Elazul
Written by Lionel. Many thanks!
One of the two Dark Immortals alongside the profoundly powerful Khasad. Known in ancient times as ‘the last of the Prime Evils’. The last because a great war had struck down the rest of their twisted brethren. A wanderer through the now-forgotten province of Senal, he was grief-stricken when the light warriors Ryvain, Falcanthen, Orvaac, and Norodruin sealed Khasad at the Tower of Crius. Yet even as Elazul felt Khasad writhing against his shackles, he knew their day would come.
The First Immortal War
A millennium after Khasad’s sealing, the Dark Immortals returned. Elazul ripped through the earth with a horde of vile creatures to bring total ruin to Senal and its jeweled city Crius. Vanishing from whence he came, Elazul then arrived in Cenril -- tribal holy grounds in those days, with a far smaller population. At the sight of a girl shrieking in horror at the atrocities spreading across the land, Elazul beckoned her to come. Her name was Eilan, and when she drank but a drop of his vile blood, she was cursed. Lithrydelian vampirism was born. Here in Cenril, Elazul would face an army, but as like before, defeat was mere setback.
Through centuries further, Elazul schemed. His dark army emerged from the south, tearing through Craughmoyle and Gualon and provinces too ancient to be remembered now. When evil ripped across the land, only Sven and Hind and Lore could dare to stand against it. Yet even they, nor even Norodruin, were fully capable. Together Elazul and Khasad created Arrecation, an evil entity more powerful than either immortal, and their display of power. Arrecation, so-called ‘son’ of Elazul, crushed the forces of peace utterly and very nearly ended the world. Only through those runes which had sealed Khasad in Crius could the Dark Immortals’ terrible plots be postponed once more.
Around this time, Kaizer and Solaris, mighty dragons, felt their free thoughts dwindle away and become possessed by Arrecation. Here in a Lithrydel where Elazul’s creation of vampires had spread, where the realm had been rebuilt but forgot the terrors which compelled rebuilding, the land was ripe for conquest.
On and on it went. A cycle unbreaking. With so much strength at his disposal, Elazul was at last able to withdraw Khasad from his prison. They spoke that the day the whole world would bend to their will was at last before them now. They spoke of the world beyond Lithrydel -- marvelous Ishaara, primitive Catal, Demon Archipelago, everywhere in-between. With the capabilities they now held, with the Spire -- a simple title for a sword of untold potential -- the saga of the ‘Prime Evils’ could ruin the planet itself.
Yet there was but one thing neither Khasad nor Elazul anticipated: the sheer will of the dragons Kaizer and Solaris. They’d cracked Arrecation’s hold and stood vigilant against them. It was the one flaw in the plan which spread forward into a hundred. The armies of light, well-aware that this pure evil would one day return, moved quickly. Although their losses were considerable, Khasad and Elazul and Arrecation were brought down. Khasad to his cage, Elazul to wandering, Arrecation seemingly blinked out of existence.
The Second Immortal War
Elazul had lain in wait for so long. He watched Hollow’s vampires, all from the line of Eilan, grow weaker as they forgot their ways. He thought to approach them, identity unknown, and he came before Lionel’s vampiric wife, the spirited and kindhearted Alexia. He tempted her with the wisdom of the ages.
Reuniting with Khasad who broke out of his prison, Elazul agreed that the world should burn and be remade in their image, never again to rebel. Lithrydel first, Vailkrin at the epicenter for the vampires’ refusal to be as thralls to their creator. With the legions of drow at their command, they plundered ships for navy, wrecking Cenril without true battle. They spread fast over Gualon and uncovered immense artifacts throughout the realm wherever they’d been hidden. These artifacts, fragments of the power that the Dark Immortals once wielded, restored their power in ways Hollow had never before seen.
Men and women of inherent good could only watch in despair as they struggled to unite a realm which had not seen complete chaos in centuries. Early campaigns against the omniscient forces of darkness were met with bitter defeat. Heroes such as Shogo and Renai perished alongside thousands of victims. Lionel was captured and tormented by the insane Khasad, and possessed by Elazul to cut down his own wife Alexia, with his own sword, Hellfire.
At the Battle of Vailkrin, the Dark Immortals’ first-phase plans came to a head. With Khasad having secured the allegiance of the drow, and Elazul recruiting countless scores of Wraithen undead, the dark army wrought catastrophe upon the city. Donovan and Kalid fought valiantly to save as many lives as possible. Fighting continued for days without end. When the dust settled, Vailkrin was torn asunder, countless bodies littered the ground, and the Dark Immortals’ reach spanned half the realm.
The Second Immortal War ebbed on. With Lionel free, and soldiers like Cailyn and Demont rising to fame, the tide couldn’t turn but at least evil could be pushed back with renewed vigor. It was only through seizing artifacts from Khasad’s grasp that a united Lithrydel could seek to save itself from annihilation.
In latter campaigns, war became endless skirmish, desperate attempts to procure items of unimaginable value. There upon the field near Cenril was the combined host of every remaining ally from as far west as Venturil to as far east as the islands which would soon become Rynvale. Humans and elves and dwarves and everyone else besides, even drow who began to fear the undead they fought beside, took a stand and held until dawn. Khasad and Elazul, so proud that their wickedness was now set to blanket all the realm, did not anticipate any collaboration between free peoples could break their nigh-indomitable war engine. They did not believe that the good which had banded together to save Hollow would use their own powers against them.
Khasad and Elazul were destroyed as much by last-second strategic failure as the heroes who felled them.