The Great Purge

The Great Purge was the name given to the genocide of any living being that practiced necromancy in any of the kingdoms of Xak Raloth.

Prelude
Necromancy had always been outlawed in the governed Kingdoms, as it does raise souls from the afterlife and those can never be at peace again. But the penalty for it was imprisonment up to five years, depending on severity.

The first ever recorded execution for necromancy was in Myrkvan, the capital of Darkale when the king at the time, Frewil Borne, made a decree after a surpising amount of supernatural deaths had surfaced. However, no one knew that the real reason the king had decided to harshly punish any and all necromancers was because his wife had passed away and he hired a necromancer to bring her back to life. But her mind and soul ahd already been corrupted by death and blamed the necromancer for the corruption.

The executed man's name was Nikolas Tayle and right before his beheading, it was said that many of the cemetaries in the city had all of their dead rise and make their way to the Palace Square, where the execution was taking place. King Borne took advantage of this event to instill fear and panic in his citizens. The weeks that followed, the entire city had gone door to door and tested every magic wielder for necromancy and if they had failed that test, they would be killed on the spot.

Backlash
As news of the city-wide purge had spread to the adjacent Kingdoms, the other kings decided to also tighten the laws as a precaution for potential retaliation. For a time, this new update to the laws had seemingly stopped all necromancy. However, King Borne had conspired with a small group of fanatics determined to eliminate anyone who has ever practiced necromancy, and had planned multiple attacks upon every major city on the continent and brand the necromancers as the attackers. The attacks worked, and so all 5 High Kings had created an alliance and had their military armies use the same test that King Borne had used in Darkale to eradicate even the concept of necromancy.

Many magic users who had ever practiced even one spell of necromancy would have a mark on their aura for as long as they live. It can be detected by holding Lady's Sumac, a bushflower, near a person who has practiced it and it would wilt immediately.

After two years of killing anyone who has ever used the dark magic, only seven necromancers had survived the attacks and have hidden themselves in the sewers of Myrkvan. Their philosophy was that as long as they stay closest to where this all started, the less the suspicion was that any were there. However, they used their time there to collect as much knowledge as possible of other forms of magic and how to twist it into their spells and accumulated the successful results into a spellbook.

Meanwhile, Alas Tayle, the brother of Nikolas Tayle (the first ever execution for necromancy) had been scouring the continent for a Chaos Fragment, a fabled type of crystal made from the blood of a god. He was able to find one the size of a grapefruit and brought it back to the group, who had called themselves "The Last Seven". Upon his arrival, they began the ritual of corrupting every living thing they could with the spellbook and used the Chaos fragment as the catalyst. The ritual was successful, turning all of Myrkvan's citizens into ghouls, any dead on the ground into revenants, and any spirit who did not have a body due to decomposure or incineration had come back as a wraith. The only beings that were not affected by this blast were the seven surviving necromancers, who were affected by the side effect that they can never age.

However, the spell was not strong enough to corrupt everything in Xak Raloth, the spell ended only a fraction of the way of its desired result, its borders became the borders of the new kingdom of Darkale, the Last Seven became its royal court and the finder fo the Chaos fragment became its High King, commonly referred to as the King of the Bones.