Profesjonalni i bezlitośni, byli jednymi z pierwszych z nowej generacji ludzi, którzy chwycili za broń przeciw wampirom Nosgoth. Uzbrojeni w precyzyjne łuki, są przyzwyczajeni do taktyki szybkiego ataku i odwrotu. Przysięgli lojalność Obserwatorom, skrytobójcom wyszkolonym w zabijaniu wrogów z wielu ukrytych punktów obserwacyjnych gór Mrocznego Edenu.
From the mountains of the north, the Watchers have maintained a link between Human communities in the northern mountains near the territory that has come to be known as Dark Eden. Once a region twisted by corrosive energies, the events surrounding the Pillars of Nosgoth’s collapse rendered it inhabitable by mortals once more, an act of irony that would no doubt have brought a wry smile to Kain’s face.
In the centuries that followed, certain brave remnants of Humanity fled to the infamous region, desperate to find refuge from the Vampiric onslaught of Kain’s legions. They discovered that more mature Vampires were less inclined to pursue them in its rocky passes, eventually coming to realise that Dark Eden was now a designated hunting ground for newly risen Vampire fledglings, with Humans being their carefully cultivated prey. Despite their many losses, Humanity began to raise new generations, permitted by their Vampire overlords if only so as to provide them with sport. The name Dark Eden remained gruesomely appropriate, with the Humans who called it home growing more cold-hearted with each mortal life cut short.
Born and raised under such inhospitable conditions, the Humans of Dark Eden became some of the most shrewd and opportunistic that Nosgoth had ever seen, these skills being a necessary part of their day-to-day survival. They set up hidden camps high in the surrounding mountains, quick to erect and disassemble, affording them early warning of a Vampire raid. Armed with longbows well suited to picking off Vampire assailants from a distance, the men and women who manned these posts became known as the Watchers. Famed for their keen eyes and steady hands, the Watchers memorised every hidden nook and cranny giving them any advantage, however slight, over their hated enemy.
Honing their skills across each passing generation, the Watchers became a link between the Human communities in the northern mountains, eventually establishing lines of communication with settlements belonging to the Ironguard, far from the central Vampire cities. Watchers became renowned as much for being messengers and path-finders as for being warriors - the first to reopen paths after the heaviest snows had fallen or to smuggle scarce supplies to those in need. This is not to say their reputation was entirely benign. As the sole source of news for Humanity’s scattered communities, they were also seen as harbingers of woe, appearing as if out of nowhere only to warn of an impending Vampire raid seeking their destruction; or worse still, slaves for the construction of smoke stacks to blot out the sun.
After some time, stories about the Watchers of Dark Eden came to inspire related factions elsewhere in the hinterlands, from the secretive Assassins of the eastern lakes to the resilient Desert Stalkers of the far south, their members swearing loyalty to the Watchers as the originators of their creed.
When winged Vampires were first spotted exploring the upper mountain peaks of Dark Eden, the Watchers’ first thought was that Kain had devised some new and terrible way to terrorise them. It was not until they saw these desperate-looking creatures being attacked by other Vampires that the Watchers realised conflict had befallen the Clans and sent word to the Ironguard. It was clear that the winged Vampires were coming from the direction of Razielim territory to the south, pursued indiscriminately by the other Clans.
With the Vampires seemingly more interested in hunting their own kind, the Watchers seized the initiative and sent a force of elite Scouts westwards, over the mountains to spy on what was once Coorhagen for fresh intelligence. What they discovered was a city turned into a farm for human blood, with pens designed for the breeding and rearing of newborns, overlooked by a gigantic statue of Kain himself. Surprised to find only a scant few Dumahim and Melchahim on guard, the greater number of forces apparently engaged elsewhere, the Scouts marshalled their strength and mounted a daring raid. Taking the Vampires by complete surprise, the Scouts liberated scores of Humans, all whom had spent the entirety of what passed for their lives in captivity.
