Jorthal Morttenstein

**Jorthal Morttenstein**is the only living member of the Morttenstein Clan. Historically a relatively small but influential clan, known for their nearly impenetrable halls, the Morttensteins were beset upon by the Celestials during the Second Celestial Intervention in the Blood War in an effort to take their holds as a military asset. This lead to the slaughter of every remaining member of the Morttensteins, including Jorthal's wife and two children.

## Early Life

Jorthal was born in the northern islands off the coast of [the continent that looks like essos]. He grew up in a brewery, helping to ferment and distill dwarvish whiskey. This gave him an extreme familiarity and fondness for strong alcoholic beverages, as well as a decent alcohol tolerance which has served him well. As he grew, he was officially taken on as a brewer's apprentice, and gruadually became well known through the Morttenstein Clan for his strong pension for good wiskey, his reccomendations and brews selling out almost as quickly as he could make them.

His apprenticeship almost over, Jorthal began to take on more and more responsibilities around the brewery, assembling blends, assigning duties, hiring on help and the like. This is when he met his wife, during a tasting for the brewery's most recent batch. They quickly grew close and got married within the year, having twin daughters soon after. However, shortly before inheriting the brewery from his former master, the Celestials attacked, wiping out his clan and any chance he had at a family.

## After the Attack

Following the genocide of his people, Jorthal fell into a deep depression, everyone he knew and loved was gone, only he survived, thanks to a band of sellswords on their way to the brewery who found him still barely alive in the rubble.

After healing his wounds, the sellswords offered him a job, seeing as he had nothing to return to, he accepted. They trained him to fight, and as he grew stronger and more competent with his warhammer he felt a rising desire to take revenge upon those that murdered his Clan. This is when the Cult of Zanar found him.

The cult recognized something within him, something they didn't tell him about, but taught him to harness it for their benefit. Jorthal, through is near brush with death, had become linked to the twin gods of life and death, allowing him to channel their divine energy to create both healing and destructive magics, this however the cult kept from him, telling him that their god Zanar had given him that power so that he may help the cult bring down the celestials and establish a new order. Jorthal fell in with the cult, and stayed for quite a while, helping them with various missions and such, but something always felt off about them.

## The Truth Revealed

Jorthal began to suspect something was off about the cult, their strange connection to the god Zanar, the Celestials and their claim to godhood. So he began to research the Blood Wars, learning all he could about battles, strategies, units and forces, and discovered that Zanar was just another Celestial, a very powerful one, but a celestial nonetheless, and worse, Zanar and his so called "cult" were the Celestials responsible for the genocide of his people.

Upon discovering this truth, Jorthal broke ties with the cult, fleeing from the very enemy he sought to destroy from years. The next few years were spent on the run, the Cult of Zanar didn't take kindly to deserters after all. This is when his true gift came to light however, as he was found and taken in by the Priests of the Twins.

## Powers and Purpose

After being found by the priests, Jorthal was told the true nature of his gift. They told him of the true gods, and specifically, of the Twins, who hold domain over Life and Death. After coming so near to death without dying and returning to life, something of death had remained, and since the two are intertwined, a part of life accompanied it. This allowed Jorthal to tap into the magic of true divinity and channel their power into the world. Jorthal, learning of this, devoted himself to the service of the twins, and to maintaining the natural order of the world. Until his past caught up with him.

Jorthal learned that the Cult of Zanar had begun to experiment with magics, recruiting sentient beings with the intent of forcing a third Blood War, overthrowing the current king of the Celestials, imposing Zanar in his place, and banishing the devils and demons from the mortal plane for good. Communing with his godly patrons, Jorthal was told to stop the cult from disrupting the natural order of the world, for surely a third intervention would ravage the mortal plane and leave none alive in its wake.