- "Hark, my flock! Your shepherd has heard the great voice from beyond. The voice that drew shamans and "medicine men" here for centuries before our arrival. The voice that designated us as its chosen, bade us seize the Serpent Mound, and built our dwelling upon it. Here in our mansion of eternal life shall the Horned Key open the way, breaking the bonds of mortality that we may dwell forever in our promised realm. Ready yourselves, for the day approaches for our final meal and farewell to the flesh."
- — Josiah Shem
Josiah Shem is a character featured in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Zombies mode.
Biography[]
In 1770, Josiah Shem and his cult arrived in Appalachia, near the town of Liberty Falls. With a forged property deed, Shem and his followers seized the land and possessions of a native tribe. The tribe originally built the Serpent Mound, a shrine with a statue of an Aether Worm at its center. The tribe also used a talisman, an antler carving containing Aetherium, known as the Horned Key, to commune with their "god of death" in the Dark Aether. Shem believed that the Horned Key would be able to grant him immortality.
During the next 40 years, Shem and his followers, now in the hundreds, built a mansion on top of the Serpent Mound, as well as gardens and a henge. During that time, Shem's cult was often scorned and casted aside by the denizens of Liberty Falls.
In 1810, Shem and his followers performed a final ritual, calling upon Kortifex to grant them immortality. However, the ritual broke spacetime and Shem's cult vanished. Somehow, Shem's spirit was transported into a liminal space inside the mansion where he was trapped in a loop, constantly searching for the Horned Key.
The mansion became known as "Shem's Folly" and saw multiple owners until Edward Richtofen and Project Janus used it as a research facility to house S.A.M in the late 1980s. Recognizing the danger of the Horned Key, Richtofen locked it in a safe. When the ex-Requiem arrived at the mansion on February 28th, 1991, they retrieved the Horned Key to free Shem's spirit and empower the Sentinel Artifact with the Prima Materia contained in the liminal space.
Gallery[]
The painting of Shem inside the mansion.
Trivia[]
- Shem can be seen wearing a similar robe as the Order's cultists from the Chaos Story. However, there is no indication that Shem was a member of the Order, or that the Order actually exists within the Dark Aether Saga.
- It is unclear which artifact was used by Shem to break spacetime as S.A.M states it was the Horned Key while Richtofen states that Shem broke spacetime while he's holding a completely different object during the cinematic preceding the fight with the Z-Rex.
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