Undead History
A Brief History of Undeath & Eecress (Ek-r-ess) her Crystal and later Staff
They say the first undead were born from nightmares, in truth undead or the first known undead were mostly mindless creations of early necromancy or the result of tormented spirits becoming trapped in undeath. The first recorded intelligent undead was the creation of the goddess Sindra. They say one day the goddess overhead an ancient dragon named Eecress who on the verge of death by old age had begged to any being who heard it for the power to cheat death this desperate wyrm who had herself mastered much of the necromantic arts both amused and impressed the goddess.
The goddess whispered to Eecress the darkest of arcane secrets, using what the goddess gave her Eecress became the first Ravencer and the first creature to willingly transform itself into one of the undead. Eecress the Eternal would return to her queendom and rule over a terrified population as an undead dragon queen for countless ages,
Eecress would come to travel the planes and seek power in realms far beyond understanding as she craved power and knowledge as much as she did treasure or drinking souls. Eecress the Empress of Undeath as she became known lived for eons surviving the first and second age into the age of mortals a feat few other beings can claim.
During the early days of the mortal age Eecress had become hungry for life and her own lands could not satiate her. She set her eyes upon the great life filled forests of the elves and became determined to conquer them. In her journeys she had encountered a race of nightmarish undead called ghouls and these alien creatures made up the bulk of her forces. Ghoul armies swarmed into elven lands spreading plague and corruption and the unprepared elves were sent reeling from the attack. When Eecress herself arrived following her army it seemed as if all was lost.
The first elven king a demi-god in his own right gave up his divine power to tip the scales in favor of his people. It was his sacrifice that granted the elves immunity to the ghouls paralysing touch and protected them from rising as ghouls from the fevered disease they carried. However Eecress was still a threat and the elves were desperate to stop her. Aurankorax the gold wyrm would after much deliberation present an option to the Elven King in the form of powerful crystal that could trap Eecress mind allowing them to destroy her body.
A battle lost to legend soon followed and in its wake Eecress was destroyed, her spirit trapped in the Crystal of Eecress and her ghoul armies destroyed or forced to flee into the dark caverns below. The Crystal of Eecress would not remain with elven hands for long. The goddess Sindra arranged for her hidden cult to fake the crystals destruction and attempted to move it deep into the mountains. The cultists would however be ambushed by an outcast family of dwarves turned bandits and the Crystal would fall into the hands of a bandit dwarven clan led by Torkrel Greyhelm.
Torkrel had been banished along with his family for banditry, murder and worship of fiends and when the crystal promised him power and immortality Torkrel was eager to accept. Torkrel soon found himself abandoning his former devil worship in favor of the Goddess Sindra and with the Crystals knowledge transformed himself into the first Familial Lich. Now immortal and reborn through the bodies of his own kinsmen. Though it would be generations before Torkrel would be stopped, the Crystal of Eecress was lost to him after a mere year of becoming a familial lich.
Stolen away from Torkrel by Ixlyntyl, a kobold thief, the Crystal made its way into the cavernous world below. While Ixlyntyl had little magical talent the whispering orb directed her to sell it to its next master and when that master discovered some new secret of undeath the Kobold thief would steal it again as she was enthralled by the orbs draconic spirit. This process of the crystal teaching and encouraging new knowledge and types of undead continued for centuries until it came into the hands of the Ghoblyn cult of Dominance who promptly killed Ixlyntyl after she sold the Crystal to them.
The Ghoblyns used the Crystal of Eecress, forcing it to teach them how to create the Throne of Souls and the secrets of shaping life and death that the dragons of old had once used to create servants. Unlike its other masters the Ghoblyns were not so easily manipulated and they locked the Crystal of Eecress away once they had what they desired from it. At the end of the Darkwalker War the Ghoblyns lay defeated and their treasures were either lost, spirited away or taken by the alliance. That is save the Crystal of Eecress. It had been found by a Svart Elf scout named Phaedyn in a hidden vault that housed only the crystal. Before Phaedyn could alert others the vault closed and he was trapped inside with the Crystal surely to die.
The Crystal spoke to him and whispered to him at first Phaedyn resisted and held hope of his rescue but his rations and water left him and he was forced to eat rats and insects his will started to grow weak and the Crystals offers of freedom and longevity started to appeal to him. The Crystal taught the desperate elf a dark and vile ritual that would transform him into something strong enough to escape the vault. Phaedyn who had already started to succumb to madness and desperation embraced the ritual and in the darkness of the vault he cut himself with the Crystal of Eecress and marked the sigils for the ritual in his own blood. He lay at the center of the ritual chanting with his last breath and as he died he demanded Sindra save him from his mortal life.
