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Lore Atlas

Every hero's story, and the events and rivalries that tie them together. Pick a hero, read their tale, follow a story to the others in it.

12
Heroes
71
Stories
Latest release

Release 2: Does It End, Death Prophet?

Does It End, Death Prophet?

Canon

Undying asks the one woman who has died and come back whether it ends.

Start readingSee this story's cast on the map

Ties back to earlier releasesThe Age of Light

Undying
strengthHero

Undying

the Almighty Dirge

A nameless warrior was thrown with his companions into the Dead God's pit, where hunger, madness, and the endless Dirge erased almost everything he had been.

“Where go the living, the dead soon follow.”

See on the mapUndying stats & abilities
Stories

Appears in 5 stories

CanonStory thread

The Chains of Abscession

Centuries ago a priestess named Crella forged links of hook and chain that nothing could break, to hold the 's strongest servants. The Dead God's rot outgrew even her work. The chains took up the rhythm of the Dirge, let go of what they held, and went home to Rumusque to tear it down at the Dead God's command.

That done, they went looking for a master. They tried the way they try everything, by rotting him, and found the one body their decay could not get into. The Chains of Abscession serve him now, and he has taught them butchery.

On the field Undying watches the seams. 'Your stitching comes loose,' he tells him. Pudge, cutting him, finds nothing worth keeping: 'No choice cuts here, this meat's gone a bit off.'

Two descriptions name Crella's home differently, Vennepra in one and Rumusque in the other; the chains' story is the same in both.

Open the full storyExplore on the map
Cast
  • Pudge
  • Undying
The hero's story

A nameless warrior was thrown with his companions into the 's pit, where hunger, madness, and the endless Dirge erased almost everything he had been. The Dead God chose him not for oblivion but for service. As Undying, he spreads the song, rallies the sleepless dead, and rises again whenever his body fails.

Connections
  • Death ProphetCanonRivalry

    Undying asks Krobelus whether it ends; she tells him his death is ready and that even his name gives her shivers.

Voice lines

  • “Undying. Oh! Even the word gives me shivers.”

    Death Prophet, about Undying · Meeting a rival

    Undying asks Krobelus whether it ends; she tells him his death is ready and that even his name gives her shivers.

  • “Does it end, Death Prophet?”

    Undying, about Death Prophet · Meeting an ally

    Undying asks Krobelus whether it ends; she tells him his death is ready and that even his name gives her shivers.

Ability lore
  • Ceaseless Dirge

    Only when the Dirge of the ceases will this soldier's march finally end.

Official biography
Read Valve's biography

How long has it been since he lost his name? The torn ruin of his mind no longer knows.

Dimly he recalls armor and banners and grim-faced kin riding at his side. He remembers a battle: pain and fear as pale hands ripped him from his saddle. He remembers terror as they threw him into the yawning pit of the Dead God alongside his brothers, to hear the Dirge and be consumed into nothingness. In the darkness below, time left them. Thought left them. Sanity left them. Hunger, however, did not. They turned on each other with split fingernails and shattered teeth. Then it came: distant at first, a fragile note at the edge of perception, joined by another, then another, inescapable and unending. The chorus grew into a living wall of sound pulsing in his mind until no other thought survived. With the Dirge consuming him, he opened his arms to the Dead God and welcomed his obliteration. Yet destruction was not what he'd been chosen for. The Dead God demanded war. In the belly of the great nothing, he was granted a new purpose: to spread the Dirge across the land, to rally the sleepless dead against the living. He was to become the Undying, the herald of the Dead God, to rise and fall and rise again whenever his body failed him. To trudge on through death unending, that the Dirge might never end.

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