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Three thousand years ago, a tragedy
occurred. Harken; it shall now be told.
A herald burned across the
southern sky one morning; a fiery drop, like the Watcher that
visits Auberean every few hundred years, yet moving far more
quickly. Shortly after this sign, a veil drew over the sun. Rain
fell, and the drops were black and cold. The trees and grasses
withered. The clouds built until noon was mere twilight, and the
wind blew as cold as stone in winter. The people wanted for
their crops and herds. Some called it the end. Some said it was
the judgment of light, and that evils must be atoned for.
“Surely,” they reasoned, “it
could not be any evil of ours that invoked this calamity.”
Many turned to the Dericost. “It must have been those
miserable, tainted people. Did their ancestors not bind their
own to rotting flesh, and seek to bring the world under their
heel? This must be their fault. The mercy we showed them has
turned the light from our shoulders. Now we must force them to
atone for their infamy.”
So the Dericost were starved.
What little could be grown was
taken from them. They died by the millions. And as they died,
well-fed missionaries told them, “You brought this on
yourselves.”
So they hated.
One among them, a man of the
village of Daralet named Ilservian Palacost, could endure no
more. He spoke in anger to the Elders, saying, “You have food
enough for many years in your storehouses. Yea, for centuries
you have tithed the crops of all in this land, while mouthing
pretty words of light and mercy and redemption. Now you feast
while we starve! My firstborn son shall die anon. He is an
innocent. Share out your food, and spare him!”
The Elders' pointed beards
wagged over their round bellies as they said, “It is for your
own good.” Ilservian was run out of town, though not before he
vowed to find the edge of the darkness that hung over the eaves
of the earth.
He did not depart alone. His
closest friends accompanied him. Elithra, a Haebran mage
possessing a wintry beauty unsurpassed save by Leikotha. Ler
Rhan, a once-corpulent scribe who spent much (some said too
much) time spinning tales for the children of the town. Omadin,
a rough farm boy embittered by the starvation of his entire
clan. Ferah, a tall warrior woman whose blue-green eyes bespoke
Falatacot blood. Foremost stood Isin Dule, a failed seminary and
friend of Ilservian since childhood. A small group of
sympathizers also joined them.
They wandered far into the
endless frigid mud of the wastelands, vainly seeking light. At
last Ilservian called to the darkness in anger. At this, many
deserted him. His friends did not. But there was no answer, save
perhaps a sibilant ghost of a laugh. Ilservian pressed on,
growing weaker, shouting his fury and anguish into the wind and
rain.
At last, something answered.
Many turns of the world later, a
shadow fell upon Daralet. The rains had ceased by then, and the
world enjoyed an extended spring. But in Daralet, the children
disappeared. One by one, at first, and then in numbers. First
the poor and unwanted, then the children of the garrison.
Whispers filled the night. Malevolence brooded on the hills
around the town. Stupefied with terror, the people boarded
themselves in their houses.
Word reached the outside, and an
army was dispatched. It found only empty buildings, in many
cases still boarded from within. On the city wall, the Elders
were found impaled, and with their blood was written: “The
proud shall know damnation.” With these words had the
victorious troops of Yalain and Haebrous put the last undead
nobles of Dericost to the torch.
The army marched beyond the
desolate town, and found a valley filled with a strange,
whispering darkness. Above the shadows, the crowns of trees
stood black and wasted. One was seen to subside into the mist,
melting away like ice. Before the army went away from there,
huge coils of grey entrails were seen above the mist, rising and
diving again like the fins of great sea creatures.
The army encamped upon a plain
that night, and none saw them again. A lone girl, driven mad by
horror, returned to tell the tale. The watch fires trembled and
bled away. The stars faded. The ground turned grey and swallowed
men. The general Lord Atlan was ripped apart. The Shadows had
come alive and taken them.
Ranks of living night swept
across the continents of Dericost and Haebrous. A black beast
led them, howling at the forefront of every charge. The few
survivors called this apparition the Slayer of Hope. Armies were
put before it, and swept aside.
