Perduke

*"The whole earth is the tomb of heroes and their story is not graven in stone over their clay, but abides everywhere, without visible symbol, woven into the stuff of other men's lives."*

 -Perduke

## History

The founder and leader of the Lords, Perduke possessed a powerful artifact known as the Earth Hand, which transformed half his body into stone, while allowing him to draw arcane power directly from the planet itself. Believed to be Terra's mightiest sorcerer, he demonstrated such feats of magic as driving back an army with a wall of stone, and crushing a city beneath a mountain. Perduke was the guardian and protector of the Underdark, warring with legions of monsters and abominations from the dawn of the world. He would soon became a prisoner of his own might and of his labors, spending more and more time beneath the earth. The rare times he did emerge were to combat extraordinary threats, and once during the founding of the Lords. Perduke wished to share his burden; to create a caste of heroic aristocracy who could, with might and force of will, defend mankind. His philosophy had a great influence over the last man to be given the title of Lord - Tolumvire of Arendur. Perduke scarcely seemed to notice the rise of Emperor Monopoly, largely ignoring him, and dividing his mind in two, sacrificing one half to Alpha's mind-slavery, and keeping the other half for himself. Perduke appeared thrice in Arendur - once alongside the rest of the Lords, to swear service to Tolumvire, once again to do battle with King Bolgar during the Arendur-Ragnarok War, and one final time to bury the city beneath a mountain to deny O'Rangus a chance to rule its last inhabitants.

## Personality

Perduke was devoted to the heroic ideal behind the founding of the Lords, and held to be a shrewd thinker and excellent leader. He always took the long view, calculating in his mind which course of action would be better for the earth as a whole. Perduke was respectful of political rulers such as Monopoly and Tolumvire, but paid them little mind and went his own way. He inspired respect, and was almost always allowed the freedom to pursue his personal duties.

## War of the Philosopher-Kings

Perduke would remain aloof from the war, preferring to stay underneath the earth and battle the horrors of the underground.

## After the War

When the new High King of Gandoral sealed the underground off from the outside world, Perduke was cut off. Surprisingly, he did not seem to particularly mind, going about his underground war with feverish intensity. He knew the great old ones were returning, and that he would be on the front lines of the battles to come. Increasingly, he went at his work alone, for the dwarves hated him for deeming their lands "collateral damage," and the majority of the other Underdark races, being more sympathetic to the great old ones, saw Lord Perduke as an outright enemy. This bothered Perduke not at all. He dispatched emissaries to appoint new Lords before turning his attention to the task at hand.

## The Great Awakening

For Perduke, little changed. The earth's core had always been more primal then elsewhere. He had always been a soldier for mankind.

## Epistles of Chaos King

*“The frightful bulk of night, feebly pushed aside for a moment, as quickly, and with an irresistible violence, regains empire.”*

*“Now we descend to the world of shades.”*

*“It might seem hardly worth questioning the idea that the world is made for seeing, or that eyes are consequent upon the undeniable fact that there is so much to be seen. Imagine a world in which the eye had never developed. In conscious animals the most sensory of environments would entail everywhere the language of touch and smell: beauty would be aural or tactile or olfactory.”*

*“I have observed a brilliant scintillation in the eyes of man himself but only once. The light was of a metallic-pink colour, resembling, in general aspect, the green light emitted from a dog’s eyes. I only saw this on one individual though I have examined many, but a friend of mine lately witnessed it in the eyes of a little girl. Both subjects alluded to were remarkably delicate.”*

*“Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance, these are the seals of that most firm assurance which bars the pit over Destruction’s strength; these are the spells by which to reassume an empire o’er the disentangled doom.”*

*“Illimitable ocean without bound, without dimension; where length, and breadth, and height and time and place are lost; where eldest Night and Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold eternal anarchy, amidst the noise of endless wars, and by confusion stand.”*

*“The welding gun, by some freak of its coils’ field attunements, was not a radio, but a teleradio: a thought augmenter of great power. After a while I found I could read the thoughts of nearly everyone in the building.”*

*“The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature, is astonishment, and astonishment is that state of the soul in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror.”*

*“Today is the deed. We will account for it tomorrow. The past we are leaving behind is carrion. The future we leave to the fortune-tellers. We take the present day.”*

*"Art is not a plaything, but a necessity, and its essence, form, not a decorative adjustment, but a cup into which life can be poured and lifted to the lips to be tasted. If one's own existence has no form, if its events do come handily to mind and disclose their significance, we feel about ourselves as if we were reading a bad book."*