Monsters and creatures of the night were no longer held at bay by Avacyn's holy might. Sensing weakness, Innistrad's werewolf howlpacks, vampire hordes and unstoppable waves of zombies began preying actively on the humans. At the onset of these events in Innistrad, the Planeswalker Liliana Vess had come to the plane of Innistrad to reclaim her soul, which she had traded to four demons in exchange for beauty and power. She believes that by killing her dark debtors, her own bargain would be negated, and she wouldn't have to continue being subservient to these demons. During her earlier days of serving her demonic masters she eventually found and claimed a dark artifact known as the Chain Veil, which greatly amplified the potential of her dark magics. Liliana used the power of the Veil to kill one of her four demonic masters, Kothophed, and she has tracked her next target, Griselbrand, to Innistrad. During her search for the demon, Liliana was beset by the Planeswalker Garruk Wildspeaker, on whom she had used the Chain Veil to bestow a curse in a previous encounter. However, she managed to fend him off due to the dampening properties of the Veil's curse upon Garruk's nature magic. In the end, Garruk was overwhelmed by a small army of undead raised by Liliana and left for dead. Upon reaching the great city of Thraben, Liliana uncovers a plot by two rival sibling necromancers to besiege the holy city, the blue-oriented stitcher Geralf, and his black-oriented ghoulcaller sister Gisa. Despite the city receiving warning reports from cathars and inquisitors, not much was done to reinforce the city's walls and failing wards. Due to this lack of adequate preparation, the holy city was caught unawares by the massive army both siblings had amassed. In the end, only the quick thinking of the cathar Thalia spared the city from utter destruction. Thalia's plan was simple, to use the thatched straw roofs of Thraben's houses to create a ring of fire, burning down the entire army of undead. The plan was successful as most of the city was spared from the undead horde, albeit at the loss of many cathars and buildings because of the great fire. Despite this successful defence, during the siege, Geralf infiltrated the heart of the city and slew Mikaeus, the lunarch himself. Not wanting the news to demoralise the already downcast human citizens of the