Thread:Argali1/@comment-26084195-20160508220847/@comment-26084195-20160510035735

High Priestess Ebony (she had forsaken her family name long ago) stood before the assembled crowd of Dark Elves. They were all splots of violet skin and white hair amidst the sea of black robes. Despite being the high priestess, she didn’t wear robes. In fact, she wore nothing at all as she stood with her back to the crowd facing the statue of Vladak carved into the rocks.

There was definitely something wrong in that pretty little noggin of hers. She had only been three when Vladak faced defeat by the forces of Ariel and Sss’ra. Nobody knows quite why, but she was deeply effected by Vladak’s apparent demise, despite the fact that her family was actually against Vladak’s rule. She had joined the still-thriving cult to Vladak amongst the Dark Elves. While the Draconians split up into fiefdoms in the absence of Sss’ra’s power and the Beastmen fiefdoms just went back to infighting, the Cult of Vladak kept the Dark Elves from (fully) regressing back into their self destructive state, and Ebony went into the cult when she was five. She had the cult sacrifice her brother when she was seven for saying she shouldn’t be in the cult. At twelve she personally sacrificed her other brother and her father for speaking out against her activities in the cult, and her mother was already dead so there was no need to worry about that. She inherited her family fortune and immediately gave all of it to the cult. She had become absolutely obsessed with Vladak and worshipped him with more manic fervor than anybody else in the cult. That was at age fourteen. At age sixteen she funded and headed an expedition by the cult and located the mines where they discovered the Crysx veins. This would eventually play host to the fortress dubbed Bloodrock. These mines quickly became the headquarters of the cult, and that combined with her really quite extensive magical prowess, she rose up quite quickly to become a priestess, and eventually the direct secondary to the former High Priest. And literally the very second she turned eighteen she murdered him and took his place. She then decreed that from that point on, she decreed that all sacrificial rituals in the mines must be performed by the High Priest/Priestess, and that it makes the ritual stronger if it is performed without clothing. She has held that position and that belief for the six years since, and her manic obsession with the fallen dark lord only continued to grow.

And so it was, on the twenty-first anniversary of Vladak’s defeat, that Ebony stood naked before his statue, staring up at it with reverence in her eyes.

“Just a bit longer, my lord.” she whispered to it. “Just a bit longer, and we shall finally be together in the flesh.”

She turned to the assembled crowd. “Bring out the sacrifice!”

A pair of cultists carried a stretcher out, on which was tied up and gagged a (also naked) High Elven Priestess of Ariel. They lifted her from the stretcher and placed her on the raised platform.

“You don’t need to do this!” She implored to Ebony. “Your dark lord is never going to come back! All of this sacrificing is pointless, it cannot pull Vladak--”

She gasped as Ebony struck her across the face. “Never speak his name you unworthy wretch!” She threw her hands out, and a highly intricate glowing purple pentagram surrounded by various symbols appeared on the floor, with the High Elf at the direct center of it. Ebony stepped up onto the platform with a bone-white dagger in her fist. She cast some sort of spell, and the pentagram erupted in blazing purple fire. The temperature in the room dropped sharply, and the High Elf screamed and writhed in agony as she was ungulfed by the cold fire. Ebony however was totally unscathed, walking through the purple fire, calm of poise but with a mad glint in her eye. She kneeled next to the priestess and plunged the bone-dagger into her chest cavity, carving out her heart.

To the newcomers, it would have seemed incredible that even while Ebony held her bloody heart high, the priestess was still managing to twist about and emit the most unearthly scream imaginable. Ebony turned and held the heart up to the statue. Its eyes began to glow red and purple fires lit in its outstretched palms. Two fireballs shot from them and struck the heart, disintegrating it.

The High Elf’s screaming stops, bu her mouth remains open. From it bursts a mass of black vapours. It hover above her body, and then begins to coalesce. When it was done, the fires had gone out and the pentagram had vanished. The priestess’s body was gone.

In her place, tall and regal, stood the black plague on the world, Vladak, the Sorcerer Supreme.

Ebony suddenly felt small and cold in the presence of his imposing figure, and almost wish she was wearing anything at all. He turned those malign red eyes toward her, and she fell to the ground in a bow of pure reverence.

“The Exalted One has returned!” She yelled.

The assembled crowd of Dark Elves followed her suit. “So he commanded. So have we done.”

Beneath his hood, Vladak smiled. “It’s good to be back. HmhmhmhmhahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!”

Meanwhile, on Arcanus, Ariel, Tlaloc, and the new Wizards Freya and Tauron all jolt from their beds in a cold sweat. Something just went very wrong with the world.