After the Gifted evaded the advancing forces of the Withered Aegis using the Novo machine, the Withered Aegis reached out to a newly invaded realm and sent Blight Anchors to Order, Chaos, Unity and Blight. The Undead Horde and newly recruited creatures from the other realms are sent through these Blight Anchors ? living breaches in the realms ? into the new realms of the Gifted. The Gifted continue to successfully defend their newly settled homes and lands. A great part of this success is due to the Gifted having access to techniqued equipment. The Undead Horde is equipped with basic combat gear without techniques and no awareness of the owner?s skill or schooling. Whenever Gifted equipment is captured, it is rendered unusable by the Undead Horde due to the item?s innate awareness of its owner. To gain an advantage in combat, Withered Aegis leaders sought assistance once again from an extremely skilled, but corrupted, Gnomish Tinkerer. Using the knowledge gained in the overtaking of Old Rachival, the tinkerer invented a process for creating powerful equipment and formulae with techniques usable by the Undead Horde. The Withered Aegis have started a new strategy of arming their forces with this Blighted equipment. The initial experimentation with Blighted short swords has proven successful and the Withered Aegis have expanded their trials to more powerful equipment and weapons. This equipment is created by combining Blight Cores with naturally occurring resources. However unpredictable and unstable the result, the process creates items that recognize the Undead's evil schooling and determination. On occasion, it also results in powerful items that the Withered Aegis hope will allow their forces to finally exterminate the Living Races. Even with these powerful items, the Withered Aegis occasionally fall in combat against the Gifted. Sometimes these defeated foes give up their equipment during the Gifted's inevitable looting of the fallen enemy. On rarer occasions, special fallen Withered Aegis combat messengers release the special formulae used to create these volatile pieces of equipment.