Antonio Salieri

"Only an idiot slays an egg laying Hen"

- Politician (Master)

**Antonio Salieri** ( [anˈtɔːnjo Zaˈljɛːri]) was an infamous Dungeon Keeper and first Feudal Lord to unite the countries of Vonderwald under a single person's rule. He perished in the attack on Avatar Island together with many other Dungeon Keepers in the chaos following the battle.

## Abilities and Skills

Salieri was one of the most long-lived Keepers to ever walk the earth. Powerful and dangerous, not for marital skill or magical ability, but for his tactical mind and skillful application of politics.

Over the course of his lifetime he developed new kinds of blood rituals and even a modification the Dungeon Heart that allow for easier Claim of territory outside of the Dungeon.

## Personality

While ruthless and without mercy, Salieri was an odd one among Dungeon Keepers because of his readiness of for selling short income gain for a longer sustainable profit over time.

He also quite partial to good literary works, especially tragedies, which he enjoyed reading while sipping on fine wine (during his breaks from his administrative duties).

## Biography

### Childhood and growing up

Antonio Salieri was born as the only son of Zagraf Salieri a small time Feudal Lord, who controlled a small castle near the center of the country named Burgentall.

Salieri was blessed with a curious mind since childhood, spending his days in the castle library, reading and devouring any scrap of information he could find. In this he was a stark contrast to his father, who was a typical short-sighted brood of a Feudal Lord, bleeding the people he controlled for short-sighted gain. Once the castle run out of books and materials for Antonio to study he turned his attention to the outside world.

Salieri spend his young adulthood training with the sword, hours riding, warfare and generally exploring the dominion of his father, and on occasion venturing in to other parts of Vonderwald. All this in preparation to one day take over the rains from his father.

### Becoming a Dungeon Keeper

Sadly Salieri's duty full preparations to become a future Feudal Lord where misinterpreted by his father as his son trying to usurper him before his time was over.

Zagraf imprisoned his son and threw him in to the castles dungeon, paranoid and afraid that if he wouldn't act first his son would kill him soon. For the first week of his imprisoned Antonio was deeply depressed and hurt by his father lack of trust, but soon enough after realizing that his father wouldn't change his mind and pardon him, this hurt was reforged in to anger and hatred, and a resolve to escape and take what was his by birthright. Thankfully Salieri remembered some old drawing of the castles dungeons that indicated the existence of a hidden corridor next to his cell. Antonio spent weeks whittling down the mortar until he finally managed to create an opening through which his emaciated body could fit. Following the tunnel deep underground he came across not an exits, but what appeared to be an empty room with a stone monument in the middle. Unbeknownst to him, Salieri just stumbled into the dormant Dungeon Heart of one of his ancestors.

Frustrated with his apparently unsuccessfully escape Antonio started pounding on the monument, so hard that it cracked his skin spilling blood. With a loud bang the stone plate cracked and malevolent dark energies surged through Salieri's body as the awakened Dungeon Heart' superstructure began to rise before his eyes. With its first beat Antonio knew that things were going to change.

### A new Feudal Lord and Dungeon Keeper

With the power of the Heart behind him Salieri freed himself completely, and in a display of fateful irony killed his father and overtook the castle Burgentall, taken the title of Feudal Lord and the lands with it.

Originally satisfied with just the lands which where his birthright, Salieri now a Dungeon Keeper was filled with ambition and a need to grow in power. Taught by his father a most excellent lesson in treachery and backstabbing, skill full manipulation and treacherous tactics would become Salieri's basic tools when conquering neighboring lands.

### Salieri’s Unification Crusade

First conquest where an easy question of numbers and proper war doctrine which Antonio has been mastering since childhood, once his lands grew to far, his power was noticed by other Feudal Lords and Dungeon Keepers of Vonderwald.

This lead to a rare instance of multiple Feudal Lord working together, united with the goal of crushing Salieri before he could amass more power. Thus started the decade long campaign of Keeper Salieri to unify Vonderwald.

Being a gifted strategist and tactician Salieri managed to win most of the battles he fought in, and through his Machiavellian manipulation he was able to weaken or brake alliances forming against him if they threaten to grow to powerful.

With the growing territory the administrative and strategic challenges of controlling such vast lands became apparent to the Keeper. To deal with that problem Salieri modified one of the basic abilities of all Dungeon Hearts. Through specially developed rituals involving massive blood sacrifices Salieri managed to couple the process of conquering new lands with putting a Claim on them. Consequently not only could he now use his Keeper Abilities such as Keeper Sight throughout all of Burgentall, but the process of Claiming new territory became easier and faster. This gave him superior and almost real time intelligence and information about newly conquered lands and their surroundings, thus giving him an enormous strategical advantage. In the following decades he refined the process and made it an integral part of his latest design of Dungeon Hearts until one day the knowledge was stolen and leaked to other Keepers. Nowadays nearly all Dungeon Hearts use his modified system to calculate Claim.

### A united Vonderwald

With his new powers developing Salieri finally managed what no other Lord and Keeper before him managed, he conquered all of Vonderwald and installed himself as it's King and first monarch. To not be to reliant on a blood fueled ritual Salieri also established an administrative section with local counties and Stewards ruling over them, all subservient to him. The tradition of monarchy and system of rule he created those days, exist in Vonderwald till this day, even under the current Light rule.

### The Tragedy of Keeper Salieri The Wise

For the following two hundred years Salieri was the undisputed ruler of Vonderwald, controlling the land with an iron fist but never with the mindless bloodlust usual to Dungeon Keepers. His people suffered but didn't die, paid horrendous taxes but never starved, blood rituals where conducted but he population numbers remained stable.

Chances were high that Salieri would still be ruling Vonderwald till this very day if it weren't for his greatest mistake, he relied to much on Vonderwalds natural geographic defenses and didn't pay enough attention to Keeper activity around the world. Unbeknownst to him the insane Keeper Mukrezar managed to create an almost unprecedented alliance of nearly a dozen Dungeon Keepers. In a private meeting between Salieri and Mukrezar – no doubt involving blackmail, bribery, and extortion – the Wise Keeper decided to join the madmen's crusade, even taking a strange kind of liking to the pink haired Keeper. Rumors circulated of a short affair between the two, and of them sharing their mystical knowledge among one another.

And so, Salieri joined in the assault on Avatar Island , his forces some of the most powerful and well organised on the Evil side of the battle. His outstanding performance during the battle and the immense amount of death and losses he caused in the lines of The Light where also sadly his undoing, since he draw the attention of the Avatar of Light himself. The Champion of Light had to focus all his attention and strength on striking down and killing Salieri, giving Mukrezar the opening he needed to unleash his secret plan, sealing the fate of the battle.