The Emperor convened the five
most learned mages of the land for council. Old Viceroy Uweden
Kormar came clad in the frost blue robes of Gelid, the Dericost
province he had governed before its fall. Lord Kerenth Portenaer
was promoted from the ranks of the Hieromancer Order, where he
was held in great esteem. Lady Adja, prophetess and priestess,
sailed from far Ithaenc. Lady Rajael Fellarien was released from
her lonely tower in the austral wastes. Maila Realaidain, the
gentle widow of Atlan, completed them.
They studied, and they worried.
It seemed the enemy's strength flowed from some other place, an
abeyance of light deep within the earth, yet beyond the world
they knew. A power, potent and invasive as nerve poison, leached
from this other place, to the Hopeslayer, and on to his
horrifying servants. At Dernehale the council fought a
shadow-woman calling herself Elithra of Daralet, and only with
the greatest of efforts was she defeated. The Imperial Archives
were consulted, and in a brief dispatch from Dericost, that name
was found among the exiled companions of Ilservian Palacost. The
true name of the Slayer of Hope was known.
An impetuous boy, talented only
with a small ability for noticing details and drawing
connections between them, called the work of Nilrhem Facill to
the attention of the council. It was possible, he said, to seal
Ilservian in a small portion of the “alternate world” Facill
wrote of. The council agreed. As the island city-states of the
Empire withered and shrank before the crawling chaos, they
constructed a device that would realize the boy's plan.
The last enchantments were bound
to the mechanism of the trap on the island of Ireth Lassel,
later called Dereth. The council worked feverishly, as did the
boy, knowing damnation was stretching forth its hand across the
water. The darkness raced across the seas, as if called by the
sputtering, flaring energies of the other plane.
Ilservian came to the site of
their work. His chaotic mist ate away the rock below the
fortress. His Thorns loomed close, blasting the walls with
entropic energies. The desert plain below was black with a
living carpet of Shadow-entities. Ilservian stormed through the
corridors, slaying all who tried to stop him. At the end, he
came before the council and the floating stones of the trap. As
if ensorcelled, he waded through them, crushing Uweden's skull,
reaching for the pulsing violet light.
The council cast their final
spell, and Ilservian was thrown into the other realm. Everything
for over two-thirds of a human mile around the site was utterly
destroyed, and a vast wasteland of cracked and scorched earth
marred the southwest of Ireth Lassel. The council was slain, but
the darkness ebbed and slipped away. It did not leave
altogether. That which had empowered Ilservian's rage remained,
shrieking, waiting. Its remaining servants in this world melted
away into a thousand hidden places. The surviving members of
Ilservian's inner circle, too powerful to be killed, were merely
made discorporate by the blast.
The trap burst into six
fragments, but the Empire was only able to recover five. The
last piece was never seen again by living eyes. That should have
been the end of the tale, save for the Gelidites.
The capital of old Dericost,
home to the dread necromancers, was the brooding Plateau of
Gelid. Its living population had been rounded up by the
victorious armies, and marched to reservations on the plains of
Haebrous. But they were sore abused there, and found comfort in
an apocalyptic faith based on half-remembered prophecies. After
an age of cleansing ice, they believed, they would master the
globe once more. After a particularly brutal inquisition, many
fled to Ireth Lassel. There they hid themselves away in the
mountains, and excavated an underground city.
It was during the digging that a
young mage named Frisirth found a beautiful, sparkling crystal.
Over the years, he studied it intently. He found it had an
unusual magical connection to the deep earth, a potential to
draw up and store vast amounts of energy. Frisirth announced to
the Gelidites that the fulfillment of prophecy was at hand. By
enchanting the crystal, they could extract the heat energy from
the ground.
They bent their own energies to
this task. The world cooled. Far above, where now new kingdoms
lay, snow began to fall. Yet at the last moment, disaster
struck. A human expedition bumbled into their lost city, and the
Gelidites were forced to slay them. Other humans came in search
of the lost party. They slaughtered the Gelidites, and destroyed
their “Great Work.” As the malignant crystal shattered,
darkness swallowed the center of the room, and a faint, eager
chuckle was heard.
The sixth piece of the council's
snare was never seen again by living eyes. But the Gelidites,
desiring to witness their prophecy fulfilled, had used the
proscribed arts of their ancestors to turn their backs on time,
and chain their wills to dead and rotting flesh.
