Unquiet spirits and the walking dead menace the lands, held in check only by a cabal or sword-wielding monks with magnificent powers and hidden pasts.
Human ambition achieves great things. Grand art, awe-inspiring cities, miraculous technologies -- all owe something to ambition. However, ambition can also lead to ruin -- greed and avarice, obsession and desperation are just as often ambition's partners. Sometimes, earthly ambition simply isn't enough -- or desire and frustration blend into a powerful, piquant need -- and a soul overcomes death. When that happens, it returns to the land of the living, narrow-mindedly seeking to fulfill some momentous desire.
The dead come in many varieties: some are shambling corpses, driven back to life by hateful demons of revenge; some are sibilant spirits, foregoing physical form to quietly manipulate the living; others seem living, but compulsively seek to fulfill debauched appetites they couldn't sate in life. Each is a threat to humanity -- in the end, they destroy anything that stands in the way of their pursuits.
A shining light are the Order Reliant, a band of penitents that wander the land, excorcising the undead. Each wields a gleaming, silvery blade that burns away impurity; they augment their swordplay with magic and holy power channeled from God.
These monks and nuns are celebrated and beloved; wherever they go, they find food and shelter. What the common man doesn't know is that these priests have devoted themselves to a single-minded pursuit of justice and purity that transcends a single lifetime. Many are themselves uneasy dead, driven forward in their endless battle against the forces of darkness. Their swords are forged from the fallen souls of their brethren; the weapons themselves lend an edge to other's obsessions, egging them on to greater and greater acts.
The priests, intent on not being found out -- and hoping to avoid creating more restless dead -- are always on the move, quietly battling their darker brethren and fighting their own urges to lapse into a single-minded existence of endless slaughter.
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