Ravenhill Keep: A Fan-made Owl House Story

Prologue: Strange Shadows Lengthen Under the Light of Dead Stars

     Eternal are the nights, for dead is the sun where the light of righteousness and mercy never dared to shine. Eldritch lights hover atop mountainous formations, casting an illuminating blaze of wickedness and despair upon a wretched hellscape where sickly pus and pungent ooze sputter out of ancient fissures; the breathing-holes of a planet forsaken by the universe. No benevolent god ever watched over this realm, so Yalgodac made its own.

     Creatures of chitin and membranous wings skitter and scuttle across and below tunnels and passages spanning throughout the inferno of darkness and gloom. With mocking cries and unfeeling eyes, their sharp, jagged appendages have tasted oceans of the blood of thousands of civilizations they have spilled. Messengers of death, architects of doom, composers of the unholy symphony of the screams of the condemned: the Black Swarm.

     Casting His loathsome shadow upon the slimy wastes, writhes their master Khraz'togoth, the Scythe-bearer; the Reaper King; the Liege of Infection. For His glory planets have been razed into submission and servitude in a crusade fueled by anger and vengeance. Nothing was left in His wake but ashes and darkness to mirror the fate of His homeworld, for if they were not deemed worthy to be granted the gift of life and prosperity at birth, neither was any other race. None shall escape His judgment.

     A planet where roaring godlike colossi once strode, their fearsome forms now buried beneath the depths of the sea or putrefied carcasses rotting along the waters with their yellowed bones yet rising above the endless ocean; one more meaningless rock to deliver unto oblivion. It will meet the same fate as those past and those to come. Surrounded by four walls of stone, a mind fallen off the brink of madness, weakened and frayed, carried by a vessel agile and resilient led by a strong, unbreakable spirit: the perfect thrall to begin domination.

     The fangs of the entity pierced the walls of her consciousness and injected His venom-corruption and madness in their purest essence-into the stream of her psyche. Once a renowned warrior, revered among her people, now atrophied into a hollow shell, little more than a maniac raving in a corner. Her mind, once a haven of clarity and resolve, now lay in ruins, destroyed by insanity and despair. She would become but a puppet in the Harvester's claws, a pawn in His sinister game. Twisted, withered were to be her wits, to fulfill His plan for her, her destiny, as the commander who would lead His legions out of the abyss.

     Patience is crucial to the execution of every strategy. The season must be right; the enemy unsuspecting; the hordes... prepared to follow His bidding without hesitation, as always. In due time, the Boiling Isles will fall.