Faction overview: Forces of the Abyss – the seven circles of hell

First come the horns. Far to the northeast, beyond the Infant Sea, the ground starts to shake, and plumes of ash and arcs of raw magic burst from the heart of the Abyss. Bridges of shadow rise between the circles of hell. The Molochs – demons the size of an ogre – drive the rest of the infernal host across them into a single great horde, and the horde climbs out and spreads across the world like a stain. Crops wither where it treads. Its shadow blights the land until someone manages to drive it back into the dark – and that always comes at a terrible price.

In this army, cackling, spiteful little devils march beside hulking brutes. These are the Forces of the Abyss, and the world screams in their wake.

Part one: a wound in the world

Domivar's blow

The Abyss hasn't always been there. It's the deepest wound the world took in the God War – and, ironically, it was dealt by a hero fighting on the right side. That war broke out when the Fenulian Mirror shattered – an enchanted mirror made by the elf Calisor Fenulian. The old gods, the Celestians, either perished or were split in two: their bright halves became the Shining Ones, their dark halves the Wicked Ones.

In the last duel of that war, Domivar the Unyielding, son of the Celestian Mescator, tore the axe from the hands of Oskan, the Father of Lies and leader of the Wicked Ones, and drove it into the earth with all his strength. The ground split for miles, a red glow burst up from the depths, and the wound began to drag everything around it inside: Oskan, his followers, his generals. One after another, the Wicked Ones vanished into it. And so a place was born that is both their home and their prison. Domivar's power holds them there to this day.

The demons, though, are older than the Abyss. The first of them are said to have been summoned by Oskan himself during the God War, out of his own power and shards of the broken Mirror. They were creatures of pure darkness, living extensions of his will. A single one could butcher an enemy many times its number, and Oskan called them up by the legion. Every hellish beast the world knows today descends from them. Other Wicked Ones tried to copy the Father of Lies, some more successfully than others.

The chasm

The Abyss lies far to the northeast of the Infant Sea, among the soot-blackened remains of the glaciers of Winter – one of the Wicked Ones, who once escaped the Abyss and locked the world in ice. It's a rift in the ground many miles deep and countless leagues across. A pall of smoke hangs over it, so the chasm and the lands around it sit in an unnatural, endless night. The upper reaches hold the empires of the Abyssal Dwarfs and swarm with orcs, goblins and other wretched creatures. The further down, the stronger the taint of the Wicked Ones' power – and the worse the things that live there.

Most mortals picture the Abyss as a hole in the ground leading down to volcanic depths. That's only part of the truth. Anyone who ventures deeper soon realises the place makes a mockery of natural law. The veil between planes of existence is thin here – a dark parody of the power that once let the Celestians walk between worlds. Bare rock breathes. Black smoke thinks for itself and corrupts whoever inhales it. Vast caverns writhe and twist into labyrinths it would take a lifetime to cross. Countless tormented souls gibber in the endless dark, and their feverish visions become new realities, new monsters and new sorceries.

Deeper still, in the smoke and the red glare of hellfire, live the Abyssals – the immortal servants of the Father of Lies. They are emanations of his mind, evil in its purest form.

Part two: the seven circles

Heaven turned upside down

The demons of the Abyss live in a strict hierarchy, a twisted reflection of the heavenly hosts of the Shining Ones. A demon's place in it depends on its circle – the level of the Abyss it inhabits. There are seven. The closer a circle lies to the mortal world, the larger it grows to make room for the swelling hordes, and the weaker it becomes, being further from the gaze of the Wicked Ones.

The Seventh Circle: twenty-seven

At the very bottom, in the Seventh Circle, dwell the twenty-seven Wicked Ones: the Father of Lies and his kin. Domivar's power keeps them from ever leaving the Abyss, but they never stop plotting how to force their will on the mortal world. They're said to live in the Eternal Dark, hostile to every kind of life, mortal and Abyssal alike. And yet they endure, and their power is felt in every corner of their realm.

