With Kumis absent, Grogar grew up unconstrained by any observer. In the nine years since Kumis left, before he came of age, no fewer than thirty-six of his young siblings or cousins had died under tragic and mysterious circumstances. At eight years old, he was taken to see his father’s court in session and those who noticed his gaze confided in their fellows that the lamb unnerved them greatly, even behind his father and wedged between his older, larger brothers. In the shadows, Grogar always observed.
At the age of twelve, he came of age to study political, ecclesiastical, military and magical fields. His tutors reported that Grogar understood the implementations very quickly and could analyse and explain the systems. Yet when asked for his own opinion, his idea for implementing a political structure was...unsettling.
He took a fascination in crime and punishment, seeking to combine aggressive magic with judicial sentencing to devise new and agonising ways to brutalise a criminal. Yet when asked what sort of punishments would warrant a crime, he seemed confused as to why that should be an issue. The ruler administers punishment and he claimed that crime need not necessarily factor. By the very law set out by them, a ruler decided who was a criminal.
One tutor pointed out that there was also the gods who decided and judged all in this life and the next. At this, Grogar was quiet and contemplative.
From this point on, Grogar focussed his attention on the gods and uncovering the mysteries behind them.

The Pantheon of Gith was a wide and complex mythology comprised of thousands of different gods from the most fundamental to the highly abstract. The Gith God of Death, Thesh the White, the younger brother of Paz, was said to be quiet and noble, a benevolent reaper who released souls from the chains of life and guided them to the underworld.
Grogar studied the ways of Thesh and his tutors informed the Emperor Melkarth who finally believed his difficult child had found his true calling. He was to begin training to take the role of Archgriever, a minor but respected position in charge of the Temple of Death.
Despite its distressing name and Grogar’s reputation, the Temple of Death was not a malevolent establishment. Its priests were the Gith equivalent of undertakers, collecting the corpses of citizens, dressing the bodies for burial, notifying the next of kin and conducting funerals befitting the status of the deceased. The Archgriever would not officially head the temple. No temple had one leader, merely groups of several of the most learned scholars. For long ago, the Priest Kings, unwilling to submit to mortal rule, had warred with the first Emperors of Gith who sought to unite the land under them and no temple was allowed to represent itself as a political faction. But the Archgriever was the official representative of the Temple of Death with full access to all of its facilities, records and practices. Temple representatives were almost always royal kinbeasts.
Thereafter, he was taken into the Temple of Death and was tutored in the ways of how the dead were collected, buried and honoured and what would happen to them afterwards when they entered the afterlife. Grogar was apparently, as ever, very quick to learn and showed no flaw in his understanding and yet possessed very little enthusiasm.
He was still allowed to pursue his own studies in the meantime. His interest in the pantheon had not been exhausted. In fact, he had found something he had spent more time investigating than ever before...
In the legends of Gith there is one known as Gr’dur.

