The Risen Kingdom

What’s REALLY going on: The Risen Kingdom story
By Jean Baptiste!

The Risen Kingdom: what’s that you ask, with your bright innocent eyes full of wonder and joy? They sound nice, after all angels rise, party members rise.

Bread too. You don’t really see a bad thing rise, except for undead but so many heroes of the realms are undead that it really shouldn’t matter. Unless you’re pulseist. You bastard.

But don’t you skip toward their embrace in friendship, these Risen are far crueler than bread.

So how about I tell you what’s REALLY going on?

Long ago, in a different universe there was a world. A world called… well who cares it’s probably dead now.

This world doesn’t have path magic like we do, instead they derive magic from something called Circle Magic, and seem to engage in a strange mixture of alchemy and druidic magic. They gather Essence from Elementals and use runes to create Void Elementals. Void Elementals are very useful servants, pretty much a equivalent of Golems, however if the procedure is performed improperly there is a tendency of it corrupting other Elementals, creating more powerful and vicious creatures.

Fortunately that would neeeeeeever happen and the Risen Kingdom, at this point a bunch of entrepreneurs decide to establish trade relations with beings from other worlds, creating a bridge to a world called Geo. The important thing to know is a bridge takes people from both sides to make and communication is done solely through messengers. This might have changed but if it has not then that means once the Risen are cleared from a area they can’t continue to invade in force without reestablishing a forward base.

A further question is how they made contact before setting up the bridge. One theory is that there are agents already in our universe corrupted by the void.  Another is that they can send people through anyway but they have no idea where they end up without a bridge.

Now the Risen Kingdom used to be a nice organization with smiles on everyone’s faces and dreams in every slumber. They  were welcomed with open arms by Geo, which was war torn universe with gods like ours, having almost been destroyed by a god who’s name they dare not speak. However they did give it a title at one point. The Dark One.

That’s right Rhode is the big bad… Not really no. But could you imagine?

Either way the god’s cultist army got squished hard, unfortunately the leader of the Risen was murdered by a king of Geo’s servant, who I think was named Kasha. As he was hauled off he delivered a rant and called his own minions to him. At this point the manufactured Void servants turned on Geo and the human menbers of the Risen Kingdom.

This means to me that the Risen Kingdom, while essentially a army of void golems, did not rebel on their own volition, rather they are controlled. Therefore if their puppetmaster (Perhaps Geo’s dark god) is toppled then the Risen will not only collapse, but be controllable by whoever did them in.

In addition I believe the army’s diverse selection is related to the void’s ability to corrupt things. The stronger void creatures are probably corrupted and may be cured. Now the original Risen had no way to do it.

But they aren’t us. They didn’t have our magic, and they didn’t have our gods.

In addition the Risen Kingdom has so far had a very small foothold, they had a portal that Void Elementals came out of in force, but none of their big hitters were there and the portal was quickly closed, by Orion’s butt. In addition the Risen were attempting to create a Iron Road (different from a Bridge, as Rosetta was quick to assert to me during Green and Gold so we shouldn’t be too worried yet) in the Fey lands. This naturally is a lot like nailing a road on a living being, Iron is so anathema to them. However these Risen were significantly more human than the ones from Storyteller. These I believe were the sentient “puppeteers” that I warned about earlier. They were likely not the actual ringmasters, but  as I stated before, the Risen are mostly mindless.

The Risen’s biggest weapon, that we know so far, is the call of imbue. Imbue I believe revitalizes the monsters with the raw power of the void. All we know is it imbues them with SOMETHING and they often hit harder when they get it, revive, or reset armor. It’s a nasty business so whoever calls imbue should be the first target.

Fortunately we got a edge on our side as well. The Order of the Subtle Thread is a organization dedicated to studying magic and have devised a… thing. It is a weapon only wieldable by fighters that allows one to go into spells and meddle with them. This could be done to undo powerful circle spells and seals or even bolster them.  Unfortunately the Order’s weakest link is there ability to name things (Anti-Anti-Magic containment unit? Why not the Anti-Abjuration-Shield) so its called like the Zwiellbopper or something. Ask Drake of Eagle’s Rook.

So now you know…. What’s REALLY going on.