Summary:The Death Knights were the four most feared generals of Lucian Homont, the Lord-Emperor who crowned himself Lich King during the post-Elvish Dominion era. Known collectively as the Mournival, these commanders helped orchestrate a genocidal campaign to secure humanity's independence — not just in borders, but in culture and soul. Their names have become synonymous with terror, and their legacies linger in cursed ruins, ancient diseases, and whispered oaths.
---
Historical Account:
When the Elvish Dominion was at last shattered, the peoples of Arta believed themselves free to forge their own destinies. Freed from centuries of control, they imagined an age of cultural renaissance and self-determination.
But Lucian Homont had other plans.
Once a celebrated general during the Elven War, Homont used his newfound authority and veteran legions to secure power as the first Lord-Emperor of the emerging Human Concord. Yet peace was not his goal. Aware of the subtle dominion long-lived races held over human affairs, not through armies, but by slow ideological seepage, Homont turned to darker solutions. Death would be the great equalizer. Immortality, the only safeguard.
Through sorcery and sacrifice, Lucian Homont became the Lich King. He proclaimed a grim doctrine: never again would humans kneel. To secure this future, the Lich King ordered the purge of non-human races from his domain, driving them beyond Arta’s Spine, the great mountain range that cleaves the continent in two.
His campaign was swift, brutal, and supernatural.
The Mournival: The Lich King's Death Knights
Foremost among Lucian's followers were four figures, warlords of terrifying power, each gifted with mastery over death in a unique and dreadful form. These were not mere generals; they were his apostles in undeath, known only as the Death Knights.
Their personal histories were deliberately erased or obscured, likely to protect any bloodlines left behind. Only one retained a true name: the infamous Blood Queen. The others adopted titles and monikers, becoming archetypes of horror rather than people.
Alexandrine, the Blood Queen
A sorceress of terrible beauty and ritual precision. Her battalions were infamous for blood rites, battlefield necromancy, and the reanimation of slain foes to serve as thralls. Rumors speak of vampirism, but no surviving source confirms it. Most records of her reign were lost, either during Nyasia’s Reconciliation or by the deliberate burning of archives by Lizbeth Alkadama. Whatever remains may lie entombed in the Alkadama vault-crypts, untouched and dangerous.
Morbhal, the Plague Bearer
Once a healer or herbalist, according to discredited apocrypha, Morbhal turned pestilence into weaponry. Their most infamous legacy is Morbhal’s Rot, a persistent, corpse-born disease that infects only non-humans. Deadly even after death, the Rot re-emerges in forgotten crypts and mass graves, its cycle of extermination ebbing and flowing with the centuries. Its unnatural selectivity hints at bio-thaumaturgy lost to modern scholars.
Caelgrix, the Fleshmolder
Also known as the Lord of Death, Caelgrix is thought to be the architect behind the undead legions and demonic war-engines that razed entire cities. Accounts suggest mastery over vitae shaping, the ability to mold flesh, bone, and soul into horrors. Once the Lich King was struck down, the dreaded creatures seem to lose all animation, leading many to believe that the Lich King’s magic itself gave them anima.
Arcane scholars question this stance, as Caelgrix’s fel magic seems to appear on and off throughout history. Practiced by beings of different names and reputations, but almost always the same in style and performance.
If this is Caelgrix, then they seem to a fickle being, quick to drop their loyalty when their purpose is complete.
It is theorized that on the Lich King’s death, Caelgrix simply saw no reason to continue his fight.
Iskarion, the Rime Haunter
A spectral presence in history, Iskarion’s raids were heralded by sudden blizzards and madness. Survivors speak of snow-blind battles, a horn’s call that unhinged the mind, and kin turning feral without warning. Their raids never aligned with broader strategy, and at the final siege against the Lich King, Iskarion did not appear. Whether this was desertion, death, or some deeper treachery is a mystery still debated by arcane historians.
---
Though Lucian Homont was eventually destroyed in the civil war that followed, the Death Knights were never officially slain. Some believe their spirits linger. Others claim they were destroyed by the very monstrosities they unleashed. A few cults still whisper their names in candlelit crypts.
Their weapons, war-paths, and deeds remain etched into the bones of Arta itself.
Comments