A Note to New and Returning Adventurers

We are currently in Season 14 of the CER LARP storyline. While the world of Medius has a rich and extensive history built across many seasons and campaigns, this synopsis focuses on the events most relevant to the current arc. There are countless tales from earlier seasons—many of which could fill tomes on their own—but what you’ll find below is meant to bring you up to speed with the current state of things in the world, so you can jump in with a solid foundation. Whether you're a new player joining for the first time or a returning hero looking to catch up, this narrative should give you the key moments, factions, and threats that are shaping the realm right now.

Everything from this point forward is written in-world, as if you are already part of the story.

 

The Taker of Kings – Aftermath and the ShadowDark

After the fall of the Mastermind, a monstrous psychic entity that once lurked deep in the ShadowDark—the world beneath the world, where twisted shadows and monsterous hungers thrive—the army of Northbourne began its long march home to Worldspeak, the heart of the icy North.​

But they did not return unchanged.​

Among their greatest trials was the cleansing and destruction of the Drachen Drauppr, a cursed blade forged by the Dark Dwarves of the deep and known in the old runes as The Taker of Kings. Wrought with dead fire, a volatile essence drawn from the souls of the living, the Drachen Drauppr was a weapon of immense power and terrible consequence. Stolen from the Dark Dwarven King, Xar'Dur who once destined to reclaim the surface, it brought only madness to those who dared wield it. Even King Syril II, the current King at the time, fell to its influence and had to be put down by his own allies. The sword was finally shattered and its black magic sealed away... or so the Northbourne Army hoped.​

With that evil behind them and the ShadowDark threat quelled—at least for now—the Northbourne turned their eyes toward home.

 

Along the Road to Worldspeak

The path north was not without peril. As the Northbourne army pressed onward through the fractured wilds of Medius, they found their way blocked by a troll and its goblin kin—creatures born of the Foe Tree, whose chaotic natures often set them against the civilized peoples of the realm. These Foe, like many of their kind, were acting without greater purpose—raiding, pillaging, and causing destruction simply because they could. Though not all goblins or trolls embrace such a path, these ones had chosen violence, and so were dealt with accordingly. The battle was swift, and the Northbourne pressed on.​

But the next discovery was far more troubling.​

Near the borders of North Haven, the army stumbled upon the remnants of a violent skirmish in a ravine: shattered equipment, shattered lives, and scattered crates marked with the sigil of Sansura—a rival city-state renowned for blending magic with technology, and for its formidable airships and gunners. Among the wreckage were the bodies of Northbourne miners, their tools and trade packs suggesting they’d been ambushed while working far from home. Though the two nations had long maintained a tense but respectful rivalry, this open aggression marked a dangerous shift.​

While scouting the area, the Northbourne found a kobold hiding in the brush—frightened, shaken, and reluctant to speak. She had witnessed the battle, and with some coaxing, revealed that Sansurian forces had taken the remaining miners captive. She spoke only in whispers of a name: Brom Riik, a name that carried weight and danger. But beyond that, she refused to say more. Fear of her true master—a shadowy figure even the Sansurians dared not name—held her tongue.​

Though her answers were few, they were enough. The Northbourne marched forward, determined to recover their kin and unravel the truth behind Sansura’s aggression.

 

Shadows in the Canyon

The trail of the missing miners led the Northbourne through a narrow canyon, its high walls echoing with wind—and something else. Without warning, Sansurian Thunder Shots erupted from the ridgelines, streaks of charged Napali igniting in bursts of sound and shrapnel. The canyon lit up with blasts of volatile current as the Northbourne were ambushed by gunners from the skyborne city-state of Sansura.​

These were no raiders. They fought with precision and strange weapons—technology born of invention and art, not tradition and steel. But the Northbourne held the line, battling their way forward through a hail of Napali-charged destruction. When the dust settled, they had survived—but the worst was yet to come.​

In the aftermath, something far more disturbing unfolded from within their own ranks.​

Jotuun Wolfstar, a knight once known for his honor, had begun to change. Touched by both the Mastermind’s psychic corruption and the lingering taint of the Drachen Drauppr, his soul was unraveling. That unraveling reached its breaking point in the canyon, when Jotuun attempted to raise the corpses of two fallen Sansurian using dark necromancy. With chilling detachment, he ordered the reanimated dead to torture the kobold prisoner for more information.​

Horrified, Saint Celeste and others intervened at once, condemning the act and attempting to reassure the kobold that such cruelty was not the way of the North. But the damage had been done. Her spirit already frayed by fear and trauma, and now faced with the prospect of being a plaything to the living and the dead, the kobold chose a final escape. With a sorrowful glance, she threw herself from the cliffside—into silence, and into shadow.​

Her death hung heavily in the air, a grim reminder that even within their own ranks, the Northbourne were not beyond danger.

