Artashir's Scholarly Writings of Deadhaus Sonata

Here, I'll try my little story-take of Deadhaus Sonata lore on my studious intake so far. I am very intrigued by the Lineage aspect and honestly, 'Legacy Scholar' is probably the best title for me in these things. As a long-time study to Legacy of Kain and certainly adapted into the dark fantasy and villainous perception for a very long time. I can finally write, something I haven't been able to do properly for a long time I think and glad I can make the opportunity here with you. Even if it might be just 'fan-work'. I made this thread mostly to avoid drowning everyone else's magnificent work and ideas, making this a little corner and your thoughts to it.

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The Falsehood of Impunity

Iulis, Lord of the Patium Lineage, furrowed his brows while he studied the latest cartography to the Deads’ Empire. There was some places that have changed in the past century he recognize. A talon brushed on where his original home was in the northeast. Now it was drowned since the river’s disastrous shift from the Humans’ foul ingenuity. He recall it vividly as if it was a mere night ago. Just as quick as his temper flared, the vampire dashed it aside to the current - the eradication of encroachment in his territory by a legionnaire force holding to dig their little boots onto his earth.

Slowly pushing himself straight, gilt eyes shone on his thralls like a lion onto jackals. Doggish things nibbling on the scraps of his majesty; four ghouls that served as his scouts and a Revenant that held their allegiance by brutish dominance. Compared to their dirty haggard appearance, the Patium Lord was a poised regal clad of fell armour and finest attire intertwined. His dark angular face showed the softest changes, coarse hair braided along his scalp to a controlled mane along nape and shoulders with well-trimmed beard. A predator of controlled malice, Iulis pointed onto the ghoul that called itself Tally’s Man - for its arms were etched dubiously with the many dead legionnaires that it feasted upon since its Change.

“I want the Foreman to be apart of your tally. His stubbornness has proven fatal of his ambition.” His soft baritone rolled with an elaborate flex of his lips as if every word had a power and they were his to weave for pinpoint command onto the Ghoul, who bowed its hooded head. The purposeful mask upon its face did little to stop the malevolence reflecting of the wide fish-like eyes behind the corroding green-iron. “As you wish, milord.” The moist gurgle-speech left the gluttonous thing’s toothy mouth.

The Vampire looked to the Revenant then, the former imperial captain stood there solid and still as a statue. Crest-helmed and armoured of failed runes and tarnished surcoat to a order that never returned for their fallen in the black lands of the Deadhaus. To him, the Lord of Scholarly Aptitude spoke just as intently,

“Kill whomever deny you and return here, then we will begin the broader strokes.”

 

[Artashir]

Chapter I

The Fallen Captain, once upon a more fairer life was Lyndon Allardf, moved with inhuman stride. Each militant step was like pushing against the waves of the aether, constantly trying to hook his soul to return back to the great ocean of ancestors and beyond. To the mortal plane, the flickering azure fires rolling from the visors of warped helm and gorgets of his breastplate to an unseen wind. Greatshield in one fist dedicating of an angel chained in eternal limbo to a whirling abyss, wisdom and loyalty lost in agony and wings torn. In the other, the Revenant heaved his longsword from the gutted horse with its innards steaming fresh.

The ghouls crawled about in the road, feasting on the patrol with the greedy gnawing and snapping of limbs was a chorus that the spirit found no mirth to. All but wrath and contempt roused his composure, lumbering on the autumn-kissed road. The Theceans were trying to civilize the Vampire’s lands to their own desire, even now he could see the darkness sip and twist in a spite that he recognized in the Patium vampires.

Spite was a venom that the house has wielded well. The same spite that chained the Fallen Captain from his own grave for his death was not one of honour nor noble recognition. For there was a snake within his legion…

The thought drove a crackling pop of jaw under the Revenant’s metal-fused skull, anger boiled as he strode into the crawling fogs. There was something moving in the pale touch. A momentary distraction before a bolt hit upon his thick cuirass. Then a barrage’s more, a few managing to even bite onto the dark plating before the Captain snarled. Shield brought up, he charged without the same fear that pounded into the chests and ears of the enemy trying to use the fog as their cover. A hellish roar rebuked this notion, it would be for Death hungered for new souls.

