In today’s Lost, Damned, & Salvation update, we’re handing over to Loremaster Sherwin Matthews to take us through the origin of the otherworldly horrors that are the Infernals.
In case you missed it, Lost, Damned, & Salvation is our very first FronTier campaign over on MyMiniFactory — we’re dropping three whole armies at once that you can print, paint, and play with straight away using the free rules in the app!
Plus, if you follow now you get a free limited edition variant of Eilish Garrity, The Occultist (which we painted on stream Thursday!), just as a thank you for following.
Now, onto the lore! Take it away, magnanimous Loremaster Matthews…
The Beginning
Before there was Caen or Urcaen, there was only darkness, stretching into infinity.
Eventually, this Outer Abyss coalesced into a reality unique to itself, and within this bleak realm, knots of dense spiritual energy swirled, accumulated, and became conscious. The first impulse this consciousness felt was malice.
Nothing is known with certainty about this primordial state of being, but it is thought to predate all life. Those that could outwit others around them — either to evade or consume their rivals — endured, becoming stronger, capable of actions both subtle and obscene. Some learned to survive by offering to serve, and a crude hierarchy emerged. In time, so too did a name for these otherworldly creatures.
Infernals.
The first Infernal societies formed before Caen existed, and others have risen and fallen in the intervening eons. These groups are paranoid and internecine by human reckoning, arising when individual Infernals learn the value of banding together to pool resources and power.
The shape of Infernal society does not resemble anything crafted by the sentient races of Caen. There is no sense of kinship between Infernals, no bonds of loyalty, love, or civic duty, only temporary stability reinforced through intimidation, calculation, and long-laid schemes. For untold millennia, these Infernal societies have fought for supremacy. Such conflicts persist, fueled by souls that have been seized from other worlds. Mortals have often been caught up in these conflicts, always to their detriment. Concepts such as trust, honor, and commitment are utterly incomprehensible to Infernals—and ascribing to them the motives of lesser beings can be a fatal mistake.
The horrors Infernals create to fight their wars — either against other Infernals or when invading other worlds — are made possible by harvesting immortal souls. The soul of an intelligent being is dense with enriched spiritual energy. To the Infernals, this is a resource that sustains their industry and serves as the foundation for their very reality. Valuable as they are, however, souls are also slippery and elusive. While mortal wars can provide a glut of souls, most will escape their clutches, shepherded into the afterlife by the gods, where they are forever beyond the Infernals’ reach.
From their dark and strange realm, greater Infernals used their occult powers to peer into neighboring realities and were filled with envy by what they saw in Caen and Urcaen. The spiritual energy that is their essence and currency is abundant in places that teem with life. It flows in great tidal torrents between the world of the living and the realm of the afterlife. Infernals do not exist within this common cosmological reality. This gives them certain advantages, but has led to a paucity of raw spiritual essence in the Outer Abyss, where every scrap is fought over and hoarded. From their perspective, Caen and Urcaen represented a vast untapped reservoir they wished to plunder.
The Contract
Infernal societies have long worked in the shadows to undermine the gods, seeking to infiltrate their worshipers, test the barriers between realms, and exploit any weaknesses.
Greater Infernals can only manifest on Caen for short periods of time before reality itself forces them back to the Outer Abyss. Because the material world is antithetical to these beings, physical manifestation requires their mortal servants to first open a gate to the Outer Abyss by enacting exact, complex rituals that poison the mind and spirit. When a greater Infernal manifests on Caen, their force of will and power is such that the world warps around them, becoming temporarily as fluid as the Abyss. Witnessing this happen can provoke psychic turmoil in mortals, shattering fragile minds.
The Infernals instead learned how to send tendrils of thought past the barriers that separate the Outer Abyss from the other worlds. They gathered information and devised methods to communicate indirectly with thinking beings in these places — through dark mirrors, by invading dreams with whispered thoughts, or sometimes by manifesting secret glyphs and runes hidden within other writings for power-hungry occultists to decipher. Infernals are the ultimate parasites and seducers, exploiting their own immortality to cull other worlds, first with smaller contracts and small requests but eventually bringing wholesale ruin. Each contract they make, each foreign soul they steal, is a small piece of a larger puzzle.
The greatest struggle in Immorese history — the Orgoth invasion and later rebellion against occupation — can be viewed in the context of strife between two specific Infernal factions: the Fellgoeth and Nonokrion orders, thought to be two of the most powerful organizations in the Outer Abyss. Much of Immorese suffering and the deaths of thousands can be attributed to the competition between these two groups, and the mortals who served them. Even the events leading up to the current invasion of Caen are deeply rooted in this struggle, one that extends back to the rise of the Orgoth Empire.
