Our Dead Gods

The race of men has failed. The undead and the necromancers of Mortua reign supreme.

Nurias was once a holy warrior. Now, he wanders across the barren wasteland doing what he has to in order to survive... killing for whoever will pay.When a chance happening reveals a way to kill the supposed immortal necromancers, Nurias and others spring to act but nothing goes as planned. Nurias is cursed with the soul of the very thing he tried to destroy... and now, everyone is hunting him.

Across the Sunkenlands, other heroes and heroines arise, as Nurias wanders into the most dangerous region of the wastelands, others seek him out not to kill him, but to unite together for a single chance to save their broken race.

But what can any of them do when their gods and hope are dead? Become what they were always meant to be.

Nurias had the man nearly within his grasp. Some would call it trivial, even foolish, to be so close to a man such as this, but this was personal.
The fleeing man tore through the barren streets of the township, his face wide-eyed and dripping with sweat, but not from the heat in the air. This man was not well. Aside from Nurias, a large group of people chased after the man, but it just so happened that in his hurried frantic flight, he had fallen into an entire barrel of water that Nurias had just paid for. The water was now beyond tainted. This man was infected, and this was not something Nurias could simply leave unaddressed.
Once Nurias was nearly within an arm’s reach of the man, he drew his dagger and lunged forward, gripping the man’s tattered leather armor with his left hand and driving the blade of his dagger into the back of the man's neck. The chase ended.
They both collapsed on the dusty ground. Nurias rolled away from the man as a rhythmic eruption of blood formed a puddle on the ground. A second later, one of the lord’s men seized Nurias from behind.
"Nurias! What did you do?"
"I killed him. I figured that would be obvious."
The man questioning what he had done was the Lord of the Township, Lord Kras. His title held little meaning, being from a bygone era that had destroyed those of royalty. Nothing had been the same ever since the fall of the city of Vasruhal ten years ago, since the coming of the undead.
The lord’s soldiers dragged Nurias up to his feet just as Lorlank, Nurias’ faithful friend, came up directly behind them. "You've killed this man, Nurias. I have given shelter to many of the Remnant before, but never has one took the law into their hands in such a vile way. You killed this man in cold blood."
"I do not know what hope you had," Nurias said. "You knew he was already injured. He was wounded bringing in those shiny boys from the North. I just sped up the process. Besides you know how rare water is, and this man tainted an entire barrel. You know how long it took Lorlank and me to save up for that barrel?"
"You still killed a man. We must remain civil or we become as lawless as the scourge. What do we fight for in this town if not to retain normalcy?"
"Clean water."
Lorlank fought between him and the lord and grabbed Nurias, pulling him away from the lord’s men.
"We're sorry," he said to the lord. "We did not mean to cause trouble."
"Don't take up for me on this, Lorlank," Nurias said. “These people are too soft. They need to know the way this world is.”
The men holding Nurias move to push Lorlank off him when the lord raised his hand in the air for them to halt. "We know of this world. We do not need a reminder. Listen, you haven't been here this long. I do appreciate what you have been able to acquire for the town. We have not had fresh vegetables in some time, and the fact that you were able to find fertile soil in a cave and somehow rig up a way to grow something makes for a lot of encouragement around here. But seeing you chase to his death an already injured soldier standing under my banner is distressing.”
"I also know what you’re about and what I have seen here in the past few weeks. You can keep trying to pretend they don't exist, but I’ll keep reminding you they do. What of this soldier's fate? Were you going to wait until he died, choking on his own blood, before the blade of mercy pierced him? Your Lord, I saw our armies decimated on the Great Plains. I watched as over ten thousand men fell to the enemy while people like you hid in your castles."
"But those men killed two thirds of the undead," one of the soldiers pointed out.
"And that is what you people living in these townships, these islands of waning life, do not understand," Nurias said, pointing at each of them. "None of you fought in the war. Those who did are all dead, for the most part. You must kill the necromancers. Killing the soldiers, the skeletons, and the death walkers is pointless. What are we to do? Continue to strike down those who would strike us down and in so simply give them more soldiers in the end? We scrape a life from this rancid world without true hope, for there is no way to kill a necromancer. Your lord is a fool to think he can do better than the countless who have fallen before us."
Kras lunged out, grabbing Nurias before throwing him across the ground. Lorlank unstrung his warhammer on his back and went between the lord and Nurias.