Delivering many of these former captives to the disciplinarian care of the Ironguard, the Watchers knew that the time had come to raise an army and turn the tables on their Vampire masters. Hunters and Scouts joined forces and headed south, away from the eye of the Vampire civil war, recapturing first Provance and then Freeport. It was here that they first met with the mysterious Alchemists, growing their confidence and swelling their ranks.
Now the Scouts have set their sights on a once unimaginable goal - the return of Nosgoth to Human rule and the total annihilation of the Vampire race, once and for all.
Kultyści zaprzysiężeni w zakonie tajemnych chemików, których mikstury wywołują najprzeróżniejsze efekty - od wybuchów po transformacje. Sekta złożona z samych kobiet ze skłonnościami do wywoływania eksplozji, której członkinie noszą ręczne działka rażące alchemicznymi kulami, wybuchającymi z impetem przy zetknięciu z celem.
As Kain’s empire thrived, Humanity’s shared knowledge of technologies such as alchemy or forging weapons withered away. Experts died before being able to pass on their knowledge, while libraries and universities were sacked or burned to the ground. The legacy of pioneers such as Anacrothe, Bane and DeJoule was lost, reduced to mere legends of how Humans had once mastered the elemental powers of the land.
By the time Kain’s empire had reached its height, the ruling Vampires had begun to experiment in new fields. The Zephonim in particular, eager to compete in raw power with the elder Clans, attempted to artificially shape and force their metamorphoses through ritual self-torture, alchemical engineering and twisted breeding programs.
As with all aspects of life in Kain’s empire, the Lieutenants pushed their Clans to conduct ever more dangerous tests as they jostled for attention and prestige. Rival groups of Vampire alchemists vied to produce new compounds and concoctions to act both as weapons and restoratives. Some lines of research were focused on the individual - methods of improving the flow or flavor of Human blood, or keeping it fresh outside the living body - while others were on the massive scale of manipulating the volcanic furnaces, which were then used to block out the sun itself.
Either by accident or sabotage, one group of alchemists from Clan Melchahim committed a grave error, inadvertently poisoning a batch of prime Human breeding stock in an effort to better preserve their fragile undead skins. Their Lieutenant-patriarch, Melchiah, had been raised last and therefore received the poorest portion of Kain's dark gift. Despite his immortality, Melchiah’s soul could not sustain the flesh, an affliction passed on to his Vampire offspring who had already begun to show some signs of the underlying decay that would come to blight them in the far future. Rather than waiting to suffer the wrath of their lord, the errant alchemists fled across the Great Southern Sea to the deserts beyond.
Cut off from Nosgoth’s heartlands, these exiles were unaware of the civil war that came to consume their kind. Instead, after setting up a new laboratory in secret, they desperately strove to make some new and potent discovery with which to buy their way back into favour. This came in the form of naphtha; liquid fire that was inert when stored but when excited could be used as a devastating weapon, especially against their Vampire brethren. One Vampire, Laderic, made the final breakthrough and kept the secret of its manufacture to himself, intending to betray his fellows and blame them for their past misadventures. His invention, however, would prove to be the catalyst of his own demise.
The Vampire exiles required slaves as test subjects for their grisly experiments, seizing any Human who strayed too far from the safety of their nomadic caravans. All the men they captured were bled dry once the Vampire alchemists had no more use for them or their seed, but the women remained incarcerated - Humans raised in captivity, after all, were more docile and less troublesome. One such slave was Elustra, a local woman kidnapped by Laderic and held in captivity for over two decades, who quickly came to realize that feigning madness gave her the best chance of survival.
Underestimating his captive’s capacity for rational thought, Laderic left vials of naphtha close enough to her cage for Elustra to burn her way out. In an act of almost suicidal desperation, Elustra managed to murder her captor with his own concoction, but not before herself suffering horrific burns in the process. Blinded by pain and driven by rage, she made her way through the halls and alcoves of the laboratory, slaughtering not just her Vampire captors, but every living being in the compound - all equally defenseless against this unknown liquid fire.
