The night air of Uffergand was cold, but the Guild Tavern burned warm and loud with life. Tankards slammed against scarred wooden tables as adventurers boasted of past victories and mercenaries argued over coin. This was the Free Kingdom, a land without kings governed by its community where survival depended entirely on skill and the allies you chose to keep at your back. Gathered around the central contract board, the group studied a newly posted task: eliminate six goblins and two orcs ambushing travelers near the northern mountain forest.
As they prepared to depart, the companions began to size one another up. Caryavata, a male elf ranger, checked his bowstrings with a focus that bordered on jittery, his eyes darting toward the tavern door at every sudden noise. Beside him stood Lukas, a female bard who seemed more interested in her own prose than the danger ahead.
"I still can't get over our last outing," Lukas crowed, leaning against the table and making sure her voice carried over the tavern din. She pointed a mocking finger at Caryavata. "The 'master' of the wilds here couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. I've seen better aim from a one-eyed goblin with a blindfold! If you miss like that today, Cary, just stay behind me and let a real hero handle the optics."
Caryavata's grip tightened on his bow, his jaw set in a hard line. He didn't offer a retort, but the anger burned hot behind his eyes. He was tired of being the butt of her "educated" jokes.
Alaric, a male paladin who carried himself with a cold, haughty grace, made no secret of his past. He had been kicked out of the prestigious Knights of Halloway and clearly had something to prove. "Quiet, bard," Alaric snapped, adjusting his gleaming pauldrons. "A Knight of Hallow requires focus, not the incessant chirping of a street performer. If the elf misses, I shall simply cleave what remains. It is the weight of the steel that matters, not the wood of the arrow."
Joining them were two dragonborn fighters: Ashtaroth, who strangely seemed more preoccupied with thoughts of cooking than combat, and Ryou, who carried a lethal combination of a javelin and a heavy revolver.
"Steel is fine," Ashtaroth grunted, sniffing the air toward the kitchen. "But have you considered the seasoning? A well-marinated orc heart... now that is a victory worth having. Do we think these goblins carry wild mountain sage? It's peak season."
Ryou shifted his weight, the heavy revolver at his hip clinking. "Focus on the contract, Ashtaroth. Sage doesn't stop a blade."
Faeno, a male elf, introduced himself simply, carefully hiding the fact that his powers were drawn from a warlock pact. Conspicuously absent was Nikia, the party's female tiefling warlock, who was currently suffering from a massive hangover after partying too hard in the city.
The journey led them toward the border of Incultum, a corrupted land where the shadows grew thick and the dead rarely stayed buried. As the party neared the edge of the wilds, the world fell unnervingly silent. No birds sang and no insects chirped. There was only the wind whispering through the pines.
Suddenly, they spotted their quarry. Six terrified travelers were backed against the treeline, surrounded by the promised six goblins and two orcs. Yet, something was deeply wrong. The orcs looked utterly exhausted, their weapons trembling in their hands as they glanced fearfully toward the darkness of Incultum.
Before the monsters could strike the travelers, Alaric made the first move. Foregoing the elegant strike of his sword, the former knight simply stepped up and drove his gauntlet into the nearest goblin's face, snapping its jaw with a sickening crunch. Behind him, Lukas unslung her fiddle, playing a surprisingly soothing melody to calm the panicking travelers amidst the rising violence.
The goblin, reeling from Alaric's punch, flailed wildly and managed to scrape the gleaming insignia on Alaric's armor. It was a fatal mistake.
"You dare?" Alaric's voice was a low growl. "You dare touch the crest of Halloway with your filth?" His blade ignited with radiant light and he obliterated the creature with a blinding Divine Smite.
Total chaos erupted. Caryavata drew his bow and let an arrow fly. Driven by a cold, quiet rage at Lukas's earlier taunts, his nerves vanished the moment the string snapped. The arrow whistled through the air with such lethal force that it pierced clean through one goblin and buried itself into another. He moved like a blur, loosed arrow after arrow, hitting every mark with supernatural precision.
The rest of the party, however, struggled to find their footing as their strikes cut nothing but air. Suddenly, Nikia stumbled out of the brush, heavily out of breath and clearly nursing the last of her hangover as she scrambled to join the fray. "Did... did I miss the party?" she wheezed, her eyes bloodshot.
Attempting to rally the disorganized group, Lukas shouted what she thought were words of inspiration. "Actually, your aim is a complete catastrophe! You're USELESS!" she hissed at Caryavata, despite him having hit every target thus far.
