Lord Soth
from KNIGHT OF THE BLACK ROSE, by James Lowder
Evil, pure evil.
The one name that signifies corruption and evil is Lord Soth of Dargaard Keep.
The Knight of the Black Rose.
Such was not always the case. Once, in years before th gods punished
mortals with the cataclysm that shook these lands to the core, Lord Soth was a
great and noble soldier for Good, a member of the renowned Knights of Solamnia.
In that most famed of famed brotherhoods, Soth attained their highest honor, the
Order of the Rose. For a time, he fought for justice and freedom. His heart
remained pure then, his soul unspotted. When it came to resemble the symbol of
his order - the flawless red rose.
Yet it was not long after Soth married and brought his wife to Dargaard
Keep that darkness settled upon his life, a darkness so profound he has never
escaped it, a corruption so complete it made the once-proud knight a willing
agent of Takhisis, The Queen of Darkness.
Some claim that pride undermined Soth's will to do good, others say
lust, and still others greed. Of those who still walk beneath the triple moons
of Krynn, only Soth himself knows for certain the cause of his own doom. The
world is left to construe what it will from the skeletal bits of history.
Soth's wife befitted a man of his station and potential. A noble's
daughter and only child, she offered the young knight much in the way of worldly
goods. That love had little traffic in Dargaard in those days was apparent to
all who visited the keep, if they found Soth there at all. The lord of the
castle spent much of his time traversing the Solamnic countryside in search of
suitable wrongs to right, accompanied by thirteen knights loyal to him above
all others.
The summons to Palanthas, most beautiful of all cities, came to Soth
early in the spring. He and his retainers set off for the Knights' Council to
be held in that unconquered city, buy before they reached its perfectly planned
streets, temptation bested the Knight of the Rose. He and his men came across
a mob of ogres attacking a small band of elven women. The knights easily
defeated the brutes, save one who had snatched up an elfmaid and dashed off into
the woods.
Lord Soth himself battled and conquered this, the strongest of ogres.
The women he saved, a young elfmaid on her way to take her vows as a Revered
Daughter of Paladine, dazzled him with her innocent beauty. Soon after, they
became secret lovers, though in doing so Soth broke both his sacred marriage
vows and the Code of the Knights of Solamnia.
It seemed as if the lord of Dargaard Keep believed this blot on his soul
would remain hidden forever, for he went to the Knights; Council as if nothing
had transpired between him and the elfmaid. Yet two things conspired to bring
Rose Knight's shame to the pure light of Kyrnn's sun. The first was the news
that Soth's wife had disappeared from Dargaard Keep. The blood found in her
chambers cried foul play, and the nobleman's almost casual reaction to this
shocking news made many in his order wonder for the first time if they had
judged Soth to highly.
The second incident that shouted Soth's guilt to those gathered at the
Knight's Council was the elfmaid's sudden illness. When it was discovered she
was with child, many suspected Soth, for he had kept company with her even
before his wife's disappeareance. The other elven women who had been rescued
by the Rose Knight and his followers that faithful day confirmed those
suspicions and revealed Soth's faithlessness.
The minutes at Soth's trial are recorded elsewhere in history. Here I
will note only that he was found guilty of many crimes, sentenced to death, and
dragged through the streets of Palanthas in shame. Death would have been a
kinder fate than the one eventually claimed by the fallen knight.
The nobleman's thirteen loyal followers rescued him from his prison on
the knight before his planned execution. Accompanied by the elfmaid, the
disgraced band slunk from the walls of the city and made their way to Dargaard
Keep. The true Knights of Solamnia pursued the renegades, but Soth reached the
safety of his castle before they could capture him.
In the months that followed, the lord of Dargaard attempted to build a
new life within the walls of his besiged castle. He married the elfmaid and
went through the motions of honoring his order's rituals. Though none who
stayed within Dargaard's walls for long lived to tell the tale, legend has it
Soth grew moody and violent. Not even his wife , heavy with child, was spared
the disgraced knight's mailed fist.
The gods granted Soth enough self-knowledgeto see how he'd fallen, and
the realization fanned the few sparks of honor left in the weave of his besotted
soul. In Dargaard's long-unused chapel, Soth prayed to Paladine, Father of All
Good, and his elfmaid bride offered her hopes to Mishakal, the Light Bringer.
Again the gods favored Soth with the ability to see, thought this time it was a
vision of the kingpriest of Istar, who some named prophet and others labled
madman. Paladine himself charged Soth with a sacred task: prevent the
kingspriest from demanding power from the dieties who oversaw Krynn.
Had Soth succeeded in this quest, Ansalon - nay, all of Krynn - would
be a very much different place today. Yet the fallen knight never reached the
city of Istar. The elven women he had once rescued now poisonedhis mind with
intimations of his wife's infidelity, and Lord Soth returned to his castle
before his quest was done. Raging like a lunitic, he confronted his elfmaid
bride, mother of his newborn child, with the imagined transgressions of their
vows; at that very same moment, the kingspriest raised his voiceto the heavens,
demanding the power to eradicate all evil on Krynn, ordering the gods to bow
down and serve those mortals who offered them worship.
In their fury at this affront, the gods hurled a mountain at the
prideful city of Istar. The desrtuction wrought by that most terrible of
heavenly messengers is known as the Cataclysm. Yet few who know how that
catastrophe twisted the land realize the manner in which it altered Lord Soth's
destiny, as well.
As a flaming mountain struck Istar, a fire engulfed Dargaard Keep.
Soth's elfmaid bride, trapped in the blaze and dying, held out her infant for
the fallen knight to rescue. Still possessed by jealous rage, he turned away.
For failing in his quest, for letting his own child burn to death before
his eyes, Soth's elfmaid bride called a curse down upon the once-noble knight.
"You will die this knight in fire," she wailed, "even as your son and I die.
But you will live for every life your folly has brought to an end!" Some say
Some say the elfmaids curse still echoes throught the mountains around the
castle. Others claim Lord Soth repeates the words to fill the silence of his
long and sleepless nights.
The flames took Soth's life that night, but he did not die. Blackened
and burned, he was reborn as an unliving, undead creature of evil. He still
wears the charred armor of a Knight of Solamnia, but the rose emblem that once
told of his honor was scorched and twisted by the fire. It is by this corrupted
symbol - the black rose - that many know Soth; and for more than three hundred
years he has walked the earth, doing the bidding of the most evil of evil
deities, Takhisis, Queen of Darkness.
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