To describe Gr’dur is difficult as he is never shown possessed of a face. This is because his legend revolves around the fact that he is the greatest trickster in existence and was once a mere goat who stole from the gods and tricked them into believing one of them was responsible and offering the other answers. He set each god against the other, meeting with each one from the weakest to strongest, each of them wanting answers from him and giving him things in return, minor favours which he used to meet and deceive the next deity and so on. It got to the point where Thesh himself granted Gr’dur eternal life if he would deceive Paz for him. Then when Paz asked him what Thesh’s plans were, the now undying Gr’dur demanded godhood. This was granted. When he knew Paz and Thesh would soon discover they’d been tricked, Gr’dur met with the primordials themselves.
The Cosmogony of Gith is vague but it tells of a primordial entity named Yj, Goddess of Nothingness, weeping in loneliness from one white eye and one black eye on opposite edges of the universe, the twin tears of which birthed a son and daughter; Suf; Child of the Black Eye and Father of the Earth, and Tsi; Child of the White Eye and Mother of the Stars. When these two met and combined, they birthed Zei the World Mother. Yj wished to see her new granddaughter and brought her white and black eyes closer to the centre of the universe until there was a great collision of the cosmos from which was born magic. From magic was created Paz, the God of Hoof and Horn, who used the gift of magic to create his brothers and sisters to move Suf and Tsi back to the edges of the universe and trapped them in the corner of the eyes they came from. He then mated with their daughter, Zei the World Mother, and then with the many daughters they had together, creating all life in the world.
Gr’dur sought out the primordials, using each gift he’d received from each god. He promised Suf and Tsi that he would move them together again in exchange for a meeting with their mother, Yj, which was granted. When he met Yj, he told her that her children would collide again and from the cosmic compress would form more enemies and calamities that would destroy existence itself. But this could be avoided were she to grant him the gift of existential liberty.
He could decide if, how, where and when he existed. By the time each and every god in the pantheon realised they’d been fooled, they could not punish Gr’dur for they could never find him. He could now hide in the one place the gods could not enter- non-existence itself. He was everything and nothing and had perpetrated the greatest crime any creature could comprehend; Breaking the laws of reality itself and getting away with it.
[Note: It some theories on Equestrian Cosmogony and Magical History, Gr’dur, or an entity with a similar legend, was closely connected with the birth of the Draconequui. But regardless, through this tale Gr’dur is perhaps the only god in any religion who does not contextually acknowledge his own existence and whose worshippers are self-confessed skeptics. Such a curious anomaly that is far from impossible to see Draconequus duplicity behind it.]

The moral to the tale is debated by modern scholars. Some believe it to be a cautionary tale about trust and not parting with things that others may use for nefarious purposes, some suggest it’s a heroic underdog tale and proof of the value of cunning and strategy, some even propose that it is an allegory for how the goat surpassed its own deities with the gift of reason and foresight and from this a few have theorised that it’s a metaphor for how mortal ambition and greed could lead to the end of life as we know it.
For Grogar, it was a tale that even the gods can be thwarted if one is clever, and cruel, enough.
Grogar learned from the legend of Gr’dur how to break law simply by playing at its very rudiments.
Through this, he ventured upon a grand perversity of Gith magic.
Goat magic was based around incantation; verbal magic. Their very religious society regarded spells similar to prayers, calling upon the winds of creation for complex elemental permutations. Goats were taught spells through symbols inscribed in ancient pre-Imperial Gith’c glyphs which they were taught to translate, arrange, visually formulate and attain through the focus of the mind.
Grogar sought a way to twist the incantations and this he did through advanced etymology.
[Note: Very useful skill.]
He studied the runes and glyphs involved in the spells and found ways they could be translated to refer a different meaning. Some official, some merely theorised, but with experimentation the end result was that the prayer, incanted exactly the same but with an alternate meaning, would cast a very different spell.
Hypothetically, when the traditional incantation for funerals meant ‘We send you to the next life’, reinterpreted the prayer could also mean ‘I deliver you new life’ and ‘We shall be your guide’ could also be reinterpreted as ‘I am your destination’.
So it was that, when called to cast incantations to send the dead to the next life, through merely interpreting the ancient prayers differently, Grogar began draining the magic from the dead. If one confirms to the Gith belief system, he was effectively eating their souls. Through this, his magical potency would double by the day and nocreature noticed. His growing power was treated as Thesh showing him favour rather than him debasing the tenants of Thesh himself.
[Note: It should be noted that Equestria has never had this danger as unicorn magic has always been non-verbal, spells taught through illustration so that the caster already has an image of the intended spell in their minds.]
So it was that he was anointed Archgriever at the age of fifteen, younger than any goatish figure of authority before him. And as it always is, power was the ultimate draw and Grogar soon began acquiring a circle of close followers. Some genuinely believed that he was blessed by the gods while others simply smelt power and wanted a taste themselves.
One of these was Xurbys ul Numra, known as Xurbys the Undue.