​

The Sealed Door and the Spider’s Lure

Their march led to the mouth of a forgotten dwarven tunnel, half-buried in shale and stone. An ancient stone door marked its entrance—sealed by a circular lock engraved with dwarven script and a riddle long faded by time. The runes warned of trespass, of forgotten guardians and cursed halls. With patience and grit, the Northbourne solved the puzzle etched into the stone and turned the dial, unlocking the gate.

But as they stepped inside, the mountain swallowed them—and the stone door slammed shut behind them.

They had scarcely descended fifty feet when the echoing silence was broken by screams of terror. A group of Sansurian soldiers, already deep within the tunnels, sprinted toward them in a frenzy, their eyes wide with madness. “It sees inside your head!” they cried. “It’s in the walls!”

Whatever they had encountered had driven them beyond fear.

The Sansurians pounded on the dwarven door, desperately trying to escape—but when the stone would not yield, they turned on the Northbourne in a wild, hopeless frenzy. The Northbourne were forced to cut them down, unsure whether they fought men or the broken remnants of them.

And then came the clacking.

It echoed softly at first—like bone on stone—then louder, until it filled the air with an unnatural rhythm. From the darkness emerged a woman swaying in the gloom, beautiful and ghostlike, her dance hypnotic. For a heartbeat, she seemed real.

Then a seam split down the center of her body.

From within, eight soulless eyes blinked into view. Two venom-dripping fangs unfolded from the illusion, and from the body of the false woman erupted the horrific truth: a Jorōgumo—a monstrous spider that wore a human guise like a veil. Her spear-like legs carved through stone. Her mind reached out, brushing against thoughts and fears. And worse still, she was utterly immune to magic.

The battle was brutal. Napali blasts singed web and stone. Steel clashed with chitin. Thought became weapon, and terror became battlefield. But the Northbourne, though bloodied, endured. With fire, fury, and unrelenting force, they finally brought down the monster.

And the path deeper into the mountain was open once again.

​

The Hall of the Forgotten Kings

Beyond the Jorōgumo’s lair, the tunnel descended into stillness once more—until the Northbourne emerged into a vast, vaulted crypt, hewn from stone in the distinct craftsmanship of their ancestors. Sarcophagi of kings and nobles stood in solemn circles, relics of past glories scattered at their feet. Dust-laden tapestries clung to the walls, faded depictions of battles, coronations, and sacrifice—symbols of a time long buried.

But something had changed.

There was a weight in the air, something ancient and watching. At the far end of the chamber stood a twenty-foot stone sentinel, master-carved and bearing an enormous spear. It stood motionless—until the Northbourne approached.

While exploring the room, they discovered a sealed hidden door behind a tapestry, locked with a complicated dwarven mechanism. Every attempt to investigate the relics or tamper with the device caused the sentinel’s gaze to shift. Then, with the deep grinding of stone, it stepped off its pedestal and advanced.

It did not strike.

Instead, it raised its spear and carved a warning into the stone beneath their feet:
“I am the keeper of the honored dead. Disturb them, and join them.”

Whether the statue moved through magic, lost dwarven engineering, or some eerie blend of the two, even the most learned among them could not say.

Heeding the warning—and weary from their long march—the party left the relics untouched. The rightmost tunnel had collapsed, and the intricacies of the hidden door’s lock seemed too taxing for their battered forces. And so, the Northbourne passed through the leftward tunnel, leaving the deeper secrets of the crypt undisturbed… for now.

​

The Shrine to the Virulent One

The Northbourne pressed onward, deeper through the stone veins of the mountain. The air thickened. Shadows no longer just clung to the walls—they seemed to breathe.

