In the year 2508 SR, the fourth year of the Great War, the Necromancer sent forth a great army against the Telnori/Umantari kingdom of Serviana. Sweeping down from the Savage Mountains, this horde of barbarians and Gülvini, bolstered by cadres of trolls, flights of dragons and a multitude of other fell beasts, poured over the lowlands like a wave.

It was a stroke long planned, and thanks to the work of his agents over the years – lies well placed, innuendo carefully wielded, doubt fanned into open mistrust – he felt confident the rift he had created between the Telnori of Serviana and the Khundari Princes of Karac would mean no help from the southern mountains for his current victims. Although the Dwarves turn would come, soon enough, as his plans came to full fruition.

Although they were numerous and fierce and without mercy, what made the advance of the Necromancer’s army seemingly unstoppable, despite the readiness of the realm for the war they knew was coming, was the commander of the horde, Khanaribas the Corruptor. This was a demon, captured by the Necromancer and placed into a great body of his own creation, a body that exuded an Aura of corruption that withered all life that it touched.

Little is known of how Pürshok Vindu created his Demon General, or of how he managed to control such a force of chaos, but many scholars today believe he somehow acquired a fragment of the Shadow of Torzhalo, the nothingness made solid that exists at the core of the Demon King Naventhül, and distilled an essence from it that created the Corruption.

Certainly Khanaribas did not possess the Shadow itself, since it showed no symptoms of being undead and it’s touch was never known to create any undead. But prior to being harnessed by the Necromancer the demon must have possessed at least one brilliant military mind, perhaps more, for it managed to guide an army of chaos to victory after victory, despite being a creature of chaos itself.

Within a month the demon’s army had reached as far south as the Imperial Canal connecting the Silvari River with Lake Benil. The Servian army had planned to hold them there, casting down the bridges and preparing emplacements of trebuchet and fire and stone casters on the far side of the Canal. But the Khanaribas’s power had grown with each kilometer south, and by the time it reached the Canal its Aura of Corruption spread around it for over a kilometer.

The stone of the Canal crumbled to dust, the water steamed and sank into the fissuring ground, and the Demon general advanced into the fire from the Umantari and Telnori ranged weapons. Wood rotted to pulp before it could touch him, stone turned to dust, flames to smoke and metal rusted to drifting flakes. When Khanaribas reached the emplacements the great weapons rotted away in seconds, the ground shriveled and cracked, plants withered and men turned black with the Corruption. These did not die instantly, but went mad with the pain and the horror, spreading the Corruption to all they touched until they themselves crumbled to nothing.

Behind the Demon General its hordes swarm across the Canal and soon routed what remained of the Servian forces. They then invested the scholarly city of Xaranda, a great center of Telnori learning and the home of numerous arcane schools. The survivors of the Battle of the Canal retreated behind her walls, and it was here that Khanaribas faced its first check.

The mages of Xaranda, with a month to prepare, had not wasted their time. The Wards they raised about the city walls were able to hold off both the Necromancer’s more mundane forces as well as the power of his Demon General. But they also used that time to created four Great Beasts, using long forbidden and ancient powers to grow and sculpt flesh into any shape, and imbued each Beast with an elemental power – Earth, Water, Fire and Air.

It has long been rumored that they did this because they had received word from the Necromancer himself that his General was only vulnerable to the combined powers of the elements. Many doubt this story, but it is possible that Vindu had become fearful of his own creation, not expecting its Corruption aura to grow as it had, and would welcome its demise at his enemies’ hands… after it had wrecked considerable destruction upon them, of course.

Whatever the motivation, four elemental Great Beasts were created, and the four most powerful mages of the city sent forth their own souls from their bodies to animate the constructs and imbue them with sentience. And it seemed to work, for when they came out of the city and attacked Khanaribas in unison, he was staggered and badly wounded.

It might be that the Corruptor’s threat could have ended there that day, but for the four dragons in the demon’s entourage. Seemingly unaffected by their master’s aura, they swooped in to attack the Great Beasts with flame and frost, tooth and claw. The Beasts held their own, but the Demon General escaped, and they dared not pursue – their presence within sight of the city was required to help maintain the Great Wards that protected her walls from the still besieging army. Without them, the lesser mages could not long maintain the protections, and the city would all too soon be overrun.