When Phaedyn awoke his body was lean but strong, his senses sharper and strange magic flowed from his now taloned fingers. He then felt fangs in his mouth and a new hunger stirred in his belly, a hunger for blood. Taking the Cyrstal he broke free from the vault and started to hunt his former allies bitter that they had abandoned him. The elves, dwarves and gnomes had no word for the terror who stalked the caverns and so called it Nosferatu. When it became apparent that the victims were rising as hungry undead themselves the allies fled the dark caverns sealing them behind them.
Phaedyn found his bite had the power to transform his victims and they arose as his loyal spawn. Phaedyn remained hidden in the dark places with his Nosferatu children long into the tarnishing eventually putting aside his hatred and finding dark knowledge his new passion, the Crystal of Eecress always at his side. He watched his people fall and become the drow, he watched as the fiend mirrors brought the world to its knees and through it all he and the crystal mastered dark arts and uncovered vile secrets. It was during the age of the first city when the power of that place drew his attention. Phaedyn created an elaborate plan to infiltrate and take control of the cities magical noble houses. However unknown to him Eecress had grown bored of him and worked against him. The Crystal reached out to the nobles of house Daethu and warned them of the Nosferatu and his plots. Prepared for the incursion the masters of house Daethu would not just defeat but magically subjugate Phaedyn and take the Crystal. House Daethu cursed the Nosferatu for daring to work against them so never to be able to reproduce, with their victims only knowing death. So it was that only by teaching the Ritual of the Blood Seal Pact could the Nosferatu continue as a species.
The Crystal of Eecress soon regretted her choice as the god hating human-centric Daethu Family took to using her as a mere tool and they had been nearly impossible to sway. She soon found herself trapped and her ability to influence the world outside her prison greatly weakened when the Crystal was used as the centerpiece for the Staff of Eecress. For generations the Staff of Eecress remained a symbol of power for Daethu and was a potent tool of necromantic might. Nearing the last days of the hyperborean age of the first city Morai Daethu was born. The youngest daughter of the clan she was far removed from inheritance and this filled her with bitterness. The only thing that matched her bitterness was her vanity and lust. As a means to an end she commited what the great houses of the First City considered the greatest of sins. She turned to the gods for power, namely Sindra.
The blood rituals and debauchery had been of mild annoyance to her family but when it was discovered she was a cultist in service to a deity the family declared her a criminal and her fate would be to be transformed into an undead slave. It would so happen that fate would play its hand and Sindra along with the other gods would rise to strike down the first city for their pride before Morai could be captured.
In the aftermath Morai recovered the Staff of Eecress and many of her houses secrets. Hidden among the fleeing survivors she traveled with them the continent of Terigoth. It was here in the early days of man in this age of bronze that she declared herself a priestess-queen and ruled over a land where southern Ziberia would someday stand using the staff of Eecress as a symbol of her might.
It was as she felt her youth and beauty starting to fade that Morai the blood queen started to engage in darker rituals and soon they say every night a dozen virgins were sacrificed so that she could bathe in their blood. It was when the fearful and superstitious people of her lands started to worship Morai and not Sindra that the goddess of black magic grew jealous. Sindra sent visions to Morai trying to steer her direction however sensing a chance to spite the last living member of house Daethu Eecress would strain her trapped power and trick Morai into thinking her own goddess was against her.
In a supreme act of blasphemy and heresy Morai claimed she was a goddess of blood and queen of the souls of the dead. To prove this she promised she would enact a ritual of great power and feed on the blood and souls of a thousand children. Sindras rage was cold and vicious. In the disguise of an oracle Sindra came to Morai and told her that she would have one chance to repent or forever live with the consequences for her hubris. Morai commanded her champion to kill the disguised Sindra in response.
The Champion’s magical sword managed to slice Sindras cheek open before she waved a hand and he was consumed in black flames. So then did Sindra say to Morai “You have made your choice, your fate is sealed” The disguised goddess disappeared and Morai unaware of who the stranger truly was collected a drop of her spilled blood and the Staff of Eecress encouraged her to use it in her ritual.
The grand ritual of blood was a nightmarish night of debauched pleasures in homage to queen Morai and at its height Morai engaged in an advanced version of the Ritual of the Blood Seal Pact drinking the drop of Sindras blood at its completion. Sindra’s wrath was absolute and every reveler who worshiped queen Morai were transformed into black marble statues forever locked in their debauched revels. Morai found herself rising as a beautiful pale creature like unto the Nosferatu before her but she was far more noble and beautiful she was the first modern vampire. Yet for her new beauty she soon found Sindra had punished her in her own way. Morai could no longer see her own reflection, could no longer touch the running waters she enjoying swimming in and more over her queendom had become an empty realm of lifeless statues.
