9
KAIN’S EMPIRE
Kain concluded with the realization that Vorador
was right — that vampirism is not a curse but a
blessing . . . that vampires are dark gods whose
duty it is to thin the human herd.
With intentional irony, Kain established the
ruined Pillars as the symbolic seat of his new
empire, and the shattered Balance Pillar as
the base of his throne. In an act of calculated
blasphemy, Kain raided the ancient tomb of the
Sarafan, a fanatical order of warrior-priests once
sworn to eradicate the vampires plaguing
Nosgoth. From the desiccated corpses of these
long-dead knights, Kain raised his six vampiric
“sons” to become the Lieutenants of his
fledgling empire.
But the Pillars, Kain ultimately realized, were
more than just a human edifice — the health
of the Pillars was tied inextricably into the health
of the land. With the Pillars left unrestored,
corruption seeped slowly into the land like
a poison, turning his empire into
an irredeemable wasteland.
CONDEMNED
Rather than evolving slowly over time, vampires
experience periods of accelerated
metamorphosis, entering dormant states from
which they emerge transformed.
When Raziel, first among Kain’s Lieutenants,
revealed his latest evolution — a pair of bat-like
wings — Kain responded with an act of
seemingly egotistical sadism. Tearing Raziel’s
newly fledged wings from his back, he ordered
Raziel to be cast into the Lake of the Dead,
where he would burn forever in the
roiling Abyss.
Raziel tumbled endlessly into the murky depths,
his flesh dissolving as he burned with white-hot
fire. After an eternity of torment, Raziel’s ruined
body came to rest — and as the pain receded,
he realized that he had not only survived the
descent, but had been delivered to the very seat
of the Underworld.
Like Kain before him, Raziel was saved from the
brink of oblivion by a mysterious benefactor —
a preternaturally ancient god dwelling in the
depths of the Abyss, who transformed Raziel
into a devourer of souls, and released him back
into the world to take his revenge.
VENGEANCE
Raziel, now the Elder God’s fledgling angel of
death, resurfaced to discover that centuries had
inexplicably passed since his execution. Kain’s
empire lay in ruin, and Raziel found himself
assailed by the degenerate offspring of his
former brethren, who had long since devolved
into monstrous forms.
Undeterred by these revelations, Raziel pursued
Kain across Nosgoth’s blasted landscape,
galvanized by a hunger for revenge, and a
relentless new thirst — not for the blood of
humans, but for the vampires' apostate souls.
Kain, however, had other plans for Raziel.
Seemingly unsurprised by Raziel’s miraculous
return, Kain baited Raziel along the course of his
single-minded vendetta, channeling him into
battle with his mutated brethren, and into a
fateful confrontation at the Pillars, wherein
Kain raised the Soul Reaver against Raziel.
The ancient blade, believed to be indestructible,
shattered when Kain attempted to strike Raziel
down. The soul-devouring sentience captive in
the blade was thus released, and binding itself
to Raziel as a wraith-blade, became his
symbiotic weapon.
Kain seemed not stunned but strangely satisfied
with this shocking outcome, and lured Raziel
further into Nosgoth’s northern wastes, leading
to their final confrontation in Moebius’s long-
abandoned Chronoplast chamber.
Driven by the fatalistic visions revealed by
Moebius’s devices, Kain activated the time-
streaming portal that would propel him and
Raziel centuries into Nosgoth’s past. Free will,
Kain feared, might only be an illusion — but he
knew their fates were intertwined in ways that
Raziel had not begun to fathom.
REVELATIONS
Swept back into Nosgoth’s early history, Raziel
began to unearth the secrets of his past …
… how his coming was foretold by an ancient
race, Nosgoth’s original Vampires, who forged
the Reaver for their champion, as the weapon
of their salvation.
… how he himself slaughtered the Sarafan
Lieutenants, and was his own murderer, and
how he thus became the catalyst not only of
Kain’s future empire, but of his own dark destiny.
… and finally, how he was fated to become the
ravenous spirit imprisoned in the Soul Reaver
blade — that this was, and always had been, the
purgatorial cycle of his destiny. The wraith-
blade, he finally understood, was his own soul,
twinned and bound eternally to him.
His motives still a mystery, Kain sought to change
history by preventing the blade from consuming
Raziel’s soul. But Raziel, nearly obliterated by
the Reaver, realized that he could never escape
this terrible destiny — Kain had merely
postponed it.
