“One who fears to be stripped of the gift of the Gods has, by their own hand, become nothing more than a servant to them.”
— Translation of the Kabbalis Book of Darkness, widely attributed to the young Dead King
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In the depths of a Hell that had long lost its name and number, a monster opened his eyes.
Change, the world whispered.
Change had arrived.
Pale hands relaxed around an oak balcony railing as Neshamah Be-Iakim felt the moment Creation shifted. It was as if the hands of a master artisan had threaded a needle and stitched a new tapestry atop the old. Stitches woven so seamlessly that one could not discern where the old masterpiece ended and the new began. Then the alteration rippled forward. It passed through the gates of the Writhing Palace and into the depths of his hell.
He wondered for a moment if his patience had at last paid dividends. If the Last Dusk had dawned and the final hours of Creation had come. Then, he dismissed the idle fantasy as he turned the full weight of his attention towards observing the phenomenon.
Touch, taste, smell. Senses once stifled filled in much like liquid metal poured into a mould. The King of Death had done his utmost to replicate the trappings of life through artistry and artifice, but even his legacy fell short of the work of the Gods. The Dead King drew an unneeded breath and tasted the fruits of their labour.
His Serenity, once lesser than creation, was diminished no longer.
Dark bushy eyebrows narrowed.
The King of Death had prepared for much over the many aeons that had passed since the dawn of his ascendancy. While this series of events was unanticipated, it did not fall outside the scope of his many contingencies. It was long before the first of those who would contest his Reign, and yet he could already sense the shape of the conflict to come.
Light brown eyes roamed across fields of gold. They passed over paved roads, bubbling brooks and miles of scenic forestry. Neshamah cast one last forlorn look upon the fruits of his labour.
The King of Death blinked.
Visions of barren fields shimmered beneath his lids.
Lands that had been carefully tended would soon fall to the ravenous maw of time.
There was a sense of poetry in it.
The Death of his Serenity would not come at the call of a crusader’s horn. It would not follow from the baying of hounds, or the summoning of angels, or even from the devils or demons of Praes.
No, Neshamah thought, Serenity would fall to no hand but his own.
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It had been long since Neshamah had last performed a ritual working personally.
The Hidden Horror had come to understand that all actions had an import to them through both time and the many lessons taught to him by his old friend. Sorcery was best channelled through others, save for when it mattered most. Conflict was to be avoided, except for when it could not be. All action held weight when it was assigned meaning, but there could only be so much significance when worth was given to everything. It was the paradox of Creation, that the less one performed, the more power one had when they took to the stage.
The King of Death knelt as he inscribed chalk lines against the stone. The many bands of gneiss felt rough beneath his shrivelled fingers. Transformation, continuity, the essence of life. It wasn’t long before his deft hands filled in the last of the lines. He spared the inner calculations a brief glance, before turning aside. He was satisfied with his work. His elegant brown robes spilled to the ground as he rose and took two careful steps past the circular indent in the ground. There — within the outer circle — his labour continued. The limestone took easier to his careful ministrations. Purity, simplicity, the essence of the Garden. There, his work concluded.
Neshamah cast his gaze across the ritual one last time for errors before he stepped beyond the outer threshold. Four candles flickered at each cardinal of the ritual circle. He raised a palm and began to chant in a sonorous voice. Blood flowed along the grooves in the rock. Flowed, then accumulated. Neshamah’s voice rose. His skeletal fingers clenched. His voice cut off.
The stone within the ritual circle darkened to a midnight black. Lights sparkled in the inky pool. A dense fog congealed above the circle, only for an imp to materialize. The Dead King chanted a quick phrase and the creature imploded. Infernal ichor dripped onto the surface below. A few moments later and there was a ripple — much like a lake at the touch of a rock — then shapes carved themselves upon the shadowed veil. The Chain of Hunger, the Principate of Procer, Keter, the Kingdom of Callow, Ashur, Levant, and even the Empire of Praes. A map of Calernia painted against the rock in red.
The King of Death leaned down and examined the residue from his spell.
It was as much as he had already surmised. The disturbance in the fallen Titan’s City of Mirrors had done more than just upset the balance of Creation. The potential for the crown of a new Fae Court to manifest had been seeded somewhere in Callow. The crown did not exist yet — but it might — should the right events come to pass. The King of Death was too distant from the epicentre for a more accurate measurement.
However, time had granted him a knack for stories that made the source of the resonance trivial to guess. It was the Aspirant who had turned Creation on its head. Her story had been birthed in the city of Liesse. It was there that the crown would one day be summoned forth. The corners of the King of Death’s bloodless lips turned upwards at the thought of the trouble that would come of it. Wars would be fought among his enemies, and he would not even need to lift a finger. It was the work of a few more moments to dispel the incantation before Neshamah turned away from the empty circle.
A few short steps saw him outside the laboratory and onto a balcony overlooking what remained of his Serenity.
