Pickaxe.

Welcome back to Arois.

The champions have set off into Astral Space, accompanied by their allies to take to the final fight against Hadar, the Red Star, the Intropic God of Consumption.

Accessing the subplane travel space called the Infinite Staircase, the Storm Chaser and the other ships in the fleet make for the Broken Vale, a war front that has been the staging ground for the conflict between Callis Valkyrian and Hadar for thousands of years.

Here the champions will meet with the rest of the Valkyrian fleet and make a desperate assault to reach the plane of Entropus, a world where the breach point into Hadar's prison can be found.

During their time in the Infinite Staircase, Keelikad Kalar attempted to use the Oracle powers of his Eye of the Storm to learn more about what awaited them, with one use of the Eye who will learn more about the world of Entropus and Hadar's connection to it.

But with another, he attempted to scry on the whereabouts of Zakira, a powerful mage and former friend of Kalasvalkyrian, now turned traitor and corrupted by Hadar.

Zakira, using some unknown power, laid a magical trap for Quill, triggered when he attempted to use the Eye to ask about her.

A magical trap destroyed Quill's Eye and nearly did something far worse, but was interrupted by a quick thinking century, used magic to protect Quill from possession and severing the connection.

Without any time to really recover from this event, the Storm Chaser was pulled out of the Infinite Staircase and into a desperate astral space battle, as the forces of Hadar have aggressively struck against the Valkyrian fleets they were meeting with.

Three vessels, an abominant bioship and two corrupted Valkyrian cruisers, bear down on the Storm Chaser as the rest of their allies fend off similar attacks of their own.

With help arriving in the form of Thalia and the Twin Star Longbow, the champions still need to defeat their foes and aid the Valkyrian fleets.

And that my friends is where we are going to pick up today.

As a quick reminder, especially for our podcast listeners, you are currently aboard the Storm Chaser.

In astral space, there is an enormous space battle going on around you.

Ships, your own allied ships, Valkyrian ships are fighting all around you.

Imagine that the sky is filled with the color and magic of combat and warfare going on around you as the ships maneuver and make their way through space.

On the deck of the ship, at the back near the command console, we have Quill and Orion, currently fending off two Hadar spawn that were launched from the bioship onto the Storm Chaser, with Nova coming up the stairs behind to try and aid Quill specifically.

Down on the main deck, Lucius Lansian, one of your NPC crew, Kamara, Sentry, Ailer, and several members of the Wolfpack are all in position.

The Wolfpack currently fighting, trying to fire their weapons at one of the nearby ships, the rest of you dealing with more Hadar spawn on the deck.

And then finally, at the very front of the ship, near the main cannon is your marksman Penny, who is currently being assaulted by two of these Hadar minions.

We have Howard, I believe, downstairs, and we are about to begin on the top of a new round.

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