At last, they emerged into what should have been a place of peace: a Northbourne shrine, carved long ago in reverence to the spirits of the North. But whatever sanctity once dwelled here had been utterly defiled.

The shrine had been claimed by the Shitarh.

A matriarchal cult of fanatics, they had corrupted the altar, adorning it with flesh-born effigies and looping symbols scrawled in sickly ichor. The scent of rot and perfume mingled in the air—an offering, a mockery. Bones were arranged with deliberate elegance, twisted into shapes meant to horrify and allure. This was no simple desecration. This was worship—twisted devotion to Vi’pt Tuk’t, the god they call the Virulent One.

Born in the image of a monstrous scorpion, Vi’pt Tuk’t is said to embody poison, perversion, and profane rebirth. Its followers revel in contradiction: though they reject the power of masculinity, they exalt the god’s venom as a holy seed—penetrating, corrupting, claiming. Here, in the shadow of the shrine, that contradiction festered like an open wound.

From behind the altar slithered the shrine’s guardian—an abomination of scorpion and man, its torso fused grotesquely to the armored thorax beneath it. Its voice rasped with pleasure as it offered the Northbourne a challenge: solve its riddles, and it would allow them to pass.

The party attempted to answer its queries, but each failure was met with swarms of spiders and scorpions, released from hidden hollows in the walls. Though they fought with determination, the Northbourne soon realized that this mockery of life would never allow them peace.

So they gave it war.

With blades and flame—and a storm called down by Saint Celeste herself—they smote the beast and burned the icons of the Virulent One to ash. Divine lightning scorched the altar clean, razing every foul mark in a storm of righteous fury.

When the thunder faded, only silence remained.

Behind the shattered altar, they found a concealed door, web-choked and half-hidden. Whatever lay beyond, it had been watching them—waiting. With heavy steps and burning resolve, the Northbourne passed through.

​

Webs, Warnings, and Weightless Death

Beyond the defiled shrine, a foul dampness clung to the stone. The tunnel walls narrowed again, then opened into a sprawling chamber webbed in silk and shadow—the true lair of the Jorōgumo. Its domain was not confined to the place where it had been slain. This was its nest.

The web maze stretched in all directions, thick cords like pale sinew hanging from pillars and crisscrossing the floor. Here, intruders were meant to be caught and digested at the monster’s leisure. As the Northbourne moved carefully through the maze, swarms of venomous creatures—spiders, snakes, even scorpions—crawled from crevices in the walls, emerging like the fevered spawn of some foul nursery. Each step was a risk, each turn a test.

Cocoons dotted the webbed walls, some the size of men.

Inside many of them were the missing Northbourne miners, their bodies long drained. One cocoon, however, stirred faintly. Though it’s known only to the few who dared look closely, there had been a chance to save at least one of them. But time, fear, and the confusion of the moment saw that hope pass unseen.

As they pressed deeper into the lair, the webs began to thin, giving way to a narrow corridor lined with glowing stone tablets. When touched, each one pulsed with pale blue light. A poem etched into the wall—part riddle, part incantation—hinted at the correct sequence to activate them. It spoke of “pathways long buried beneath silk and sorrow,” suggesting that this mechanism predated the spider’s occupation entirely.

When the tablets were activated in the proper order, the way forward opened: an ornate stone door framed in bronze filigree, its surface humming faintly with arcane energy. Like so much else in this place, it was built with both magic and mechanism, a blend of lost dwarven craft and ancient enchantment. Had they failed to solve it, the price would have been steep.

But the Northbourne endured—and stepped into a chamber of spoils and slaughter.

Crates, ropes, broken barrels, and shards of Sansurian gear floated eerily in the air, caught in a ripple of warped gravity that radiated from the center of the room. The protective sigil—nearly invisible—manifested only as a subtle shimmer in the air, like heat rising from stone.

At its center sat an ornate chest, untouched.

But the most harrowing sight lay closer to the ground: the smashed bodies of Sansurian gunners, flattened against the stone floor within the dome of distortion. Whatever enchantment protected the chest did not repel—it crushed. Anything alive that entered the sigil’s reach was violently pinned to the floor by an unforgiving, accelerated gravity, enough to shatter bone and rupture organs in seconds.

