Grim Dawn Grim Misadventures #58

In the 58th "Grim Misadventures" update, Crate Entertainment designer "Zantai" continues to focus on the action RPG's notable factions, this time telling us what we need to know about The Order of Death's Vigil. A bit of what to expect:

For the Order of Death's Vigil deals in that ultimate fate which binds all men. They are necromancers, reapers, the embodiment of mortal desire to understand the inevitable. Though the art itself is as ancient as man's control over magic, the Order owes its origins to just one man: Uroboruuk.

Uroboruuk is perhaps more legend than man and no one knows in what distant time and place he was born but his name has reappeared throughout the ages and is central to tales of the downfall of Arkovia centuries ago. Under decree of the Arkovian Oligarchs, all suspected practitioners of the necromantic art were to be taken to the Steps of Torment, a vile prison where doomed men were left to rot in the darkness of the depths of the earth. Uroboruuk, who then had a powerful following in Arkovia, was betrayed and handed over to the Arkovian torturers. However, he was not like any man they had ever met. It seemed Uroboruuk could not die. His skin would not burn and his wounds would not bleed.

Unsurprisingly, this drew the attention of the oligarchs, who craved such power for themselves. Under their command, Uroboruuk was subjected to the most brutal and imaginative forms of torture ever conceived. His immortality had worked against him.

Ultimately, the necromancer agreed to their demands and offered to perform the ritual which would make the oligarchs immortal. The oligarchs had assumed his will broken and greedily accepted. Indeed, Uroboruuk granted the people of Arkovia the immortality they so craved, but it came in the form of a devious curse. They still suffered from the ravages of time, but the merciful release of death would not come. They became trapped within their physical forms, even as their bodies disintegrated and turned to dust. The remnants of the once great Arkovian Empire still roam the world as mindless ghouls and tortured spirits. But that is another tale, one which you may learn yourself as you journey through Cairn.

Shortly after the ritual was complete, Uroboruuk vanished from the clutches of the Arkovians. It was centuries before he resurfaced again. With the systematic extermination of his necromancer brothers and sisters, Uroboruuk represented one of the last threads by which the art of necromancy still existed within the world of Cairn. He swore to restore necromancy to its former glory, to engrain the pursuit of knowledge and life's mysteries into a new generation. That was the day the Order of Death's Vigil first came into being.