Caerwarum

Caerwarum "The Defiler" was a wizard from the distant past who angered a number of deities on a very personal level. His last living appearance on the material plane was him fighting against Draeg Huntmaster, the upper echelons of both fey courts, and a rakshasa immortal.

## Biography

Caerwarum was born in an ancient city located in what is now Ligurwia. His family, descendants of the great wyrm Ariancorn, originally came from the Lung Empire, and were part of a silverbrow minority in the Tirsgailic city. He grew up in a monastery located in the centre of the city, and trained to hone his natural psionic powers alongside his magic. Soon after he reached adulthood, he married one of the noblewomen of the city. His wife though, was sickly, and was often bedbound. Caerwarum dedicated his time to research, hoping to find a way to empower and strengthen the body, developing an interest in blood magic. After a number of years, he theorised a ritual involving mass sacrifice of humanoids which could potentially grant the performer the power of the dragon. Before he could enact anything though, rumours spread about his work, and he had to flee the city.

He joined an adventuring party with Atli and Luvese, and went on to commit many war crimes alongside them, specialising in torture and intimidation tactics. Eventually, during a trip to Nicmark, he developed a special technique called Arcane Defilement. With this technique, he was able to further augment his spellcasting, going far beyond what anyone short of a god could accomplish. This power came at a cost though: the power he used for it was forcibly stripped from the natural world around him, draining the life from his surroundings. This drew the personal ire of a number of the gods.

When their party was travelling through the area now known as The Wastes, they were accosted by a rakshasa immortal calling himself Nalmun. This rakshasa was sent by Mazedan to capture Caerwarum and bring him to the depths of the pits. Violence broke out, and while the rakshasa was dealing with Atli and Luvese, a gateway to Vafheim opened up and a horde or archfey came out, members of both the seelie and unseelie courts sent by Vafrey herself to tear apart the defiler. While Caerwarum was dealing with them, Draeg Huntmaster himself appeared and entered the fight, hoping to take Caerwarum alive to stand trial for his crimes against nature. In the ensuing combat, Caerwarum stripped the life of the entire region to fuel his spells, condemning it to be forever known as The Wastes. In the process though, he burnt out his own life, becoming a t'liz. As the rest of the party were unconscious on the ground and Caerwarum severely injured, his defiling now greatly limited by his undead state, Nalmun managed to get a hold of him and shift him to the pits. There, Caerwarum, with his unique abilities, was offered a position as one of his demon lords, which Caerwarum accepted under the condition that he could return to Erah and bring his wife so she may live as his wife.

He returned incognito to his home, and found things not as he left them: his wife's keep was under siege by the locals, who were intent on killing her. Caerwarum soon learned that his wife had used some of his research notes to perform experiments of her own in an attempt to strengthen herself to the point that she could go herself to find her husband, and had inadvertently turned herself into a vampire in the process. When the townspeople had learned this, they deemed her to be a monster, and tried storming the keep. Caerwarum, seeing his wife under attack by these foolish mortals, finally surrendered, in his own mind, his mortality, and accepted his role as a demon lord. He performed a great spell that dragged the entire city through the depths of Erah, down to his layer of the pits, and suffused his domain with vast amounts of negative energy, straight from Derwo itself. The result was the immediate deaths and reanimation of the locals, and Caerwarum became the ruler of this damned place.

Caerwarum was reunited with his wife, and together they worked towards becoming stronger. Caerwarum managed to learn planar mechanics, and was able to link his layer of the pits to a number of locations across the planes, with his holdings becoming known as the Great Tomb of Caer Grym. He also recruited, reanimated, and otherwise created a number of powerful individuals to protect his domain, and then had his servants start spreading rumours of his domain on Erah, almost challenging mortals to come to him...