1.4.11 A new challenger approaches

brief session summary, overall

Opening Monologue

The ground beneath your feet shudders, a low, bone-deep rumble rolling up from the earth’s heart. At first it is distant—then suddenly it grips you. Your knees buckle as an unseen force drags you downward, pulling at your very marrow. Weapons feel impossibly heavy, your limbs straining just to rise, and across the battlefield you see even your enemies stagger and sink, all caught in the same unnatural pull.

Then—release. A thunderclap from beneath the soil, followed by a deafening blast. The battlefield erupts as the earth itself is torn skyward in a geyser of rock and dirt. From the ragged wound in the world, noxious vapors spill—sickly green and lurid purple, burning the air and stinging the eyes.

And then—movement. Claws, jagged and too long, gouge their way out of the rupture. A glistening tongue, serpentine and slick, writhes into the open air. Shapes emerge, grotesque beyond reason—bodies half-formed, twisted, seething with deformity, dripping with ichor. They drag themselves free from the pit, creatures born of nightmare, clawing their way up from Hel itself.

Instinct stills the battlefield. Elves and Pact alike turn toward the wound in the earth, eyes wide, blades and spears lowering as the first of the creatures claw their way free. For a heartbeat, there is no war—only silence, disbelief, and the raw animal knowledge that something older, darker, and fouler than any mortal quarrel has arrived.

Then they come in droves. Pale, elongated limbs end in claws that scythe through armor and flesh. Jaws unhinge far too wide, packed with jagged teeth, snapping at anything that moves. Some bear slick, pallid skin that glistens with foul ichor; others are armored in jagged carapace, clattering as they surge forward.

Worst of all are those that carry a trace of familiarity—twisted mockeries of elf-kind, their faces stretched and broken, ears elongated into cruel spines, eyes hollow voids. They stagger forward like echoes of what once was, corrupted into something unspeakable.

The line between foe and ally blurs. The Pact’s defenders and the elven host both recoil, unsure whether to turn blade on one another or join arms against this nightmare. The battlefield itself becomes chaos—shouts of command are drowned by screams, as Hel’s brood pours through the rift, clawing for Hammerfall.

Session Notes

the invasion was a bit easy. Probably should have put the slow guys at the front and the fast guys at the back. Used more spells....Pact were probably a little too quick to ally with the PCs, maybe should have them fight each other a bit more....would have made things harder...