The first game in the series, created by Silicon Knights of Eternal Darkness and Too Human fame and the only one to play as a top-down action RPG in the style of The Legend of Zelda: The story begins with Kain, a then-unknown nobleman, being assassinated by a group of thugs on the way home from a pub. Mortanius the Necromancer offers him a chance for vengeance by resurrecting him as a vampire, and as soon as Kain avenges his own death, he begins to seek a cure to his own vampirism. The ghost of Ariel, the former Balance Guardian, points him to the direction of the Circle of Nine, the Guardians of the Pillars of Nosgoth and her former colleagues, who have all been corrupted when Ariel's former lover, Nupraptor the Mentalist, went mad with her death. As long as the Guardians remain alive, th