Black, The: The Black Revealed

The Black Revealed

I'm Diorad, priest of Chaos in Morloch's Vengeance, although now I have taken up residence in the new guild subbed to MV, the Cult of the Dead. I saw that my fellow ex-Northvaler Errandir had such sucess in having his curiousities quelled by irritating you on a more personal level of e-mail, and I thought "If a tool like Errandir can do it, why not me?".

Greetings! Honestly, having to cover 10 servers at once on the Event Team means that PMs or the occasional email is indeed the best way to get a hold of me. I’m not saying spread the word (I don’t want to get buried!) and I’m not saying I can always answer quickly, but I’ll answer when I can, and I want to foster as much RP as I possibly can. A cult of Death teaming up with the Morloch bunch, eh? An interesting pairing, but then I expect I have a better perspective on this than you guys do (there’s a big dark secret here ? I’ll hint at it soon).

The Cult worships something called "the Living Darkness". It's a force which we can feel growing weaker now that there are no souls passing to the land of the dead, and so we work to return "true death" and meanwhile feed it by sacrificing a part of our own soul to it through a (really cool, angsty RP) ritual. Higher-up members later sacrifice their free will to it by giving it their True Name (going off the knowledge of True Names gained from the summoner lore) to it, so that they become an extension of it's will as the phoenix is of the summoner's.

That said, most of the shades in the cult believe that the Darkness is Ardan, but I wanted Diorad to doubt the fact. I have a few questions, feel free to bullshit me or tell me if there is no answer.

Actually, you’re very very close to the mark. Most sages and wizards believe that the universe arises from the juxtaposition and eternal conflict of two opposing forces: Law and Chaos. They’re wrong. There’s actually a third force that I call Oblivion ? also known as the Dark, or Shadow. It is the cold, dread force that animates undead. It waits, outside the universe, in a void of eternal cold and menace.

It’s almost a cosmic force, like gravity or electromagnetism, but it IS conscious ? it has a mind, terrible and inhuman. It hungers. For ages, the spirits of all who die have passed into it, to be devoured and purified in the cycle of life. The Dark serves to clean up the rubble and the residue left when Law and Chaos mix. But all that ended at the Turning. Now the Dark is shut out, and it is hungry. It’s straining to break the membrane and devour everything ? it’s tried to break through before and been held at bay. The appearance of Shades is one part of its will made manifest. It has a plan, but mortal minds who commune with it tend to go mad, go its designs and true nature are still only hazily understood. Those who know it’s there, however, all agree on one thing: it is coming. Who can stop it this time?

1)Besides Ardan, are there any other dieties or higher beings which are agents of Death in Aerynth, or major players in the realm of the dead. Ardan, when he was alive, fought great wars with the undead. What force drove these creatures to rise up into armies, giving them goals? Who is the "Big Bad" of the realm of death?

Ardan is but one servant of the Dark ? Ardan is NOT the Dark itself, but a vessel of its power. When Ardan died in agony, he went into the Void to be consumed. The All-Father plucked him out of it, but not quite all of Ardan came back to Aerynth. Ardan was less than he once was… and somehow more. Ardan shows the way to the fallen souls, guiding them through the Gates of Heaven and Hell and into the Dark ? at least, that was his job before the Turning. Since the Turning, he has vanished ? perhaps he is walled in the Void. Perhaps he needs to be rescued again, so that he may serve as the final Herald of Oblivion.

The Dark is its own “big bad” ? if it has some kind of anthropomorphic manifestation and identity, it has yet to ever manifest in Aerynth. Some prophets of the Shadow have claimed to sense more than one voice or will in the Void. Perhaps there is more than one Shadow in the Dark… Only the turuly Dead and the hopelessly mad claim to know for sure.

2) What do you think would Ardan's view on the undead would be?

They are manifestations of the Dark that rage and hunger because the Universe is out of balance.

3) My character Diorad follows the Cult because he wishes to return true death so that he might finally die, though he is still officially a priest of Morloch and Chaos (because of pacts that have been made which cant broken). Does this give him any conflicting goals? Are Death and Chaos, as universal forces, related?

Law, Chaos, and Death are all three opposed (instead of two arrows meeting in opposition, imagine a capital Y). The fact that most don’t see the distinction between Chaos and Shadow I expect serves your purposes ? you serve as spies of the Shadow, waiting for the time when the Dark may have need of mortals. Until that time, serving the ends of Chaos is fine ? it was Law (as embodied by the All-Father and Titans) that ruined the Dark’s access to the universe in the first place by throwing the Universe out of balance. The enemy of your enemy can easily be your friend, for the present at least. The minions of Chaos need never know that they shall also be consumed when the Long Night finally comes…

Thanks very much for your time,

No worries, man! Keep this as hush hush as you can (especially that 3rd force thing ? its still a secret), but RP away!

I hope all this helps!