As I open up my eyes ...adow Empire, Shadow Empire ...The rise of the machine ...adow Empire, Shadow Empire ...I hear the voices of the dead ...The essence of your dream ...adow Empire, Shadow Empire ...The rise of the machine ...adow Empire, Shadow Empire ...In my heart there's alway...The master key of trust ...In my mind the arctic wind blo...he light, the light of day. ...adow Empire, Shadow Empire ...The rise of the machine ...adow Empire, Shadow Empire

Life in the Empire State... ...s and devils before my eyes ...The palms of my hands hung by my side ...Life in the Empire State... ...Cold were my bones, warm was the fire, white was yr face cast to my mind ...On Life in the Empire State Into the Void...romise you'll be by my side for the end Of Life in the Empire State... ...the shifting weight of home ...er how lion-hearted my will I still stray ...I threw up my hands and swore I'd...Sounds like the empire State's comin' on?

aelun's "Chronicles of Antediluvia", volum...Episode I: The Fall of the Shadow-King ... & III: The History of the Great Wars ...des IV-VI: The Rise of the Imperium ...est for the Trinity of Might ...nshroud The Citadel Of The Obsidian Crown (recounted on the second Bal-Sagoth album; "Starfire Burning Upon The Ice-Veiled Throne Of Ultima Thule) ...nbound (The Legions of the Imperium Storm the Cloud-Capped Palisades of Gul-Kothoth) ...sode XI: The Battle of the Nine Armies (The War of the Crown) ...and the Dissolution of the Imperium ...nbound (The Legions of the Imperium Storm the Cloud-Capped Palisades of Gul-Kothoth) ... resplendent armies of the Imperium assembled before the towering cyclopean walls of ancient Gul-Kothoth. It was some time before the billowing dust cloud raised by the massed arrival of the vast imperial host settled, ultimately dissipating as the shadows of dusk descended. With nightfall, the imperial army's countless torches, braziers and cookfires illumined the dark plain before the fortress like a coruscating sea, painting the stygian heavens the colour of flame. And the high summer's night passed swiftly. At length, the dawn approached tentatively, and with the first signs of the newborn sun etching its promise upon the skies, the martial preparations commenced in earnest. A brief and perfunctory exchange between the Imperial Herald and the fortification's Watch Commander held no surprises, and the Emperor's banner was duly driven into the seared earth before Gul-Kothoth with a chilling finality. Vast siege engines and powerful ballistae were hauled inexorably into position, alongside a battery of katapelte and petrobolos. The one hundred thousand strong Imperial Frontier Army, having planted their regimental blazons into the arid soil, waited with a disciplined patience born of never having met defeat in pitched battle or siege, the dreaded Imperial War-Leopards straining noisily against their iron-link leashes to the rear of the cohorts of conscripts and auxillieries. The pitiless Iron Phalanx and their Lord Militant Commander had assumed position at the head of the army's Alpha Wing, polished swords, spears and poll-axes reflecting the glow from the myriad torches and braziers which still burned about the Imperial Host. And behind them were drawn up the legendary Legion of the Ebon Tiger, Pride of the Emperor, the infantry and cavalry famed throughout the Great Northern Continent, personal regiment of the feared general Baalthus Vane. True to their martial reputation, the six thousand strong Legion were inscrutible in their jet black armour, their sable banner billowing in the chill breeze which skittered over the plain. And finally, astride his azure-shaffroned warhorse and surrounded by his elite guard, the silvern-armoured Emperor Koord himself studied the precipitious gates with a disdainful scrutiny. At the Emperor's right hand was the renowned Swordmaster of Kyrman'ku, an eastern bladesman of preternatural skill and the most revered and expensive mercenary in the Imperium. At his left, the infamous Ogre-Mage of the Black Lake brooded silently, swathed in a stygian cloak and fuliginous cowl and exuding an aura of implacable malevolence which unerved even the bravest of the Imperial troops. The Emperor had deemed the services of these two nefarious renegades pivotal to the execution of the Final Campaign, for they alone had knowledge of the mysterious arca...ades, the defenders of Gul-Kothoth beheld ...gin the final stage of this campaign with the rising of the sun. This war which has raged for decades shall finally be decided here, before the hoary walls of ageless Gul-Kothoth. The Imperium's last and most glorious victory is at hand. The procrastinating sybarites of the bureaucracy have been threatened and bribed into compliance over this venture. This more than anything else is why I have deigned to grace this final battle with my Imperial presence, even against the advice of the Grand Vizier and the sage counsel of the Seers. ...e the hunt is done, my loyal servitor. Overconfidence is but one of the many foes a general must face upon the field of war. Today, the precepts and maxims of the Imperium shall be tested, and we shall see whether the velvet glove of diplomacy or the iron gauntlet of conquest has proved...THUS VANE: The days of the feudal suzerainties are long gone, my liege. The Imperial Military Council is the only entity fit to govern the dominions. The fall of Vyrgothia shall today render the truth of the Imperial Mandat...atched to the Court of the Over-King has warned that the Vyrgothians may have recovered one of the artefacts comprising the fabled Trinity of Might; the legendary Obsidian Crown itself! In the hands of a skilled thaumaturgist, it is said that the Crown may be used as a weapon of unparalleled destru...tre! Feh! The power of the Trinity is but a myth! No antiquated trinket weilded by a religious fanatic will prevail against the Legion, sire. Our steel is proof against such diabolism! Behold! Gul-Tryarch has fallen, Gul-Azlaan has been given to the earth, Gul-Nomedes is naught but smouldering rubble, and soon we shall surge over the shattered remnants of Gul-Kothoth's renow...n weighing heavy on my mind. But