The Thrune Dynasty ruled by the grace of Asmodeus, they no longer ruled, ergo Asmodeus had withdrawn his blessing and without it they had fallen.

Asmodeus would tolerate mortal weakness but only so far, Cheliax had been dying for a long time, losing territory and rotting from the inside, so He had turned from them in disgust. The Thrunes had lost the Mandate of Hell and fallen to the first group of foreign adventurers to stumble across the corpse.

The Church must have been rotten too, hard as it was to admit it. Perhaps they were held responsible for allowing Cheliax to fall so far. Or they’d been more corrupt than Orgull had realized. They'd failed Asmodeus and He'd abandoned them as well. 

But he didn’t abandon me.

He’d remained true to Asmodeus, so perhaps there were others like him. In hiding across Cheliax, or fled abroad, scattered and in disarray, but set aside to rebuild.

Did we all deserve it? All the junior priests who'd just been brought into a broken system? Màtic and Donia? All the soldiers? You couldn't have saved them and made use of them? Was there no other way to rebuild but to burn it all down and start again? 

Some time previously....

24 Pharast 4713 AR, evening following Ostenso docks mass panic casualty event: 

Beneath the (liberated) Ostenso Wizarding Academy, through a passageway hidden behind cunning illusions, lay a damp stone dungeon.

The room was lit by everburning flames in torches on the wall, summoned minor devils and elementals roamed. Dominating it was a ritual diagram like a traumatized fractal. 

At the center of which stood a chanting wizard. He wore rich, elaborate, sinister (and slightly stained) red and black robes, with the requisite skull ornamentation, magic items, and glow of sinister energy required to be taken seriously in his profession. 

“AHAHAHA! Excellent! An audience!

Perfect perfect!

Those fools in the faculty never appreciated my genius, but soon the ritual will be complete and…”

Dispel

Dispel

Dispel 

Scorching ray

Scorching ray

Scorching ray

Scorching ray

Scorching ray

Scorching ray

Magic missile

Magic missile

Magic missile

Magic missile

Magic missile

Magic missile

Magic missile

Magic missile

Magic missile

Magic missile

Magic missile

Magic missile

.....

The rest was a fairly tedious formality, but eventually they’d returned all the various lesser summons to their planes of origin, and the squad, slightly scorched but no casualties, had a moment to collapse against the stone walls at the entrance to the dungeon they’d just cleared.

“Erastil’s wrinkly ballsack. Why are wizards like this.” One of the martials said, followed by an awkward glance at the dozen casters around him “Present company excepted, naturally.”

“Because all the ones with the wisdom Gozreh gave a fish wouldn’t be fighting for Cheliax would they.” He said in his best Maintaining Morale voice.

“Or they'd have fled when we whipped them on the battlefield. Not holed up in their basement like some kind of Opera villain.” That got a laugh out of them at least. 

“Alright, everyone take a rest then start standard sweep. Remember there might be mundane traps as well. I don’t care how sure you are, let the scout team take a look before you poke anything. That means you Michel, your face is disturbing enough already.”

That got an obscene gesture from the man in question, and another, slightly forced laugh from the rest.

Ugh. Why did I have to start commanding people. Best to finish on a high note.

“After that we’ll have cleared more than half the dungeons! I reckon that's earned us a drink or two.” 

A ragged, but mostly sincere cheer at that, he’d take it. 

The ritual circle they found was either advanced beyond what any of them could understand, or totally incoherent. In accordance with orders, they took detailed notes and drew diagrams of it, before liberally dousing the whole place in acid and fire for good measure.

As well as purging the Asmodean taint from the place, and, of course, ensuring the future safety of the good people of Cheliax, their orders were to prioritize confiscating any useful looking magical research and components.

Ostenso wasn’t one of the great Wizarding  Academies of the world, but given their close ties to the Chelish Navy it was hoped there would be research of military use, like the spell variants designed for casting on moving ships maybe, rather than, to quote the Marshal “more fucking Academae style wizard bullshit”.

So far he’d not been impressed.

Tonight hadn’t even been the worst of them, having your own basement of horrors apparently being an important enrichment activity for Chelish wizards.

The first day after the battle, they’d nearly had a breakout of wights from the former Chancellor’s basement. The memory of little child sized hands clawing at him was among the many reasons that he needed a strong Caydenite escort for his nightly visits to Desna’s realm these days. (They’d been halfling slaves not actual children, mostly, not that that made it any better.)

The former Chancellor (may she burn in Hell even more than the rest of them) was researching “Applications of self-replicating undead as a cost-effective area denial solution” according to her notes. Tragically nobody would ever learn the results, as Marchand had burned them all and scattered the ashes in the sea. (He trusted his superiors to not cross certain lines, but best to remove the temptation.) 

That one had taken them most of a week to sort out. Then it turned out another wizard had, seemingly entirely separately, been breeding ghouls in their basement.

Fucking Cheliax.

Fucking (other) Wizards.

It was shit like this that was why he wasn’t a Nethysian. 

His mood had turned dark by the time they left that night. He brusquely he waved off the messenger who approached him asking about spare slots for scrying rotas, the infantry could sort out their own damn messes for once.