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"Silenced
Cathedral" is a musical initiative inspired to the "Legacy of Kain" series
of videogames.
For those who doesn't know the saga, a short introduction, taken from the
game booklet, can be found below.
NOSGOTH'S HISTORY
The Pillars
In the centuries before Kain's birth, the land was protected by an
oligarchy of sorcerers known as the Circle of Nine. These guardians were
sworn to serve and protect the Pillars of Nosgoth, the ancient edifice
towering over the earth as a manifestation of the mysterious power that
preserved and gave life to the land.
But the Circle was infiltrated by dark forces, and Ariel - the Balance
Guardian - was cruelly murdered. Her assassination sent psychic shockwaves
throughout the Circle, and in their derangement the remaining sorcerers
turned their powers to dark purposes, poisoning the land with their
sorcery and abandoning the Pillars to stand like silent, decaying sentries.
Destiny
Into this dying world Kain was born. The son of an aristocratic
Nosgoth family, he lived the privileged life of a nobleman, never
realizing his undiscovered destiny - that he was marked from birth as
Ariel's successor, fated to take her place as the Guardian of Balance.
Ignorant of his destiny, the ambitious but directionless Kain roamed the
land - during one fateful journey, he was ambushed by brigands and
murdered, cruelly impaled on his assassin's sword.
A Dark Covenant
Plucked from the brink of oblivion by the Necromancer Mortanius, Kain
awakened in the underworld, still transfixed by his enemy's blade.
Tormented by his hunger for vengeance, and heedless of the spiritual cost,
Kain recklessly accepted the Necromancer's offer of revenge - and rose
from his tomb to discover that he had been resurrected as a vampire.
Kain quickly tracked down his assassins and exacted his bloody revenge.
With his vengeance and hunger sated, he sought only a cure for the
vampiric curse that afflicted him. Guided by Mortanius and the spectre
Ariel - now bound helplessly to the decaying Pillars she once served -
Kain hunted down each of the corrupt sorcerers now poisoning Nosgoth. Only
with their deaths could the Pillars be healed - and only by restoring
Balance would Kain be released from his vampiric curse.
At first releuctant to live the horror of an existance blighted by a
thirst for human blood, Kain soon adapted and discovered, within his
darkened soul, a growing disaffection for humankind as he embraced his
newfound immortality.
During his journey, Kain discovered and claimed the Soul Reaver, and
ancient soul-devouring blade, and stumbled across - not so coincidentally
- a time-streaming device created by Moebius, the Guardian of Time.
Fragile History
Against the counsel of the ancient vampire Vorador, Kain found himself
embroiled in human events, caught in a bloody battle between Ottmar's Army
of Hope and the ruthlessly advancing armies of the Nemesis, from the north.
As the tide of battle turned, Kain used his only means of escape - the
time-streaming device, which swept him nearly 50 years back into Nosgoth's
past.
Hoping to alter the course of Nosgoth's history, Kain assassinated the
young King William the Just, who would become the diabolic tyrant known as
the Nemesis. After sating himself on his victim's blood, Kain returned to
the present - only to discover that his murder of the beloved king had
ignited a genocidal war against vampires, led by the Time-Streamer Moebius,
himself.
Upon his return, Kain witnessed the future that he had wrought - and the
final, triumphant act of Moebius's cold-blooded mob. Vorador, the last of
the era's vampires, is guillotined and his head held aloft for a cheering,
bloodthirsty crowd - leaving Kain the sole surviving vampire in Nosgoth.
Fateful Dilemma
As his quest brought him full-circle, Kain confronted the destiny that
Mortanius and Ariel had hidden from him - that he was the Balance Guardian,
and that only by sacrificing himself could he restore the Pillars. Ariel
presented him with a final, climactic decision - sacrifice himself to heal
the land, but ensure the extinction of the vampires; or refuse the
sacrifice, and seal the world's corruption.
Revolted by the machinations of the human sorcerers and alienated from his
former humanity, Kain chose the latter path - opting to rule the world in
its damnation rather than commit himself to oblivion. This apocalyptic act
completed the Pillars' destruction - the mighty columns toppled as Kain
sealed their ruinous fate - and damned Ariel to ceaselessly haunt the
dilapidated Pillars she once served. Until the Balance is restored, she
can never be released.
Kain's Empire
Kain concluded with the epiphany that Vorador was right - that vampirism
is not a curse but a blessing. That vampires are dark gods whose duty it
is to thin the human herd.
With intentional irony, Kain established the ruined Pillars as the
symbolic seat of his new empire, and the unrestored Balance Pillar as the
base of his throne. In an act of calculated blasphemy, Kain raided the
ancient tomb of the Sarafan, a fanatical order of warrior-priests once
sworn to eradicate the vampires plaguing Nosgoth. From the desiccated
corpses of these long-dead knights, Kain raised his six vampiric "sons" to
become the Lieutenants of his fledgling empire.
But the Pillars, Kain ultimately realized, were more than just a human
edifice - the health of the Pillars was tied inextricably into the health
of the land. With the Pillars left unrestored, corruption seeped slowly
into the land like a poison, turning his empire into an irredeemable
wasteland.
Condemned
Rather than evolving slowly over time, vampires experience periods of
accelerated metamorphosis, entering dormant states from which they emerge
transformed.
When Raziel, first among Kain's Lieutenants, revealed his latest evolution
- a pair of bat-like wings - Kain responded with an act of seemingly
egotistical sadism. Tearing Raziel's newly fledged wings from his back, he
ordered Raziel to be cast into the Lake of the Dead, where he would burn
forever in the roiling Abyss.
Raziel tumbled endlessly into the murky depths, his flesh dissolving as he
burned with white-hot fire. After an eternity of torment, Raziel's ruined
body came to rest - and as the pain receded, he realized that he had not
only survived the descent, but had been delivered to the very seat of the
Underworld.
Like Kain before him, Raziel was saved from the brink of oblivion by a
mysterious benefactor - a preternaturally ancient god dwelling in the
depths of the Abyss, who transformed Raziel into a devourer of souls, and
released him back into the world to take his revenge.
Vengeance
Raziel, now the Elder God's fledgling angel of death, resurfaced to
discover that centuries had inexplicably passed since his execution. Kain's
empire lay in ruin, and Raziel found himself assailed by the degenerate
offspring of his former brethren, who had long-since devolved into
monstrous forms.
Undeterred by these revelations, Raziel pursued Kain across Nosgoth's
blasted landscape, galvanized by a hunger for revenge, and a relentless
new thirst - not for the blood of humans, but for the vampires' apostate
souls.
Kain, however, had other plans for Raziel. Seemingly unsurprised by
Raziel's miraculous return, Kain baited Raziel along the course of his
single-minded vendetta, channeling him into battle with his mutated
brethren, and into a fateful confrontation at the Pillars, wherein Kain
raised the Soul Reaver against Raziel.
The ancient blade, believed to be indestructible, shattered when Kain
attempted to strike Raziel down. The soul-devouring sentience captive in
the blade was thus released, and binding itself to Raziel as a
wraith-blade, became his symbiotic weapon.
Kain seemed not stunned, but strangely satisfied with this shocking
outcome, and lured Raziel further into Nosgoth's northern wastes, leading
to their final confrontation in Moebius's long-abandoned Chronoplast
chamber.
The Story Continues
Driven by the fatalistic visions revealed in Moebius's chambers, Kain
activates the time-streaming portal that would propel him and Raziel
centuries into Nosgoth's past. Free will, Kain argues, is an illusion.
Their fates are intertwined in ways that Raziel has not yet begun to
fathom...
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