THE RADIANT CITADEL OF VELLISEX THE GOLDEN

In legends it is said that far above the clouds resides the land of the Gods of the Sky, who dwell in the broken remnants of their kingdom, and keep a greedy watch over the immortal men who still worship them. Only the oldest of these undying mortals can remember the time their world was borne atop the back of the great dragon Albaraxis as it swam through the shining void, who birthed the sun and the moon every morning and devoured it every night, when the gods had not yet gone to war. 

The first of the gods, Oirothil of the Storm, seemed to suffer a curse of sons. First was Liofnir, then came Falquin, who was called the Red Death, and then Vellisex, the Golden. Then came Gagrathox, who arrived unbidden. And when Oirothil gave birth to a daughter, Voyra, she gave birth also to a son, who she called Calagon, and who even in his youth the people of her land called the Dismal Twin, for his cursed proclivities.

Then came the Shattering War. Desirous of power, Liofnir gouged out his own eyes, to better see into the heart of the storm. He discovered there the secrets of war, and as the new God of War, made war on humanity. The war that resulted between Liofnir and the rest of the gods rent the world asunder, and in his agony, Albaraxis threw the world from his back. This is why the land of the gods lies in pieces, floating atop our sky.

One piece that remains entire is the Radiant Citadel of Vellisex the Golden, the Glinting Capital, where Vellisex Himself yet resides. Only recently, word has come from within the Shining Walls that an affliction has fallen upon the Golden Order. The Great Goblet which rises over the city and holds the sacred reservoir has begun to tarnish, and its light diminishes. His Knights have begun to fall into madness, and even some of his Beloved, which once emerged many-legged and gleaming from the Pit of Demise, have taken to senseless murder and grotesque blasphemies.

And the Death Rot of Liofnir, who after his death pronounced himself God of Death, and sits now upon a Throne of Death in the remotest north, has spread from his festering eyesockets and found root in the human citizenry of the Radiant Citadel. They live in fear of the Rot, and Hunters have been appointed by the Golden Order to burn it out at the root. Quarantine, slaughter, mass execution, and blood administration have failed to stop its spread, mass hysteria rules in the lower districts, and it has spread even to the high townships of Lordsmouth and Belgraver.

And now, word has come that Vellisex has taken pity upon his brother Calagon, and sprung him from the prison in the earth the gods consigned him to before the Shattering War. They hold court together in the Citadel, and those Beloved of Vellisex which have not succumbed to the Tarnishing can be seen hunting the city streets even in the day, escorted by the Knights of the Golden Order, and seeking the finest youths for Calagon to slake his desires upon. 

Maybe through the art of grafting, some of the nobility imagine, they could be more like the gods, and escape their predations. But the children of Rathor the Leviathan, who swims in the waters of the Golden Goblet, whisper that their time has come, and in their unholy masses in the Exiled Church of the Lower Citadel, hail the End of the Gods, and the start of an Age of Abominations...