"The end is coming.
Demons once more walk the earth, hunted by angels with no interest in the stewardship of men. The gods have forsaken us, turning instead to petty squabbles over domain and precept - pettiness past the gates of Heaven! The children are born sickly, or not born at all. Savages descend upon all the civilized people, and some - some among us do not call this disaster. The cults of Armageddon have risen. The Long Night falls.
BUT PAST THIS NIGHT WILL BE DAWN!
Every man, woman, and child among us is mortal in body, yet immortal in spirit. Still there is that which threatens us - the domain of Death holds no sanctity against the machinations of demons, devils, even the devious among mortal men. Monsters walk that can feed on the life of a man and even beyond that consume his very soul. Fallen angels enslave the restless dead and conscript them into the armies of apocalypse and above all this...Armageddon. The End of all Ends, the yawning abyss beyond which no prophet may scry, the final oblivion that swells to consume us all forever.
YET WE ARE NOT HELPLESS AGAINST THESE TERRORS!
Even as a man may deny Death its due that upset balance is righted by another. Monsters and demons both may be slain, and if their souls are as difficult to kill as our own that is not to ascribe them any higher indestructibility! Even a god may be slain, and has been, if the world's need is great enough. AND EVEN ARMAGEDDON MAY BE TURNED IF OUR IMMORTAL SOULS SO WILL IT.
Agares - Destroyer! Enemy of Erebus! - yes, the God of Despair has fallen into darkness and seeks to drag all things with him. But he is only a god, not Armageddon itself! And I say this tug-of-war he seeks to play with Erebus is ONE WHICH WE CAN WIN! If a god can fall, a god can rise - rise to redemption, to a new Age of Triumph where we will walk unscathed from the shadows of this one into a new day, blinking as if newborn, and experience anew the warmth and beauty of a world bathed in light!
This is the dream that cannot be banished upon waking, the strength in our hearts that cannot fail even if their beating is ceased, the hope that cannot - cannot, if Agares himself were to stand before us and demand it - be swallowed up by despair. This is the Dawn Invictus, the light that will steal over us however many armies of damned demons stand in our way. The Long Night is falling, brothers and sisters! Let our fears and our weaknesses pass now into slumber, and let our valor stand the vigil through these darkest hours.
Every demon that lives was once angel or man, and will be made so again. Every terror that bares teeth against us will find the incandescent fury of the Dawn no easy meal to drag away to dark corners. And Agares, King of Hope, will remember himself before he brings Erebus to its end! Hear me, citizens of Erebus! A Long Night comes, but WE ARE THE DAWN INVICTUS! A darkness shall pass, and at its end will be a new day! Stand with me! Fight with me!
AND WITH ME, GREET THE DAWN!"
These are the last words of Marikinde, Guardian of the Dawn, shortly before her unfortunate end as the night's first merry feast for a band of laughing Revelers. It appears after inciting a crowd of Ashen Veil initiates she was selected by their savants as the first sacrifice to poison the earth beneath their unhallowed temple - copies of her speech have appeared here and there (it is troubling to me that I found Disciple Sheridan Malindrel hiding one of these in his quarters - I suspect one or two of their Messengers remains in the city and is targeting the Fellowship in their conversion efforts) but information regarding exactly what took place later that night is frustratingly anecdotal.
Reports indicate everything from the Temple of the Veil falling to pieces by itself as the raw influx of hope undid Agares' works in the area, to a Beast of Agares turning on the Profane in charge of defiling our city in preparation for the summoning of more of its kin before bringing the temple down on itself, to the prophet Marikinde returning as an angel, shattering the whole thing with a spoken command, and leading the Dawn's converts out of the city...
Although our priests called in a number of Life adepts to be sure, it would appear the area did not, in fact, require sanctification before the construction of a new Temple of Leaves was begun, and the blights in the nearby forests appear to be receding. The new disciples of this 'Dawn Invictus' seem to have moved on - Kazendel, the Autumn Razor, says he can feel the grip of Armageddon loosening from the land in the direction they were headed, yet the reports of dire omens and the appearance of demons has not faded from the area. We've sent Kazendel and two younger Satyrs to follow them - this merits further investigation.
-Almalyl Vintendia, reporting to Kithra Kyriel on the Liberation of <LJOSALFAR CITY>