Bal Sagoth The Obsidian Crown Unbound Lyrics:
[Episode IX: The Legions of the Imperium Storm the
Cloud-Capped Palisades of Gul-Kothoth] [Chapter 11: The Siege Begins] And so the mighty and resplendent armies of the
Imperium assembled before the towering cyclopean
walls of ancient Gul-Kothoth. It was some time
before the billowing dust cloud raised by the
massed arrival of the vast imperial host settled,
ultimately dissipating as the shadows of dusk
descended. With nightfall, the imperial army's
countless torches, braziers and cookfires
illuminated the dark plain before the fortress
like a coruscating sea, painting the stygian
heavens the colour of flame. And the high summer's
night passed swiftly. At length, the dawn
approached tentatively, and with the first signs
of the newborn sun etching its promise upon the
skies, the martial preparations commenced in
earnest. A brief perfunctory exchange between the
Imperial Herald and the fortification's Watch
Commander held no surprises, and the Emperor's
banner was duly driven into the seared earth
before Gul-Kothoth with a chilling finality. Vast
siege engines and powerful ballistae were hauled
inexorably into position, alongside a battery of
katapelte and petrobolos. The one hundred thousand
strong Imperial Frontier Army, having planted
their regimented blazons into the arid soil,
waited with a disciplined patience born of never
having met defeat in pitched battle or siege, the
dreaded Imperial War-Leopards straining noisily
against their iron-link leashes to the rear of the
cohorts of conscripts and auxiliaries. The
pitiless Iron Phalanx and their Lord Militant
Commander had assumed position at the head of the
army's Alpha Wing, polished swords, spears and
poll-axes reflecting the glow from the myriad
torches and braziers which still burned about the
Imperial Host. And behind them were drawn of the
legendary Legion of the Ebon Tiger, Pride of the
Emperor, the infantry and cavalry famed throughout
the Great Northern Continent, personal regiment of
the feared general Baalthus Vane. True to their
martial reputation, the six thousand strong Legion
were inscrutable in their jet black armour, their
sable banner billowing in the chill breeze which
skittered over the plain. And finally, astride his
azure-shaffroned warhorse and surrounded by his
elite guard, the silvern-armoured Emperor Koord
himself studied the precipitous gates with a
disdainful scruntiny. At the Emperor's right hand
was the renowned Swordmaster of Kyrman'ku, an
eastern bladesman of preternatural skill and the
most revered and expensive mercenary in the
Imperium. At his left, the infamous Ogre-Mage of
the Black Lake brooded silently, swathed in a
stygian cloak and fuliginous cowl and exuding an
aura of implacable malevolence, which unnerved
even the bravest of the Imperial troops. The
Emperor had deemed the services of these two
nefarious renegades pivotal to the execution of
the Final Campaign, for they alone had knowledge
of the mysterious arcane rite known as The Words
Which Unfetter. And, behind their titanic
time-worn palisades, the defenders of Gul-Kothoth
beheld this awesome force ranged against them and
shuddered, not with fear, but with an awful and
night-cold anticipation.
[The Emperor Koord:] General Vane, we begin the final siege of this
campaign with the rising of the sun. The war which
has raged for decades, shall finally be decided
here, before the hoary walls of ageless
Gul-Kothoth. The Imperium's last and most glorious
victory is at hand. The procrastinating sybarites
of the bureaucracy have been threatened and bribed
into compliance over this venture. This more than
anything else is why I have deigned to grace this
final battle with my Imperial presence, even
against the advice of the Grand Vizier and the
sage counsel of the Seers.
[Baalthus Vane:] You shall enjoy watching the Ebon Tiger bloody its
claws, sire. Our victory here is assured.
[The Emperor Koord:] You should not call your falcons before the hunt
is done, my loyal servitor. Overconfidence is but
one of the many foes a general must face upon the
field of war. Today, the precepts and maxims of
the Imperium shall be tested, and we shall see
whether the velvet glove of diplomacy or the iron
gauntlet of conquest has proved the more effective
tool.
[Baalthus Vane:] The days of the feudal suzerainties are long gone,
my liege. The Imperial Military Council is the
only entity fit to govern the dominions. The fall
of Vyrgothia shall today render the truth of the
Imperial Mandate self evident.
[The Emperor Koord:] And yet I am vexed, for as you well know, the
sorcerous emissary I dispatched to the Court of
the Over-King has warned that the Vyrgothians may
have recovered one of the artifacts comprising the
fabled Trinity of Might; the legendary Obsidian
Crown itself! In the hands of a skilled
thaumaturgist, it is said that the Crown may be
used as a weapon of unparalleled destructive
potency.
