A putrid, sour smell woke the man up from his sleep. He lifted his head, nd hit it on a very hard piece of wood. The man expected pain to come, but none did. He lifted his arm and pushed on the wood, and off it came. He drug himself out of his oddly made bed. He stood up to look at it, and gasped.
It was a coffin. He stumbled around, feeling like he was just learning to walk. he saw a light and followed it. Looking around, he saw that he was in a mausoleum, which made him uneasy, and that horrible smell was still clinging to him. After climbing some stairs, he was finally out of the building.
"greetings my brother. I hope i find you well." said a harsh, gravely voice to his left. The man whirled around, or tried, and got his feet tangled together. After getting his limbs sorted out, he stood up and looked up at the figure that had spoken to him. The sight frightened him greatly. The man was wearing robes and holding a lamp with a wretched, skinny, rotting hand. But the face was what startled him. It was greenish gray, and the flesh that was still attached to it as gray and peeling. The fact that you could see the skull was also a little unnerving.
The man tried to speak, but all that came was a hacking cough. he coughed for a minute or two, well the robed corpse stood there patiently, like he has seen this all many times before. "Who... hack ... You?" was all that he managed to say.
"I am Kandyl. And the Dark Lady has christened you Herder. Between you and I, I think she's running out of proper names. Any way, she was freed you from the clutches of the litch king, the slave driver of the undead. You can now do what ever you wish, bit I'd recommending speaking to someone at the temple at the base of this hill.
"Wait a minute, I'm dead? what did I die of?" Herder asked. "that explains the smell" He added silently.
"I think you were the one with the plague" Kandyl said. "and you don't even have to ask. you were a mercenary that was good with a sword and other bladed weapons. your life story is that you're parents die when you were thirteen, and you had to take care of your little brothers and sisters so you turned to fighting. Now go and exterminate the ones that would hunt us as monsters... and if you lose a limb, try you best to sew it back." with that, Kandyl turned to face the mausoleum once again.
"bet he does this as a living." herder said to himself. Herder started walking down the hill, but it was gently sloped so he tripped and fell all the way down it.
"OW! Wait, that didn't hurt. That's pretty cool right there. I could do anything I want and not get hurt!" Herder ran head long into a large tree. He heard a large crack, and worried that it was his skull. "Oh well.