8
THE PILLARS
In the centuries before Kain’s birth, the land
was protected by an oligarchy of sorcerers
known as the Circle of Nine. These guardians
were sworn to serve and protect the Pillars
of Nosgoth, the ancient edifice towering over
the earth as a manifestation of the mysterious
power that preserved and gave life to the land.
But the Circle was infiltrated by dark forces, and
Ariel — the Balance Guardian — was cruelly
murdered. Her assassination sent psychic
shockwaves throughout the Circle, and in their
derangement the remaining sorcerers turned
their powers to dark purposes, poisoning the
land with their sorcery and abandoning the
Pillars to stand like silent, decaying sentries.
DESTINY
Into this dying world Kain was born. The son of
an aristocratic Nosgoth family, he lived the
privileged life of a nobleman, never realizing
his undiscovered destiny — that he was
marked from birth as Ariel’s successor, fated to
take her place as the Guardian of Balance.
Ignorant of his destiny, the ambitious but
directionless Kain roamed the land — during
one fateful journey, he was ambushed by
brigands and murdered, cruelly impaled
on his assassin’s sword.
A DARK COVENANT
Plucked from the brink of oblivion by the
Necromancer Mortanius, Kain awakened in the
underworld, still transfixed by his enemy’s
blade. Tormented by his hunger for vengeance,
and heedless of the spiritual cost, Kain
recklessly accepted the Necromancer’s offer of
revenge — and rose from his tomb to discover
that he had been resurrected as a vampire.
Kain quickly tracked down his assassins and
exacted his bloody revenge. With his
vengeance and hunger sated, he sought only a
cure for the vampiric curse that afflicted him.
Guided by Mortanius and the specter Ariel —
now bound helplessly to the decaying Pillars
she once served — Kain hunted down each of
the corrupt sorcerers now poisoning Nosgoth.
Only with their deaths could the Pillars be
healed — and only by restoring Balance would
Kain be released from his vampiric curse.
At first reluctant to live the horror of an
existence blighted by a thirst for human blood,
Kain soon adapted and discovered, within his
darkened soul, a growing disaffection
for humankind as he embraced his
newfound immortality.
During his journey, Kain discovered and
claimed the Soul Reaver, an ancient soul-
devouring blade, and stumbled across — not
so coincidentally — a time-streaming device
created by Moebius, the Guardian of Time.
FRAGILE HISTORY
Against the counsel of the ancient vampire
Vorador, Kain found himself embroiled in
human events, caught in a bloody battle
between Ottmar’s Army of Hope and the
ruthlessly advancing armies of the Nemesis,
from the north. As the tide of the battle turned,
Kain used his only means of escape — the
time-streaming device, which swept him nearly
fifty years back into Nosgoth’s past.
Hoping to alter the course of Nosgoth’s history,
Kain assassinated the young King William the
Just, who would become the diabolic tyrant
known as the Nemesis. After sating himself on
his victim’s blood, Kain returned to the present
— only to discover that his murder of the
beloved King had ignited a genocidal war
against vampires, led by the time-streamer,
Moebius, himself.
Upon his return, Kain witnessed the future that
he had wrought — and the final, triumphant
act of Moebius’s cold-blooded mob. Vorador,
the last of the era’s vampires, was guillotined
and his head held aloft for a cheering,
bloodthirsty crowd — leaving Kain the sole
surviving vampire in Nosgoth.
THE FATEFUL DILEMMA
As his quest brought him full-circle, Kain
confronted the destiny that Mortanius and Ariel
had hidden from him — that he was the
Balance Guardian, and that only by sacrificing
himself could he restore the Pillars. Ariel
presented him with a final, climactic decision
— sacrifice himself to heal the land, but ensure
the extinction of the vampires; or refuse the
sacrifice, and seal the world’s corruption.
Revolted by the machinations of the human
sorcerers and alienated from his former
humanity, Kain chose the latter path — opting
to rule the world in its damnation rather than
commit himself to oblivion. This apocalyptic act
completed the Pillars’ destruction — the
mighty columns toppled as Kain sealed their
ruinous fate — and damned Ariel to
ceaselessly haunt the dilapidated Pillars she
once served. Until the Balance is restored, she
can never be released.
THE HISTORY OF NOSGOTH
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