Crossbowmen were scrambling from their line, pushing themselves back into the defense bulwark of shielded infantry that no doubt heard the echoes of their dead kinsmen. Their defiance was an insult. An insult was punished by the swooping cleave of his blade, the shriek of collapsing armour and flesh against one shield-bearer’s side almost muted the man’s own scream. Silver-tipped lances thrusted to the burning form between joints and gorget. The seethed roar answered in the sizzling punctures to his animated cadaver within, a mere husk of the man that was.

What the formation thought was just him found quickly to a falsehood. From the rolling fogs, a new symphony of pain howled around them. The crossbowmen were being hurled and torn apart by darting monsters. The gurgling and eldritch hisses of Ghouls still hungering for the flesh and blood so warm of life.

The Tally’s Man raked his talons around one’s spine, twisting it like a splintering twig before hurling the pain-stunned cadaver in twos with only the rope of intestines to be their connection. The disgusting horror breaking discipline, leaving the eleven soldiers of once-fierce men and valiant women to be torn between the savage brute at their fore and the pack of ghouls at their back.

The sagging flesh of the Myre-Haunt pounced onto a quick shield, clawed toes raking while leaning its heavy body with a unhinging maw rowed of black teeth and greedy tongue howling a breath so fetid that stomachs twisted into involuntary retch. Fists with one too many fingers slamming over and over onto shield and face, crushing the soldier under before comrades forced themselves to break their wall to skewer the undead from either side.

The sizzling of flesh and organs had little more uses than mere physical representation to the human that was. The pain it experiences was sweet and blood-curdling, black watery ichor squirting before muscles squeezed, the drowned cannibal clawing and writhing like a mad animal, trying to escape and the soldiers too terrified to thrust deeper - risking the ghouls’ claws - or pulling out - and risk the ghouls’ claws.

Choice was made by the appearance of another of the ghoulish pack, a polar opposite to the fat-sagging Haunt was the Wretched Tom. Crawling on all fours akin to a demented archanid with elongated limbs split out at their elbows, a body taut under shrouds and aged beast leather stitched to the hardened flesh. Human was the barest recognition, not even her jaw-split face had the one of the last remnant to the former existence. Lunging with bloodied claws, one pair of hands groped around one soldier’s nape and helmet for a neck-snapping yank. Still there was a delicious fight in the choking woman, the Wretch dragged her victim with an envious glow in her black eyes the moment she saw that beautiful face twisted in pain and soldiery.

One thumbed caress before the two swept into the fog with only the soldier’s scream into a brutalized gurgle.

“Doom to my Murderer’s Kin!” The Captain vowed as a boot stamp a legionnaire down into the earth, pinning the squirming man as his sword whipped and slammed with savage handling. His overwhelming strength a blunt hammer as rage fueled each attack that broke the shieldwall further. “Death to the Living that dance still!”

With sword’s tip pointed to the night-shrouded heavens, cursing the gods that damn him and the hellish flame warped along its blade before cleaving several more of the Living into seared pieces. A sliver of the Captain’s technique returning in the tempest of hate, instead of a single-minded brute there was an experienced dance of legs to shield batting each thrust of spear and attempted plunge of side-blades. Each failure to wound or cripple him was a death sweetly given.

“All will know the weight of Death!” In the finality of his claim the Revenant crushed his pinned victim and looked for more souls to release, watching the Myre-Haunt eating the tongue out of a faceless legionnaire bowed back on their knees the lance still in his ribs. Disgusting creatures. Throwing his blade into a broken body, feeling the life flash out of its corpse before grabbing the lance’s shaft. The Haunt looked at with a glare of his bulbous eyes, looking down as the Captain broke the lance from one end. The snarl from the fat thing was rewarded with a backhand, reminding his place before the other end of the lance was pulled.

Ichor spewing a moment more before the muscles closed in the quivering tensions. Pain now nothing much a phantom-sensation to the gnawing hunger still driving the ghoul to eat more. “Move.” The Captain ordered, the last word he gave as his hellfire slowly lowering to a disdainful calm. The animation of his wrath doused to a silent lamentation, continuing his march down the road. The ghouls slowly prowling around when they ate as much as the more brutish undead allowed.