Farmlands grew wild, houses fell apart with disuse. A land which had once been idyllic buckled under the callous touch of entropy. A part of Neshamah had been tempted to have undead servants cultivate the Serenity — to maintain the pale imitation that he had crafted — however, the King of Death had been quick to set that sentiment aside.
It had been months since those living within his Serenity had been called to join his host.
It would be long before the life which had been bestowed upon his hell breathed its last.
The old monster would wait out those centuries. He would wait until the last echoes of Creation had drained out of his Serenity before his work was renewed. Much had changed in the years since he had first claimed the hell. His methods had been refined. What had taken millennia to achieve once would instead be whittled down to the span of a few careful centuries. It would be weaker in its return. It was unfortunate that a story was never so strong as when it is first told. The King of Death had deemed it too dangerous to risk allowing new tales to find purchase in his domain.
The present shape of Serenity was not his only loss to this unexpected turn of events.
Both the Mantle and the Drake had failed to slip their bonds once again. The King of Death had decided this time that it was wiser to lay them to rest. His old friend was dangerous enough without him handing her the knife to press against his heart. He would not chance his own demise to the depredations of new and novel stories. The remnant of the Drakon which slumbered in his realm presented another complication that Neshamah had yet to resolve.
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A stillness had fallen over the Kingdom of the Dead. Neshamah had halted all raids into the Lycaonese lands. Now only scouts ventured south. He had decided to watch and observe until new patterns could be discerned. It is almost as if the Gods have abandoned an old game in favour of a new one, the King of Death thought. There was no predicting what patterns he might fall prey to should he play the new game without first learning the rules.
It was fortunate then that the burden of new stories had weighed his enemies down more than they had weighed down him.
His scouts had brought word from neighbouring lands. News of chaos stretching across from one side of Calernia to the other. The first whispers had held the most promise. It had taken many attempts for a revenant to successfully thread the gloom of the Everdark and then journey past the Dwarven encirclement, but much had been learned.
Discord scoured the Kingdom Under the Mountain.
What had appeared to be the first seeds of a fourteenth expansion had withered and died at the stem. The War with the now fallen Empire Ever Dark in the north-east of their territory had intensified, only the tides had now turned. It had come as a surprise to the King of Death that it appeared the weight of new stories favoured the Drow. Machines that once cut down the Drow with ruthless efficiency now found themselves torn apart. The Drow had found renewed purpose in their sudden windfall and had turned the offensive back on their once unbeaten foes.
Fire spirits — once bound tight by Dwarven sorcery — had broken from their fetters and brought chaos to the Kingdom Under. The King Under the Mountain had been struck down by one of his own people in an act of treachery that many were appalled by. Civil war had spread from one side of their empire to the other as many tried to lay claim to the now empty throne.
A turn of fate that not even Neshamah could have anticipated had come from deep within the heart of the Kingdom Under. A dwarven sorcerer had collected pages of the Kabbalis Book of Darkness and toiled away at his own attempt at apotheosis. It was a masterpiece of artifice engineered by an expert who was seemingly unaware of the dangers that lay within the pages that he consumed.
Neshamah’s scouts had failed to uncover what occurred within the land of the elves. The result left him unsurprised. The Forever King had a history of executing any who stepped into the shelter of the Golden Bloom. Even in the face of what the King of Death was quickly coming to consider the Age of Chaos, the veil of secrecy the elves shrouded themselves with had yet to fade away.
There had been a brief rise in conflict along the border shared with the Chain of Hunger before the more typical seasonal violence had resumed. Not that Neshamah expected to learn anything from behavioural changes in that damned species. There was no land more accursed than those to the west of Keter.
Despite the Principate of Procer holding much less hard power, the matters which occurred there were arguably of far greater import. Procer had eaten its own tail for close to two decades. The King of Death had expected them to fall apart at the seams. Failing that, he expected them to lick their wounds after the civil war and eventually call a crusade against the east in the years to come. Neshamah had observed events within the principate with interest for some time. There had been a slim chance that circumstances would unfold in a manner that presented him with an opportunity.
It had appeared at first as if the nation of Procer would dissolve in the aftermath of the now infamous political debate. Four of the southern Principalities had threatened to secede from Procer and another two had become consumed by internal succession wars. The King of Death would’ve celebrated the fall of his southern neighbour, but was unsurprised when the Principate claws its way back from the brink. Cordelia Hasenbach had ridden south to negotiate a resolution, only for her journey to have proven without merit.
A damaged fleet of refugee ships from Yan Tei had docked on the shores near Vaccei.
Neshamah had puzzled over the arrival of the Yan Tei for some time before a revenant overheard a boast spoken in hushed tones from one refugee to another. They had whispered of the Emperor having perished while striking down a Gnomish sky ship. It appeared that the Yan Tei were content to suffer under their yoke no longer. The King of Death would applaud their temerity if he believed it would amount to anything more than the same futility of every other nation who had attempted the same.
