• 
  The Party Rides Onward:
  They ride to Drowning Wallace, grim and determined.
  Thallin and his two acolytes run barefoot, faster than horses, using Marthus’s Stride.
  Discovery of the Churned Road:
  They find a churned, muddy scar across the road.
  Wild horses stampede; the party hides in the bushes.
  Pappy’s Muddy Adventure:
  Pappy soothes and rides a spectral horse.
  At dawn, the horse vanishes; Pappy crashes into mud and enjoys it.
  The Haunted Stable:
  The party meets the old stablemaster and learns of the monstrous white horse.
  Three times, the creature came and transformed men into horses.
  The Battle Against the Monster:
  Night falls; Pappy fires at the approaching grey horror.
  Battle erupts:
  Aldric summons a sleet storm.
  Pappy batters the creature with spinning hammer blows.
  Blueberry uses illusions to deadly effect.
  Scorn’s music boosts allies and hampers foes.
  Ipid stands against the creature’s attacks without yielding.
  Aldric uses the Hammer of Fate to destroy the monster.
  Ipid’s Talk with the Stablemaster:
  After the battle, Ipid convinces the stablemaster to choose life.
  The stablemaster joins the party as their horse caretaker.
  The Communion of Flames:
  Thallin and acolytes burn the stable.
  Aldric walks into the flames, communes with Regentus, and emerges blessed.
  Thallin witnesses a true miracle.
  Approaching the Temple:
  The party nears a temple surrounded by undead.
  They bait and destroy the undead:
  Ipid holds the front line.
  Blueberry traps undead in illusions and deals massive damage.
  Scorn aids with songs of war.
  Pappy wades into the melee with muddy fury.
  After victory, a lingering darkness remains…

The company rode hard, their battered banners raised once more. Bruised but unbroken, they charged onward along the mud-choked road to the great city of Drowning Wallace, hearts heavy with grim purpose. Above them, the sky roiled — bruised clouds swirling like a wounded god’s eye — but still they rode.

Among them moved Thallin Giggis, the Cleric of Regentus the Sun God, whose steadfast acolytes ran barefoot across stones and roots, their soles bloodied but their strides unbroken. They bore the blessing of Marthus’s Stride, ancient magic taught by a monk who had once dashed across a kingdom in a day. They ran faster than any horse, faster than thought, their feet whispering prayers to the earth itself.

It was Scorn, the quick-tongued bard, who first spotted the churned-up path ripping across the road — a scar of mud and splinters. The party reined in. The ground began to tremble. A sound like a thousand war drums grew behind them.

“Scatter!” barked Blueberry, whose sharp mind always found danger quickest.

They threw themselves into the brambles as a stampede of a hundred wild horses tore past, their flanks steaming and eyes wild with terror.

Pappy, a mud-loving gnome with a temper short as a spring thaw, darted from the brush and seized a panicked mare by the reins. Murmuring the old words he learned on his father’s muddy fields, he soothed the beast enough to swing into the saddle. With a shriek and a lurch, it bolted down the ruined road, Pappy clinging to its back.

The creature galloped until dawn. Then, like a mirage at first light, it faded into nothingness — leaving Pappy to arc through the air and crash headlong into the welcoming embrace of the mud. He grinned wide through a mouthful of muck. Reminded him of home.

Not far from Pappy’s graceless landing sagged a decrepit stable, its doors creaking on their hinges. Inside the shadowed ruin sat a man — a scrap of grey hair, a stubby beard, and a heart crushed under the weight of nightmares.

His voice cracked like old leather as he told his tale:

A monstrous white horse, ten feet tall, its mane and tail dragging across the ground like funeral shrouds, had come to the stable. It charmed the horses. It trampled the stablehands. And with blasphemous magic, it reshaped broken men into new horses — birthed from bone and torn cloth.

Three times it had come. Three times it had stolen more souls.

The party whispered grim plans. Steel was sharpened. Spells prepared. But the old stablemaster merely stared at the floor, lost to despair.

Night fell. Pappy took first watch, crossbow in hand, boots sunk in the cold mud. From the east, it came — a towering grey horse, walking like a thundercloud, dark magic curling in its wake.

Pappy wasted no time. He loosed bolt after bolt, one striking true. The monster shrieked — a sound like the gates of a tomb swinging wide — and charged.

The road became a battleground. Aldric, Scholar-Mage and seeker of forbidden truths, conjured a sleet storm to ensnare the beast. Pappy, whooping with rage and glee, spun like a dervish, hammering the creature back into the storm’s clutches.

Blueberry, cunning mage and lover of gold and mayhem, trapped the monster with illusions of Ipid — dozens of them, all as sturdy and defiant as the real one. Scorn’s songs lifted the hearts of his companions and made their enemies stumble like drunks in a storm.

And at the fore, unbreaking and unyielding, stood Ipid — the paladin, the wall, the heart of the line — taking blow after blow yet never faltering.

When the beast stumbled from the storm, Aldric, recognizing its cursed form from visions half-remembered, took up the Hammer of Fate. With one solemn blow, he brought death crashing down.

Only when the dust settled did Ipid find the stablemaster once more, huddled in the ruin of his home. The old man spoke of his wish to die with the stable — to be reduced to ash alongside it.

But Ipid, with patient words and the unshakeable kindness of a true knight, spoke of life yet to be lived. Of hope not yet spent. Of roads still open.

And so the stablemaster, with tears brimming in his weary eyes, chose life, pledging himself to the company, offering care for their steeds in exchange for a future unshackled by fear.

Meanwhile, Thallin and his acolytes built a funeral pyre of splintered wood and sorrow. As the flames took the stable, Aldric recognized the ritual: the Communion of Flames, a sacred test of devotion to Regentus, the god who neither weeps nor laughs, but judges in absolute fairness.

Without hesitation, Aldric stepped into the inferno. The fire bowed away from him, and from within its roaring heart, he heard Regentus speak — not in words, but in the endless repetition of cycles: day to night, life to death, fire to ash.

When at last the flames died, Aldric stood unburned at the center of the ashes, blessed with newfound knowledge. Thallin Giggis knelt in reverence, seeing with his own eyes a miracle few had even dared to dream.

Leaving the ruin behind, the company pressed on. The road narrowed. Darkness grew thicker.

Near the broken bones of an ancient temple and its restless graveyard, they met the dead once more.

The battle was fierce. Ipid stood a bulwark against the undead tide, never once yielding. Blueberry bent reality into bloody illusions that tore the dead apart from within. Scorn’s music turned the tide again and again, as bolts and blades flew with unnatural accuracy.

Pappy waded through the carnage, swinging and cursing and laughing, coated in mud and gore.

When at last the final vengeful spirit was banished, silence fell — but it was not a peaceful silence. A dark presence lingered still. A malaise thick as smoke.

The temple held its breath.

And so did the shadows that waited there.