#Myrkul is the brains of the operation in this adventuring party and I am not surprised

[y-rhywbeth2]

So here's the updated story about the Dark Three's mortal adventuring days and eventual promotion to the Dead Three - including Jergal being a sneaky bitch who owes Charname and the Dark Urge free painkillers, Bane and Bhaal being "friends", the idiots unleashing horrors upon the world long before they became gods, and we also get Bhaal's other backstory.

In this version Bhaal's full name is Arabhal (no surname), he was born in the Netherese flying city of Rdiuz and became the spymaster and chief assassin for the local government

Said government is led by people who think they're the equals of the gods. Obviously a key step to that "challenging the gods" thing was graverobbing and stealing god corpses in the Astral Plane and they eventually planned to start invading the realms of living gods.

This led to an invasion by people from another world and the pissed off guardian god of the divine graveyard.

Said people also damaged an ancient binding that was keeping an ancient god of horror and his army of monsters and slaves from being unleashed upon the world again. "The Bane of the Ancients" was part of that slave army, which means they also unleashed Bane, which is even worse. Rdiuz' response to this was to try and recruit the army of horror, which says a lot about them.

The Crown-Sorcerers created magic daggers that could kill gods out of the corpse of a god that they stole. (Then Jergal stole all seven and turned the people who made them into ghouls, driven feral by unquenchable hunger) They still didn't stop trying to find ways to best the gods and actually ended up in a fight with the Netherese pantheon and the army already invading.

Anyway, Bhaal and Bane both ended up working together as scouts/killers against the invading army. Apparently they got along - insofar as these two can get along with anybody - because they respected each other's skill at murder and both recognised the other as a ruthless bloodthirsty bastard. They were so efficient that Jergal noticed them and decided that they'd make brilliant servants if he ever needed them. He noticed Bane first, which I'm sure did wonders for Mr Lord of Darkness' ego.

Jergal started plaguing the two with horrible nightmare visions, torturing them until they bent to his will and followed the directions to collect those god-killing knives mentioned earlier. He also revealed to them the locations of three Primordials (ancient gods from the dawn of time that the modern gods went to war with). He had a whole thing going on where he was trying to make six mortal pawns into human gods who would be extensions of him, so he needed some Primordials dead and planned to use these two.

While they were invading a lich's tower they also met a crown-prince who decided that his kingdom wasn't powerful enough and ran away to find better opportunities for power. (Hello, Myrkul, you asshole). The three of them beat the shit out of the lich, ransack his place and raze the tower to the ground.

There's a whole load of quests involving horrific nightmare visions, murders, god-slayings, and building up such a reputation that people start calling them the Dark Three.

When they went after Bane's old master, Maram, they gathered an army to do it. This included Gnolls, so I guess Durge gets that particular affinity from Dad. The battle that ensued was horrific and left all survivors with severe trauma.

The three did not succeed in killing Maram, but they did manage to absorb some of his power, promoting them to quasi-deity status, and Myrkul banished him to the Elemental Plane of Earth while Bane fixed the seal.

All primordials dealt with, Jergal assumed he didn't need them anymore, discarded them and stoped torturing them.

This leaves them to their own devices, which goes fantastically for everyone!

Current plan: undo the seal they just fixed and release more Primordials so that they can subjugate/kill them and steal their divinity while hunting down lore to help them harness it.

And they succeed! After unleashing an horrific six years of darkness, chaos and war upon the world, of course. They managed to ruin the entire Eastern coast of the Moonsea. The lore they uncover leads them to portals, and after a decade of study they work out how to use it. And in this context, "they" means Myrkul, who is the brains of this party.

Eventually they used the network to reach Jergal, fighting off entire, endless legions of the dead by themselves to reach his throne, where Jergal appears to be slumped in his chair, too depressed to care. Before anyone could attack, Jergal got off and asked which one of the three would like it?

And obviously the three started fighting about it, which Jergal watched until he got bored of it and suggested a game that involved bowling with human skulls.

That game got derailed when Malar, god of the hunt, dropped by and ruined it. They let him run off and chase the skulls and then Jergal just split his porfolio in three and had them draw straws for them while Malar wasn't paying attention.

"Bane won the game and chose to rule the living as a tyrant, beginning with the seven primordials [which may include his old master, Maram]. "Myrkul came in second and chose to command both Jergal and the dead, with the exception of the lich Urgund Mezeketh [the guy they beat the shit out of and whose tower they burned down earlier in the story], who was bound to serve Bane as his seneschal and first banelich. "And Bhaal, while coming in third of the Dark Three, balanced the other two on a knife's edge, claiming the instance of death and the transition between their two domains. "And so it was that Jergal, Lord of the End of Everything, surrendered much of his divinity to the Dark Three. But this simply marked the start of his new plan, set to unfold over the next 3,600 years."

#They are the product of their societies #Except Myrkul #Myrkul is just a sadistic power hungry bastard #That terrible part of my brain that enjoys fucked up crack ships based on a single line of writing now wants to ship Bhaal/Bane... #Myrkul is the brains of the operation in this adventuring party and I am not surprised #lore stuff