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Mesandroth
Among the greatest wizards of his age, Mesandroth the Fiendlorn was an infamous necromancer and conjurer of demons who vanished abruptly over a century ago. Few believe that he is dead, if only because by the end of his career there was too little humanity left in him for death to have any dominion over his body or soul. It is more likely, most believe, that he wanders the Abyss or the teeming citadel of Pandemonium, perhaps someday to return to Bierilon.
Little is known about Mesandroth's early life, save that he was educated in the House of the Books in Amrali, one of the lowland cities of western Ardashir. It is speculated that his father was a woodcarver who fell on hard times and sold his son to the temple for money to keep the rest of the family afloat; while there is little hard evidence to substantiate this story, poor families in Amrali did occasionally sell promising children to be trained as scribes and clerks, and it is well known that Mesandroth displayed uncommon intelligence from an early age. Everything he did, he did well, and he was gifted with exceptional physical strength in addition to his keen mind.
He was also, however, utterly without empathy. While some children cringe from bloodshed and others are instinctively cruel, Mesandroth seems to have been coldblooded from the beginning; he saw nothing wrong with dissecting small animals alive to see how their bodies worked, and likewise saw no reason not to extend his studies to the beggars and street children of Amrali. Though his superiors tried to bar him from this practice, he regarded their prohibitions as weak-minded and continued it in secret, until he was caught and expelled from the House of the Books.
By that time, however, he had learned the beginnings of necromancy, and the expulsion merely turned him to an alternate course of study: bargaining with demons.
In some respects Mesandroth was an ideal summoner from the fiends' perspective: he had no scruples and no limits, and there was little he could not achieve once he set his mind to a task. In others, he was impossible: he was extraordinarily patient, possessed of an iron will, and had no vices that could easily be exploited. Untouched by lust, uninterested in dominion over others, and weakened by neither mercy nor sadism, he was utterly incorruptible beyond the limits he had already set. He gave countless others' souls to the Abyssal powers, but never bargained with his own.
Yet his victory would be counted a hollow one by most measures, and may well have been the most profound corruption in itself. In committing so many sins with clear eyes, Mesandroth forsook his humanity and became a fiend himself. All he accomplished with his steadfast will was to keep his soul in his own demonic clutches, rather than handing it to another fiend; in the end, the Abyss took it all the same.
By the end he had forgotten how to deal with humans; it is believed that this accounts for the horrors he unleashed upon The Belled Stag, among other deeds. The gentler subtleties of human emotion were lost to him; all he saw in the world was malice, ambition, and savagery, and he dealt with it accordingly. Increasingly isolated in his studies, he spent longer and longer in the Abyss, until finally he did not return.
Mesandroth's legacy in Bierilon, apart from the scars he left on the world, lies primarily in expanding the range and power of fiendish summonings. Most of his notes have been sealed up in, or destroyed by, the various goodly temples seeking to keep such knowledge out of dangerous hands, but it is believed that the greatest cache of Mesandroth's work still lies in his tower -- where it may be better protected than any of those temples could manage. That tower, a smooth spike of green-veined obsidian, lies at the edge of the Black Sands, just under the shadow of Cathilcarn.
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