Kelenso

Kelenso embodies the inevitability of decay, her form a grotesque and twisted tree, bark peeling away to reveal the rot within. Her limbs are gnarled and brittle, festooned with fungi and crawling with insects that thrive in death’s embrace. Her hollow eyes, deep within the trunk, gleam with a cold malice, a reflection of her desire to see all life succumb to entropy.

Necromancers, those who have been touched by blight, and the desperate who wish to hasten the end of their enemies worship her.

Kelenso's very essence is interwoven with the cycle of mortality, her influence seeping into the soil of graveyards and battlefields, anywhere the grip of death holds sway. The Rotten One is not just a deity; she is a fundamental force, a dark whisper that accompanies the last breath of the dying. Her presence is felt in the soft rot of autumn leaves, the silent decay of forgotten ruins, and the inevitable decline of empires.

As life's antithesis, she was never born in the manner of mortals or gods of more radiant realms. Instead, Kelenso coalesced from the universe’s first acknowledgment of life's fragility, from the decay that touched the first living cell. She is as ancient as time itself, a manifestation of the universe's entropic nature. In every ending, in every ruin, Kelenso's power waxes.

Where some see decay as an end, Kelenso perceives opportunity—the chance for renewal and the clearing away of the old to make way for new forms of existence. However, in her eyes, the cycle is unbalanced, skewed heavily towards life and creation. She seeks to redress this imbalance by hastening the world's end, not to reign over a lifeless void, but to fulfill her role in the universe's great tapestry, where the old must perish for the new to be born. Her dogma is misunderstood by many; she is not evil for the sake of malice, but because her purpose necessitates the end of all things so that the cycle may continue.

Her realm in the Shadowfell, the Compost of Eons, is a testament to her work—a place where the remnants of life return to the earth, only to rise again in twisted, fungal forms. It is here that Kelenso meditates on the nature of decay and plots the expansion of her domain across all planes of existence, ensuring that nothing can escape the inevitable embrace of rot.

The Pact of Rot, sealed in spores and the blackest of magics, was a cataclysmic moment in the history of the realms. Kelenso, in her infinite craving for the balance of decay, found in Zoren the Lich a kindred spirit—a being whose very existence was a testament to the inevitability of decay and the beauty of the wither.

When Kelenso granted Zoren the knowledge of her withering touch, she instilled in him not only the power to bring ruin but also a fragment of her own consciousness, ensuring her influence would spread far beyond the reaches of her dominion. The Withering Divinity marked by their alliance was an era of slow ruin, where the vibrancy of life began to dim under the shadow of relentless decay. Ancient forests turned to twisted wastelands, kingdoms crumbled into dust, and hope seemed a fleeting memory.

Zoren's influence grew, and his name became a curse upon the lips of the living. Kingdoms fell into despair, and heroes rose in vain attempts to halt the spread of rot. It was during the Kingdom of the Gods event, an unprecedented convergence of divine and arcane forces, that Zoren's terror was momentarily halted. The Betrayer Gods of Rotania, seeing no other recourse, invoked a forbidden spell that trapped him within orb that was capable of killing him every 3 days, and unfortunate timeline synced with his rebirth cycle.

Zoren, caught in the eye of a timeless storm, was imprisoned in a murderous hell as he looped through endless life and death cycles. His physical form was locked away, withering, in a state of living death where not even his powerful necromancy could reach. The Withering Divinity was paused, a moment in time stretched to an eternity, waiting for the seal to break.

Yet the Pact of Rot was not so easily denied. Kelenso's will, intertwined with Zoren's essence, worked upon the chains of his prison. Whispers of her influence seeped into the dreams of the desperate and the mad, urging them to seek out the timeless prison and release the lich to resume the epoch of decay. Until eventually, the call was answered, by an orc named Borg. Borg, overwhelmed with the desire for power and hindered by his own ego, accepted the lich's offer as a warlock patron. Eventually, with the help of his friends (not knowing his intentions), Borg freed the lich.

As prophecy and fear predict, should Zoren ever be released from his temporal stasis, the Withering Divinity would begin anew, with vengeance as its herald and the rot of eons as its wake. Kelenso's patience is vast, her reach inevitable, and her Pact of Rot remains, a dire promise of the world's withering yet to come.