Barbazaal: Knight of Hybernia

The Hybernian Imperium's infamous Hexblade ( Sorcerer-Knight ) Barbazaal was a Fetchling of the Shadowfell. A Shadar-Kai Warlock of great fame and dark repute. Said to be a master of shadows and darkness, his soul all or mostly gone, traded in a dark bargain with the Spirit Lord known as The Raven Queen. Perhaps the most powerful remaining Faerie Lorde of The Dawn Age.

Wielding a black sword of focused darkness he slipped through the age of Heroes, in the shadows, slitting throats of the mighty, felling the champions of foreign lands in single duels. Murdering the high and powerful in their sleep through guile and subterfuge and wicked black magic.

Barbazaal was said to be able to trap whole groups of foes in magically expanding folds of his powerful mystic artifact, The Cloak of Darkness, exposing them to the un-shielded realm of shadows, slowly sucking the light and life from them heartbeat by heartbeat, until he either chose to release them from the black prison or they died screaming, drained of life and filled with the terrible stuff of darkness, becoming creatures known as \*Shades\*. Soulless once-men who dwelt forever in the darkness and twilight, fearful of the sun and accursed with unending life.

Throughout his career the ancient and eldritch secrets imparted to him by his otherworldly patron, The Raven Queen, yielded great treasures crafted by his hand. He wrought powerful artifacts under her dark tutelage. Fashioning weapons and armors that allowed him to mercilessly prey on the kings and heroes of many lands. One such, The Black Gauntlet, he crafted in such a manner that it acted as an everpresent conduit to The Shadowfell. Allowign it to reach forth in the blackness of that otherworld at any tie and pluck forth a Shadow Blade from nothingness to battle any foe.

Among his other black creations is his Pactblade black sword, later known to Mortals as Barrowrazor or Barrow-Raiser, which laid low the kings of old, shining queens of good lands, great sages and philosophers, saints and martyrs. And carved a dark swath through the annals of history leaving a wake of black murder and abhorrent death. Few withstood his murderous schemes. Fewer still survived his deadly assaults.

In the name of the Witch-King of Hybernia, the Great Emperor of olden days, he paved the way for the conquest of kingdoms. Cutting the heads off of their leadership and masters of battle, clearing the wise Strategos of a land before their invading legions marched in to take and conquer and rule. Kept far from the Capitol, by constant decree of the Emperor, he wandered foreign lands ever far from home. He died a great distance from his adopted land, Hybernia, in service to the emperor. In the campaign against the Kingdom of Westphalia, in the western province of Ruritania. And was laid to rest in that far-away land in the obscure region that came to be known as Westfell. By Imperial Decree his evil body was made to be interred far outside of the confines of the Empire. Where his spirit would have no ken to walk and haunt the Witch-King. His failure to overcome the Seelie Forest Lords of The Tulgeywood used as an excuse to inflict this dishonorable punishment.

## ***Zarsaahl The Lightning Lord***

There was in life, a terrible servitor of the ancient Sorcerer Knight. The captain of the Imperial Conquest Host known as ***Zarsaahl The Lightning Lord***. Once a Storm Genasi half-breed in service to the Lich-Emperor of Hybernia, he fell in the heroic battle to slay Barbazaal committed by the ancient hero ***Viktor von Jägermarke of Ruritania***.

His service to his dark master Barbazaal continues in death, their mutual destruction linking them in fate. Buried together in this Imperially decreed Barrow. Zarsaahl wielded in life and will again in death brandish, the mighty desert-born ***Axe of Ash'ari***! The Blue Dragon Spirit-bound Storm Axe of legend. Long Forgotten but soon to terrorize the land once more.

Zarsaahl the stormborn champion of ruin led a vanguard force of Paladins of Entropy and Chaos-Wizards in life. Fell conquerors who pledged fealty to the Witch-King of Hybernia in return for power and their very lives, after the defeat of their nations at the hand of the Armies of Conquest of Hybernia. Traitors and vile betrayers of their homelands to a man, these cowards who turned their backs on their people and served their land's oppressor in return for their continued lives represented the worst of opportunistic and depraved, desperate and hopeless soldiers without mercy or pity. Whose lack of personal regard and utter contempt for themselves and all who stood before them motivated them to depths of rapacious villainy and horrid atrocities for which the spirits cursed and punished them in a host of ways. All of them were barren. Most ravaged by ailments, maladies and diseases. Infirmities bestowed on them by vengeful spirits in punishment for their deeds in service to their overlord. Their Witch-King's epic magics kept each of them alive. suppressing the worst of their infirmities, magically enhancing them against the ravages of their curses. Driving them ever forward in evil. For should they waver or fail,

their vile master had only to remove his boons of succor and weal and they would in a moment fall prey to the murderous curses that encircled them from the wrath of the very lands themselves. Keeping them ever in their dark master's bondage. Their deaths at the hand of the host of Viktor von Jägermarke was a mercy both to the lands they ravaged, but in some measure, also to them as their foul lives were finally allowed to end and their constant suffering could finally cease. To a man, not one of those blighted villains returned as an undead. Their curses purged by their deaths, they left forever the suffering of this world to face punishments in the planes beyond.

Zarsaahl's legendary Axe of Ash'ari is eternal. It's bound dragon-soul undiminished by the ages, rages and crackles and sears the extradimensional confines within the weapon. Waiting to burst forth once again. To express and release the FURY of that ancient bound spirit on everything around it.

## The Risen Barbazaal

Such wicked and un-souled things such as Barbazaal are EXTREMELY difficult to end once and for all. While his body was riven asunder by the The Greataxe of the Sylvan Sovereigns, the fact that he had LONG BEFORE traded his mortal essence for the Stuff of Shadow through an ancient ritual whispered in nightmare to him by The Raven Queen, meant that when the remaining mortal soul, withered and pitiful thing that it was, passed to The Realms Beyond, the Necrotic Energies of death were swift to fill that void, beckoned by the dwindling and desperate shadow stuff. Diminished terribly by the onslaught of that ancient hero. Over millennia since the doom was laid upon Barbazaal, the remnant imprint of his wickedness and hate and evil and foulness, forever reflected in the dark and shadowy part of his na-soul, adsorbed the black and sunless sustenance of the lightless gloom and necrotic forces of the barrow. Transforming his remains into a fearsome and terrible Adraghast! A horrid, spirit-cursed Barrow-Wight who was given the power to arise whenever mortal souls transgressed upon his resting place, and to wax great and terrible to wreak vengeance and rage in his hate for all life, mad with loss and envy and longing for their light and freedom and soul-stuff that he so deeply lacked.