The (Potential) Patron

Lord Urdurel:

Undisputed ruler of Stowan, Lord Urdurel was a very young, extremely ambitious and hyper successful Warlord, invading all the lands around him and rapidly expanding his realm. Only when he met his first wife, Dulcetta, did his attitude change, his heart soften and peace reigned for the first time in over a decade. Together, they retreated back to the capital city of Cotis, in the very heart of the Kingdom.

Their Daughter was just fourteen-years-old when beautiful Dulcetta fell ill to a mysterious fever and died, despite every possible treatment, blessing and magical remedy offered. 

A year later Lord Urdurel, ‘coincidentally’, met his second wife; Hetzabah and was instantly (and literally) enchanted by her and she fell pregnant within a month of their marriage. Hetzabah gave Lord Urdurel a son and a powerful ‘flamberge’ bastard sword and encouraged him to wage war once more, and for a time, he did but he eventually began to grow suspicious of her motives. When his first child; Lamenta was murdered in her bed, he ordered Hetzabah’s capture but she escaped and managed to claw out Lord Urdurel’s left eye in the skirmish. 

Sending out a dozen of his most loyal and trusted Captains, with orders to ‘stop at nothing’, the thirteen Witches were quickly killed, captured or driven out and with them, all of their evil thugs, thralls and followers. 

Hetzabah herself was eventually caught but even then, Lord Urdurel couldn’t bring himself to fully overcome her enchantment and order her death, even though she herself had ordered hundreds, if not thousands of rebels to be burnt alive in the years before by her personal executioner. Instead he commissioned the Gnomes of Mount Snaffang and a conclave of Human Wizards to bind her in his first wife’s tower and hide it away somewhere that it would never be found. 

It’s fifty years later and now he’s practically ancient by Human standards, yet Lord Urdurel, in spite of the physical failings that come with advanced age, has made amends for his past crimes, returned lands, forged strong alliances with the surviving nobles and surrounding kingdoms and still, solely and unchallenged, rules the realm that borders the untamed; Fey wilds.