Barely conscious and close to death, Elustra staggered out into the surrounding desert wastes, only to be found by a group of wandering nomads, drawn to the area by the plumes of smoke emanating from the laboratory. While they tended to her dreadful wounds, the nomads questioned Elustra about the fate that had befallen her. When no coherent answer came, they suggested whether she had slain her Vampire abductors in revenge for the murder of the other hostages imprisoned within the laboratory. Elustra did not disagree.
Unaware of the truth, a sisterhood formed to venerate Elustra in remembrance of the women tortured for decades by the Vampire alchemists… ignorant of the fact that they had been massacred by Elustra herself. Elustra spent the following months recovering from her ordeal with a grim determination. She donned a mask to cover her disfigured face and, as much in penance as in reverence, she dedicated her life and those of her followers to Anacrothe - the last Human Guardian known to have mastered the art of alchemy before all knowledge fell into Vampire hands.
The first task of the newly inaugurated Red Sisters of Anacrothe was to ransack the abandoned laboratory of its contents before razing it to the ground. Even this small accomplishment was enough to swell their ranks. Now armed with weapons and knowledge capable of exterminating the Vampire threat, Elustra decided the best form of revenge would be to use the Vampire’s stolen knowledge against them.
Journeying by sea to the heartlands, the Red Sisters brought with them exotic supplies and materials previously unseen in northern climates. Arriving in Freeport only to discover it had already been taken by Human forces, the Red Sisters joined forces with the Watchers and the Ironguard. They set up chapter houses in nearby Meridian, once a prime seat of Human knowledge and long abandoned by Kain’s Lieutenants as they focused their attention on securing their own territories. Now referred to as Alchemists by the other Human forces, the Red Sisters quickly put their new weapons of war into mass production. It was not long, however, before this industrial activity attracted the attention of the reunited Vampire Clans.
Now the Alchemists wage war with a single-minded purpose - the immolation of their former captors down to the last Vampire in Nosgoth.
Łowcy Wampirów czują się jak w domu jedynie w ferworze walki. Należą do Żelaznych Strażników, ostatnich z niemal wytępionej formacji oraz dalekich przodków wojowniczej kasty, która istniała, trenowała i walczyła w jednym celu - wyplenieniu wszystkich wampirów w Nosgoth. Oddani sprawie, bezlitośni i utalentowani, żyją dla łowów.
From before their earliest recorded histories, groups of Human warriors have come together and taken up arms against their enduring enemies, Nosgoth’s race of Vampires. These ruthless men and women are known as Vampire Hunters, drawing their inspiration and their creed from the Sarafan Order, legendary warrior-priests who have long since passed into history but whose influence has taken on an almost mythic status.
When all of Nosgoth fell to the Vampire legions, the remnants of Humanity would comfort themselves by recounting legends of the Sarafan crusades. In this way, the memories of Nosgoth’s early history - a time when the Sarafan had won many victories, bringing suffering to many Vampires and decimating entire bloodlines - were passed from one generation to the next.
With Nosgoth undisputedly under Vampire control, the last of the Vampire Hunters were forced to flee Nosgoth’s heartlands, pushed to the edges of the world to avoid Kain’s vengeance. Calling themselves the Ironguard in memory of the massacres of the Iron Pass, they continued to train, sustaining their weapon-making skills and preparing for the day when they could bring the war back to their Vampire overlords.
When word reached their settlements that civil war had broken out between the Vampire Clans, the Hunters seized the chance to resume their forefathers’ mission. As Kain’s Lieutenants fought and squabbled, the Hunters began to reorganise, rearm and mount a rebellion. They were the first to take advantage of Kain's disappearance, successfully recapturing the mountain town of Valeholm. By the time the Watchers of Dark Eden had freed the first Human captives from the most vulnerable blood farms, the Vampire Hunters were ready to take charge of recruiting and training these former slaves into new warriors for the Human armies.
Once their strength and number had grown, the Hunters sent emissaries travelling from outpost to outpost and to the edges of the world; recruiting those they could while offering advice and training to others so that they could learn to defend themselves against future attack. Each new recruit swore loyalty to the Hunters’ cause, knowing that in doing so they became damned men, destined to die on a battlefield far from home.
