Update: Necropolis v1.10

[zepath]

NECROPOLIS HAS BEEN UPDATED. TO DOWNLOAD THE NEWEST VERSION, CLICK THE DOWNLOAD LINK ABOVE OR USE THIS LINK:

http://www.plutoniumdoughnut.com/dom2mod_necro_111.rar

Hello, all. I would like to present my first nation mod. This will replace Machaka, which I believe has not previously been modded, with the nation of Necropolis. Check it out and let me hear your impressions and suggestions for improvement. I tried to keep it as balanced as possible, but haven't been able to play-test the mod as much as I would have liked. I just want to get it out there!

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NECROPOLIS

Lament with me, brother. Our great city is dead.

In an ancient time, the city-state of Necropolis bore another name and stood as a bastion of civilization. Its leaders sought to eradicate the perceived threat of dark magic and began an inquisitorial campaign to root out all spell-casters and fortune tellers in the realm. Many were captured, tried, and exiled, and a few were slain when they resisted. But the city fathers could not have imagined their terrible luck when they detained an old woman known only as the Withered Witch.

At the conclusion of her trial and conviction as a magic-user, the Withered Witch rose from her seat and shrieked a terrible cry. She screamed, in madness it seemed, that the city would stand forever! She was banished forthwith. And though the inquisitorial prosecutors thought such a prediction hopeful, its source was unsettling for the witch had vengeance in her eyes as she cried out.

In fact, the Withered Witch had lain a most foul curse upon the city and all its residents. As its citizens lived and aged, their bodies grew old and weak as was natural. But at the point of death, when the breath was exhausted and the heart stilled... their minds did not lapse. Those who were seemingly dead remained aware and able to move to their bodies, even to speak. They became something, not alive, not dead, but still not... undead. They became the purgators.

Over centuries, the purgators became the dominant class of citizens. True death was impossible to a member of the everdying class. As the body decays and flesh and ligament fall away after death, a purgator begins to emit an ethereal glow. In time they appear only as ghostly spirits, pale and twisted visages of themselves in life. But a crucial side-effect to this transformation is an increased awareness of the magical energies at work in the world. A purgator's magical potency increases with time and it is said that the original purgators have evolved to a higher form and that their spirits inhabit the entire city at once.

And that city is now known as the Necropolis, City of the Everdying.

Beneath the ancient city a vast network of catacombs has been built and there reside the generations of the everdying. Yet further still into the earth does the city extend. Under the catacombs are the endless tunnels and caverns of the Underworld where the brutish troglodytes and reclusive gnomes live. Over the ages, the purgators have come to make these keepers of the Great Dark their allies.

Purgators despise the undead. Unlike skeletons, ghouls, soulless, wights, banes, and other undead beings, the citizens of Necropolis still possess every ounce of their individuality, awareness, and souls. Indeed, they are essentially the living soul of a human being trapped in the husk of a slowly rotting corpse. And unlike vampires or other intelligent undead, the purgators have not fallen under the umbra of evil. The priests of the city utilize holy power and can banish undead and demonic hosts. Their single-minded goal is to find the power to repeal the curse lain on their souls so many centuries ago.

Necropolis utilizes human light infantry, sacred purgator elites, troglodytes, gnomes, and purgator and etheral mages and priests.