Manshoon

Manshoon is a powerful wizard and the last surviving member of the Hipraxes race which once ruled over a significant region of the universe. The Hipraxes were masters of cloning, and Manshoon is known for being the most cloned organism ever to exist. There are at least a billion Manshoons galavanting across the universe, all of them convinced that they are the most intelligent Manshoon, called Manshoon Prime or The Paragon. They try to prove this by killing other Manshoons, hoping to one day be the last Manshoon standing. At the same time, many Manshoons continue to clone themselves in the hopes that it will prevent their "Paragon Genes" from dying out when they are inevitably killed by another Manshoon.

## Biography

The original Manshoon was a transmuter wizard who worked aboard a Heian Construct called the Animator-Factory of Ionara, which was a research engine and storage facility for trillions of genetic samples. It was here that the first cloning device was built by Manshoon and the other researchers. When the factory fell under attack by Neogi marauders, Manshoon escaped in a small space pod with the cloning device and several pieces of lab equipment. They were intercepted by a Spelljammer ship and taken to one of the Sigil Cities, and started a new life as a wizard-merchant. This particular Sigil-City was largely controlled by a crime syndicate of Star-Vampires who demanded constant payments under threat of death. Under constant stress from their hard work and interactions with the syndicate, Manshoon became incredibly paranoid and fearful of death. This all came to a head when Manshoon's apprentice, an Avalokian called Zorko tried to kill him in his sleep to steal his cloning device. Manshoon was able to detect Zorko's approach and killed him with a disintegration spell.

In order to prevent his death, Manshoon used his cloning device to create four clones of himself. In the event of his death, a Psi-Warp Locus implanted in Manshoon's brain would transfer his consciousness to one of the clones and he could continue living. He sent these clones out on small space pods, hoping they would continue to drift throughout wildspace undisturbed. Unfortunately, Manshoon's communication with the pods was severed as they entered a cloud of phlogiston outside the city, causing Manshoon to mistakenly believe them to be destroyed.

Eventually, Manshoon did die. A stranger who sought to steal the cloning device sneaked his way into Manshoon's home and killed him with a disentigration spell. This stranger was in fact one of Manshoon's own clones; he had drifted back to the city, on the brink of death as their malfunctioning pod slowly ran out of oxygen. This clone assumed the position of the origional Manshoon, and made six clones to send out in probes for the same reason the origional Manshoon had: self preservation. At the same time, the other four origional clones had also made their way back to the city. One of them snuck into Manshoon's shop to steal the cloning device, killing the Manshoon that had killed the origional Manshoon with a disentigration spell. This Manshoon quickly made nine clones and sent them off in pods, realizing that the other Manshoons would be upon them soon. They escaped the city in a stolen Spelljammer ship, but were intercepted by another Manshoon, and were disintegrated.

The Manshoons kept killing each other, and every time the cloning device fell into the hands of another, more Manshoons were created. Eventually one of the Manshoons started calling themself Manshoon Prime. They took control of a space pirate ship and went on a quest to find the cloning device. After killing the Manshoon that owned it with a Disentigration spell, Manshoon Prime made thousands of clones, deploying them all over the universe from their ship. Eventually, the chaos caused by all these galavanting Manshoons caught the attention of an Obligatum unit (Obligatum II) from Intention Capital, who found Manshoon Prime, killed him and proceeded to finally destroy the cloning device that had caused all the trouble. This caused every one of Prime's clones to awaken at the same time. The Manshoon's now numbered in the billions, and many had already built new cloning devices. It was very clear that there would be no end to the madness, which had been dubbed the Manshoon Wars. Despite this, the Obligatum continues to hunt and kill Manshoons to this day.