 

[Artashir]

Chapter II

The forest slowly yawned out with the pallid breathes of the fog parting for the warband, the Captain’s firefoxes stare out to the autumn-gloomed stretch of abandoned farms and homes leading to the central home of Faradhurz - the northern tribute of the Patium territories, there were two other redoubts that served the vampires as their personal serfs of humans that dwelled in Deadhaus. A controlled economy that held a simple law; the vampires will protect the living from the famished Undead and those outside of their territory, in exchange of their collective blood and their dead while their generations can continue to exist.

A pact that seem to be so blatantly broken.

This is the evidence that brought the Captain and his ghoulish escort this north facing the Spine of the Dead Dreamer. While the blood-red standard of the gilt lion stood, there was a dismissal to its appearance as if the spirit of loyalty was gone. An air of something foul in the breeze that brought the Tally’s Man into a slow rise.

They could see that the protective walls of Faradhurz were more manned than the usual thrall-sentries. Where there would be dead men occupying, lesser dead that shambled in slow yet dutiful attention, now new bodies walked with spears. Shrouded under hoods and patchwork armor. It caused a sneer to pull the ghoul’s scarred lips, “Humans.”

The Revenant said nothing, looking out to the changing horizon of darkness into the faint purples whilst the moon made her fall over the edge of Sleepwalker’s Pass. Then a presence brushed in the back of his mind, causing a slight turn from the large warrior. His sight piercing through the fog in curiosity. The presence grew more while the pack spoke among themselves.

“The Humans’ liberators are bold, brother.” The Myre-Haunt whisps, gnawing on splinters of a femur. Blood from some sharper bits piercing his palette, given little mind while his tongue flicked them loose. “The walls are well...watched.” “Too well.” The Wretched Tom crooned while combing her serrated claws through her wet locks. “There are only five of us. We are strong but their numbers will drown us.”

“Does fear still pollute your fattened heart, Sister?” The final of the ghouls questioned in challenge as much as jest, making the Tom turn her head with a trilling sneer. From the fog as it stretched and whirled like ghouls. Faces slowly shaped, yawning silent screams with fingers groping for the last as he crawled like a hunchbacked dog. The powerful scaled arms ending in curled claws full of gore still being lapped by black tongue, from the hood of stitched flesh was ratty drapes of unkempt hair and an unblinking eye over a constant smile of wet teeth.

The Rabid Son was an appearance well-known but the figure behind him made the ghouls bristle. Legs unwillingly moving to part for the Son and his guided being; the unwanted of this venture.

A seer of the Patium court, that has stood in the shadows and in a way, still does. The shape of man wrapped under the linens and silks of a life long gone, the only visible flesh being the grievous lips puckered in a constant disdain to the things before him under the shroud of hood and iron crown and the arm so greedily holding a orb the size of a man’s head. Black as night and just as craven to return no light from the moon’s curious peek. He never touched the floor, levitating with the whip and flicker of robes’ tattered ends like angry snakes.

“W-What…’ The Tally’s Man seethed, feeling muscles being rebellious as he parted to one side with the Myre-Haunt. “Are you doing here, Lich?” Every attempt of word was a struggle, feeling the offensive onslaught of whispers and whimper in his skull. It wasn’t that of pain or screams of sweet agony of limbs being torn and guts spilling but the insidious symphony of souls that never knew a salvation promised. Their faces - men, women, children, even beasts - pushed against the fog like a morbid surface of stiff waters, never able to break through. Through the Rabid Son, the Lich spoke.

“To watch. To indulge. To ensure tribute is given sum total.” The voice echoed under the Son’s, used like a willing puppet. The pure disdain the ghouls shared oozed like toad’s slime. The Liches of Deadhaus were arrogant incarnate, to achieve their immortality and flaunt fair more for peacocks. Magistrates and judges of death and collectors of souls. And the Lich of Patium’s Court was no different, Palla’sul.

