Geiger

*"This is shod- shod- ech- shoddy work. Try getting it right the first time and use a thrastic crystal array next time, fool."*

 Geiger is a brilliant, if incredibly unstable mage, alchemist, and scholar. Over 700 years old, he holds a colorful history as a tyrant, a scholar, and a lunatic.

## Early life

Geiger was born to a poor family in a small village. His mother died in childbirth, and his father was distant and cold, eventually selling him into service to provide for his other children. At the age of 6, Gieger was taken into a Tannery and forced to work in horrific conditions, but the brutality of it awoke his magical abilities. By age 7, the Tannery wanted nothing to do with this frightening child sorcerer who could light people on fire with but a thought, and sold him to a traveling mercenary group. There he met his father figure, a wizard named Ciaphas, who while demanding and hard, was not unkind, and for the first time in his life, Gieger was happy. Ciaphas kept Gieger supplied with arcane texts, and Gieger consumed them with voracity, quickly outpacing Ciaphas in skill, to the point where Ciaphas became afraid of the prodigy. Sensing something was different about their relationship, Gieger pushed his mentor to explain his distance, to which the old man said the boy frightened him. Their relationship quickly soured after that, and Gieger put himself completely into his work, becoming a commander in the Mercenary Army.

## Mercenary Career

Quickly rising through the ranks, Geiger used whatever means necessary to secure promotion after promotion, until he had an army working for him. The mercenary army became a traveling hoard, sacking any town with a library in search for arcane texts. The name of Geiger was hated, feared, and despised. Still, he found himself greatly unhappy, advancing his academic and arcane skill did nothing to ease the pain of his mentor falling out. He began studying alchemy, hoping to find some chemical means to ease his pain, and after much experimentation with various alchemical drugs, he discovered one that would change his world view completely, a dangerous tonic that could completely reshape a man. Having a very nihilistic view of the world at this point, he took it.

## Life as a Scholar

The drug changed him at his core- he went from being a cruel warlord that would do anything to achieve knowledge to a kind philanthropist. Suddenly, all the pain and suffering he had caused in his life wracked him, and the guilt left him in a deep depression. He disbanded the Mercenary group, and converted those who chose to remain as an order of scholars, healers, and builders for those in need. During this time, he rebuilt the cities he destroyed, raised money for the families of people who he had killed, and built Universities, staffed with scholars trained by him. Statues were erected of this warlord who had suddenly changed his way and become a famous philanthropist. Despite his odd appearance- his hair had gone prematurely white, his face weathered and scarred from alchemical experiments gone wrong, and his eyes being wide and gaunt, he had no shortage of suitors seeking his favor, although he turned them all down. In turn, he never seemed to fully let anyone into his shell, seeming to keep a calm, cool veneer over his person. The one exception was Ciaphas, now an old man, who Geiger would visit often. The two had rekindled their friendship, and as they did, Gieger seemed to become happier. They were often seen playing Chess or having shouting matches about arcane theory in Geiger's garden. Gieger continued his research, including work on the Trembal Core, a gemstone that would grow within a gall of a very rare tree. To obtain seeds for the tree, Gieger had to travel long and far, and when he finally did, he found his only friend had passed away.

Geiger fell deep into the a darkness agan, and decided he had done enough of this. He took the drug once more, and it changed him once again, in a profound way.

## Lunacy

The potion drove him mad, shattering his thoughts. He abandoned most of his projects and began frequenting bars, pulling mean spirited pranks, and not caring about anything. At one point he, for a bet, started the highly fanatical order of Nestor that was later confined to an Island due to its fanaticism. He continued working on the Trembal Core project, but after realizing it would take hundreds of years to complete, he built a suspended animation system and froze himself in time. He also started spelling his name is different fashions during this time, including such spellings as Giger, Geiger, Gieger, and Nurf.

## Awakening

A party of adventurers woke him from his stasis and revealed that the tree had been destroyed. Angry that this had occurred, he determined that the culprit of this crime must be stopped. He went on to help the party defeat the mad wizard turned brain-network turned living Skumble, and then proceeded to begin work on an airship to explore the world.

## Airship

He commanded an Airship with a large crew, and they traveled to the East. He eventually encountered the remains of his old Nestorian cult, and while they were cautious about him now, he managed to subdue them and keep them at bay. After an attack by storm giants that had been disturbed by weather magic occurring about the ship, they went into the library basement of the cult, where they discovered a series of cave networks.

Still, during this time, certain signs pointed to a specific prophecy occurring, so he, using a long forgotten spell, sent a message to his former self to make a few key changes, which caused a few members of the party to not be on the ship when it left.

After he had secured that, he traveled deeper and deeper into the mines, and discovered an ancient incredibly complex artifact. The party left him there to study it, and he built a simple shack and laboratory, which is where he has been since.

### Post Airship

Geiger returned Casey and Lilith to the mainland, using a long forgotten timeline alteration spell he discovered in the Nestorian temple, as he had a really bad dream saying that they needed to be back on the mainland. After a while of leaving them to it, he left his underground shack and helped them with various endeavors to stop Tiamat from being summoned. During that process, he altered the Cryomancer's throne to make the next ice age less terrible, but in doing so he accidentally made a group of void worshiping outsiders aware of the planar location of the party, who expressed interest in devouring it. The avatar of the void worshiping called out Geiger by name, but he denied knowledge of any of that.

Afterwards, Geiger vanished. Rumors of him setting up shop on an island to the south began to proliferate, with stories of a beautiful utopia, full of excess food and riches being the most common reports. Later came reports of leaving people on the island, only to return to find them happy and vacant, their only distinguishing feature being a new obsession, whether that be clocks, spiderwebs, or goldfish. Geiger was reportedly seen once on this island, looking much more distinguished.

Geiger was also sighted above Fourspire Island and other locations, driving a sled led by mechanical wolves, declaring a Merry Solstace to all, and distributing 'presents' to a number of households. Nearly all of these presents were arcane components, with no instructions or context, and on several occasions resulted in fires that burned down houses, although thankfully no casualties were reported.

### Recent Years

In recent years, Geiger has become more of a recluse, having abandoned most of his research to focus on writing fanfiction of the popular manga, Autumn High Memories. He also developed GeigerBuddy to keep artificial intelligence from networking, his own cryptocurrency called GeigerCoin (which, thus far, nobody actually knows what it is, save that it uses a theoretical Mephendi Tax Code formula called the PunChain), and a portable computing book called a Geigerbook. However, as many of his more dangerous research has been abandoned, scavengers and bandits are starting to loot his labs, attempting to steal high tech items to sell on the black market. Depending on if he remembered to activate security measures, this can result in a quick demise or riches, and a market being flooded with dangerous weapons-grade artifacts.