Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain

Story

During a journey, the human nobleman Kain is attacked and killed by a gang of assassins. Mortanius offers him revenge - Cain agrees, regardless of losses, and awakens as a vampire. After killing his attackers, Mortanius explains to him that they were the tools of his death, but not the actual cause. In search of the truth and a cure for his vampire curse, Cain travels to the Pillars of Nosgoth. There, Ariel tells him that he must destroy the Circle of Nine before he can find peace. Cain begins by tracking down and killing Nupraptor, and then confronts Malek, but their duel ends in a stalemate. To defeat Malek, Cain seeks the advice of the Oracle of Nosgoth. The Oracle warns him of the legions of Nemesis and instructs him to seek out Vorador, Malek's old adversary. When the two meet, Vorador welcomes Kain and offers him his help, but urges him to embrace vampirism and not interfere in human affairs. Pursued by the older vampire, who serves as an example of what will become of him if he does not find a cure, Cain persists, and in a decisive showdown Vorador defeats Malek, while Cain kills Bane the Druid and DeJoule the Energist. Later, after slaying Azimuth the Planner and recovering a time stream device, Ariel tells Cain that he must prioritize the war against Nemesis, whose armies threaten to conquer Willendorf. Cain persuades King Ottmar to rally his troops in a last stand against the legions, but the battle ends disastrously. Ottmar is killed, the Willendorf troops are overwhelmed, and Cain, cornered, uses the time ray device to escape. He emerges 50 years in the past and kills the younger version of The Nemesis from that time - the beloved King William the Just - triggering a temporal paradox that erases the Legions from the time stream. When Cain returns to the present, however, he finds that William's murder has triggered a new vampire hunt. The Oracle of Nosgoth - who turns out to be Moebius the Time Streamer, a member of the Circle - leads the genocidal crusade and completes his trap by executing Vorador. Cain kills Moebius, but remains the last of his kind. At the Pillars, he witnesses an argument between Mortanius and Anarcrothe, the alchemist, who reveals to him that Mortanius is a guardian responsible for the deaths of Ariel and Cain. Mortanius was seduced and involuntarily controlled by the Dark Entity and forced to kill Ariel. To redress the imbalance, he created Cain, a creature powerful enough to destroy the coven. Mortanius kills Anarcrothe and then succumbs to possession by the Dark Entity (responsible for everything that happened in Nosgoth), which defeats Cain. With only one Pillar left unrestored, Cain comes to a realization: he himself is the last mad member of the Circle, Ariel's unwilling successor as Keeper of the Balance, killed in the short time between her death and the corruption of the Pillars. The "cure" for vampirism he has sought is his own death. Players can choose to cure the world - an ending in which Cain sacrifices his life, ensuring the extinction of the vampires and the restoration of Nosgoth - or to damn the world, with the Pillars collapsing and leaving Nosgoth an unsalvageable wasteland, while Cain fully embraces his curse and lives on as the most powerful being in the land. The latter is considered the canonical ending, leading to the rest of the series.