Palla’sul the Defiler. A title not easily gained for those of the Undeath. Cursed by the Men of the Human Empire for a battle that saw barrows explode as graves awoken. The ancestors of generations; of shambling bones and rotten flesh, mummified and worse, that tore their own apart with their souls mere slivers to inhabit and move their bodies while the rest were said to be trapped in his orb. Foulest were his spells and he remained a shadow compared to the other great Liches that dotted the Deadhaus, each one an unliving grimoire of the blackest spells and ambitions that subvert all that the living held dead for their chances for eternal lives. Respect and fear, horror and admiration held over them and Palla’sul enjoyed it all finer than any wine.

And as he looked upon Faradhurz, the Lich saw only tribute. Bodies and Blood. Nothing but bodies and blood.

 

[Artashir]

Chapter III

The coming dawn was a bleak thing in Deadhaus, where the Undead’s power waned yet their presence was final in these dark lands. Where in the empire, the sun would come like a brilliant eye of the gods’ glorious love. Here, it was an orb clouded by grey clouds and hating haze that provided only the briefest allowance of satisfying crops that barely feed the human stock for the next - if at all.

The morning fogs were starting to crawl across the fields and slithering malevolently between forsaken homes to the cart-barricaded entrance of Faradhurz. The ghoulish brush of finger-like vapors groping and raising up at the ramparts. Above, villagefolk stared down with upmost fear that perfumed the air. In their conscious betrayal, they knew the punishment will come. Yet, they still chose to denounce the iron watch of the Patium in favor of this slivering chance of freedom. Freedom that the governor risked by staying as bodies for the Imperial soldiers seeking their redoubt as a forward hold for the campaigns to come.

The first sound of a crow, the first in many days, caused a fright into one man’s heart. The eyes of the vampire, some say. Familiars, one of many that could be under their master’s. Or it could be just a simple crow seeking some dead dog or morsel. Many of their people have been dying as of late from the dissents of those who knew better, attempting to fight the Faradhurz back for the vampires but instead, the Imperial soldiers killed them and tossed their slain bodies to the pyre so the Undead could not claim them.

In the smoke, the guard could have sworn he saw a daemonic shape. Ever-watchful, ever malevolent - for blood was able to be spilt with just cause.

It has been in his dreams. Nightmares. Will they survive. Will they see the sun? Will they see a time not of fear?

Why not just end it? Why not just…

His eyes drew to the blanketed ground, seeing the fog. Oh how it danced and twisted, slowly reaching for him. Come and join them. Join them...the voice that was his became more. Many. Himself. His father. His mother. His sons. His grandfathers. So many that it weighed him and his mind into a tumble, his fellow sentries too slow to catch him before vanishing under.

There wasn’t a thunk of his body, only a symphony of whispers and curses that pierced the listeners with a wash of cold dread. From the fogs twisting among itself, a tempest of uplift revealed a ghost of womanly allure. Her face pallid and sad from the writhing mane of phantom locks while wearing a death attire linen and dress of old regality. When those white eyes looked upon the living, the ghost’s beauty twisted into something far more foul. The peacefulness turned horrible and cruel as a draping arm swayed to reveal a evil visage that unhinged a scream that woke every living being into a heart-beating fright, the old died with clenched hearts and babes cried as a omen of terrible coming.

The guards’ screams followed with the Banshee as she claimed their lives with a swipe of her hand, dark magics spearing through bodies and linens slashing like flexible blades. With the souls freeing themselves like lost fish, a darker hand took them and forced them into their own cadavers or twisted into enthralled ghosts.

Grabbing their own weapons, the groaning zombies leashed by a dark presence moved. Even some with a more self-destructive path, their flesh starting to rot and meat slipping off animated bones as they tore at their former allies. From the town’s center, as men and women ran in confusion and fear, the Imperial garrison was mobilizing with their armor on and swords and spears in hand. Officers in their more knightly attire looked and saw the source of the Faradhurz’s sudden disturbance.

“Undead! Undead have breached!” A knight warned, running to intercept the zombies walking down the rampart before clashing a blade with a half-made skeleton’s swinging cleaver. From his side, a door flung open to reveal the redoubt’s minister shambling with the wide eyes of horror still on glassy eyes. The saintly icon of the Holy Lords swung and hissed on his chest, the only truth to his life of lies in both self-perseverance, greed and some faux-attempt to bring hope to the sheep. The minister’s body shriveled more and more till his flesh gripped onto his ribs and cheeks. A bony finger pointed and through his glowing eyes, a spell was weaved through blackening teeth.

