Vision

The immediate surroundings waver and fade, replaced by a bird's-eye view of the city of Kuluth-Mar at its height. The streets are empty, as the thousands of citizens seem to have gathered in a mass in the central plaza surrounding the Spire of Long Shadows.

Suddenly, a foul energy wells from the spire at the center of the city, sweeping outward and felling the living as it passes. For each creature that falls, you feel a silent but potent sense of wrongness, as some indescribable part of the creature, perhaps its soul, is drawn back toward the Spire of Long Shadows to be absorbed by the strange black monolith of stone balanced at its peak.

As the energy builds around the peak, a shimmering image of a colossal humanoid figure, its body composed of a million writhing worms, takes form around the Spire of Long Shadows, its arms raised in triumph. Yet in another moment, that triumphant pose seems to change to one of rage, and a soul-wrenching cry of fury tears from the undulant face. The image shrinks, pulled into the stone monolith at the Spire's peak, imploding with a horrific wet burst.

In an instant, the city is quiet again, yet as the vision fades, the first signs of unlife spread through the thousands of dead bodies strewn around the ziggurat's base as bodies, now festering with green worms rise from death.