The boy who would be King

There is an old legend telling of a city, lost a thousand years ago.

In this nameless city, the people lived, worked, and died, much like our cities today.  And much like our cities today, there were born those with the gift of magic.  But power corrupts, as they say, and those with magic certainly had power.  In it’s endless cycle, history saw the rise of sorcerer after sorcerer, the slaughter and enslavement of innocents, and the fall of sorcerer after sorcerer.  But in this city, things changed.  The citizens, seeing the pattern of history, would kill all those born with magical talent.

Naturally, there were problems.  How do the non-magical find who is magical?  How do the mundane kill the exceptional?  And how do you make sure the dead stay where they are buried?

There was once a nameless boy, born in this nameless city.  He too, had the gift of magic, and he too, was bound, killed, and buried deep in the earth.  But his hunger for life could not be so easily quenched, and he struggled against death in his tomb.  Then he rose, rotted, insane, and powerful.  And the city felt his anger as he buried it beneath the earth.

He is the Buried Man, the King of the Dead, the Rotted One.  He ruled for a hundred years of darkness and despair before being cast beyond the Astral by his successor.

~ by episoen on December 15, 2011.