With a drive of force, the knight threw the skeleton back with the same motion to end the perversion done to the Minister’s body to feel his mind dulled and muscles clenching into a locking stillness. Fear was immediate, unable to do nothing but watch as the controlled Minister moved closer. Lips still whispering before his cold hand touched an armored cheek, ice creeping from the mere contact. Through eyes, the knight’s tightening lungs managed another gasp as he saw the black figure that wore the Minister. The hateful gold peering into his soul with a baneful hunger.

“Where is he?”

The Knight shuddered and had no power to even scream as chaos claimed Faradhurz with the growing number of zombies and skeletons like a fell disease, fighting where their blades could swing. The front barricade exploding by a writhe of weaved magicks and undead pushing for the flesh and blood of their victims. Above all, the Banshee screamed into the dawn as she haunted the living.

 

[Artashir]

Chapter IV

“Oh gods…” The Foreman whispered in sheer horror, how did Faradhurz suffered. His scrolls bundled in arm and satchel, seeing the chaos claiming the town like a wildfire. It happened so fast, he wouldn’t have believed it if he didn’t see for himself. He have seen battle. He have seen war in his life but this - the innocence torn asunder so callous - he was frozen in the disgusting black hearted tactics of the Enemy. They have no quarter. No shame for the living nor dead.

How the meat slipped off bones like the most tender of meals, revealing wet and bloody bones of a magick-conjured skeleton from a former soldier, eyes slipping like wet snails from sockets as the scream of agony turned to a hiss of the damned charged by a twisted soul. How, the freshly dead rose so stiff and ugly with whatever they held last as their weapon or using blackening claws to tear into former kinsmen. How the wailing spirits of the old and new haunted for more to join their agonies, naked from their bodies and hateful that they know suffered and had no escape to the Next Life by fell magic that only these Undead monsters could muster with glee.

Warriors of the Empire held the line, fighting with skills gifted by training and experience. How their blades swung with silver glint and magics weaved by academy’s tutelage. Armor and shields deflecting greedy fingers and breaking teeth, smashing skulls and splintering limbs with formation and unity. Their warcries for the Emperor and the people they hoped to protect, holding…while the cries of Faradhurz folk tried to run on their horses and remaining of families in some last vestige of hope guided by his knights as per his orders. Into the mountain pass while these monsters were busy. It was their only hope. Their last hope.

His eyes stung. A shaking hand touched his scarred face, feeling wet. Tears. Rubbing fingers together, his hand shook no more before taking his scrolls to throw into the fire. They will not have his work. Polydorus Catullus will not let them. Then something dripped on his face again. Thicker. Hotter than tears. Hand shot, snatching his sword with his body rolling in time to barely evade a sudden fall of weight from the ceiling. Just then, he heard the sudden attack outside of his office. The battle in the grand hall erupted just as fierce as outside.



“Devils!” Foreman Polydorus cried out, springing on his knee with his sword swiping at the attempted lunge of a Ghoul, foul as all and just as unique in its horrid retid form. As it swayed and crawled on splintered forearms and jointed legs like a demented spider. Once a woman, now far less. The veil of wet hair barely hiding the bulbous eyes and faux-mouth splitting into a teeth-rowed assembly of mandibles as she shrilly screamed, coming at him with jerking speed.

This wasn’t the first time he faced such a thing, his sword swiping into a wide arc that seem meant for her neck and cut at chitinous limbs before thrusting forward to encourage a further retreat. Arm retreating as quick as it came, never over-extended as he constantly forced himself to move. Hand groping the table for a fierce tumble that caught the ghoul off guard and it screamed angry at the actually troublesome prey. Boot kicking the table’s surface at its face as he made a lunge through the window. The crack of something in his bag but the legionnaire rolled in the momentum, age had the mischief to nip at his stamina. He did not let it linger, pushing his body forward.

“The enemy have broken into the Townhall!” He warned to the garrison, already set upon by zombies stumbling for him. Behind, the archanid-wretch was reaching for him. Blasted all! Polydorus snatched his satchel with his blade grinding a short flickering of hot sparks along the hall’s stone into his oil-stinking bag. The flashing of bluish flame boiling and the content bobbing inside for a hasty toss.

