"As Long as there has been evil, there have been those who exemplify it.”:- Preface to Marland Hewlets Wars Of The Dark Ones

From The Desk Of Peiter Beletti, Professor of inter Scape learning at Xoastat College, Ptrygon.

I have taken the liberty of compiling a short summary of the so called Dark Lords of the Scape of Myrsgaurd. I hope that it is useful to the students of that Scapes’ history, but it is no replacement for true research. For that I recommend Professor Hewlets’ Wars Of The Dark Ones’. Though dry, it does well in compiling all the known facts into one, weighty tome.

A Note On Context
The following should be viewed in the proper context. Most of it is compiled from folktale and rather uncertain sources. Such is the nature of legends, but as the first Dark Lord arose three thousand years ago, we should forgive the facts for being less than certain.

Also, this work assumes you are familiar with the history surrounding each event. So information on the governments and factions of the time has been left purposefully brief. For those wanting more insight, may I direct you to the academy’s extensive library.

A Note On Terminology
A  Dark Lord is many things, indeed there have been many who have usurped the title in every Scape and age. They can be differentiated by there scope, each true one threatened not only great loss of life but also the entire nature of the world. Each would have completely remade Myrsgaurd in their own image, and could have if they had not been opposed. Such was the threat posed by each one, that many lay the blame on them for stymieing the Scapes growth. Who knows what could have been accomplished if not for the anarchy and life loss brought about periodically by the cycle of war heralded by these individuals. In their age, each was rightly feared as being a possible end bringer and each very well might have been.


Arularch The Proclaimer
I am the Wind and the Rain
I am the Swell and the Calm
I am the Storm and the Tempest
I am everything that kills you
And so I am the Lord and the Master
Arularch, at the siege of Hayve


The first of the dark lords, little is known of Arularch. It is said he was a ocean reaver, one of the piratical sealords who had one practically ruled the entire coast of the Supercontinet which is home to most of Myrsgaurds inhabitants. The capital of the reaverkings was the port town of Tor’bellosea, which is now only scattered stones. It is lost to time how he became the first ‘Dark Lord’ but a myth exists about his defeat which shows that he may have had a power matched by few other.

It is said that he grew tired of ruling the seas and desired to sac the many burgeoning kingdoms which existed towards the centre of the continent. It is said that he twisted the waterways so his ships could sail on through any battle fields. The great moat abound the city of Balesgate is thought to date to when he ringed the city so his war galleys could be brought to bare on the walls.

But it was at the city of Kirkarden that he met his end on the twin swords of the King and Queen of that fair city, Venril and Faya Darkslayer. They cast him of their battlements and to his death. The story goes that he, as his body lay broken, spoke in a voice that all the city could hear. And proclaimed that his revenge would come and it would visit woes on the Scape tenfold that he had already visited upon it. Some claim that that prophecy twisted the Skein of reality itself. Allowing the rise of all who followed him. If this is to be believed then he was the most powerful Fatecaster ever to exist on any Scape.


Syrinil Alpoor’toapa
While I despair at the shame he brings my bloodline, it is his great vision which brings tears to my eyes. – Aerius Farey’toapa. Elf Prince

An Elf of the toapa bloodline, legend says he went mad trying to find a way to step effortlessly between the Scapes and that the madness gave him his great magical power. It is true he was afflicted with the wanderlust that affects his bloodline to this day. He became obsessed with breaking though to new, undiscovered Scapes and, rather than raise an army like all other dark lords, he formed a cabal of dangerously deranged mages from every school of magic. He kidnapped Wilders and formed a kind of harem, one that existed to fuel his addiction to reality altering magics.

Many Cities were melted or torn apart by his rampage, but by the time he came to besiege Sternholm, apparently after the newly discovered Journey Stones there, he had devoured all of his allies and driven his captive Wilders as insane as he was. Realising an army was useless against him the mages there, who were mostly Earthshifters, engaged him one by one in single combat. Targeting the Wilders and killing them all by submerging them in burning tar or spearing them with Diamond Javelins, even as Syrinil killed them.

Soon he was alone, and barely concious of his actions, his form a writhing mass of magic, he fought Highmagnus Varn. Varn was one of the first Sophimancers. The spell that he used against Syrnil is lost to antiquity but it is said that he traped the Dark Lord in a raindrop. Within he had conjured an endless stream of false realities, which Syrinil still breaks and reforms every moment. Whether this is true or not, you can view the raindrop of legend, it was made into a necklace as a coronation gift to the king of that city. Though never warn it is the center piece of the display in the Sternholm vault museum. If you can stand to view the ever-shifting colours contained within it is said to be quite beautiful.

The Lady Mae
My heart aches for her touch, my eyes for her aspect…
:- Fragment of Kar poetry

Mae’s origins are shrouded in mystery. It is known she came from the Island of Kar in the Eastern ocean. But the people there keep few written records and the island had not even been discovered before she ruled it. Mae was said to be poisonous, possibly due to a Talent in Biomancy, though some say it was a curse placed on her by a rival. Either way, she signalled her goal of World Domination by somehow polluting the bay of Posraylin. That once great port town melted into the ocean. This shocked the world, due to there having been a longer than expected period between the fall of Syrinil and the appearance of Mae. An army was assembled by all the cities and marched to meet Maes army of Kar-men, who had marched a shore from silk sailed ships. The battle that followed, known to posterity as the battle of the Wilting, saw the Knight of Myrsgaurd shamed by the poisoned weapons of the Kar-men. They fought to scratch their enemies and had strange fighting techniques which relied upon continuous attacks and ordered withdraws. The great army was taken apart in a few days and the demoralised knight fled back to their cities.

