Angels have descended onto the Forever Dawn!

The forces of Heaven have been investigating the apocalypse since the sanguine sun failed to set. They brought their divine machines and forges down to the badlands to create statuesque vessels for their angelic essenses to embody. While survivors of the apocalypse assumed the apostles of a god had come to save them from all this, instead they were greeted with soldiers demanding resources and any information about the forces of Hell rising up from the depths. They claim that the Holy War has started, this crimson apocalypse a clear beacon for Heaven and Hell to duke it out, our wasteland their battlefield.

The vampires find themselves in Brass Grove, a newly acquired Angel territory not far from an ongoing engagement with Hell, recently occupied from a Sunborn town and the surrounding oasis. It’s never anyone’s first instinct to seek refuge with Angels, but shelter is hard to refuse out here. Here they will find out about a current war plan being orchestrated by General Azavier involving building a great Behemoth for the angels to pilot, a mythical bell vessel with the power to banish armies of demons in a single note. However, the Sunborn civilians are desperate for freedom under the rule of the divine, their homes turned into charging stations for their vessels, their forges roaring without rest, and the prayer tax to bolster the forces against evil.

Both the Angels and the civilians will be apprehensive to call upon the aid of Vampires, the former seeing you as blasphemous and the latter worried about siding with the blasphemous, but the tides of the conflict have shifted and the demon hoardes are breaking the Angel’s line. They’ll take all the help they can get. Whether the vampires help the Angels with their war, push the Angels out of the area, plug up the Hell Gate, or help the Sunborn defend their community will ripple out their reputation in the Forever Dawn.

The Blessed Land of Brass Grove

Set Pieces

Have the vampires enter this episode from one of the locations on the corners.

Heaven Station #313

A giant halo hovers over a large marble platform. The halo shimmers with strange angel technology, a mixture of marble, gold, and circuitry inside impossible geometry. Loud church bells signal a drop is arriving, usually supplies and weapons. Occassionally you will see the empty vessels that Angel’s inhabit placed on the platform, the bells rings, and they all spring to life. Several Angels will be deployed here to protect the station and deal with traffic.

The first time witnessing an Angel’s vessel will be jarring, even to those who’ve seen the worst of the Forever Dawn. Their true divine forms cannot exist here without withering so the forces of Heaven have created vessels for their essences to embody. These vessels are usually made of marble and gold, renaissance statues come to life. While they look beautiful they move like marionettes, and often are broken at the joints, repaired with molten gold, and the impossible geometric circuitry peaking out from the seams. Vessels are often a grotesque mix of function and form, beautiful marble scultures cobbled together with extra limbs, horrific instruments, and strange floating eyes, halos, and marble cloth that takes anyone a moment to truly parse the beautiful from the horroric.

Brass Grove

The town of Brass Grove is a blessed oasis in the badlands. Due to the powers of the Crown of Surya, these lands are fertile even under the harsh crimson rays of the sanguine sun. Brass Grove is named such due to it’s brass domed buildings and strange copper-leaved palm trees. Brass Grove as a town has thrived due to it’s walls and moats, giving the Sunborn ample time to protect themselves from ravagers and also drawing in many merchants and travellers looking for a break or a new home. Shops and houses line the streets and a large cultivated park takes over for a town square.

What was once a lovely beacon of rest in this apocalypse has now been effectively blockaded by demons and occupied by angels. The Holy War has brought nothing but misery to Brass Grove, it’s buildings converted into barracks, churches, and factories, it’s parks converted into training grounds, and it’s aquaducts rerouted to be blessed into holy water bombs. The Angels don’t force the civilians onto the frontlines, in fact outright refusing them any part against their devilish enemies. Instead, the Sunborn are forced to pray to strengthen vessels, stoke the forges, and run caravans from the Heaven Station and back. Brass Grove has seen scarce visitors since Angel occupation and have no way of knowing when this battle will end, or whether the Angels will leave after the outcome. Demons still batter against the walls, some breaking in through the cracks and the civilians often die before the Angels can push them back. Hope is all but lost in Brass Grove.

Farmlands

The Farmlands of Brass Grove sit by the outskirts, fortified by a giant greenhouse that protects the crops from the dangerous weather of the wastelands. Angels have no need for food so they have mostly kept away from this place, seeing no use for it in their Holy War and understanding that the Sunborn creatures under them require sustenance.

