The Prophet's Pursuit

The Prophet's Pursuit was a conflict between the Prophet with his followers and the Order of Trinity.

Byzantium and Syria
Jacob was born in the year 843 as Iacobus, in the suburbs of the Byzantine capital of Constantinople. As the son of free laborers, he seemed destined to follow in their footsteps, despite insatiable curiosity and obvious intelligence. Around the time of his birth, the Iconoclasm period which had lasted for a hundred years came to an end, once again leading to proliferation and renaissance of religious art and mosaics.

In June of the year 860, the pagan Rus invaded Constantinople. Attacking as sudden and unexpected as "a swam of wasps", they raided the suburbs outside the city, committing great atrocities. The Byzantine army and navy were absent from the city, split in previous conflicts with the Normans in the Mediterranean and the Arabs in the Aegean, and were unable to defend the city. Iacobus' family was killed in the first day of the siege, and he only survived by fighting alongside the city guard. In August, when the Rus retreated, Iacobus was left without a home or family. He was requested to join the Byzantine army, but having seen inglorious truth of war personally, and driven by his own desire to find purpose in life, he instead entered the seminary.

In the year 863, Iacobus was a novice in the Church and accompanied a Bishop of Constantinople on a mission to Kiev to bring the word of Christ to the Rus, and to persuade them to renounce their pagan ways. Iacobus did not return with the Bishop. Already chafing and the restrictions and formalities in Christian theology, he became obsessed with the direct mysteries of God, here on earth. In his discussions with the pagan kings and chiefs of the Rus, he was exposed to tantalizing hints and evidence of truths beyond and contradictory to the teaching of the church.

In the year 866, Iacobus traveled across the North, to the borders of the Baltic Sea. On the Island of Rügen, near modern day Poland, among altar stones and ancient megaliths, he discovered the Artifact and series of cryptic messages carved in the rock. For many years, he lived among Slavs that inhabited the island, seeking to unlock the mystery of the Artifact. At last, after more than a decade of trial and error, he was successful in unlocking its purpose, and his soul was bound to it.

Granted with immunity to death, illness, age and injury, Iacobus began to preach the word of God as a Prophet, while using the powers given to him by the "Divine Source" to heal the sick and wounded. His seemingly miraculous ability to heal, as well as his natural charisma, led to him being seen as a "Messiah" sent by God himself, with many flocking to his side.

This put him in a conflict with the Roman Catholic Church, which sent the Order of Trinity to eliminate him for heresy and blasphemy. He wasn't blaspheming, just is what Trinity thought. While fleeing from Constantinople to the deserts of Syria, a contingent of Trinity knights set upon the Prophet's followers and killed many. The Prophet himself was fatally impaled by the spear of the knight's commander. Distraught, the Prophet's surviving followers transported his corpse to an oasis near Aleppo and began work on a tomb for him, but during construction Iacobus miraculously returned to life. This led to him becoming known as "The Deathless Prophet."

His "death" only rallied his people. In addition to the tomb, his followers built a city in the oasis, thinking themselves safe from further persecution. New followers came from far and wide to heed the Deathless Prophet's message, but this activity was noticed by Trinity. Unwilling to believe that the Prophet had truly returned from the dead, Trinity's leaders assumed the Prophet's movement was perpetrating a hoax and supporting an imposter. They sent a small army under the command of the knight who had originally killed him to raze the oasis and exterminate the movement. More of the Prophet's followers perished in the attack, and the survivors, including the Prophet, barricaded themselves in the tomb. With Trinity thinking that the Prophet and his followers were trapped with dwindling supplies, the Prophet and his followers surprised the knights and killed them to the last man. The Prophet led his remaining followers then journeyed eastward, seeking a new safe haven.

Founding Kitezh
After traveling thousands of miles, across harsh environments, the Prophet and his followers, found a hidden Valley, which they decided was the perfect place to settle. So began the construction of a massive city, which was named Kitezh. Within the city, the Prophet created the Chamber of Souls, a vault used to seal away the "Divine Source". The Prophet led his people for many years, and Kitezh prospered due to the skilled disciples he had gathered, constructing a massive cathedral, a pantheon within the mountain, an acropolis, an observatory, an orrery, and a temple honoring the founders of Kitezh in a nearby vale. The Prophet was presented with an artifact, known as the Atlas, which acted as map of Kitezh, so that he would know his city.

Fall of Kitezh
Decades later, Trinity learned the truth of the Prophet's survival, and of the Divine Source. Seeking its power, Trinity dispatched their forces to locate Kitezh, kill the Prophet, and retrieve the Divine Source. In order to ensure their victory, they aligned themselves with a Mongol army by promising its Khan the riches of Kitezh, and used it to ravage the Siberian countryside in search of the city.

When Trinity and the Mongol army finally found Kitezh and attacked, the Prophet's followers first tried to hold them back with conventional means, using their city's vast defenses, but as the Mongols pushed and making defeat seem likely, the Prophet; in an act of desperation, allowed thousands of his elite warriors to be exposed to the Divine Source, turning them into the Deathless Ones: possessed with superior strength and regeneration to being killed, but also devoid of emotions save for blind desire to protect the Divine Source. Even with Deathless' tirelessness, the siege dragged on, and eventually even they would fall to sheer numbers of the Mongols. The Deathless resolved to keep the Divine Source safe and prevent it from falling into anyone else's hands by any means. To the Prophet's horror, the Deathless chose to sacrifice Kitezh and turned their weapons en masse to the mountains surrounding the city, starting a massive avalanche, causing all the ice from the mountains to bury the city. Thousands of citizens and enemy soldiers were killed in this genocide, and the Prophet was thought to be lost as well.

The survivors of Kitezh eked out a living among the ruins of the city's outskirts in the geothermal valley. The first years were difficult and casualties mounted, as the people were used to living in luxury and had no knowledge of how to survive in the wilderness, but eventually, they adapted. Almost a decade after Kitezh's fall, the Prophet unexpectedly returned to them, albeit ill and at first unrecognizable to most of his people. After recovering, he assumed leadership of his people once more. He knew that as Trinity had, other outsiders might come seeking the power of the Divine Source, and therefore decided that it was better off lost. He and the Remnants of Kitezh began a new mission: protecting the secret of the Divine Source.