Adam McCrory

## Adam

### Aliases

Cardinal of the Church of Desna, Father of the Children of Adam, High Priest of Rhan-Tegoth

### Relatives

Eve McCrory (sister), Ivor McCrory (brother-in-law)

### Affiliation

Children of Adam, (formerly Church of Desna, Trade District, Dragonsmouth)

## Physical description

### Eye color

Grey

*“For a moment everything was clear, and when that happens you see that the world is barely there at all. Don't we all secretly know this? It's a perfectly balanced mechanism of shouts and echoes pretending to be wheels and cogs, a dreamclock chiming beneath a mystery-glass we call life. Behind it? Below it and around it? Chaos, storms. Men with hammers, men with knives, men with guns. Women who twist what they cannot dominate and belittle what they cannot understand. A universe of horror and loss surrounding a single lighted stage where mortals dance in defiance of the dark.”*

-Adam McCrory

## History

The only one of the warlords born before the founding of the Dragonsmouth, the McCrory was one of two Androids created in an experimental forge in the far north. Adam and Eve, as they were called, were part of an experiment called “Project Genesis” which sought to create living constructs with souls who would be able to resist the madness of the great old ones. Adam and Eve were successful, but their creator - known to them only as “Prometheus” - perished not long after finishing his work. Created to fight the great old ones, the two settled in the north and later joined the host of the King, were they were amongst the first settlers in the city of Dragonsmouth. The first differences between Adam and Eve emerged here. Eve was the more human of the two, and found faith, becoming a priest and later high priestess of the goddess Desna. She was chosen by the King of Dragonsmouth as one of the members of the College of Cardinals, devoted to guarding the statue of Rhan-Tegoth. Eager to life a normal life, she even married a man - a fellow soldier from Godhunter’s Legion - named Ivor McCrory, whose last name she took. For his part, Adam was a reclusive creature, much more machine then man, skeptical of his sister’s faith and more concerned with uncovering ancient lore, with learning, and with teaching. He was his sister’s closest ally and supporter, and in time, Eve McCrory began to outlive her compatriots on the College of Cardinals and emerge as an elder statesman in Dragonsmouth. But power did not interest her, only faith and family, and so the colder and more cunning Adam found himself at the nexus of power in the Trade District. Events persisted until Ivor McCrory died of natural causes, plunging Eve into grief. What neither she nor her brother knew was that Prometheus had made them mortal. As neither Adam nor Eve could reproduce, they both assumed they had been made immortal, but the truth was that as soon as their soul departed to the Great Beyond, a new soul from the Well of Souls would enter their indestructible bodies. Eve began to undergo this process not long after her husband’s death, until she became completely inert. Beside himself with grief and terrified over the prospect of his own impending death, Adam turned to the unspeakable. He entered into a pact with the great old one Rhan-Tegoth, whose slumbering statue stood in the center of Dragonsmouth, tended to by the College of Cardinals until the day that the Godhunter managed to find a way to kill him for good. Knowing that the deity required sacrifice, Adam rounded up the best sacrifice he could find - a community of immortal Wyrwoods, whose immortality he indeed resented. Adam fed them to the god, but the ritual went wrong when one of them, Galar Insabatius, escaped. In light of this failure, Rhan-Tegoth did not make Eve immortal as Adam had wished, but cursed Adam and made him immortal instead, and returned back to his slumber. But the damage was done, and drip by drip, the citizens of the Trade District began to suffer from horrific nightmares initiated by the slumbering god. As for Adam himself, he faked his own death and took the place of Eve, for the two Androids were androgynous and resembled each other entirely. The passage of time and Adam McCrory’s assiduous efforts ensured that Dragonsmouth forgot that there had ever been two Androids. As for Eve, since that day, her body has been the host of another soul. She is imprisoned by McCrory, who is still keen to get his hands on another batch of immortal sacrifices - Galar Insabatius first among them - and bring her back. Now a cleric of Rhan-Tegoth, it has been easy for him to pose as the high priest of Desna, as his sister was.

## Personality

In the modern day, as the undisputed warlord of the Trade District, Cardinal McCrory does not so much exercise direct power as much as he wields influence and mortal authority. His only direct followers are the Children of Adam, those citizens of the Trade District who have succumbed to the nightmares of Rhan-Tegoth and are useful enough to the Cardinal that he chooses to string them along for his own ends. As far as he is concerned, McCrory only wants one thing - to bring Eve’s soul back, and to make her immortal. He does not care about the world, for that matter, for if the cosmos were naught but him, her, and empty void, he would be content. Perhaps it would even be ideal.