Karnage the Anarch Masteries Guide

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Karnage the Anarch Champion Lore

Chaos; pandemonium; bedlam; disorder. These are all that Karnage the Anarch, a master manipulator and sadistic killer, has ever cared for. The horrifying and unexpected can cause desperation in any soul, and in reaction to these events individuals are forced to behave in ways they normally never would to survive. Thus they bring about novelty, and to witness this is Karnage’s driving force. Why he is like this is a mystery beyond even the gods — not even they truly understand what happened when the Firstborn were created. Each being birthed from that experiment was unique in temperament and desires. There were angelic beings of sublime beauty and purity of spirit, creatures that defied any categorization, and beasts of undeniably malignant heart and monstrous bearing.

After the Dance of Darkness forever drove a wedge of hatred between Lumaya and Siroth and the Great Divorce began, no one who knew Karnage was surprised that he took the Shadow God’s side. For years he had been a sower of discord between mortals and immortals alike, a malicious experimenter whose caprice resulted in the spilling of blood and the toppling of keeps. His allegiance to Siroth was not something born of any kind of loyalty, Karnage merely saw that the god’s plans were by far the most entertaining. The Dance of Darkness had bred all manner of slobbering predatory beasts and malformed creatures that wreaked havoc wherever they tread or slithered. The prospect of the Shadow God creating more and more without check was one Karnage relished. Lumaya’s relentless penchant for order and regularity was something so painfully dull to him that the thought of it playing any dominant role in the world was the only thing he truly feared.

Siroth suffered setback after setback in the centuries that followed. The banishment spell saw the immortals cast from Teleria itself, a disaster only turned around when the later Dragonkin invasion of Anathraad failed and the Demons could use the mortal bodies of captured soldiers to return to Teleria. Karnage took great pleasure in choosing the most honorable captive he could find to possess to make himself a Demonspawn. The First Great War, which followed the Demonspawn’s invasion of the mortal world, ended in catastrophic defeat. Karnage was furious for a time, for failure stalled plans of his that would cause untold mayhem and conflict. But the debacle proved to be even more enjoyable to him. Siroth’s rage and the frustrations of his fellow Demonspawn were amusing to a degree he hadn’t anticipated.

Ultimately, what were setbacks for Siroth were, at most, partly so for Karnage. The capture of the Brimstone Gate and the Shadow God’s creation of innumerable portals gave easy access to Teleria from Anathraad, and ever since Karnage taken great advantage of this.

To the Dwarves, during the collapse of their great under-empire, Karnage was known as the Grinning Flame, who laughed while trapping detachments of warriors in caved-in tunnels with slavering Demonspawn hounds, and using torrents of balefire to force skittering Demonspawn toward ranks of Dwarven crossbowmen. When Siroth’s forces surged across the Winterlands to seize the Waters of Life, Karnage took the form of Norr refugees. He went from village to village telling the inhabitants that their neighbors sought to betray them, weakening Telerian unity in the face of Demonspawn hordes. Karnage laughed as the Ice Golem tore through the great and good of the Confederation of Frostheim. He delighted as Elf fought Elf in their tumultuous and bloody civil war. Lady Mikage herself called him the Burner of Webs, for his feeding of false intelligence to her network of operatives and turning many for and against her. In the buildup to the Red Crusade, Karnage whispered into the ears of Skinwalkers and Orcs, as well as Sacred Order warriors and lords of Kaerok, stirring up mutual hatred and encouraging unprovoked attacks on all. Karnage cares not for who wins or loses wars in Teleria, nor in the endless politicking of Anathraad. He lives only for the chaos they cause. The conflicts are but a game, the entire world a board upon which he moves all the pieces he wishes according to ever-changing rules, entirely his own.

Many Demonspawn, as well as Telerians who know of Karnage’s existence, believe that he has interfered with Siroth’s own designs, too. Hypotheses have spread that he encouraged Demonspawn in Teleria to take no part in the Third Great War, and to turn on Lady Mikage in Yakai. It may have even been Karnage’s idea that Siroth attempt to force Lumaya to dance with him, millennia ago. Karnage neither confirms nor denies any of these allegations. As for Siroth himself, as much as the Anarch might be a dangerous force, his desire for greater chaos is one predictable thing about him, and Siroth is, if nothing else, a seeker of novelty himself. All in all, for every injury Karnage may have inflicted upon the God of Shadow, he has inflicted ten upon
his foes.

Karnage’s latest experiment is with the Free City of Sintranos, to ‘see how wounded dogs might bite, if someone rattled their cage’. Devastated during the Gaellen War and never recovered, it was eclipsed by its sister city of Delanos in the conflict’s aftermath. It was a place of malaise and quiet despair, full of the hopeless and the lethargic, making it ripe for the Anarch’s attention. As he saw it, its people needed something to stir them to life from their moribund, impoverished existence. The medium he chose was a mediocre mage of middling age called Amius, who was torn between the safety of the city he knew and the sense that out in the wider world something better waited for him. The man was weak, and open to the honeyed words and promises of power Karnage fed to him in disguise. What happened next caused Sintranos to be cursed beyond recognition, and brought about a veritable maelstrom of confused panic, turmoil, and death that threatens to draw in forces unnumbered.

Karnage the Anarch Updates

• (2024-03-06) Raid Shadow Legends Patch Notes V8.30
• (2023-12-12) Raid Shadow Legends Patch Notes V8.00