Dark Fantasy22 plays

The Ashen Crown

A grieving mother becomes an alchemical witch to destroy a king who steals daughters.

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About this adventure

In the twilight years of the Sundered Age, the kingdom of Velmor stands upon a foundation of bones. King Aldric the Golden, third of his line, has built his reputation as a benevolent sovereign—while his agents steal daughters from their beds, selecting the fairest to serve as 'princesses' in his mountain fastness. None return. None speak of what they find there. You are not a hero. You are what remains when heroism fails. A parent hollowed by grief, a soul traded for power, a conscience drowned in mercury and mandrake. The alchemist's path offers no redemption—only transformation. You have become something the world fears: a witch of the crucible, capable of brewing poisons that mimic disease, of crafting homunculi from stolen hair, of speaking with the restless dead who crowd Velmor's shadowed streets. Your vengeance will not come at the head of an army. It will seep through castle walls. It will wear the faces of the beloved. It will turn the king's own power against him—his court, his consorts, the very 'princesses' he has collected, each one a potential vessel for your retribution. But power exacts its own price, and the crucible that forged you demands ever greater sacrifices. How much of your humanity remains? How much are you willing to burn?

Prologue

The rain falls on Velmor as it has fallen for three hundred years—slow, patient, eroding stone and memory alike. You remember a different rain. The night they came, hooded and courteous, with a letter bearing the royal seal. Your daughter's name upon it. Her silence since. They call this kingdom prosperous. They do not speak of the locked tower where golden-haired girls learn not to scream. They do not speak of the king's 'adopted daughters,' each one a hostage against her family's obedience, each one growing thinner, paler, more like porcelain dolls with every season. You have learned to speak of other things. To brew other things. The alchemist's fire does not judge the hand that tends it.