The Past...

Each Pillar Guardian is marked from birth, chosen and summoned by the Pillar he is destined to serve for his lifetime. In return, the Guardians are granted longevity and extraordinary powers. The death of a Circle member is inevitably followed by the birth of a successor, whom it is the responsibility of the remaining Guardians to seek out and apprentice into the Circle.

In the decades leading up to Kain's birth, the Circle was infiltrated and Ariel - the Balance Guardian - was cruelly murdered. Her assassination, orchestrated by dark forces at work within Nosgoth, sent shockwaves throughout the Circle.

Wracked with grief and tormented by suspicions of treachery, Ariel's beloved Nupraptor - the Guardian of the Mind - descended into madness. In his anguish, he unleashed a telepathic assault upon his fellow Guardians - symbiotically bound, the entire Circle was infected by his madness...

Corrupt and deranged, the remaining sorcerers turned their powers to dark purposes, poisoning the land with their sorcery and abandoning their guardianship of the Pillars, which began to crumble, manifesting the corruption of their patrons.

Kain was born into this decaying world, marked from birth as Ariel's successor, and destined to grow to adulthood ignorant of his intended role as Balance Guardian. The ambitious but directionless Kain roamed the land – during one fateful journey, he was ambushed by brigands and murdered, cruelly impaled on his assassin’s sword.

Plucked from the brink of oblivion by the Necromancer Mortanius, Kain awakened in the underworld, still transfixed by his enemy’s blade. Tormented by his hunger for vengeance, and heedless of the spiritual cost, Kain recklessly accepted the Necromancer’s offer of revenge – and rose from his tomb to discover that he had been resurrected as a vampire and used by the necromancer Mortanius and the ghost of Ariel as the scourge of the Circle. During his journey, Kain discovered and claimed the Soul Reaver, an ancient soul-devouring blade. Against the counsel of the ancient vampire Vorador, Kain found himself embroiled in human events, caught in a bloody battle between Ottmar’s Army of Hope and the ruthlessly advancing armies of the Nemesis, from the north. As the tide of the battle turned, Kain used his only means of escape – the time-streaming device, which swept him nearly 50 years back into Nosgoth’s past.

Hoping to alter the course of Nosgoth’s history, Kain assassinated the young King William the Just, who would become the diabolic tyrant known as the Nemesis. After sating himself on his victim’s blood, Kain returned to the present – only to discover that his murder of the beloved King had ignited a genocidal war against vampires, led by the Time-Streamer Moebius, himself.

Upon his return, Kain witnessed the future that he had wrought – and the final, triumphant act of Moebius’ cold-blooded mob. Vorador, the last of Nosgoth’s vampires, is guillotined and his head held aloft for a cheering, bloodthirsty crowd – leaving Kain the sole surviving vampire in Nosgoth.

As his quest brought him full-circle, Kain confronted the destiny that Mortanius and Ariel had hidden from him – that he was the Balance Guardian, and that only by sacrificing himself could he restore the Pillars. Ariel presented him with a final, climactic decision – sacrifice himself to heal the land, but ensure the extinction of the vampires; or refuse the sacrifice, and seal the world’s corruption.

Kain concluded with the epiphany that Vorador was right – that vampirism is not a curse but a blessing. That vampires are dark gods whose duty is to thin the human herd. Kain refused the sacrifice, opting to rule the world in its damnation rather than commit himself to oblivion. His fateful decision triggered the Pillars' collapse; the mighty columns shattered and toppled. With intentional irony, Kain established the ruined Pillars as the symbolic seat of his new empire, and the unrestored Balance Pillar as the base of his throne. In an act of calculated blasphemy, Kain raided the ancient tomb of the Sarafan, a fanatical order of warrior-priests once sworn to eradicate the vampires plaguing Nosgoth. From the desiccated corpses of these long-dead knights, Kain raised his six vampiric “sons” to become the Lieutenants of his fledgling empire.

When Raziel, first among Kain’s Lieutenants, revealed his latest evolution – a pair of batlike wings – Kain responded with an act of seemingly egotistical sadism. Tearing Raziel’s newly fledged wings from his back, he ordered Raziel to be cast into the Lake of the Dead, where he would burn forever in the Abyss.

But like Kain before him, Raziel was saved from the brink of oblivion by a mysterious benefactor – an ancient god dwelling in the depths of the Abyss, who transformed Raziel into a devourer of souls, and released him back into the world in order to take his vengeance.

Kain however, had other plans for Raziel. Seemingly unsurprised by Raziel’s miraculous return, Kain baited Raziel across Nosgoth’s ruined landscape, leading to their final confrontation in Moebius’ long-abandoned Chronoplast chamber.

Driven by the fatalistic visions revealed in Moebius’ chambers, Kain activated the time-streaming portal that would propel him and Raziel centuries into Nosgoth’s past. Free will, Kain argues, is an illusion; their fates are intertwined in ways that Raziel has not begun to fathom...