Vescrutia: Legacy

Noviscara, The Crimson Plane: A Realm Made Flesh

Noviscara is not a world in the conventional sense; it is a meticulously crafted demi-plane, a living testament to the Fel Sovereign's ambition and the perverse devotion of its followers. It exists as a festering wound in the fabric of the cosmos, a place where the laws of nature have been rewritten with blood and pain. To an outsider, stepping into Noviscara is to step into a masterpiece of cosmic horror, a realm where every element is designed to oppress, corrupt, and serve a singular, malevolent purpose.

The Sanguine Veil: The Sky and Its Star

The first and most overwhelming feature of Noviscara is its sky. It is not merely red; it is the color of a fresh wound, a pulsating, visceral crimson that seems to breathe. This light emanates from a single, bloated star named Maladictum. It is no ordinary sun. Maladictum hangs eternally at a twilight position, never rising, never setting, casting the entire realm in a perpetual, bloody dusk.

The light it casts is thick and viscous, making the very air feel heavy and cloying. Shadows are not simply black but a deep, bruised purple, stretching long and distorted as if they are physical things, grasping and hungry. There are no clouds of water vapor. Instead, slow, drifting veils of gaseous ichor traverse the upper atmosphere—the vaporized sorrows and fears of countless sacrificed souls. At times, these "clouds" will weep, not rain, but a slow, oily black dew that stains whatever it touches with an iridescent sheen of despair. Orbiting Maladictum are not moons, but seven shattered shards of a dead world, each one catching the star’s light like chips of obsidian reflecting a pyre.

The Bleeding Earth: Landscape and Topography

The very ground of Noviscara is corrupted. The soil is a rich, crimson-black loam, metallic and sharp on the tongue, saturated with aeons of shed blood and distilled suffering. It is unnaturally fertile, but what it grows is a perversion of life.

The Obsidian Peaks: The mountains that ring the central plains are jagged, serrated spires of black volcanic glass. They are not inert stone; they seem to have been violently pushed up from the planet's core. From deep fissures in their sides, slow, sluggish rivers of what looks like black tar weep down their faces—a substance known as Lethe-Tar, the condensed regret of forgotten deities. These mountains groan and shift, not from tectonic pressure, but as if in a constant, pained slumber.

The Rivers of Vitae: There is no water in Noviscara. Instead, great, slow-moving rivers of a dark, near-black fluid snake across the landscape. This is Vitae, the lifeblood of the plane itself. It flows not from a source but seems to well up from the ground, carrying with it the psychic energy of the realm. It smells of ozone and rust, and its banks are lined not with soil, but with a pale, bone-like sand composed of the calcified grief of mortals. To touch the Vitae is to feel a thousand lifetimes of agony wash over your soul.

The Glass Plains of Sorrow: Between the mountain ranges and the central citadel lie vast plains of razor-sharp, red-black glass. These were formed by ancient celestial lightning strikes that superheated the blood-soaked earth, fusing it into a glittering, treacherous expanse. Crossing these plains is a death sentence for the unprepared, as the winds that howl across them, known as the Wails of the Enthralled, can pick up shards of this glass and turn them into a storm of cutting razors.

The Citadel of Oracles and The Seven Spires

At the very heart of Noviscara, where the Rivers of Vitae converge, sits the sprawling citadel of the Red Oracles, a metropolis built around its seven divine pillars.

The Seven Spires, the Pillars of Damnation, are the most sacred and terrible structures on the plane. They are the "Pillars" of the prophecy. They were not built, but grown from the realm's core, each one a monument to one of the seven founding Vampire Lords who first pledged their souls to the Fel Sovereign. They are composed of a living, ebon material that resembles obsidian but heals from damage and hums with a palpable, low-frequency energy.

Each spire is an architectural nightmare, a fusion of Gothic grandeur and biomechanical horror. Their design defies Euclidean geometry, with buttresses that curve into ribcages and spires that terminate in needle-sharp talons. Intricate carvings writhe across their surfaces, depicting not holy scenes, but the tenets of the Fel Sovereign: the beauty of subjugation, the divinity of pain, the ecstasy of absolute power.

The "gargoyles" are not stone but the petrified, screaming forms of heroes and champions from conquered worlds, forever bound to watch over their destroyer's sanctum. The stained-glass windows, illuminated from within by soul-fire, depict constellations of madness and prophesied genocides.

These spires act as colossal tuning forks, channeling the psychic anguish and devotional energy of the entire realm. They collect this power, refining it before beaming it as a concentrated stream of will towards the Nether, weakening the cosmic chains that imprison their lord.

The Perverse Garden: Flora and Fauna

Life, in its twisted way, thrives here.

