Michinaki

When the Mikage Autocracy rose to power in Yakai, its mortal leaders made no secret of their allegiance to Siroth. Most worshipped him as the prime deity of their new kingdom, but some went a step further. They sought out the Shadow God himself, and gave him their souls to become Demonspawn. The warrior known as Michinaki was one such wretch. A skilled and deadly leader of the Mikage Autocracy's armies, he showed no hesitation when confronted with the offer of Demonhood. He gave his soul and his freedom to Siroth, not then imagining that an altogether different form of imprisonment awaited him. Michinaki led the Autocracy's foremost army, the Legion of the Horned Skull, against the rebellion growing in Yakai. Many were his victories, and many were the traitors his forces slaughtered in battle or in the pursuits that followed, or nailed to posts on the side of roadways as a warning to others who would dare defy the Mikage. Still, however, the tide of the war turned slowly and irrevocably against the servants of Siroth. Eventually, Michinaki suffered defeat. A rebel force led by a Dawnlands sorcerer known as Tymo succeeded in ambushing the Legion of the Horned Skull. All of Michinaki's warriors were cut down in the bloodbath that followed. Knowing that holding one of the Mikage's foremost commanders prisoner would be a powerful sign of how far the rebellion had come, Tymo had Michinaki bound in physical and magical irons and fetters. The sorcerer decided that captivity was too good for a monster such as Michinaki. He unleashed the full wrath of his sorcerous power on him, torturing him. The green fires that he summoned burned Michinaki's flesh from his warped bone and twisted him into an even more horrifying visage of pain and suffering. The arcane flames burned Michinaki night and day, and his shrieks of pain echoed through the rebel encampment. As soon as the shackles were undone by the sorcerer's apprentice, Michinaki's power was unconstrained. He snapped the apprentice's neck and retrieved his sword, before hacking a path through rebel soldiers to Tymo's tent. Tymo unleashed his magical fires at Michinaki, but found they no longer hurt the Demonspawn. The flames, always rooted in dark magic, betrayed Tymo, instead obeying Michinaki as their new master. The Demonspawn had passed through the inferno, and emerged stronger. Michinaki beheaded Tymo, bound the severed head in the chains that had once held him, and set it aflame with his new powers. After he defeated Tymo, Michinaki fought his way from the camp and disappeared. Even more than before, he became known as a dire, cursed warrior, and he continued to hunt down and slay those who had defied the Mikage. Throughout it all, the Demonspawn carried the head of Tymo. Rumor has it that Michinaki no longer acts alone, drawing the cursed and the dispossessed to him, forming a corrupt force of Demonspawn and mortal Mikage loyalists to rival his lost Legion of the Horned Skull.