Damien Strakos

Strakos Barony in northern Mantua is a bitter place. The soil is poor, and the Black Peaks tower over all, their shadow casting a miasma over the land. Nightmares come out of those mountains, come out to children and kill livestock. And yet the people endure. They endure because they are foolish, ignorant, stubborn, and prideful. I should know, since I was born there.

My father was Simony Strakos, baron. People said he was a great fighter and an accomplished general. I say he was a drunken oaf who beat his wives and loved only his first two sons. Unfortunately I was the third and only barely legitimate by Mantuan law, being born of the second wife. Thus I was largely left to my own devices as a useless third son as a child, which is probably why I chose to turn to magic.

Magic is a wonderful thing. It's a step to power that doesn't involve fists and fighting, but guile and cunning. More importantly, it is far more powerful than even the greatest physical skill at arms. After all, the hags that so terrorize the countryside in Strakos are frail and old, but even the most powerful of my father’s men cower in fear when they come.

I started to study to become a wizard at age 13. Mostly I started as an act of rebellion, but the study became a fascination in its own right. I studied what I could in secret, for the unwritten rules of Strakos were that mages were not to be tolerated. After all, the common folk still believe in fairy tales where the wytch-king Atheros blights the land by hoarding the storms in the Black Peaks and sending his hags to punish the people of Strakos for their sins.

As I matured, I gained more knowledge. While my brothers were learning arms, I was in the library or out investigating the hag abductions. By the time I was 16 I could create a few effects, and by the time I was 18 I could change the color of water. By the spring of my 20th year, I had mastered a few spells and was becoming more and more interested in the hags.

One day in that spring, I was investigating the site of a particularly gruesome abduction when I spotted in the dirt a small tarnished glint. I dug around in the blood-soaked dirt, thinking it was odd that peasants would even have anything that glittered, much less after they had all been slaughtered. You can probably imagine my astonishment when I pulled up not only a tarnished copper ring, but the finger of a hag! I cut the ring off and cleaned it, excited to finally study an artifact from the hags. That night I wore it to perform a ritual, a standard summoning.

I don't know how or why, but this small, tarnished copper ring was drawing me to it. That night, as I was performing my first major ritual, a storm cloud formed from nowhere, and a massive bolt of lightning struck me. Everything went white, but when I came to in the morning I was surrounded by terrified peasants and soldiers, laying in a crater on my back. The old tarnished copper ring was gone, replaced with this (see description). You wouldn't happen to be able to read this inscription, would you? No, I thought not. Anyways, I was taken to the dungeon that morning and exiled that afternoon. All I had was my spellbook and this ring, but I managed to secret a few other things away on my way out.

I came to the coast because I heard there is work here and you lot have a healthy respect for mages and magic. I'll do anything what needs doing so long as it doesn't mean hitting something with a sword.

Ring Description:

Bright shining copper finish with a large amethyst set in the top.  Think a class ring, but more smooth. There are runes in an unknown language that surround the stone setting and the ring counts as a spellcasting focus, but only if the caster fiddles with the stone of the ring, or otherwise touches it with a free, unused hand.