Crag leaves the Awoken clan without telling anyone.
Scyth and his friends use the Portal Key to Holdest, confident that the mobs there should be higher level than in the Lakharian Desert. But the continent disappoints them: the few mobs that lived there were low level. Moreover, the place of power where they had a chance to build a new temple to the Sleeping Gods was almost at the South Pole, and Storm, Scyth’s dragoness, couldn’t fly the long distance—a frost debuff damaged her. It would take Scyth weeks to get there on foot. He decides to sell the Poi’tal Key at the goblin auction house.
Gyula the builder erects the Stronghold of the Destroying Plague just in time for the NergaTs Summons event to begin.
In a conversation with Scyth, Gyula mentions a series of strange deaths in Cali Bottom. Humans are dying from the Doom virus, which causes sudden death from strokes and heart attacks. All the victims had given up mining to work in Dis at one point or another. Hank, Manny’s brother, who Scyth met in the form of a dungeon boss in the instance Tristad City Jail, has gone mad and been taken away by Snowstorm.
Scyth hands in his quest to build the Stronghold of the Destroying
Plague and gets new abilities; now he can infect players with the Destroying Plague. He picks up Behemoth. The Sleeper, seeing that his Initial is changing, gives him a lesson: Alex temporarily loses control of his character and loses his legendary armor set, thrown off by the AI now in control of Scyth. The Nucleus gives him task of turning the cultists of Morena undead, to use them as vessels for the ‘departed’ legates of the Destroying Plague. They were once nine, but now only the lich Shazz and Scyth the player-legate remain.
Shazz’s undead army passes through a Plague Portal and grows in strength as it farms high-level desert mobs. The cultists of Morena appear there too, those that the Nucleus had ordered turned undead. Scyth decides not to turn them, and sends the cultists to Kharinza instead.
While leveling up Fishing on Kharinza, Hung encounters the huge kraken Orthokon. The warrior throw’s his catch to the kraken in fear, increasing his reputation with the beast god and becoming a Threat himself.
The Montosaurus returns to the island and unwittingly helps Scyth. The beast god deals insane damage, allowing Scyth to quickly refill his plague energy and pour it into Plague Fury scrolls. Later, Scyth gives those scrolls to Yemi as weapons of sabotage.
Scyth then goes to meet Pecheneg in his castle. The old man introduces him to Blackberry, an analyst and officer from Modus. She’s working for Polotsky. Summoning an Arbiter to register a trade, Blackberry gives Scyth the right to use her image, which allows him to fool tests with the fire of the True Flame. She also talks about Nergal the Radiant’s Great Portable Altar, which the preventers carry with them as a respawn point.
Several thousand high-level players invade the Lakharian Desert and move toward the temple. The Alliance of Preventers is in a hurry to get there before the huge mass of ordinary players. It wants to be the first to complete Nergal’s quest.
Scyth attacks the altar and destroys it. Immediately afterwards, he infiltrates the preventers’ headquarters under the guise of Blackberry and kills them all. Among them he encounters Crag, now a partner of Modus. As it turns out, the destroyed altar was a fake.
Yoruba detonates a series of explosions around the temples of Nergal the Radiant during mass blessings. The high priests survive and ask their god for protection against Plague Fury.
Nergal promises to protect all who answer his summons.
The Continents of Disgardium
Latteria
The largest continent in the world, separated from Shad’Erung by the Thunder Strait. The Commonwealth occupies the western half, with the neutral races in the northeast and the Lakharian Desert stretching across the southeast. Latteria is home to Tristad (Scyth’s sandbox), the capital Darant, and frontier towns. Mob levels: 0-500+.
Shad’Erung
The continent of the dark ones. Almost fully belongs to the Empire, although roughly a third is covered in the uninhabitable Ursai Jungle. The Empire’s capital is Shak. This is where Scyth found the cultists of Morena. Mob levels: 0-500+.
Bakabba
A small continent in the southern hemisphere. Belongs entirely to the Goblin League. Mob levels: 200-300+.
Holdest
A snowy continent on the South Pole. Uninhabited although its depths shelter the barely-alive Reaper, who went there to hide away from the New Gods and eventually became the Nucleus of the Destroying Plague. Mob levels: o-???
Meaz
A small continent slightly larger than Bakabba. Located on the equator to the east of Latteria. Covered with an impenetrable magical field, so nobody has settled it. Mob levels:???-???
Terrastera
A dwarf continent to the south of Shad’Erung. Has active volcanoes that cover the whole continent in lava, ash clouds and acid rain. Uninhabited. Mob levels:???-???
Prologue: Hairo
FORTY-YEAR-OLD Hairo Morales has been working in the Excommunicado security sendee for the past three years. A former peacekeeper and veteran of the Third World War and local conflicts in the Middle East, northern China and Africa, he struggled to find activities that suited him in retirement. He’d been a special operative in the army and tried to find something similar in civilian life. Sure, it gave him gray hairs faster, but he was too late to change now.
The rain had been crashing down since dawm. Clouds of flint hung over the city. They seemed endless, divulging an eternal downpour. That bothered Morales. The rain brought phantom pains and he gritted his teeth. It was on a gloomy day like this that he lost his leg, burnt off by a plasma mine in one of the Central American Zones. Only his life-support system saved him, built into every peacekeeper exoskeleton.
The army provided him with new bionic limbs. Better than before! the doc said, with exaggerated enthusiasm. At least they won’t smell,
