For forty-three years, Silica Gate held. Its people, hardened by decades of siege and sorrow, lived within a city built into the bones of a shattered mountain range. It rose from the stone like a scar—braced steel towers, concrete bastions bristling with mortars and other artillery, lit by dancing lights. It wasn’t beautiful. It was functional. Silica Gate had always been a city of war—a fortress city designed to endure. Thousands lived within its city blocks. Its walls were steel-reinforced concrete, layered with blast plating and lined with spell fire nests. The city was fed by subterranean supply corridors, transporting munitions, fuel, rations, and personnel—guarded by floodlights and sentries that never blinked. Every citizen was trained to respond to the Stitch with fire and finality. They knew the truth: the Stitch was already inside them. It bloomed only in death. So pulse monitors were worn like second skins. Soldiers carried vials of sanctified ash clipped to their belts, ready to burn a fallen comrade before breath could return. Medics were trained not just to heal, but to destroy. The protocol was clear. Euthanasia was authorized.
The leaders of Silica Gate were called the Triumvirate of Silica Gate—three ancient powers bound by pact and purpose, each entrusted with the city’s leadership.
Seraphine of the Ninth Radiance, the Celestial, was the city’s shield. Her wings were forged from sunsteel, her voice a chorus of protective wards. She walked among the people, sanctifying the streets with radiant magic. Seraphine believed in hope, in mercy, in holding the line no matter the cost. Her presence calmed riots, healed the wounded, and inspired defenders to stand even when the walls cracked. She did not lead with command—she led with light.
Varnyx the Red Accord, the Fiend, was the city’s blade. An archfiend who had traded conquest for containment, he oversaw the city’s defenses with brutal efficiency. Varnyx believed in sacrifice, in control, in burning the infected before they could rise. His armor hissed with brimstone. He did not mourn the dead—he prevented their return. He did not protect the city. He preserved its shape.
Threnody Voss, the Lich of Echoes, was the city’s mind. A necromancer of a thousand years, she maintained Silica Gate’s archives, rituals, and memory. Threnody believed in continuity, in cold logic, in preserving knowledge even through death. She advised with ruthless clarity. Her magic was precise, her counsel unflinching.
They did not rule in harmony, but in balance. Their presence kept the Woven at bay. The city’s streets were wide and clean, lined with markets that never slept and halls that sang through the night. Survivors came from all over to trade, to find safety, and a little fun. It was the largest city in the Severed Land. This city didn’t just survive—it flourished. Its people were proud, its culture vibrant, its defenses legendary. None of that mattered now.
The Fall
The sky turned black at noon. Not with clouds, but with wings. Grotesque birds circled the city. The first breach was Sector 9, where the outer wall met the old rail line. The Woven had come—thousands of them. The birds had been only the first wave. They were followed by shambling ranks of flesh-bound horrors aglow with glyphs and sigils. They emerged from the marshes and the broken highways. They didn’t roar. They didn’t charge. They walked in silence. Giant siege beasts, woven from rust and bone, dragged antimagic anchors behind them, disrupting wards and unraveling protective enchantments. Bone Lords, stitched from multiple corpses, slaughtered anything alive within range. The Woven came not as a horde, but as a tide—rising from the outskirts, they chewed through the foundation like termites while the birds harried the defenders.
Street-to-street combat raged for three days. The Triumvirate stood ready to defend the city, each leading the defense in different ways. The defenders fought with precision. Defense teams of battlemages and medics moved through smoke-choked alleys, casting suppressive spells and dragging wounded. Barricades were built from wrecked transports and collapsed buildings. Floodlights flared, mortars fired, and flamethrowers swept the streets. Sniper nests of eldritch archers or machine gun turrets held intersections until their spell slots or ammunition ran dry. Then they fought on with blades and wands. The city fought valiantly, but every fallen defender became another enemy. The clerics and warlocks sanctified and cleansed what they could, but their divine and infernal channels flickered and failed when their patrons were Woven. The pyres burned day and night, but it wasn’t enough. You could smell the failure in the air—burnt hair, blood, and the sour stench of fear. The enemy was relentless. Defense teams were cut off, surrounded, and consumed. The city fell piece by piece.