The Shadows began to venture
from their hidden places of power. Ilservian's surviving friends
became corporeal once more and raised the Thorns, using them to
alter the patterns of magic in the world. Ferah and Ler Rhan
weighed the measure of the strange outlanders that had come to
their world with probing attacks and individual trials. Only two
proved useful to them: the “Dark Masters” Blackthorn and
Vidorian. They were given items of power, and told that they
would be called upon in the great days to come.
But Isin Dule had misgivings. He
remembered the final days of the last war, his friend's blank
expression when the planar energy was felt, and the compulsion
that had come upon him. “It is likely a trap, brother,” he
told Ilservian, and still they had gone.
Dule, brooding in the wastes,
steered a fateful course. He took his portion of the Shadows
into his confidence, telling them that the pieces of the
council's trap must be protected. If his friend should be
released, he feared it would be the end of all. Ilservian was
not fully in control of his own mind. What would happen after
his vengeance was slaked? The price that the darkness of the
wasteland would demand of them was not yet known. But Dule's
first attempt to stave off disaster failed. The humans of Ispar
gained access to the Nexus Facility, and a second piece of
Ilservian's prison was destroyed.
There were remnants of Dericost
in the world beyond the shattered Gelidites. On far Aerlinthe,
the Lady Aerfalle observed the passing days and rising blight
with worry. She sent her emissaries into the world, contacting
her old friends and enemies.
The fractious Undead came to
rare accord, and massed an army. For its commander, they chose
Anadil, the last great general of their old realm. He set his
banner in the creaking jungles of Ithaenc Isle. At his side
stood Asmolum, an ancient schemer and diviner. Asmolum's agents
soon located three more fragments of the council's device. But
others under the night sky observed their scurrying. . .
Anadil sent a force to garrison
two of the fragment vaults. Dule's Shadows, following them,
moved to defend the third vault, named Caulnalain. But Dule's
fellow generals had also witnessed the movements of the Undead,
and made ready an assault. This, they decided, would be the
decisive battle of the campaign to free their friend.
Complicating things further,
there was a third faction of Shadows in the world, predating
Ilservian. They were neither loyal to him, nor to the rogue
Dule. These Shadows were even farther from what they had once
been. They were a single mind in myriad bodies, subordinate to
the will of. . . something. It was these ancient creatures that
brought about the Darkest Night. While Ferah and Ler Rhan's
Thorns attacked Cragstone and Arwic, drawing the attentions of
the defenders, the elder Shadows destroyed a long-buried circle
of standing stones beneath the oasis of Tufa.
Even as the rubble of Arwic was
settling, Ler Rhan's forces invested Anadil's garrison at the
Fenmalain vault. The fighting was fierce and lethal, but
ultimately indecisive. Reinforcements promised by Dule failed to
arrive. Ler Rhan, livid, accused Dule of treason. Before any
action could be taken by the divided Shadows, the Isparians came
into the fray again. They swept through all three vaults,
battering through both Anadil and Dule's defenders, and
destroyed all three crystals. Again, the immigrant races had
served as an unpredictable force of change.
The fate of the world hinged now
on the final piece of the council's trap. This was the most
cunningly hidden one, titled the Shard of the Herald. The Undead
found it first, again through the divinations of Asmolum. It
brooded in the catacombs beneath the Cathedral of Ithaenc, near
at hand to Anadil's encampment.
Almost as soon as Anadil was
informed, the Shadows knew, for they had long infiltrated the
rotting army. When the Undead attempted to gain access, they
found the final portal had been altered such that only those
who'd sworn themselves to Ilservian could pass through.
Taken aback, the Undead
leadership split the key to the catacombs into three pieces. The
first remained in the keeping of Aerfalle, the second given to
the commander of the Undead legion from Chalicmere Castle in the
Direlands, and the last to the head of the legion lent by
Aerfalle's own political faction. Again, the Shadow infiltrators
among the Undead foiled their plans. The last commander was
murdered, and his key given to the keeping of Ler Rhan's Shadow
Children.
Anadil sent emissaries to make
contact with the enigmatic Virindi, knowing them to be similarly
distressed by the chaos of the Shadows, and thus potential
allies.
