fetid corpses of adventurers who had come before.  "I would dare say there were over a hundred corpses," Ser Hara said.  "So much death was lathered over the citadel.  We tried to save as many survivors as we could, but we could not save them all."

 

The party fought hordes of undead and voidsent, tragically losing many of the adventurers they had come to save.  Still, the undead might of the citadel was no match for the heroes until they were ambushed in the courtyard by the citadel's elite undead in glistening black armor.  At the same time they were assaulted by an undead dragon, perhaps the selfsame dragon who had served as the Queen's mount years before.

 

Ser Aaron Glacier, a knight in the group, took it upon himself to fight the leader of the elite guard.  "Ser Glacier did prove his skills," Ser Sadowyn said of the man's brave, and nearly fatal duel.

 

It was Ser Hara herself who slew the dragon.  "If not for the scaled plating I was wearing I would have been bitten in half by the dragon," she said, her face unreadable behind a stoic mask.  "As it flew off with me, it tossed me into the air for another bite.  I managed to maneuver in mid air so drive my lance down and impale the dragon."  The dragon crashed to the ground with such force that the courtyard gave way, collapsing to the catacombs below, trapping Ser Sadowyn alone in the bowels of the citadel.

 

Bereft of one of their leaders, the brave group continued on, fighting through more undead and voidsent, and several powerful eldritch abominations.  "I suspect The Queen was into some of the most deviant forms of her art, including Necromorphosis," Ser Hara said.  This most foul form of necromancy involves fusing together the corpses of the recently slain to create nigh unstoppable abominations of flesh and bone.  "We burned her notes to keep her research from being used by others with ill intent."

 

"We eventually confronted her in the middle of a summoning," Ser Hara said.  While her companions fought against the necromancer's minions, Ser Hara took it upon herself to dispatch The Queen.  The battle was long and arduous, and much blood was spilled.  "We were stretched to our physical limits," Ser Hara said.  "With no options left, I destroyed some of the stonework around the edge of the wall, and we both fell down into the courtyard below.  She was killed by the fall while I only suffered broken bones.  As soon as she died most of her undead turned to ash and her voidsent, without a master to tether themselves to, were sent back into the void."

 

The brave companions suffered no casualties during their mission, and eventually met up with Ser Sadowyn again on their exodus from the Voidknight Citadel.  Lives were saved that day, and who knows how many more lives were spared the predations of the necromancer by these brave, powerful souls.

 

"Fighting is not for everyone," Ser Hara said in a calm, but stern voice.  "Some are born with an exceptional talent for battle.  Some are born with a desire for it, and some are just forced into being fighters by circumstance.  I am a knight.  I did not go into battle for honor or glory.  I went into battle to save others who would have died as a result of inaction."