Chronicles of the World of DaoTyr

Bael does not attack as grenade tears fall, destroying the ancient tome, Bael’s sorrowful tomb. As it crumbles, the Sworn Singers attempt to solve an ancient puzzle of Acererak to gain access to the first five organ-stones of the Rod of Seven Parts.

Immediately following VISIONS OF RUIN, the adventurers are brought to the Sanctum in Sigil, where Alustriel reveals that she has been working with the Wind Duke of Aaqa, the Eye of Seraphim, to find them and bring them together in the dying light of hope. She goes on to explain that the witch queen Tasha and the archmage Mordenkainen have been working with her to mitigate the unmaking ritual of Vecna, a ritual whose purpose is to destroy the multiverse and reform it in the Lord of Secrets vision. The three take an oath and become The Sworn Singers. Tasha calls Chord “a perfect being.” Mordenkainen is awkward and terribly uncomfortable with the meeting. He says to Korra “we all know something about betrayal, don’t we?”

Battle 1: Avernus. CHORD. As Chord and Mahadi prepare for the night’s performance, they are confronted in the open beside the storage crates of the Traveling Souk. The arch-lich Acererak leads a confederation of devils and fel-magicians and claims to be on an errand from lord Vecna to collect the body of the Bardlock Warforged, Chord.

Battle 2: Haredor. KORRA. In the Beastlands, the red cloak commanders are interrupted in a sacred ritual to collect a red dragon egg by Lord Soth and his dark company. The Black Rose Bearers and the Necromantic Wizard, Iklar, wish to take the egg that has been left by ancient pact with the wyrm called Drekarvynix.

Battle 3: Silverymoon. REY. High in the boughs of the naming tree, two spellguard defend the demi-god niece of Queen Alustrial, Teremini, against the ward walkers, agents of Lolth called the Kelem Jabar who infiltrate the arcane city with dark magics and with help of their host, the shadowsworn Eigeroth, who Rey had killed once before, the one-time wielder of the Sword of Kas, prior to when Rey was cursed with it.

Was there ever any hope? Vecna arrives at Haredor and takes the dragon egg as Korra nears death after long combat. Vecna arrives at Silverymoon and take the child as Rey nears death after a tortuous battle. Vecna arrives on Avernus and attempts to take Chord’s body but is foiled by the coming of the Eye of the Seraphim, the air duke of Aaqa. The Eye comes for Korra in Haredor, and the Eye comes for Rey and whisks them away in a flurry of feathered wings.

KORRA KAHNNA HAN

Korra Kahnna was born to the Thousand Arrows Clan. Her mother’s demise during the birth was Korra’s first kill. Her father was a warrior of renown and soon after fell in battle. Korra became a Battle Master and was awarded a tunic of mithril armor in her sixteenth year after successfully leading a raiding party into the elven lands. It was during this campaign that Korra destroyed the elven commander Urthelen Graycloak and claimed his legendary longbow as her own. Two years later, she took her left eye in the ceremony of GRUUMSH and continued her ascension in the ranks of the Thousand Arrows command.  She was thought of by many of her peers as the next obvious choice for High Chieftain of the aligned tribes. As Dal Dal Grun, the chieftain at the time, was on his deathbed, Korra was approached by a general of the Order of Red Cloaks, an Urog named Borus Fen Hahn, who convinced her to accept the honor of leaving the Thousand Arrows and become a Red Cloak and instead of High Chieftain, become an elite soldier in the eternal holy war against the abomination of necromancy, a Hahn (an orcish title that means Spirit Hunter). According to the secret lore of the Hahn, their leader, the vampire warlord KAS, took the mantle of undeath as a sacrifice to the greater glory of the impending true victory to come: the destruction of the lord of undeath, VECNA. As Hahn, Korra was given one of the eight, holy Flame Tongue Blades of the Order of the Red Cloaks, semi-sentient swords that are forged from and imbued with the same steel and magic of the original SWORD OF KAS, that cut the hand and the eye from Vecna. 

Raeyleth “Rey” Illia 

Reyleth was raised in Silverymoon in the Northwest of Faerun, east of Neverwinter and Waterdeep, and Northeast from the Sword Coast. Raeylith served in the Argent Legion during the War of the Silver Marches (1484-1485 Dale Reckoning) in the years of the Darkening, drow and orc armies were successful in their goal of collapsing Queen Alustriel Silverhand’s united kingdom of Luruar. The high commander and mastermind of the armies of the Darkening was a mysterious figure known as The Nameless King, who notably had one hand and one eye.

