Legends of Belariath
Artaris
Scion of Death
This is an epic tale of an evil Necromancer who lived before the time of life now. Most information on this man has been lost to the passing of time, but each century, new life is brought into his past. We here at the History Department wish to bring reference to those out there who search for knowledge and information on the past.
Life essence had always been flaunted around by living beings of the world. The significance of all living creatures, but most of all, those of the darker arts. Necromancy had a wide range of worshipers, but some of the darkest known to record were those of the moriel. This is a tale of a Necromancer who had spread his reign across the world, releasing endless hordes of undead minions while he supported his own realm of power and sadistic euphoria.
Nefindaliz was a once great Torian Necromancer who had forged himself into the darkest of all rituals, Immortality. Though his tale was not known to most, and lost in history, few tomes still reside which hold small fragments of information on his life and methods. The man was known as the Scion of Death, the son of life who came to the side of death without truly dying. Man had fallen in his four hundred year reign of power.
During the ancient times, before Nanthalion existed, there was a realm known as Glamadorn. In the midst of the land would be a great, wondrous city named Farlum. Inside this great city would reside many different races and breeds, and honor and code was the way of life. Things were far different then how they are now in Nanthalion, but that was a different time, a different age long past.
Farlum held a great council of people, two from each race, of both genders, so everyone was voiced and their opinions heard. This council was called the Coalition. The alliance between these different breeds helped keep peace in the land, so none of the lower aspects of creation would ruin the image of their betters.
Of course, there was petty things such as thieves, assassins, and brigands, but they held a strict code like everyone else. The innocent were never harmed unless by shear necessity. No children were ever killed. Slavery did not exist any longer, outlawed centuries before when the Coalition first formed.
It was a paradise said to never end. Perfection in it’s prime.
Then suddenly, a certain Torian came into the picture and altered everything. The foundation that life had risen itself upon crumbled, and the War of Chaos began.
Nefindaliz had grew up as a young prodigy. Born of a noble family, and his father was on the Council for the Torian races’ male behalf, one would except great things from this child. Oh, one must wonder why anyone would name their child Nefindaliz, but at one time his name was not such. His true name had disappeared long before this tale was retold to the world, but that is something else entirely.
Growing up as a student of healing, and mastering the arts of the Healing Magic, the man became one of the City’s top healers. Any disease could easily be remedied by his powers. Everything was too simple for this master of the magical arts. But it was not enough, he wanted to broaden his horizons. He wanted more. Greed and lust for knowledge and power filled his mind, and off the Torian went.
Searching the realm, seeking high and low, he found what he sought, something unusual and unknown. Something forbidden in Galmadorn. The Art of Necromancy. The man’s eyes grew wide and heated with passion for his desire to learn more, so he sought out the teachers. A cult deep in the underground, moriel priests who would gladly teach him the ways.
It took not long, just like everything else, for the man to adapt and learn these new things, and was told of a certain book, which name is unknown to the history of time, that held more ancient arts that had never been performed, and some that one could never dream of. Nefindaliz’s thirst to search out this book overwhelmed him and away he went yet again for his ambitions to be filled.
Not long after he had searched for the book, about three decades, he had found it, deep in the Nethergloom. An area of dark tunnels had lead him deep into the darkness where he found an ancient and forgotten shrine which held the book on a pestle with dust all over it, untouched for over the centuries.
Leaving the Nethergloom, the Torian found his way to the surface where he returned to Farlum and secluded himself in his Tower that he had acquired from his deceased father and mother. The land was going through a prosperous time, and they had already hired a new, yet older Torian male to succeed his father. Finding it a disgrace, Nefindaliz confronted the Coalition.
The outcome did not fair well. As the Coalition told him away, he went without any effort, but only back to the book. Digging within the reaches of the tome, he found a spell he saw useful, and another to aid in it’s power. The magic of death was new to him, but he saw possibility in them.
Returning to the Coalition while they were in sitting, he cast a spell that ended the life of each and every man and woman’s life in that building. Then, with another spell that took several minutes to prepare, life came back to those who had fallen, but they were walking corpses.
The facade succeeded as Nefindaliz took control of the Coalition, turning all the power over to himself and then released the spell upon the dead bodies. They fell to ash all around, and the man claimed himself the Emperor of Glamadorn.
With the sudden rise of power, and no one able to do anything to stop it, the Torian Necromancer started to raise an army of the dead to serve him.
All life began to turn into turmoil, and people feared for themselves and their loved ones. Some changed to go toward the darker side. Everything had changed with one sudden action from a single man.
People revolted. A normal rebellion at first, which caused nothing to be noted of it. But the longer the battles raged on, the more it was concerned as a war. The great city of Farlum existed no more, it was a pile of rubble with only a small fraction of the buildings still standing. With this, Noble Houses split, creating lands further away from the fallen land which was known as the Sinner’s Haven. As new realms sprouted up like weeds, Nefindaliz worried himself more into his great tome.
War did break out a century later. With all the combined Houses forming into one army, they laid siege to the old Farlum. The people did war against the undead for nearly three centuries until things truly started to heat up and change the facts of life. Nefindaliz had found himself a ritual inside the tome which none had ever tried, at least none in history that had been written down or noted. The Ritual of Life. The Ritual of Death. Immortality was in his grasp. The ritual called for one key ingredient. Human souls. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands. It was all laid at his footsteps for him to do. The Ritual would take days to prepare, and then hours to perform. A sky within the great citadel that Nefindaliz had taken up as his residence found out this plan and reported it back to the forces who opposed him.
Victory had to be achieved, or the vile abomination would succeed and live forever. Fear enveloped everyone’s minds and hearts. But they pushed on deeper into his realm, going for the citadel. Four days into the ritual and he was preparing for the casting. Suddenly, the door opened at his most weakest state, revealing a horde of humans, elves, and many other species into the room. The warriors slaughtered the Torian while he remained at his most vulnerable.
As short and as simple as this may appear, this is not the whole story behind Nefindaliz, Scion of Death. It is actually just a simple reference that had happened before and at the end of his reign. Information is gathered ever century that helps uncover more foreboding tales of this man, but something that is not truly explained was at the end, when Nefindaliz was slain. It states he was killed, but not what had happened afterwards. What happened to his body, did he truly die? Was the spell already cast or did they stop him in time? There are references that there was another who acted and was described just like the fabled Torian, but those of us in the History Department are quite unclear on the details.