Now, the only home the Hunters know is in the midst of battle; living and fighting for just one thing - the slaughter of every last Vampire in Nosgoth.
Prorocy używają skażonej krwi jako broni, obracając źródło życia ich wrogów przeciwko nim. Kule w niej umaczane niosą ze sobą potworne uroki. Ciemna krew może zostać rozlana na polu bitwy, by tymczasowo odeprzeć, bądź osłabić atakujących. Ich zmutowane ciała odczuwają niedrowy pociąg do innych źródeł skażonej krwi, dając im jednocześnie umiejętność dosłownego wykradania życia pobliskim wampiriom.
Hunted down and preyed-upon in the wild, or imprisoned and bled dry in a Vampire blood farm, Humanity is an endangered species and will use any weapon at their disposal – even if it turns out to be a double-edged sword.
When Kain himself was only newly made a Vampire, the great Human city of Avernus changed from being a place of peaceful worship to a hell on earth. Azimuth the Matriarch of Avernus went insane, ordering her followers – the Cenobites – to gather sacrificial victims while summoning demons to decimate the city. With Azimuth radiating supernatural power and threatening to destroy any who stood against her, some orders of her priests turned from protecting and healing the population to being their tormentors and oppressors, becoming the Acolytes and Summoners.
The divinatory order of the Prophets, however, was appalled at what they saw and – seizing rare treasures from the catacombs of the Cathedral – fled from the burning city. An enraged Azimuth dispatched demonic servitors to hunt these traitors down, but in the chaos many escaped thanks to their own magical prowess, hiding in remote locations scattered across Nosgoth.
Even after Azimuth herself was slain by Kain, the surviving Prophets remained hidden. Shocked by how easily the Circle of Nine had been torn apart, they decided that secrecy would be one of the most powerful ways to ensure their survival. Another would be the artefacts that would help balance the scales against inhuman adversaries, be they Vampire or Demon, and so the Prophets became scavengers and treasure-seekers, using their abilities of augury and scrying to new effect. Soon tales of mysterious covens of Witches started to spring up among the Humans of Nosgoth – ironically often referring to them as demon-worshippers.
The relics rescued from Avernus became the first of many treasures that the Prophets would discover in the hidden places of the world, and gather in their own secret treasure vaults. They were determined to remain an elusive target and so maintained a scattered organisation, with isolated communities often only aware of a few others of their kind, meeting rarely and communicating instead using their mystical powers. New recruits were identified by divination, kidnapped and indoctrinated into the mysteries of the Prophets, to form new generations of scholars, explorers and artificers.
Two particular events of note would shape the future of the Prophets. Compelled by otherworldly hallucinations, the Prophet Roxen wrought ballistic equipment that her sisters would come to favour over the centuries, including technologies previously unseen in Nosgoth. In time, multiple-barrelled pistols emerged as their signature weapons. Though some whispered tales of a connection between the new armaments and a great Oracle whom Roxen suspected might be another of her own kind, the truth remained ambiguous.
The second discovery was to prove even more momentous. Following a series of shared visionary dreams to the long-abandoned mines east of Willendorf a band of Prophets discovered an ornate fountain of red blood deep underground. The youngest – a new recruit named Malus – was seized by an irresistible compulsion to drink from the fountain, and immediately fell into a coma that lasted for a whole year. When she awoke she spoke of the visions she had received, that the blood fountain was capable of killing any Vampire who drank from it.
Research devoted to employing the fountain’s full potency became Malus’ life, and after her premature death, a like-minded group of companions continued the quest. Once harnessed however, the blood fountain proved an unwieldy weapon since removing the now-blackened blood from its source rendered it inert.
Frustrated but sure that one day Humanity would find a way to harness this lethal power, over the centuries the explorers instead became a sect of guardians, protecting the cavern and praying for enlightenment. When it was discovered that after decades the black blood turned red again, a tradition sprang up of volunteers drinking from it again to maintain its unhallowed state for further tens of years.
