Those Who Live in Death
Tarnished. You seek knowledge of the vile affliction that stains these lands? You speak of Those Who Live in Death. Then listen closely, and know that you walk among an abomination.
I am D, Hunter of the Dead, and I know this corruption intimately.
The Profane Existence
Those Who Live in Death are not merely the returned dead; they are a blasphemy against the Golden Order. They are a stain upon the sacred cycle of the Erdtree.
Under the perfect law established by Queen Marika, when a life ends, the soul is meant to return to the roots of the Erdtree. There, it is purified and waits for rebirth, ensuring that life energy is conserved and the Golden Order is perpetually renewed.
But the death of Godwyn the Golden—murdered in his soul on the Night of the Black Knives—shattered this sacred law. When his corrupted, soulless body was interred beneath the Erdtree, it infected the very roots meant to carry life.
This corruption is the Deathroot.
Those who come into contact with the Deathroot are denied the clean return to the Erdtree. Their bodies rise again, animated by a shadow of a soul, trapped in a grotesque, decaying half-life. They are the undying dead.
The Manifestations of Filth
You see their horrors everywhere, though you may not recognize the source:
The Skeletons: These are the most common thralls—the skeletal soldiers who rise again and again until their animating glow is utterly extinguished. They are a mockery of resurrection.
The Tibia Mariners: These wretches sail spectral boats upon the rivers of the dead, acting as ferriers of the corruption, spreading Deathroot wherever they travel.
The Deathbirds: These hideous creatures, along with the fearsome Death-Rite Birds, are the ancient priests of true death, now invigorated and empowered by the return of the fatalistic curse. They are the heralds of this profanity.
The True Danger: Their Prince
The greatest peril is that these creatures, and the twisted men who champion them, see their wretched state not as a curse, but as a new destiny. They revere Godwyn’s corpse, the very source of their corruption, as their sovereign—the Prince of Death.
They seek to usher in a new age where this state of un-death is normalized, where the pure cycle of the Golden Order is replaced by the eternal, festering stagnation of the grave.
They must be cleansed, Tarnished. They are a disease upon the world, and every Hunter of the Dead, myself included, is bound by sacred duty to destroy them utterly. We must ensure that every single one of these abominations is given the true death that the Rune of Death, once stolen, now demands.
Do not be swayed by their whispers of 'new order' or 'eternal life.' They are filth. Go, and let the holy word of the Golden Order guide your blade to their eradication. Slay them, and ensure their ashes never trouble the sacred Erdtree again.