The Shadow of Arwonia (Y84-Y94)

Part I: The Summons and the Cover (Year 84)

When King Arwon and Grand Priestess Eran Sage began their "Decade of Construction" in Year 84, their patron, the Grand God Senzyn, "spread the word." The call went out across the world: a new kingdom was being built, a utopia for arcane minds, a place to push the boundaries of magic without fear of mundane superstition.

Wizards of every kind, from all corners of the world, answered the call. Evokers, Diviners, and Transmuters came, eager to build.

And so did the Necromancers.

They were not, at first, a "cult." They were academics, researchers who had long been forced to practice their art in secret, shunned by societies like Astra. Arwonia, the kingdom of "safe experimentation," was the sanctuary they had dreamed of. They came to Arcanus to practice their art in peace.

This gathering of so many magical disciplines in one place created an unprecedented "magical field." The sheer, raw power being expended daily by Arwon, Eran, and the growing collective to build Arcanus and raise Senzynia created a massive "storm" of arcane energy.

This magical static was the perfect cover. It blinded any divine scrying or long-range divination. Under the "noise" of Arwon's Creation magic, a different, quieter magic could be practiced, completely unnoticed.

Part II: The Uncovering (Year 87)

A small cabal of Arwonia's most ambitious necromancers, led by a brilliant (and secretly amoral) wizard named Malakor, began to gather in secret. They were not just practicing old spells; they were, in the true spirit of Arwonia, innovating. They began to combine their traditional necromantic formulas with the new, god-like "permanence" magic they were learning from Arwon's work.

They were pushing the boundaries of their art, further than any mortal had in this new world. And in doing so, they found something.

It was not a voice. It was not a call. It was a presence.

Deep within the "mathematics" of their most complex spells, in the very "equations" of undeath, they felt a cold, ancient, and supremely intelligent mind. It was not a god praying to them; it was a "master equation" waiting for them.

This was Dayereth of the Veil.

They had, through their own research, "uncovered" him—the Vile, the First Lich, the secret master of their art, still trapped in his ancient prison.

Part III: The "Great Work" (Y88-Y94)

For the necromancers, this was a religious revelation. They had not just found a powerful being; they had found their source. Dayereth, trapped but now able to communicate with his new "like-minded" followers, offered them the ultimate prize: true mastery over life and death.

This new, secret cult found a hidden valley, deep within Arwonia's protected mountain ranges.

While Arwon and Eran were publicly building Arcanus with vast, flashy expenditures of magic, the cult was privately building their own city. They used the "magical static" from Arwon's project as the perfect, continent-wide cloaking spell, masking their own, darker "Great Work."

As Arwon raised Senzynia, the necromancers raised their own dark spires, safe in their hidden valley. They used their new, combined magic—Arwon's permanence and Dayereth's necromancy—to build their city.

When Arcanus was "completed" in Year 94, so too was the secret city of Almadinat Almaytat Alhaya ("The Living Dead City").

Here, they worship Dayereth as a god. And in the city's dark, central temple, they have constructed their ultimate project: an exact, ritualistic duplicate of Dayereth's prison. They do not know its true purpose, only that Dayereth has commanded it. They believe that by performing their rituals upon this sympathetic duplicate, they will one day find the key to unraveling the wards on the original... and set their god free.