Xurbys ul Numra was the heir to one of Gith’s biggest trader families and was well on his way to being cast out of it. Xurbys was a hedonist who spent most of his time in the Mansions of Delight (The city’s high class casino/brothel establishment) from whence he earned his name ‘The Undue’. He was said to consume so much drink, sweetmeats and drugs that his teeth were black and splintered and his body stank as if it were rotting. He had to pay courtesans extra to ignore his failings and when intoxicated would become very violent and would lash out in ways that would often end in the death of somegoat. His father was planning on disowning him and Xurbys, desperate, came to the Temple of Death to pray; specifically for his brothers to die so that his father would be forced to leave him as heir to the Numra family fortune. There he met Grogar and the two made a deal.
As Archgriever, Grogar would meet with Xurbys’s father, telling him that his son was sorry for his misdeeds and wished only to contribute to his family’s business, asking that he give Xurbys a chance to prove his prowess. In the meantime, Grogar would meet with his other acolytes to ensure certain events spelled ill fortune for Xurbys’s siblings.
Xurbys was tasked with one thing in return.
Bring him deer.
The Numra family traded on the Misty Isles and the deer that dwelled on those islands were practitioners of the higher magic, touched by the oldest and most powerful magics known to beasts of two horns. Grogar lent him a cadre of goats who’d be useful for a small slave-gathering mission and bid him leave.

A year later, Xurbys returned bringing cervine treasures to his father and hearing from his weeping parents that all his brothers had met with untimely death or lifelong disgrace and now he was the heir to the powerful family and its business interests. Then, in the night, Xurbys went back to his ship and smuggled into the catacombs below the Temple of Death a group of captured deer.
These were Antifer, followers of the notorious tyrant of the Misty Isles; Reiziger Redwinter, Fallen Son of Tarandar and Raihane. They were practitioners in the darkest arts of the old magics. And creatures of eternal life at that.
Exactly what Grogar needed.
He had the magical potency to practice the kind of magic he sought but he required knowledge before he could put it to use. And so, taking the Antifer to the catacombs, he demanded they grant him the knowledge of the old magics, torturing them when they responded curtly. Several died under the knife but there was one who chose to grant the knowledge willingly, a seductive ‘Pygarge’ doe named Desoniel of Golule.
[Note: Pygarge refers to an old Cervine distinction where a doe has large white markings over her flanks. It’s a common conception that Pygarges (Or ‘Lossumilin’ in Old Elken tongue) are marked that way by the moon deity as temptresses with powerful gifts of speech and persuasion for others to be wary of. This has led to the colloquial term for them; 'Moonspanked'. They were rare in the Antifer, who were closer related to the Ancient Reindeer rather than the more common woodland deer living in Equestria today.]
To prove her loyalty, Desoniel murdered her brother, drained his magical essence and granted it to Grogar. Convinced and intrigued, Grogar studied under Desoniel who became something of a mistress to the young goat, tutoring him through the ‘conference of the flesh and transaction of the essences’ along with verbal, literal and visual study, using the remaining captive Antifer as test subjects. For another year, Grogar studied and at seventeen, had perfected the ancient and terrible Dark Arts.
Xurbys the Undue was also very much in debt to Grogar and asked what else he could do and what he could be rewarded with. Grogar demanded more knowledge and research from the deer, tomes and glyphs especially.
In order to increase his political power, he had his acolytes spread their own influence throughout Gith and began clandestine conspiracies to rid the empire of many of his remaining siblings. It was a slow process but steadily, Grogar climbed closer and closer to the heirship. By the time he was twenty, he was the third eldest of ten remaining children. Melkarth was steadily ailing under unforeseen circumstances and chose his remaining children for vital positions of power.
Grogar was appointed Grand Mystagogue, the head of religious practices in Gith, with full access to all magical materials and permissions as well as a seat in the Imperial Ministry.
But this wasn’t all. Grogar had still been serving as Archgriever throughout the tragedies of his family. And each time he tended to a body of one of his siblings, he drained from them the magical essence, the blood of royals imbuing his power twofold. Grogar’s power could now surpass his own father. But he knew he’d still have to wait for the right opportunity before he attempted to take all that he felt was owed to him.

