The Ill Companions: The Decline and Fall of the Colony of Nebezzdos

[The Old Hack]

[The following text was written based on the tales of Ill Companion Leonard Schaltz as well as supplementary information from other survivors, without whose aid it could never have come into existence.

-- Tatyana Borislawa, Skald of the War God]

1. The people of the Colony

Ymph has always been a place of strife and recent years were no different. The Orcan invasion of Red Eleint, the Nightriser Attacks, Ixpadia Sabuth's rebellion -- these and many other conflicts all left their mark on the people of Ymph. All who lived in the Colony had felt their touch through either blood spilled, friends and relatives lost, or both. The survivors, however, toughened by all they had gone through, dug themselves deeper into the land and made for themselves a home in spite of hardship and loss.

Eventually a time of relative peace and stability came. The Colony endured, though divided in twain. On one side stood the Dominion ruled by the Duke Antoine Trenada and his courtiers. Supported by the Count of Old Port, they grew wealthy and complacent living on the profits of trade and taxation. But the remnants of Ixpadia's revolt endured in the slums of the Docks and refused to submit to the Duke's rule. There, they spent themselves in futile gang warfare and languished in poverty, showing common front only when the lackeys of the Duke threatened to impose Ducal authority on them.

But eventually the peace started to fray. Renewed Orcan assaults devastated the farmlands that served as the breadbasket of the Dominion. The Duke was forced to import grain at a ghastly price and soon ran low on gold. Short term loans at a ruinous interest rate did not stem the tide for long. Soon famine took hold in the Dominion and the Docks starved even worse than before. The squabbles between Docks and Dominion intensified, fed by the desperation of men and women who could no longer hope to feed their families.

But in spite of everything, the people of the Colony endured. They struggled, they fought, they survived. Until the day where everything changed. The day where the folly of the wildfolk released the Lich from her timeless prison. Believing themselves destined to slay her, thirteen fools unsealed the gates of the Lich's tower and went inside hoping for glory, wealth and fame. They found only their doom -- theirs, and Ymph's, and perhaps even the doom of the world itself.

The gates of that dread tower swung open. From its confines burst forth a darkness and rot that soon began to poison the land itself, and following it came the creature known as the Agony of the Hunt. The Lich had rewarded her liberators by merging them all into a single monstrous being, their souls bound inside it, and sent it forth to do destruction at her bidding. Still today it roams, begging for death that it may be released from its torment, crushing all that dare oppose the Lich, leaving despair and destruction in its wake.

And from the moment the Lich broke free onwards, an implacable fate seemed to descend on the Colony, dooming it to destruction in spite of the most valiant of efforts.

2. The Fall of the Dominion and the fate of the Colony

Soon, rot and corruption spread in all directions from the tower of the Lich. A host of undead formed and grew with great speed, its initial attacks taking the people of Ymph by complete surprise. With each victory the undead army grew in numbers and strength, leaving terror and destruction in its wake. And ever the Agony of the Hunt would roam unchecked, a massive unstoppable juggernaut of horror and death.

Yet the living did not yield. Soon their own hosts gathered and joined, seeking to stem the tide of darkness. The men and women of the Colony mobilised. The Numinous Order took the field, its knights and soldiers readying the first line of defence at the hamlet of Vortgyn's Rest. And for a little while, as the brunt of the Lich's wrath first fell on the savages and peoples of the wild, the Dominion had time to prepare itself.

But its respite did not last long. Soon undead companies fell on the outlying lands of the Colony; skeletal pirates sailing ships of the damned harassed the trade vessels bringing the vital grain and supplies to the Dominion. The Count of Old Port, disturbed at having his flow of riches interfered with, blamed Duke Trenada for this failure and had him summoned. In a treacherous ambush he had the Duke publicly humiliated and whipped, then sent him home to the Dominion.

Precisely what the Count intended to accomplish through this was not clear. It is possible that he was deliberately trying to provoke a rebellion so he could wash his hands of Ymph, of course. In the event, Trenada turned on his liege lord in rage, denounced his oath of vassalage and declared himself the new King of Ymph. He named Lord Blackhearth Prince and successor and between the Dominion and the Order now openly rebelled against the Count. At least one assassin was dispatched after him and slain but this did not in the slightest deter the newly minted King from his purpose.

Trenada's first action after his rebellion was to muster a great army of citizen militia, Ordersmen and his own Stygian mercenaries. He then went to war against the Lich. Even some Docksmen joined force when the time came to attack the Lich's tower. This host first besieged and then frontally assaulted the tower in a monumental battle where the King placed all on one throw of the dice -- and lost. Though they pressed the undead hard, eventually the tide turned, and when the living were close to the breaking point, the Agony of the Hunt entered the battle. The King's army finally had to retreat, and even a planned ambush of the Agony failed when the siege weapons emplaced to kill it all exploded when their crews tried to fire them.

During all of this, the mages of the Transcendent Conclave had been preparing a stroke of their own. They had protested against the King's attack and said they were not ready for it yet but the King had ignored their protests and marched against the Lich without them. It is possible that their lack cost the King his battle. Yet the King, ever distrustful of mages and wizards, heeded them not and paid the price.

After his defeat, the badly battered King sought to seize the Docks by force to reunify his kingdom and to gather conscripts to replace his losses. He initially defeated the armed resistance there but then fell prey to a trap set by the Cyricist 'Father' Michael who had until then masqueraded as an Ilmateri. The King was lured into the false temple of Ilmater and there subjected to a ritual that cost him his mind, reducing him to drooling idiocy. This last disaster also sounded the death knell for the Dominion which descended into chaos; some of its nobles squabbled for its rule while some few went into the Mist in a desperate attempt to find a cure for the fallen King's madness.

This was when the Conclave launched its master stroke against the Lich. They moved their floating Conclave towards her tower and laid magical siege to it, taking the Shield that had for years protected Nebezzdos from the Nightrisers with them. Seizing the opportunity at once, the Risers began a renewed attack as soon as the Sun set. Yet the Oracle of the Conclave, the child-wizard Razul, proclaimed he would return to rule the Dominion and destroy the Nightrisers once he had broken the power of the Lich.

Now defenseless against the Nightrisers, the Colony fell completely apart. Some of the population fled by ship only to be massacred by a blockading fleet of vessels launched by the Count of Old Port. Others hid in the old temples which the Nightrisers did not yet attack, whether out of respect for the sacred places or simple lack of interest in the refugees is uncertain. Still others fled into the wilderness in search of places to hide there.

Then the Conclave attacked the Lich. It is said that the Lich faced Razul in magical duel and was all but defeated, yet on the very verge of their victory, a traitor sabotaged the magical ritual that would have bound or destroyed the Lich and she escaped, badly injured. She managed one last magical stroke which sent the Floating Enclave of the wizards careening out of control southwards, there to vanish for years from the ken of men. Then the Lich retreated into her tower and brooded while she recovered, there to create and unleash the deadly curse of the Withering upon a defeated and defenceless Ymph.

It was now clear that nothing remained that could save the Colony from the Nightrisers. The Warden and Imperator of the Nightrisen Lotheri Sanq, for the longest time disguised as a simple Jergalite scribe, emerged from hiding to seize rule of Nebezzdos in the name of the Nightrisen and the fallen Netherese Empire. Yet in an unlooked-for gesture of mercy he allowed the last of the living refugees to leave the city, sending them to the Dreamers, who took the last of the champions of the living and placed them in a long sleep slated to last for three years.

Thus ended the Dominion and the Colony of Nebezzdos.