Flora: Groves of Scar Arbor with bark like rusted metal and leaves like sharpened blades grow near the Vitae rivers. Fields of Corpse-Orchids, flowers the color of bruised flesh, bloom only when nourished by fresh death, releasing a cloyingly sweet perfume of decay. The most prized plant is the Oracle's Tear, a crystalline lotus that grows only where a Red Oracle has achieved a state of pure, murderous enlightenment. Its petals, when consumed, grant visions torn directly from the Fell Sovereign's mind. A maddening divinity.

The Atmosphere of Malevolence

To exist on Noviscara is to be under constant sensory and psychic assault. The air is thick with the coppery tang of old blood, the rotten-sweet scent of the Corpse-Orchids, and the sharp, electric smell of raw power. The constant sound is a low, thrumming hum—the song of the Seven Spires—overlaid with the distant, whispered prayers of the cultists and the chittering of unseen things in the shadows.

Most profoundly, there is the psychic pressure. It's a constant, crushing weight on the soul, a force that erodes hope, amplifies fear, and twists love into obsession. It is the ambient will of the Fell Sovereign, leaking through the veil, reminding all who reside here that they are but instruments in a symphony of damnation, living and breathing within a realm that is both a prison for their enemies and the very key to their dark lord's ascension.

The sky above Noviscara was the color of a fresh wound. Under the perpetual twilight of its blood-red star, seven ebon spires scraped at the crimson heavens, each a monument to a soul twisted into a pillar of divine malevolence. This was the Crimson Plane, the sanctum of the Red Oracles, where the seven ruling lords of the Hand of Fell One convened.

Within the central spire, in a chamber of obsidian and veined marble, they sat upon thrones that were extensions of their very being. Malakor’s was of scarred, dark iron, still radiating the heat of a billion soul-forges. Lyra Vex’s throne was a lattice of shadows and whispers, shifting and indistinct. Silus Marr was perched on a construct of petrified forms, limbs, and faces frozen in silent screams. Fenris gnawed on a bone atop a throne of skulls and primal rock. His flesh was like spattered marble, hiding the feral beast simmering under the guise of a man. Vorlag was enthroned upon a living, pulsating mass of verdant and crimson flesh and thorny vines.

And Kaelus, the Chronos Tyrant, sat upon a throne of crystal that seemed to flicker in and out of existence, showing brief, tantalizing glimpses of futures that were, and futures that could never be. His origin, like the others, was born of despair. The chief historian of a people who mapped causality, he foresaw their unchangeable extinction. Driven mad by his powerlessness, he screamed at time itself, demanding the power to break its chains. The Red Eye answered, granting him the ability not just to see, but to seize, prune, and rewrite the timelines of lesser beings.

The seventh throne, however, remained empty, a placeholder of polished, unblemished nightstone.

“He is free,” Malakor’s voice was the grinding of continents, a sound forged in his ethereal domain of Xylos. The Iron Hand’s gauntleted fist clenched, and the air around it shimmered with the psychic residue of conquered worlds. “The curse has been broken. A thousand years of curated madness, undone.”

Lyra Vex’s form wavered. “It was more than madness, my lord Malakor. It was a containment protocol. Each death, each rebirth, reset the board. It kept him pliable, predictable. My agents on Vescrutia confirm it; his mind is now whole. He remembers. He remembers everything. And what's more, he has slain a Lord. Xora....” Her voice was a memetic virus in itself, an idea that wormed its way into the minds of the others, planting the seed of urgency.

“A thousand lifetimes of knowledge,” Silus Marr hissed, his voice a dry rustle of ancient parchment. He ran a long, ink-stained finger along a face in his throne. “Imagine it. A thousand years of skills, of grief, of arcane mastery, all converging into a single point. He possesses a library within himself that rivals my own Ashkalon. He is no longer just the Seventh Chain; he is now a master key.”

Fenris, the Hunger of the Wastes, a grotesque amalgamation of predatory nightmares, laughed—a sound like rocks cracking and beasts tearing flesh. “Good. A chase without a worthy quarry is just wandering. A thousand years have made this prey cunning. I will enjoy the hunt.”

“This is not a hunt, you brute,” Vorlag, the Verdant Maw, interjected. His voice was a wet, fecund gurgle. “This is horticulture. Inariel is a weed that has overgrown its containment. He bears the Seed of Creation, one of the three Ethereal Keys. A key that was meant to be turned by us. Now, he holds it with a will of his own. He must be pruned, assimilated before he can seed defiance across the realms...if he unites the keys before us...”

