March 2024 event
Official Recap
Previously we found our adventurers adjusting to life in the desert city of Shakar a week after assisting the Rift Scholar in a ritual to close a stabilized rift, a phenomenon never heard of before. What seemed to be a nice quiet morning was quickly tossed into chaos as a group of bandits began to attack the city. Explosions tore at the buildings in the city as the bandits moved through the crowds, cutting down anyone on their path...their target destination, the University of Shakar and the Rift Scholar.
Joining the city guard, the adventurer’s quickly overcome the bandits and rescue the students and faculty of the University. The adventurers learn that the bandits are from the Northern Town of Darust and that they are working in conjunction with a group of religious extremists who worship The Devourer. It would seem that they were trying to obtain the rift scholar’s research into the rifts, a fact that has the rift scholar sending the adventurers to check on his field research site as well as the site where the rift closing ritual was held. According to the rift scholar the Aetheric energy readings have been high and he fears another stable rift may be able to form.
The adventurers recovered the elemental sigil boards used in the Rift closing ritual, tracked down the remaining bandits who had stolen the Aetheric transmutation device from the research site and gathered a sample of large un-attuned Aether crystals to use in the ritual should another rift open. Using the Aetheric Transmutation device the adventurers magically attuned the aether crystals to each of the natural elements (fire, water, earth, wind), as well as, two prototype synthetic elements (plant and lightning).
Suddenly a rift opens in the center of the city, lava pouring out into the city proper as fire and earth elementals begin to assault Shakar. A robed figure lets out a twisted laugh and casually mentions that this is the beginning of the end of Shakar. Before the adventurers can approach him the mysterious figure slashes into air creating a temporal tear in reality that he steps through and then is gone. With the figure gone the adventurers turn their focus to the elementals and starting the ritual to close the rift.
As the fighting commences a large lava elemental steps through the rift, the adventurers try their best to overcome this new threat however it seems to be empowered by the rift and its home plane. Hoping to weaken the lava elemental, the adventurers set up the ritual to close the rift. The ritual begins and the rift starts weakening but just as it is about to close the lava elemental explodes, disrupting the ritual sigils. The rift, now unstable from all of the aetheric energy, violently explodes with the entire force of the lava plane. In an instant the entire city of Shakar as well as a large portion of the surrounding desert is destroyed by the cataclysmic explosion…the energy and heat from the explosion turning the desert area into what is now known as the Sea of Glass.
The Anarian Empire
The fall of their capital of Shakar, and the death of many of the empire’s central figures, led to the collapse of much of the Empire’s power. Just two years after the destruction, the Kingdom of Turiand saw itself break away, and the decades that followed had several City-states and small lords on the south-western outskirts claiming independence. Most of the Anarian empire’s power remains to the east, it even now struggles to hold what remains of its empire on the western continent with the loss of a large amount of it’s western forces attempting to retake breakaway states. With the sea of glass nearly impassable the only real means to transport people or messages from one side of the empire to the other is by boat across the Raymere Sea. Rumours abound that even now the western kingdom of the empire is already no longer under the control of the emperor.
Newspaper