Each of them carves out a domain of their own. The domains grow and shrink with their masters' fortunes, and sometimes they collide, setting the Wicked Ones to war and intrigue against one another. Crazed seers have tried to describe them in forbidden books. They write of cities of writhing, pulsing flesh and plains of precious stones glittering to the horizon. Of kingdoms where the air is thick and poisonous, where shadowy things shuffle after their dark lord dragging plague-ridden souls behind them. Of a kingdom of dog-headed spiders, of palaces of bone, and of the endless forges of Ariagful, one of the Wicked Ones, where cursed artefacts are forged and reforged again and again before being sent out into the world to rot the hearts of mortals.

Not all of them fare equally well. Akshun'arha, the Mother of Vampires, is now little more than a wraith – a sliver of the goddess she once was. To escape banishment into the Abyss, she bound most of her divine power into the hearts of mummified Ophidians, people of ancient Ophidia, but most of those were destroyed. The other Wicked Ones envy her all the same, because shards of her power live on in the mortal world as the first true vampires. Only Garkan the Black can claim to have loosed a similar darkness on the world – his orcs. Others rule vast kingdoms, and the names of Ju'bilex, Barglurath and Vraz'zt are feared – and worshipped – in the mortal world. Kyron, the Dark Smith, has risen in prominence of late, for the oceans themselves answer to him; still, his power ebbs and flows like the tide. And even he pales beside Oskan, lord of all evil, who schemes from the heart of hell while keeping one eye on the intrigues of the other twenty-six Wicked Ones, his Abyssal Lords.

"The prayers of mortals are a double-edged sword: they give courage, but they feed fear. No one can honour the Shining Ones without acknowledging their dark halves. If man believes in good, he must also believe in evil." So says the Book of Malborgia.

The Sixth Circle: hell's generals

The will of the Wicked Ones is carried out by the Archfiends, Lords of the Sixth Circle – generals of the infernal hosts, mighty in both body and sorcery. No mortal has ever seen the Sixth Circle, and any who did would surely go mad. Impossible towers of brimstone and gleaming crystal twist up into endless skies of fire and blood. Effigies of nameless gods from forgotten planes sit atop monuments built from the remains of defeated foes, while at their feet Molochs and Despoilers – the fused remains of punished demons – drill endlessly for war. The Archfiends' servants never stop searching for ways into the mortal world, where sweet flesh is plentiful. Unlike the Wicked Ones, the Archfiends can leave the Abyss when the signs are right.

Nobody knows how many there are at any one time – they rise fast and fall almost as fast. Their true names are kept hidden, because anyone mad enough to call an Archfiend by name could tear the very fabric of reality, and every horde of the Abyss would pour through the gap.

The greatest of them is the so-called Lord of Lies, who clawed his way up through sheer deviousness. He's so cunning that some say he's an avatar of Oskan himself – a way for the Father of Lies to slip out of the Eternal Dark, if only for a while, and taste conquest.

The Fifth Circle: war without end

The Fifth Circle belongs to the Abyssal Champions: crafty Lower Abyssals – demons of the First Circle – or mortals, who won the favour of the Wicked Ones and were raised to power their kind can barely imagine. Slaves from the lower circles build their fortresses and monuments. When the gates to the world close, the champions turn on each other and fight without pause: fortresses fall and are rebuilt, and the defeated come back stronger than ever. It's a realm of unending war – and the champions wouldn't have it any other way.

Lately, there's a newcomer. The demon prince Scudku-z'luk, spawned by the unholy rituals of the ratkin, the rat-folk, has carved out a realm of his own here and is fighting for power and followers. The champions loathe him as a usurper – a bit rich, considering how they rose themselves. Only one thing stops them from trying to banish him: the Wicked Ones haven't done it themselves. Which suggests they rather approve.

