Battle for New Budapest
Budapest today:
The once gleaming spires of the Cathedral of St. Peter are now twisted and blackened, like skeletal hands reaching
toward Heaven. Its marble interior has been corrupted, its statues of saints replaced with those of members of
the Dark Conclave, and its holy books torn to shreds and swapped for dark texts. Four square miles of holy ground
was converted into a bastion of evil.
The largest tower was converted into a dark generator, whose dark cloud now swathes the central island and outer
districts in a perpetual shroud. Sunlight has not penetrated the cloud in four long years. Archbishop Walter Stykes still runs the cathedral, though as a mummy serving the Dark. In overall charge of the city is a liche—Kaltharix the Mad—a senior member of the Dark Conclave and a necromancer supreme.
Approximately half the inhabitants were converted to Undead through mass rituals performed by liches and
mummies. Large numbers were thrown against the attack of 2347, more died a second death assaulting the Iron Belt
in the counterattack of 2348, but over half remain in the Battle for New Budapest city. Against this vast hoard are pitted the ranks of the Militia Dei.
Of those not converted, many tens of thousand died to create the dark generator. Others were shipped into the
Dark Zone to serve as food for vampires or become slave workers. There are still survivors in New Budapest, kept
under guard as food, potential reinforcements, and to take part in Kaltharix’s great experiment.
The liche believes that through a powerful ritual and the sacrifice of thousands of souls he can open the gateway
to the Dark Dimension. Tests involving hundreds of souls produced noticeable effects, and the liche is preparing to
sacrifice the rest of the citizens in one bloody massacre.