The Fall of Seraphine
The outer wards were the first to go. Families barricaded themselves in their homes, praying the walls would hold. They didn’t. The Launch Bay was lost in the first hour. Its fuel reserves were ignited by a desperate pilot who hoped the explosion would buy time. It killed hundreds in a blast that lit the valley, turning the Launch Bay into a crater of wild magic and shattered constructs. It saved no one. When the invasion began, Seraphin descended into the lower wards, casting radiant barriers and burning back the first wave of Woven. She watched a child die in her arms, and when the body rose, she hesitated. It was all it took. She did not die. She transformed. Her wings, tattered and dripping black ichor, her body now glowed with a purple light. The air turned black with spores—those who inhaled began bleeding from the eyes, their lungs unraveling from within. Her voice is still a chorus—but now it sings lullabies to the soon-to-be dead. Most of the outer defense towers collapsed by nightfall, their defenders buried beneath their own fortifications. They died holding the line and rose behind it. Civilians were herded into the subterranean corridors, but many never made it—and those that did, well, the Woven move fast. A guard captain detonated a bridge with refugees still crossing, whispering “Better ash than Woven” before the blast. The Transit Hub became a morgue, then a battlefield, then something worse. In Sanctum Row, priests locked themselves inside the Citadel and prayed for deliverance. When what had been their patron saint returned, their prayers became screams—soothed by lullabies before being cut off in the once-blessed Citadel.
The Fall of Threnody Voss
The Historians sealed themselves inside the Hall of Echoes, hoping to hide and outlast the tide. The Hall’s silence shattered as the Woven tore through its sanctum. The Historians were defenseless. The glyph-etched walls became canvases of blood and viscera. In the aftermath, amid the carnage, they found it: an altar of obsidian and bone. Upon it, Threnody's phylactery. Somewhere deep in the city, Threnody screamed as her soul was rewritten. In the central plaza, where once children played beneath the statue of the First Architect, it had now become a killing floor. People were trampled in the chaos. Elders were slaughtered where they cowered. The ground is slick with gore. The fountain, once a symbol of resilience, ran red and clogged with bone.
The Fall of Varnyx
The final defense line was drawn at the Core Bastion—protected by layered abjuration fields. Volunteers manned the walls, knowing they wouldn’t survive. They fought anyway. A Bone Lord breached the eastern gate. The defenders detonated the lower levels with a chain of delayed fireballs and dynamite, burying hundreds—Woven and mortal alike. It wasn’t enough, and it was too much. The wards failed. The explosions caused a chain reaction, and Varnyx and the last of the defenders were consumed in fire and debris. The Core Bastion fell silent, save for the crackle of flame. The last survivor in the city didn’t scream. She walked into the center of the city, carrying her dead brother’s body. She laid him down beneath the shattered statue of the First Architect. She lit a match. She burned herself with him. The Woven watched. They didn’t interfere. They whispered. It wasn’t a siege. It was a harvest. And the city had been ripe. Silica Gate is gone. Not because it was weak. But because it was human. Now, the gates hang open, split down the center like a wound that never closed. The Severed Land mourns.
The Parties Escape
The party was caught by surprise as reality buckled around them. Screams echoed through the streets. The party ran. The city was dying, and it wanted to take them with it. They fought Woven spawn with the rest until they all almost died. The party escaped into a maintenance shaft moving beneath the streets. The shaft was narrow, half-flooded. Through the tunnels, they passed a collapsed command post. The last defenders had detonated charges to seal the tunnel. The blast had worked, but the cost was visible in the blood-stained rubble. Further in, they climbed a broken elevator shaft, rung by rung. At the top, they emerged into the Transit Hub.
Their escape vehicle was a relic—a salvaged arcane transport once used for mobile instruction and tactical deployment. Thirty-five feet of reinforced steel, its hull etched with faded glyphwork and patched with scavenged armor plates. It had no name, not officially. But the locals had called it the Magic School Bus, half in jest, half in reverence. It wasn’t built for war. It was built to survive it. And it was right where they left it.