The Fourth Circle: fire

The Fourth Circle is a plane of fire that feeds the volcanic pits along the border between the Dark and the mortal world. Here the beloved children of Ariagful walk on burning seas – Ariagful, She of the Red Flow, dark double of Fulgria the fire goddess, whose very name brings to mind both lava and blood. This is the domain of the Efreets. They channel the lava pouring into their great forges and turn out artefacts for the Archfiends' armies – things that gods and mortals alike crave. Their bodies are suffused with flickering magical fire, and their touch can turn a man to ash where he stands.

They're served by the Flamebearers, lesser demons spared a fate in the First Circle only because the Efreets find them useful. The ground beneath their hordes grows hot enough to sear flesh and melt armour.

The Third Circle: torment

The Third Circle is a wellspring of magic and corruption that feeds the circles above and below. Endless labyrinths of living stone wind through the underbelly of the Great Pit, and countless torture chambers ring with the screams of the damned. This is the realm of the Succubi covens – infernal matriarchies that torment the Abyss's captives with their basest desires. The victim is lured into submission, then flayed alive with razor-sharp blades. A succubus's caress is never gentle.

Among them stride the Chroneas – black-skinned beasts said to have roamed the world since its creation and to have entered the Wicked Ones' service during the God War. Time flows faster or slower around them. In the torture chambers they slow it down, so every torment lasts an eternity.

The Second Circle: the great hunt

The Second Circle is a wild, blasted waste – plains of ash under a sky of liquid fire. Here the Great Abyssal Hunt goes on forever. The quarry are the Tortured Souls: mortals who thought they could resist the lure of the Abyss and found out how wrong they were. Stripped of everything they once were, they've become little more than beasts. A chase can last anywhere from minutes to long years, but in the end every one is caught and torn apart. And that's not the end. Their souls belong to the Wicked Ones now, so the quarry is brought back to life, and the hunt begins again.

The First Circle: the countless

The First Circle straddles the border between the mortal world and the incorporeal domains below. Most of the Abyss's denizens are born here. In seemingly limitless numbers, Lower Abyssals – the "Diaboli" – and winged gargoyles crawl out of volcanic pits, breathing toxic fumes as if it were fresh air. They mostly busy themselves torturing mortals dragged back down into the Abyss. They also fight each other constantly for supremacy, so by the time they're called to war, they're already battle-hardened. Tiny imps scurry through the dark caverns, clinging to stronger demons for protection – or ending up as dinner for the predators lurking in the gloom.

For most Lower Abyssals, life is violent and short, with no hope of their masters' favour. Some, though, have more ambition than that. They strike unholy pacts with the lesser beasts of the first and second circles and fuse with them into something new and utterly freakish. Other demons regard these Harbingers with fear and envy. The best of them earn a reward most Diaboli can only dream of: promotion to the Second Circle.

"Those who believed that the Wicked Ones were defeated when Domivar cast them into the Abyss knew not how wrong they were," says the Book of Malborgia. "There, in a realm beyond realms, a world of the Celestians' own making, the demonic legions thrive, and wait."

Part three: a history of the hordes

Ebb and flow

The Abyss breathes. At best, it's a menacing place where something is always simmering. At worst – when the winds of magic grow strong, the stars fall into the right alignment and the walls between worlds wear thin – it vomits out legions of demons. Mantica, ancestral home of the noble races – elves, dwarfs and men – suffers most, simply because it lies closest.

The demons of the Abyss already fought in the War with Winter. When the dwarfs marched out onto the frozen surface, their High King Odador was hurled from the walls of a fortress in human Primovantor by a triumphant Archfiend. Meanwhile, beneath the northern dwarf holds, shapeless and unspeakable horrors of the Abyss welled up from depths no one had known existed and laid waste to everything they found.

