The Legacy of Kain

The Legacy of Kain series has its roots in a set of books from the 1800s. They don't borrow much, mainly that there is a land called Nosgoth and there might be vampires in it (spoiler: there are)


Nosgoth is the home to three races: humans, vampires, and a race called the Hylden. All three are mortal, but the Hylden are a little too technologically advanced for their own good. While the humans and vampires worship an Elder God who ordains a wheel of fate – basically that all things are destined to born, age, die, and be reincarnated. The Hylden look down on the other races for worshipping the Elder God so they wanted to break away from that. The Humans and Vampires see this as heretical, and an all-out war breaks out, with the vampires using their magic to erect 9 pillars – The Pillars of Nosgoth – pillars which reach to a seemingly infinite height both above and below ground, to banish the Hylden to another dimension. They create a sword called the Reaver to defend Nosgoth in the event they return. As a final act of revenge, the Hylden damn the Vampires to eternal life and sterility. This removes them from the Elder God's wheel of fate. A lot of vampires kill themselves, while others are killed by humans.

The pillars have to be maintained by 9 Guardians. They form what is called the Circle of Nine.



Blood Omen


Blood Omen begins with a vampire absolutely destroying six of the nine Guardians of the Pillars. Like he's blowing skin off and shit it's pretty rad. Apparently the Guardians outspokenly support a faction of warrior priests called the Sarafan, and they wage a holy war against the vampires. This vampire, named Vorador, doesn't like that one bit. During this fight he bests but spares a member of the Nine – Malek the Paladin, Guardian of the Pillar of Conflict. For his failure to defend the other six, he has his soul ripped from his body and bound to a suit of armor to forever protect the Circle.

Because Guardians have to be maintained by a human that represents the pillar, when a Guardian is killed, someone, somewhere, is born to take their place.


An indeterminate amount of time passes since the Slaughter of the Nine, roughly 500 years, and the current guardians are:

Nupraptor – Mind
Azimuth – Dimension
Malek – Conflict
Bane – Nature
Ariel – Balance
DeJoule – Energy
Moebius – Time
Anacrothe – States
Mortanius – Death

Ariel, Guardian of Balance, is slain by an unknown assailant. Her lover, Nupraptor, is inconsolable over seeing his lover's body. He uses his mind abilities to corrupt the rest of the Nine. As the Guardians become corrupted, so too do their pillars.

Kain is a nobleman who's attempting to get drunk, and failing pretty hard at it. He leaves the tavern extremely sober and gets jumped by a band of assassins. They give him the revolutionary's hand shake and put a sword through his back. He's burning in the underworld when the necromancer Mortanius offers him a chance for vengeance. Kain jumps at the offer, and is transformed into a vampire. He slays his assailants and makes his way to the Pillars of Nosgoth.

At the pillars he encounters the ghost of Ariel. She tells him that the entirety of Nosgoth will fall to ruin unless the pillars are restored. Kain is desperately searching for a way to end his vampirism, and he believes that restoring the pillars is his ticket to doing so. His goal is simple: kill the nine guardians, retrieve mementos belonging to them, and return their respective pillars to normal. Kain is partly aided in this task by the Oracle.

Things are going pretty well, but Kain needs help killing Malek. He's instructed to reach out and contact Vorador, someone who has a little more with the whole being a vampire thing. Vorador is a bit of a vampire supremacist – he believes that vampires are gods and that humans are sacrifices that offer up their blood to them so they can cast lightning and turn into bats and shit. He gives Kain a ring to summon him so they can spank Malek's metal ass. He encourages Kain to stay out of human affairs after this. Kain responds by killing Azimuth and obtaining a time stream device. Hey, neat.


Okay so bad news, there's kind of another army invading Nosgoth. And this whole restoration shit will be all for naught if another army invades. The army is called the Nemesis because you can't spell Legacy of Kain without subtlety. The Army of Last Hope (again, subtle) is the only army that can stand up to the Legions of the Nemesis, Kain sees it as kind of a good idea to ally himself with them. They do battle and Nemesis get their asses kicked all the way out of Nosgoth. Just kidding. The Army of Last Hope gets the ever-loving shit kicked out of them on the battlefield. Kain, in a desperate bid to save his skin, uses the time stream device to travel 50 years into the past and kill the leader of the Nemesis army while he's still young. The time stream device is destroyed. This creates a Paradox where the Nemesis army never existed. But hey, good news, the leader of the Nemesis army had his own time stream device. He uses that to get back to his original time.


Well shit, apparently a vampire killing a king gets some people a little bit upset because now there's a rejuvenated crusade against vampires. Vorador gets killed, making Kain the very last of his kind. The crusade is being spurred on by none other than the Oracle himself – who is actually Moebius, Guardian of Time. The two do battle but Kain defeats Moebius and lops that head clean off.

Kain returns to the Pillars of Nosgoth and overhears a conversation between Mortanius and Anacrothe. Anacrothe reveals that Mortanius betrayed the Circle of Nine, being influenced from beyond by a powerful Hylden, causing him to murder Ariel and later to hire a band of assassins to kill Kain. In Mortanius' mind, the circle had failed at their duties since Nupraptor corrupted their minds and thus they had to be destroyed. He wanted to use Kain as a sort of pawn to ensure the rest of the Nine could be defeated and also to have him around cause vampires are cool. Mortanius and Anacrothe, unable to resolve their conflict peacefully because that would be gay as fuck, do battle, with Anacrothe being defeated.
Kain reveals himself with a hairline that looks like someone stopped peeling an orange halfway through and tells Mortanius that he's going to beat that boney ass. He kills Mortanius, cleansing the pillars of Anacrothe and Mortanius. But wait... that's only 8 of the 9 pillars. Where's the 9th guardian?


Well, remember how Guardians are born to take the place of their predecessor when one is killed? When Ariel was killed... Kain was born. Kain is the Guardian of Balance. Kain, unwilling to sacrifice himself after having been lied to and betrayed and used as a pawn and honestly he really enjoys being able to do vampire shit and THE HEART OF DARKNESS decides that he won't sacrifice himself to cleanse his pillar. Because of his refusal to sacrifice himself, the rest of the pillars fall, plunging Nosgoth into ruin. Kain erects a throne room where the pillars remain and proclaims that Vorador was right... Vampires are indeed gods.