The bus roared through the battle at the Transit Hub, its crushing wheels grinding over barricades and bodies alike. A Woven siege beast lunged from the rubble, its limbs bristling with rebar and sinew, but the bus didn’t slow. The impact shattered bone and steel, sending the creature tumbling beneath the chassis. Inside, the crew held fast—four survivors bound by grit and desperation, each manning a station, each knowing that one mistake meant death. Sparks flew as the vehicle clipped a fallen signal tower, the Flux Surge Detector screaming in protest. The Feywave Radio crackled with dying broadcasts: “Varynx is… Lost… repeat… Lost…”
A grappling claw extended from the side panel, snatching a survivor from a pile of rubble just seconds before the Woven reached her. She didn’t scream. She didn’t thank them. She simply collapsed into the cabin, eyes wide, hands shaking. The terrain drag at the outer gate nearly stalled the engine, but a last-minute adjustment to the Drive Core sent the bus lurching forward, wheels spinning, exhaust belching smoke and arcane residue. Behind them, the last thing they saw was the Core Bastion, engulfed in smoke and flame. The Severed Land had lost its anchor. Silica Gate collapsed into a wound in the world. The Triumvirate was gone. The survivors were scattered.
Campaign Opening: Dawn in the Severed Land
Twelve hours ago, Silica Gate fell. You escaped aboard a relic of another age—a battered arcane transport once known as the Magic School Bus. Its name is a memory now, buried beneath armor plating, jury-rigged spellwork, and the hum of a fresh core. It is your lifeline. Your shelter. Your weapon. But it is also a beacon.
Now, dawn breaks over the Severed Land. The sky is pale and bruised. The roads ahead shimmer with heat and ley distortion. The Woven are out there. Watching. Hunting. Inside the bus, systems flicker. The new core is stable. Supplies are limited. The radio picks up static and fragments of speech. The city is behind you. The world is broken. The sun rises. You must move.
Your Starting location Options:
50 miles
- North
- East
- South
Of Silica Gate.
The Severed Land waits.
Which way do you go now?
All of you are alerted as the rescued Woman awakens screaming.
And so it is said.
Silica Gate
For forty-three years, Silica Gate held. Its people, hardened by decades of siege and sorrow, lived within a city built into the bones of a shattered mountain range. It rose from the stone like a scar—braced steel towers, concrete bastions bristling with mortars and other artillery, lit by dancing lights. It wasn’t beautiful. It was functional. Silica Gate had always been a city of war—a fortress city designed to endure. Thousands lived within its city blocks. Its walls were steel-reinforced concrete, layered with blast plating and lined with spell fire nests. The city was fed by subterranean supply corridors, transporting munitions, fuel, rations, and personnel—guarded by floodlights and sentries that never blinked. Every citizen was trained to respond to the Stitch with fire and finality. They knew the truth: the Stitch was already inside them. It bloomed only in death. So pulse monitors were worn like second skins. Soldiers carried vials of sanctified ash clipped to their belts, ready to burn a fallen comrade before breath could return. Medics were trained not just to heal, but to destroy. The protocol was clear. Euthanasia was authorized.
The leaders of Silica Gate were called the Triumvirate of Silica Gate—three ancient powers bound by pact and purpose, each entrusted with the city’s leadership.
Seraphine of the Ninth Radiance, the Celestial, was the city’s shield. Her wings were forged from sunsteel, her voice a chorus of protective wards. She walked among the people, sanctifying the streets with radiant magic. Seraphine believed in hope, in mercy, in holding the line no matter the cost. Her presence calmed riots, healed the wounded, and inspired defenders to stand even when the walls cracked. She did not lead with command—she led with light.
Varnyx the Red Accord, the Fiend, was the city’s blade. An archfiend who had traded conquest for containment, he oversaw the city’s defenses with brutal efficiency. Varnyx believed in sacrifice, in control, in burning the infected before they could rise. His armor hissed with brimstone. He did not mourn the dead—he prevented their return. He did not protect the city. He preserved its shape.
Threnody Voss, the Lich of Echoes, was the city’s mind. A necromancer of a thousand years, she maintained Silica Gate’s archives, rituals, and memory. Threnody believed in continuity, in cold logic, in preserving knowledge even through death. She advised with ruthless clarity. Her magic was precise, her counsel unflinching.