Already in starting to run through the greater gap of the zombies approach, slamming one over and slicing another before his office exploded with the ghoul’s flaming body screaming through the window, crashing through another’s house. He ran for the side entrance and saw what was fighting the men in the townhall. A large Revenant clad in what looked like knight’s plating, a greatshield crushing two men in one sway and slicing three more in another with its hellish flame roaring through its gorget and helm’s crest. He did not look back, he had to keep moving. Especially when he heard the hate-filled shriek behind him with the still fire-licked she-devil behind him racing on all six limbs.

Polydorus shifted on his good leg, giving the final rites onto the Merciful Gods - to find his soul worthy and his sword true. The softest light was felt onto his shoulders as evil surrounded all around him but he did not falter. Let the Gods know, he did not cow away as he looked into the ghoul’s ravenous eyes and her mandibles spread, wanting nothing more than to devour him whole into her spiteful gullet. He did not falter as her body lunged onto his blade, piercing thyroid and collarbone to the plentiful spill of black ichor. Screams of agony loud and true. His entire blade plunging to quillons’ halt as they tumbled against one another. Twisting one way to another, clawed limbs tearing on earth and street. Fangs and teeth unable to reach from their position, only to let out spit-flinging curses of bestial and mannish cries with more of its foulness gushing into fingers.

The thought of slaying this poor thing was almost to mind, yet the lore of these beings existences were terrible as any and yet from the harvests beheld in these dead lands, one would almost imagine the desperate souls that had no choice but the flesh of their kindred. This only drove Polydorus more, his knee against its - her - stomach and forced them to roll till his weight pressed her down like the oversized spider that she was.

Bones too powerful to snap, the foreman tore his weapon free with the blade slicing her throat and loosened a mandibles. “Gods find some mercy upon your wretched soul.” He prayed as his blade was coming for its decapitation. Instead, one clawed hand caught his arm and with the effort of a child to a wooden toy, snapped it back with a loud pop of loosened socket and splintered shoulder blade. The pain was hot and sudden, so agonizing the foreman’s scream was choked by his own tongue.

An leathery arm etched in tallies wrapped around his underarm and shoulder for a lift to a hot, panting maw. “Your soul might…but not the flesh.” The cold voice cooed between flaring teeth. What came next was a grotesque ending for a valiant man with flesh torn and meat ripped, bones exposed and snapped for a suckling thirst. His screams only to be added onto symphony of Faradharaz’s punishment decreed, eyes looking to the skies as long as he could praying the refugees will find salvation while the crows circled, awaiting to taste him. Not even realizing until a mummified hand slowly cradled him up that he was not but a head still alive, staring into the face of a iron-crowned spectre. Words unheard by lips but by his departing soul.

“Go to your Gods and cry to your ancestors, ‘Polydorus has failed, the House of the Dead has seen the end of my works. The souls I’ve shepherd were lost…and I come alone where there was many’. Go not in peace but wretched and regretful…thus I say. Thus the Lord of Patium decree with your flock crying your name in hate forever more.”

 

[Artashir]

Word of the Patium

We are the Patium.

We stand where others have drowned.

Where the many have lunged head-first to the temping darkness. We drank deep and emerged anew.

Mortality have its uses for all of its amusing hubris. We will educate them to the truth.

We are the guiding apex and we have the responsibility to show them the Darkness, it is by their choice -

Will you drink or will you drown?​

 

[Artashir]

Milady Silana
Last Shanty of Lord Dillsbowe
-
Oh milady, oh milady

Oh Lady of Lily White

Oh milady, oh milady

Oh Lady of Sweetened Night

Oh milady, oh milady

Oh Lady of Quiet Light

Oh how you cry, my lady denied

Oh how the night slight and your eyes light

I see you by the barrows

I see you by the down

Oh milady, oh lady mine

Come to me, return to me

So you may finally lay

Oh milady, oh milady

Lady Silana, Heaven's Light

Return me, come back to me

Oh milady, oh milady

Your veil's beauty is ever fine

I shall lift you once again

Heaven's fine but without you, I rather deny

Oh milady, oh Lady mine​