As the White Ones grew more mad with power, one of the older wizards had his local village leveled overnight, destroyed utterly by his army of trolls, with everyone in it. On this site he began construction of a pyramid, a tomb unlike anything Foran had ever seen, vowing to return one day from the dead, and demanding his wealth and servants would await him there. His trolls toiled for many months before its completion. The idea caught on, other White Ones followed suit and soon more tombs of power were being built. Only the first of these was ever completed before the troll exodus. With his servants fleeing beneath the mountains, the old White One was never buried in his tomb after his death in battle against the lords.
Naihtep was the local lord who personally slew the old sage. To defy and mock the White One, and to honor their lord who also died in the battle, the local peasents buried Naihtep in the finished pyramid, in a grand sarcophagus in its heart. The pyramid had not only been completed in structure, but had already been filled with much of the wizard's hoard, including the Relic of Kings, encased in the massive tomb's vaults.
Naihtep never touched the essence physically, but being so entombed together for thirty years allowed the Relic to reach out to the dead lord nonetheless. He rose from his sarcophagus as the first mummy. When Naihtep returned to his people they honored and praised him, reinstated as their lord. His castle had been destroyed in the exodus, and so the pyramid became his new seat of power, where he restored the feudal ways.
After the exodus there were no more exoknights, no more energy knights. Naihtep was forced to draw from the untrained peasent pool to construct a new militia. When the vampire scouts reached them Naihtep learned that other monsters were sharing their gifts with human recruits. Naihtep studied his new powers and discovered he too was capable of this. As the new alliance with the vampires and werewolves was forged, new mummies were rising from the depths of the pyramid to strengthen Naihtep's foundation as lord of his lands.
In Foranworld Naihtep maintains Palladion, one of the last independant feudal states.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Friday, September 17, 2010
Reanimating the Dead
The Death Relic called out to a man named Sanadin, who was dying of a slow but fatal disease known as "the rot". The disease caused him to decay while alive. His sight and other senses were deteriorating as the responsible organs began to fail, fingers withered and began to fall off and speech was very difficult with the bloated and unresponsive tongue of a corpse. This made Sanadin the perfect candidate, as noone could be closer in affinity to this aspect of the Void.
He found the Relic hidden in a treehollow by the river north of Darcborough but reached it too late. With his dying act he reached for the artifact and with his last breath brushed it with his gloved hand, knockit it from its perch. Both toppled into the river. The essence had begun to transfer itself to its target host, and when contact was lost continued to pour outward, mixing with the water of the river.
Over the next two weeks the inhabitants of Darcborough became ill, increasingly so with time, until the first deaths occured. Within a month, everyone in the village was no more. These were the first zombies. Those that died early clawed their way out of their graves, the rest rose from the places they had fallen. Aimlessly they shuffled around the village, repeating the most common activities of their recent lives repetitively , moaning the fringe of torment their dead bodies could still perceive. For those that were greedy or malicious in life, a hunger for living flesh became their only driving force, and those pets and livestock that had not yet fallen to the essence of death were swarmed upon and eaten alive.
Malek's vampire scouts, while seeking survivors of the troll exodus, came upon Darcborough and soon warriors from every village in reach gathered to purge Darcborough of the undead infestation. The roaming essence of death lingered and moved downriver, partially taking to the air and becoming an unseen tumor on the world, threatening the fate of Darcborough to any it encountered.
Malek himself found the empty crystal Relic of Death by the body of Sanadin, and devised a plan to draw the essence back to its intended host. The dead man was so badly decomposed that salvaging the corpse in its current state was unthinkable, and so pieces of the dead were borrowed. A new body was fashioned for Sanadin from bits of himself and parts taken from other corpses to fill the gaps. It was an awkward looking creation with stitchlines running up and down its surface.
Together with the mummies, the vampires raised Sanadin to the clouds to be struck by lightning, believing this in combination with the mystic element of the pyramids would reanimate the dead man. It worked. The essence of death that had passed into the lifeless body before becoming seperated from the rest became active and Sanadin opened his eyes. He was not a zombie, his consciousness intact. He became the first Golem, a patchwork man.
The rogue essence of death did not seek him out, to the dismay of Malek and those that aided him, and the knowledge of the damage it caused was much for Sanadin to bear. He shuffled off into the wilds and was not seen for many years.
When Sanadin resurfaced he brought with him knowledge of the Void, which he had gained from sifting through old ruins of white towers. He found a way to create more Golems, that this power lay within him as part of his gift from the Void. He knew that there was another way, that Golems could be created by stitching together the deceased of those that had fallen victim to the Roaming Death before their awakening as zombies. Using the method only available to him he created only a few and kept thems as his close followers.