They did not rule in harmony, but in balance. Their presence kept the Woven at bay. The city’s streets were wide and clean, lined with markets that never slept and halls that sang through the night. Survivors came from all over to trade, to find safety, and a little fun. It was the largest city in the Severed Land. This city didn’t just survive—it flourished. Its people were proud, its culture vibrant, its defenses legendary. None of that mattered now.
The Fall
The sky turned black at noon. Not with clouds, but with wings. Grotesque birds circled the city. The first breach was Sector 9, where the outer wall met the old rail line. The Woven had come—thousands of them. The birds had been only the first wave. They were followed by shambling ranks of flesh-bound horrors aglow with glyphs and sigils. They emerged from the marshes and the broken highways. They didn’t roar. They didn’t charge. They walked in silence. Giant siege beasts, woven from rust and bone, dragged antimagic anchors behind them, disrupting wards and unraveling protective enchantments. Bone Lords, stitched from multiple corpses, slaughtered anything alive within range. The Woven came not as a horde, but as a tide—rising from the outskirts, they chewed through the foundation like termites while the birds harried the defenders.
Street-to-street combat raged for three days. The Triumvirate stood ready to defend the city, each leading the defense in different ways. The defenders fought with precision. Defense teams of battlemages and medics moved through smoke-choked alleys, casting suppressive spells and dragging wounded. Barricades were built from wrecked transports and collapsed buildings. Floodlights flared, mortars fired, and flamethrowers swept the streets. Sniper nests of eldritch archers or machine gun turrets held intersections until their spell slots or ammunition ran dry. Then they fought on with blades and wands. The city fought valiantly, but every fallen defender became another enemy. The clerics and warlocks sanctified and cleansed what they could, but their divine and infernal channels flickered and failed when their patrons were Woven. The pyres burned day and night, but it wasn’t enough. You could smell the failure in the air—burnt hair, blood, and the sour stench of fear. The enemy was relentless. Defense teams were cut off, surrounded, and consumed. The city fell piece by piece.
The Fall of Seraphine
The outer wards were the first to go. Families barricaded themselves in their homes, praying the walls would hold. They didn’t. The Launch Bay was lost in the first hour. Its fuel reserves were ignited by a desperate pilot who hoped the explosion would buy time. It killed hundreds in a blast that lit the valley, turning the Launch Bay into a crater of wild magic and shattered constructs. It saved no one. When the invasion began, Seraphin descended into the lower wards, casting radiant barriers and burning back the first wave of Woven. She watched a child die in her arms, and when the body rose, she hesitated. It was all it took. She did not die. She transformed. Her wings, tattered and dripping black ichor, her body now glowed with a purple light. The air turned black with spores—those who inhaled began bleeding from the eyes, their lungs unraveling from within. Her voice is still a chorus—but now it sings lullabies to the soon-to-be dead. Most of the outer defense towers collapsed by nightfall, their defenders buried beneath their own fortifications. They died holding the line and rose behind it. Civilians were herded into the subterranean corridors, but many never made it—and those that did, well, the Woven move fast. A guard captain detonated a bridge with refugees still crossing, whispering “Better ash than Woven” before the blast. The Transit Hub became a morgue, then a battlefield, then something worse. In Sanctum Row, priests locked themselves inside the Citadel and prayed for deliverance. When what had been their patron saint returned, their prayers became screams—soothed by lullabies before being cut off in the once-blessed Citadel.
The Fall of Threnody Voss
The Historians sealed themselves inside the Hall of Echoes, hoping to hide and outlast the tide. The Hall’s silence shattered as the Woven tore through its sanctum. The Historians were defenseless. The glyph-etched walls became canvases of blood and viscera. In the aftermath, amid the carnage, they found it: an altar of obsidian and bone. Upon it, Threnody's phylactery. Somewhere deep in the city, Threnody screamed as her soul was rewritten. In the central plaza, where once children played beneath the statue of the First Architect, it had now become a killing floor. People were trampled in the chaos. Elders were slaughtered where they cowered. The ground is slick with gore. The fountain, once a symbol of resilience, ran red and clogged with bone.
