Meredoth
Meredoth was born to a pair of talented and wealthy wizards in the Alphatian Empire in the outlander world of Mystara. Unfortunately, he received precious little nurturing from either of them. His father was an obsessive constructcrafter with no time to spend upon child who was instead entrusted to the care of golems and their like. And his mother was a self-absorbed enchanter who found it least bothersome to discipline irksome her child through the use of enchantments.
The Alphatain Empire was a magocracy and Meredoth met this parents expectation by demonstrating an aptitude for magic which would ensure his eventual membership in its nobility. The child was drawn in particular to necromancy which was held to be as valid an avenue of research as any other in free thinking realm. In his early teens, Meredoth watched her mother addict herself to the drug tsongha and withered away within a span of a few months. The conclusions that he drew from his childhood were that the flesh was weak and was to be disdained, that arcane craftsmanship could improve upon nature and so was to be valued, and that entities capable of perfect obedience were alone worthy of trust.
The young necromancers's time in school only reinforced these conclusions. His brilliance was recognized and gave his peers reason to overlook his oddity and instead court his goodwill. Soon enough a false friend stole his ground-breaking research into a variant skeletal golem. Meredoth retaliated by addicting him to tsongha. It was a ploy that he would use repeatedly, with the difference that it was now he who stole the work of others, confident that they plotted to do no less to him. In addition to necromancy, Meredoth honed a talent for destructive evocations which served him very well in spell-duels with those who dared question his "honour". Picking his fights carefully, he at once slaked a violent nature that his father had derided as plebeian and claimed rightfully as spoils the spellbooks of his peers.
Meredorf soon graduated to experiments on animals and commoners in pursuit of a predictable and reliable intelligence stripped of the influence of both drives and emotions. He had no ability, however, to wield spells of enchantment which would have been most applicable to this line of inquiry. Ultimately abandoning a direct approach as futile, he instead set to crafting unique constructs and undead with ever great capacities for rational and intelligent self-direction. These efforts met with far greater success, although the results still fell well short of the mark. The constructs wanted for the potentiality of the living and the undead retained the perversity and appetites of the living.
The onset of arthritis forced the aging wizard to confront the betrayal by his own flesh. He was predisposed to neither the path of lichdom, deeming it beneath his abilities, nor the path of ascension, deeming its demands on his time too great. Instead he opted for the alchemical exilirs that kept the Alphatian elite youthful. Disdainful of the cult of youth that his his mother had worshiped, Meredoth was content to dial back the clock no further than his late sixties.
Politically, the question arose as to what do the psychopathic wizard. He would soon be confirmed as a supreme master, but there was no appetite to bring him to court. So upon being confirmed in 633 BC, a barony in the distant wilderness of Norwold was foisted upon him. Although a surprise, Meredoth was pleased enough with the arrangement.
The colonialists sent with him were left to take care of themselves on the mainland while the necormancer installed himself on an island that he named Todstein. His researched fared well, his vassals faired poorly. They beseeched him for aid. His response of animating their dead and putting them to work in the service of the needs of the living was ill-received. By spring, the colonialists were dead to their last. The obedient dead, however, had not slacked in their efforts and so there was some grounds for hope that a second batch of colonialist might survive the winter. The soil, however, proved to be no more fertile. Death by slow starvation awaited them too. On the first day of 635 BC, Meredoth answered their pleas in person. Food aplenty was distributed to all. Unfortunately, it was laced with a deadly poison. Meredoth then proceeded to animate the entirety community as obedient dead. Snow began to fall and a blizzard rapidly came into being. The necromancer retreated to Todstein. The island and its master were seized by the Mist. Todstein became one of the two principle islands of the domain of Nebligtode. And Meredoth became the darklord of this new island of terror.
Meredoth remains locked in his research on Todstein to this day. His kidnapping from Mystara and his imprisonment within Nebligtode troubles him very little. He plunders the human resources afforded him on Graben Island and ship in the immediate vicinity of Todstein as he sees fit. He is unaware of the curse that has crippled his creativity and effectively reduced him to a tinker. He is all too aware of the inexplicable and loathsome change that has overtaken his spellcasting and partially remade him as a spontaneous spellcaster. He has demonstrated little interest in making sense of his kidnapping and imprisonment beyond a curiosity into the the macabre effects that often attachment themselves to his necromantic spells. Still, his knowledge of the Land of Mists has grown with the passing decades. More than ever he takes pleasure in the seizure of the spellbooks of fellow wizards, although the thefts are now mostly effect by his agents. He has populated his island with golems, of various sorts, and with corporeal undead, principally
He deHe remains locked in his experiments.
This is a vast wilderness area north of the Known World and the Heldannic Territories. The Empire of Alphatia has claimed Norwold, but little of the region is actually under the control of King Ericall, who rules from Alpha, a fortified northern city. Ericall is actively seeking capable rulers who wish to assist him in taming this unsettled land. Other civilised areas include the independent city of Oceansend, the squalid criminal town of Landfall, and the hin clanhold of Leeha.
Statistics
Necromancer 15 / Archmage 5, Chaotic Evil
Data from the Ravenloft Catalogue
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Domains of Dread - pp79 | |
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Domains of Dread - pp79-80 | |
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Secrets of the Dread Realms - p7 |