Followers of Sanadin were typically those who wanted resurrection from death badly enough to pay the price of living on as grotesque giants. Sanadin chose goodly men and women to whom the completion of their life's work was more important than their own desires. Just as the werewolves and vampires had done, the golems realized they were an important new addition to what is required to surivive in this new and darker world.
Golem construction became more sophisticated over time. Later golems were not the shuffling giant monstrosities that their older kin had become. Still, it is impossible to oversee the nature of a golem, the crisscrossing stitches and mismatched bodyparts never fail to give them away. No golem could pass for human, no matter how precise the patchwork had become.
Over time the ranks of golems grew. Grievers who had lost loved ones sought out Sanadin with increasing frequency, begging him to raise their lost friends and family. Wanting to ease the world's sorrow in some measure he granted these requests. The golems were very quick to discover that many of these new golems were outraged at their new forms, resentful of what they had been forced to become. Most of these ended their own lives in short measure. Sanadin learned from this, and decreed that no golem was to become of anyone who had not themselves requested resurrection before their death.
He found the Relic hidden in a treehollow by the river north of Darcborough but reached it too late. With his dying act he reached for the artifact and with his last breath brushed it with his gloved hand, knockit it from its perch. Both toppled into the river. The essence had begun to transfer itself to its target host, and when contact was lost continued to pour outward, mixing with the water of the river.
Over the next two weeks the inhabitants of Darcborough became ill, increasingly so with time, until the first deaths occured. Within a month, everyone in the village was no more. These were the first zombies. Those that died early clawed their way out of their graves, the rest rose from the places they had fallen. Aimlessly they shuffled around the village, repeating the most common activities of their recent lives repetitively , moaning the fringe of torment their dead bodies could still perceive. For those that were greedy or malicious in life, a hunger for living flesh became their only driving force, and those pets and livestock that had not yet fallen to the essence of death were swarmed upon and eaten alive.
Malek's vampire scouts, while seeking survivors of the troll exodus, came upon Darcborough and soon warriors from every village in reach gathered to purge Darcborough of the undead infestation. The roaming essence of death lingered and moved downriver, partially taking to the air and becoming an unseen tumor on the world, threatening the fate of Darcborough to any it encountered.
Malek himself found the empty crystal Relic of Death by the body of Sanadin, and devised a plan to draw the essence back to its intended host. The dead man was so badly decomposed that salvaging the corpse in its current state was unthinkable, and so pieces of the dead were borrowed. A new body was fashioned for Sanadin from bits of himself and parts taken from other corpses to fill the gaps. It was an awkward looking creation with stitchlines running up and down its surface.
Together with the mummies, the vampires raised Sanadin to the clouds to be struck by lightning, believing this in combination with the mystic element of the pyramids would reanimate the dead man. It worked. The essence of death that had passed into the lifeless body before becoming seperated from the rest became active and Sanadin opened his eyes. He was not a zombie, his consciousness intact. He became the first Golem, a patchwork man.
The rogue essence of death did not seek him out, to the dismay of Malek and those that aided him, and the knowledge of the damage it caused was much for Sanadin to bear. He shuffled off into the wilds and was not seen for many years.
When Sanadin resurfaced he brought with him knowledge of the Void, which he had gained from sifting through old ruins of white towers. He found a way to create more Golems, that this power lay within him as part of his gift from the Void. He knew that there was another way, that Golems could be created by stitching together the deceased of those that had fallen victim to the Roaming Death before their awakening as zombies. Using the method only available to him he created only a few and kept thems as his close followers.
Followers of Sanadin were typically those who wanted resurrection from death badly enough to pay the price of living on as grotesque giants. Sanadin chose goodly men and women to whom the completion of their life's work was more important than their own desires. Just as the werewolves and vampires had done, the golems realized they were an important new addition to what is required to surivive in this new and darker world.
Golem construction became more sophisticated over time. Later golems were not the shuffling giant monstrosities that their older kin had become. Still, it is impossible to oversee the nature of a golem, the crisscrossing stitches and mismatched bodyparts never fail to give them away. No golem could pass for human, no matter how precise the patchwork had become.
Over time the ranks of golems grew. Grievers who had lost loved ones sought out Sanadin with increasing frequency, begging him to raise their lost friends and family. Wanting to ease the world's sorrow in some measure he granted these requests. The golems were very quick to discover that many of these new golems were outraged at their new forms, resentful of what they had been forced to become. Most of these ended their own lives in short measure. Sanadin learned from this, and decreed that no golem was to become of anyone who had not themselves requested resurrection before their death.
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