The war ended with Winter's defeat, and her ice melted away in the Great Flood. After that came a time of relative peace. Orcs and goblins nibbled at the edges of civilisation. Every so often the denizens of the Abyss would venture out, wreak havoc, then – stretched too thin and too far from home – be driven back. Once, the Varangur clans, led by their god Korgaan, crossed the Frozen Sea, fought their way into the fiery peaks that ring the hell-scar and pushed everything the Wicked Ones could muster right back to the edge of the Abyss. The clans call that time the Reckoning.

Part four: the infernal legions

The call to war

At a signal from the Archfiends, bridges of shadow form between the circles, and the Molochs take on the role of enforcers. They herd the demons into a single horde, and the horde marches out into the world.

The Diaboli

The backbone of every infernal army is the Lower Abyssals – red-skinned, vicious demons that the Wicked Ones summon into being by the legion. They fight well, and best of all in a mob. They're only half-corporeal, so their wounds knit even mid-fight. An arm hacked off grows back. A severed head simply reappears, leering, in the chest.

Their existence is constant violence, not least among themselves. Those who claw their way to the top through cunning, strength or – most often – both, earn the right to ceremonial armour and better weapons. These are the Abyssal Guard.

Gargoyles circle over the horde like a black cloud. They're dim-witted, little more than flying beasts driven by hunger, and they drop on the wounded and the stragglers. Unlike most demons, they can hold their shape far from the Abyss for a long time, so they also turn up in the armies of other races devoted to the Wicked Ones. Underfoot scamper the imps – the weakest creatures of the Abyss, chittering, spiteful and nasty, as likely to slit a warrior's throat as to play a childish prank on him. A swarm of them can drag down a foe many times their size and tear it apart in an orgy of gleeful slaughter.

Behind the hordes trail the Abyssal Ghouls. In the scorched wastes of Tragar, things that were once human pick through the black rocks for carrion and prey on the lost and the weak. They're lost souls: soldiers left on the battlefield, survivors of villages and towns ravaged by Abyssal incursions, or depraved wretches lured to the Abyss by voices in the night. They're drawn wherever there's war and suffering. The champions of the Abyss were quick to see their value: they're ferocious, and nobody misses them.

The hunters

When the Second Circle is called to war, the Hellequin gallop through the rift at the head of the horde – heavily armoured knights on demonic steeds, with long lances or huge hell-forged axes. They're said to have once been mortal, men who gave up everything for demonic power. They see themselves as the Wicked Ones' chosen, but in truth they're slaves of the Abyss, no more favoured than the lowliest imp. Still, the sight of these dark riders is so awe-inspiring that mortals with corrupt hearts long to be like them, whatever the cost. That's why the Second Circle never runs short of warriors.

The Hellequin ride with the Hellhounds – three-headed brutes with jaws full of enormous teeth, as vicious as they are ugly, and ready to go for anything within reach, friend or foe. On the hunt, they're the ones that run down and maim the Tortured Souls so the hunters can deliver the final blow. The hunt is led by the Blood-Masques, lords of the Great Hunt. In war, they unleash the Tortured Souls straight at the enemy. The freed souls throw themselves on mortals and drain the life from them, desperate to break free of their eternal torment. Their freedom never lasts. The riders and the pack soon catch up and drag them back into the pit, victims and all. And the hunt begins again.

The temptresses

The covens are ruled by Seductresses, who oversee the torment of the Abyss's most prized captives. On the battlefield they can appear as fair maidens no one could resist – and in a heartbeat become fanged harridans. Most Succubi lure their prey, but the elusive Lurkers prefer stealth. Cloaked in unnatural shadow, they follow their victim like an unwanted desire and strike when it's least expected, usually from among their own sisters.

It isn't simple cruelty. The Succubi feed on the pain they cause, and they can never get enough. For every succubus at the height of her powers, there are a dozen starving ones. These, known as larvae, go to war in hordes, tearing their enemies limb from limb with savage glee in the hope of a scrap of sustenance.

