When he was alive and whole, the wise Sage Zobek was a courageous and virtuous man. He was not the strongest or the fastest with weaponry - that role belonged to Cornell - nor was he as skilled in the ways of Healing and Light Magic as Carmilla was. But Zobek had a masterful grasp of Shadow Magic, and a strategic and creative mind. He was able to plan for the worst on the fly, and had the confidence and fortitude to face horrors many of the world would shun from. As one of the three founding members of the Brotherhood of Light, Zobek was a brave soul and a good man.

Zobek the necromancer is a coward.

He isn't weak - he ruled the Land of the Dead as the most fearsome of Necromancers, and was easily the most feared and reviled of the three Lords of Shadow - but he is afraid. As much as his greed and ambition push him towards angling for the reclamation of power and assembling of the God Mask, he dares not attempt it himself. He finds a human - capable enough, and easily riled into dark moods. Gabriel Belmont is perfect to carry out the riskiest parts of his scheme for power.

He almost regrets his mad plan the second the Demon Mask latches onto the man's face.

All men, no matter how pious, have darkness within them; a fact that Zobek is more aware of than most, given his own nature. But even he, for all his years and power, cannot help but feel he has made a grave error in judgment when Gabriel's empty eyes lock onto him from behind the Mask's cracked face. The man is human, and under the Relic's influence he's but a puppet to Zobek's commands, but the necromancer can't shake the feeling that some part of Gabriel is looking right at him.

The moment the murder of Marie Belmont is carried out, Zobek covers up his own involvement and departs for the Lake of Oblivion, abandoning his original intention to offer his aid and travel with Gabriel from the start. Throughout the quest he follows Gabriel from the shadows, aiding the man sparingly and limiting much of their interaction. He doesn't feel secure in Gabriel's presence until the Dark Gauntlet is bound to the man's left arm.

That moment where he had been caught on fire, crushed beneath the heel of Lucifer's naked foot had been his lowest - he had thought he would die there. But in the end, Zobek was not just a necromancer, and no mere sorcerer either. He was a lich, and his phylactery had not been destroyed, so neither had he. He doesn't know what happened after that - Gabriel, that poor fool, had lain dead upon the plinth, and Satan had once more walked the earth. He had waited for weeks to see what would become of things with the Devil freed from Hell.

Nothing had happened.

It was worrying. There were no great calamities or earthquakes heralding the arrival of the Lord of the Damned. The seal on The Forgotten One had been broken as well - he felt it shatter - but that demon had failed to raze the world into molten slag as well. There were two possible scenarios. One, that the Great Evils were biding their time before inflicting their wrath upon an unsuspecting and complacent world. Or two - something, or someone, had stopped them in their tracks.

And Zobek the coward could not decide which was worse.

Zobek waits in the Land of the Dead. He may no longer be one of the Lords of Shadow - for that power was stripped from him by Satan - but his strength as a necromancer is still peerless, and he has enough reputation to keep a hold of most of his servants. Currently, he waits while one of the more capable necromantic creatures he has raised has embarked upon a scouting mission to the northern and western regions of the continent.

He is alerted the moment his undead servant enters his domain and he stands tall, shedding his guise of a distinguished old man, for his skeletal true form, green flames spilling forth from empty eye sockets.

"Well? Report, worm," he demands imperiously, voice acerbic as the lesser necromancer sheds its own disguise - that of a roughshod merchant - for its own linen-wrapped and mummified appearance.

"Lord Zobek," it begins, head bowed in subservience. "The forces of Darkness are behaving... strangely. To the West, the human settlements are thriving now that they are no longer being constantly harried by the Lycan and Vampire armies - there is talk among the towns about expanding into the Agharta's old borders."

"...There's no attacks against the settlements at all? I find this hard to believe - even deprived of Cornell and Carmilla's leadership, perhaps even with their deaths, the lycans and the vampires should be more unruly than usual," Zobek muses, skepticism obvious in his tone and in the tilt of his skull.

"I thought it strange as well - and I found out why in the Northeast. There is a powerful Dark Creature that has taken roost in Carmilla's old haunt, Bernhard Castle, and it's been rallying all the creatures of Darkness and Shadow to its side, as well as dictated when and where attacks and raids on humans can take place. It has many of the creatures confused - it seems to be deliberately avoiding weaker targets, and the raids against human population - while successful - leave much in the way of destruction and casualties, but the amount of fatalities has definitely decreased from the ways things were before."

Zobek is surprised, and unpleasantly so by this information. Either the demon beneath the Castle has truly broken free and is biding its time as he had feared, or there is something else afoot. Something, that is using its power to protect humanity while simultaneously consolidating the forces of Darkness.

"...Did you discover what this... Thing... ruling from Bernhard Castle is?"

"Lord Zobek... Its servants refer to it as a dragon!"