[center][img]https://i.pinimg.com/345x/2b/f8/5d/2bf85d833dbef253786a78808e49b747.jpg[/img]

[h2]Akhaav, the Lord of Rot[/h2]
[sup]Reference artwork created by Elisabeth Nagurnaya[/sup][/center]

In a small village, there lived a boy with no name. Throughout his homeland, a miniscule property within the territory of Novala, he was known as an orphan, his family having long since abandoned him for new lands. He was mocked for having no parents most days and avoided at all other times. For the child, life was miserable and existence was a burden. Still, it was far from the worst that was to come.

Novalan soldiers would often ride through the village's muddy paths, looking down upon and chastising its denizens. Some would even take to apprehending what things of little worth the residents had, a show of either force or cruelty. Those who could not give were usually beaten, so as to set an example to those who would defy their power. Attempts were made to issue complaints and grievances with Novala's ruler. They would be labeled as dissidents and promptly imprisoned for daring to question the motives of "His Majesty's most noble knights."

As expected, the village people would start trying to gather support from nearby communities, in the hopes of showing His Eminence the consequences of and effects from the abysmal treatment they received. The king responded in kind by sending his forces to slaughter those in opposition. The boy would watch from the shadows as his home was set ablaze. Body after body would fall before him, and it would be the first time he'd become familiar with the empty gaze of the dead.

The soldiers who committed these atrocities would soon find and set upon on him with the intention of leaving no witnesses. They would pursue him into the snow-draped fields and to the edges of the nearby lake, where they would fire upon him with multiple arrows. One arrow would strike him in the back and send him face-down into the murky waters, where the sediment and blood would mix. To the Novalans, he was as dead as those in the village.

He washed ashore, miles away from his home, barely alive and breathing. A passing traveler happened upon him. Fearing the worst, they set to work on healing his wounds. Though the traveler was well-versed in the arcane, no amount of magic could remove an arrow without doing more damage than could be mended. The boy was brought to the traveler's home and, with the help of a nearby doctor, the arrow was extracted with minimal complications, and the traveler took care of the rest. The boy would wake days later, battling an awful fever. Luckily, the same traveler also dabbled in the art of potionmaking, and was able to concoct a vial of medicine that would nurse the boy back to health.

The boy would stay with the traveler for a time, learning that they were one of the High Mages of Novala, a collective of extremely talented and powerful sorcerers that served the kingdom at the behest of its ruler. The traveler would repine about their issues with how the kingdom and, at large, the territory was run, most of which the boy would fail to understand, at least at first. Over time, their bond would strengthen, and the traveler would come to trust the boy to such an extent that they would begin teaching him the basics of magic; how to manipulate the already-present energies of the world and harness the power necessary to conjure and control them.

It can be considered needless to say that he showed a natural aptitude for such things, and yet the traveler noticed a deeply-seeded anger within him. No student under their tutelage had ever practiced with such determination and intensity. The boy would regularly disregard sleep and food in favor of research and training. In just under a year, he could perform powers that even the most faithful students had trouble perfecting. To the traveler, it was a worrisome development, and so they would take to guiding them in the ways of the just. Such lessons were ineffective, and the boy would abandon their guardian, in search of strength.

He would find the source of such embedded deep in the heart of a forest where very few dared to tread, in an academy dedicated to the most primal of magics. He would be inducted into the newest body of pupils, each of which were there for some nefarious reason or another. For a little over seven years, he would study the deepest, darkest parts of the occult, dipping into the wisdom of the profane. At the end of the seventh year, he and his colleagues would be escorted to a remote area, even deeper into the woodland, to meet with the headmaster of the academy.

The headmaster was a multi-limbed creature, resembling a human. Though their features resembled that of a woman, their voice was dual-toned. Each of her limbs gestured in extravagant display as she divulged the purpose of the meeting. Before them was set a legendary runic circle, inscribed with the symbols and representations of powerful warlocks and academy alumni who had since passed on. The task was simple; one would step into the circle, offer a tribute of their life essence, and the spirits of the alumni would grant them a familiar that would accompany them for the remainder of their days.

