The Story So Far

A recap for heroes with short attention spans

The world is ending, but not in any of the fun ways. No fire raining from the sky, no dramatic final battle between ancient gods. No, The Entropy Shepherd—formerly Keeper Antonius, now the universe's most committed pessimist—looked into the cosmic void and decided that since everything dies eventually, why not speed things along? His solution: freeze the worthy in crystalline amber, dissolve the rest, and call it preservation. Mountains have turned to dust. Time itself has gotten sticky. Entire civilizations have been offered a simple choice: become a lawn ornament forever or cease to exist entirely.

Enter the Fellowship: five disasters in humanoid form, assembled at the Last Summit because apparently nobody better was available. Ale-ore Bridge, a dwarf whose parents definitely lost a bet when naming him. Kurg "Breaktooth" Randalar, an orc war profiteer who sold weapons to all sides and kept the receipts. Mortimer Montgomery, a street urchin who joined because the Fellowship had "much fanfare." Ulion the Sleepbringer, an elf lord sent from the Winter Court looking appropriately mysterious. And Nyx of the Pale Flame, a former minion of the Overlord who switched sides for reasons best described as "it's complicated."

Their first real test came when the City of Bells decided to fall. The Ash Dancer—a fifty-foot frozen ash ballerina of doom who used to be a fire giant named Surtur—waltzed through districts while the Stillness Choir harmonized citizens into temporal stasis. The Fellowship discovered that Mortimer could fly if he flapped his arms hard enough (yes, really), that Nyx could terrify cultists into compliance, and that their actual objective wasn't rescuing Master Carillon but retrieving the Unwritten Song—a sacred text that will "someday save the city." They escaped by ship as the bells fell silent forever, leaving behind a city half-frozen, half-burning, and entirely doomed. Mission accomplished, if you squint.

The escape came courtesy of gray-clad sailors aboard the Everlast—helpful folk who happened to be cannibals with an uncomfortable interest in their passengers. Because when fleeing one apocalypse, why not sail directly into another? The Fellowship's destination: a northern outpost that turned out to be Kovat, an orc settlement in the throes of religious crisis. The Memory Circle, those bastions of orcish wisdom, had decided eternal rebirth was overrated. Why reincarnate when you can just... not die? The Shepherd's philosophy had infected them like theological plague. Meanwhile, evidence surfaced that some enterprising dwarves had helped neutralize the City of Bells' defenses. Even in the apocalypse, someone's always selling out.

Expelled from Kovat at dawn, the Fellowship collected Tuya and a dozen refugee families—four wives, twice as many children, all targets of a cult that hunted deserters. The journey to Hearthgate featured the usual fantasyland nonsense: Ulion's song sparrow preaching bird theology, Ale-ore learning to speak avian from a magical primer, Mortimer nearly becoming crab-bear kibble after telling orc children stories about riding giant spiders. Nyx, ever practical, lured Kovat's hunting party into a spider nest where fire giant and arachnids murdered each other. Problem solved, forest burned, conscience... flexible.

Then came The Mob—thousands of broken humans shambling toward Hearthgate, chopping trees with bread, conversing with stones, led by a Void Titan four stories tall and made of pure headache-inducing nothing.

Here's where things got interesting. Rather than running or fighting (traditional heroic options), the Fellowship built a weapon. Ale-ore and Kurg cobbled together the Boom-Stick—a striker-mechanism tuning fork amplifier quenched with drops of Nyx's elixir. The theory: fight entropy with properly tuned acoustics. Mortimer, strapped to the contraption and mounted behind Nyx on a reluctant pegasus, blasted the Void Titan and glimpsed a fire giant's shoulder beneath the nothingness.

But acoustics alone weren't enough. Nyx drew on old friendships with fire giants, channeling magic through one of Ale-ore's amulets to weaponize memory itself. Fire fought darkness. Creation battled entropy. And when the light faded, Shod—a two-story fire giant corrupted for over a century—collapsed weeping molten lava, freed at last.

The Fellowship didn't destroy the monster. They saved it.

Shod's first words as a free being: "We fuck his shit up." He means the Shepherd. He likes Mortimer.

Hearthgate survived. Khaz-Dorahn opened its gates. The Fellowship has its first allied city, a fire giant companion, and a prototype weapon that might actually work. Somewhere, the Entropy Shepherd is probably very annoyed.

Next time: Dwarven politics, mass production, and the eternal question of whether fire giants and underground cities mix well.