One last time, the humans acted
unexpectedly. Finding new paths to Ithaenc, a tide of human
warriors and mages flooded Anadil and his army. The old general
was slain, but not before asking his attackers to take up his
burden. “Don't let it end like this, young ones. If you must
send me to the wind, my task is yours to complete. Protect the
stone.”
And so they did. An
unprecedented coalition of Isparian barons recovered the pieces
of the key, and set a watch on the catacombs and the terrible,
hallucination-inducing black stone that hummed and spun at its
heart. The stalwart members of the Shard Vigil repulsed several
attacks by humans in the service of Ilservian.
Frustrated, Ferah and Ler Rhan
assumed human guise once more to contact the Dark Masters.
Blackthorn, who had turned his coat and become a member of the
Vigil, wisely disappeared for a week. Vidorian, however, sought
out her aggrieved masters, and begged forgiveness for her
failure to break the Vigil and the stone.
On a quiet night in the third
week of the Vigil, the two Shadow generals and Vidorian swept
into the dungeon, driving the defenders back and shattering the
Shard of the Herald. With a shriek that could be heard across
worlds, Ilservian Palacost was freed.
Isin Dule knew his time would be
all too brief once Ferah and Ler Rhan spoke with Ilservian. Thus
he offered assistance to the fledgling Virindi-Undead alliance.
With a heavy heart, I decided I
must also cast my die with this unsavory coalition.
All unknown, we gathered in the
wastelands that mark the wreckage of the Jailne Lyceum -- the
place at which Ilservian was last defeated. Each of the inhuman
powers held an item that would sap the power of our Enemy. I
believed I had the knowledge to combine these items into a
single, united thaumaturgic assault.
But the time was not yet right;
the items had to be prepared. So it was that I challenged
Ilservian openly. It was nearly my end. That which empowers him
is far beyond my feeble powers. Had he not been determined to
toy with me, I should have died most swiftly.
While I distracted the Enemy,
Lady Elysa Strathelar set her feet upon the roads of the world,
seeking knowledge of which monarchs could be trusted and which
could not. She charged those who walked in light with the
recovery and safe transport of the various pieces of the spell.
The items were to be delivered to Luminary Golems in the
Isparian capital cities. These entities, relics of ancient and
lost demiurgic arts, were immune to the influence of shadow.
The children of the other sun
recovered the items. The great binding was cast, and Ilservian
was much enfeebled. At this, humanity charged into the breach.
Their losses were terrible. The man of Daralet had already
surrounded himself with the misbegotten leavings of elemental
chaos. These things lurked among the flapping, green-tinted
membranes of his inner sanctum, where the walls breathed and ate
the flesh of men. After numerous assaults, a coordinated team of
mages, warriors, and archers destroyed the physical form of
Ilservian Palacost.
But this was not the end of him;
rather, it was the end of the part of him that remained mortal.
His dark spirit descended, summoned by whatever created him.
Before he left, his scream of betrayal was heard by the
triumphant humans. “Dule! Base traitor! I sense your art in
this artifact assembled by the last Yalain. Thee and thine are
banished from Our sight for all time, and ye shall be hunted
until the stars fall from their course! Marked are thee!”
Ilservian's story, then, has not
ended. He goes on. His generals Ferah and Ler Rhan go on. And
his best friend Dule, somewhere in the lonely wastes, also goes
on. The seeds sown here may not be reaped for a generation, but
their poison will spread. There will be accounting. We have only
won a reprieve.
These were the reagents of the
binding. A fragment of the Virindi Singularity was used to
divert a portion of Bael'Zharon's power into the wilds of
portalspace. The Heart of Shadow, supplied by Isin Dule, was a
partial manifestation of Bael'Zharon's connection to the Shadow
World. Its destruction sapped him of still more power. Last came
the skull of a child, enchanted with lost Falatacot bindings by
the Dericost Undead.
The skull of Avroen Palacost,
the son of Ilservian. The skull of a child of Daralet.
Think kindly on Ilservian, if
you can. Who among you can claim that your grief should be less?
For my part I will bow my head, and pray that father and son may
find peace.
-- Asheron Realaidain
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