Father Wendell

Father Wendell was an Human Priest of The Church of Kirva and a missionary to the Taino Basin on Sierna.
== History ==
=== The Expedition to Taino Basin ===
Under the auspices of the Kirvan Bishop of Sierna, Wendell bought his way into a Knights Mercantile expedition to the Taino Basin on Sierna, giving the expedition a considerable grant of for the exclusive right of the Kirvan Church to preach its faith to the natives. He was accompanied in this endeavor by Brother Felix, a penitent monk under a vow of silence who nevertheless served as Wendell's bodyguard and partook readily in butchery of all sorts.
Wendell proved an ideological thorn in the side of the expedition's secular leadership, though he was a morale booster for many of the men, who were themselves Kirvans, Idolmites or just happy to have a preacher along in the event of their own death. Unfortunately for the expedition, this led to several violent misunderstandings with the natives as Wendell's firebrand style of preaching and popularity with the soldiers led to enthusiastic baptisms at bayonet point.
After the expedition's leaders took the bulk of the soldiery with them on an excursion which would ultimately lead to the doom of the expedition and a covenant between the leadership and Aztlan, Wendell remained in the group's basecamp, fortifying it. He stayed behind with his new native and offworld flock when the leadership returned to Chelonia.
=== Missionary on Taino Basin ===
As the months passed, Wendell's expectation of assistance from his church or from the Knights Mercantile dwindled and life in the mission became increasingly desperate. Scarce resources, rampant disease and hostile tribes seeking to take advantage of their apparently weakened neighbors (native and offworlder alike) led to desperation, and Wendell sought guidance in an altar recovered by his men from a nearby sinkhole. He believed that this altar of strangely hued granite bestowed divine visions upon him, and his soldiers (now his "deacons") took to collecting peculiar artifacts of their own, looting native shrines and "purifying" their loot before the altar. Wendell himself soon augmented his Kirvan holy symbol with a more potent item, one which allowed him to perceive the minds of beasts (and, unknown to him, for darker things to perceive his mind in turn).
=== Death ===
As Wendell's mission devolved into a cult, the influence of Aztlan became ever more apparent, as children born to the natives during this time grew deformed, and his men took to moments of insanity. One figure, however, remained stalwart: ever silent, the brutally conditioned Brother Felix seethed at the decline of his surroundings. A journal recovered from the ruins of the mission decades later by another Knight Mercantile expedition sent by the surviving leaders of the first (Dr. Hans Schulz and Frederick Hopkins) recounts that one day, as Wendell prepared a blood sacrifice in a twisted imitation of the Kirvan rituals, Brother Felix, normally mute, finally spoke. His words are unknown, but he struck down Father Wendell and slew or turned his deacons, before setting fire to the mission and striking out into the jungle with the remnants of the congregation.
Father Wendell was burned, then buried in a mass grave. He was disinterred by the subsequent KM expedition, and his amulet recovered by Coyote the Gnoll.
Category:Non-Player Characters
Category:Deceased