Caryavata loosed another arrow, skittering it through an orc's shoulder. "I haven't missed once, Lukas! Open your eyes!"
"Open your ears to my prose and maybe you'd find some talent!" she shot back. The party glared at the bard, save for Faeno and Caryavata, who were laughing too hard at her terrible pep talk to be offended. Realizing her mistake, Lukas swiftly retreated and hid behind the nearest thick-trunked tree.
Furious and impatient, Alaric hoisted a spear and hurled it with terrifying force, skewering two goblins at once. Seeing the opening, Ashtaroth and Ryou pushed forward into a brutal killing spree. Blood sprayed across the forest floor, coating Ashtaroth's face in a dark, crimson mask as they tore through the ranks.
"Finally!" Ashtaroth roared, wiping gore from his snout. "Now we're cooking with real heat!"
With only one orc remaining, Caryavata and Ryou unleashed a relentless volley of arrows and bullets, pinning the beast down before Alaric strode forward to deliver a final, crushing Divine Smite. Standing over the carnage, Alaric coldly ordered the shivering travelers to fetch his thrown spear from the goblin corpses. The travelers hastily complied, offering their frantic thanks before fleeing back toward the safety of Uffergand.
The party took a collective breath, ready to celebrate their chaotic victory, but then the temperature plummeted. Lukas gagged as the foul, unmistakable stench of rotting meat hit her out of nowhere. A low, rattling groan echoed from the treeline and gray hands clawed through the underbrush as a horde of corrupted corpses dragged themselves forward from the direction of Incultum.
"Oh, Carolines save us," Nikia whispered, her hangover suddenly the least of her problems. "That's not a goblin patrol."
While Faeno began to panic, frantically flipping through his mind for the right spell to cast, Alaric's eyes lit up with absolute glee. Undead were the perfect target for a paladin. "Form up! Let the light of Hallow show these husks the way to the dirt!"
However, Ryou acted first, raising his gun and firing a deafening shot into the rotting mass. The gunshot echoed like thunder, instantly drawing the furious aggro of the entire zombie horde right toward him.
From her hiding spot, Lukas slammed her hands into the dirt and cast Earth Tremor. The ground violently buckled, shattering the legs of several zombies. But the undead did not stop. Now limbless, they clawed their way across the shattered earth toward the bard. Lukas panicked as rotting fingers grabbed at her ankles, taking a painful hit before scrambling backward.
"HELP! They're touchy! Very touchy!" she screamed.
As the tide of the undead continued to swell, Ryou and Faeno realized that standard strikes wouldn't be enough to halt the corruption. Sharing a reckless glance, the two unleashed a combined assault of black powder and arcane heat. Ryou's shots sparked against Faeno's volatile magic, igniting the dry needles and ancient timber of the forest floor. Within seconds, a roaring forest fire erupted, a wall of orange flame licking at the sky as it began to incinerate the remaining undead.
"A bit excessive, don't you think?" Faeno shouted over the roar of the flames, his face pale from the drain of the spell.
"Dead is dead!" Ryou grunted back.
Before the flames or the horde could fully overwhelm them, a sound like a thunderclap split the clearing. A man slid down the steep slope into the battlefield with incredible speed. He wore the dark, tactical leather armor of The Watchers, the elite defenders of Uffergand. In one hand, he wielded a shimmering whip and in the other, a massive rotating revolver.
CRACK. BANG.
The whip tore through a walking corpse, snapping its spine. The revolver roared, blasting another zombie into pieces. The stranger moved with deadly, practiced precision, drawing the entire horde's attention as he emptied his cylinder into the rotting mass, forcing the undead back toward the Incultum treeline.
Spinning the empty cylinder, he holstered the massive weapon and turned to the blood-soaked party.
"Well, Carolines take the night," he muttered, invoking the legendary figures who defied the gods. "Looks like I arrived just in time."
He studied the panting adventurers, his eyes lingering on the goblin corpses.
"Name's Cain. Watcher of the Incultum border." He gestured toward the dead greenskins. "Those fools weren't hunting travelers. They were running from something. And judging by what just crawled out of those woods, Carolines, that's not normal."
Alaric stepped forward, his sword still glowing. "We had the situation under control, Watcher. Your assistance was... noted."
