Kehl

Saint Kehl is a monstrous being of The Redwood Forest, part-undead, part-plant, and part-celestial; made up of a body of root and bone alongside the mask that resurrected it, fused to a rotting cranium with eyes long since picked out by the crows. Forever cursed, or blessed, to have all around it fall sick and die; it has taken up Godhead among the extremist Craobhaile tribe of The Redwood Forest, whether inadvertently or by design.

## Early Life

Kehl Tonbutt was the half-elf, half-human son of Sutere Tonbutt and his wife Eadwine, the latter of which a court member of Winebald's early court, born just as power was being established in western Glaescer by the legend-king Raedwald through the establishment of Thrilingas and its trade in ship building.

While this process was mostly peaceful and the tribes of The Redwood Forest gladly accepted their new neighbours as long as they didn't encroach too far, tensions were still high, due to attacks from a select few tribes who believed that the continued logging Raedwald's kingdom enabled was destroying the reforming body of their deity. As such, Kehl received a military education until his mid-teenage years.

Despite this, Kehl had a comfortable childhood as a son of one of the court members, also being taught in matters such as history, philosophy and political manoeuvring.

## Murder

At the age of 15 years old, for unknown reasons, Kehl took up a knife and murdered a visiting messenger of King Raedwald in his sleep. Making a display of his kill, he had pinned the body to the wall using a spear and dismembered it. After this, Kehl disappeared, with eyewitness accounts of guards describing him running into The Redwood Forest bloody-handed.

In the aftermath of this, the royal court took efforts to erase this stain on the Tonbutt name, but Kehl was never found.

## Return

Decades later, after Sutere Tonbutt's human wife had died and he remarried as part of an an alliance with one of the Orcish tribes northeast of Thrilingas; Kehl returned; brutally murdering the same guard on the wall that had seen him all those years ago in the same fashion as his first kill. Concerned with the remarkably similar pattern of gore the slasher had left behind, Aethelswith of Winebald's court put together a team of mercenaries to hunt down Kehl and dispose of him; refraining from using members directly under the court's command to keep the Tonbutt family name from being sullied once more; in fear of Sutere's current marriage alliance being torn to shreds. This team, as fate would have it, included Vellig Tonbutt, the product of the current Tonbutt marriage alliance and half-brother of Kehl by Sutere.

The mercenary team investigated Kehl's whereabouts, visiting the murder site, the team's warlock Tulles briefly seeing a dark figure wearing a deer-skull mask and rags within a guard tower and the team as a whole seeing the same creature up among the branches of a tree when they surveyed the entrance to The Redwood Forest; who disappeared abruptly both times upon further investigation. After this, the party decided to get a night's rest; during which Kehl claimed another victim, a city watchman named Alfred; picking him up from behind and forcing his legs into a bear trap the team's ranger Lamius had set up at the murder site to attempt to capture Kehl in, watching the innocent guard bleed out with a stare hidden behind his mask before severing his fingers.

Eventually, the party found this brutalisation, and a trail of fingers leading into The Redwood Forest leading to a seasonal tribe hunting camp dominated by a massive broch, or tower. As the rest of the party climbed up the broch, the phaethon paladin Aurea flew to the top and was ambushed by a dark figure wearing a deer skull mask and wielding a knife made of a massive mandible, who leapt from a tree branch, with Aurea barely escaping his grasp and sending him crashing into the roof of the broch; leading to the fight beginning. During the fight, it was revealed that this was Kehl, who was exceptionally resilient to injury and pain, even ignoring hits that sloughed his flesh off. Whether this was a consequence of the Mask of The Redwood Spirits and/or the blade he wielded is unknown. The fight culminated in the party wizard Sonata tackling him, sending him off the edge and dealing massive damage; though he was not killed until Aurea dive-bombed him with a smite-infused longsword and Sonata cast magic missile on his seemingly dead body.

After this, Vellig decapitated Kehl and finally snapped at the prospect of killing his half-brother, lashing out and fatally wounding Tulles, who would have died if he did not receive immediate medical attention form the rest of the party, before Sonata knocked him out and he was tied up until he had calmed down. Subsequently, Kehl's head and mask were presented to the court of Winebald to confirm his death; though the party held on to both as Tulles had an interest in experimenting with the two.

## Resurrection

Tulles, in the presence of Lamius and Sonata, and on the newly-won boat the party had been awarded for their work; reunited the mask with the decomposing head of Kehl out of an interest to see what information he could garner from the effects of one on the other. The results were suboptimal for the party and kingdom as a whole. The mask fused with the head of Kehl, becoming immovable, and quickly regenerated a body for him made of twisting, knotted bone-like roots; with this new body, Kehl lashed out and leapt of the boat, sinking out of sight into the river Wefan. This filled the requirements for Kehl to become a Saint of Fallidh'aog, Moon of Radiation and Forgotten Weapons, patron deity of the Craobhaile tribe who claim direct descendance from the trees of the forest, and by extension, their goddess.

## Godhead

The mage of Winebald's court, Scirhead, has been compromised by Kehl with no known cure. He is encouraging Winebald to declare war on The Redwood Forest and has been experimenting on various humanoids using an extremely rare, radioactive mineral for unknown reasons. Further, he has offered the party a place among the Craobhaile tribe of The Redwood Forest, whom he claims Kehl has taken Godhead over and the population of having seen unprecedented growth.

What will they decide?