For years Maes’ armies crept further and further inland. They roved the land in groups sometimes as small as twenty, challenging knights they met to single combat and ambushing any who they found travelling. It is thought that they bankrupted two states due to the destruction of trade routes. Other cities disappeared below vile green mist which forced the inhabitants to hide in there home for weeks at a time. Never before had the Scape seen such despair, as the Kar-mens’ longboats looted the land of everything they didn’t kill.

However, the Kars did not go entirely unopposed. With the knights failure it fell to the hunters and the woodsmen to protect their homes and families. A slow and personnel war was waged over a thousand miles of open country between small groups of archers, sometimes even between lone men locking themselves in combat for days, until one made a single mistake.

In the end, it was in the wilds close to the crystal spires that the final battle happened. When a thousand low born peasants marched against Maes bodyguard, after she had expressed an idle interest in seeing the spires. A respected ranger called Mil Myrson swore she would never set her eyes on those spires. The ranged battle was fierce, but it looked like Mils’ armies would be undone when Mae herself closed the distance. She walked through a hail of arrows completely untouched, the mist around her turning arrows aside. Where the battle joined she strode into the press, caressing any man who stood against her, killing them instantly. She was not armoured and met cavalry charges with a heavy sigh, her breath causing men and horses to collapse together in writhing stupors as her bodyguards finished them off.

Mryson had one hope remaining. He had composed an arrow with the help of all the knowledge of past ages, soaking it with the oils of every medicinal plant under the sun. As it flew towards Mae its supposedly burnt the green mist away from her. It struck her in the chest, and though she pulled the arrow out immediately it took route within her. She fell to the ground strangled by routes as a young sapling sprung from her wound.

After a moments reverence, her bodyguard fell on their own swords to a man, ending the war there and then. Her army was pursued back to her homeland and Kar was burnt by the remaining kings. She died never seeing the spires.

How true any of this is up for debate, but it is said you can find the tree if you look for it, though the woodsmen are notoriously unhelpful. Myrson himself was haled as a hero though, and it is his name that is worn by that Scape to this day.


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Tobor the Proclaimed/ Tyborus Gilt
If I had known that keeping them would cost me this much, I would have sold him my cities willingly… :- Tyborus Gilt, Last words.

Tobor the proclaimed was from the northern Wreal tribes. The Wreal were once a massive empire, spanning from sea to sea. When Tobor was born they celebrated for the portents had spoken of the baby being born at that exact moment who was destined to rule the world. On his twentieth birthday he was declared Warchief and the entire empire went to war on the world. He was obsessed with the tails of the previous Dark Lords and hunted down relics of them incessantly. It seemed that he was ascendant.

Except that in the southlands another child was born, same date, same time. He had been raised as a prince but showed little interest in ruling. It was money that drew his attention. He coveted it and pursued it at every turn. He was greedy and selfish and would never have made it to the throne of the great Empire his father had forged if his father and brother had not been lost when the city they were visiting was overrun in one day by Tobors’ armies. When he heard the news, it is said he reached for his ledgers and slide rules and calculated the cost to his empire that the fall of the city would mean, never considering his father, except to factor in the cost of his crown. He stood up a day later in his court, outraged. Over the following weeks he sent armies from every corner of his empire to slay Tobor, almost haphazardly. He also relocated his court to the Southern port city of Cape Lind.

The following battles were vicious and it seemed Tabor was unstoppable. He wore the crown of Myrsgaurd on his head as he looted. It is said he found protective charms forged by Syrinil, and had eaten the fruit of the tress that had sprouted from Maes body, giving him unsurpassed vigour. Some whisper he found the scrolls of Arularch himself, and the rains did his bidding, shrouding his army in mist and calling deluges down upon his enemies. The people of Myrsgaurd despaired as they seemed trapped between an uncaring king and an unstoppable conqueror

Tiring of the weak troops and poor leadership of the armies sent against him, Tobor set a course for Cape Lind, such was the rage he felt at Tyborus he passed by other cities on the way. Tyborus brooded on his golden throne for many days, until he seemed to reach a heavy decision. The Wreal reached the outskirts of the city and there numbers seemed to have not been affected by the constant war they had been through. As they attacked, the gates of the sea port fell open before them. In a haze of victory Tobor led his armies into the city.

When he reached the palace the trap was sprung. A massive spell, transported mercenaries from four different Scapes into the city. It is said Tyborus had wept when he had emptied his treasury to pay for them, and the mages to work the spell. He personally commanded early model Ptrygoni cannon to fire into the fray from his towers. Killing Tobor as he raged. The entire city burned as Scencetans, Ptrygoni, Trinians and even some captured elementals made war within its walls. Thousands died in the chaos and the Wreal never really recovered from the loss of men and women, never mind the shame of Tobors inglorious defeat. Tyborus himself died after the battle as he totalled up the damage to the siege works. All who were present say he fell from the ruined battlements after he commented on wastefulness of war. No one ever disputed them.

Why the confusion over the true dark lord? While Tobor fits the template, Tyborus was the source of much suffering as well. And consider this; The moment the Wreal fell, Tyborus’ armies, and so power, could be said to have extended to the entire world. This is why the two are said to share the blame and are often depicted tied together, with chains of gold and sinew.