Dage's Origin

Dage and Wilhelm

After a commander deserts, Dage convenes the Dark Council and demands loyalty to himself alone. Recalling how he challenged Nulgath with the Legion as his weapon, every soldier's attack extending his own power, he turns to an earlier betrayal.

Dage recalls the final tests for his Mark of Mastery, saying he was already a powerful lich when he apprenticed himself to Nulgath for more than a century, seeking strength he intended eventually to take for himself.

Wilhelm VorKrieg accompanies his childhood friend into the Shifting Planes, questioning why Dage still needs the Mark after everything he has already done but promising to stay through the trials.

Dage answers the contempt of Nulgath's followers with force. As he accompanies Dage through the trials, Wilhelm begins to understand why few apprentices reach this point.

On the way to Nulgath's fortress, Wilhelm asks whether Dage is truly willing to take people's souls and destroy their futures for this power.

At the fortress, Nulgath reveals that he has been exchanging messages with Wilhelm, turning the friend beside Dage into part of the test against him. Wilhelm accuses Dage of indifference to a woman who is gone. Nulgath has offered him a way to turn that grief against Dage, and the former friends fight.

Even after Dage defeats Wilhelm and offers him a place at his side, Wilhelm refuses, willing to give his life to keep Dage from leaving the Underworld and harming anyone else.

When Dage confronts Nulgath over arranging his friend's death, the Archfiend explains that Wilhelm expected to die and used the sacrifice to trigger a binding spell. It was not strong enough to imprison Dage completely: his spirit is bound to the Underworld, but his body retains freedom. Dage seizes that distinction as a chance to continue, while Wilhelm's lingering voice regrets that his sacrifice did not bind both.

For the final test, Nulgath summons Dage's double. Defeating the reflection earns the Mark of Mastery, but Nulgath reminds him that Wilhelm's binding remains.

Back before the council, Dage says he has guarded against betrayal ever since, yet Laken, his former second-in-command, has broken a contract he believed unbreakable. He orders Envy to find, subdue and return the deserter by whatever means are needed.

Dage's Rebellion

Before the Underworld's factions were established, the Beast consumed souls that should have passed into the afterlife. Death enlisted Nulgath to stop it, offering rule over the Underworld and the lost souls who refused to pass on.

When Nulgath's armies failed to contain the Beast, he fought it himself, winning at the cost of his physical body and many Fiends. He divided its soul, sealing its hunger and power in the Seven Circles while retaining the half associated with cunning and conquest.

Nulgath then offered a cursed king power in life in exchange for service in death, but the Beast's desire for conquest made King Dage a tyrant whom his own people executed. Bound to Nulgath in unlife, Dage entered the Nation as an apprentice worth cultivating, with the Commandant assigned to train him.

The Commandant tests Dage's strength and his ability to work within the Nation. Training with its Fiends shows Dage what its soldiers and magic can do, but defeating a Fiend Champion leaves him questioning whether Nulgath can make him as powerful as he hoped.

When the DoomKnight Scarvitas attacks the Underworld to seize the Soul Forge, Dage leads the defense and defeats him. The Commandant's fear of DoomKnights interests Dage, who sees potential recruits as well as enemies and asks why the Forge matters so much.

The Commandant explains that the Soul Forge lets Nulgath bind a signer's soul to a contract: impossible terms can condemn less-valued recruits to Adimonde's transformation into Fiends, while favored recruits keep their will and receive power to lead. When Dage asks whether a contract can be broken, the Commandant thinks it would require strength exceeding its owner's when it was made, but insists no one could surpass Nulgath. Dage agrees and wishes their master a long reign.

Years later, pursuing the rebel Baelgar through the Seven Circles with the Commandant, Dage helps restore prison seals and subdues escaped forces, including Avarice. Dage also feels an unexplained pull toward the deeper prison, but postpones following it.

Defeated, Baelgar denies wanting Nulgath's throne, saying he wanted freedom because power and glory mean little when even his soul belongs to someone else. The Commandant orders him taken for judgment, and Dage dismisses the rebellion aloud, yet lingers over the wish for something of his own and the unexplained pull deeper into the Seven Circles.

Dage begins building his own army from willing Nation defectors and Proto-Legion Knights. The Commandant fights through them, breaks the wards concealing the rebellion, and reaches the former pupil he still hopes to bring back to Nulgath.

Dage explains that Baelgar made him recognize how much he had sacrificed for Nulgath's glory rather than his own. When the Commandant invokes the contract, Dage recalls the crucial condition: he need only surpass Nulgath's strength when it was signed, just after the Beast destroyed the Archfiend's body. As the contract disappears, Dage declares himself stronger than the Nulgath who made it and vows to surpass his master's present and future power too.

Dage offers the Commandant a place beside him, but his old mentor refuses to betray Nulgath. When Dage defeats him in their final confrontation, an orb appears as he says he cannot part with the Commandant's strength. On learning of the rebellion, Nulgath declares war against Dage and calls the Nation to arms.

Rand and Ravenscar

In present-day Ravenscar, Mina's Ghost uses her amulet to show you how her home was cursed and how her betrothed, Rand, became the first General of Dage's Undead Legion. Five thousand years earlier, Dage and Vilkas Blightbringer fought over the Underworld. Blightbringer sought the Book of Dark Doors in the village, which burned in their struggle.

Confronted by Rand over the destruction of his family and home, Dage denies responsibility and offers to help punish the necromancer who caused it. Rand agrees to do anything that will make the enemy suffer as he has.

Fighting the undead leads Rand to a page and then the missing spellbook, where Dage identifies a spell that will open Blightbringer's lair. It requires Rand to provide something pure and good connected to someone who has died, which the spell will corrupt.

Rand recovers the stolen portrait of his lost love, Mina, to open the portal, but afterward he no longer knows whom Dage means when he mentions a beloved. Dage explains that the memory fueled the spell and has been destroyed.

Rand fights his way into Blightbringer's sanctum, attacks the necromancer from behind and takes a green ball of energy from him.

Unwilling to let another rival rise, Dage kills Rand and binds his soul, then tells him plainly what he has done when Rand awakens undead and demands an explanation. Because Rand can still think, plan and lead, Dage names him the first soldier and first General of the Undead Legion.

Rand refuses to serve the murderer who made him undead, but Dage attacks him with blue flames and orders him to serve, recruit or be replaced. Back in the present, Mina mourns what he might have become without Dage and fears that Ravenscar's suffering will last as long as the Legion marches.