The Corrupted Isles - A History
Taken from The History of the Western Kingdoms Vol. 1
Every history, no matter how big or how small, has a black stain, a part that nobody likes to remember, a scratch on an otherwise perfect jewel. In the case of The Western Kingdoms, that irremovable scar is The Corrupted Isles.
The Corrupted Isles are an old, almost forgotten, part of the western kingdom. Consisting of two parallel islands: The Western and Eastern Isle. Previously under the ownership of the Great King Fenwick of the West, The Isles used to be a bustling trading port for a rare strand of crystals known as Aetherium. For years, the isles were hailed for their naturalistic beauty and the seemingly unending wealth of Aetherium.
However, not all good things can last forever, and a mere 50 years after the establishment of The Isles, a curse of unknown origin caused a plague to spread through the land. Beginning in the Western Isle, the plague quickly corrupted all living beings in its path, turning them into grotesque, horrific monsters known only as Plague Beasts.
As chaos and bloodshed reigned across the isles, King Feris, son of Fenwick quickly scratched the isles from the history of the western kingdoms and left the inhabitants to fend for themselves. Shortly thereafter, the islands fell into a state of anarchy, both completely lawless and under the complete control of the curse.
In a desperate measure to hinder the spread of the plague, a group of righteous Paladins, known as The Covenant of Light, attempted to destroy the bridge connecting the East and West Isles. However, their efforts were in vain and only led to more lives lost as the plague continued its rampant spread, claiming more and more victims.
For those brave enough to stay the only haven to still exist in these cursed isles is the White Watchtower. A tall and imposing marble structure located on the southernmost tip of the East Isle. Wherein live the few surviving members of The Covenant of Light. The few that still dedicate their lives towards eradicating the curse from the isle.
As for those who fled to the mainland, songs were sung of the plague, and the Isles were said to be the birthplace of evil itself. This reputation became legend, forever after the islands were renamed to match their malevolent reputation. Thus, they came to be known as the Corrupted Isles.
Prologue
Drysten awoke, the sounds of battle still echoing around him, deafeningly loud. Casting his view around the ravaged battlefield, Drysten saw nothing but the bodies of his fallen comrades around him. Some dead, some mutilated beyond recognition, and worst of all, some still desperately clinging to life. As Drysten shifted his body in an attempt to stand, his ribs erupted in a fiery pain that sent a scream of agony running through his entire body. He involuntarily let out a guttural scream, damaging his already bleeding throat, and causing his body to slump heavily back to the ground.
Born a paladin of the Covenant, Drysten’s body was unaccustomed to feeling such anguish. Drysten again tried to push himself up from the scorched earth, and, with great effort, he succeeded. Now in a sitting position, Drysten desperately attempted to assess the situation around him, the haze of pain still hanging like an impenetrable fog over his mind and body.
Able now to pinpoint the cries of battle that he was hearing, Drysten’s heart sank. The ferocious sound came from about thirty-five feet to his right, where Elandra Dawnbringer, and other lesser members of The Covenant, were engaged in a fierce battle with three monstrous plague beasts. Drysten’s hope dwindled as the beasts cut down the lesser members of the covenant with their razor-sharp claws and teeth.
Eventually, only Elandra remained standing tall and proud in the remnants of the gory massacre. As the sun reflected off her flaming red hair she raised her twin battle hammers swinging them with blazing speed and determination at the vile creatures.
With a furious attack, Elandra connected her first hammer with the head of a beast who was lunging at her. Drysten cringed as he heard a sicking crunch, the exposed bone of the beast’s snout shattering under the sheer power and weight of the hammer. The monster released a howl of agony, its face now horribly disfigured by the cold iron of Elandra’s relentless attack.
Drysten admired Elandra’s persistence in battle, even though The Covenant had fallen around her, she still fought with all the courage and ferociousness that she had held when the ranks of The Covenant, at its full power, still stood by her side in battle.
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Spinning deftly on her foot, Elandra sent her second hammer flying into the side of another beast. The impact sent out a wave of radiant white light, which temporarily blinded Drysten as he looked on. The beast roared in anger and pain as the white light spread across its rotting skin, seeming to eat away at the remaining flesh, exposing horribly disfigured innards and jagged bones covered in plaguerot. As the light spread further, the beast fell to the ground reduced to nothing more than dust at the hands of the holy magic.
Pivoting again, Elandra turned to face the last remaining beast. The beast snarled, revealing rows of routine, pointed teeth. A black viscous slobber oozed from its rotting jaws. Elandra raised her hammers, the gore causing the radiant light to shine through only weakly. But before she could bring them down, finishing her vicious battle, a cloud of black fog rose from the body of another fallen beast behind her.