now, the sun rises! Let it begin! Let the final chapter of our legend be writt...An age of fire, sword and shi...The thunder of the battlefield, ...May the Empire's glory never fade,...The Wizards of Vyrgothia: ... bejewelled circlet of night, Crown of the Elder King, ...at last the Trinity of Might, the Sceptre,...hapter 12: The Fall of Gul-Kothoth ...shed upon the field of battle. Colossal stones, firebrands and howling iron-tipped missiles rained pitilessly down upon the hero-hewn walls of Gul-Kothoth. Vast and serpentine cracks appeared in the ancient cyclopean edifice, and hundreds of warriors, both attackers and defenders, perished in the fray, either crushed beneath the ceaselessly assailed testudo, hammered to crimson pulp by the merciless storm of unforgiving stone, or burned to blackened husks by the nightmare onslaught of flaming quicklime and saltpetre. Scaling ladders raised and repulsed in turn, storms of razor tipped shafts...ngth, the mightiest of the Empire's iron-hooded battering rams, dubbed The Bringer of Woe, was brought to bear upon the besieged fortress, and, with the shadows of dusk lengthening upon the field of war, the centuries old Primary Gate of Gul-Kothoth was finally sundered amidst an earsplitting cacophony of shattering oak and iron louder than any storm-born thunderclap. With the rending of the mighty gate, and vast fragments of the ancient walls yielding, buckling and crashing to the blood-sodden earth, the Imperium's forces breached the defenses of Gul-Kothoth and sur...nstant that an army of five score and ten, bearing the Obsidian Crown, arrived upon the field of battle. ...eilding the Circlet of Night! The dire warning issued to me as I stood before Vyrgothia's Master Wizard has been proved no idle boast! The citadel's spells of containment breache...e forseen! Be spry, my sorcerous lackey... join the Iron Phalanx in entertaining these latecomers while I prepare a reception worthy of their audacity! ... and at the command of a decurion, a volley of armour-piercing shafts screamed skywards to rain down mercilessly upon the foe. And even as this transpired, the Emperor's Prime Sorcerer, emissary of the Imperial Court and master of those arts which speak to man in narcotic dreams from the darkest and most silent places, summoned forth that black potency which lay entwined in stygian tendrils within his mind... an ireful power born of they who writhed upon the shores of Pangaea before man's progenitors ever erected their lofty spires to the restless skies. And yet Vyrgothia's Master Wizard, unrivalled Arch-Mage and adept of that lost Eastern order who journey beyond the boundaries of time and space upon those nebulous wings born of the sacred Azure Lotus, rose to meet this power which lapped at the periphery of his mind like a midnight tid...pon that arid field of war, the sentinels of light and shadow sp...the aeons-old might of the Obsidian Crown was finally brought to bear against they who had breached the walls of ancient Gul-Kothoth...Sundered, the gate of the ancient fortres... lo, there and army of five score and ten,...Like the prow of a blood-hungry vessel of war rending the waves of a midnight sea, a luminescent blade of shrieking cerulean light lanced from the legendary black circlet locked tight within the gnarled hand of the Master Wizard, and clove mercilessly into the glorious ranks of the Imperium. And all who were touched by this ruinous arc of coruscating radiance knew no more... Men and beasts reduced to blackened husks, charred shells of smouldering ash, lifeless effigies which toppled to the seared earth to be dissipated by the whispering breath of the wind. Again and again the ravaging radiance smote the ranks of the Empire, leaving a noisome charnel-pit of nightmare in its crackling wake. The forces of the Imperium were plunged into a howling vortex of disarray, and, faced with the unthinkable prospect of defeat, the unprecedented first routing of the Emperor's glorious army began to become a grim reality. Yet for all the unparalleled carnage which had erupted about them, there was one regiment of Imperial troops for whom the taste of fear was bland compared to the sharp tang of rage which sat bitt...E: By all the gods of war! Stand fast, hounds of the Imperium! 'Tis true... steel is no use against this ignoble magical trickery! But if our souls are bound for the Pit this day, we'll damn well take a few of these bastards with us! Onward, my Legion! Alpha forma...THE EMPEROR KOORD: My sorcerous thrall has fallen, but he has bought us time enough to riposte! And General Vane's mettle may yet turn the tide of war back in our favour. Now, let the final act be played out! I call thee forth, Ogre-Mage of the Black Lake! I call thee forth, Swordmaster of Kyrman'ku! It is time! Now, I charge thee, for the glory of the Imperium... Spe...ll their most vital of roles in that grand theatre of carnage which now ran unchecked on the field of battle. ...homless countenance of the distant heavens, words which in truth were not words, but rather a resonant key which would aspire to unlock a dire power which had reposed shackled since the fall of the legendary Shadow King himself, whose ebon circlet's power they even now sought to thwart. The incantation they gave voice to in the midst of that sanguineous turmoil which engulfed them was not so much heard by those within earshot as perceived, sensed as a vague disturbance in the fabric of reality, as fuliginous ripples on the surface of a hitherto still and placid pool, growing ever larger and more far reaching; an unnerving and unnamable sense of change which insinuated itself into the mind of the listener and suggested with a cold and disturbing quasi-certainty that something of preternaturally ineffable magnitude was transpiring, as surely as a festering and gangrenous corpse would split to spill its noisome gore. And as that maddeningly implacable incantation reached its resounding climax, a momentary silence enshrouded the battlefield, swathing the vista of chaos in an aura of noiselessness more pure and untainted than the tranquility of the boundless and s... the sundered gates of ancient Gul-Kothoth

