Prologue: Strange Shadows Lengthen Under the Light of Dying Stars
Eternal is the night, for dead is the sun where righteousness and mercy never dared to shine their purifying rays. Eldritch lights hover atop mountainous deformations, illuminating a wretched hellscape with their blaze of malevolence, where reeking pus and pungent ooze sputter out of ancient fissures; the nostrils of a planet forgotten by the universe that spawned it. Sprawling chasms mar the blackened surface of Kar-yephuril, their walls blighted by passageways of the lairs and hatcheries where the denizens of the forsaken plague-world creep. No benevolent deity deigned to watch over this realm, so it was left to fester in the void. Unbeknownst to its progenitor, the Cataclysarium weans on vitriol, malice, and antipathy.
Creatures of chitin and membranous wings skitter across and scutter below cavernous passages spanning throughout the inferno of darkness and gloom. With savage squeals and soulless eyes, their jagged appendages have tasted oceans of the spilled blood of the thousands of civilizations they have annihilated. Messengers of death; architects of doom; composers of the unholy symphony of the screams of the condemned: the Black Swarm.
Casting Her loathsome shadow upon the slimy wastes, writhes their matriarch Ic'thanaxelith, the Scythe-bearer; the Reaper Queen; the Mistress of Infection. In Her name entire helpless galaxies have been razed into nihility in a universal onslaught fueled by scorn and vengeance. Nothing was left in Her wake but ashes and echoes to mirror the fate of Her homeworld, for if they were not deemed worthy to be granted the gift of life and prosperity after eons of evolution, neither was any other race. None shall escape Her judgment.
Another realm where roaring godlike colossi once strode, their fearsome forms now buried beneath the depths of the all-encompassing sea, or rendered as nothing but carcasses putrefying as they lied along the waters with their yellowed bones still rising above the endless ocean; one more meaningless rock to deliver unto oblivion. It will meet the same fate as those past and those remaining. Surrounded by four walls of stone, a mind fallen off the brink of madness, weakened and frayed, carried by a vessel agile and resilient, and led by a strong, unbreakable spirit: the perfect thrall to begin domination.
The fangs of the Scourgeweaver pierced the walls of her vulnerable consciousness and injected Her venom–corruption and insanity in their purest essence–into the stream of her psyche. Once a renowned warrior, as revered among her people as she was feared, now atrophied into a hollow shell, little more than a madwoman raving in a corner. Her mind, once a haven of clarity and resolve, now lay in ruins, ravaged by lunacy and despair. The demented captain would become but a puppet in the Harvesteress' claws, a pawn in Her sinister game. Twisted, withered were to be her wits, to fulfill Her plan as the commander who would lead Her legions out of the abyss; her inevitable destiny.
Patience is crucial to the execution of every strategy. The seasons must be right; the enemy unsuspecting; the hordes… prepared to follow Her bidding without hesitation, as they have been for millennia. In due time, the Boiling Isles will fall.