Cain gave a dry chuckle. "Under control? You've set half the border forest on fire and a bard is currently trying to shake a zombie's hand off her boot. Follow me. We need to report this to the Headmaster and the Grandmaster of Uffergand immediately. The frontier is waking up."
Later that evening, the party stood within the great council hall of Uffergand. Tall stone pillars rose toward the vaulted ceiling while torches flickered along the walls, casting long, dancing shadows. Two powerful figures sat across a massive stone table: Guildmaster Marvollo Flyshield and Headmaster Carllo Martgifft. The atmosphere was thick with tension, and Martgifft wasted no time. He slammed his hand against the table, the sound echoing like a gavel.
"Carolines, Cain!" Martgifft shouted, his face reddening with fury. "You were late! That horde should have been destroyed at the border by you alone. Instead, they nearly reached our gates!"
Cain remained infuriatingly calm, leaning back with a nonchalant air. "With respect, Headmaster, the frontier is changing. The undead are appearing more frequently and in numbers I have never seen. These adventurers didn't run. They held their ground. If Incultum keeps pushing like this, we are going to need more fighters like them."
Marvollo Flyshield studied the rowdy, chaotic group before him. The party was hardly a picture of discipline. "So, you are the adventurers Cain speaks of," Marvollo muttered, rubbing his temples as if a headache were already forming. "Many claim courage in this hall. Few prove it. Tell me, why should Uffergand place its trust in you?"
The group immediately exploded into a cacophony of voices.
"Because you have a paladin of the Hallow Order standing before you," Alaric interrupted, stepping forward with a haughty shrug. "Or rather, one who understands the real weight of a blade. These others... well, they provide a sufficient distraction while I do the heavy lifting. You won't find a more capable leader in this rabble-filled city."
"Leader? You nearly got your 'knightly' nose broken by a goblin's flailing arm," Lukas retorted, rolling her eyes. She turned to Marvollo with a surprisingly reasoned expression. "Ignore the peacock, Guildmaster. The truth is, we worked. We were disorganized, sure, but we were the ones who actually stood between those travelers and the grave while your 'elite' Watchers were playing catch-up in the woods. We have the results; isn't that what the Guild pays for?"
Nikia leaned against a pillar, yawning. "Look, can we skip the 'save the world' speeches? My head is killing me, and I'm pretty sure I've still got goblin blood in my hair. Just tell us the gold is good and the contracts are signed, and I'll blast whatever shambling corpse you point me at."
Ashtaroth puffed out his chest, trying to look the part of a seasoned commander despite the lingering scent of wild herbs on his breath. "A group is only as strong as its stomach and its steel! I led these warriors through the thick of it. We broke their line, we held the flank, and we did it with minimal casualties. We are a unit now."
"A unit?" Caryavata muttered under his breath, though he stepped forward to join the plea. "We survived. And we learned. The things in those woods... they weren't just wandering. They were driven. If you don't send us back out there, you're just waiting for the next wave to hit your front door."
The Headmaster was eventually swayed by the words of Lukas and Ashtaroth. Though the Guildmaster looked as if he were on the verge of a breakdown due to their lack of decorum, Martgifft gave them a chance. He officially formed them into a specialized party tasked with defending the realm against the encroaching darkness of Incultum. They were told they would travel the world to various points connected to the corrupted land.
However, as soon as the briefing ended, the party's discipline evaporated.
"Right, business is done," Ashtaroth announced, clapping his hands together. "Cain, where is the nearest spice merchant? I saw a root in the forest that looked like it would pair perfectly with a roasted boar's heart." Upon being pointed toward the markets, he vanished.
Alaric didn't even wait for a dismissal. "I believe I've earned a night of... higher quality company than you lot," he said, glancing at the others with disdain before sprinting out the door toward the red-light district.
Nikia rubbed her temples. "Is the pay in advance? No? Fine. I'm going to go find a dark room and a very large bottle of water." She disappeared into the shadows of the hallway.
Lukas unslung her fiddle with a grin. "I need a crowd. You can't write a ballad about glory without an audience to pay for the inspiration." She ran off to find a busy square to busk for extra coin.
Caryavata headed out to restock his arrows, and Faeno stayed behind for a few awkward moments, hovering over maps and intelligence reports, whispering to himself about the ley lines of the north. Ryou, troubled by his own nature, approached the leaders as they began to gather their papers.
"Master Flyshield," Ryou said, his voice low and gravelly. "In the heat of the fight... I felt something. Like a pulse in my blood. I think I'm changing. When I get close to death, it feels like a wolf is trying to claw its way out of my chest. Is it the corruption? Or something else?"
