Dragon 416
Dragon 416
4e
Count Strahd von Zarovich: “Now, young one, we must start with the so-called first vampire. You’re right to be skeptical of the title. He’s unlikely to have been the first vampire to walk the world. On the other hand, it’s said he’s the first to be created by death itself. He certainly was the first vampire in his now famously tormented land, Barovia.”
“Strahd would not surrender, not even to death. No, he used his arcane powers to make a pact with death instead. On Sergei’s wedding day, Strahd sealed the pact by murdering his own brother.
“Tatyana fled from Strahd, refusing to hear his attempts to explain himself. The castle guards shot the count during his pursuit. Consumed in grief and horror, Tatyana threw herself from the battlements of Castle Ravenloft. She disappeared into the mists a thousand feet below.
“The count should have died from his wounds, like any normal man. But the pact saved his life, in a way of speaking. He did not die because he could not. He became undead. He became a vampire, and his wrath fell upon the entire wedding party.
Lord Soth, Death Knight: Finally, with her last breath, Isolde cast a curse upon her husband. “You will die this night in fire,” she cried, “even as your son and I die. But you will live eternally in darkness. You will live one life for every life that your folly has brought to an end this night!” With that, the flames engulfed Soth, charring his armor and searing his flesh. Soth witnessed the flames burning everything around him, wood and stone, cloth and iron. His retainers, loyal unto the end, attempted to flee, to no avail. None that were inside Dargaard Keep survived.
And yet the afterlife held no rest for Lord Loren Soth. Isolde’s curse would not let him truly die.
Shaking off the debris and ashes of his fallen home, the creature that once was Loren Soth arose, encased in his own armor. Of all the intricate designs that decorated the armor, only a single rose survived, blackened by the fire. As he came to learn, his divine powers, once fueled by Paladine, became terrible magics of death and hellfire.
Lord Soth, Death Knight, Lord of Sithicus: Finally, with her last breath, Isolde cast a curse upon her husband. “You will die this night in fire,” she cried, “even as your son and I die. But you will live eternally in darkness. You will live one life for every life that your folly has brought to an end this night!” With that, the flames engulfed Soth, charring his armor and searing his flesh. Soth witnessed the flames burning everything around him, wood and stone, cloth and iron. His retainers, loyal unto the end, attempted to flee, to no avail. None that were inside Dargaard Keep survived.
And yet the afterlife held no rest for Lord Loren Soth. Isolde’s curse would not let him truly die.
Shaking off the debris and ashes of his fallen home, the creature that once was Loren Soth arose, encased in his own armor. Of all the intricate designs that decorated the armor, only a single rose survived, blackened by the fire. As he came to learn, his divine powers, once fueled by Paladine, became terrible magics of death and hellfire.
Skeleton Warrior: Isolde’s curse spared no aspect of Soth’s life. His retainers, once loyal beyond reproach, turned into skeleton warriors.
Banshee: Isolde’s curse spared no aspect of Soth’s life. His retainers, once loyal beyond reproach, turned into skeleton warriors. Dargaard Keep became an ashen ruin, distorted by the fire and ravaged by the Cataclysm. Where once it was shaped like a beautiful rose, now it was blackened and crumbling like a wilted flower. And the priestesses that were so instrumental in Soth’s downfall were doomed to serve him as spectral banshees.
Rotting Zombie: In the days of Kalak’s reign, the vast majority of these undead were mindless hordes of rotting zombies, the victims of Kalak’s tyranny who were carelessly tossed into these catacombs to dispose of them.
Withering One: Of the undead that shamble through the undercity of Tyr, perhaps the most bizarre are the zombies that some have come to call the withering ones.
They were born (if such a term is appropriate) at the time when the city of Tyr was dying.
Back when Kalak was still alive and was preparing for his draconic apotheosis, the city of Tyr was awash in defiling magic. Whether the people knew it or not, their sorcerer-king was burning the life force out of the entire city. The living citizens above the ground in Tyr weren’t the only ones who suffered under the sorcerer-king’s greed. In the undercity, the still-rotting flesh of the undead creatures that roamed those catacombs was being affected as well.
Many of the zombies were ultimately destroyed by this prolonged exposure to Kalak’s defiling magic. A special few, however, reacted to the magic by seemingly absorbing it. Those that continued to shamble on after the sorcerer-king’s death had been transformed into zombies that now had defiling magic built into the very fabric of their being.
The withering ones are zombies that have been suffused with defiling magic.