Here, in the relative secrecy and freedom from their occupiers, the civilians of Brass Grove desperately plot either escape or rebellion. Many Brass Grove citizens have fled to live here, but only so much space can be sacrificed inside the greenhouse for living, while the outside is still unsafe from the demon hoards and other hazards of the badlands. The Sunborn here are very cautious of outsiders coming in, and will threaten those that approach. However, they are only lightly armed, mostly fortified, and are desperate for help.

HELL GATE

Portals to Hell are distinctly gruesome, as if someone dragged a giant dull knife thru the world itself, the wound ugly and bleeding flames. Unlike the Angels, Hell doesn’t treat each battle with such militaristic enthusiasm, and this HELL GATE in particular is apart of a tactic they’ve been using to their advantage in the Holy War. Since Devils and Demons are accustomed to the hellish conditions of the Forever Dawn, they can exisit here without the need of vessels, and opening a wound to let out hordes of demons to siege Angel territory has been working. The demon ranks of Hell’s army are uncanny creatures, humanoid in shape but vicious, altered, and horrified. The demons scream, the bodies of the damned entirely organic, their charred limbs sharpened to claws and spikes, their teeth cut into knives, either having too many eyes or too little. Some have wings, some tails, some are just bodies grafted with more muscles than needed.

While Hell has command bases around the Forever Dawn, this HELL GATE exists solely to wear down Heaven and stop them from getting the Heart inside the Crown of Surya. Visiting the HELL GATE is not just dangerous but almost suicidal, the horrid radiation coming from Hell pours out in waves and it’s impossible to tell when another horde of demons will clamber out and where they will target. However, without any Devil command to maintain this wound, it is possible to stitch it up, if you knew how.

Angel Command

The cathedral breaks the horizon dramatically with it’s ornate spires and grand cross shape, a strange building seemingly dropped here from heaven itself against the profane landscape of the Forever Dawn. Of course, that is exactly what happened. The Angel Command for the Battle of Brass Grove materialized here to give strategic surveillance to the HELL GATE. This incredible structure is intricately carved with angelic figures and grotesque gargoyles, patterns that would be impossible to scult by hand and stained glass that pours it’s colors in and out somehow. Looking too long at the facades of this cathedral is both mesmerizing and maddening, reliefs moving and changing, patterns fractaling forever, the divine image desperately contained here on the mortal earth, our eyes unfit to understand it’s true form.

The inside is both better and worse. The building seems set, it’s rooms make sense, but it’s vastness is impossible. Hundreds of pews face the ridiculously grand pulpit where General Azavier delivers military orders like sermons. The reliefs and stained glass tower into the heavens, depicting battle plans instead of mythological stories. Inside the ginormous apse are the parts of a Behemoth, a vessel big and holy enough for an archangel to inhabit. This Behemoth’s body houses a giant bronze bell with several faces reliefed on it’s surface, each representing a virtue, and the bell is noticeably missing a clapper. The Behemoth rests uninhabited yet dramatically posed, tragic and beautiful. Angels march the aisles and hold strategy meetings in chapels. The wounded are taken to the crypts to be chiseled apart and welded back together to create new vessels for the ranks in Heaven. The tranverses lined with books from all over history, this plane, and even ones unknown to mortal imagination.

You can only be invited into the Angel Command, otherwise Angel guards outside will stop your entry, warn you, or attack. If you are invited in, General Azavier won’t admit it but he is straining the resources of this fight and will gladly let you use this station as a base in exchange for help.

Crown of Surya

A strange structure sits in the middle of Brass Grove, surrounded by several rings of solar panels, sitting atop beautiful foliage and fresh springs. It’s a tall spire that splits at the top, like a crown. It’s structure is made of brass and copper, yet seemingly indestructable. It looks to draw in the sunlight into it’s crown, it’s shimmering surface and rings of panels bouncing light in magnificent displays. The civilians of Brass Grove have no explanation for this miraculous structure, but they know it draws the crimson rays of the unsetting sun towards it, allowing the area around Brass Grove to thrive closer to a time before the apocalypse.

There are doors that ring the outside of the spire, but no one has been able to get in. Along the arches of the doors reads ancient text, a language lost to time or even one never spoken on this world. The words translate to the key to opening the doors by moving the panels so that all 6 doors are illuminated at once.

Now, the forces of Hell have surrounded the Crown, a mass of demons writhing around the structure and it’s surroundings, slowly chipping away at it in hopes to destroy whatever is inside before others get it. The beams of light burn the demons, requiring them to replenish their forces at the Crown and to often hide in the shadows of the solar panels and foliage, but they have effectively held this position for the whole battle. The Angels believe that inside is a holy relic, an engine that will power the great Behemoth they are building, a perfect clapper to sound the holy power of Heaven and banish armies of demons in one single note. The Sunborn civilians are praying their one bastion of hope in this apocalypse isn’t butched in this war, watching the sides battle to take it away from them. The Crown of Surya is the focal point of this battle, and it will not end until one side gets whatever is inside.