So, while they were able to hold off the horde from their walls, they were unable to stop the advance of the lager part of the army into the fertile heartland of Serviana. And the Demon General again seemed unstoppable. Wherever it strode, the earth around it died, the very life energy sucked from it, feeding its voracious appetite. Plants withered and died, but animals took the Corruption into themselves, and spread it even further as they ran, until they were themselves consumed and crumbled to dust.

As Khanaribas moved through the land, the bulk of its army trailing a safe distance behind, it grew in power, the radius of its life-draining aura growing with each kilometer. By the time it neared the great Telnori capital of Yalura the now 7-meter tall demon’s aura covered a circle of land 15 kilometers in diameter.

The eldritch wards of the Telnori mages of Yalura stopped the beast and its army 20 kilometers from the city, but this baulking only infuriated the creature, and it began a rampage through the hinterlands, circling wide around the city, killing the land as it went. And where it didn’t pass, the dragons flew, and their breaths of fire and ice wrought their own devastation on the groaning land.

As the land died, the power of the Yaluran mages began to fade, and they knew it was only a matter of time until their Wards failed. They had heard of the partial success of the Great Beasts created by their brothers and sisters in Xaranda. Lacking the artifacts for biological creation, they constructed instead a great golem of iron, in the shape of an armored knight, and a great sword for it to wield. And they would imbue this Iron Knight with the powers of all six elements.

But time was not on their side, and while the Iron Knight was forged, and the Sword as well, the Great Wards began to fail before all the elemental essences could be forged within the golem’s shell. The mages of Xaranda, knowing this, and realizing the only hope of all their people, and perhaps the world, lay in defeating the demon for good, decided to send the elemental Great Beasts to their king in Yalura. This meant leaving their own city open to the Necromancer’s army, but if Khanaribas was not stopped, where would his growing power end?

Within three days of the departure of the Beasts the city did indeed fall, and while many escaped down the river to the southwest, many more died in the fiery looting and rapine of the triumphant Gülvini, mountain tribesmen and things even less savory. The burned and shattered ruins of the city, though long overgrown and softened by the passing centuries, can still be seen where the Imperial Canal and the Silvari River meet, a silent monument to courage and sacrifice.

Arriving in Yalura, the four Great Beasts were hailed as heroes, and King Taharazod shared with them his plan. Knowing there was now no going back, their mortal bodies having been left in Xaranda, they agreed to the plan. A Greater Ward of Sealing was etched into the stone of the city’s central square, and four Elemental Wards of Sealing were placed at the four cardinal compass points around it.

The Great Beasts took their places within the Circles, and then their elemental-infused spirits flowed out of them and into the waiting crystal receptacles within the Iron Knight. The Knight stood at the center of the Greater Ward, 14 meters tall, hands clasped on the hilt of the mighty Sword, its tip planted between its feet.

Then Taharazod, not only the King but a great mage in his own right, split his own immortal soul in two, and imbued the Great Sword with half and the Metal Heart of the Iron Knight with the other. The Heart was the power core of the golem, using the purest part of the great king’s spirit to create an eternal link to the infinite power of the T’ara, while the Sword contained his strength and indomitable will.

For the final step in the ritual, the greatest Umantari warrior-mage of Serviana, Kelohir the Gray, and the great Khundari warrior-mage Zhedorum of Storm Peak (the only one of his kindred to reject the lies of the Necromancer, and answer when the Telnori called for help) let their own spirits be transferred into the crystal chambers of the head and torso of the golem, to lend it their battle prowess and fortitude, and infusing the golem with the elemental powers of Spirit and Metal.

And when all this was done, the seven-souled construct prepared to face the Demon of Corruption, even as the wards around the city finally failed. As the evil hordes rushed for the Ebony Bridge in eager anticipation, their jubilation turned to sudden terror as a towering apparition, 14 meters of living metal wielding a 5 meter long sword glowing with the white light of Taharazod’s pure soul, confronted them at the center of the span.

The mighty figure spoke no word, but even as the horde hesitated, the Iron Knight waded into them, slaying twenty or more with a single blow and sending another hundred flying through the air. Thousands died, and many more fled, before the demon Khanaribas, sensing the sudden disappearance of the great city’s shields, returned.

