Siege of Thraben
| Siege of Thraben | |||||
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| Information | |||||
| Era | Mending Era | ||||
| Date | 4558 AR | ||||
| Location | Thraben, Gavony, Innistrad | ||||
| Sets | Innistrad, Dark Ascension | ||||
| Storyline Sources | Mikaeus, the Unhallowed, The State of the Faith | ||||
| Characters | Geralf Cecani, Gisa Cecani, Grimgrin, Liliana Vess, Lothar, Mikaeus Cecani, Thalia, Volpaig, and others | ||||
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The Siege of Thraben was a devastating and unprecedented zombie assault on the High City of Thraben. Amid the decaying provinces of Innistrad, the necromantic siblings Gisa and Geralf Cecani turned their petty rivalry into a catastrophe for humanity’s last true sanctuary. What began as a cruel contest of “NecroWarfare” — raising corpses and flaunting the Church’s fragile order — escalated into a siege that tested the faith, resolve, and resourcefulness of the Church of Avacyn’s final defenders.[1][2]
Description
The Siege of Thraben saw Geralf and Gisa unleash vast hordes of ghouls, skaabs, and the monstrous Grimgrin upon the city’s ancient walls. With Avacyn missing and the protective wards faltering, Thraben’s guardians, led by the determined Thalia, mounted desperate defenses. While Geralf infiltrated the city to murder his cousin, Mikaeus the Lunarch, Gisa’s tireless dead battered the gates until the main wall finally fell. In a final gambit, Thalia set the outer ring ablaze using stolen thatch from Thraben’s rooftops, creating a roaring inferno that incinerated countless undead and halted the siege just short of the Cathedral’s inner sanctum.
Meanwhile, within the fractured Church hierarchy, the bishop Volpaig — secretly the leader of the demon-worshipping Skirsdag Cult — exploited the chaos to spread his dark creed. Corrupt and crude-minded, Volpaig lured desperate citizens toward the Skirsdag’s promises of forbidden power. However, his ambition ended when the planeswalker Liliana Vess tracked him down for information about Griselbrand. Even under the threat of death, Volpaig refused to betray his demon master. He was slain by Liliana, but not before revealing by accident that only the dead Lunarch Mikaeus knew Griselbrand’s true whereabouts.
Though the city did not fall outright, the siege left Thraben scarred, leaderless, and on the brink of collapse. Lothar, the venerable Guardian of Thraben, perished in a madness-fueled fall from the high ramparts. After being personally stabbed to death by Geralf, Mikaeus was secretly entombed beneath the Cathedral, his death hidden from the faithful to avoid a crisis of faith within the Church of Avacyn. Liliana used Volpaig’s final clue to exhume Mikaeus’s corpse, forcing it to reveal that Griselbrand was imprisoned within the Helvault — setting the stage for the Sundering of the Helvault.