# Lore

#

How long has it been?

This forever pain.

Through endless loss, while having nothing.

In the binding dark.

Who am I?

Or, who was I before I became nothing?

This shadow.

This formless outline of me.

I’d ask for death, but that is the only thing I was granted.

Yet, now I am free. The Gates left open.

Where did our tormentors go?

Hell is unbound, and so am I.

.

You are a damned soul, trapped forever in the Underworld...

Or so you thought, for one day after millennia, for the first time, the gates of the Underworld open before your eyes.

The Guardians are nowhere to be seen, and the God of the Death has disappeared without notice.

You are one among thousands of souls and hellish creatures to escape.

The Underworld has literally broken loose, and the World is filled with its cursed scourge.

Creatures take over temples, dungeons, and cities that now lay in ruin - for where the living lived, now rules the dead.

Where are the Gods?

... Banished!

What are we to do?

...

You do not care what the living do. You are a bodiless soul, an ethereal remnant of ether, floating through hunted lands searching for one thing and one thing only:

**A new skin to inhabit. ** As you defeat creatures and enemies of all kinds you test their bodies, but they are weak and fall to dust under the strain of your powerful soul. You must hunt bigger prey, more powerful foes, more valiant heroes. Those wearing skins worthy of you.

Meanwhile, the world burns. Maybe you’ll discover why during your search.

# Where are the Gods?

Gone.

Instantly, all of them disappear. Without a trace, without notice... With them the AntiGod, the Undead Lord of Gehenna, master of the Underworld, sovereign of Hell, The Counterweight, the Bones to the Flesh, the Dark Suzerain. There, waiting for the living to end to rule them forever in the afterlife. The Last Laugh. As powerful as all the Gods of the living together, before he too vanished.

The Gates of the Underworld now open and unguarded, without a barrier between both Worlds.

Death is now a matter of where rather than when.

Abandoned, the living turned desperately to worship creatures of all kinds that claim reign over the Godless lands. Some still worship the Gods, thinking of it as one last test of their Faith. But most have given up, giving in to their deepest desires.

Societies are gone.

Death is not the end. Freed, the punished dead run rampant and take vengeance upon all that is good for their millennia of suffering. Those that were granted bliss upon death, see with horror their return to the physical plane, as they claim their rightful place above everyone else by whatever means necessary.

Unsupervised, the World belongs to those willing to take it.

# What does death mean now?

Nothing, or everything.

Those who die, lose their physical bodies and their souls are moved to the Underworld, but there is no one to sort the pure from the wicked, no one to serve the good in Elysium or punish the evil in Ammit. The souls of the dead are thrown into disarray, and left to their own devices.

Finding their way back to the land of the living is harder or easier depending on where their souls fell. Some will forever lose themselves in the tortuous labyrinth of Tartarus, while others will be enslaved by the more powerful souls of monsters too big to fit through the gates that take you back to the physical  World.

Those who come back do so as ectoplasmic shadows and existence pains them until they find a body to inhabit. But of course, that requires them to kill their host first. Bodies are the most valuable commodity, and souls are now willing to wreak havoc to obtain the most powerful bodies within their reach.

Now that death does not represent the end, life has acquired a new meaning, for both the living and the no longer dead.

# The Body Snatchers

Souls existence in the physical world is painful.

Some cope with it, others are driven mad, a few decide to stay in the Underworld, but most try to take over the bodies of the living instead.

When a freed soul kills a living being, it has a window of opportunity in which it can fill the space the previous soul leaves behind when it is taken to the Underworld. Thus, keeping the body for itself.

But, it is not that simple... 

The body and the soul must be somewhat compatible for this thievery to work... if the soul is too powerful for the body, it will destroy it in the process, and if the body is too powerful for the soul, it will reject it or even drive it mad!

Creatures of great power, killed by an opportunistic soul when wounded, asleep or by pure luck, roam the World possessed by these deranged souls who can barely control their gigantic and monstrous frames.

There are always those willing to sell their bodies to powerful souls in exchange for power, those who have nothing to lose and are fine with existing as disembodied shadows. For this reason, the living who value their physical bodies turn to Cults for protection.

Unexplicably the ancient souls of the shadows being played by the players are too powerful for all the bodies they find in their path.

They have forgotten who they were but their souls are extremely mighty and rip to pieces all the bodies they try to inhabit eventually.

All they can do is keep some of the attributes of the most potent bodies they try to snatch, which translates into certain metamorphosis for the soul while obtaining certain memories, abilities, and physical attributes of the dissevered body.

Players who defeat great enemies and take over their bodies will remain shadowy figures, but with certain physical attributes absorbed from those bodies.

# The Cults

In the wake of the Gods, heretic Cults take their place, feeding on desperation.

These Cults roam the land, forcing all they find into their ranks, or killing them in sacrifice if they find them failing and giving their bodies to the souls of their followers.

Most Cults have a leader, who has built a whole religion/philosophy around itself and has aspirations of ascension to Godhood, while others behave like hives.

No one knows how many cults there are, some are destroyed, assimilated or abandoned, while others are excised or are created from scratch every day. But, a few Cults are vastly more powerful than the rest, known as the Greater Cults, or the True Cults.