He was also, through Desoniel, discovering the power of Bezoars.
Bezoars are small organic stones that form from precipitated matter in the digestive tracts of hoofed creatures. In ponies, it’s considered an illness and treated pharmaceutically but in goats, the bezoar was able to be removed from the body magically and were powerful conductors of magic, worn as jewellery to strengthen the caster’s spells, memorise incantations and focus the mind. Similar to lodestone, they are treated as items of ancient magic, powerful and mysterious even before the first spells were cast in the world.
Grogar was harvesting bezoars from corpses regularly and, cut from the corpse, he found the bezoars were much stronger. Experimenting with them with both caprine and cervine spells, he combined them into huge orbs which he gave to his followers to grant each of them incredible magical energy.
With the bodies of criminals, vagrants or even rivals of his associates, Grogar began truly delving into the practices of necromancy, reviving and animating the dead. Any of his fellow priests in the Temple of Death who happened to walk in on such a scene were immediately seized and were added to his test subjects. Yet the spells were temporary and binding a raised corpse to his will required immense energy, even from Grogar.
So it was that he continued to research the ways by which a goat could attain power over life and death. Through the Dark Arts, he learned that pain, hatred and despair were powerful conduits, negative emotions that the inflicter could use to drain magic off its victims. The more a prisoner felt, the more magic could be extracted, even before the subject was dead. So it was that he stepped up his games and began abducting random citizens and subjecting to horrific tortures and tragedies as a means to test the augmentation of extracted magical essence.
But to forge an army from dead flesh, he required an instrument that could effectively conduct his immense power safely and fluidly. His more experienced or dutiful acolytes were sent out to find various devices that the cervine tomes spoke of. Some returned in days claiming the tomes were misinformed while others went missing for months.
However, on one fateful night, Xurbys returned with a very special gift, found on a land beyond the Misty Isles, gifted to him by Xurbys when he became Grand Mystagogue.
A staff.

Witnesses claim the staff looked wooden and yet had a bizarre coldness to it that could only come from metal. At its head were strange twisting twin-horns that appeared more stone-like than organic with a rippling pale smoothness to them that didn’t reflect any natural light. Around those horns was a small brazier which, when held by a powerful magic practitioner, would ignite in a flame of murky blue-grey, similar to Grogar’s peculiar coat.
And fastened to either side of the horns and in the centre just below the brazier were three small bells that looked silver yet, according to documents, ‘didn’t feel like silver when looked upon. They did not carry the same noble aura. It was a foreign and obscure metal that made one feel cold at the very core.’
Grogar consulted with Desoniel who told him this staff was not of deer-craft nor goatish-made and that it could well have been older than the Misty Isles themselves. The legends surrounding it are obscure, nothing yet proven, but nothing they suggest is benign.
As it happened, the bell carried an insidious symbolism among the goats. It is said that a goat who wears a bell is a slave to demons, the bell representing the fiendish chains and each toll of the bell a call from their masters. It is also said that at the centre of the earth, there rests a great bell that will ring when the End Times have come.
The Ta’am-Bahel’n.
It is believed that Gr’dur the Trickster was gifted with a shard of Ta’am-Bahel’n by one of the gods he deceived, a piece that was broken when the world that came before was ended. This shard would ring at random times and those who suddenly heard a slight ringing in their ears at a strange moment would know Gr’dur was close and planning trickery.
For a period of around three weeks, Grogar studied this mysterious artefact and became convinced it held powers previously unknown to any creature in the world. And now that it was his, power beyond the scope of any foe’s understanding would be his and his alone.

Nocreature in Gith knew but all Grogar needed was a spark before he was ready to make his move.

