When The Dead Rise: How it Began
The world is a harsh and cold place if it is allowed to be. There are things lurking in the shadows that seek to destroy the warmth of humanity, and in the formative years of humanity’s colonisation of the continent of Merora, those things fought hard to extinguish that flame.
Merora was a fertile land, rich in good soil and resources. The forests were vast and uncompromising, their trees solid and straight, perfect for building. Its fields were nutrient rich and flat as far as the eye could see, allowing agriculture to flourish; below its soil, in places near the coast, lay a treasury of metal ores that included large deposits of silver. When the first settlers landed and discovered the bounty available, it was no surprise they chose to stay, nor that they sent for others, for much of the world around them was overworked and overcrowded.
In the early years, humans built settlements around the continent, and they thrived. The coastal villages mined the ore, and the rural ones farmed the land and harvested the forest for timber. Yet as successful as they were, they were forever plagued by a foreboding feeling and a string of bad luck.
People would go missing; animals would die, torn apart by some wild thing. The rural settlements suffered far more frequently from these attacks than their coastal brethren, though no one knew why. The largest of these settlements, Uvrenmouth, named after the river that met the sea where it sat, suffered the least of all. Some of the more superstitious members of the community claimed that the metal ores beneath the coastal towns acted as a warding, but few could believe in such superstitions.
Time is said to be a healer, but sometimes wounds get infected and fester into something far worse. For decades the towns dealt with the occasional loss of their livestock and even the odd foolish adventurer who lingered near the woods too long, but this only emboldened the creatures who feasted on the flesh of others.
It was during these formative years on the continent that a pseudo-religion began to form, led by the Uvren family. A brand of soldier-like worship formed in the town of Uvrenmouth and spread to the other villages with emissaries and trade, becoming known as the Order. They did not worship a deity but devoted themselves to the selfless mastery of soldiery and knowledge, steadfast in the idea that there was a deadly threat to humanity in these lands. They would train day after day to perfect their warrior skills and search the lands for repositories of knowledge in order to better understand the world in they now called home.
The Uvren family built a great monastery deep in the mountains that bordered Uvrenmouth to its northwest corner. Despite its size, it remained well hidden from the town by the winding paths of the mountain. Only from its tallest spire could the city be viewed, and even then, it was no easy task. The monastery became home to The Order, and within its walls, they trained and they learnt, for almost four hundred years.
Knowledge of the Order began to fade as the centuries passed, but as villages expanded and natural resources were stripped from the land, the attacks got worse.
On one particularly warm summer’s evening, the air was close and thick, a dark shadow of clouds clinging to the sky as a foreboding presence, waiting to strike out. In the rural fiefdom of Shadebarrow, the livestock was restless, as was much of the town. It was here that the creatures that had been haunting the forests and edges of their towns became desperate enough to venture into the farmlands.
One creature strode out of the woodland with a menacing demeanour. The bi-pedal monstrosity hunched over itself, its enormous shoulders moving with every laboured breath. Its elongated snout slowly sniffed at the air, deciding on which scent to follow. The farmers that inhabited the land there watched in a state of frozen awe until one dropped the rake he had been grasping, causing the clang of metal on stone to ring out from the farm. The reverberations echoed in the silence, filling every sense that the humans had as they watched, paralysed by fear. The creature spun with inhuman speed and descended upon the poor farmers with all the feral ferocity of a caged beast finally set upon its captors. When the beast was done, no one could have identified the bodies that lay strewn around the field.
Those unlucky enough to find the scene were met with the brutal stench of viscera and gore, but little of what you could have said were the farmers. The alarm was raised, the woods were checked, and the wound that had festered for so long burst and foulness wept from that single lesion.
In the months that followed, word of the horror that had occurred at Shadebarrow spread to the other settlements, as did stories of similar attacks from hulking wolflike creatures and sinewy humanoids that resembled their own kin. When the former attacked, only the ruination of the bodies was found, but when the latter attacked, victims vanished, or their exsanguinated bodies were left pale and lifeless in the moon’s glow.
