Azarax/History

Azarax, known as Azarax the Mighty, the King of Kings, the conqueror of a hundred thrones, and the Plague of Steel, was a Supreme described as a plague that had befallen the mortal realms. Due to his powerful Aspect, endless bloodthirst, and insatiable greed for power, he sought to conquer all the realms, subjugate all other Supremes, and become the sole ruler of all humans, with the likely intention of continuing his endless campaign of conquest and slaughter into the Divine Realms in a war against the gods themselves. He commanded the most powerful army in the mortal realms—an unstoppable horde that swept across existence like a steel plague, destroying and subjugating one Domain after another. As his conquests expanded, both his personal power and the might of his conquering horde continued to grow. Powerful enemies became his thralls, and every corpse sacrificed on the altar of his ambition made him stronger, making the tide of his tyrannical conquest seem truly unstoppable.^[1]

Azarax's greatest threat lay not only in his own overwhelming power but also in his ability to share that power with his elite thralls, the Dread Warriors. These warriors were tremendously deadly and radiated a debilitating aura of dread that weakened and paralyzed enemy soldiers, causing many kingdoms to surrender without a fight because their soldiers were too terrified to raise their weapons against him. Although his unfathomable strength could not topple the mystically reinforced walls of the Mason's city, each clash against him left Effie and her companions battered and broken, barely clinging to life, and even Jet could only make him exercise a measure of caution during their combined assaults.^[1]

Despite leading the most powerful army in the mortal realms, Azarax failed to conquer the peaceful city that stood on the shore of a warm sea for more than a year. The city endured because of the Mason's mastery of the Will, the mystical reinforcement of its walls, and his Ability to augment chosen champions; Morgan's strategy, which devastated the conquering horde through tactics such as burning fields and poisoning wells; the combined Aspects of Effie, Kai, and Seishan, which countered the aura of dread while empowering the defenders; Jet's deadly versatility; and Nightwalker's repeated success in bypassing the impenetrable naval blockade Azarax established to starve the city into surrender.^[1]

Azarax's kingdom was a vast empire that spanned a hundred realms, providing the nearly endless resources needed to sustain the prolonged siege of the Mason's city. Built with fire and blood, the kingdom was described as a gluttonous beast sustained by conquest. If new riches, spoils, and slaves ceased flowing into its maw from the battlefield, it would starve and fall sick, and could even fall apart entirely. The stability of the empire depended not only on continuous conquest, but also on the fearsome reputation and dreadful prestige of the Plague of Steel as a relentless conqueror who had never been defeated.^[2]

If a single, pacifist city managed to stall his conquest for too long, Azarax's prestige would be wounded, weakening his tyrannical hold over the unstable Domain. To secure victory after repeated failed assaults, Azarax turned to more insidious methods of warfare.^[2]

A cabal of sorcerers that served Azarax engineered a mysterious plague to be as stealthy and virulent as possible, weaponizing the rotting corpses of his own soldiers by launching them into the city with trebuchets. The plague spread through personal contact, causing its victims to rot from within before dying in agony, and was intended to destroy the city from within. Although Azarax did not possess a strong navy, the battleships he did command maintained an impenetrable naval blockade around the city's harbor, while his soldiers also contaminated the city's main river by dumping their dead into its waters upstream in an effort to undermine the defenders.^[2]