The Rune of Mechella
Mechella the Sultana of Shadows had been charged by Necronias to prepare the
ground for the Plague of Banes. She was to further the spread of their
corruption. She had been given a musical composition by her mother the Void
Queen to act as the host for the bane Lust. In order to spread its contagion,
Mechella sought out the fallen Avatar of Love, Icaribil. The Damned Musician was
at that time trapped within the Necromancer’s Citadel, eternally playing the
overture of his opus, the Nocturne. He played the overture again and again
without ever being able to reach its finale for Necronias had torn the sheet
music of the Nocturne in two and had cast the finale into the Citadel’s Hall of
Broken Lore.
Mechella had shadow-scryed that one day a small band of heroes would enter the
Hall of Broken Lore and use the finale of the Nocturne to free Icaribil. The
Sultana of Shadows devised a ruse by which she would replace the finale of the
Nocturne with the composition that held the bane Lust. Mechella shrouded Lust's
arrangement with her Shadows of Doubt causing Icaribil and all others to see
Lust's composition as the Nocturne. She left Lust's masterpiece on the floor of
the hall scattered amongst other broken lore for the future heroes to find. The
heroes would believe that they had saved Icaribil, but, in fact, they would damn
him further by making spread the corrupting touch of Lust upon the land.
The Sultana of Shadows then opened a shadowbox and placed the true finale of the
Nocturne within it. Mechella's shadows dribbled from her fingertips into a
shadowy inkwell which she used to write a locking incantation on a blank piece
of parchment from the floor. She smoothed the inscribed parchment over the
opening of the shadowbox sealing it. She pulled off the locking parchment to
reveal nothing but a bare wall. The shadowbox, once sealed, had vanished
entirely. Mechella then tore up the locking scroll so that no one could find the
shadowbox and recover the true finale. The shadow sorceress completed her
mission by weaving spells in the Hall of Broken Lore and elsewhere to protect
the Nocturne's true finale and the reign of Lust.