Vlaad Aeron [The Beginning]

Vlaad Aeron [The Beginning]

A mildewed grey had settled into the lands. A cloud of impious actions hung in the air like a beast of burden, floating like a songbird who only moans dirges. The whole region had been plagued with shadow since the supposed assassination of Lord Whitaker the Wise and his family, minus his deviant son. In adjacent kingdoms, there was still a slight sense of normalcy. The nearby castle of Greldor had been falling into disrepair over the past few decades, thanks to Vlaad Aeron the Cruel, son of the praised Lord Whitaker the Wise. A more evil man was unimaginable. As a young boy, he killed his entire family, one by one, oddly coinciding with a series of ‘accidents’. After all of them had been pulled out of the picture, he was the only one left with ‘noble’ blood. Being the only one with ‘noble’ blood left, he unquestioningly became the new Lord of Greldor. He had a vast militia at his disposal, and treated them as such. His mercenary army of barbaric knights, appropriately called the Black Horde, was almost as malicious as he. The Horde killed for almost any offense, ranging from heckling to treason. Innocent peasants were massacred daily, with their heads shoved on pikes lining the path to the gatehouse of Greldor. The path was now so hideously and wickedly dark after years of this that a torch was required to even see your own hands in front of you. Few other rulers of neighboring lands wanted anything to do with Vlaad, for he was far too evil and corrupt to be dealt with. Besides, the messengers who got sent there often never returned. Mortality rates were up, birth rates were low. Many of the Horde would rape women they came across, resulting in beastly children that would grow into even more fiendish adults. The term horde had become associated with the idea of murder, monstrosity, and even the Reaper. Peasants had it the worst, especially peasants of surrounding regions. Vlaad and his Horde had recently become expansive and began a campaign of territorial conquest. Invasions had started getting progressively more and more horrific. For an example of Vlaad’s ever-growing cruelty, the people who surrendered were covered in a sticky paste of sultry resin and ferrous oxblood and thrown into a viewable pit full of bloodthirsty exotic creatures. His most recent creatures gained were a family of starving crocodiles. He made the pit viewable, and enforced the watching of mutilations as a sort of fear tactic to teach any other able-bodied prisoner the lesson of humility and terror. These are the ways of Vlaad Aeron the Cruel.

On the other side, there was little oppression, but it existed nonetheless. The Righteous, as they called themselves, were growing ever more tired of Vlaad the tyrant and his fear-driven crusades. They had each begun the process of unification against the Lord and his minions. Gifts of piety were being exchanged to offer a sense of trust and strength between the other kingdoms. An additional motivation was to create an army strong enough to withstand the might of the Black Horde, also with the intent of destroying and disbanding what would remain of it afterward. Prophets and seers foresaw a mysterious hooded figure in black, presumably Vlaad, leading the forces of evil into a battle of epic proportions against the Righteous forces, rallied under a single standard. The only thing that remained to be determined was when the two sides would be enmeshed in the clash of the millennia.