On the battlefield, the Chroneas turn their power around: instead of slowing time, they speed it up. Enemies near them wither and die in a heartbeat, as if the curse of ages had fallen on them.

Fire

Whenever the Efreets get the chance to face mortals in battle, they turn it into a fireworks display. They ride columns of flame and hurl balls of fire that melt through armour and flesh alike.

The Flamebearers spend years learning to call up the all-consuming fire of the Abyss and shape it into fireballs and weapons. A lucky one may catch the eye of Ariagful herself. The Wicked One blesses her favourite, but her caress is not kind: it fills the soul with power and shatters the mind. So the Warlocks are made. They're carried into battle, where their violent outbursts of magic can be aimed at the enemy, while they bark rambling orders that probably have little to do with reality.

The lords of war

A Diabolus who distinguishes itself under the Archfiends' gaze is rewarded with a champion's power and rule over its former brethren. Lower Abyssals fear their champions and dream only of one day taking their place and tormenting others the same way.

The Archfiends are the Wicked Ones' favourites and the only demons able to speak with them directly. Grotesquely muscled and winged, they tower over the denizens of every other circle and command them as supreme warlords. On the battlefield, they can tear whole regiments to pieces.

Beneath them are the Fiends, the dark princes of the Abyss, feared by every demon except the Archfiends. The Archfiend leads in war, but it's the Fiends who see to the daily running of hell – from the forging of weapons in the Fourth Circle to the torture of captives in the Third. Nothing happens without their notice, and the slightest failure to obey is punished severely. Below them are the Molochs: huge, lumbering brutes the size of an ogre. They usually keep to themselves, because they can barely contain their rage. When war calls, they sometimes band together in small groups, but such pacts never last before the next brawl breaks out. The Fiends, far stronger than the Molochs, keep them in line.

The fate of those who anger the Fiends is on display for all of hell to see. Despoilers are the fused remains of such demons – insane abominations led into battle alongside the Molochs. They have only one purpose: to die among the enemy's ranks and be reborn in the same cursed form in the bowels of the Abyss. There's no escape from that punishment. Only an eternity of slaughter and suffering.

Part five: names that inspire terror

Many champions of the Abyss have tried to conquer the mortal world, and many have been turned back. For most, a single defeat ends their brush with glory. But some never lose the taste of the prize waiting beyond the Abyss. The Wicked Ones give such lords everything they need to march on the world once again.

Ba'el

Bane of the Mortal Kingdoms, Bringer of Woe, Eater of Realms. Ba'el has gone by many names in his long life.

The tales about him reach back to the God War. Where the Straits of Madness lie today – a passage that drives sailors out of their minds – there was once a chain of paradise islands, the hunting grounds of the naiads, a sea people of Neritica. Ba'el gathered a demonic army to lay them waste, and Liliana stood against him – the shining half of one of the sundered Celestians. The ocean heaved in revulsion at such evil, and the sky turned black as tar. Then the Green Lady – a Celestian who escaped the sundering and guards the balance of the world – arrived at the head of a vast fleet of allies. Her fury was such that not even Ba'el and his host could stand before it. Legions of hellspawn burned, and Ba'el himself withdrew to lick his wounds.

After the God War, he was one of the mightiest warlords of the Abyssal hordes, and his name was feared wherever it was spoken. Whole civilisations vanished from the map before his armies, leaving rivers of blood and mountains of the dead in his wake. In the end, he was brought low by the great hero Valandor, one of the Shining Ones, who bound him in an eternal prison beneath the ruins of the last civilisation Ba'el had razed – the Du'lan Var. Legend says Valandor meant to return and destroy him once he had undone the damage Ba'el had caused. He never got the chance. The Great Flood took him first.