The floating debris outside the sigil’s core was not free of gravity—it was caught in its ripple, drawn to the threshold but held at bay.

Through careful study and teamwork, the party identified the arcane script etched into the floor as the source of the enchantment. By disrupting the runes—scraping the symbols just enough to break their harmony—they deactivated the sigil and stepped into the heart of the chamber.

What they found within the chest remains a tale for another day.

With no further paths forward, the party turned upward. Using rope, gear, and grit, they climbed through the breach in the ceiling, a tunnel of stone and light that led them—finally—out of the depths.

What awaited them above the tomb, however, was far from rest.

​

Midsommer Interrupted

Climbing from the depths of the tomb, the Northbourne army emerged beneath open skies once more—weathered, wounded, but victorious. And though the road to Worldspeak remained ahead, the weary host paused in the highlands of Quinn Row to mark a sacred tradition: Midsömmer.

Tents were raised, fires lit, and horns of froth-poured mead passed freely. Midsömmer was more than a celebration of the harvest—it was a reaffirmation of unity, a rite of belonging, and a moment to remember what they fought for. Feasts and sparring matches broke out as banners of Northbourne snapped proudly in the wind.

But the night would not remain theirs.

As the stars wheeled overhead, a low hum began to rise—metal and magic churning through the air like an omen. Then came the lights: piercing white beams that slowed time itself, floodlights laced with Napali energy, falling over the camp like a net. A Sansurian airship, sleek and wreathed in stormlight, descended from the sky.

The ambush had begun.

The skies split with cannon blasts and arcane detonations as Captain Tal Na Jaar, the elusive and infamous Sansurian commander, launched a precision assault on the Northbourne army. Napali cannons thundered. Thunder Shots crackled. The very air warped with engineered violence. She came not to scout or parley—but to strike a blow at the heart of her rival.

The Northbourne scrambled to recover, their camp turned battlefield in seconds. Saints and soldiers alike fought in tandem, dodging explosions and returning fire with enchanted steel and storm-forged wrath. Matter-slowing beams twisted their movements, throwing off timing and balance, but the Northbourne adapted.

They endured.

At last, the tide turned. With grit, strategy, and raw fury, the army grounded the airship, bringing it down in a blaze of smoke and splintered hull. From the wreckage, Captain Tal Na Jaar was captured—bloodied but unbowed, her silver uniform torn and her eyes still burning with purpose.

The battle had ended. But the questions were only beginning.

​

The Diamond and the Dragon

With the airship wreckage cooling behind them, the Northbourne turned their attention to the one prize they had not expected to take: Captain Tal Najar, the renowned Sansurian kitsune who had orchestrated the ambush with ruthless precision. She was bound, bloodied, but far from broken.

In the flicker of campfire and torchlight, her amber eyes remained steady. When questioned, she answered sparingly—but every word was chosen with care.

“We all become cogs in the machine of war… or be crushed by it.”

She did not seek to deflect blame. Nor did she plead. Tal Najar made it clear: she fought for Sansura’s survival, for her family’s safety, and for her people’s right to exist in a world tilting toward chaos.

It was then that she spoke of the Victuun, a faction now quietly ruling Sansura from within. Their hunger had steered the Sansurian army toward increasingly dangerous ends—and their goal was no longer mere defense. It was preemptive domination.

Their target: The Diamond of the North.

Unlike the songs sung by skalds in taverns, this diamond was no myth. The jewel rests in the helm of Tordek Bloosteele, the dwarf-king who once saved the North from ruin. His helm, now worn as a crown by the reigning monarch, is not just a symbol of legacy—it is a relic of immense power.

Tal Najar revealed that the Victuun believe the Diamond could grant Brom Riik, a rising white dragon, the strength needed to challenge and overthrow Cryosis the Frozen Gale, one of the most feared of the Chromatic Kings. The Diamond does not control dragons—but in the wrong hands, it could tip the scales of draconic power.

And should Brom Riik succeed, it would not end with Cryosis.

Every Northbourne in the room knew what such an ascension could mean: fire, frost, famine, and the collapse of all mortal dominion. A second coming of the Age of Kings, when the chromatic dragons ruled the skies not as gods—but as tyrants.