It was no thing of wonder ...Reminds our shoes of horse glue ...Of what we have been m...And the busy ant empire ... guess I'll pack up my mind ...And the busy ant empire ...And the busy ant empire ...I stood on my heart supports thin...'Oh my God, I'll probably ... remember if I took my brain out, threw it...I could have my mind erased

People of America ...In our empire ...10 pieces of gold for every man ...The roman empire the glory of Rome ...are beware the ides of march ...ail Caesar! emperor of Rome hail Caesar! ...ar, beware the ides of march ...Pay him no mind ...The empire is tired, Caesar wi...We depart for my chambers

Here I am with my empire, I'll bring ...Ebb and flow with my desire, cause its a...I'm the bastard son of what's been overcom..., consume, be proud of what I let you see ...es ignore the sense of rage welling up ins...Pay no mind to what we do cause...re that this is our empire this is war

y I'm slowly losing my my mind ...nderneath the guise of a smile gradually I...So I wear my disguise 'til I go ...Of the pain that rejec...y I'm slowly losing my my mind ...nderneath the guise of a smile gradually I...So I wear my disguise 'til I go ... situation wrackin' my mind ...y I'm slowly losing my my mind ...nderneath the guise of a smile gradually I...So I wear my disguise 'til I go

In the eyes of the mighty domain a..., there is no trace of romance ...u killed the poetry of mine ...tten lampoons about my life ...And desires, about my pleasure and pain ...I bare my fangs to you, look at my face and ...You'll stare into my mind and you'll watch ...The eyes of the tyrant - eyes of the night ...The eyes of the tyrant - eyes of the night ...King of tonight, tell me wh...ory, should I raise my fist ...The Crime of my deads is the frolic...I won't die on my knees, I will kill ...The chagrin of the damned cries the tears of ...Romance, lord of uprightness take me...The empire of the sad, the empire of the mad ...My feelings were kille...There is a trace of glory in our hands

is all I'm thinking of ...d just make up your mind

The Sunz of Man sion has been ...It's like beware of biochips I share h...Bridge smoke trees of weed ...ated, higher than a Empire State ...s beyond the clouds of rain ...Space was my birthplace, meditat...Expand your mind (4X) ...ee nor hear not Son of ?Zsaslot? ...idend Bird Segment? of unseen beings ...Watching my road with the blood of the land, consequen...Ain't one of the parties you mak...My niggaz make sure th...ther stole the soul of the streets and ?be...Expand your mind ...e is the key to the mind which is a mysterio...zed you better read my lips ...e, out the hallways of negative ...Expand the mind ...Expand the mind ...Expand the mind ...Expand the mind...

