Far to the southern reaches of Rhy'Din, past the rolling forests, golden plains, and lush grasslands, the land itself begins to die. Everything that is green and good begins to die, leaving behind cracked, black clay as the only earth that remains. The sprinkled remains of bones, sporadic at first, begins to grow thicker as you travel further south. Once upon a time, a mountain would have risen from this dead earth, where the only ground that could be seen was the ash-covered bones of a score of dead men, birds, and beasts. Atop the Mountain of Bones stood a fortress. The black walls, thick and strong, had stood for an Age, and it was simply assumed they always would. The castle was known as Doomhammer, and vomited from the gates like a parade of evil, came the armies of Jodiah Ayreg.

The Death Knight served his own ends, so long as they also coincided with the ends of his dark gods, the pantheon known as The Nihil. Destruction was his goal. Warfare, starvation, disease, and plauge were his methods. Ayreg stood atop his fortress, Doomhammer, as a colossus as his dead armies -- summoned from the very bones the citadel was built upon -- marched on the world. Blazing, stern eyes, like coldfire, burned into the faces of those who stood against him, and he was the Scourge of Worlds.

But he was defeated.

It was a great alliance of armies that put him down, in the end. His primary nemisis -- the leader of this alliance -- was a great, white dragon named Tiari. It was a monumental battle that took place near White Dragon's Hall, the ancestral chantry of the guild known as the White Dragon's Vengeance. The battle ended in a personal duel between Tiari, and Ayreg, whereupon the white dragon took the Death Knight's power as her own, and threw him down. His armies, his generals, his banners -- all fell after the Death Knight's ruin was smote upon the walls of White Dragon's Hall.

His great wealth was plundered from Doomhammer Keep. His armory stolen, and in the end, the castle itself was razed to the ground. Only a single tower remains, and only half-standing, like some monument to evil built upon the top of a gentle hill. So complete was the destruction of the fallen Death Knight's assets, that even the Mountain of Bones was annihilated, and the bones that gave these blasted lands their name, scattered into the nearby ocean.

Jodiah Ayreg lay dead, and the room his corpse was deposited in was bricked over by the soldiers who, at the same time, looted the stores and rooms of the castle, greed burning in their hearts to take the Death Knight's considerable amount of possessions. His great sword was taken, and broken, by Tiari. His armor melted, and turned into implements of agriculture -- shovels, picks, and the like. It was the greatest humiliation the Death Knight had ever faced...

But that was then. Now, it seems, Jodiah Ayreg was a penniless pauper, living in shattered ruins among a few piles of stones and a single room that smelled of death, and nothing less. No proper blade, no proper armor, no proper steed. Just a few rags remain to keep the reborn human alive in the cold of the unforgiving winter.

Jodiah frowned.