It was Kaelus who silenced them all. The air around his crystalline throne grew cold. “The threads of causality fray around him. For a millennium, his loop was a knot, a predictable anchor in the temporal flow. Now… now he is a rogue current. My visions of our Lord’s glorious reign, once so certain, now flicker with… alternatives. Variables. He is an anomaly that must be corrected.”

Malakor rose, his sheer presence bending the light around him. “Then we correct it. The old ways of traps and subtle influence are over. His parents betrayed the pact, leaving the chain incomplete. The curse was meant to rectify that, to grind him down until he begged to complete it. It has failed. The Red Eye’s prophecy is law: Seven Pillars Rise… Seven Chains Broken… Seven Doors Opened…only one Reign. Inariel is the Seventh Chain. We will take him to Lokaleer, shatter him upon the Seventh Door, and use the Seed of Creation he carries to unlock the First.”

“And who will you send, Iron Hand?” Lyra’s whisper cut through his warlike pronouncement. “Your legions will turn Vescrutia to glass, but Inariel is a sorcerer, not a soldier. He will slip through your grasp.”

“My methods are more precise than you credit, Whisper Queen,” Malakor growled. “The Oracles on Vescrutia have been activated. They will not fail.”

"And yet they already have so much so that our lord himself had to breach the veil between realms to confront the Moon Spawn..."

Malakor slammed a gauntleted fist onto his iron armrest, sending a shower of orange sparks across the obsidian floor. "Draining much of his accumulated power, we all felt its pull. Xora might have been a newborn Lord, but she was powerful within her right." He gestured with a contemptuous thumb towards the empty throne. "And the Moon Spawn shattered her."

"Powerful is not enough," hissed Silus Marr, a cruel smile stretching his thin lips. "We are Mythic, treading upon the threshold of omnipotence. We must be definitive, we can no longer leave this to the Oracles and their vague portents..."

Fenris snapped the bone in his jaws, the sharp crack echoing in the vast chamber. He tossed the splinters aside and rose, his bestial nature barely contained. "We have been...placid! I will be held back no longer! He proclaims us prey," he snarled, his voice a low growl that promised violence. "We must show him the power that haunts him... he must come to fear once again."

The others murmured in assent, a symphony of malice. The air crackled with their combined will, a force that could unmake stars. Vorlag’s throne pulsed faster, its vines writhing in anticipation. "A world to rot," he gurgled. "A beautiful, fertile blight to offer our Lord."

"No..."

The word was quiet, yet it cut through the din like a shard of ice. All eyes turned to Kaelus. The Chronos Tyrant’s throne stabilized, the flickering visions ceasing. His gaze, ancient and weary, met each of them in turn. "To strike now, in anger, is to walk a path I have seen end in ash. There are futures where our ambition becomes our tomb."

"I have had enough of your maybes and could-bes, Tyrant!" Malakor roared, rising to his full, towering height. "Your visions are of cowardice! Xora fell because she was alone. We have already established a fractured force will accomplish nothing... we will descend upon Vescrutia... together."

Lyra Vex’s shadowy form coalesced slightly, her head tilting. "Malakor is... unsubtle, but correct. The cost of inaction is now greater than the risk of action. Our Lord is weakened. The Moon Spawn grows bolder. We must remind the realms why our names are curses on their lips."

A slow, terrible understanding dawned on their faces, a shared hunger that eclipsed their individual rivalries. The anger and grief for Xora was merely a catalyst. The true prize lay beyond vengeance.

"For then," Silus Marr whispered, his eyes gleaming with avaricious light, "by the time the next moon cometh we may all fulfill our sacred duty... our unholy cause."

Vorlag chuckled, a wet, bubbling sound. "To devour each other so that our god be reborn..."

"...for true eternity to be bequeathed to us," Fenris finished, his feral grin stretching from ear to ear.

Kaelus sighed, the sound lost in the rising tide of their dark purpose. He had seen this future, too—one of countless possibilities, now rapidly becoming a certainty. He slumped back, and his throne began to flicker once more, a silent admission of defeat. The path was chosen.

Malakor raised his fist, no longer in anger, but in solemn declaration. The others rose, their thrones flaring with their respective energies—iron glowing, shadows deepening, screams echoing, rock cracking, flesh pulsing, and crystal shining with a thousand doomed tomorrows—six voices, speaking as one, a blasphemous creed that shook the foundations of the Crimson Plane.

"Seven Pillars Rise… Seven Chains Broken… Seven Doors Opened… only one Reign."

Power erupted from the spire, a column of pure malevolence that punched through the wounded sky. The blood-red star seemed to dim in its presence, and the very fabric of reality groaned under the weight of their pact.

And on the mortal world of Vescrutia, a thousand seers screamed as one, and then fell silent.