While all this was occurring, the Skith, the oppressed sheep communities in Gith, had placed a lot of hope in Grogar. Since he was a goat-sheep hybrid, they wished for him to gain favour with Melkarth and prove that the sheep had a right to represent themselves on the same level of worth as goats.
Grogar certainly knew their pains. Early in his teens, he had met a great deal of prejudice from his siblings, cousins and higher officers for his mixed origins. He was proof that a sheep had great potential in Gith’s society. If he convinced his father and his court to grant them liberty and rights in the empire, a way could be paved for a dynamic new culture in Gith.
Day by day, the Skith passed their blessings upon Grogar and pleaded with him to pass on their pleas to his noble father. Grogar heard them day by day and waited for the next council to be held.
However, this would be after the eventual death of Emperor Melkarth.
At the time, he felt as though he were recovering from his ailment and was advised by his courtiers to officially sign his will in case of another, less fortunate bout. He made his way to his chamber and asked for a cup of wine along the way. He was given one, drank it, and fell upon the corridor floor a few steps from his chamber doors, choking on his own blood and bile.
With his inheritor still not official, a council was held which Grand Mystagogue Grogar was present for. The ministers consulted him on whether the gods had spoken to him and shed any revelations.
Grogar brought forth the word of the divine, not so much who was worthy to inherit as who was responsible for his death as well as the deaths of his children and the recent disappearances of other citizens...
The Skith.
He declared that a conspiracy of sheep had put together an assassination attempt, proving as such with evidence that both the wine and the Hornbane-Berries that poisoned him had been grown and harvested by sheep farm-labourers and then brought in a sheep who he claimed had tried to assassinate him, the sheep confessing to everything his interrogators asked him in a dull, stupefied monotone.
So it was that the Imperial Armies of Gith began a city-wide pogrom against the Skith in Gongros. Sheep of every age and gender were slaughtered without mercy, the luckiest killed by the sword in the street and the less fortunate seized and brutalised for hours. In any event, Grogar demanded that the corpses be placed in an area where could commence the death rites and prevent their treasonous spirits from endangering the empire.
Over the course of a night and a day, the bodies of just under a hundred-thousand sheep were rounded up and piled in the valley of Zisk, a hallowed ground where heinous criminals were tried and punished by death. Grogar and half his acolytes remained there overnight to cast the incantations while the other half of his inner circle stayed in the city waiting for his signal.
At the third hour before the morning, Grogar held his a strange staff.
As the city fell to slumber, preparing for the next day when Prince Anzar would be crowned Emperor, Grogar proclaimed the incantations, a masterful spell nocreature in Gith had heard before, and slammed the butt of his staff upon the ground.
The three bells gave a ring that woke every beast in Gongros with an eerie metallic hum in their ears and every light in the city glowed an eerie blue-grey.
The guards woke to find Grogar’s acolytes opening the city gates.
And pouring into the capital was a tide of the walking corpses of freshly-slaughtered sheep.

The pre-coronation morn over Gongros became a nightmare of arcane proportions as the living dead swarmed the city, each goat they killed adding to the tide. A few royals and councillors, Prince Anzar among them, managed to teleport themselves out of the city but all others either surrendered to Grogar or were crushed under his foul magics. Desoniel, Xurbys the Undue and the rest of his acolytes gathered in the Brominian Palace and welcomed their new Emperor.
But Grogar was far from finished. His eldest brother, Anzar, his remaining family and all their supporters, along with the vassal kings of the other city states in Gith, would require subjugation. And afterward would come the neighbouring tribes and kingdoms that had threatened Gith then those who had befriended it. Then all realms not yet known to the goats. And afterward...
Afterward, Grogar intended to vanquish the gods themselves, outdo them as Gr’dur did, and end their reign for he would allow none to even imagine they could stand above him.
Grogar declared that the age of Gith was at an end. From the pale, lifeless silence of Gongros would arise a new empire, one that conquered life and death and whose first and only ruler was everlasting.
His eternal empire would endure even when the rest of the world ended. An empire named for the very chthonic bell that would ring on command to herald the doom of all who opposed it.
Tambelon.
And upon its throne, carrying his mighty staff, his fur a deathly blue-grey, his eyes a blood-bathed red, his mighty, curling horns as dark and fearsome as obsidian, rested its Emperor. He of many names.
The Grand Necromancer, the Great Contradictor, the Horned Bellringer, the Master of Life and Death, the Deformer of Spells, the Bane of Thesh, the Scourge of the Goats, the Doom of the Sheep, the Sage of Pain, the Obstructor of the Gods, the Bezoarsmith, the Devourer of Essences and the Everlasting Emperor...
Grogar of Tambelon.