The Pedagogue of Chaos

'A Shroud of the Avatar inspired adventure'
The Pedagogue of Chaos


PHASE I: The Trans-location

The dislocation of the occupied peoples from Lux transpired due to abhorrent acts of barbarism at the auspices of aggressors from two orders known as the Aggregation of Nihilism in the Northern tundra and the Denomination of Fire in the Great Oculus to the East. The magnitude of the resultant bloodbath over the disputed Polestar territory was so severe as to displace the entire race, uproot a heritage eons old, and further inflame already volatile tensions in the region.

The surviving people of Lux merged alongside sympathizers from a tribe of warriors known as the Vandals to from a Pedagogy. In commemoration of the rebel order, a Pedagogue was elected to oversee the order, to establish a new creed for his fallen peoples, and to locate a fundamental new land in which the order could subsist, long enough to amass the armies that would later prove instrumental in the dissemination of their adversaries.

The cost to the peoples during this prolonged period of translocation was famine, pestilence and a thinning rally of loyalists.

When the time finally came to set sail for their new land, the Pedagogue had, in his unfathomable wisdom, curtailed many of its turmoil's, drastically redirected the focus of its diocese and purged doubters from its hierarchical ranks.

With that accomplished, the Pedagogy hoisted sails for the new promised land which lay across the transmarinum, known by their Lordship as New Britannia.

For seven days and nights the seas stayed eerily calm as the flotillas tracked the astronomical bodies in the constellations, and followed a bright Northern star to the shores of the Perennial Coast in New Britannia.

In the dark hours before dawn, the Pedagogy landed. A procession of torches spread out onto the beach as people left the boats in droves to set up makeshift encampments. Trumpets flourished, and bards regaled with fantastic legends of beasts unknown and lands unseen.

A great feast ensued for all rejoiced for they journeyed to New Britannia on the promise of re-establishing Lux and were now close to achieving their dream.

 

PHASE II: The Strath

For aeons, barbaric naked primitives wandered the savannah and rocky foothills in the shadows of the Blackblade precipice, hunting the legendary horned-Kobold for meat and hide leather.

Their most noteworthy tools consisted of crude bludgeons, stone knives and spears. The tips, of objectionable quality, were melded from bog-iron hand excavated from the enriched marshlands said to have mottled the stagnum swamp between Blackblade and the Demons Causeway during the period. The ore was melted down, poured into clay molds, and cooled in the regions most notorious and mendacious river, a river carved between the two mountains of the Serpents Spine, the river Strath.

In the years preceding the great cataclysm, torrential flood waters cascaded down from the nearby mountains, crashing into the banks of the Strath, and causing them to crumble and erode. Almost overnight, the meandering brook roared into a roiling thundering river. Today, the vast wide channel supports the various tribes known to subsist along its banks.

Encounters with the tribes are seldom due in part the remoteness of the geographical locale and to the shyness the natives exhibit to outsiders.

Ongoing territorial disputes in the region have made the area notoriously dangerous. Travelers seeking to ply their wares are cautioned to avoid the route entirely, and seek out the alternate roads and paths circumventing the mountains as recommended by the famed Britannian guards.

As the sun sets on the Strath, we find two wayward natives aged 17 and 16, Abros and Nissan, harvesting 'molluscs', 'crustaceans', 'gastropods' and 'small armour-plated fish' that had become stranded in the shallow pools alongside the riverbank following a recent deluge.

Nissans emerald-green eyes catch the setting sun, as hair cascades down her shoulders like a waterfall of braided darkness.

Abros, with searing musculature, continues to wade the murky black ponds under Nissan's watchful eye, uprooting bladed reeds and raking 'placoderms' from the mud

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Out of the mist, jackals snarl and hone in on the unassuming pair. The two quickly make a dash for the water in the hope of masking their scent.​

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The jackals stop in their tracks at the waters edge.​

They have managed to allude the jackals, but must proceed!

 

PHASE III: Fatum​

Abros and Nissan ford the Strath, ascend a mudbank and twisted cage of rot-wood, rung by perilous rung, and crouch atop the a stone slab marked by a dulled plaque which reads: “abacus of courage”.

From the abacus they can see the Turncoplier Foothills to the West, and beyond them lay the Seneschal Hills, and in the far West the high peaks of the Paladis Steppes.

The abacus denotes the entryway into the foreboding dungeon Fatum, and deep within it the Pit of Skulls.

Abros leads Nissan into the menacing entrance, which protrudes from the mountainside like the skull of an extinct giant, plunged into the villainous shadows of Serpents Spine. Undoubtedly the remnant of a fallen populous from the ancient world.

The stale cavern air upturns scattered leaves and caresses the surface of a cave pond.

Cautiously, they commence the descent into blackness...

But a few feet within, the pair stymy long enough to allow their eyes to adjust to the receding light, and their lungs to the dank air. Several moments pass when finally, before them, the silhouette of a dried out underground channel slowly fades into sight. The sides plummet into the Abyss.

