“It was the year 877 C.M. and the Shadow was the strongest it had ever been. All around Adoana, Cultists of the Shadow held high offices, and covens and gatherings in the wilderness were sacrificing the innocent, wary and unwary alike, to their dark god.

“There were few that fought against this Shadow, a flickering, guttering candle against the darkness of the night. They rescued some through skill, and some through luck, but most died, their souls consumed by the Shadow, whose hunger is never sated.

“It was with one of these that the War of the Shadows started in earnest, though it had been going on for centuries beforehand. And it was in this very kingdom that this band began their prosecution of the vile cultists. For years they fought, and they rescued no small few in their crusade, including the one now know as Finobrai, which is Evil’s Bane,99 before their swift destruction at the hands of their own prey.

“They were scattered to the winds then, each fleeing from their doom. Many did not make it, and their souls were sold for pittance to the dark lord of the Shadow. But this was not the end of the hunters. No. If anything, it only reinforced their will.

“It was the dead of the night, some years later, and the survivors from that night of destruction were gathered, and they had been quite successful as of late, bringing in bounty on many a witch. This night, they were charged by the king of Marasol to put an end to a coven that had holed up in a fort, abandoned for long years following the wars of the Firstborn.

“They gathered there most stealthily, all their information gathered, an ambush well set. But the cultists heard of their coming through lies and trickery, and laid in wait for the hunters. Again, it seemed a grievous defeat for the forces of light, and it was, but it was not a few that fled those corridors to safety, for the trap was ill-set.

“The one known as Finobrai escaped with his closest friends, alone unscathed of them all. But the king of Marasol worried only after the safety of his kingdom and wished the man to go back; it was after much promising and scraping and begging of him that he relented, and returned unto his very death willingly.

“None know truly what happened within those halls on that night, when Finobrai returned to the fort. Some say he sold his own soul, and that he was a friend of the Shadow from the first—what else could explain his repeated survival? Others say he was captured by the cultists, and transformed into a cursed Shadowspawn by them.

“The latter, I fear, is closer to the truth, though Finobrai was too wily to be caught by mere men. He crept about those halls, with his bow and his sword, and silently did he send them all to their master. But he was not the only hunter, that night.

“In the depths of the crypt, the foul cultists had summoned their lord, hearing that this lone hunter was coming for them. What, they asked themselves with mock bravery, could a single man do that a veritable army could not? And yet they were afraid, deathly so, and rightly so, and they gave their lord the body of a rat.

“Even the slightest of children knows what the Shadow does to its hosts. It twists them, and mutilates them, and makes them wholly different from how they began. And this was no different.

“The rat grew, it is said, to thrice its height, then to ten times, and it grew to stand a full head over the tallest of men. Its claws grew to wicked scalpels, its rear ceased to be that of a rat, and became that of a man with the head and shoulders and arms of some abominable rodent, and in the dark, it waited.

“Now did Finobrai finish all the cultists, and put an end to their vile pets, and he roamed the hallways, ever on the watch for more. He came then into a dark room in the bowels of the earth, unlit and dark, and he entered into it silently, ears ever listening for more of his prey.

“Many now might call him foolish, but his life had shaped him up to this point. He had grown on the darkest of streets, where the difference between life and death was seeing where others said sight was impossible. He had the best tutors in following years, to teach him the sword, and the best trackers later to teach him archery. Some hand guided him, that night, and every other night of his life, some say, a hand that was not that of the Shadow.

“As he stepped full into that room, he heard the beast behind him, whether by its breathing or some movement it made, and he spun about, making to strike at it, though the dark betrayed him, and blinded him, and the monster leaned forward casually, and made an incision over Finobrai’s heart, and removed the house of the soul, replacing it instead with the most vile of voidglass, into which the Shadow had seeped its own will, and Finobrai was lost….

