Within the skull of the lone mountain ran hundreds of timeless caverns, their enduring rock walls sunless in the never-changing grayness of the sky-beyond. They wound about with the ruthless coiling of a cornered snake, twisting violently through the core of the rock. All was silence and death in the gray mist of the spirit kingdom, a permeating somber air that marked the total extinction of hope, the complete burial of gaiety and lightness. There was movement even here, however, but it was life unlike anything known to mortal man. Its source was the single, black chamber at the peak of the mountain, a monstrous room with its north face open to the dim light of the cheerless sky beyond and the endless stretch of forbidding mountains that formed the north gate to the kingdom. In this cavernous room, its walls wet with the cold that cut knifelike through the rock, scurried the inky minions of the Warlock Lord. Their small, black forms crawled about the floor of the silent chamber, their spineless frames bent and shattered with the terrible, wrenching power their Master wielded over them. Even walking would have been redemption in their existence. They were mindless wraiths, kept only to serve the one who held them enslaved. They muttered as they hustled about, small cries and weepings that sounded of unforgettable agony. In the center of the room rose a large pedestal that held a basin of water, its murky surface placid and deathly. From time to time, one of the little crawling creatures would hasten to its edge and peer cautiously into the cold water, eyes darting furtively about, waiting, watching expectantly. A moment later, with a small whimper, it would scurry away to blend back in the shadows of the cavern. “Where is the Master, where is the Master?” the sounds would cry like whispers in the grayness as the little beings moved about uneasily. “He will come, he will come, he will come,” the answer echoed back hatefully.