Dage origins: Wilhelm, Nulgath and the tests
Dage Remembers His Master
Council Meeting frames the origins story as a warning about loyalty. Dage addresses the commanders of the Undead Legion after one has fled, demanding obedience to himself alone. The account briefly recalls his confrontation with Nulgath, then turns further back. Dage says he was already a powerful lich before apprenticing to the ArchFiend for more than a century, seeking power he meant eventually to take for himself. His claims of supremacy and eventual victory are part of his address to the council.
The official March 6, 2015 release makes the reenactment explicit: the player proceeds as Dage through the final tests for his Mark of Mastery. Wilhelm VorKrieg, a childhood friend, accompanies him. This apprentice is not the present-day Hero or a newly introduced mortal version of Dage. The flashback concerns the end of an apprenticeship already filled with dark deeds.
The six preserved tests take Dage through the Shifting Planes cavern, demand violent demonstrations of command, and send him into the Bonesaw Prison Cave for a mystery stone. Further fighting opens the fortress approach. The stone is then combined with another shadow gem, and recovered rune and fiend scrolls finish the preparations for entry. Wilhelm questions what his friend has chosen to become, even while promising to stay beside him.
The Test Behind the Tests
At the fortress, Nulgath reveals that he and Wilhelm have been exchanging messages. The companion's betrayal is another test. Wilhelm accuses Dage of indifference to a woman who is gone, but this scene does not identify her. Nulgath offers Wilhelm a way to turn that grief against Dage, and the former friends fight.
Dage defeats Wilhelm and offers him a place beside him instead of death. Wilhelm refuses, insisting he will give everything to prevent Dage from leaving the Underworld. After the fatal outcome, Dage confronts Nulgath over arranging the destruction of his friend. Nulgath explains that Wilhelm entered the battle expecting to die and that the death has triggered a binding.
That binding has a limit in their exchange. Wilhelm intended to confine Dage completely, but Nulgath says the sacrifice was not strong enough: Dage's spirit is bound to the Underworld, while his body is not trapped there in the same way. Dage seizes on the remaining freedom as a chance to pass the final test. Wilhelm's later whisper repeats the distinction, regretting that the death could not bind the body as well as the soul.
A Mark and Another Betrayal
Nulgath summons a copy of Dage for the last confrontation. The final quest asks the apprentice to overcome the necromancer he is and the one he might become. Afterward, Nulgath's preserved dialogue grants the Mark of Mastery, grudgingly, while insisting that the binding caused by Wilhelm's death remains. Passing the test does not undo that cost.
The story returns to Dage's council. Remembering Wilhelm, Dage declares that he has guarded against betrayal ever since. Now Laken, whom he calls his former second-in-command, has broken a contract Dage believed would hold him. The lord's certainty about his followers has failed again; the flashback explains the suspicion and anger behind his response.
Envy receives the order to find, subdue and return Laken. Dage authorizes whatever means will achieve it. The command points toward the Seraphic Paladins story, but it does not yet show Laken recaptured or explain how his contract was broken. Dage has finished recounting the old betrayal and begun acting against the new one.