From beneath the deserts of Ra’Shah, rises the cunning and lethal Zakhadar…
A member of the Dehk tribe in Ra’Shah, Zakhadars life was turned upside down with the coming of the civil war. A journalist by trade, he operated as a field correspondent along with his wife, Raya, reporting from the thick of the fighting in order to reveal the fear and suffering both sides were inflicting upon one another, hoping that showing the true horror of war might help end the conflict as swiftly and peacefully as possible.
This was until the terrorist group Shek’Rahn became involved. Lead by the infamous Ba’Thosh ‘The Butcher’, they set about ravaging the Dehk, striking at them with one vicious, insane act of evil after another, women and children being particularly favoured targets of the group. It was when Zakhadar was reporting from a refugee hospital with Raya, that Shek’Rahn struck once more.
The terrorists released a poison gas attack on the hospital. Zak and Raya desperately tried to usher the sick and dying away from the cloud, but to no avail, people asphyxiating and dropping dead around them even as they attempted to drag them to safety. Eventually the pair themselves were overwhelmed by the gas, collapsing to the ground.
.
Against all odds, somehow Zak survived. Groggily regaining consciousness, he was greeted by a vision of horror, the dead were piled all around him where they had fallen in a desperate attempt to escape, lifeless eyes of the innocent staring emptily at him. Zak crawled over to Rayas body and held her in his arms, letting out a scream of anguish before falling unconscious once more.
When Zak next awoke, he found himself secured to an operating table. Dehki special forces had found him the only survivor of the attack and transferred him to the research facility, where they had discovered that Zaks body had somehow assimilated the poison gas, and mutated. Catching sight of himself in a metal panel, Zak was horrified by what he had become, prominent veins beneath his skin glowing with corrosive green ichor, his eyes had become burning red pits of fury, centred with glowing irises of baleful malevolence. As Zak cried in rage, the special forces supplied him with files on every known member of Shek’Rahn, and tattooed his face with the black scorpion, an ancient Dehki symbol of vengeance, before releasing their new weapon upon the terrorists.
Soon, word began to spread of a terrible demon hunting down and killing members of Shek’Rahn, Zakhadar unleashing his own brand of psychological warfare upon them. As bodies of multiple high ranking leaders were found, each more mangled, mutilated and tortured than the last, the terrorist attacks against the Dehki were brought to a complete halt as Shek’Rahn fled, believing they had somehow awakened an ancient curse. But Zakhadar would not relent, he pursued them into the depths of the Ra’Sharian desert, ripping apart every camp and settlement he could find, before eventually cornering Ba’Thosh in a mountain cave. The pair clashed in a vicious, brutal battle, with Zakhadar eventually taking the upper hand and crippling the madman, before injecting him with a sample of his own, acidic blood, and leaving him to die slowly.
Zakhadar didn’t even care when he saw the Hexx Apocalos roaring through the sky, the war had scarred his mind and heart so deeply…he wandered the scorching desert alone, awaiting his fate. Then one night, he saw a star shining in the sky, brighter than any he had ever seen before. Speaking to whatever flicker of light remained in Zakhadars soul, he followed the star, before the sand gave way beneath him, and he fell.
He landed in a long forgotten shrine, belonging to the darkest and most mysterious of the star gods, Antares. Antares told Zakhadar that he had been watching with great interest, and had been impressed by Zaks sheer ruthlessness in destroying Shek’Rahn, but the true enemy was still out there. Zakhadar was uninterested however, he was dead inside, he had lost his wife and become a monster, there was nothing left to fight for. Aldebaran told him that he was wrong, the second chance Zak secretly longed for was still possible, but first he must find a way back from the dark path he was travelling. Zak was gifted with a suit of chitinous insectoid armour topped with a monstrous, menacing stinger, that would better able him to control the acidity level of his blood, and utilise it as a deadly weapon in the coming battle. Told that his destiny lay with the CelesSteel, Zakhadar set forth from the desert to find both the others, and perhaps even salvation…