[Baalthus Vane:] The Shadow-Sword! The Obsidian Crown! The Ebon
Sceptre! Feh! The power of the Trinity is but a
myth! No antiquated trinket wielded by a religious
fanatic will prevail against the Legion, sire. Our
steel is proof against such diabolism! Behold!
Gul-Tryarch has fallen, Gul-Azlaan has been given
to the earth, Gul-Nomedes is naught but
smouldering rubble, and soon we shall surge over
the shattered remnants of Gul-Kothoth's renowned
walls! The Vyrgothian Alliance shall crumble when
these gates are breached, and the Over-King
himself shall stand before thee in shackles!
[The Emperor Koord:] Indeed. At any rate, I have been blessed with
foresight enough to prepare a contingency should
the foe fulfill that fearful potential which has
been weighing heavy on my mind. But now, the sun
rises! Let it begin! Let the final chapter of our
legend be written! Give the word! Raze Gul-Kothoth
to the ground!
[The Imperial War-Skalds:] An age of fire, sword and shield, The thunder of
the battlefield, The clarions call, bring down the
wall! May the Empire's glory never fade, Righteous
fury guide our blades, We march to war!
[The Wizards of Vyrgothia:] Darkly bejeweled circlet of night, Crown of the
Elder King, Unfettered at last the Trinity of
Might, the Sceptre, the Sword and the Ring!
[Chapter 12: The Fall of Gul-Kothoth] And so it was that a terrible and inestimable
[ Find more Lyrics on www.mp3lyrics.org/rXu ]carnage was unleashed upon the field of battle.
Colossal stones, firebrands and howling
iron-tipped missiles rained pitilessly down upon
the hero-hewn walls of Gul-Kothoth. Vast and
serpentine cracks appeared in the ancient
cyclopean edifice, and hundreds of warriors, both
attackers and defenders, perished in the fray,
either crushed beneath the ceaselessly assailed
testudo, hammered to crimson pulp by the merciless
storm of unforgiving stone, or burned to blackened
husks by the nightmare onslaught of flaming
quicklime and saltpetre. Scaling ladders raised
and repulsed in turn, storms of razor tipped
shafts exchanged by the combatants, isolated
skirmishes raging upon the ramparts, men blade to
blade and clarions bellowing embattled defiance.
For seemingly innumerable hours the sanguineous
battle raged, with no quarter asked nor given
between the bitter ancestral foes. And the gates
held firm. At length, the mightiest of the
Empire's iron-hooked battering rams, dubbed The
Bringer of Woe, was brought to bear upon the
besieged fortress, and, with the shadows of dusk
lengthening upon the field of war, the centuries
old Primary Gate of Gul-Kothoth was finally
sundered amidst an earsplitting cacophony of
shattering oak and iron louder than any storm-born
thunderclap. With the rending of the mighty gate,
and vast fragments of the ancient walls yielding,
buckling and crashing to the blood-sodden earth,
the Imperium's forces breached the defenses of
Gul-Kothoth and surged into the Vyrgothian
Alliance's last and most renowned stronghold. And
it was at that fate-steeped instant that an army
of five score and ten, bearing the Obsidian Crown,
arrived upon the field of battle.
[Chapter 13: The Wizards Do Battle] [The Sorcerer:] By Klatrymadon and Zuranthus! They come! They
come, wielding the Circlet of Night! The dire
warning issued to me as I stood before Vyrgothia's
Master Wizard has been proved no idle boast! The
citadel's spells of containment breached... the
Black Crown is upon us!
[The Emperor Koord:] It is as I have forseen! Be spry, my sorcerous
lackey... join the Iron Phalanx in entertaining
these latecomers while I prepare a reception
worthy of their audacity!
[The Sorcerer:] By your command, o' luminous Imperial majesty!
At once, the far-feared and martially renowned
Iron Phalanx wheeled to face the newcomers, and at
the command of a decurion, a volley of
armour-piercing shafts screamed skywards to rain
down mercilessly upon the foe. And even as this
transpired, the Emperor's Prime Sorcerer, emissary
of the Imperial Court and master of those arts
which speak to man in narcotic dreams from the
darkest and most silent places, summoned forth
that black potency which lay entwined in stygian
tendrils within his mind... an ireful power born
of they who writhed upon the shores of Pangaea
before man's progenitors ever erected their lofty
spires to the restless skies. And yet Vyrgothia's
Master Wizard, unrivalled Arch-Mage and adept of
that lost Eastern order who journey beyond the
boundaries of time and space upon those nebulous
wings born of the sacred Azure Lotus, rose to meet
this power which lapped at the periphery of his
mind like a midnight tide, and stood firm against
its insistent siren call. And upon that arid field
of war, the sentinels of light and shadow spoke to
each other in tongues dormant since the Third Moon
fell burning from the heavens, and not sweet were
the words they uttered. Until at last, with the
armies poised to clash, and with dusk painting the
sky a deep crimson exceeded in its vibrancy only
by that bloody rubicund hue which stained the
battlefield below it, the Emperor's mage fell and
the aeons-old might of the Obsidian Crown was
finally brought to bear against they who had
breached the walls of ancient Gul-Kothoth.
