Death Knight

The original Death Knights were created by the Dark Elders as commanding officers of their undead legions. These Death Knights were created by taking the bodies of slain Knights and resurrecting them as Deathrisen. Unlike modern death knights however, these ghoulish fiends were risen from the ground as battle hardened warriors; they were insidious beings who still possessed their naturally superior intellect and tremendous tactical prowess on the battlefield in life. They often favored the use of terror tactics and would have Liches reanimate the corpses of recently fallen enemy soldiers to serve them as mindless undead minions against their own brethren. These horrific acts of psychological warfare were commonplace among their number. Eventually the Death Knights were however destroyed during the events of the Undead War.

In the years since the Temple of Thuul's destruction, the world has seen the rise of many new deathrisen horrors beyond those seen in the Undead War. These unrelenting crusaders of the damned eagerly await the Dark Elder's command to unleash their fury on the Material Plane once again. Just as the dead grow more powerful in the afterlife so too has the power and fury of the deathrisen grown. Because of this, the Age of Strident Shifts has seen Hod no longer need to pull from the limited pantheons of slain knights immortalized through legend, but rather existing deathrisen champions. These tireless death knights are considerably stronger, faster, and more agile than the average Deathrisen; and these new varieties have possibly bred a lineages of champions even more powerful than the original Death Knights. However, both generations are equally destructive and terrifying to engage in the field of battle.

Although a number of Death Knights are very likely out there already, Hod himself has not yet seen fit to write their name into the Deathrisen compendiums however, and has seemingly left it up to his armies to discover who among them has been chosen to continue this ancient lineage