After witnessing the arrival of the Dawn War ship from Wolford Manor, the party rushed to the docks to meet the figure approaching the city. What they found was not simply a ship, but a miracle unfolding across the sea.
The ocean itself split before the vessel, revealing a vast path of sand beneath the waves. The ship raced toward Wolford at impossible speed, carried across the exposed seabed by High Magic. As it neared the shoreline, the coast transfigured into a massive seawall, halting the vessel just short of the city. From the ship came a host of paladins bearing banners of Corellon, Father of Elves and the long-absent god.
At their head stood the current Holy Father: Pious Titus of Spring.
Titus disembarked in black armor, a massive white hairpiece billowing behind him like a holy banner. Everything about him was grandiose, theatrical, and almost painfully humble. He spoke in dramatic declarations, proclaiming that Corellon had returned to guide him and that, as Corellon’s champion, he would become the wall against Tharizdun.
Upon seeing Behzad, Titus greeted him as “Little Dragon,” a nickname that immediately provoked the disgraced prince’s anger. Behzad began explaining that the party had already reached the Tomb of Tharizdun and that the entity beneath Wolford was too powerful to face directly. Meanwhile, Fable kept to the shadows, fearing what the Holy Father might do if he sensed her undead nature.
Titus was led to the mine, where he warned the party to avert their eyes. He revealed that his right hand had been replaced by a golden gauntlet, one of the Seven Seals. With a snap of his fingers, the underground temple was sealed behind a radiant dome of divine light, locking the fragment of Tharizdun away until all seven seals could be gathered in Wolford.
Behzad failed to look away.
The intensity of Titus’ High Magic boiled the eyes from Behzad’s skull. Horrified but composed, Titus immediately cast Regeneration, restoring Behzad’s sight and treating the catastrophe as an unfortunate consequence of divine radiance rather than malice.
Afterward, the party returned to Wolford Manor. Titus thanked them for their bravery and hospitality by conjuring a Heroes’ Feast. He moved around the room pouring wine, which he called “the Blood of Corellon,” and offering communion to the gathered heroes.
Fable eventually revealed her undead nature. Rather than condemning her, Titus apologized for having frightened her and promised to administer thirty lashes to himself in penance. Fable begged him not to. In place of wine, Titus cast Inflict Wounds upon himself, opened one of his own veins into her glass, and offered her his blood as communion.
He called it, again, “the Blood of Corellon.”
Then he healed the wound with Cure Wounds, took only a single piece of bread from the feast for himself, and called it “the Body.”
Fable found the gesture deeply unsettling. His overwhelming kindness disturbed her more than hatred would have.
With the tomb sealed for now, the party decided to leave Titus in charge of Wolford while they ventured into the wider world to search for the remaining seals, now known to them as the Tides of Chaos. Titus swore to protect Wolford from the entity beneath it with his last breath. However, feeling unworthy of “a house of loyalty,” he refused the comforts of Wolford Manor and instead conjured a tiny hut in the garden, choosing to live humbly among the people he had sworn to protect.
This display of radical humility only irritated Behzad further, challenging his own understanding of nobility, authority, and what it means to rule.
Before the party departed, Titus used Life Transference to give Fable a jug of his own blood for the road. Fable, increasingly uncomfortable, admitted that Titus’ kindness was somehow worse than if he had simply hated her and tried to smite her.
The party left Wolford and returned to Azmar, where they found the city keep under siege by its own people. With ACE fallen and the truth exposed, that Azmar’s rulers had sold the souls of their people to a demon, the city had erupted into revolt.
The party managed to break up the riot by invoking their own heroism and reminding the crowd that they had saved the city. Their words calmed the people enough for the mob to disperse, but the moment carried unintended political consequences. Many in the crowd began chanting that Behzad, as Lord of Wolford and savior of Azmar, should inherit the throne of Azmar.
Once the crowd had cleared, the party noticed two familiar figures watching from among the people: the Prophet and Turbulence, the sand genasi Fern and Fable had freed from the Wolford jail.
The Prophet and Fable shared a quiet moment of grief over Vulmer’s death. Then the Prophet advised the party to stop in Dunedrift on their way to the Charmed Cove. An old associate of his, Trinity, was now “running things” there, and without Vulmer, the party would need another feather in their cap if they had any hope of overthrowing the Lords’ Alliance.
Fern fulfilled his promise to Turbulence by giving him one of the Wolford Resurrection Gems. In return, the party learned that Turbulence had originally been commissioned to steal the gem by Nys’s husband in the Charmed Cove. Her husband still hoped to restore Nys to what she had once been before becoming a shadar-kai, before serving the Raven Queen, and before abandoning her old life as a wife and guardsman.
The revelation deeply upset Nys.
She and Behzad shared a private moment afterward, where Nys vented her frustration and grief. Her husband, she said, was being foolish. She was not dead, but the woman he married was gone. She now served the Raven Queen for eternity, and she no longer felt what she once had for him or their children.
With Vulmer gone and the Guild weakened, the party departed toward Dunedrift, hoping to find someone who could help fill the void he had left behind.
On the road through the desert, they were attacked by a blue dragon.
The dragon descended upon the wagon, but Nys acted quickly, hurling a Bead of Force and trapping the creature mid-assault. While it was restrained, Behzad spoke with it in Draconic and learned its name: Asherdalon, the Giver of Fire. The dragon claimed the Sapest as his territory.
When the Bead of Force expired, Asherdalon unleashed his breath weapon upon Behzad and Fable, instantly knocking Behzad down. The dragon then launched himself into the sky. Fern used Fey Step to appear on the dragon’s back, striking him with a flurry of unarmed blows and Stunning Strikes, but Asherdalon’s tail knocked Fern loose.
The dragon escaped into the sky, leaving the party bruised, bloodied, and stranded in the desert with a new enemy circling somewhere above the Sapest.