He’d rotted in the dungeon, in the sanctum, in the sanctuary, a satanic, seething road of withered irreverence, a blade dulled and edgeless, decomposed. One breath, one taste, one savoring of the arctic wind, of the winter air, of the frigid rapiers nettled and soaked into his skin, and he was seduced into the calloused, nefarious villainy again; recaptured, reanimated, beguiled and swindled into the true embrace of violence, satanic reverie, malice and menace an unholy fuel. They’d lived, they’d survived, they’d chiseled and scraped, crawled and slithered, hastened and chastened through labyrinths, caves and warrens, revived and reincarnated into corporeal beasts and barbaric masters. They were given back their munitions, their arms, their alms, the beat of their Tartarean hearts and the derisive slate of their noxious gazes, the cruelty, the animosity, the building, brewing apathy and enmity; rancor’s steel, relentless mettle. Fervent, infernal, deplorable, horrible minions murmuring primordial treachery, rigid, possessive supremacy bleeding into scintillating annihilation, clinging to the raptor eaves, the diabolical insurrection, the hunger, the need, the yearning of their glacial kingdom, Siberian wiles and licentious credence. Ripping out compassion, potent, predacious, eager, and wanton, they flowed and followed into the wild beyond, screaming animal acrimony, feral indignation, ruthlessly fixating on the wake, the climb, the barbarous contortions and pathways of their beloved home – granted, abandoned, renounced, forsaken in mortal coils until the twisting, the turning, the assembling of their desires foretold, presaged, augured regeneration. Again, they’d been defeated, collapsed, depleted, and once more, they wound the silent chords of their fierce friction, of their meticulous, scrupulous ruins, consumed, ravaged, possessed, persevering, conquering, devouring. All the promises of cryptic conceit, all the unfurling, uncurling, hedonistic elation, ate at his enigmatic depravity, flooded into feverish motion and movement, into the distorted, precise puissance of his treacherous considerations, of his might, his brawn, his supremacy, to ensure that their reign, that their ravenous plumes, imperious gallows, pariahs to hope and mercy, could thrive anew. Savage temptation, heinous danger, a chance to unwind, to spill, to revolt and delude in one anarchical swing, to watch their kingdom rise while so many others crumbled into ash, into dust, into decay. They would not be subdued. The summits, the mountains, provided it all – they just had to stoke the right embers, engulf the world in heathen infernos, Mephistophelean decadence.

They molded into the earth, time at the Reaper’s helm, contorting mayhem into strange, unfamiliar reverie. As they walked, as they moved, as they chased after snow and folly, the Time God’s measures flowed around them; life restored for the barest of seconds. Minerals, sustenance, lapping waters to quench the basest of their cravings, provisions for the long journey to auroras and peaks. Marching camps and glowing bodies, figurines followed the wayward, siren call of a refuge they knew well, harbored and harpooned, flew beneath vivid banners and cried for at the height of battle. Only when they crossed the borders, when they touched upon home, did the gilded promise of the deities’ incantation end, simmer, die, leaving and leading them to the restoration of icy squalls, of winters’ ravaged, spun strikes, of power and dominance. He bowed at the entrance, paid reverence to glaciers, to summits, to caverns, to the sinister landscape they seized, grasped, and molded to their beings, to their sanctum, to their barbaric necessities. When he raised his forbidding skull, the world was just as they’d left it, and as they filtered in, as they gathered, it was no longer absconded, forsaken, or desolate – filled with the turbulence, the tenacity, the persistence of the corrupt, of the petulant, of the trenchant, mordant, and incorrigible; unattainable again. For the slightest of seconds, with his eyes caught on the highest peak and the borealis nestled behind its chilling supremacy, a smile curled into his baleful lips; a blackened heart appeased, grateful, at ease. It was theirs to protect, guard, and build, shelter and shape, and with its power, with its will, theirs to corrode other realms into cinders. With their followers, brethren, spirits behind, alongside, in front of the mountains, the valleys, he bellowed their return, procured another bow behind his reticent brow. “Welcome home, comrades.” A suitable pause, a snippet of his unholy gaze extended towards the GildedBlade, seemingly free of her own pestilence, before he proceeded into the fervent, passionate venue. “Convene with us. We have much to discuss.”

[Mandatory herd meeting for Basiners. We’ll be talking over quite a few rank changes, monitoring who is still fully present, etc.

Please let @[Illynx] to go first, then you may file in!]