The zeal of the Prophets endured while Kain rose to power and the Human race fell into decline. His sudden disappearance from Nosgoth changed many things: it not only led to his Lieutenants turning on each other in civil war, but over the centuries led to a weakening of certain enchantments he had laid throughout the Heartlands. Sensitive to these disturbances, the Prophets sought out these newly exposed sites and were stunned to discover each one housed another of the blood fountains, primed for their use. These new sacred places were swiftly occupied and warded again by the Prophets, and they re-doubled their explorations in the hope of finding yet more of such secrets. Yet despite all their new activity, the Prophets were no closer to being able to take the fight to the age-old enemy.
Now however, with the once-warring Vampire Clans united in a war of final conquest, this reclusive order has been driven by desperation to the brink of madness. In hidden shrines across the land of Nosgoth, terrible rituals are coordinated. Imbibing potentially lethal doses of the black blood, the ranks of the Prophets put their bodies into a state of toxic shock from which barely half emerged alive. Those who do are permanently altered – blinded, their lips stained and their own blood tainted for as long as their hearts continue to beat.
Now the Prophets turn the source of their enemies’ very existence against them – the blood is no longer of life, but instead has become a weapon. Experimenting with the powers unlocked within their own bodies was the first step, followed by extracting a blood-tithe from any Human settlement that wanted their protection.
Prophets use tainted blood – their own and that of others which they ‘bless’ – as weapons. Bullets dipped in the fluid carry wicked hexes. Dark blood can be spilled upon the ground to temporarily repel or weaken attackers. Their mutated bodies have an unhealthy attraction to other sources of stolen blood, giving them the ability to literally steal the life from nearby Vampires.
Some members of the other factions, raised on child-hood tales of demon-worshipping witches, might look askance at their new allies and mutter darkly about demons and black magic, but for now the Prophets are welcomed as a powerful new force in the war against their common foe.
Bataliony twardych wojowników założone przez mieszaninę skazańców i nadzorców, którzy pospołu przetrwali natarcie wampirów na Wyspę Umarłych. Topiący przyciągają teraz straconych i upośledzonych i nikczemnych ze wszystkich, spustoszonych wojną osad Nosgoth. Kryminaliści, dezerterzy, piraci, zeszpeceni wojną weterani, unurzani we krwi kapłani oraz nawiedzeni medycy stoją ramię w ramię niby wał obronny przed wampirzymi hordami.
The city of Meridian has its darker side: wherever people gather in numbers, there will be some of their own kind to prey on them. Conmen, thieves, robbers, slavers, rapists, murderers – Humanity has always been capable of cruelty to itself in ways which can make a Vampire’s hunger look simple by comparison. As Meridian rebuilt itself all manner of villains were among those who swelled its population, and as their Vampiric former overlords busied themselves fighting among themselves, the criminals of Meridian returned to their old ways.
In time, the problem became such that the Chancellor of Meridian was forced to act. Squads of watchmen swept through the slums and smugglers dens, snatching up anyone suspected of wrong-doing. If a few so-called innocents were caught up in the watchmen’s nets, this was a price deemed worth paying.
Human lives – even those of this kind of scum – were too precious to sacrifice, so the prisoners were pressed into work-gangs to help with the ongoing reconstruction and repair of the city. However after a series of murderous escape attempts and lethal attacks on their guards, some prisoners were recognised as too dangerous to be allowed out in public like this. Chancellor Speyr needed a new solution, and the Patriarch of the Waters provided one.
The mountain ranges and the sea which protected Meridian had also in the past isolated the city from the rest of Nosgoth, and as a result unique traditions and beliefs had long-ago sprung up here. Whereas elsewhere Humans consigned their dead to the pyre-churches to return them to the embrace of the obscured Sun, here in Meridian the superstition that the dead would be desecrated by Vampires had long ago led to them being consigned to the sea instead. The ocean graveyards of Meridian, stretching between the peninsulas and sandbanks known as the Witches’ Fingers, provided a safe haven for the shrouded and weighted bodies of the city’s dead. A church of equal parts clerics, professional mourners, and boatmen - revered and yet shunned for their contact with the dead – worked in this industry. Their black barges would berth at the city’s docks to take on a fresh load of the deceased, ferry them to their undersea resting place, and then row back to their fortress-monastery on the Isle of the Dead. Here the Patriarch of the Waters could find a use for the worst of the criminals the Chancellor could provide.