With no home and no ability to admire her beauty or any sycophants to admire it for her the undead queen fell into a deep depression.She realized then that she had failed her goddess and blamed the Staff of Eecress and in her fury tossed it into the sea. As she wept tears of blood waiting for the sun to end her new found sorrow Sindra stepped from the moon's shadow. “I can not forgive you nor the people who followed you my sweet Morai, but even as I cursed you I give you a second chance because in spite of my rage I love you my dear Morai '' They say the goddess kissed Morai and left her to consider her new existence.
Morai rededicated herself to her goddess and her new life as the queen of vampires vowing to spread the gift of undeath and rebuild an empire in the shadows. To this end she traveled to another kingdom pretending to be a princess and convinced them to wed her to their king. Morai found much to her surprise that this king was no mere pawn and he soon stirred feelings of love in her cold heart. King Samel became her husband and the first mortal she gifted with her curse.For centuries they ruled as immortal lovers only turning their most faithful into vampires who would in turn spread the Morai strain of vampirism.
Alas as time does all things even her kingdom would fall, betrayed by her own children her husband slain and her heart broken Morai retired from the mortal world to slumber in some hidden place and remains hidden away in some eons old crypt to this day or so the stories say. Others say she still stalks the world feeding on vampire and mortal alike seeking to punish her own children for their betrayal of her beloved husband.
Although it is unknown most sages suspect the Ritual of the Blood Seal Pact was used and variants of it responsible for the creation of other strains of vampire like undead in other regions around the world. Though Morai consider themselves blessed as they carry the blood of the very goddess of undeath in their heritage.
Ages later the staff of Eecress, now mad beyond reason and barely capable of communicating outside of her prison found herself washing ashore in the Kingdom of Torvaria. The staff was soon found by the bitter bastard prince Hordain Thuridas who would affix the skull of his brother to the staff hiding its black Crystal Core and use its power and his own talent with arcane magic to become the greatest necromancer ever to live. Countless new undead horrors were unleashed upon the world and Hordain developed (but never had a chance to use) the first rituals of lichdom (Though many of his apprentices would go on to become terrible lichs themselves). As for his staff it was lost upon his death and the vile artifact has yet to surface once more.
They say the first undead were born from nightmares, in truth undead or the first known undead were mostly mindless creations of early necromancy or the result of tormented spirits becoming trapped in undeath. The first recorded intelligent undead was the creation of the goddess Sindra. They say one day the goddess overhead an ancient dragon named Eecress who on the verge of death by old age had begged to any being who heard it for the power to cheat death this desperate wyrm who had herself mastered much of the necromantic arts both amused and impressed the goddess.
The goddess whispered to Eecress the darkest of arcane secrets, using what the goddess gave her Eecress became the first Ravencer and the first creature to willingly transform itself into one of the undead. Eecress the Eternal would return to her queendom and rule over a terrified population as an undead dragon queen for countless ages,
Eecress would come to travel the planes and seek power in realms far beyond understanding as she craved power and knowledge as much as she did treasure or drinking souls. Eecress the Empress of Undeath as she became known lived for eons surviving the first and second age into the age of mortals a feat few other beings can claim.
During the early days of the mortal age Eecress had become hungry for life and her own lands could not satiate her. She set her eyes upon the great life filled forests of the elves and became determined to conquer them. In her journeys she had encountered a race of nightmarish undead called ghouls and these alien creatures made up the bulk of her forces. Ghoul armies swarmed into elven lands spreading plague and corruption and the unprepared elves were sent reeling from the attack. When Eecress herself arrived following her army it seemed as if all was lost.
The first elven king a demi-god in his own right gave up his divine power to tip the scales in favor of his people. It was his sacrifice that granted the elves immunity to the ghouls paralysing touch and protected them from rising as ghouls from the fevered disease they carried. However Eecress was still a threat and the elves were desperate to stop her. Aurankorax the gold wyrm would after much deliberation present an option to the Elven King in the form of powerful crystal that could trap Eecress mind allowing them to destroy her body.
A battle lost to legend soon followed and in its wake Eecress was destroyed, her spirit trapped in the Crystal of Eecress and her ghoul armies destroyed or forced to flee into the dark caverns below. The Crystal of Eecress would not remain with elven hands for long. The goddess Sindra arranged for her hidden cult to fake the crystals destruction and attempted to move it deep into the mountains. The cultists would however be ambushed by an outcast family of dwarves turned bandits and the Crystal would fall into the hands of a bandit dwarven clan led by Torkrel Greyhelm.
