The Withering Dark

Some three hundred and fifty years before the present day, a pestilence spread through the Low Roads around the Argent Hall. Villages and settlements occupied by Dwarves and their Deep Gnome cousins began to disappear, no word from them. Few survivors reached the gates of the Argent Hall - usually harried parents and children. They spoke of a spreading darkness and a disease, of those who passed from this insidious illness rising from their resting places to hunt the living and a cloaked figure appearing from the shadow, bound in bone, who reaped those who remained.

Illness

After the first reports reached the Argent Hall, paladins and clerics of Bronnir Ironhammer were sent out to investigate, under orders from the King. They found that the first symptom that something was wrong in a particular village was the spreading of a darkness that crept into the town. The oil-like shadow could not be banished by any light and pooled no higher than the waist of a Dwarf. This was followed by a spreading rash and boils, which slowly drove the afflicted mad over the course of the next week. They became unable to keep down food and water, leading them to waste quickly as though the illness drew their very strength from them. It was this that earned it the name the Withering Dark. Those that died had to be burned, or they began to raise from the dead within three days. Even those that were burned occasionally rose as spectres.

The Reaper in the Dark

After the darkness had been present for a week, the clerics found that the dead became too numerous to hold back. As though they were being commanded they would hunt down those who had not fallen ill, but spare any children as though they didn't see them. Eventually, shrouded in darkness, a figure would appear through the onslaught of undead. Bones protruded grotesquely from this monster as it struck with lightning reflexes, crackling with a sickly energy and decimating any remaining living and raising each one as a new undead to fight at its side. It moved quickly, like a monster in the darkness, striking at any who tried to flee.

Legend

Attacks by the Withering Dark continued for nigh on a century. There would sometimes be years between incidents or several settlements would be wiped from memory in the space of a few days. The disease and its Reaper became folklore amongst those who settled the Low Roads, a tale told to scare children who wouldn't go to bed, even as real as the attacks were.

Vae'Nocturnus

In one attack, a hundred and thirty years, after the first, a Dwarven Paladin by the name of Thaddeus "Thad" Oreshaper had been called from his nearby village to aid the defence. Unbeknownst to him, his young son, Hjaldar, had followed him with his wooden sword in hand. The child was found by the Reaper before he found his father and in the midst of battle, the undead stood still. The darkness parted as this figure that had caused so much fear, returned the lost child to his father with a simple phrase in smooth Undercommon: "Take him home. The dead won't attack until you return, Paladin." The shadows around the monster faded and instead stood a humanoid figure armoured in bones.