Chained to their oarsmen’s seats in the black barges, or manacled in the mortuaries where the dead were ritually gutted and then wrapped in their funeral shrouds and chains, the prisoners began new lives of service to the dead. They lived, slept, and died in their fetters. Those on the Isle of the Dead never left it, and even if they had managed to break free were trapped on a rock a mile from the shore with the dark waters in-between infested with the sacred predators known as the Eaters of the Dead. Those on the barges were constantly watched by overseers, whose heavy shields formed a wall between the oarsmen and the city whenever they made landfall. Over time the convicts came to be the source of their own superstitions and have their own title – the Drowning Men.
Then came the war with the Vampires. As the Vampire armies laid siege to Meridian’s outer defences, anything that lay outside the causeways was left to care for itself and so swiftly overrun and destroyed. For a time the seas kept the Isle of the Dead safe. From its squat towers the new Patriarch of the Waters watched the fires spread along the shoreline, creeping closer to the city itself. He and his followers had been abandoned, but were safe at least: until the Razielim arrived at the siege. While the archers and artillerists of the city could pose a warding danger to these winged Sentinels, the Isle of the Dead had no such protection. A flight of the Razielim swooped on its isolated defenders.
The watching Patriarch Ancellas was plucked from his tower-top vantage point and dashed on the cliffs below. Panicking priests and scribes were easy prey for the Vampires. The overseers, led by their Marshal-at-Arms Torstein, retreated to the most defensible positions: the mortuaries carved into the rock beneath the fortress-monastery. Here the Drowning Men waited and listened to the muffled sounds of slaughter overhead. In the torch-lit vaults the overseers and convicts came face-to-face in the realization that their mutual end was terrifyingly close.
When the first of the Razielim broke through the mortuary doors he was instantly cut down by a hail of thrown hand-axes and butchers’ tools. The second was swept from his feet by a flailing length of chain swung by the tattooed mass-murderer Gerik, and his skull cracked open against the flagstones by the crushing weight of Marshal Torstein’s tower shield. The shield-wall pushed forward to drive their enemy back and block the doorway again. There in the semi-darkness the Humans and Vampires struggled and fought and died, one of the countless small battles almost lost against the grand scale of the slaughter elsewhere.
When this fight was over, it was Humans who emerged blinking from the shadows into the fire-lit fresh air. When the black barges rowed away from the Isle of the Dead for the final time, before putting ashore at a secret smuggler’s dock to let their crews creep through the sewers to meet with the defenders of Meridian, the men aboard no longer called themselves convict or overseer. They were now all equals, all survivors, all Drowning Men. In return for their freedom they would join the defenders but it would be on their terms, and they would recruit accordingly.
With the struggle for Meridian acting as a beacon, fighters from across Nosgoth made their way to boost the ranks of its defenders. Ships proved the best way to circumvent the besieging forces of the Vampires, and the docks became increasingly busy bringing in men and supplies. New arrivals were picked over by the elite units for suitable candidates, but some among them would never be chosen even in these desperate times, or were already determined about where their destiny lay. The story of the Drowning Men had spread, and had particular resonance for some of its audience. Last survivors of decimated units; suddenly guilt-stricken former deserters and escapees from penal battalions; pirates and smugglers determined to protect their way of life; criminals looking to escape punishment for prior wrong-doings; initiates of militaristic mystery cults looking for new secrets; battle priests questioning their faith among the horrors of war; field medics who now heard the voices of all the dead when they tried to sleep at night… When the regimental discipline of the Iron Guard and the self-discipline of the Watchers offered no appeal or welcome, the Drowning Men drew in the lost and the damaged and the wicked and gave them a new home. Together they would be a bulwark against the Vampire hordes.