The inside of the Crown of Surya is dark but a sole beam of concentrated light from the small oculus at the top. The beam of light shoots into a giant, suspended, beating, glass heart, the light refracting within it pulsing with each beat to get out. The glow of the heart illuminates the tower only slightly, a warm glow that no one has felt since the apocalypse. This sunlight doesn’t hurt the vampires. The heart bleeds, dripping strange golden blood into a well that digs deep into the earth below. Staircases wind up the tower leading up to the heart, there are no rooms outside this one. The walls are covered in diagrams of organs and body parts from all kinds of creatures from all different planes.

Events

Random Encounters

When traveling between hexes, roll 1d6 and compare below:

1-2. A skirmish between Angels and Demons is raging.

3. A caravan of Sunborn are transporting Angel tech and resources. There’s a 50% chance they are escorted by Angel guards, and what they are transporting is valuable.

4. Demons stampede forward towards the nearest location. Only those who directly notice you will attack, but their goal is set towards their next target.

5. A platoon of Angels are marching towards the nearest location. If they have never seen you before they will stop and ask questions about your intent in this area. Otherwise, they will react accordingly to your standing with them. There is a 25% chance that General Azavier is leading this march.

6. The weather changes.

Weather

Roll 1d6 at the start of the session. Weather is weird and shifting under the sanguine sunrise and should come with a tangible difference in how a place feels and how you navigate it. Ask each player a side effect of the weather on the vampires or those in Brass Grove.

1. Crimson rays break the clouds and burn hotter and brighter

2. Pinkmist is rolling in from the south

3. Radiation Storm is brewing, redlightning occassionally strikes

4. Orange clouds soften the sanguine rays

5. Violet rain downpours

6. Clear skies are a bad omen

Statblocks

General Azavier: a general in the army of Heaven, commanding the Battle of Brass Grove. He himself is an Archangel, this vessel specifically designed to house his grand essense. His vessel is impressively tall, emperor-like with a solid gold halo slowly turning and shifting with spiked beams. He has no arms attached to his bulky body, but a large ring of arms floating behind his back which turns depending on his needs.

• Vessel 5, Scripture 3 | Guts 3, Guile 1

• Sermon: Spend 1 Scripture to recite the word of your god, bolstering you troops or cowering your enemies in divine fervor. Your sermons can even cause miracles to happen, but this vessel only has so much divine power left after such a long conflict.

• Angelic Fury: Your vessel was designed to conquer a battlefield, any rolls against you in combat are made with 1 Difficulty and any attacks you make are Boosted by 1.

Angelic Forces: The various vessels of Heaven’s forces are designed to fight til the end and come back stronger. An Angel does not die when its vessel is destroyed, but it’s essense is lost from this world and returns to heaven.

• Platoon 4, Elite Force 3

• Specialized Vessel: Spend 1 Elite Force to have a vessel with strange anatomy designed to tackle the challenge at hand.

Demonic Forces: The various demons of hell are creations molded from the bodies of the damned. When 1 perishes, 2 more seem to take its place.

• Horde 5, Hellish Ranks 5

• Horrific Demon: Spend 1 Hellish Ranks to have a demon with unique anatomy designed to crush the obstacle in its path.

Sunborn Civilians: These civilians are not prepped for battle, only a few seem to know how to handle a gun and the majority are farmers or builders. However, they are resourceful and have gotten good at smuggling recourses to those in need.

• Group 5, Intel 2, Smuggle 3

• I know what you’re looking for: Spend 1 Intel for a Sunborn Civilian to know exactly what someone is talking about or know where you can find more accurate information.

• I can get you what you’re looking for: Spend 1 Smuggle for a Sunborn Civilian to have either an item or a skillset needed for something. The more complex the thing needed, the more time it might take to get. The player asking for something should roll Stat under Bullet to determine how long.

Find out next time on… Bloodbeam Badlands!

Make sure to take note of ripples the final state of The Blessed Lands of Brass Grove will leave on the story moving forward. Go around the table and everyone names a thing (character, item, event, location, etc) that they want to see come back in a later episode. End this story arc with a glimpse into what’s about to change in Brass Grove when the Vampires leave and who has heard of their exploits here.