"Step one step further," he said, angling the hammer toward Lord Kras.
Kras’s soldiers were triple that of Nurias and Lorlank, but in truth, Lorlank could take two times the amount that now threatened them. That was something Nurias, Lorlank, and Kras knew.
"No, just stay back," he said to his men. "Listen, I will not have my men fighting you and your friend here over one life. Just please, these people have been through so much. I am trying to give them some form of peace."
Kras returned to pull Nurias to his feet. The Remnant brushed off his clothing and straightened his tunic.
"I get that. It is why as a Remnant, I have fought still, but that ideology is why humanity has fallen, why my friend Lorlank left the Holy Guard. The Remnant were always considered nothing but a bunch of lawless criminals, but when your pretty castle boys couldn’t put up the fight, they began paying insane amounts for our protection."
The lord looked back to his men and then back to Lorlank and Nurias. "Leave me. Return to your duty, soldiers."
As the lord's men departed, they took the dead soldier and covered him in a nearby cloth.
"We have to burn him. But I’d rather do it outside the city, away from the people." He looked to Nurias. "The ‘shiny boys’ you speak of have all but died out. Of the many who came here, one remains, but he nears the end of his life. I need to talk to you, both of you," he said, looking at Nurias and Lorlank. "I was hoping it would not be after such events as this morning, but now the time has come I should just tell you. I have a task for you. One that lines up with exactly what you said. We have a way to kill a necromancer."
"We've tried to assassinate them,” Nurias told him, “And that has never worked. They cannot be killed by blades of men. The elves did it, but there are no elven blades still within our world."
"It wasn't the steel the elves used or the crafters who pounded out the metal to form their blades that killed the necromancers,” Kras said. “One of those Knights of the Holy Order who came here was incognito. He is no mere knight; he is the last High Executor of the order itself! The sanctum was next in the path of the necromancers, and when they attempted to escape, they were attacked."
“Okay so what do we do to kill them? And what do you expect, just me and my friend here to hunt down the nearest necromancer and bring you its head?"
"No but let us speak of it at the keep."
Lorlank and Nurias followed Kras back through the township streets. As they did, Nurias looked around, seeing the same sights he had seen for the few weeks they had been there.
The township was built in the frames of an old castle. A structure from the days long ago, but with none of the grandeur. It was a city of tents.
It had been over ten years since the fall, since the light of men darkened. The Plague Reapers and the great Curselights of Mortua. At first, they thought it just some random evil creature, a strange demon, but nothing else. They appeared on the shores of the many lakes of the lands and upon the great seas. When the Curselights, the pillars of accursed rock were erected along the coast of the oceans, it should have been some sign, but it was not until the lakes themselves, the rivers, and the wells at every major town across the land were suddenly tainted with poison that the kings of the lands suddenly sprang into action.
They struck down many of these beasts, some requiring more than three hundred to four hundred men at once to kill them. They razed the towers, and the kings had thought this was enough. The water supply began to clear, but then a haze came across the ocean and a long night fell upon the lands that did not lift until civilization was destroyed.
The undead were relentless, and their necromancer masters, though few at the beginning, grew in vastness and power as they squandered and plundered every major city, killing the kings of old and turning them into beasts of themselves.
The culmination of the battles came in the holy city itself. Vasruhal was assaulted until the dark goddess of necromancy came upon the temple of the One God, darkening the great torches of light over the city. The Holy Order, the Anointed Ones, defended the city. But they failed.
In that time, Nurias and Lorlank were of the Anointed, but that title was no more. Now, with the rare others that had survived, they were known only as Remnants. They had many other names back just after the fall. Some were thieves, a band called the Night’s Grasp, others were sell swords, but in the end, they all became the Remnants.
Life had went from trying to win a battle to trying to simply obtain food and fresh water. It was during this time the knowledge of before then unknown races such as dwarves and elves began to pop up. Most did not believe they even existed, but those who studied realized that there was much of the greater world than the race of men did not know. Through some research of dwarven magic, some water had been pulled from rocks, but it was a strange process and frankly not one that Nurias understood. It made whatever reward this Lord had extremely strange. There was very little of value, for even gold had fallen out of favor because there was nothing else in the world one could buy.