The Gods Declarant
Long ago, in the last five hundred years of the Golden Age, a group of Human and High Elf mages formed a fraternity called the Corpus Perfecti. They were obsessed with high alchemies, dealing in long-term magical conditions, and merging various races to create hybrids. Many of the theories of magic that we now accept as law were first observed by these mages. Some of them even breached the walls of this plane and traveled to other worlds, other planes of existence, even returning with... guests. In such a manner, they learned to bind their own souls to objects, creating phylacteries, effectively allowing them to cheat death at the expense of their own life. This leveled an imbalance in the fraternity, as the elves lived for almost as many centuries as the humans lived decades.
The fraternity became more exclusive, and their research was not shared, giving them a great advantage over other colleges. Despite their newfound advantage, the elven members noticed something about their contemporaries. The human liches were failing, not in body but in mind. They no longer grew, their minds were set, and failed to retain information that they had learned after the transformation. With this knowledge in mind, the fraternity began to seek out an avenue of perpetual growth. They found minor success by infusing the liches with blood, most successful was dragon blood, although this backfired when they used the blood of the Great Red Dragon, Sangunguis Dom. Soon after ingesting the blood of the Prime Dragon, they began to hunger, at first for flesh, but ultimately for blood.
Which goes to show, there's some truth to the old legends. What vampires exist today are of a bloodline of the dragon.
Desperate, the remaining liches, decided to look for a more permanent fix for their dilemma. At this point, some of the elves had undergone the procedure, and they too desired to exist in a state of growth. Even then, they talked of achieving Godhood via alchemy. They studied all forms of energy, and then, by sheer luck, stumbled across the Keepers.
You see, Keepers are balance points. They exist in a state of constant death and rebirth, much like a tree that is properly tended, they keep the necrotic and beneficial energies of our world in check. It's a lot more complicated than that, but suffice it to say, they tie it up all together in a nice, neat bow. Part of the things necessary for the task is the ever constant flow of vitality they receive from the Weave.
There was one small hitch, there were only four Keepers, and well over fifty liches and vampires.
In the end, there was a mad scramble for the Keepers, with all notions of fraternity cast aside. This was probably what saved you all in the end, because if the Keepers had been seized all at once, none would have escaped. Two did, although one was eventually caught. The other is still in hiding to this day.
Now, let's see if I can remember the names of the winners of that rat race. Ser-Naggoth, of whom you are familiar. He was a warlock who had made a bet with his patron Voidlord. It kinda went like "I bet if you turned me into a parasitic ooze, I could become a God." And his patron took that bet, which is how we got the darkness. What? It's true. We beat him... four hundred and fifty.. plus... years ago. We thought he evaporated and went straight to Limbo plane, where his patron was waiting to digest him. He must have made a slight detour, because we have his Emissary now. Anyhow, he was first place.
Next was Seraei, a Vampiress. She caught a Keeper just as it was waking up. She drinks its sap, and has forced it to drink her own blood. They've set up somewhere on the continent of Tenochyt. To this day locals there live in perpetual fear of the Queen of the Night. In those lands, the Dark Age has not ended.
Whoever caught the third Keeper, caught it one hundred and fifty-seven years ago. We don't know who, but we suspect it's someone in Pallan, probably in or around Sacelea. A powerful religion has been built up there, although, none of the trademark corruption of nature. Whomever this individual is, they were prepared for sholduring balance and were not part of the original Corpus Perfecti fraternity. That ended with their little rat race. Seraei and Ser-Naggoth were ruthless, they would tolerate no intrigue, no knife in the dark.
How do I know all this? Let's just say I watched from a distance. And that's all I have to say about that.
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