But what struck the North most deeply wasn’t just the threat Tal Najar revealed—it was the quiet desperation behind her eyes. In that moment, many saw her not as a monster or an enemy, but a reflection.

A commander. A patriot. A soul caught between duty and fear.

The war was no longer a matter of borders or raids. It was a question of survival—and who would shape the age to come.

​

Trinity's Silence

With Captain Tal Najar in custody and questions weighing heavy, the Northbourne army set their course for Trinity—a city of towering steeples and shadowed sanctity, home to the famed 12th Covenant and the Triocese, the three spiritual figureheads said to speak directly with the Aegis.

To the faithful, Trinity is a bastion of light and law.

To the wise, it is a city built on silence.

The Covenant welcomed the Northbourne with ceremony, proud to host the sainted Celeste and to secure Tal Najar in their long-abandoned prison—a stark stone garrison outfitted with human stone and dwarven-forged doors, unused for so long that none remembered how to unlock them. That, they claimed, was a sign of peace. But beneath the polished words lay an older truth: in Trinity, justice often skipped the cell and went straight to the sword.

Celeste, in her faith, did not question.

With the prisoner secured, the party was granted an audience with the Triocese—three high-ranking clerics of the Aegis whose authority was said to rival kings. But as their audience began, something strange happened. The three fell silent. Their eyes rolled back. And then...

They spoke in unison.

Not in their own voices, but in something older, clearer. For a fleeting moment, it was not they who spoke—but the Aegis itself, reaching down through a veil of corruption to deliver a message directly to Saint Celeste. The words were cryptic. The moment passed. The Triocese recovered, shaken but dismissive.

Only Celeste felt the weight of what had truly happened.

An attendant pulled her aside afterward, offering a quiet warning: that the Triocese, once holy, may no longer serve the Aegis at all. Something else had taken root—something subtle and insidious.

Outside the cathedral, the signs were already present.

The streets were unnaturally quiet. Locals avoided eye contact, whispering behind shutters. Not from shyness, but fear. Fear of speaking truth in a city where truth had become treason.

And then came the trap.

Mercenaries poured from alleyways, blades drawn and Thunder Shots flaring—clearly Sansurian and Victuun agents, though dressed in the leathers and markings of Bloodspathe, an orcish sell-sword clan known for siding with the highest bidder. It was a misdirection—a red herring meant to sow confusion.

But the Northbourne were not so easily deceived.

They fought back with precision and force, capturing several of the mercenaries alive. Through interrogation, they unraveled the deception: this was not an orcish raid. This was a coordinated strike, orchestrated by the Victuun, meant to cripple the Northbourne’s leadership before they could act on what Tal Najar had revealed.

They failed.

But the message was clear: someone feared what the North was about to uncover—and would spill blood to keep it buried.
 

Trial by Fang

Leaving behind the steeples of Trinity, the Northbourne made their way into the dense, shifting terrain of QuinnRow Forest—a realm of thorns, ravines, and age-old secrets. The deeper they traveled, the more the land seemed to watch.

They came across a barrow nestled in overgrowth, the remains of a lone tracker scattered within. A journal, half-decayed, told a story of silver spine wolves—massive, night-hunting predators with metallic ridges down their backs. The tracker had hunted them. But in the end, they hunted him.

The Northbourne read the final entries just as the wolves arrived.

Silver spine wolves, displaced from their territory, attacked in broad daylight—a rare and desperate act. This detail would only be understood later. Had they come at night, as they were built to, it’s possible none would have survived. Instead, the wolves struck with raw instinct and fear, retreating only after heavy losses on both sides.

The reason for their flight soon revealed itself.

From the trees, a Sansurian strike force descended—elite, precise, and relentless. Unbeknownst to the party, these operatives had been sent to extract Captain Tal Najar before her secrets could be spread. They arrived too late, but they brought blood regardless. Napali-based tech flared across the forest, and the Northbourne countered with fury and resolve.

When the smoke cleared, silence returned—until a flowered arrow sank into the earth before them. Attached was a scroll: a formal challenge from Clan Dýr. The Northbourne had crossed into sacred territory, and now they would be tested.

Guided by the message, they made their way to a long-whispered site: the ravine, a natural and ancient proving ground steeped in honor and danger. Countless had stood there before them. The challenge was not a surprise—it was tradition.