The fog took on a natural, almost animalistic form. Not of any living creature Drysten had ever seen, nor one he would ever comprehend, but a living form nonetheless. Purple lightning seemed to form spiderweb-like veins in the horrific foggy creature and as Drysten looked on, unable to help, an unplaceable panic began to fill his mind, taking over every sense in his weakened and bloodied body. He couldn’t move, every part of him felt frozen, his limbs numb with terror. He was too weak to fight, too worthless to save Elandra from her inevitable fate.
The Horror reached out a black, foggy hand and grasped the back of Elandra’s shining white armor. The body of The Horror seemed to seep through the very fibers of her armor, and as it reached Elandra’s skin, she dropped her hammers and writhed in agony, falling limply to her knees.
Drysten attempted to call out, but his throat was raw and all that came out was a weak cough followed by smatterings of blood that stained the charred ground below him. Trying to move toward Elandra only caused Drysten more pain, triggering more futile attempts at screams, and resulting in more blood. The pain was so intense, that Drysten’s vision again blurred at the edges, and he began to lose focus on Elandra.
Fighting hard to refocus his vision, Drysten saw The Horror, which had now completely enveloped Elandra, start to worm its way inside of her. Her mouth, which was trapped in a perpetual scream of terror and excruciating pain, seemed to be its main point of entry. As Drysten looked on, Eldandra completely swallowed The Horror. And as she did so, her hammers, moments ago filled with white light, began to glow, the purple spiderweb pattern emerging onto the faces of wrought iron, a mirror image of The Horror’s veins.
As Dyrsten watched on, his vision altered from tears of agony, the light intensified, wrapping around the hammers, and then, with a deafening bang, Eleandra’s hammers shattered into millions of little shards. They scattered in every direction, and any light left in the world seemed to disappear along with the light of Elandra’s very existence. A darkness seemed to envelop Drysten’s very existence and the pain grew to an almost intolerable level. Slipping into unconsciousness’s cold embrace, the last thing Drysten saw was Elandra, now possessed by The Horror, get to her feet, and shamble as a shadow of her former self into the west, silhouetted by the setting sun.
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The world warped around Drysten. No longer was he lying on a hill upon the field of battle. Suddenly he was in a white void filled only with a sheer, incomprehensible nothingness. A floating sensation filled his body, and Drysten weightlessly flew through the whiteness.
Slowly, the void began to change around Drysten, fading from a light reminiscent of the sun's rays to the complete darkness of the ocean floor. Stars began to appear around him, and before he knew what was happening, Drysten was floating amongst the cosmos themselves. Around him swirled nebulas, galaxies, and universes, their size far beyond Drysten, or anyone else’s comprehension.
From the darkness, a voice, from both everywhere and nowhere, began to speak. It spoke in an ancient tongue, words that Drysten had never before heard. Whilst it was impossible for him to decipher cohesive sentences, Drysten was able to pick out some of the words from the unfamiliar tongue. Words, he thought, like “Light” and “Dark” as well as “Sun” and “Moon”.
The voice filled Drysten’s entire existence. He felt then as he had never felt before. As if nothing had happened before now and nothing would happen after now.
As he floated there, amongst the entirety of existence, with the voices echoing through his mind, Drysten began to see visions. He first saw a massive volcano, erupting with a dark purple and black ooze. Black smoke rising from the eruption in huge plumes. And a white tentacle snaking out from the volcano, glistening like a pearl even through the coating of ash.
Next, he saw bodies, reanimated and shambling towards the White Watchtower. Then he saw a giant serpent, its body made of the same nebulous hellscape that he currently floated through.
Faster and faster the visions flew past. Drysten saw more bodies littering the landscape, more destruction reaching across the islands, and finally, he saw a woman, standing in front of a towering grey monolith, dressed in a shimmering grey cloak. Then the visions ended, and Drysten was left to float on.
Whether it was long days or mere minutes that Drysten spent in the annals of existence, he would never know. But eventually, the cosmos began to fade, and back came the bright light of before. Back came the smell of rot. And back came the familiar sights of a battlefield, long forsaken. But worst of all, back came the pain.
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Upon his painful return to the battlefield, Drysten spent a day floating in and out of consciousness as he attempted to regain the remnants of his former strength. It was during this time that he found the determination to lift his body from the surrounding piles of corpses and bloodily stagger a few weakened steps south towards his home in the watchtower. It was another day yet before Drysten was able to reach the doors of the watchtower itself. By the time he did, he was torn, broken, and bloodied beyond recognition. As he dragged his nearly dead body through the door, he knew that one day he would have to face The Horror, and the memory of Elandra, now forever tainted. But that day was not today, nor would that day come for a long time yet.