Blade of the Ruined King

The Blade of the Ruined King is the cursed sword of Viego, once the king of Camavor and now the Ruined King of the fallen Blessed Isles. A spectral two-handed sword bearing the crest of Camavor, it is infused with the Black Mist and with Viego's undying obsession for his queen Isolde. It channels the Ruination, a cataclysmic wave of spectral corruption, and wherever it strikes the Black Mist follows, turning the living into undead thralls. Its curse was born of tragedy. An assassination arranged by political rivals targeted Viego, but the poisoned blade he parried struck Isolde instead, and the magical poison resisted every cure. Viego emptied Camavor's treasury on fruitless antidotes and sent his niece and general, Kalista, to find a miracle. Her search led her to the Blessed Isles, a hidden archipelago of preservation magic where the Masters of Helia guarded the Waters of Life, which could heal any mortal ailment but never reverse death. By the time Kalista returned, Isolde was already dead. Viego commanded the Camavoran armada to breach the Isles in search of resurrection, and when the Masters refused he ordered a slaughter, guided to the inner sanctum by Thresh, a warden of the Helia vaults. When he lowered Isolde's corpse into the Waters, the magic recoiled. She rose as a confused, horrified wraith, seized the blade, and stabbed Viego through the heart. The blast merged the opposing forces of life and death: the white mist turned black, preservation became stagnation, and the Blessed Isles became the Shadow Isles. Viego was left comatose while Isolde's soul shattered into fragments scattered across the world. The Black Mist that pours from the blade is a broken preservation magic that seeks to preserve everything it touches by freezing it in undeath. Wielding the sword again, Viego is driven only to gather Isolde's fragments and remake her, unaware that the woman he loves is the one who destroyed him.