A junction of three ...Of our name which is "...Student of the old, teacher of the new school ...My inspiration is the ...and formed a legion of my force ...ork nine to five on my easel ...My physical is strong and my mind is cock diesel ...Making use of the knowledge that ...u, here to send the mind into a frenzy ...Seep into the mind the brain and activ...e in the boundaries of the righteous laws ...ative or inhabitant of Nubia ...(LJ) A member of one of a group of African tribes that... Empire between Egypt and E...(GP) Any of several languages s

Religious figment of your mind ...Believe the visions of your brain ...lions with the meat of the christians ...Order of the emperor, circus of deluded minds ...Religious figment of your mind ...Believe the visions of your brain ...They sang songs of praise as they died...Religious figment of your mind ...Believe the visions of your brain

The hour is out of joint ...And the river of words ...The cages of tradition ...And these standards of living ...Burnin' holes into my head ...g out like the eyes of the dead ...And sometimes my soul flickers ...When the wind of change blows cold ...Over the mire of repetition ...Down the corridors of rigmarole ...In the storm of mankind ...In the sea of faces ...eaningless movement of the jaws ...Or in the rattle of hollow applause ...d sun body willing, mind undone ...Out into the poles of the extreme ...Of these godless minut...In the shadow of delusion's regime ...On this empire of dust ...eel it from the pit of my stomach ...Into the ditch of my mind ...Inside the chambers of my heart ...At these walls of cardboard ...Body willing, mind undone

Ask my folks, just ask my folks ...To the otherside of the game ...To the otherside of the game ...At the end of my rope from sellin' t... them dumb-dums out of soap ...My attitude mad, young...Plottin', worryin' my Mama to death ...Put your mind on your money, thug...Other than that, my nigga, just smile ...Ask my folks, just ask my folks ...Bow my head, askin' the Lo...egan to acknowledge my bang ways ...Maybe my pain, dealin' with ...The otherside of the game ...Where you're rich, my aim to fame ...ke to thank you for my Mo Thug family ...I remember my first day out of prison ... it was just me and my cousin ...So gimme a couple of days, and I will le...I had to collect my mind ...Ask my folks, just ask my folks ...To the otherside of the game ...in to the otherside of the game ...Consisted strictly of some type of a hustle ...While my Mama workin' nine-t...eachin' me the ways of the world - pick yo...or except for a box of baking soda ...And empty jar of pickle juice ...Put my trust in You ...y about three pairs of pants, holes in my shoes ...How? Me and my brother up there ...ody understand, but my family ...Thug all the way to my dirt ...Sadness take over my world of gladness ...w stroll and get on my hustle ...To keep my pockets swoll for s...I collect more of those ...To hoes, me and my trues decided ...Ask my folks, just ask my folks (just ask my folks) ...To the otherside of the game ...To the otherside of the game. ...rmy weather tossin' my boat to and fro ...Often to the point of shatterin' senses ...ntain, hold on, but my son, just keep it s...A lot of people got stuck ...ldwide to replenish my thought ...Drop to my knees, and began to...sometimes it's even my people ...eel like I'm losin' my mind ...s entire evil, evil empire ...Ask my folks, just ask my folks ...To the otherside of the game ...To the otherside of the game

I've soiled my hands puttin' work ...tta be, the epitome of nice? ...d they want to test my wits ...nsive, intense with my brain waves ...e you can see it in my eyes ...nds makes the sound of compromise ...When a voice of a gangsta starts to..., collects an ocean of funds ...stuck in the middle of a gay parade ...escape the confines of one's mind ...tal prison, a prism of thought ...A crystalis of anger created by the action of strangers ...these with the ease of a hiatus in Fresno ...My threshold, the pres...And no proof of a cracking point ...Like Empire State, the power wi...Peep the problems of the average man whe...It's the wrath of rage-aholics ... playing games with my mind ... world, disillusion mind ...I'm losing my patience, losing ti...Wasting my patience, you wasti