“The masquerade returns, a dance of war
The fire ignites, burning evermore
Eternal damnation, for all but the blessed
A conflict unending must be put to rest
Those who will rise and extinguish these flames
Shall save the land, and end these warped games.”
Act 1: With the collapse of the nation centuries ago, the small village is beset by troubles after years of relative peace. Only the party and their neighbors can save their home because nobody else is coming. After returning from resolving several dangers, the village is raided by bandits before the PC's can make it back. They learn from surviving bandits that they have formed an army under the banner of the self-styled bandit king, who calls himself the Golden Lion. After tracking down and exterminating several bandit camps, the party finally frees hundreds of prisoners at the bandit fort of River's Reach. They also learn dire news: The bandit king is bringing his army south to their home!
Returning home from River's Reach while escorting the freed villagers, fate intervenes. A forbidden ruin that was once sealed has opened again. Desperate to find any advantage, the party is implored to explore it while everyone else returns home to prepare to defend against the Golden Lion's army. They do find treasures that give them a little hope, and a chance to win. Upon returning, the party arrives shortly before the army does. Those unfit for battle have been evacuated, and the battle for the village begins.
Act 2: Following the defeat of the Golden Lion's army, the former inhabitants of many of the neighboring villages chose to stay, their old homes razed. The village is now a town, and the party are well-respected voices and leaders of the people (if they choose to be). As the year passes, fewer merchants arrive from the mountains to the east. In their place are more people, looking to set down roots. Rumors start to spread, and soon the truth becomes clear: It has been several generations since the last Orcish horde has descended from the mountains. They have outgrown their dwellings, and have started displacing people with raids of ever increasing intensity. It will not be long until the party must fight for their homes again.
Act 3: Through great sacrifice, the war is ended. The orcs have been turned back. The town is in bad shape, but the surrounding lands are worse. Over the next several years the party will take the mantle of leadership, and guide the reconstruction of their home, possibly turning it into a city-state. Just when things start going well, terrible news comes from the west. A Paladin from the noble nation on the other side of the forest has brought a formal declaration of war! Necromancers from the east raise the dead, and soldiers under the banner of the city-state have been razing villages and burning fields. The last straw was the regicide in the royal chambers, as both the crown prince and king himself were murdered. The guilty parties were captured and, through divination magics and confession, implicated the party's government. The party must find proof of a set up and present it to the widowed Paladin-Queen Erisia before their young realm is trampled underfoot by a vastly superior professional army.
Act 4: It has been a few years since the war ended and the plot to frame the party's government exposed. The doppelgangers who orchestrated the events fought to the death. Once enemies, the Paladin-Queen has become an ally and helped heal the land. Despite vigorous investigation, no more leads have presented themselves to reveal a greater plot...until the next war starts from within. The dead walk the land, and an army of the unliving soon threatens to tear the young kingdom apart from the inside out. When several drow necromancers are killed during campaigns to cleanse the undead, it appears that the dark elves of The Beneath have made their move. The party looks for allies, and finds them in the dwarves of Clan Laghdannor. In exchange to help them find and secure the lost dwarven citadel of Kraggenach, the dwarves will guide the party further into The Beneath.
However, when the party finds the Drow city of Leth'nilyrn, it too is under siege by both undead and monstrous aberrations. When the party finally establishes communications with the Drow, they discover that the drow were being assaulted by an army of surface dwellers. However, their enemies made a mistake, and the Drow discovered the deception; these surface dwellers were not actually surface dwellers. This caused the assailants to drop the act, and they intensified their efforts to sack Leth'nilyrn. The Drow offer a treaty in the interest of mutual survival for both kingdoms, and to find out who tried to pit them against each other.
Act 5: Civil War! The party barely escape the capital with their lives after a bloody coup attempt. The usurpers begin a bloody purge, and a civil war pits neighbors against each other. Desperate for answers, the party is approached by a unique and unlikely ally: The Cyan dragon Zelcestixa. The child of a pairing between a green and blue dragon, she possesses a blue's desire to manipulate and control, tempered by a green's insatiable desire for knowledge and self-perfection. Although evil, she too has fallen victim to the manipulation by the same hidden enemy, losing her lair and control of her vast criminal network across the sea. They must work together if they wish to save what is theirs before there is nothing left to save. As the civil war rages, the party works with Zelcestixa, gathering clues from a kingdom of fire giants, a free city of pirates, and even fantastic locations on other planes.
Act 6 - March into Oblivion: The war has come to an end, and the real culprits have been revealed! Urdefhans, worshippers of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, have found an artifact known as the Masquerade Machine in a vault deep within The Beneath. The Masquerade Machine transforms any being into the perfect resemblance of another being while retaining it's own personality. The deception is complete and only the most powerful of magics can detect that something is amiss. Using the ritual created with Zelcestixa, the party wipes away the disguises, and purge their home of the Urdefhans who have infiltrated and conspired to bring forth oblivion.
The final war has come, as the party seeks to destroy the Masquerade Machine and remove the threat of the urdefhans once and for all. However, the Four Horsemen will not sit idly by and lose their foothold on this world. As the unlikely alliance of the kingdoms of paladins, humans, criminals, dwarves, drow, and giants amass to strike at their common foe, Szuriel, the Horseman of War, marshalls forth her daemonic army to bolster the urdefhans and protect the Masquerade Machine. Can our heroes win the day, destroy the Machine, and stop their world's march toward oblivion?