Bloody-handed mystics who serve as vengeful instruments of the natural order, the Scourge have sworn to cleanse Nosgoth of the blight of Vampire-kind no matter what the cost. Beastmasters are ruthless fighters who use powerful firearms and primal magic to purge their foes, but are best known for their supernatural ability to temporarily take on the form of a bird of prey and take to the air to continue the hunt.
"This world is wracked with cataclysms. The earth strains to shrug off the pestilence of Kain's parasitic empire”.
Nosgoth is being torn apart. Humans are locked in a savage battle, but if they lose then they will sacrifice only their freedom and not their very existence. The world around them however may not survive at all.
While most Humans are concerned only with the daily struggle to stay alive and free from the tyranny of their Vampire enemies, there are others who are aware of a more subtle but no less dangerous threat. Far-roaming Watchers bring back tales of mountain passes and distant settlements lost to earthquakes or landslides, of watercourses poisoned or dried up, while in Dark Eden itself the forests are dying or - even worse - living in twisted new ways. Prophets emerge from toxic dreams that show a dark past and darker future, where plants and animals alike are twisted into unnatural growths of perversion. Yet neither of these groups has an answer as to why these things are happening, or how to stop them coming to pass.
Scattered across the wild places of Nosgoth are a group of like-minded and bloody-handed mystics. All have a shared brutal philosophy and similar set of powers, even if they do not follow a single tradition. Some call themselves Druids or Masters of the Hunt and look to the fabled lord of all life, Bane himself, as the forefather of their kind to justify their own domination of the natural world. Others claim to be Elementalists or Channellers harnessing the devastating elemental forces of nature, guiding the usually uncaring destructive power with Human malice. The most infamous call themselves Beastmasters or Skinwalkers, forging cruel bonds with the wild creatures of Nosgoth, usurping their senses or stealing their forms. Even though most people simply call them by the name of their best-known members, and while as a group they usually disdain official titles, they have collectively become known as the Scourge of the Wild.
While the Scourge see the damage done to the natural world just as clearly as anyone, they also see the true cause. Kain and his brood are a blight on reality. Their existence is a corrosive influence on all natural life, and Nosgoth is tearing itself apart in convulsions against their continued presence. Every shifting of the earth or corruption of fauna and flora, every flood or drought, is the life-force of creation rebelling against the unnatural presence of the undying Vampires. The Scourge see themselves as vengeful instruments of the natural order. They are sworn to remove this blight, redress the balance, and force nature’s return to heal the world from its physical and psychic wounds, no matter the cost. The Scourge are ruthless fighters who see their lives – and those of any individual living thing – as secondary to the need for Nosgoth to be restored. The fauna and flora of Nosgoth are their tools and weapons. If a forest must be burnt to the ground to destroy a Vampire settlement, so be it: the healthiest new growth comes from the ashes of the old. Sacrifices will need to be made, and even the strongest may be asked to fall on the field of battle before the end.
That is not to say that each member of the Scourge is not expected to strive their utmost before their own inevitable return to the earth. This means self-purification and testing themselves against the harshest of environments, and training both in martial skills and in ways of thinking that keep them focused in the heat of battle. Vassals are armed with powerful short-ranged weaponry for close-quarters combat, and have developed other crude explosive devices of their own. They supplement these physical capabilities with the ability to call on primal energy from the sky and the land, blasting their enemies with fire and lightning or bolstering their allies with the strength of the natural earth. Their most distinctive trait however comes their ability to forge unique and terrible bonds with wild beasts, and so reshape their own bodies into new forms. While various savage animals roam the wilds of Nosgoth, from wolves to great cats, the only shapes the Scourge have been able to take on are those of various airborne birds of prey, sharp of eye and sharper of claw. Most common of these are the raptors called Treshawks – bat-winged, three-eyed and horned – which have come to dominate the skies of the north in recent years. Usually wild, these fierce predators can be captured and used by those Humans who have truly dedicated themselves to the ultimate struggle for the future. For the chosen ones, this bond extends to a temporary merging of the two beings, powerful sorcery allowing the Human to swap their body for that of the raptor but still retain their own intelligence and magical abilities. This supernatural transformation is fuelled by the life force of the raptors and few survive the demands of a pitched battle, but fortunately they breed prolifically. The transformation itself is even more short-lived and tenuous, but gives the Shaman unprecedented manoeuvrability on the battlefield as well as ways to track the movements of their enemies in a way that even the most experienced Scout would envy.