Those aboard had marched swiftly on the city and seized the walls. The Dominion of Levant had made two separate attempts to recapture their city, only to be rebuffed brutally on both occasions. Many dispossessed Levantine citizens had fled Vaccei across the boarder to the Principate.
The southern Principalities had been quick to cease threatening to secede from Procer once it became evident how much of a threat their new southern neighbours posed. The new selection of Princes had all banded together behind Cordelia in the face of the new potential adversary. Diplomatic overtures were now being attempted by powers on either side of Vaccei. Both negotiations between the Principate and the Yan Tei refugees, as well as negotiations between the refugees and the Dominion of Levant.
It had therefore come as an unsettling surprise when the Principate of Procer had proceeded to capitalize on the winds of fortune that had blown their way with an alacrity rivalled only by his own. There had been a brief period of strife where heroes and villains had risen up before a new order had crystallized. The Principate’s newest rising hero had seen to the organization of heroes. There had been some resistance, but soon even that resistance was quelled.
Neshamah tapped the balcony railing and frowned once again at what the hero had done.
Heroes and villains within the Principate were required to put everything about their lives to the page. Who they were, when and where they were born, what injustice they sought to right, who they had come into conflict with, or even what masterpieces they wished to produce. Those details were then added to House of Light records, which were then made available to any hero who wished to further their own understanding of Namelore.
Heroes were organized into groups of varying sizes according to mutual compatibility. Some were sent out into the wilds in the traditional bands of five. Some were sent out in groups of three. Lovers were assigned duties in pairs, and those with Names that encouraged solitude were expected to mediate disputes on their own. Heroes were never organized into groups of four, and the Aspirant had insisted that heroes fill in forms justifying their reasoning if they wanted to organize an alliance of chosen that numbered more than five.
She had faced resistance to her attempt to bring order to the organization of heroes at first. Some heroes had ignored her claims to authority. Those complaints had died a swift death with every success that accumulated under her belt. Her Name was rapidly transforming into one spoken of with the same degree of reverence usually afforded to a White Knight.
That was not even taking into consideration the new approach that she had insisted on taking towards the resolution of Named conflict within the Principate. Each time a new villain was encountered, they were categorized similarly to heroes. Their weaknesses were then assessed. Scribes were employed to sift through all the accumulated information and speculate on which narratives villains would be weak to.
One of the scribes had even earned a Name related to the task.
When a new hero or villain was first encountered within the Principate, they were approached by either a hero or members of the armed force under the command of Klaus Papenheim. Any Named individuals that proved benign were guided towards the House of Light. Those who reacted with hostility were either captured or killed, depending on the degree of threat that they posed. Villains who were deemed to be redeemable were assigned permanent mentors from those who were willing to fill the Role.
So far only two had taken the offer.
The effort that the Aspirant was undertaking to strip the magic and mystery surrounding Names away impressed Neshamah. She approached the subject of Names with the same degree of rigour that he had once done many millennia ago. The trouble was that she didn’t sit on the same side of the table as he did. Instead, he observed as one press of the quill at a time his foes accumulated a wealth of knowledge which one day he would need to oppose.
Neshamah had not seen anything near as absurd in all the many years since his ascendancy. That those carrion crawlers Above would cheat the game this way was enough to draw forth his irritation. The greatest danger posed by her gambit lay in that there was a chance that she established herself as an arbiter of either Names or stories.
It wouldn’t be the first time that either a hero or a villain had attempted to claim such a position of authority. However, it would be the first time that Neshamah would consider the ambition to have any chance of success at all. There simply were not enough people with Names at most times for such a gambit to succeed. The temporary addition of new stories into the existing pool had created the perfect opportunity for somebody to do so.
The King of Death had intuited that new stories did not hold the same weight as older ones by observing how they played out across Calernia. Old heroes would face new villains, and the conflict would — barring exceptions — skew heavily in the favour of the old. The same was true when old villains came into conflict with new heroes.
This was promising in that it suggested that with time they would fade away, however, it was not the only outcome that was possible. Some of the new stories that appeared might accumulate sufficient weight through conflict to become not only permanent — but also major — fixtures in the warp and weft of Creation. While that meant that there were opportunities aplenty for new villains, what was far more likely was the banding together of many new heroes.
The old paradox first acknowledged by Irritant also remained a fixture in an altered form. The Aspirant had diluted the potency of Names by making them more present.
There was also a less obvious truth that lay below the surface.
Many smaller stories added together were able to accumulate a different kind of weight. The stories that did survive the coming culling would have a presence to them that made them almost impossible to remove.
Neshamah would’ve seen this as an opportunity in his younger years. A chance to make a play for greater power. Accumulated defeats at the hand of his old friend had taught him how far one could reach into the fire before losing a hand to the flames. No, he would not step outside the safety of his walls any time soon. He would do what he had done in the passing years instead.
The King of Death would wait.
Opportunity — after all — was ever eager to come knocking at his gates.