Forrest Cameranesi Geek of all Trades

(1x09) Nadir of the Darklight: Part 2, Episode 3

Alone away from prying eyes, Tamara shapeshifts into the form of an old man who John recognizes as the wizard Thomas, the former leader of a failed resistance to the expansion of the Chalman empire, who was very publically executed and had his body magically sealed away. Thomas reveals a ragtag group of resistance fighters, who he explains broke the magical preservation of his body and allowed him to regenerate, as he has the almost unique power to do. With this group he hopes to bring peace and end this unjust war against the isolationist orcs who pose no threat to the men of the east; a war for which Thomas feels responsible, having foolishly led the Chalman prince into power that he is now unable to stop by himself.

John asks what kind of being is Thomas, to be so uniquely powerful, more so than even the orcish warlocks or the human wizards who command the Chalman prince's army. An elf? A mythic vampire, long thought extinct? Thomas claims that the so-called humans like John are no more or less human than the orcs. That both kinds are more fallen and corrupted peoples than even the elves or the vampires. And that he is nearly the last of the original peoples of this world, who are the closest thing to human that has ever existed here. But there he stops, afraid to tell more than he fears John or the rest of his followers will believe. Pressed for further details, he shares the legend of the downfall of the world as it once was, the separation of the magical energy called Darklight that once emanated from it into the lights of the sun and the moon, and the imprisonment of its old god, the Eldest, at the hands of the goddesses of the sun and moon, Fire and Ice. The seven-pointed emblem worn by Thomas is the long-forgotten symbol of the Eldest, which he has adopted as the group's identifier. He continues to recount how the original peoples of the world were corrupted by Fire and Ice into the elves and vampires, each kind becoming mortal in their own ways compared to what they had been, and in the process of dying and being reborn losing the memories of their original lives, except the fragments that survive in dreams. Both what John calls "humans" and the orcs are in turn further corruptions of those elves and vampires, and as such, are in truth all equally (in)human. John recounts his own dream of being a vampire fighting elves, and is told that that was a memory of another life, a life when he was a vampire, likely before "humans" like he is now existed.

Composed mostly of so-called humans and the few wizards who resisted the Chalman prince's summons, their rebel group is soon joined by an elf who claims to seek a reunification with the orcish people, their distant relatives. She turns out to be a saboteur in collaboration with the Chalman prince, and she surreptitiously embraces Thomas with a unique elven magic magical ability, analogous to a vampire's bite, which renders him "human" and thus mortal, finally able to be killed for good.

Next: Nadir of the Darklight: Part 1, Episode 1