In the years before the Darkening,  Rey’s family dishonored themselves by marketing in supplies to both sides of the coming war. After the war, in the Court of Silverymoon, Rey’s parents were tried and claimed they tainted the supplies and food they sold, having in one case, ground glass into the food they sold to forces of the Nameless king. They were found guilty. Rey renounced any familial ties and took the new name that was assigned upon conscription to the Argent Legion, Raeyleth Illia, which means Child of the New Day.

Rey’s service included a decade-long campaign to Everlund with the Army of the Vale, where much glory and honor was bestowed on the fledging knight as the legion worked to rebuild after the Darkening. Adept in magic, Rey eventually attained the honored title of Spell Guard and as a Blade Singer, was awarded tuition at the prestigious Lady’s College of Arcane Mastery in  Silverymoon. After studying the noble philosophies and secret arcana of Alustriel, Rey was called again to military service in defense of the city of Sundabar. This was the year 1495DR, the year of the Witchlight, as it was suspected the Nameless King had risen again and Rey commanded a battalion to take the city back from the rising evil. The Blade Singer’s first great victory in the city was realized after a duel with the death knight lieutenant of the Nameless King, Dread Lord Eigeroth. Rey claimed the death knight’s magic, and black-bladed sword, and strode, shielded with greater invisibility, to face the Nameless King himself.

In the throne room at Sundabar, The Nameless King, a bent, robed form of an impossibly ancient man seemed feeble and was unaware of the approaching elf. Rey’s heart swelled with hate, surprising the Nameless King with a quick thrust of the black-bladed sword. The King erupted with great fury and explosive magic, shocked at the glancing blow that cut his cheek. Revealed as a manifestation of VECNA the archlich, Rey also realized that the sword he was wielding with the legendary SWORD OF KAS, the very sword that had once taken the hand and eye of the ancient evil. The Sword helped Rey escape the wrath of Vecna, but the Blade singer would long be haunted by the Sword. Burdened with the blade, unable to let it go, Rey spent the next year obsessing over the evil whispers, with a soul poisoned and an innocence forever lost.  Queen Alustriel was able to repair Rey’s soul and break the bond with the blade, although she had to deal with an unnamed demon lord to do it, and the Sword of Kas was freed from the elves’ possession and its current whereabouts are unknown.

Chord

Before the Blood War, when Bel was Archduke of Avernus, he designed the evil and illusory land of the first of the Nine Hells as a false paradise, tempting mortals into giving their souls to stay in a land of vice, pleasure, and cheap satisfactions. It was then, so many millennia ago, that the artificers of Avernus conceived of an unliving yet sentient being, an android constructed from infernal woods and abyssal alloy that could manage the false paradise of Avernus without being tempted by its corruption. These beings, later called warforged, would assist, entertain, and tend to Glasya, daughter of Asmodeus and the target of Bel’s affection. Only one was ever successfully constructed and it was named Chord. The Blood War erupted before Chord could be delivered to Glasya and Bel’s novel creation was lost, along with his dream of gifting the realm of Avernus to Glasya.

Most recently, Chord was adventuring with a group of strangers marked by the Claw of Tiamat. Operating along the Sword Coast from Phandelver to Elturel, to Candlekeep, and finally to Baldur’s Gate, Chord began, for the first time, to feel something like empathy for his adventures and a purpose in the world that it had never known. After nearly being destroyed by the Unnamable, a multiversal god spawn of Talos, the Claw of Tiamat disbanded and Chord returned to Avernus, curious about its origins. Eventually, Chord would be conscripted into the service of Mahadi, The Maestro of Pleasure, and his traveling souk, a rolling circus of dozens of wagons and hundreds of slaves who attend to a clientele of multiversal personalities across Hell’s landscape. Mahadi has a mysterious and powerful leash on Chord and holds the warforged as his continuing thrall. Mahadi, a demonic rakshasa, goes to great lengths to keep Chord’s continued existence a secret from the governing forces of the Nine Hells, including holding some kind of terrible and eldritch contract with Lord VECNA. Although Chord was created thousands of years ago, after journeying across the Prime Material Plane, the warforged’s mind is equivalent to a mortal teenager, and now, the bard claims to desire freedom from Mahadi’s gilded cage above all things.