Unchecked, the monsters of the new world began devouring the human race like a swarm of locusts devastating a field of corn. With each passing feast, they became more bloodthirsty and emboldened, and the humans had few ways to repel any attack that fatefully came their way. For so long, the creatures of Merora had slaked their hunger on the wild animals that roamed the forests, but now they were presented with an almost unending conveyor of meat, and the human flesh made them into something worse than they had ever been.
Those who managed to survive attacks quickly turned into the creatures that had brought ruination upon them, and werewolves and vampires stalked the forests and towns with unending terror. They brazenly attacked by day or by night, no longer relying on the cover of darkness to aid their pursuit of flesh.
But a sickness had crept into the warped flesh of the creatures. The more they fed, the more they lost control of themselves, a madness creeping into their flesh and minds like a parasite taking control of its host.
The wolf beasts began to transform at will, their ability to destroy unparalleled, and the desire to hunt so overwhelming that it spurred them on relentlessly.
The vampires, however, lost all control. No longer able to hold their human guise, they became unrecognisable gargoyles; feral creatures with a thirst for blood so great it held a control over them like no other. The more they fed, the greater the craving for blood became, an eternal cycle of desperation and ferocity.
The world of humanity stood on the brink; it wouldn’t take long for the attacks to decimate the population and extinguish it for good. A great black cloud descended over the continent, and most felt that they would not outlive the storm.
While it had enjoyed the least attacks, Uvernmouth was not without its troubles, fending off its share of lycanthropes and vampires. Yet the attacks were never in packs but rather solitary and more opportunistic. The mystics of the town claimed it was a holy place they were fearful of entering; the philosophers pointed out it was probably more likely because two-thirds of the town was surrounded by sea and mountains.
With a harsh divide splintering the townspeople, they were caught off guard when one particularly stormy evening, with rain hammering into the streets like bullets and lightning forks and thunderous booms echoing through the night sky, they came.
The wolves pounded the streets, their pelts sodden from the relentless rain, but their eyes ever vigilant and undimmed, shining like black beacons in the dark, searching for prey. The feral, gargoyle vampires stalked in via the rooftops of the town, looking down upon the streets with impatient desire. To the townsfolk, this seemed like a coordinated attack, but it was pure animalistic drive and hunger that drew so many to the walls of Uvrenmouth that night.
No longer able to contain their greed, the monsters descended on houses and taverns drawn by lamplight and the sound of music and voices. They battered down doors and windows and dragged screaming bodies into the street without discrimination, and gorged on their flesh and blood. The streets turned a gory red as blood mixed with torrential rain.
In the town’s most desperate hour, the pained human screams and animal shrieks were pierced by the desperate howl of an injured beast. The howl echoed out into the night, silencing the streets of death and confusing both attacker and assailant. A lone werewolf limped out of the darkness of a side street into the glow of the main streetlight and fell to the floor. A great bolt of lightning descended from the heavens and forked over the town, illuminating the street and, in its unearthly glow, the ruined face of the Lycanthrope.
Before any human or beast could react, a great figure clad in silver armour strode into the street, his face ashen, a grimace drawn across it. His eyes were lit with fury, and even in the darkness, they pierced the souls of those that looked upon them. A cape billowed around him, from his neck hung a large silver Ankh, and in his hands lay a two-handed war hammer, resplendent in sliver and stained with blood. The Grand Priest Uvren had descended from his mountain monastery, and from all around him, his warriors stormed the streets.
The silver-clad warriors clashed with the monsters, and they unleashed the martial fury of their warrior Order upon the beasts in the street. Silver weapons drawn, they slashed and cleaved through flesh with precision and determination. They were met with feral ferocity, but they were no match for the weapons the Order wielded, and after several hours of brutal fighting, the last of the creatures were slain or driven from the town as the rain abated and rays of sunlight pierced the black clouds.
It had been the darkest night of humanity, but the Order had brought its brightest dawn…
