Arc:Venturil's Bane

Background

Of the many forces that have left Venturil all but a barren waste, none are more terrible than the vast creature that for centuries has, in its long state of dormancy, slowly grown to immense proportions while it tainted the land and bled the nation dry.

A remnant-gone-wild, it is the resultant monstrosity of an horrific protoflesh guardian left behind millennia ago by the Arch-Necromancer Aranoch the Damned, who was banished from Lithrydel to another dimension for his crimes.

Now something is summoning the Burrower has to wake. And it is hungry.

In a strange and perhaps not wholly accidental twist of Fate, the very woman who is determined to resurrect Aranoch's legacy has discovered the origins of the Burrower, and seeks to harness its immensity.

But as those ancient mages who banished Aranoch so long ago knew, when it came to the Arch-Necromancer, Fate has a strange way of weaving together apparently disparate fragments of distant time and space. Nothing is co-incidence. And nothing is ever as it seems.

Tenebrae's quest is already causing Fate to ripple in odd ways. Whether this will ultimately prove to be for good or for ill is as yet anybody's guess...

Part 1: The Gaunt Returns

1. Prequel, in the Shadow Realm
2. The Little Mistress
3. Something Fishy in Kelay Tav
4. Ranok Gets the Finger
5. What Happens When You Trespass
6. A Mermish Interlude
7. How Fate Meanders
8. Gruesome Cargo
9. Of Pigeons and Lingerie
10. A Wight in the Dark
11. A Present from Mr. Snuggles
12. Messing With Kuzial
13. Master, Apprentice and the question of Maladroit
14. Hunters and the Hunted
15. Rocks, Hard Places and JiggeryPokeries
16. When throwing things in the Blood Fountain, be careful what you wish for

Part 2: What the Necromancers Dragged In

1. More Than a Dream is Shattered
2. Tipping the Scales of Fate
3. Valentin is Proper Effed
4. The Understanding
5. A Trembling in the Web
6. The Burrower Beneath, Part 1
7. The Hand That Feeds (upon) You
8. Conversations In the Hanging Corpse
9. Guild Smalltalk and Shadowplay
10. A Touching Scene (in the bad way)
11. Thanadule and Novus Morior: Sigils, language, and a lesson in patience
12. Matters of Flesh and Bureaucracy
13. Butchers and Barrels and Kittens and Coopers
14. The Guild Expands, The Assassin is Paid, Valentin Gets Some Cleavage
15. Necromantic Briefs
16. Subtle Signs and Differences

Part 3: The Cold Winds of Change

1. Below, the Unintelligible Truth
2. Stranger, Strangeness and Stranger Things Still
3. Conversation with the King
4. A Crown of Great and Terrible Price, Pt 1
5. Pt 2
6. Pt 3
7. Pt 4
8. Pt 5
9. Westward Ho! Necromancers on the move
10. Segue: The Eye of Vakmatharas, Part 1
11. Part 2
12. Westward Ho! The Venturil Venture
13. The First Parchment Reaches Eboric
14. The Second Parchment Summons Rheven
15. Kuzial Eats the Messenger
16. Trespassers Will Be Persecuted
17. And Then There Was Two..
18. Eboric Takes the Palace
19. Tene, the Lich & Undead Philosophy
20. The Murder of the Spider Queen
21. The Arch-Mage Regains Mortality

Part 4: The Burrower

1. Tails and Tales - Regarding the Follies of Necromancers
2. Looking at the World Through Orange-Colored Glasses
3. A Day of Reckonings
4. The Way the Cookie Crumbles..
5. Episodes
6. Headache
7. The Avatar's Journey
8. The Rise of the Burrower
9. Freedoms
10. A Brief Siege
11. Bait