Shadows Over Vasloria (Draw Steel Campaign Log)

Shadows Over Vasloria

Overview

In the past few years, dark rumors have begun to spread across Vasloria like a sickness without cure. Whole towns lie razed to blackened stone. Villagers who once shared harvest feasts now fall upon neighboring homesteads with torch and blade. Trade guilds and noble houses that prospered together for generations have declared open war, caravans ambushed and border keeps bristling with fresh-forged steel. Militias raised to defend hearth and home instead abandon their towns—wives, children, elders, all—turning to banditry with a ferocity that feels rehearsed rather than desperate .Some whisper that the taint of the world itself is seeping upward through the soil. Others point to conquest from without, blaming a rising warlord whose banners have never been seen yet whose name is cursed in every tavern. A few terrified souls speak of things that fall from the sky or worse, E̶N̶T̶I̶T̶Y̶ ̶R̶E̶D̶A̶C̶T̶E̶D̶. Then, one night, it finds you. In dream or waking vision, under starlight or in the reek of a burning village, the same images sear themselves into your mind: a black sun bleeding over Vasloria, a child’s voice—clear, cold, ancient—speaking a single name:

the Delian Tomb.

And beneath the name, an urge like cold iron dragging at your heart, pulling you south-west, toward the mist-choked highlands where that half-mythical crypt is said to lie. You wake with grave-dust on your tongue and the certainty in your bones: if you do not reach the Delian Tomb before E̶N̶T̶I̶T̶Y̶ ̶R̶E̶D̶A̶C̶T̶E̶D̶, everything ends. You are not alone. Half a dozen strangers across the realm jerk awake with the same name burning behind their eyes. Some fight the pull and find it only tightens. Others ride straight for the highlands, half-mad with purpose. All of you arrive within a day of one another at the town nearest the eager to investigate, but knowing something is yet to happen and you must be ready, you spend a few days staring at people you have never met yet already recognize from the vision. After the E̶N̶T̶I̶T̶Y̶ ̶R̶E̶D̶A̶C̶T̶E̶D̶, atrocities continue —bounties nailed to trees with rusted spikes, names whispered by refugees or carved into the chests of the dead—but every road, every contract, every massacre now points back to the E̶N̶T̶I̶T̶Y̶ ̶R̶E̶D̶A̶C̶T̶E̶D̶ like iron filings to a lodestone.

Incident by incident, slaughter by slaughter, the marked heroes chase smoke and screams across a dying land. And as the pieces fall together, the question is E̶N̶T̶I̶T̶Y̶ ̶R̶E̶D̶A̶C̶T̶E̶D̶.

but whether anything can be done before E̶N̶T̶I̶T̶Y̶ ̶R̶E̶D̶A̶C̶T̶E̶D̶.

Expected Gameplay

  • Combat: High (2–3 fights most sessions, often large and desperate: holding crumbling walls against hundreds of former neighbors, cutting through eerily silent bandit legions, facing things that wear E̶N̶T̶I̶T̶Y̶ ̶R̶E̶D̶A̶C̶T̶E̶D̶).

  • Exploration: Medium (blighted roads, corpse-strewn battlefields, and forbidden ruins all lie between you and the E̶N̶T̶I̶T̶Y̶ ̶R̶E̶D̶A̶C̶T̶E̶D̶; the vision always shows the next step, but never the cost).

  • Intrigue: High (every quest hides a lie wearing truth’s skin; every survivor is a suspect; every patron may already belong to E̶N̶T̶I̶T̶Y̶ ̶R̶E̶D̶A̶C̶T̶E̶D̶).

  • Interpersonal: Medium (you are bound by the same curse-vision, but trust frays fast; you’ll bargain with broken warlords, redeem or execute lost souls, and decide how long you can keep one another human).

What You’ll Be Doing (Player Buy-In)

You are the last sane blades in a world losing its mind. The Delian Tomb holds the first shard of truth—E̶N̶T̶I̶T̶Y̶ ̶R̶E̶D̶A̶C̶T̶E̶D̶—but it is only the first stop. From there the vision becomes a grim itinerary: it pulls you toward the places where the madness is spreading fastest. One week you’re evacuating a mining town whose foreman just tried to sacrifice his workers to “the voice in the ore.” The next you’re hunting a merchant prince who has begun executing anyone who disagrees with him “before the whispers get them.” Some people you save stay saved. A grateful village names a street after you. A rescued caravan master swears lifelong loyalty. Other times you arrive too late, or the “rescued” turn on you a month later when the fear finally breaks them. The madness is spreading, but it has not won yet. There are still weddings in the countryside, taverns full of laughter, children who have never seen a razed town. Your job is to keep it that way as long as possible. You will ride hard, fight hard, and piece together what is actually happening: where the fractures began, who (if anyone) is profiting, and whether the tide can be turned before Vasloria tears itself apart. You will become legends to some, witch-hunted by others, and the only steady point everyone else clings to when the world feels like it’s tilting. The nights are growing darker and people are definitely on edge, but dawn still comes.

You are the ones who can still look at the sunrise and be certain it’s real.

Hold the line.

Keep your friends close.

Carry the torch a little farther.

The land hasn’t gone mad yet—and as long as you stand, it won’t.

———————–

Players —

Hurkemier Vandemier - (played by @_UDL_Rayven )

Gravitaxx AzRon - (played by @IkeHyran )

Sandor Riles - (played by @Sinsear )

Val’Ethron Wolfsblood - (played by @Nerion )

Thunax AzRon - (played by @Shadow )

R’ow Half-Fang - (played by Gannonbelle/KittySmash)


Session 1 - 1/5/26


The party starts at the Featherbed Inn in the Town of Broadhurst. The last to arrive being Herk. Once Herk is there, the party feels “gathered”, the rest of them biding their time in the town all arriving within the past 24 hours. They know their purpose is joined by the vision. Each of them introduces themselves and begin to talk about the vision when the town blacksmith bursts through the door, inconsolable and bleeding from a head wound. She rushes to an armored man and robed women that belong to a mercenary group, the Gilded Hand, pleading them for help. They refuse citing need for payment. She then turns to our group of heroes. Herk healing her headwound, and listen to her pleas. Her daughter Violet was captured by some goblins and taken into a Tomb, leaving her for dead to the head wound. The group agrees to help, and after some exposition and an hours travel the group arrives at the entrance to a tomb, with the word “Delius” in old Caelic at the top. The group notices the goblins defending it before they are noticed, an attempt by R’owh to do things peacefully fails in horrible fashion as she messes her dialect up, offering in trade to disembowel them for free. Thus begins the encounter, in which our heroes handle the 8 goblins defenders, as well as the 4 goblin support team that come out of the tomb moments later. R’owh and Val being the ones who were hurt the most and came closest to death. When only three of the original twelve goblins remain the goblins throw down their arms and flee. The heroes chase them down, Val slicing one clean in two while Herk and Sandor chased the second, capturing him and R’rowh subduing the last, dragging him back with his leg in her mouth. (Panther form). The heroes intimidate some information out of the goblins, successfully - There is a fortress with a Boss Lady elsewhere. There are many more goblins inside of the tomb, along with the girl. There are no traps (that he knows of).

With this information the Blacksmith, Ashleigh, comes and throttles the goblin, demanding answers, eventually killing him after confirming with the group that her daughter remains inside. She promises a reward of any sword they want crafted if they bring her daughter back alive.

The party takes a quick breather and delves into the Delian Tomb.

End Session - Gained 1 victory - Current XP 4.

https://rumble.com/v73vyp0-draw-steel-episode-1.html