Vaz

The Immortal

Desperation breeds extreme solutions, and when everything else fails, a desperate population seeks help from those, who they previously shunned for reasons of morality. For decades their numbers had gone down, mysterious illness with no symptoms had been taking them down faster than they could reproduce, only few generations ago there were millions of them, now, only a fraction of that. They had tried everything, medicine, science, magic, occult, they had prayed to every god they could find, worshiped every being with power to help, but nothing changed.

And so they turned on the last lifeline, a dark mage skilled in the unholy, the one that dared to challenge the universe itself, the one seeking to defeat the most powerful force of them all, Death. It was a gamble of course, the lone kobold had spend his whole life in the darkness, but nobody knew if he had made any progress, nobody had dared to ask, after all, what he was doing was a crime against nature, nobody wanted to know if he had succeeded, until now.

He knew this day would come, since his first breath he had known this was his fate, and so, the day had come, he gathered those left and started a ritual, it was time to end this, end the generations of suffering, save the doomed family. Yet, the universe had the last laugh, as it always does, for playing god there is always a price, and his price, was failure, a catastrophic failure. Had he made a mistake? was the fault in the ritual itself? no, it couldn't be, he had prepared this for his whole life, yet, there he was, standing alone, surrounded by silent, lifeless caves of once great family. 

It was supposed to save everyone, he was supposed to give up himself to bring life to others, but instead the exact opposite had happened, he had succeeded finding the key to immortality, he didn't age, he couldn't be killed, but, it had cost everything, everyone, he was now alone. 

The Undying

Desperation breeds extreme solutions, and when everything else fails, a desperate population seeks help from those, who they previously shunned for reasons of morality. For decades their numbers had gone down, mysterious illness with no symptoms had been taking them down faster than they could reproduce, only few generations ago there were millions of them, now, only a fraction of that. They had tried everything, medicine, science, magic, occult, they had prayed to every god they could find, worshiped every being with power to help, but nothing changed.

And so they turned on the last lifeline, a dark mage skilled in the unholy, the one that dared to challenge the universe itself, the one seeking to defeat the most powerful force of them all, Death. It was a gamble of course, the lone kobold had spend his whole life in the darkness, but nobody knew if he had made any progress, nobody had dared to ask, after all, what he was doing was a crime against nature, nobody wanted to know if he had succeeded, until now.

But it was not yet time, he knew it was his fate to save his own, but not yet, there was a greater threat approaching, an enemy who would bring ruin to not only them, but the whole of kobold kind, and so the enemy came, it destroyed, it killed, it enslaved. The dark mage was made an example, executed in front of those he had vowed to protect, chained and thrown to drown, his last words cursing the enemy, cursing everyone and everything that allowed this to happen. And so time passed, for generations the kobold kind suffered great injustice, hope was low, but the spirit never broken, through the worst pain they kept going, together pushing through the most violent of storms, in place of every ruined home, they build a stronger one, every lost life, was a reason to live more, as they never forgot, they never forgave, and in the shadows, fate was working overtime.

And so, after centuries, a group gathered together in the shadows, a great plan was to be fulfilled, for lifetimes it had been prepared, and now the time had come, time to fulfill a fate so long ago left unfulfilled. They started a ritual created through generations, a spell build for single purpose, and as they chanted, as the ancient promise was spoken, the darkness was lit up by sinister light, and from the altar a form rose, the dark mage of old was awake once more.