Valandor had a dark half – one of the most hideous and hated generals of the Abyss. That dark half was Ba'el: the two are twins, one born of light, the other of darkness. That's why, as secret cults in the darkest corners of the world whisper, Valandor could no sooner kill Ba'el than kill himself. The mad scribe Athalaneus wrote that one day both would return for a final reckoning. In human Basilea, saying so out loud is punishable by death; in elven Elvenholme, it earns instant exile.

Drech'nok the Destroyer

Drech'nok was one of the mightiest warriors of the Abyss, and even there he stood out for his cruelty and his love of slaughter. In one of the great battles of the War with Winter, before the Great Flood, Valandor himself defeated him, sealed him ritually inside a sarcophagus and buried him deep beneath the skin of the world to wait out eternity.

The tomb held for centuries. Then a dwarf mining expedition, hunting a new seam, stumbled on it by accident – and its drill shattered the ancient prison. Drech'nok slaughtered the dwarfs and broke out into the world to wreak havoc all over again. His long imprisonment has left him in a permanent, blinding rage. He's one of the deadliest foes anyone can meet today.

Ba'su'su the Vile

Ba'su'su is a halfbreed made by the Abyssal Dwarfs, stitched together from many creatures: the face of a hairless dog, eyes burning with the heat of the deepest Abyss, the over-muscled body of a man, the reverse-jointed taloned feet of a vulture, and two pairs of wings as black as ash clouds. He owes the title of Lord of Gargoyles to the fact that he's forever wheeling above the Abyss on its searing thermals, master of every winged thing there. Wherever he flies, a cloud of gargoyles follows so thick that it blots out the sun.

Gargoyles feed on the dead and dying, friend or foe. But when Ba'su'su is among them, they cower in hissing submission, because he eats first. Until he's had his fill, none of his winged kin may touch the flesh. He doesn't seem to have anything to do with the rest of the Abyss's denizens. He did, however, have a bride, Sor'ik'su, queen of his lofty seraglio. The Varangur captured her during the Reckoning, and in one of their rituals her body and essence were fused with the remains of the long-dead warrior Herja. So Herja was reborn as Korgaan's champion.

Mau'ti-bu-su

Mau'ti-bu-su revels in torture and destruction. She often stays on the battlefield long after the fighting is over, looking for those still clinging to the last scraps of life. She doesn't hasten their end. She draws out their agony with great pleasure before sending them into the fires of the Abyss.

She's a skilled deceiver and can take the shape of a fair maiden, so plenty of victims have walked into her web. Most face months, even years, of horrific torture to the sound of her cruel cackle. When the body finally gives out, the soul still finds no rest – it becomes one of her desperate slaves.

Part six: the Abyssal Crusade

The Necromancer

After the Great Flood, for all the orcs, demons and petty wars, the world kept a kind of balance. Civilisations grew, and life went on.

Then came the Necromancer.

Mortibris wasn't the first necromancer, nor the only one to blame for what followed. He had once studied with the Order of the Ardent Light in the Basilean city of the Golden Horn, then went astray and hunted for the fabled Tome of Valandor. The Tome revealed Valandor's secrets to him, along with the rituals that could set Ba'el free. He also sought the Portal of Khul-Harakh, one of the Portals Beneath the World – passages that snake through the fabric of the world – and his search ended with the seals on the Entrance to the Underworld being broken. That was where the dark times began. Scholars had called the previous era the Age of Conflict. They soon found out how little they'd known about conflict.

Mortibris's schemes brought a manifestation of Ba'el into the mortal world. For a time the demon served the necromancer, and together they unleashed a hellish crusade on the world.

They were stopped by a small band of heroes chosen by the Council of Rulers in Basilea. The heroes found the starmetal amulet holding the last essence of Valandor and released his spirit to face Mortibris and Ba'el. A titanic struggle between the twins of light and darkness followed. Ba'el was defeated and banished back to his eternal torment, Valandor's essence was spent, and Mortibris's body was never found.

