The Great Oubliette of Shyish, part 7

Malkrohl The Half-Seen, Spirit Torment

The Spirit Torments are the lords of the Great Oubliette of Shyish, a continent-sized underworld of dank cells and ice-cold dungeons. Known as shacklegheists to the elders of the Shyish Innerlands, they were once a rare sight in the Mortal Realms.

They are entrusted with a duty Nagash considers vitally important – it is their role to capture the souls of transgressors, those who have escaped their due fate. A Spirit Torment draws its victim’s soul into its shacklegheist chains, heavy bonds forged of malefic iron and tempered by fell ritual. 

The masked creature known as Malkrohl The Half-Seen was a pitiless jailer in life. In death he seeks out those that Nagash deems his by right of rulership, bludgeoning them with his ensorcelled iron padlocks before locking away their souls.

The fate of most Torment-apprehended spirits depend upon the strength of the soul and the crimes that it committed in its mortal life. The majority are remade into lesser Nighthaunts, but those captured by Malkrohl are all trapped in a pocket of unreality linked to the Great Oubliette.

Malkrohl takes great pleasure in his dark work, though as much as he delights in ending lives and capturing souls, there is one aspect of their duties he enjoys above all others. The spiteful phantom often peers into his padlocked prisons, gazing over the bright soul-stuff captured within. Then, he draws a great breath with a discordant howl, a chilling inhalation that steals hope, robbing the imprisoned spirits of energy even as it subjects them to nightmarish angst and dread.

Filled with the energies of the incarcerated souls, Malkrohl exudes an aura of malevolence and despair. At times this malignant force can even be seen as pale, greenish wisps of spiritual radiance amongst which faces leer, taloned hands reach out to grasp, and agonised screams echo. To the living these emanations evoke purest terror, and are oppressive even to those who cannot see. To bask in such baleful phenomena is to be overcome with feelings of morbidity and gloom. To other Nighthaunts these harrowing energies are invigorating, driving the wraith-creatures on towards still greater acts of violence and spite.

Other Spirit Torments have earned their fell notoriety for the sheer number of souls they have returned to the great mausoleums of Nagash. Malkrohl has earned his for the single-minded way he deals out punishments.

Kaldrak the Pale, Guardian of Souls with Nightmare Lantern

A Guardian of Souls keeps vigil over the dead whilst driving those around them to the heights of malice. When one of these sorcerous spectres goes to war, hundreds of the living dead are drawn to their lantern’s flame from leagues around.

Kaldrak is a nexus of undead energy. Once, he was a lesser Necromancer who used amethyst magic to further his own cause, yet his arcane knowledge was not enough to keep him alive. Nagash eventually claimed his soul, shaping Kaldrak to better fit his needs. Now he uses his spells not for his own ends, but to summon more Nighthaunts or restore spirits damaged in battle.

In addition to a deadly chill blade, the Guardian bears a nightmare lantern: a ghostly beacon lit by the Flame of Nagashizzar. The mind-chilling black smoke it exudes does not rise up to the heavens, but instead drifts down, along the cracked flagstones of the Oubliette. Nearby Nighthaunts are invigorated by the wafting vapours, and the Guardian of Souls can channel the lantern so that the cold fingers of smoke snake through the earth, beckoning spirits to rise out of their graves and mausoleums. Or the smoke can entangle mortal foes, chilling them to death.