Tayles’s First Expedition into the Scourgelands was Tyrus Paracelsus’s attempt to turn the preservation of knowledge into an assault on the Plague itself. The party entered with the Arch-Rike’s blessing, but was destroyed by the Scourgelands’ defenses; its failure left Tyrus alive with evidence of a concealed betrayal and a determination to return to the work through Annon and a Dryad who could uncover what human records had lost.

Purpose and historical setting

The expedition arose from a crisis no archive could date precisely. Possidius Adeodat’s account says Kenatos possessed records reaching back to its founding, yet none established when the Plague began. The epidemic had ravaged every kingdom, decimated populations, and erased some races. In response, the survivors united around preserving knowledge, founding Kenatos as a shared stronghold rather than a city ruled by any one kingdom. Books, provisions, and wealth were contributed to its survival.

Tyrus understood his own undertaking in the same collective terms. He had chosen the work of banishing the Plague as a young man and had lived to see its devastation twice. Studying records and interviewing people who had crossed into the Scourgelands, he sought stubborn facts rather than stories. His mission was not simply an exploration of dangerous territory: he hoped to identify what lay behind the catastrophe and prevent further suffering.

The assembled party and its defeat

Tyrus gathered people he considered exceptionally capable: brilliant minds, fierce warriors, and a Bhikhu whom he later identified as Annon’s father, described as the most gifted of his generation. He sought the Arch-Rike’s blessing, received it, and led the party north into the Scourgelands, determined to overcome whatever stood in their way. The expedition was destroyed. Tyrus later said plainly that the party had been lost and that he himself should have died with them.

The danger was not an abstract threat. Possidius’s records describe the Plague as changing its symptoms across generations: sores, rashes, white spores, yellow skin, or red flux. It could devastate a community quickly, leaving most of its people dead; flight could carry it onward to other cities and kingdoms. Because its symptoms changed, finding a cure was especially difficult. In this context, the expedition’s ambition to reach the source of the danger came with stakes extending far beyond its members.

Merinda’s sacrifice and the escape

Tyrus survived because Merinda saved his life. During the attack by the creatures guarding the Scourgelands against intruders, she was gravely wounded and released the magic in her blood to protect the party. The use of that power cost her her sanity. Tyrus promised to bring her safely home and give her unborn child a chance to live. The expedition’s aftermath therefore became inseparable from the survival of Annon, whom Tyrus later left with the Druidecht in Wayland.

The party found a way out through knowledge Merinda revealed about the Dryads, who guard the Scourgelands. Tyrus came to regard this as the missing piece: the Dryads there were not merely obstacles but guardians connected to the explanation of what had gone wrong. His later account joined their hostility to a hidden injury or betrayal, which he believed was preserved in the trees even after it had disappeared from human memory.

The suspected betrayal in Kenatos

After escaping, Tyrus reasoned that the party had been trapped before it had even substantially crossed the woods’ outer defenses. The defenders had attacked and assembled too quickly for him to understand at the time. In retrospect, he concluded that the Arch-Rike’s approval had been part of the betrayal: the expedition had been sent toward its deaths, he believed, because the authorities wanted the truth about the Scourgelands to remain hidden. He suspected that the Rikes of Kenatos wished to perpetuate the injustice associated with the Dryads.

Tyrus returned to Kenatos rather than risk provoking the Arch-Rike’s suspicions by remaining absent. He reported failure and said that he had needed time to recover, a statement he considered true but incomplete. He concealed that Merinda was pregnant, protecting Annon from the Arch-Rike’s knowledge. Tyrus described his return as a choice to enter his gilded prison again, this time carrying a secret about the expedition and its survivors.

The unfinished mission and its legacy

The expedition’s defeat did not end Tyrus’s effort; it changed how he pursued it. He concluded that the truth about the Scourgelands had to be read from the trees by another Dryad. A Dryad bound to a tree in the Paracelsus Towers agreed to go, and Tyrus explained that she was his wife by Dryad custom: she had chosen him, and an ankle bracelet marked her bond to him for the remainder of his life. He denied forcing her and framed her participation as voluntary. Her ability to enter the Scourgelands and bind herself to its trees offered a way to investigate the wrong the failed expedition had revealed but could not resolve.

Years later, Tyrus told Annon that he needed a Druidecht to finish what the first party had begun, specifically because Merinda had saved his life and he wanted to honor her memory. He also recruited Khiara, explaining that the earlier party had been wounded and killed in numbers that might have been reduced by a Shaliah’s healing and support. The first expedition thus remained both a military failure and the origin of a continuing inquiry: the Plague’s changing devastation demanded answers, while the expedition’s defeat suggested that the truth had been deliberately guarded.