But once summoned, Ba'el could not be sent away for good – and he had never been anyone's slave. His body has been destroyed many times, but wherever there's slaughter in the name of the Abyss, Ba'el can take shape once more. Since then he has become a scourge on the world again, leading Abyssal armies against the cities and strongholds of mortals on his own account. Surely it's only a matter of time before he breaks his bonds entirely and regains his full strength.

The Wicked Ones gazed up from the Seventh Circle and showered Ba'el with their favour. He had, after all, found a way to crush the mortal world.

A world unravelling

The crusade of Mortibris and Ba'el changed everything. The dwarfs of the Golloch Empire and the humans of Basilea eyed each other with even more suspicion. The elves of Walldeep decided they had to take a hand in the world's affairs again. Ancient Ophidia was dragged back into politics. The orcs smelled weakness, the Abyssal Dwarfs gathered for a great assault, and the Twilight Kin wondered how best to exploit the quarrels among their elven cousins.

Worse, opening one portal woke the whole network: the Portals Beneath the World pulsed with life again. Children were born with deformities or unnatural gifts, and strange creatures were sighted at the edges of towns. And the Abyss whipped itself into a frenzy.

The darkest hour

Under Ba'el's leadership, the Abyssal hordes became the greatest threat Pannithor had faced since the Wicked Ones started the God War. The portals snake through the fabric of the world, so an incursion, large or small, can begin anywhere at any time. Every victory makes the demons stronger, until the horde gathers such momentum that reality tears and fresh gibbering hosts pour through.

More than a thousand years after the War with Winter, the chasm split with a mighty crack and tore its way into new ground, and demons poured out in numbers the world had never seen. The Brotherhood, which had kept the Eternal Watch on the edge of the Abyss for generations, took the first blow. The Abyssal Dwarfs, emboldened by the demons, surged south and took the Halpi Mountains from their kin. The war dragged on for years. In one battle, a harpoon fired from a war engine of the naiads of the undersea Trident Realm struck the winged Archfiend Ara'koth the Sunderer – it punched through his black iron armour and into his heart.

It was the Green Lady who finally stopped the onslaught. Together with the Thuul, the water mages of the Trident Realm, she drowned the hell-scar under the waters of the Frozen Sea and quenched the fires of the Abyss, if only for a while. Many Thuul died in the ritual. That was a decade ago.

The Southern Rift

The Abyss in Mantica isn't the only place of its kind. Far to the south, beyond the Cracked Lands, stretches a broken country of scorched stone and craters – some say the scar of a comet from the God War, others that it's a place of evil to rival the Abyss. Only a handful have crossed it in recent times, because there isn't enough water there to keep a camel alive. They claim that on the far side the hills are cloaked in lush jungle. Their word is hard to trust, because no one who has seen those lands has ever come back unchanged. And up close, something is clearly wrong: the creatures there are many-eyed and fanged, the leaves drip venom and the roots drink blood. At the heart of the jungle a chasm drops away into a blistering darkness – one of the Portals Beneath the World. Given time, it will gorge itself on Pannithor's magic and grow into a void worthy of the Abyss. Then the legions of the Wicked Ones and the Nightstalkers – nightmares from beyond the veil of reality, hungry for mortal souls – will gain footholds all across the world.

A fire that won't go out

Flooding the Abyss bought the world time. Nothing more. Nothing can put out the fire at the heart of the hell-scar. The Abyss is stirring again, and in its depths a new horde is waiting its turn. The Archfiends of the Sixth Circle are passing their orders to the Abyssal Dwarfs, who suffered least from the flood, and the gaze of the Abyss has already turned north – to Chill, the city of the Northern Alliance. Korgaan and his Varangur clans, who also fought in the Green Lady's war, are bracing for revenge.

Because this horde isn't after land, gold or glory. All it wants is the end of mortals and the burning of the world.

"Those who embrace fear can fear no more. Those who embrace change can change no more. Those who embrace death will be born again, to fight in service of the Wicked Ones." – the Book of Malborgia