While serving as messengers and spies for the growing Human resistance, the Scourge have also worked to spread their beliefs and now count converts from across all the survivors amongst their numbers. Watched by an ominous gathering of squabbling semi-feral raptors leashed to the trees around each testing-ground, each would-be Scourge faces trial by fire and water. Here they find their true spirit in exposure to a fraction of the pain that nature suffered as the sun was lost. If the person flinches, they are judged too weak to make the change into their animal form and they are fed to the waiting raptors in a reversal of the usual sacrifice. Those who can stand the pain of the earth are taken to the ritual fields where new recruits feed the crops with their own blood: symbolic of both the sacrifice they are prepared to make to nature and a defiance of the Vampires who would take this life-giving fluid for their own corrupt purposes.
The Scourge are implacable in their desire to rid the world of the Vampire plague, and will spend the lives of any number of beasts and Humans in pursuit of this greater good. Theirs will be a bloody harvest, although perhaps not as they anticipate…
"If it could be said that a land descended into madness, ‘twould be an accurate account of Dark Eden. A garden of horrors, seeded with sick perversion of nature’s design.”
Everything the Scourge think about themselves is a fiction. Just as Bane and the other Pillar Guardians of legend were not heroes of humanity but ended up corrupted and insane, so the Scourge are in fact not saviours of Nosgoth. The origin of their powers is not part of a grand tradition of nature-worship, but the twisted influence of the progenitors of Dark Eden. A mad triad of Pillar Guardians – Anarcrothe the Alchemist, Bane the Druid, and DeJoule the Energist – together crafted this travesty of nature, a cursed region where the rivers ran with lava and the wildlife mutated into monstrous forms. Kain himself stalked this aberrant landscape in his quest to defeat the Pillar Guardians, and while the most obvious excesses of their mad experiments were purged as the Pillars of Nosgoth fell, there remained a hidden danger. Buried in the very soil was the lingering essence of corruption, dormant but still latent.
When Humans returned to Dark Eden they did so with trepidation, and rightly so. While the hulking green-blooded mutant beasts and unnatural strangling plant growth were gone, and the people thought that they could perhaps be safe here, the true danger remained, invisible and insidious. Tribes of settlers and outcasts came northwards and braved the mountains. Some settled here, forging a new life for themselves in the mountainous borderlands; others pressed deeper, unknowingly following in Kain’s footsteps. Some the latent corruption affected only subtly, making them more ruthless and callous – easily explained away as simply a survival mechanism in this harsh landscape. Upon others it had a more profound effect. From the heart of this realm were born a new kind of Human, one touched by the triad’s legacy of alteration. This has made them uniquely capable of channelling its warped energies, and of binding themselves to the new more subtle breeds of mutant wildlife that now thrive here.
The Scourge have rationalised their new-found capabilities in various ways, from reclaiming lost links to primal forces to being blessed by Bane or DeJoule who they now revere as deities. Their self-discipline has crafted a particularly focused belief system from their disparate mysticisms, even if the true source of their apocalyptic visions is not the voice of a suffering world as they may believe, but the corruption rooted in their own bodies and psyches. The Scourge are ultimately no more natural than the Vampires they seek to eradicate. They enslave and abuse the wildlife of Nosgoth, and sacrifice their own kind without thinking. Every time they shed their blood in the ritual harvest fields, they are seeding new growth of their own infection, and their new recruits share and spread their curse. Ultimately the embryonic evil they are unwittingly nurturing will burst into its full and horrible growth. Where there once was a member of the Scourge there will be something awful in the shape of a man, and then the true dark harvest will begin.
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