Paen the Mad

In 954 GD, savage attacks were taking place on Galefridish farms, leaving the farmlands burned to the ground, with the mutilated corpses of humans and animals strewn about. Rumors spread that Paen the Mad had returned. Paen the Mad - once a half-elf, now a gruesome monster - and his roving covey of horrific creatures - once his adoptive family - were banished from the world and into the Shadowfell in 758 GD by Heradric Dreth'dor. It is unknown how Paen managed to escape the Shadowfell and re-enter the mortal world.

## Background

Paen was a half-elf orphan, adopted by a family of Folkhardish farmers. Unfortunately for him, his family was… well, not entirely mentally stable. They treated him like a pet, or worse, keeping him locked up in a cellar and feeding him table scraps.

Paen began to develop arcane powers as he grew into adolescence, and he delved into the dark arts. He kept this hidden from his deranged family, but they eventually realized what he was doing when he came to adulthood. Appalled that Paen was using black magic, his family decided to kill him. But they decided that he first deserved to suffer, because apparently the appalling living conditions he was forced to endure was not quite enough.

They began by binding his arms to his sides by tightening numerous belts over a cloak. They wrapped a chain around his neck like a noose, tied him to a horse, and dragged him around their farm for hours. But he didn't die. So, his uncle hung him with that chain, from a rafter in their rickety old barn by the neck. Yet he still didn't die. So they decided to leave him there to starve to death. His uncle was found on the morn, strangled to death with a chain wrapped around his body.

Paen hung in the barn for weeks, moaning in agony. The patriarch of the family eventually sent his twin daughters, two sweet little girls with a taste for humanoid flesh, to check on Paen. Crows had pecked his eyes out, and a pair of mangy dogs, locked in the barn with him, had chewed off his legs below the knee. The dogs lay dead, but Paen still lived.

The Patriarch eventually went to check on Paen himself, and found his daughters gnawing on Paen's legs. The twins rapidly became ill and died, and the Patriarch, in his fury, cut off Paen's face. With a knife, he cut through the side of the mouth, up through the cheeks, following the temple, and towards the back of the head, taking off his face and scalp all in one piece of skin.

Days later, the family stitched Paen's face back on, because he was far too frightening with his fleshy skull exposed. They sewed his mouth shut to muffle his incessant moaning.

When winter rolled around, Paen's two adoptive brothers buried him under the snow one frosty night. Come morning, the brothers were found dead in their beds, frozen to death.

The Patriarch was furious. He ordered Paen's cousin, the family's butcher, to execute him. As the butcher set Paen's neck upon a tree stump and raised his massive cleaver, he chopped the blade into his own neck, again and again and again until he had decapitated himself.

The patriarch then set a pyre burning, hoping to immolate Paen. But before he could throw his son into the fire, he himself fell in, and burned to death.

All those in the family who died then rose from the dead as creatures as macabre as Paen himself, and the grisly lot began to roam the countryside, slaughtering farmers and burning their land.

## Paen's Covey

Paen's covey consists of:

* The Hounds, whose horrid baying heralds the arrival of the covey.
* The Hangman, who strangles his victims with his chains.
* The Twins, whose thirst for flesh is unquenchable.
* The Brothers, who bring with them the chill of death.
* The Butcher, who delights in dismembering his victims with his enormous cleaver.
* And The Patriarch, perpetually on fire.