[The Imperial War-Skalds:] Sundered the gate of the ancient fortress,
Besieged! Now breached stand the walls. And lo,
there an army of five score and ten, Behold! The
Obsidian Crown. Embattled, the wizards, their
weapons arcane, Untramelled, the circlet, the
Prime-Sorcerer slain, The Crown's peerless power,
the Emperor's bane, Dark magicks and havoc, now
red carnage reigns!
Like the prow of a blood-hungry vessel of war
rending the waves of a midnight sea, a luminescent
blade of shrieking cerulean light lanced from the
legendary black circlet locked tight within the
gnarled hand of the Master Wizard, and clove
mercilessly into the glorious ranks of the
Imperium. And all who were touched by this ruinous
arc of coruscating radiance knew no more... Men
and beasts reduced to blackened husks, charred
shells of smouldering ash, lifeless effigies which
toppled to the seared earth to be dissipated by
the whispering breath of the wind. Again and again
the ravaging radiance smote the ranks of the
Empire, leaving a noisome charnel-pit of nightmare
in its crackling wake. The forces of the Imperium
were plunged into a howling vortex of disarray,
and, faced with the unthinkable prospect of
defeat, the unprecedented first routing of the
Emperor's glorious army began to become a grim
reality. Yet for all the unparalleled carnage
which had erupted about them, there was one
regiment of Imperial troops for whom the taste of
fear was bland compared to the sharp tang of rage
which sat bitter upon their noble tongues...
[Baalthus Vane:] By all the gods of war! Stand fast, hounds of the
Imperium! 'Tis true... steel is no use against
this ignoble magical trickery! But if our souls
are bound for the Pit this day, we'll damn well
take a few of these bastards with us! Onward, my
Legion! Alpha formation, banners high! Glory to
the Emperor! Into the foe! Show them the Tiger's
claws!
[The Legion:] Never quarter, never mercy, never retreat! Praise
the Emperor!
[The Emperor Koord:] My sorcerous thrall has fallen, but he has bought
us time enough to riposte. And general Vane's
mettle may yet turn the tide of war back in our
favour. Now, let the final act be played out! I
call thee forth, Ogre Mage of the Black Lake! I
call thee forth, Swordmaster of Kyrman'ku! It is
time! Now, I charge thee, for the glory of the
Imperium... Speak the Words Which Unfetter! And
so, it began... the two pivotal players in the
Emperor's plan, the two key figures in the
Imperium's contingency, stepped forth to fill
their most vital of roles in that grand theatre of
carnage which now ran unchecked on the field of
battle. The Ogre-Mage and the Swordmaster began to
utter fearsome words in a tongue which was ancient
ere the gleaming stars shifted upon the fathomless
countenance of the distant heavens, words which in
truth were not words, but rather a resonant key
which would aspire to unlock a dire power which
had reposed shackled since the fall of the
legendary Shadow King himself, whose ebon
circlet's power they even now sought to thwart.
The incantation they gave voice to in the midst of
that sanguineous turmoil which engulfed them was
not so much heard by those within earshot as
perceived, sensed as a vague disturbance in the
fabric of reality, as fuliginous ripples on the
surface of a hitherto still and placid pool,
growing ever larger and more far reaching; an
unnerving and unnamable sense of change which
insinuated itself into the mind of the listener
and suggested with a cold and disturbing
quasi-certainty that something of preternaturally
ineffable magnitude was transpiring, as surely as
a festering and gangrenous corpse would split to
spill its noisome gore. And as that maddeningly
implacable incantation reached its resounding
climax, a momentary silence enshrouded the
battlefield, swathing the vista of chaos in an
aura of noiselessness more pure and untainted than
the tranquility of the boundless and stygian void.
It was as if time itself had halted for one
immemorial moment. And it was in that oddly
immeasurable instant that the dark and peerless
power unfettered by those grim pseudo-words
finally, ultimately, made itself known before the
sundered gates of ancient Gul-Kothoth...
[To be continued in Episode X: The Shadow King
Reborn]Lyrics: The Obsidian Crown Unbound, Bal Sagoth [end]