D20 SYSTEM✦ Normal

The Windbone Penance: Lance of the Nomad King

# Dark Fantasy# Wilderness# Undead

The Windbone Badlands are a cursed expanse where the wind never ceases, carrying the whispers of the dead. Decades ago, the Nomad King Ushar fell in a pyrrhic victory against a lich, his legendary Storm Lance shattered and his army raised as the Skeletal Steed Legion. Now, two desperate factions race to reassemble the Lance, believing it is the only key to ending the eternal curse or controlling the dead. You are a band of sellswords and scholars, drawn by promises of fortune or redemption, who must navigate the blasted wastes, the living dead, and the living who are far more dangerous.

Chronicle Prelude

The oasis town of Ku'u, the last bastion of civilization before the Windbone. It is a chaotic hub of prospectors, grave-robbers, and zealots, all breathing air thick with desperation and sand.

Environmental Traits

The Skeletal Steed Legion, led by the ghost of Ushar himself, has begun a synchronized night-raid, moving with purpose towards a central point in the deep badlands. The players must decipher this pattern, recover the three shards of the Storm Lance, and decide the fate of a cursed land before the Legion achieves its unknowable goal.

Legendary Archetypes

Rayan

HP:45

STR:16

WIS: 12

CHA:11

Key Factions & Autonomous Nodes (8)

Commander Korvain
A man in his late 40s with a shaved head bearing ritual scars, clad in practical, scarred leather armor bearing the sun-and-anvil emblem of the Oathbound. His eyes are hard and calculating, and he carries an aura of grim authority. He moves with the disciplined efficiency of a lifelong soldier.
Sera Vex
A woman in her 30s with deep-set, intelligent eyes and ink-stained fingers. She wears practical traveler's robes adorned with beaded amulets depicting forgotten nomadic symbols. Her expression is earnest and passionate, and she clutches a leather-bound journal tightly, as if it were a lifeline to a lost world.
Ushar, the Nomad King
A towering spectral figure in cracked, ceremonial armor, his form flickering between solid and ethereal. His face is a mask of terrible grief and rage, and greenish necrotic energy crackles around his lance-like weapon. The air grows cold and heavy with sorrow in his presence, and whispers of his final, tragic command echo from his armor.
Blister
A wiry, scarred goblin with large, perpetually squinting eyes and sun-scorched skin. He wears a patchwork of looted desert gear and carries numerous small tools and pouches. His mannerisms are twitchy and paranoid, and he is constantly looking for the next angle or escape route.
The Chained
A skeletal figure in rusted, ornate Oathbound paladin armor, shackled by glowing spectral chains to a cracked obelisk. Green fire burns in its eye sockets, and its jaw hangs open in a silent scream of rage and betrayal. It moves with jerky, violent intent, and the air around it hums with vengeful energy.
Mirra of the Mires
A hauntingly beautiful yet unsettling figure formed from bleached bone fragments, salty mud, and glowing memory motes. Her form shifts and drips, and her eyes are pools of reflective water that hold the sorrowful faces of the nomad dead. She speaks in a chorus of whispers, and the ground around her feels soft and treacherous.
Ghul Caravan
A silent procession of skeletal camels and robed, desiccated figures moving in perfect unison through the deep waste. Their bones are hung with tinkling charms of bone and glass, and their eye sockets glow with a soft, amber light. They carry packs of strange trade goods and emanate an aura of ancient, patient hunger.
Skeletal Steed Captain
A large skeletal knight mounted on a similarly undead steed. Its armor is pitted and scarred, fused to its bones in places. It carries a standard of tattered, grey cloth bearing a faded lance emblem. It moves with relentless, silent purpose, its empty eye sockets scanning the horizon for prey. It shows no capacity for parley, only the hunt.

Chronicle Prelude

Environmental Traits

Legendary Archetypes

✦ Related Cases ✦

The Frost-Vault Gambit: Chart of the Drowned Corsair

The Silent Wetlands: Throne of the Parched