He was heralded by the arrival of his four dragons, who swooped on the Iron Knight breathing fire and ice. But the Sword of Taharazod deflected the blasts, turning each on the other, and thus did Belazur and Grendavol, the greatest fire and ice dragons of their age, destroy one another.

Their lesser brethren, enraged but learning the lesson, eschewed their breath weapons and went in for the kill with tooth, claw and barbed tail. But they did not understand the power and the speed of the Iron Knight and the Sword, and they too quickly died, headless bodies collapsing in pools of black blood.

Creature of chaos that it was, Khanaribas was not without intelligence and cunning. Seeing the fate of its greatest servants, it approached the Iron Knight with caution, seeking to destroy it from afar. Now itself almost 10 meters tall, it hurled rocks from the dying land, attempted to drown the Knight in black, corrupted water from the poisoned aquifer and river, summoned magma from even deeper within the earth, and caused tornadoes to buffet the mighty figure.

The Iron Knight withstood them all, the elemental spirits of the Great Beasts blocking or dissipating each attack, while the souls of Keohir and Zhedorum guided the golem’s own counter-attacks. The battle raged for hours, moving through the great city as her people fled into the barren lands that had once supported them. Buildings crumbled to dust as the demon touched them, the Asamira River steamed and boiled away, and every tree in the once-green city withered and turned black.

The Iron Knight scored three hits on the demon, wounding it badly each time, even slicing off three clawed fingers of its left hand. But each time the monstrous thing absorbed more energy from the land and life around it, and healed itself… although it seemed unable to grow the fingers back. Bit by bit, however, it was lured and driven where the Telnori mages wanted it to go, into the carefully hidden Ward Circle at the heart of the city.

And it was there that the Iron Knight put forth its full power, and the soul of Taharazod shone out like a beacon from the Sword. Khanaribas was taken by sudden fear, and faltered for just a moment… and so was lost. Guided by the battle-honed reflexes of two of the greatest warriors of the age, powered by the soul of a great and pure King, the Sword plunged plunged down and cleaved the corrupted form in two.

As the spirit form of the great demon poured like smoke from its corporeal remains, in great pain, panicked and confused, the Iron Knight took a mighty leap backward out of the Circle. At the same instant the light of the Sword died as the portion of Taharazod’s soul within it left the weapon and energized the great trap – within the Warding Circle a portal opened, sucking the shrieking demon spirit into a pocket dimension no bigger that the sphere defined by the circumference of the Circle itself.

The demon seemed to shrink as though it were falling a vast distance in an instant, and as it vanished in a tiny flash of light, the second part of the trap was energized – a Great Seal was set in place over the portal, that it might never be opened again, and the elemental-infused souls of the four Telnori mages flowed from the Iron Knight back into the bodies of their Great Beasts. As they did, each one empowered another seal between Khanaribas’ prison and the world, and each body seemed to turn to stone, to stand as eternal sentinels against the Corruptor’s return.

Although the victory was achieved, it was a Pyrrhic one – much of the heartland of Serviana was now a desolate wasteland, two of her greatest cities  razed and their people killed or scattered, the King sacrificed to seal the danger away forever. The corruption eventually faded from the land, but it remained dead, and to this day no living thing will grow in the soil of the Blasted March.

The souls of Kelohir and Zhedorum returned to their bodies, and after the Iron Knight was placed at the foot of the Ebony Bridge over the Asamira River as a warning for all to stay out of the dead city, and the Sword was placed in Taharazod’s hidden tomb, the two warriors turned north with fire in their eyes and vengeance in their hearts. For, although one army was destroyed, the Necromancer had many more, and the Great War was far from over… and so they strode forth into legend. What happened to the Heart of Metal, containing the remaining portion of King Taharazod’s soul, has never been revealed, although many speculate it is kept safe by the Telnori in case the Iron knight should ever be needed again.

The surviving Umantari of Serviana found refuge in various settlements to the north, in the still fertile lands untouched by the Corruptor, especially the great port city of Lirilar (where tragedy would soon stalk them again), while the Telnori retreated to the fastness of the island of Iria. From the shining city of Tir-Iria Taharazod’s son Kelabin still rules the land known today as Serviar, and none are allowed within the desolation of the Blasted March without his permission. Regular patrols are kept to ensure that no looters disturb the lost cities, and that no adventurer ever seeks to break the seals and release the Corruptor once more into the world…