Torkrel had been banished along with his family for banditry, murder and worship of fiends and when the crystal promised him power and immortality Torkrel was eager to accept. Torkrel soon found himself abandoning his former devil worship in favor of the Goddess Sindra and with the Crystals knowledge transformed himself into the first Familial Lich. Now immortal and reborn through the bodies of his own kinsmen. Though it would be generations before Torkrel would be stopped, the Crystal of Eecress was lost to him after a mere year of becoming a familial lich.
Stolen away from Torkrel by Ixlyntyl, a kobold thief, the Crystal made its way into the cavernous world below. While Ixlyntyl had little magical talent the whispering orb directed her to sell it to its next master and when that master discovered some new secret of undeath the Kobold thief would steal it again as she was enthralled by the orbs draconic spirit. This process of the crystal teaching and encouraging new knowledge and types of undead continued for centuries until it came into the hands of the Ghoblyn cult of Dominance who promptly killed Ixlyntyl after she sold the Crystal to them.
The Ghoblyns used the Crystal of Eecress, forcing it to teach them how to create the Throne of Souls and the secrets of shaping life and death that the dragons of old had once used to create servants. Unlike its other masters the Ghoblyns were not so easily manipulated and they locked the Crystal of Eecress away once they had what they desired from it. At the end of the Darkwalker War the Ghoblyns lay defeated and their treasures were either lost, spirited away or taken by the alliance. That is save the Crystal of Eecress. It had been found by a Svart Elf scout named Phaedyn in a hidden vault that housed only the crystal. Before Phaedyn could alert others the vault closed and he was trapped inside with the Crystal surely to die.
The Crystal spoke to him and whispered to him at first Phaedyn resisted and held hope of his rescue but his rations and water left him and he was forced to eat rats and insects his will started to grow weak and the Crystals offers of freedom and longevity started to appeal to him. The Crystal taught the desperate elf a dark and vile ritual that would transform him into something strong enough to escape the vault. Phaedyn who had already started to succumb to madness and desperation embraced the ritual and in the darkness of the vault he cut himself with the Crystal of Eecress and marked the sigils for the ritual in his own blood. He lay at the center of the ritual chanting with his last breath and as he died he demanded Sindra save him from his mortal life.
When Phaedyn awoke his body was lean but strong, his senses sharper and strange magic flowed from his now taloned fingers. He then felt fangs in his mouth and a new hunger stirred in his belly, a hunger for blood. Taking the Cyrstal he broke free from the vault and started to hunt his former allies bitter that they had abandoned him. The elves, dwarves and gnomes had no word for the terror who stalked the caverns and so called it Nosferatu. When it became apparent that the victims were rising as hungry undead themselves the allies fled the dark caverns sealing them behind them.
Phaedyn found his bite had the power to transform his victims and they arose as his loyal spawn. Phaedyn remained hidden in the dark places with his Nosferatu children long into the tarnishing eventually putting aside his hatred and finding dark knowledge his new passion, the Crystal of Eecress always at his side. He watched his people fall and become the drow, he watched as the fiend mirrors brought the world to its knees and through it all he and the crystal mastered dark arts and uncovered vile secrets. It was during the age of the first city when the power of that place drew his attention. Phaedyn created an elaborate plan to infiltrate and take control of the cities magical noble houses. However unknown to him Eecress had grown bored of him and worked against him. The Crystal reached out to the nobles of house Daethu and warned them of the Nosferatu and his plots. Prepared for the incursion the masters of house Daethu would not just defeat but magically subjugate Phaedyn and take the Crystal. House Daethu cursed the Nosferatu for daring to work against them so never to be able to reproduce, with their victims only knowing death. So it was that only by teaching the Ritual of the Blood Seal Pact could the Nosferatu continue as a species.
The Crystal of Eecress soon regretted her choice as the god hating human-centric Daethu Family took to using her as a mere tool and they had been nearly impossible to sway. She soon found herself trapped and her ability to influence the world outside her prison greatly weakened when the Crystal was used as the centerpiece for the Staff of Eecress. For generations the Staff of Eecress remained a symbol of power for Daethu and was a potent tool of necromantic might. Nearing the last days of the hyperborean age of the first city Morai Daethu was born. The youngest daughter of the clan she was far removed from inheritance and this filled her with bitterness. The only thing that matched her bitterness was her vanity and lust. As a means to an end she commited what the great houses of the First City considered the greatest of sins. She turned to the gods for power, namely Sindra.