The Fall of Varnyx
The final defense line was drawn at the Core Bastion—protected by layered abjuration fields. Volunteers manned the walls, knowing they wouldn’t survive. They fought anyway. A Bone Lord breached the eastern gate. The defenders detonated the lower levels with a chain of delayed fireballs and dynamite, burying hundreds—Woven and mortal alike. It wasn’t enough, and it was too much. The wards failed. The explosions caused a chain reaction, and Varnyx and the last of the defenders were consumed in fire and debris. The Core Bastion fell silent, save for the crackle of flame. The last survivor in the city didn’t scream. She walked into the center of the city, carrying her dead brother’s body. She laid him down beneath the shattered statue of the First Architect. She lit a match. She burned herself with him. The Woven watched. They didn’t interfere. They whispered. It wasn’t a siege. It was a harvest. And the city had been ripe. Silica Gate is gone. Not because it was weak. But because it was human. Now, the gates hang open, split down the center like a wound that never closed. The Severed Land mourns.
The Parties Escape
The party was caught by surprise as reality buckled around them. Screams echoed through the streets. The party ran. The city was dying, and it wanted to take them with it. They fought Woven spawn with the rest until they all almost died. The party escaped into a maintenance shaft moving beneath the streets. The shaft was narrow, half-flooded. Through the tunnels, they passed a collapsed command post. The last defenders had detonated charges to seal the tunnel. The blast had worked, but the cost was visible in the blood-stained rubble. Further in, they climbed a broken elevator shaft, rung by rung. At the top, they emerged into the Transit Hub.
Their escape vehicle was a relic—a salvaged arcane transport once used for mobile instruction and tactical deployment. Thirty-five feet of reinforced steel, its hull etched with faded glyphwork and patched with scavenged armor plates. It had no name, not officially. But the locals had called it the Magic School Bus, half in jest, half in reverence. It wasn’t built for war. It was built to survive it. And it was right where they left it.
The bus roared through the battle at the Transit Hub, its crushing wheels grinding over barricades and bodies alike. A Woven siege beast lunged from the rubble, its limbs bristling with rebar and sinew, but the bus didn’t slow. The impact shattered bone and steel, sending the creature tumbling beneath the chassis. Inside, the crew held fast—four survivors bound by grit and desperation, each manning a station, each knowing that one mistake meant death. Sparks flew as the vehicle clipped a fallen signal tower, the Flux Surge Detector screaming in protest. The Feywave Radio crackled with dying broadcasts: “Varynx is… Lost… repeat… Lost…”
A grappling claw extended from the side panel, snatching a survivor from a pile of rubble just seconds before the Woven reached her. She didn’t scream. She didn’t thank them. She simply collapsed into the cabin, eyes wide, hands shaking. The terrain drag at the outer gate nearly stalled the engine, but a last-minute adjustment to the Drive Core sent the bus lurching forward, wheels spinning, exhaust belching smoke and arcane residue. Behind them, the last thing they saw was the Core Bastion, engulfed in smoke and flame. The Severed Land had lost its anchor. Silica Gate collapsed into a wound in the world. The Triumvirate was gone. The survivors were scattered.
Campaign Opening: Dawn in the Severed Land
Twelve hours ago, Silica Gate fell. You escaped aboard a relic of another age—a battered arcane transport once known as the Magic School Bus. Its name is a memory now, buried beneath armor plating, jury-rigged spellwork, and the hum of a fresh core. It is your lifeline. Your shelter. Your weapon. But it is also a beacon.
Now, dawn breaks over the Severed Land. The sky is pale and bruised. The roads ahead shimmer with heat and ley distortion. The Woven are out there. Watching. Hunting. Inside the bus, systems flicker. The new core is stable. Supplies are limited. The radio picks up static and fragments of speech. The city is behind you. The world is broken. The sun rises. You must move.
Your Starting location Options:
50 miles
- North
- East
- South
Of Silica Gate.
The Severed Land waits.
Which way do you go now?
All of you are alerted as the rescued Woman awakens screaming.
.
Love God. Love Others. Any Questions?