Diedrich von Hochstatt

Diedrich von Hochstatt is a member of Lamordian nobility born in 732 BC in Leidenheim, a Bard and a member of the Sevenstrings.

Appearance

Diedrich was once a handsome young man, a skilled harpist and a fine dancer. Currently, he is paralyzed from the neck down due to spinal injuries and his fine features have been mutilated, following his fall from the battlements of Schloss von Brandthofen. His body has been hooked up to a complex life-support system, located in the secret base of the Sevenstrings underneath an abandoned Lamordian temple.

Background

Diedrich always yearned for adventure and excitement in his life, only for his demanding father (a member of the Schultebott of Leidenheim as well as the Syndicate of Enlightened Citizens) to demand that he fulfill the role of his perfect and rational heir. Whenever Diedrich stepped out of line, he would be harshly punished.

Diedrich found little ways to rebel. His training as a Bard allowed him to learn the use of arcane magic. A chance encounter with Colmarr Greatorm led to him secretly joining the Sevenstrings, which allowed him to learn about other worlds. When his father decided Diedrich needed a wife to keep him grounded, Diedrich's reluctant tour of the Lamordian social circuit brought him face to face with the scholar Mu.

Diedrich fell in love with Mu's intelligence as well as her beauty, but did not know how best to express his affection and win the young woman's heart in turn. When he discovered Mu was trying to find sponsors to fund research into ways of travelling beyond the Demiplane of Dread that could bring her back to Gothic Earth, Diedrich made the mistake of trying to entice the Schultebott of Leidenheim to invest in the project. He told his father a great deal about Mu and arranged for a private meeting.

Be it because Diedrich's father misinterpreted what his son's intentions and Mu's nature were or out of malice towards someone who sought to use science for such an outré subject as planar travel, but the meeting did not go as Diedrich had intended. The members of the Schultebott met Mu behind closed doors, casually burned her notes and brutally beat and raped her before handing her over to some thugs who worked for a local brothel.

World Engine

Diedrich - aided by Mu's dread familiar Tom-Cat and Amourette Schlosser - managed to save Mu before the brothel's thugs could cart her off. At the Devoratrix's suggestion, they retreated to what would become Schloss von Brandthofen, where they nursed Mu back to health and as close to sanity as they could.

Wracked by guilt, Diedrich threw himself into helping Mu prove her theories by creating technomagical devices. When his skills proved insufficient to create the machinery needed, Amourette Schlosser brought Victor Mordenheim into their temporary qabal. Diedrich struggled to keep up with the greater minds surrounding him and did make several valuable contributions, but his sense of guilt prevented him from seeing his own worth. While he did suspect some malice on the part of Amourette and he was as disgusted by Mordenheim as anyone, his wish to please Mu stopped him from warning her when success seemed to be so close. He did, however, build additional securities into the constructs he had built to help the work along.

When the World Engine was completed and activated on the spring equinox of 753 BC, Diedrich was overwhelmed by the arrival of Adam, Mordenheim's treachery and the revelation of Amourette as a fiend from the Abyss. In his extremis, he shouted a command phrase to the attending constructs that caused them to sweep everyone except Mu from the castle's battlements - including himself.

Divergence

Diedrich suspects that something the World Engine did upon activation caused there to be two of him in existence. Certainly, when the Sevenstrings came to see what had happened at Schloss von Brandthofen, they found one decapitated body that was undeniably his. (The head had been removed by the Red Haunt for future questioning.) But they also found a crippled body that was undeniably his, barely clinging to life.

Current Sketch

Trapped in a broken body, Diedrich survives thanks to the technomagical life-support provided for him by his fellow Sevenstrings. In spite of their best efforts, no amount of healing magic can heal his shattered husk; keeping him alive and free of pain is the best they can do. Diedrich has redesigned several of the machines keeping him alive, and has dictated the creation of medical constructs that monitor his vital signs and do things for him. (While he is unaware of it, Diedrich is an ironic inversion of Mordenheim; he tried to use his intellect to pervert the natural order for the sake of the woman he loved, and as a result is in nearly the same unenviable position as Elise while the woman he loves has disappeared from his life.) Currently, Diedrich is working out principles that will allow him to transfer himself into a construct body that retains his full dexterity and abilities. The work is taking a long time, but he is determined to one day be free of his broken shell so he may seek out Mu and make up for the wrongs she endured because of him.

Statistics

Chaotic Good male human Aristocrat 5 / Bard 3 / Sevenstrings Agent 3