The blood rituals and debauchery had been of mild annoyance to her family but when it was discovered she was a cultist in service to a deity the family declared her a criminal and her fate would be to be transformed into an undead slave. It would so happen that fate would play its hand and Sindra along with the other gods would rise to strike down the first city for their pride before Morai could be captured.
In the aftermath Morai recovered the Staff of Eecress and many of her houses secrets. Hidden among the fleeing survivors she traveled with them the continent of Terigoth. It was here in the early days of man in this age of bronze that she declared herself a priestess-queen and ruled over a land where southern Ziberia would someday stand using the staff of Eecress as a symbol of her might.
It was as she felt her youth and beauty starting to fade that Morai the blood queen started to engage in darker rituals and soon they say every night a dozen virgins were sacrificed so that she could bathe in their blood. It was when the fearful and superstitious people of her lands started to worship Morai and not Sindra that the goddess of black magic grew jealous. Sindra sent visions to Morai trying to steer her direction however sensing a chance to spite the last living member of house Daethu Eecress would strain her trapped power and trick Morai into thinking her own goddess was against her.
In a supreme act of blasphemy and heresy Morai claimed she was a goddess of blood and queen of the souls of the dead. To prove this she promised she would enact a ritual of great power and feed on the blood and souls of a thousand children. Sindras rage was cold and vicious. In the disguise of an oracle Sindra came to Morai and told her that she would have one chance to repent or forever live with the consequences for her hubris. Morai commanded her champion to kill the disguised Sindra in response.
The Champion’s magical sword managed to slice Sindras cheek open before she waved a hand and he was consumed in black flames. So then did Sindra say to Morai “You have made your choice, your fate is sealed” The disguised goddess disappeared and Morai unaware of who the stranger truly was collected a drop of her spilled blood and the Staff of Eecress encouraged her to use it in her ritual.
The grand ritual of blood was a nightmarish night of debauched pleasures in homage to queen Morai and at its height Morai engaged in an advanced version of the Ritual of the Blood Seal Pact drinking the drop of Sindras blood at its completion. Sindra’s wrath was absolute and every reveler who worshiped queen Morai were transformed into black marble statues forever locked in their debauched revels. Morai found herself rising as a beautiful pale creature like unto the Nosferatu before her but she was far more noble and beautiful she was the first modern vampire. Yet for her new beauty she soon found Sindra had punished her in her own way. Morai could no longer see her own reflection, could no longer touch the running waters she enjoying swimming in and more over her queendom had become an empty realm of lifeless statues.
With no home and no ability to admire her beauty or any sycophants to admire it for her the undead queen fell into a deep depression.She realized then that she had failed her goddess and blamed the Staff of Eecress and in her fury tossed it into the sea. As she wept tears of blood waiting for the sun to end her new found sorrow Sindra stepped from the moon's shadow. “I can not forgive you nor the people who followed you my sweet Morai, but even as I cursed you I give you a second chance because in spite of my rage I love you my dear Morai '' They say the goddess kissed Morai and left her to consider her new existence.
Morai rededicated herself to her goddess and her new life as the queen of vampires vowing to spread the gift of undeath and rebuild an empire in the shadows. To this end she traveled to another kingdom pretending to be a princess and convinced them to wed her to their king. Morai found much to her surprise that this king was no mere pawn and he soon stirred feelings of love in her cold heart. King Samel became her husband and the first mortal she gifted with her curse.For centuries they ruled as immortal lovers only turning their most faithful into vampires who would in turn spread the Morai strain of vampirism.
Alas as time does all things even her kingdom would fall, betrayed by her own children her husband slain and her heart broken Morai retired from the mortal world to slumber in some hidden place and remains hidden away in some eons old crypt to this day or so the stories say. Others say she still stalks the world feeding on vampire and mortal alike seeking to punish her own children for their betrayal of her beloved husband.
Although it is unknown most sages suspect the Ritual of the Blood Seal Pact was used and variants of it responsible for the creation of other strains of vampire like undead in other regions around the world. Though Morai consider themselves blessed as they carry the blood of the very goddess of undeath in their heritage.
Ages later the staff of Eecress, now mad beyond reason and barely capable of communicating outside of her prison found herself washing ashore in the Kingdom of Torvaria. The staff was soon found by the bitter bastard prince Hordain Thuridas who would affix the skull of his brother to the staff hiding its black Crystal Core and use its power and his own talent with arcane magic to become the greatest necromancer ever to live. Countless new undead horrors were unleashed upon the world and Hordain developed (but never had a chance to use) the first rituals of lichdom (Though many of his apprentices would go on to become terrible lichs themselves). As for his staff it was lost upon his death and the vile artifact has yet to surface once more.
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