ShadowCaster/Temple of the Dark God

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Items Acquired
Horn of the Caun
Enemies Encountered
	Skeleton
	Rice Snake
	Blue Phantom
	Green Ssair
	Zardaz

The Temple of the Dark God is the fifth level of ShadowCaster. It acts as the games main hub level.

Synopsis

First Visit

To be Added

Second Visit

To be Added

Third Visit

To be Added

Fourth Visit

To be Added

Fifth Visit

To be Added

Illuminations

''"There was no doubting when the time for Veste to smite his enemies had come to hand. The omens were quite clear. Veste sacrificed two of his most pious and noble captives in his rituals to Malkor, and the will of the Dark God was manifest. The first victim struggled, an ancient priest without the strength to walk in a windstorm, and Veste laughed. The stone knife cut like leather-stropped steel, and the old man shuddered once and died. His drying eyes remained fixed on Veste's face in frozen defiance as the Dark Priest split his chest open and pulled out the steaming organs needed to read the future. But then Veste's red, slick hands paused as the soft tissues spilled onto the altar. The time was unexpectedly near, too near. The sacrifice was complete, even without reading the patterns of gore and offal, for there was no heart.

The time to destroy the People had come at last. Yet perhaps it was too soon. The People were stronger than ever before in their history, both in heart and in the protection of their gods. Their gods, in turn, were strengthened by the worship and respect they received from the flourishing and wise civilization. United, the gods and their People were unlikely to be destroyed by any attack made by Veste and his minions. Even a frontal attack would have only served to strengthen the servants of Good. It was a conundrum. The attack had to be insidious - not so much at the People, but between the People and their solicitous pantheon.

Veste's purpose was two-fold. His master, Malkor, outcast from the company of his brethren deities, hungered for revenge. The Dark One demanded the humiliation and downfall of those who had ostracized him from his own kind, who had erased his name and struck his image from the temples . This was a difficult task for any mortal to accomplish, no matter how much power he commanded. Veste had to make careful preparation, or all his plans would come to naught. He could not afford to strengthen his enemies' convictions and beliefs by starting a war which would strengthen the bonds between them and their gods. There must be a way to divide the forces, an attack from a direction so unexpected it would distract them from their virtuous ways. Veste retired to his master's temple and meditated.

Both moons were high in the evening sky when Veste entered the unholy temple to contemplate the battle that would soon begin. When the second moon had set, and the night was at its darkest, he emerged. He had decided on a course of action that would eventually send tendrils of evil throughout the known worlds until their grip was too tight to unwind. He went to the City and gathered about him the lowest classes of People, those who had never been granted the gifts of shapeshifting.

He was an emissary from the last of the Benevolent Gods, he told them. The time had come for them to take on other forms and use them in the service of their god, Malkor. Veste whispered the poisoned words to the weakest citizens of the City, and they believed. And believing, they spread the word across the countryside until their numbers were great enough to be deadly to the unsuspecting, sleeping City. Moving in the darkness, they captured animals and People. On some occasions they were quick enough to ensnare, in tangled webs of sorcery, one of the fantastic forms of a morpher. Veste had taught them the rituals to steal the shapes of others, and they prospered in their new-found power. Most of the People, the true morphers, did not suspect anything was wrong. Riodn, however, had noticed that the new temple flourished in darkness, far from the sight of the City. He sent a Caun-morpher to stealthily investigate, and the news that came to him was blood-chilling. There were sacrifices being made to the Outcast God. Veste himself had performed some of the rituals, and the breathless spy reported that the priest had held the glossy organs of the victim over the flames as though scrying some secret. Riodn knew the signs, and denounced the new sect publicly. Veste laughed, summoned bolts of fire and acid, and threw them at Riodn. As the old man died, the first battle of the Kin Murders began. Just as Veste had planned.

Veste flew back to his temple in the form of an enormous carrion-bird. He spelled the doors dosed, and bound demons and djinn to protect the edifice from all comers. There were other things which he had to do now, and four generations of People was all the time he could spend accomplishing those goals. That would be time enough for the ties between the People and their gods to dissolve without the inevitable healing process undoing all his work.

He had kept the spirits of the sacrificial victims in a spiritual limbo, and now he manifested them in soldiers of his own creation. They would be the forefront of his army. A horde of fearless, obedient killers would sweep through civilizations, destroying all who recognized the grace of Malkor's treacherous kin. The doorways to these worlds were in the deepest, most protected part of his temple, and were stabilized through both sorcery and necromancy. The forces that held them open were invulnerable to any power, save his own. They stood as dark obelisks - a focus to the powers of himself and his god. There was only one danger: there would be doppelgangers of these obelisks created in the backlash of the powerful rituals, and they would be antithetical to his own. Any gods who claimed these obelisks could use them as their own, and use them towards a noble purpose. To do that, however, they would have to search diligently, and Veste suspected they would be far too busy for that. Meanwhile, outside the walls of the temple, the rift began to show between the People and their gods. The gods had given the gift of morphing to those deemed most worthy, but had never intended to create a caste system among their worshipers. One had grown, however. Those deemed Most Worthy considered all others Less Worthy, and undeserving of the same advantages enjoyed by those touched by the gods. The gods saw this differently. The Kin Murders further dismayed them. The noble and prosperous civilization that had worshiped them tore itself apart as factions grew and divided, and battles began to ignite in instances that only called for an arbiter. The gods grew distant as their People grew more and more unjust. Only Tovason withheld his judgment, and watched with concern.

The temple was Veste's focus of power. All the Evil generated throughout the worlds he conquered was funneled to the dark halls, where it was stored in anticipation of the final battle. Malkor would face Tovason and the others, and when it was done, there would be nothing left untouched by his influence. There were obstacles, of course, but all portents read that the forced of Veste would triumph. Nowhere could be seen an omen of defeat. Not even Tovason, who had suspected Veste's motives from the beginning, could foresee a victory for Good.

As the decades passed, and the armies.of Evil conquered world after world, Veste began to prepare for his final assault against the People and their gods. Veste was confident, but not foolhardy. There were rumors that Tovason had fostered a champion, and that the child was nearly grown. Although there was little that any single human could do against the mobilized forces of Veste, the troublesome details had to be dealt with. Veste sent spies throughout the known worlds and beyond, in search for any human who had the touch of Tovason. It was not, after all, a step that Veste would not have taken eventually. Now that the People had lost the favor of their protectors, they were ready to fall. And after they fell, world after world would open up to the advances of evil. Even the ones beyond. Tovason's champion would fall the moment he emerged from his hiding place- and the door to a new world would be open.

After four generations had come and gone, Veste readied his forces for their re-emergence into the realm of the People. He destroyed the obelisks before he left, to eliminate the remote chance that an enemy could use the Otherworld doors and strike him from behind, using his own temple as a base. On a night when the moons rose together in full crimson harmony, Veste blew open the doors to the world he had left more than a century ago, and began the invasion once more against the People. In the dark and echoing halls of Veste's temple, the only signs of life were the patrols of the guards and the rustling of the robed phantoms. Each different section was sealed securely from the others. Lurking, mindless predators paced the corridors, hungry for flesh in a place containing only dry and dusty death . They waited, while outside the last of the living were inevitably defeated."