“The Shadow controlled Finobrai, much as a puppetmaster dictates the movements of his puppets, and he ran then through the night, and through the next day, until he reached the borders of Kingdom Corval, for the fury of the Shadow at what had been done to its people knew no reason, nor any bounds.

“Here Finobrai earned another name, and that was Aminlo, the Never-Sated Hunger, for he butchered many an innocent man, woman and child, and the power of his passing was greater than that of any king, then or since. And when he was done in Kingdom Corval, few lingered, and fewer returned; their livestock butchered, and many a family and friend ended during the expanse of a year of utter terror.

“But the Shadow did not let slack here, but drove Aminlo on further afield, into the kingdom where he had first made the name Finobrai for himself, which was Kingdom Mirdta, and the waste dealt there was even greater than that dealt in Kingdom Corval. He left behind him a wasteland, full of smoke and bones, and rats and crows feasted on the carcasses even of the royal family.

“But here fate took a turn for the better, for Aminlo had killed all that could provide his heart sustenance, for the voidglass heart fed itself on the souls of the slain, and his inhuman strength left him as he came upon a patrol form Marasol, and he fell to them, and was imprisoned.

“For nigh on a year, Aminlo wasted in the prisons beneath Marasol, until it was decided that he should be executed for his crimes, in spite of his past services. But luck would have it that one of Finobrai’s men was not so easily persuaded of the evil in his friend, and strove back to the fort, seeking some answer for the darkness weighing on his heart.

“Here he hunted the long-abandoned halls—for none would now return to that haunted place—and at long last found a clay jar, sealed by some rune or other, and from within came the steady beating as that of a heart.

“He brought it back, mixed with joy and sorrow, to the famed Magistry of Marasol, and they took it and examined it while he implored the king to stay his hand but for another cycle. And the king relented, for he was a consciences sort, and felt to blame in part for the fate of poor Finobrai.

“At long last, and after many a sleepless night, the magisters performed their miracle. With their magics and their knowledge, they plucked the voidglass heart from Aminlo, and placed in its stead the beating heart of Finobrai.

“Thus Finobrai’s soul was returned to him, though much tortured through the long years of watching himself perform unnumbered murders, and it was long before he was well again. In this time, his soul turned to darker things; to revenge, to hate, and to burning desire to see the Shadow cast out, for now and forever.

“And after two years of his wallowing, he left Marasol once more, seeking his old friends and allies. But many had grown old over the years, or too comfortable in their common lives to risk going hunting with the man who murdered a kingdom.

“So Finobrai set off alone for a time, though he knew the dangers in doing so more than anyone, and for five years he hunted across the world for lore of the Shadow, reading from libraries by day and infiltrating and exterminating cultists and Shadowspawn by night, Finobrai strove for his answers. Across the highest mountains he tread, and across the deepest seas he sailed, and slowly but surely he found his answers.

“Now after these five years, Finobrai began again to gather hunters by virtue of his reputation, and ten years after that, his network stretched across every corner of Adoana, each man and woman striving to find anything tying the Shadow to the Mortal Plane—for Finobrai knew the Shadow better than any, and he said it must exist.

“Finobrai was an old man when finally they were ready to strike into the heart of their foe. And he brought with him to the place known as Casosindo the voidglass heart, and all his hunters, and they fell upon the enthralled armies of the Shadow.

“Many died in the plains outside of Casosindo, whose location has been lost to time, and many spells were wrought which heaved the earth, and burned the trees, but Finobrai and his most trusted hunters slipped by the host of their enemy, and came to audience with the Shadow itself.

“Here, in the depths of the dark fortress of Casosindo, Finobrai strove against the Shadow while his magister coiled his magics, spreading a trap that would bind the whole of the Shadow to the voidglass heart, though he knew not entirely the making of the coil.

“And when it was done, he released it, and the jaws of the trap sprung just so, snaring the being of the Shadow within the voidglass heart, and the survivors of the battle outside leaped with joy as their enemies crumbled before them. But there was no joy within.