Fortune has it the drop is bridged by a sole log, yet it appears to be in an advanced state of decay. Abros steels himself and attempts to cross. Sweating, he makes it across. And ever the sure-footed Druid, Nissan two-steps across. Unbalanced, she catches Abros arm just in time to witness the log crumble and careen down into the sweeping mist. Stories of unmentionable horrors rumored to inhabit the depths below flash through her conscious.

The Pit of Skulls is reputedly inhabited by Troglodytes. festering hordes of evil elements and all forms of craven depravity and Undead.

All sounds within the caverns labyrinthine passages seem to fuse into a single blurred hum, save that of thick, root-like bloodworm’s feeding off the bulbous red thorn growing in clumps from an artifice in an adjoining passage.

A staircase spirals downward...

 

PHASE IV: The Pit of Skulls

The roar of water fills the passage, periodically opening along the banks of a deep cave river.

An iridescent blue hue appears in the shadows on the opposite bank. Insects hum in the air around its light.

Beyond the river lay a shield baring the insignia of the Ankn. upon the dirt, brightly burning through a chamber in cloaked darkness. The searing armour of an Obsidian knight lay a few feet away, the charred corpse within still alight and emitting smoke.

Eddy's swirl fiercely around the rocks jutting out from the turbulent water between like daggers.

Nissan recounts to Abros part an old tribal fable denoting the existence of an legendary sister river which flowed alongside the Strath, deep underground. The river was feared due to its deadly undertow which had carried many an unwary soul to a watery doom. The waterway became so treacherous it was later forsaken utterly and abandoned.

The following year, a catastrophic tremor caused a section of Serpents Spine to shear away from the cliffs and slide down into the Stagnum Swamp below, permanently sealing the entrance from surface dwellers.

To our two weary travelers, the shield on the other side is unreachable. They continue on their way...

The cave ahead bends sharply many times before progressing gradually into a junction past a stack of kegs. The arterial to the East has collapsed. The pair ventures West, encroaching deep into the intersecting chambers and bisected caves.

The labyrinth soon widens into a vulva shaped cavern. Miscellaneous artifacts lay strewn about the noxious fen including a still of cured liquor, a chain coif, a semi-scorched parchment, and a jewel-encrusted diadem. Abros tucks the diadem into the pocket of his knapsack. Nissan reads the parchment...

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It disturbs me deeply that what I am about to reveal to thee could cause great harm to my kingdom. Nevertheless, in the past my trust in thee has not been misplaced, Avatar. Thou must know that thy struggles in the pernicious darkness of Sabre Isle hath not gone unnoticed. The inhabitants of the surrounding isles hath formed an alliance in contempt of thine conquests. Thou art considered a heretic, a blasphemer, and art the construct of a belief that hast proven most unpopular throughout the lands of late. So long hath the people flourished in thy absence, I foresee no institution arising whereby they might come to accept the principles that hath uprooted their lands in thy name. Long hath thou been an avid practitioner of Truth, Love and Courage. And many are the times the percolating darkness hath risen up against thee as the sea to the land, only for thee to again drive it back into the depths from whence it came. Yet I feel thy turmoils thus far hath merely been precursors to a dark ferocious age, led by an instigator cloaked in shadows, impenetrable to my perception, yet whose incalculable evil firmly bore its roots deep into the patches of New Britannia when thou last left our world. The wisps with whom I hath communicated with through my magical scrying-mirror hath provided little insight into this looming evil, save that invasion of my kingdom is imminent, and inevitable.

Though the tides be ebbed, the winds still, and the fires subdued, thou must not mistake my conceit for fervor, for there are those that seek to punish thee. They hath dispatched their forces, and they bide their time, waiting for thy guard to slip...

Do not make light of my words. Alas, I'm sure thou wilt be famished and weary from thy travels, and wilt soon need rest. I wilt be brief...

The isolated isles to the South are mostly uninhabited. Few venture to them these days. Perhaps thou should'st visit them on thy travels. If not to uncover their mysteries, then to ponder in their venerable beauty.

Fading as from a dream to lucidity, the archipelagos abruptly end where the icy Southern gale stirs up gigantic waves that have tested the courage of many a superstitious crew. Beyond the Polar Sea lay a frozen tundra where, it is written, our ancestors visited and inhabited for a time before abandoning the area entirely, though it is not known why.

Beyond the Southmost glacial peaks little is known. Their remoteness and propensity for unpredictable thunderclouds to form and savagely pile the region with with snow makes progress beyond seem impossible. However, mountain goats have occasionally been sighted high up in the alps through a distant spyglass.

Rumors persist concerning a blinding vortex of ice encircling the region beyond the alps. Within the circumference lay a purported paradise brimming with lush evergreen, fertile pastures, strange ruminant quadrupeds and ancient relics. But historians have recently dismissed these legends as nothing more than the ramblings of a frost-bitten hermit driven mad by the years of isolation in the whiteout.

Whilst I can sense little beyond the Archipelagos, personally, I do think the frozen lands warrant thy investigation.
ncerely,
Sir Amaros

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Neither have the faintest inkling what it means but feel it is important enough to carry with them.

In the following passage the two freeze in their tracks at the foot a large stone slab engraved in runic. The words read: “Beware, for beyond lies the Pit of Skulls”.

A dark sense of foreboding overcomes the two, and they withdraw in terror...