There are 5 of them, and they are as powerful as empires and control regions as big as countries. Most of them are in an eternal fight against each other, and it is under their duelling feet that the rest of the Cults thrive.

They are known as: The Cult of Heaven, the Cult of Locus, the Cult of Death, the Cult of Sol, and the Cult of Hell.

# The Cult of Heaven

“This is not what I was promised!”

The Cult of Heaven is the cruellest of all. Their hate is fueled by their own feeling of self-righteousness, built upon thousands of years of living in Nirvana as pampered perfect beings.

Only souls who entered Heaven can belong to this cult, which does not have any members from the living, Tartarus or the Lost Souls. Nevertheless, thousands of living creatures follow them, as adepts, with the promise of full membership once a new Heaven is installed.

They claim their perfect undying and eternal bliss back, and if they cannot have it, they will build their own—upon the corpses of all those that oppose them. Building Heaven is not an easy task, and it cannot be done with clean hands instead they will use slaves for it.

Their absolute leader is Gabriel, once a powerful Angel who took care of congregations of peaceful souls in Elysium. As the Gods vanished and left it abandoned, Gabriel grew angry and what everyone thought was gentleness, revealed itself to be self-glorification. It has no respect or care for any being and will do anything, to gain back his privilege.

# The Cult of Locus

“What is a corpse but the sustenance for a thousand smaller souls?”

Death is rebirth. Maybe not for the dying, but a thousand souls will feast on the dead’s body, grow within it, and nurture future generations. Living beings must feed on others to survive. The Cult of Locus believes that if the living end up disappearing from Earth, killed by all the freed souls of the Underworld, then existence itself will stop. It is the energy of the living that keeps reality from collapsing now that the Gods have left this Universe. And, as the dead are killing the living at an unnatural speed, the only way to maintain the balance between the living and the dead, is to multiply the living as much as possible.

In a way, the Cult of Locus opposes most of the other Cults, as they are the greatest defenders of the living. They always avoid taking lives and will take in anyone who wants to join them. In a macabre way, they are the only Cult that respects and loves its members equally.

All that the Cult of Locus asks of its members is to give their physical bodies to their Biowitches, magicians who take away all feeling from their bodies and graft them into its nests for loci,mushrooms and other small creatures who feed and grow from there.

One life becomes a thousand and the wave of death is delayed another day.

# THE CULT OF DEATH

“There has got to be a way to end it all - we just haven’t found it yet”

The Cult of Death believes that death—final death, not heaven not hell, but an eternal end is possible… and desirable. They are ancestral souls; tired souls, they don’t wish for anything, but nothingness.

How do they think they can achieve this feat when souls keep coming back from the Underworld? They believe they just haven’t found the right way to kill someone. What they venerably call: The Final Kill.

So, they test. They experiment. They burn the Earth and test their killing on all who dare stand in their way. They use the darkest of magics, the evilest of weapons, and the weirdest of combinations. Before ending a life, they first recite a prayer of gratitude for giving yet another body to their cause. They keep track of all their murders in their Tome of Death, their sacred book. If the soul killed appears back in the Underworld, they cross off that method and improve new ones searching for their ultimate purpose. If they find the way to die forever, they will use it upon themselves—finally giving up their bodies, and their souls.

# The Cult of Sol

“She still shines on us”

The Cult of Sol believes the Gods were fakes—mighty beings who took advantage that their powers felt god-like to most of the living. They claim that their counterfeit pantheon has been finally taken down by the one and only true God: Sol, the Fiery All-seeing Eye, the True Torch, the Womb… The first of all Gods, venerated for a hundred thousand years by many tribes, and then forgotten and replaced with newer Gods, who walked among mortals, parading themselves as the feathered birds they were.

But no more. Sol is back. She has claimed her land again, she has burned the infidel wannabe gods, and has left one clear message: “My children, now is your turn to burn theirs”.

And that is what the followers of Sol do, burn everyone else on their path. The Ember warriors conquer all on their path, taking all as prisoners. The Furnace Priests are in charge of their conversion, while the Blaze Judges run the courts that deem whose conversion rings true and whose deserves to fall in the hands of the Pyretioners... After the cleansing of a town, the Ash Magisters are left behind to oversee that what is left follows the doctrine of Sol, while the army marches onto their next divine mission.

# The Cult of Hell

“Our turn”

They called us the damned. They gave up on us. They left us to suffer, for eternity—No, they sent us to suffer.

Some pitied us, most relished on our agony. You cannot even begin to imagine our pain! The excruciating agony, the hopelessness of such an eternal fate. No lesson to be learned, just relentless punishment. We were forced to pay for our sins, but what about the sins that rained on us?

They never expected it to end. They never thought that they would have to pay for what they did to us. Now, it's our turn.

The Cult of Hell are out for revenge. Unjustly punished or not, now nothing is stopping them from running rampant in the realm of the living. If they were wicked before they were sent to the Underworld, now they are resentfully evil.

They are the most unorganized cult, with no clear structure or hierarchy, the only requirement to join them is to have left Hell and not to meddle with other cult abuses over heavenly or earthly creatures. They have no higher goal, they only care about satisfying their basic instincts and enjoying their newly gained freedom.