Across the suspended chasm stretched a bridge of radiant energy, flanked by metal animal statues. Their tails swept beams of magic back and forth, punishing the slow and the foolish. A riddle was carved into the stone at the ravine’s edge. The objective: cross safely, one at a time, and retrieve a series of coins under the statues’ watchful gaze.

More than one attempt met with searing pain. But in time, the Northbourne prevailed. The final coin was claimed, and the path ahead opened.

Then came the second test.

From the trees dropped a lone elven archer, a guardian of the Dýr. Vines burst from the earth, wrapping the Northbourne in snaring coils as she launched a flurry of elemental arrows. Bound, bleeding, and under fire, the party still managed to free themselves and bring her down.

And then the forest hushed.

Drogan, Alpha of the Wolf Pack, stepped into the clearing—a massive warrior adorned in hides, scars, and reverence. One of five alphas within the full Clan Dýr, he represented the strength and wrath of the wilds. Without a word, he drank a fang-shaped vial, and his body surged with power. Not a transformation, but a revelation of what he was: a warrior, wild and unleashed.

He challenged the Northbourne to a final test—single combat.

A champion from the North stepped forward. What followed was a battle of precision, fury, and spirit. Blow met blow, and in the end, Drogan fell—but did not yield.

Instead, he stood, bloodied and proud, and nodded once.

“The forest sees you now.”

The challenge complete, Clan Dýr withdrew, honor satisfied.

 

Spoils of Autumn, Echoes of Elsewhere

After enduring sacred trials, ambushes, and revelations, the Northbourne finally stepped into the rolling frost-kissed hills of North Haven. Here, for a moment, the weight of war gave way to something older—something rooted in hearth and harvest.

The Harvest Festival began not with fanfare, but with reverence. Bonfires were lit. Ancestor stones were polished and blessed. Horns of mead were raised, and for a night, they were not soldiers or saints—they were simply Northbourne.

But peace, like the turning season, is fleeting.

From the treeline came a quivering tremor—a sound that was not quite a growl, nor a rumble, but something wet and wrong. What emerged was a gelatinous cube, dragging with it the stink of the deep. Spawn spilled from its sides, and the joyous grounds were quickly transformed into chaos. The air shimmered unnaturally. Trees bent toward something unseen.

And then, just as quickly, it was over. The creature was slain. But the veil had shifted.

Those present would later whisper that the stars seemed too bright that night. That the cube had not arrived—it had been invited.

 

A New Season Dawns

Winter came. And passed.

As spring’s thaw spilled into the land and the flowers of QuinnRow began to bloom again, the Northbourne—still weathered from battle—found themselves on the outskirts of the forest, seeking guidance.

Feeling they had no other choice, the army turned toward nature itself, hoping to commune with something older, wiser, and far more unpredictable: a Fae spirit.

The Kiss of the Fae Flora Festival is typically a time of song, competition, and bountiful magic—reserved for the wild kin and spirits of the land. But with the aid and hospitality of Clan Dýr, preparations were made. Rituals cast. Songs sung beneath open skies.

Yet not all omens come wrapped in ribbons.

A powerful sign appeared during the festivities—one that shifted the air and set watchers on edge. A magnificent feast followed, yes. But it came with unease. The concentration of goodwill, nymphic energy, and unfiltered mortal yearning drew more than just blessings.

The veil is thin again. And this time, it is not just dreams slipping through.

Sometimes, when we gaze into the stars…
they gaze back.

 

Onward to the Kiss of the Fae (Event Link)

We are now preparing  Kiss of the Fae.

The events of All Hallows Eve—including the Jelly Cube’s attack and the thinning of the veil—marked a turning point. Winter has passed, but its silence left a strange echo. Now, as spring awakens and the flowers bloom across QuinnRow, something ancient is stirring beneath the roots and stars alike.

Kiss of the Fae is a season of strange beauty and subtle danger. A time of fae rituals, blooming magic, temptation, and spiritual transformation. The boundaries between worlds are weakening, and not all who cross them return unchanged.

New and returning players are welcome. If you're just joining us, this is the perfect place to begin. The world is shifting—mortal hearts are being tested—and the Fae are watching.

Will you dance with the wilds, or resist their call?