Mauro Builterman

Mentioned in Quoth the Raven Issue 30, in the article Wartorn Gazetteer Volume II: Conquista, Mauro Builterman was a human resident of the northern cantón of the domain of Conquista.

Mauro is noted to have been of a studious bent, with no subject of study being beneath his interest (even witchcraft, even though the domain was magic-dead at the time), much to the ire of his father. The elder Builterman desired a strong worker and derided the son he actually got as a 'book-loving wimp'. For his part, Mauro seemed to hold his father in some disdain, doing things that made his father happy only to shut him up so he could return to his beloved books.

During his manhood trial, Mauro encountered what he thought was an avatar of the goddess Brightwell, draining the mind of local bully who had assaulted her. In truth, this was a persona of the she-demon known as the Red Haunt. Initially amused by the misconception, the Fiend engaged the boy in conversation. As it turned out that Mauro had a true yearning to know, the demon questioned him as to his purpose for learning, guiding him to a realization that the world was an unfair place in need of ... 'adjustment'.

When Mauro declared that his purpose for learning should then be to change the world to make it worthy of him, rather than trying to curry favour, the Red Haunt provided him with her questionable encouragement - "Study without restriction. Study as though your life depends upon it, then study beyond the limits of fleeting life and stale morals. Do so, and you will not just please Brightwell, you will give worth to your studies and satisfy your own hunger" - and a bag of priceless gems.

Mauro abandoned his father's farm the next day, and invested the wealth bestowed on him by the Fiend not merely in his own education, but in the founding of the current incarnation of los Viejos Sagrados. Though he is noted to be deceased in the current day, his actions have had a lasting effect on the Wartorn Cluster, albeit a secretive one. As Mauro founded the current incarnation of los Viejos Sagrados, it is more than likely that he also had a hand in designing the organization's signature prestige class. As such, he would have had to become a spellcaster of some sort over the course of his life. Apparently natural death claimed him before he could partake of one of the variants of immortality that await at the ultimate level of the prestige class.