The Guildmaster stopped, looking at the dragonborn with a flicker of pity. "The world is changing, Ryou. Incultum brings out the hidden truths in men. I have no cure for you, nor an answer. The truth will reveal itself the further you venture into the dark. Just pray you remain yourself when it does."
The peace did not last. Before the party could truly settle into their tasks, a scream echoed from the battlements. A guard burst into the hall, face pale with terror. "The dead are inside the city! They are breaking through the gates!"
Marvollo drew his sword instantly. "Carolines... so the forest attack was only the beginning. If you wish to prove yourselves, fight beside us!"
Cain spun the cylinder of his revolver with a smirk. "Looks like the dead chose a Carolines of a night to attack. Come on, let's send them back to the grave."
The party met up in the smoke-filled streets as waves of corrupted undead flooded Uffergand. Alaric was in his absolute glory, a terrifying grin spreading across his face as he waded into the thickest part of the swarm.
"Look at them!" Alaric shouted over the sound of snapping bone, his voice pitched with a manic edge. "No shields, no honor, just meat for the harvest! Watch and learn, you peasants! This is how a Knight of Hallow paints a street!" He laughed, his blade singing through the air as he cleaved rotting limbs with a sadistic, joyful elegance.
Nearby, Nikia struggled with the lingering haze of her hangover. She attempted to use Thaumaturgy to boom her voice. "FEAR THE—hiccup—FEAR THE MIGHT OF THE DARK!" Her voice cracked and the magic fizzled out in a weak puff of smoke.
"Oh, for the love of..." she muttered, leaning back against a wall as a zombie lunged. "Fine. No theatrics today." She lazily flicked her wrists, sending bolts of Eldritch Blast into the horde. Each blast struck with unerring accuracy, popping heads like overripe melons. "Much better. Less shouting, more dying."
While Lukas focused on ushering commoners to safety—"Move along, citizens! Move with the rhythm of the retreat!"—Ryou and Faeno began lighting everything in sight on fire to create barriers. Cain caught up to them but held back, watching their performance.
"You're just going to stand there?" Faeno yelled, narrowly avoiding a charred claw.
"You're doing fine, kid!" Cain called back, leaning against a post and lighting a small cigar. "Consider this your first official field test. Don't let the fire go out!" He chuckled before heading to other sectors.
Suddenly, a massive undead orc emerged from the smoke of a crashed market stall, leading a fresh wave of corpses. The party quickly adapted.
"Frontliners, get in its face! Casters, clear the trash!" Ashtaroth roared, his culinary focus replaced by raw combat instinct.
The beast zeroed in on Ryou, drawn by the thunderous noise of his gun. Ryou took a heavy blow, his ribs cracking, and the beast within finally snapped its leash. He shifted into a massive, snarling werewolf, embarking on a savage killing spree.
"Ryou's gone fuzzy again!" Nikia shouted, blasting a zombie off the werewolf's back. "Cary, do something!"
Caryavata didn't respond. He entered a state of total focus, the chaos of the city fading into a single line of sight. He drew his string back to his ear, feeling the wood groan. "For the tavern tab, Lukas," he whispered. He loosed a single, whistling arrow that struck the undead orc squarely in the center of its forehead.
The massive creature collapsed directly onto Lukas, pinning her to the ground.
"GET IT OFF! IT SMELLS LIKE A WET SEWER!" Lukas shrieked, her bardic dignity vanishing as she flailed under the orc's bulk. Alaric rushed to her side, laughing as he heaved the carcass off her.
With the orc dead, the party turned to the rampaging Ryou. Faeno attempted to snap him out of it with a burst of flame. "Stop! Bad dog!"
The fire only succeeded in burning Ryou's clothes off. Nikia tried to soothe the beast. "Nice puppy? Good... scaly... wolf thing?" Ryou snarled, lunging.
"Enough!" Lukas shouted, wiping orc grease from her face. She strummed a discordant, heavy chord and cast Sleep. The magic took hold, and the werewolf collapsed, shifting back into a naked, unconscious dragonborn.
Amidst the settling dust, Alaric and Caryavata looked up toward the ridge overlooking the city. There, a figure in tattered dark robes stood watching them. It was a Necromancer, their pale skin ghost-like beneath a dark hood. The figure raised a hand in a mocking acknowledgement before fading into the shadows.