The Lady of Dawn Falls in Battle

Life, Death

Nearly five decades after Fauna’s career with the Warrior’s Five ended, the Lady of Dawn had joined the Order of the Sun and sought to purge the realms of fiends and the unliving alike. When the Order sought expansion into humid jungles and arid deserts of Bharazad, they sent Lady Fauna to lead their new Chapter. Under Fauna’s leadership, the Order of the Blazing Sun, as the Bharazadian Chapter would be called, quickly rooted out and exterminated untold evils from the sands of their new home. This victory was not to last, however, and it was not long before something profoundly wicked found them.   When a Cult of the Demon Prince of Madness, Yeenoghu, emerged in Bharazad, Fauna surmised that these vicious sadists were a threat too great for her nubile order of paladins to manage on their own. The Lady of Dawn lead the charge herself and personally eliminated four of the cult’s warpriest commanders. Despite her victories, and those of the paladins in her command, Fauna felt uneasy about this cult of madness and grew suspicious. In her wisdom, Fauna contracted a Diviner to peer into her enemy’s ranks and discovered the cult was performing a foul ritual to bring their Mad God into the realms of mortals, using their own warpriests as willing sacrifices to fuel this vile magic. Fauna ordered her paladins to stand down, but the cult was vicious and cruel, two more warpriests forced her hand by assaulting villages and demanding a response from the Order of the Blazing Sun. With one warpriest remaining, Fauna called for a retreat to the nearby city of Vialago where she could keep the innocents under her protection.   The final warpriest marched on Vialago with ten score of bloodthirsty gnolls at her heels, gnashing their teeth and whipping their barbed scourges. For seven days and seven nights the gnolls besieged the city, and Fauna met the sun at the eastern bridge to pray each dawn with a single question weighing in her mind: what were these mad sadists waiting for? On the seventh night, the uncharacteristic patience of the Cult of Yeenoghu was made clear: a new moon had risen, and the night was black as ink and cold as death. In the utter darkness of the new moon, Fauna’s strength, and that of her legendary morningstar, Fleur, was at its weakest. The cult struck without hesitation or mercy, and in the weakened state of Fauna’s magic, the Lady of Dawn had but one choice to save the people of Vialago—with ruthless efficiency, she bludgeoned the Yeenoghu warpriest to death.   The warpriest’s blood filled the proverbial chalice of their foul ritual and from the cackling howls of Yeenoghu’s followers, the Mad God walked into the realm of mortals. The howls of the Mad God corrupted the city’s inhabitants, twisting them into Madlings, savage, unstable shadows of their former selves driven only by an insatiable bloodlust and mania. Only Fauna and her paladins remained incorruptible; a cruel joke, as Fauna was made to watch her warriors slaughtered by the twisted shadows of those they once sought to protect.   Fauna struck at Yeenoghu with what might she had left, but the creature’s hide was as impenetrable as her own plate, its ferocity as unending as her determination. Hours pass and neither falls, yet it is clear to Fauna that she is outmatched. The Lord of Madness would kill her and strip flesh from bone. Fauna retreated under the darkness of a fading new moon, Fleur scarcely a candlelight in her grip, and fled to the eastern bridge at the city’s edge. The Mad God grew hungry, desperate, and foolish. It followed her, hounding her through the ruinous rubble of Vialago to meet her at the eastern bridge. Here Fauna dug her heels into the cool sands of Bharazad’s barren plains and turned to face her murderer. In the shadow of the slavering demon lord her prayers were at long last answered by the coming dawn. The rising sun spilled over the horizon at her back, Fleur burned to life and Fauna’s strength was reinvigorated. Radiant light flowed from the holy warrior and with a cry and flash of searing light, Fauna delivered a mighty blow and sent Yeenoghu back to his wretched domain in the Writhing Chaos, leaving nothing of her own body behind.