Wolves, crows, imps - each student accepted the task and gave what was necessary. The boy would bring up the rear, entering the ring last. With a sacrificial blade, he would slice open his palm and give himself unto that which demanded it. What was granted to him was not a simple familiar, an animal or otherworldly lesser demon that would accompany and aid him in his quest for magic. The spirits sensed a great and terrible malice within him, and bestowed upon him an ephemeral fiend that matched his sheer propensity for hatred: the aspect of rot.

Swirling pools of black and dark red would bubble beneath him, overflowing the circle. From beneath the surface rose a countless number of hands, each rotted and decayed and hungrily searching. These hands would shackle the students and teachers and drag them under, into the deep. The only two that survived the onslaught of the damned and dead were the boy and the headmaster, who expressed such genuine jubilee at their pupil's potential. She would take to calling him a name derived from the ancient variations of her native language: Akhaav, meaning "world's shadow".

The headmaster would take Akhaav beneath her wing and begin teaching him the most profane of arts - necromancy. Though largely forbidden across the lands, few were still practitioners. He cultivated this newfound knowledge with such proficiency and speed, but at the same time, both his mind and body would begin to wither. Having been instilled with what was essentially the essence of extinction, the power of such a blight was too great for such a young psyche to contain. The headmaster knew this and offered a solution, if only temporary - she would sacrifice her body, letting her soul inhabit his physical form to keep it from withering.

The ritual was swift and its effects minute, prolonging Akhaav's personal destruction by only a few years. However, it was all the time he needed. Having perfected the talents needed to sustain virtually limitless capability, Akhaav would let his flesh waste away, passing on shortly after entering into adulthood. His body would not be abandoned for long; though his surface flesh and organs had failed him, his bones were still usable, and his capacity for power excelled to the point where he could compel the dead to move through sheer force of will, his sights focused on one destination in particular: the kingdom of Novala.

Akhaav would carve a bloody swath through the lands on the march back to his homeland. With every body that fell, a new servant would rise in its place, pledged to serve the newfound Lord of Rot. His power grew considerably, to the point where he could summon projections of himself that could move and act independently of being governed. The legions of the damned would swarm Novala en masse, slaughtering all within sight and turning them over to his cause. Novala's armies would resist at first, fighting tooth and nail to beat back the seemingly endless hordes, but to no avail.

The traveler would watch in horror from a distance as their former colleagues joined their strength together and weaved together a great firestorm, a last-ditch effort to eliminate the sea of undead. As this took place, the king would abandon the throne, fearing a fate worse than death. The firestorm would descend upon the kingdom and its territories and level it to the ground, turning all within it to ash. The High Mages, their mana depleted, would perish in the flames, the last of their vitality spent. In place of Novala, a massive expanse of ruin remained, the swirling remnants of powerful magic possessing the corpses of those who hadn't disintegrated for moments at a time before collapsing, only to be possessed again by some other existing fragment of befouled energy. For all intents and purposes, Akhaav was gone, his vengeance complete.

Except he wasn't.

Deep in a fetid swamp, there lies a throne. Upon this decomposing seat lay the remains of Akhaav, whose name traveled so far across the land that he was now legend, a nightmare tale told to children who misbehaved. His skeleton immobile, the lich sits, slack-jawed among the throngs of his aimlessly-wandering soldiers. Where his eyes once lived, there were now bright, ruby-tinged wisps that could pierce the stares of hardiest warriors. Though he could no longer move, his exerted power was all but absolute, and he would use such to complete two final tasks: find and eviscerate the king, so that he may set an example to all those who opposed him, and return to Novala, where he would cross the eternally-burning grounds upon the backs of those beneath him, take his place upon the throne that refused to fall, and proclaim himself as the new king.