Of Times Forgotten...

When the Temple of the Damned was destroyed and Ocllo was lost, the remaining Scions went into hiding. Dividing into two groups, they had to formulate some means of survival.

The first group fled across the sea, to a distant arctic isle. There, they used their undead hordes to etch a fortress out of the ice-covered mountains. Inside, they populated its halls with armies of undead, created to be more powerful than any that had gone before.

The second group of Scions began a secret campaign to find more elves within Sosaria, in order to drain them of their essence and feed once again. Using their Daemonic gifts they were able to locate the elves’ sacred trees, which acted as magical beacons to the Scions. They would descend upon an area only long enough to take the lives of certain elves, and would then move on. They were careful not to attract the attention of the Paladins of the Ankh, who still searched with an undying fervor. The elves of every region wrote heart-wrenching songs of the massacres that came. Wherever elves dwelt, the Scions of Baal’morda could find them. Using profane rituals, they could pierce any veil to find their prey. And find them they did.

But though they were able to keep their exploits from the eyes of the Paladins for a time, it did not last. With entire tribes of elves vanishing from the secret war and from the Affliction that followed, the Elven Lords sought the assistance of the Sacred Order of the Ankh. The elven priests and the Healers of the Ankh worked tirelessly to find some way that the Scions might be defeated, or the Affliction might be halted. And their efforts proved their salvation. They developed a ritual which used a Silver Ginseng extracted from one of the sacred elven trees. They hoped to use its restorative properties to restore the Afflicted, thus depriving the Scions of their power. In the meantime, the dwindling number of elves from across Sosaria gathered together with the Paladins of the Ankh to fight the Scions in the largest elven glade, called Sylva.

From the onset of the Battle for Sylva, the armies of undead and the powers of the Scions of Baal’morda proved too powerful for the elves and Paladins. Many fell in the first day, and into the night. Even more were captured for sustenance. The undead armies sent by the Scions did not tire, and did not retreat. Their only command was destruction, and they carried that command out until all animation left their battered and crippled bodies. The Paladins and Elves, however, grew more weary with each wave of attacks. Every one of them would have fallen, if not for the intervention of the Priests and Healers.

They arrived, cloaked by the chaos around them. Their ritual went undisturbed, for there was no reason to take notice of them. No reason, that is, until its completion. The Priests and Healers could not have predicted what happened afterward. The power they released did not cure the Afflicted among them. But it did sever the bond through which the Scions fed on the Afflicted. Suddenly, the Scions found themselves empty, without a single soul on which to feed. Their undead creations fell where they stood, with nothing left to fuel their tireless attack. The Scions realized instantly their peril. They were powerless and outnumbered. They did the only thing they could.

They fled.

Elf and Paladin alike took to the woods to hunt down the sorcerers. But they would not find them. Not for several days. And when they did find the body of Mord’daascha, known to them as Farseer Reizon, they saw that he had died of the same symptoms as those he infected. Aged beyond his years, ravaged by the Affliction... suddenly it was all so clear. These sorcerers were, themselves victims of the Affliction. Yet, they had learned some way to sustain themselves through the lives of others. The Paladins knew that their time of victory had come. They now held the key to the Scions’ defeat.

Three Afflicted Scions managed to escape the valley and flee deep into the woods. After the death of Reizon, only two Scions returned to the northern isle to tell of the tale. They did not expect to see what they found. The other Scions had not been idle. On the frozen isle, they had built an elaborate underground fortress. Populated by their army of undead, they had hoped to make their stand here, where they could not be defeated by an invading force. But word from the survivors of Sylva changed everything. The returning Scions told of the battle, and the ritual that had doomed them.

The course of action was obvious. Both the knowledge of this ritual, and its components would have to be destroyed. If they waited in their fortress, then they awaited only their doom. For eventually they would be found out, and the Sacred Order of the Ankh would strike them and damn them as their own magic had damned so many others. So they formulated a new plan, a plan that called for the destruction of the Order. The Scions prepared their powers, choosing only one to remain behind. They intended to strike at the Sacred Order of the Ankh where they least expected it... Home.