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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Janos Audron" data-source="post: 209525" data-attributes="member: 4649">Fire. Torture. Insanity. Pain. Endless suffering, without hope of freedom. The images were always the same. He saw himself, chained, humiliated, tortured by things far beneath him. Things he could have slain with ease when he still had the power. When he was still out there, free. Not only free from the chains, but also from the marks, the marks that bound him to the Devil.The images came when he closed his eyes, whenever his consciousness passed away. "No rest for the wicked", never had he heard a more true saying. They started as flashes, as some quick glance into the future. But when the years passed, and he continued working for Him, the images grew more intense, became more frequent and only after a long time did he realise it was him who was the victem...Life. He laughed at those who desperatly clang to it. At them unable to see that all life ended in death. Eventually. For him, death had been a release. The release from a weak body. The release from Time. A Passing to a more pure state. The next logical step for those who had the knowledge and the money.But deep in his heart, or what was left of it, he had to admit that death did not only bring good things. With endless time, he grew bitter, cold, alone. It did not come suddenly. Else, he would have detected it, stopped it, cured it...whatever. But he didn't see it coming. It came gradually. Of course, now, looking back at it, he noticed the subtle signs that he missed when he was still young. When he drowned all his feelings in the hate in his soul. Every little grievance, insult, mistreatment and other crimes against him, he remembered. He spend his young days plotting against those who had wronged him. Their deaths were painful. Pleasing to watch. And yet, there always was this sense that something was missing. An emotion he never knew after he died...something small, fragile ... but untouchable. It seemed like it eluded him. And it was very skilled at that. In time, when the sense grew that he was somehow incomplete, he turned to other ways to satisfy himself. Power, wealth, knowlege. Goals he also had in life. Then, they were unreachable, now they were so easy to get. And as his knowledge and power grew, so did his emptyness. And all it takes is one Devil to turn your own feelings against you...Late on night, when he was delving into the secrets of protecting his wealth and his library using creatures that fully obey you, he found a piece in one of his tomes. It contained instruction for a ritual to gain insight in the construction of magical guardians.Sometimes, he could even see the irony of the whole situation. Of course he had skimmed the tome when he bought it. And he specially prepared it to make it resistant to insects and water damage. Never had he noticed that piece of paper. He should have been suspicious, but back then, his lust for power was greater than his common sense. Even the sacrifice of elves and humans seemed perfectly logical ... at that time.That same night, he performed the ritual. The thing that appeared was obviously not human. It radiated immense power. But it kept his end of the 'bargain'. It filled his mind with arcane secrets, so obscure, so evil that most mortal would have gone insane, or maybe died from shock. He knew the creation process for what was commonly known as a Helmed Horror.He began the construction. It was a diffictuly task, mentally draining, and costing many GP. When he finally had it completely assembled, he searched his mind for the activation method. And what he found shocked even him ... well, a little.He thralled a cleric and forced him to return his family. They weren't delighted to see him again. They had lived quite a nice live with their God. And now, to have that taken away and to face your killer, especially when he's family, wasn't exactely something that made them happy. But their power was no match for his skills. He enslaved them, tortured them. Made them suffer for weeks. And finally, he killed them again, only to capture their souls to activate his masterpiece: the Helmed Horror.more to follow.</blockquote>

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