1.4.10 - Audience

The elves mustered in full to force the Pact to the table, and the ground chose that moment to open onto Hel.

The time for whispers was over. Veylith called every elf to the field, banners up in defiance, the full strength of a people refusing to be erased. This was not conquest. It was survival, a show of force to drag the Pact from extermination to the negotiating table. The host split into three strikes under Aelion, Theren, and Vaelen, with Veylith steeling the ranks, and you threw your weight behind the push on the Pact's strongholds and their leaders.

Then the ground betrayed everyone. A deep rumble, a force that dragged you toward the earth and pinned your limbs, and then a thunderclap from below as the battlefield erupted in a geyser of rock and sickly green and purple vapour. Claws too long and a slick serpent tongue tore their way out of the wound in the world. Things half-formed and dripping ichor began hauling themselves up from Hel itself, into the middle of your war. Hammerfall was not just a battlefield any more. It was a gate.

Remember For Next Time

• The elves went all in: Veylith mustered the whole host to force the Pact to negotiate rather than be wiped out.
• A gate to Hel: something tore open under the battlefield and began pouring monsters into the city, mid-confrontation.
• War on hold: elf and Pact alike now have a far worse problem clawing up out of the ground.

Where We Are

On a battlefield split open by a rift to Hel, the war with the Pact suddenly the smaller of two emergencies.