Backstory:

Durgen Sandstone once believed death was a puzzle to be solved. A celebrated dwarven archaeologist, he was founder and curator of the Atlas Museum, a grand repository of ancient lore nestled in the stone heart of Port Atlas. He’d spent decades mapping ruins, translating dead tongues, and bringing relics of long-lost civilizations back from the brink of time’s erasure. Among academia, he was revered. Among the dead, perhaps less so.

Durgen was a member of the Order of Scribes, a circle of scholars who cataloged the arcane with sterile reverence. But Durgen wasn’t content to observe—he needed to uncover. To claim. To prove that death, like any force, could be measured, mapped, and mastered. No prize held his obsession like the fabled tomb of Bal’gul, emperor of the Sun-Eating Serpents—a tyrant said to have ruled an empire where life was currency and souls were fuel.

He'd chased rumors for years: fragments of murals in the Crimson Sands, shattered idols in the Greenhorn Marshes, cursed maps in Esmerach’s overgrown temples. The legends always ended in one truth—Bal’gul had become more than a man. Some said he’d swallowed a god. Others, that he became one.

And Durgen meant to find him.

The Final Expedition:

Durgen assembled his most trusted team:

Serafina Brightmere, a devilkin mage and former student who challenged Durgen’s theories but idolized his ambition. She was the one who first deciphered the Sun-Eaters' ritual glyphs.

Tharn Bristleback, a half-orc mercenary who’d been with Durgen since the jungles of Esmerach. Gruff, loyal, and unswervingly brave—he saw Durgen not as a scholar, but as a commander worth following into hell.

Nico Underbough, a halfling rogue and Durgen’s former protégé-turned-rival. They’d quarreled over a stolen relic years before, but Durgen offered him a place on the team as a peace offering— or bait.

They traveled for weeks into the desert, enduring sandstorms and snakebite, until they found it: a pyramid half-swallowed by the dunes, ringed with scorched bones and deadly viper nests. The tomb of Bal’gul.

Warnings carved in stone lined the threshold:

“What death devours, it does not return.”

“To name him is to wake him.”

“Do not open the lid.”

Durgen, of course, did.

Descent and Devastation:

Inside, the tomb was a gauntlet of cruelty: blades, fire, gas, and curses. But the team advanced, spell by spell, step by step. Murals revealed dark truths—Bal’gul had transcended mortality through ritual parasitism, transforming his loyal subjects into scaled, twisted forms: the first of the naga. And at the center of it all, an obsidian scepter, carved to resemble a basilisk's spine, said to command a sun-devouring beast and the deathless alike.

Serafina begged him not to touch it. “It’s not just a key,” she warned. “It’s a beacon.”

Durgen smiled. “Good. Let it shine.”

When he cracked open the sarcophagus, the torches died with a hiss, and the air turned thick as blood. Then came the whisper—not spoken aloud, but etched into his bones:

“You sought me, little thief. So now I dwell within you.”

When the light returned, he was alone.

The Aftermath:

He found Serafina’s robes first, empty and smoking. Tharn died on his feet, holding back a tide of skeletal guardians before collapsing—his last words a whisper of Durgen’s name. Nico lasted longest, retreating into the ceiling tunnels. Durgen reached him just as the snakes did. His final breath formed a curse Durgen would never forget.

Wounded and delirious, Durgen escaped the tomb carrying the scepter—but it was hollow. Useless. A shell. The true magic had entered him. He collapsed in a village days later, waking to find a dozen corpses around him... and several beginning to rise.

Durgen returned to Port Atlas in silence. He boarded up the museum’s lower wings. He told no one of the scepter, now sealed in the reliquary, pulsing when he dreamed. The voice—Bal’gul, or something deeper—remains. Teaching. Testing. Tempting.

Durgen insists he hasn’t changed. He still catalogs the dead. He just commands a few of them now.

Whether he's a vessel, a victor, or a fool... that remains to be unearthed.