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Dark Gods A millennium has passed since Lord Kain set his capital in the ruins of the Pillars of Nosgoth and began his conquest of the world. His first act was to recruit a cadre. Dipping into the underword, Kain snarled six souls and thus birthed his lieutenants, of which I, Raziel was one. We, in turn, prowled the twilight of purgatory building six legions of vampires to pilliage Nosgoth. The destruction of the major human kingdoms was inevitable. Within a hundred years, humanity had been thoroughly domesticated. To be sure, there remained some feral humans scattered across the hinterlands, clinging to their hopeless holy war to rid Nosgoth of the vampire scourge. They were tolerated. They made existence for the fledglings more challenging. After the taming of the major humans, our real work began: shaping Nosgoth to our will. Around the pillars, slaves constructed a shrine worthy of our new age, worthy of our dark renaissance. Huge furnaces were built to belch smoke into the sky, shielding the land from the poisonous effects of the sun. Never had the world know a time of such beauty. However, we grew bored. We allowed the remains of the legions, the lesser vampires, to have their intrigues. They provided amusement and spice to an increasingly uninspired court. As faction fell against faction we bet upon the outcome. We helped and foiled plots at our whim. We were the council and lord Kain, our only master. |
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The Elder To us the touch of water is agony; it burns our flesh like acid. My punishment was to be cast into the Lake of the Dead, our execution ground for traitors or weaklings. As my brethren threw me into the air I could see the bemused expressions on their faces. The transitory thrill of something new. Then the pain. Melting, twisting, burning, falling. A new experience indeed. Time. I have no concept of how long I fell. Only that there was an end to the fall and through the pain I heard the voice. At first I thought it merely the echoes of my own tortured mind, but I grew to understand that it was more. Something primal. Something angry. Something righteous. Something Ancient. The elder explained much to me. It told me of creation, of death, of souls and of hunger. For eons the elder fed upon the souls of Nosgoth. Then Kain's vampire dynasty deprived the Elder of sustenance. For centuries his hunger grew and in this place. The Elder offered me a solution to my sorry existence - if I would stalk the Material Plane, slaying my former brethren, then I would have the chance to avenge myself against Kain. How could one refuse such an offer? |