The Orgoth were empowered by the Fellgoeth, who gifted the Orgoth warlords with the power of magic and immortality. In exchange, the Orgoth sacrificed thousands, the souls of their victims marked for their unholy masters. Over the course of the invasion and occupation of Western Immoren the Fellgoeth order rose to absolute dominance, eclipsing the Nonokrion order and dramatically unbalancing the conflict between the two rivals.
The Nonokrion Order would have faced extinction were it not for the god Thamar. Driven to desperate measures by her followers’ existential crisis, Thamar agreed to use extraordinary measures to empower the humans of western Immoren with the gift of magic, so that they might overthrow the Orgoth. Knowing of the rivalry between the two Infernal orders, Thamar entered into negotiations with the Nonokrion Order, and eventually secured the Gift of Magic for humanity in a contract with vast and far-reaching commensurate costs — fully two thirds of all human souls on Caen, to be claimed hundreds of years into the future.
By this arrangement the first human wizards were born, and humanity quickly developed the means by which they could overthrow the tyrants. Utilizing the disciplines of mechanika, alchemy, and gunpowder, the first colossals were built, and the Orgoth driven from Immoren. In the aftermath, the Fellgoeth faltered and waned, retreating into the shadows.
Though Thamar’s bargain enabled the eventual defeat of the Orgoth, all sides understood it for what it was: a countdown to inevitable hostility. Struck between master negotiators operating in the absolute absence of good faith, the gods of Caen were set to pay a price too dear to bear. And for the Infernals, no quantity of souls could ever slake their thirst. Both sides immediately began preparing for the reckoning, with the gods girding their worshipers for a great confrontation, and the Infernals preparing methods to cast the gods themselves from Caen so they may yet claim its entire bounty for themselves.
The Claiming
For centuries, Infernals plotted and schemed from a distance, feared by all but rarely seen. The Infernals were well aware that Thamar sought to renege on her agreement, and that the humans would fight to avoid paying what was promised. Their agents, those humans that sought power above all things, even at the cost of the ultimate betrayal of their kind, infiltrated societies and organizations in every corner of the world. There, aided by the gifts of their masters, these Infernalists rose to positions of great influence and prepared for the moment the Infernals would pierce the veil and step once more onto Caen. With such preparations made, the will of the Nonokrion Order would be unstoppable, able to overcome any mortal opposition.
As the time for this Claiming approached, an unexpected development threatened the plans of the Nonokrion Order. The Old Witch of Khador, an ancient being of vast and indeterminable power, divined what had come to pass and reached an accord of her own with the Defiers and their grymkin followers. A Wicked Harvest was unleashed upon Western Immoren in an attempt to purge the Nonokrion Order’s pawns, yet such efforts were too late.
The Claiming was already upon Immoren.
Stepping through unholy gates constructed by their hapless human followers, the Infernals came to Caen to claim the debt owed to them. Thamar and the other gods drew upon their reserves to send divine champions to protect the mortals of Caen. Armies of great power were raised, old rivalries put aside as previously unthinkable alliances formed. Cygnar and Khador, bitterest of foes, stood side by side. The holy knights of the Protectorate marched alongside undead thralls. So too did the forces of other peoples ally to fight the invaders — although their contract was for human souls only, the Infernals did not limit their ambitions. The skorne and elves of Ios temporarily cast aside centuries of hostilities to unite in the face of the Infernal threat.
Even so, the price of this Infernal War would be great. For eons, the Nonokrion Order had jealously watched souls slip from the mortal realms to the halls of their gods. Their powers were beyond those of the mortals they faced, and their armies nigh on unstoppable. For every horror that was destroyed, another could be summoned. The cultists might be defeated, but in truth, their purpose had been served and their presence was by now irrelevant beyond the satisfaction of the mortals in seeing those who had betrayed them be punished. Such concepts were unimportant to the Infernals themselves.
The height of this conflict would be at Henge Hold, where the Convergence of Cyriss had revealed a means for the fleeing refugees from fallen cities and towns to escape Caen entirely. The armies standing against the Infernals that day expected only to buy time with their sweat and blood so that their countrymen might escape the clutches of the Nonokrion Order.
Nearly every great hero and warrior of the Iron Kingdoms arrived on that battlefield, bringing blade and cannon, warjack and spell to bear against the Infernals and their horrors, all in a desperate and noble bid to send as many people through the gate to Cyriss as they could. The losses were unfathomable. Many rose to greatness, and many more perished, making the ultimate sacrifice. But their efforts were not in vain. The Infernal threat was vanquished, and the masters of the Nonokrion Order were banished, their forces scattered or destroyed.
The world the demonic invaders left behind had been broken. And amongst those wise few that survived, a whisper remained unspoken.
The Infernals had not been defeated, only driven off for the moment…
