@Device(PostScript)
@Make(Report)
@Style(Spacing 1.5, Leftmargin 0.75 inch, Rightmargin 0.75 inch,
       SingleSided, Font = TimesRoman, Size 10)

@comment(Set these values appropriately for each character profile)

@string(name="Ezakiel Leah")
@string(realname="Deveral alle-Judah Marai")
@string(playername="Player Name")
@string(id="987332")

@include (/mit/abstract/Characters/Sheets/cover.mss)



@MajorHeading(@value(realname))

At last, the time has arrived, and all of your planning and plotting
is soon to culminate in your eventual, inevitable victory over the
weak-willed ignorant fools who have stood in your way for so many
years.  Soon they shall be forced to see the truth, that despite their
protests the strong will always survive, and those born to rule shall
achieve rule, for the good of all.

It has been nearly half a millenium since the Realm's first attempt to
place rulership in the hands of those who may best use it, those with
power.  The Church of the Trinity had the right idea, but failed to
realize that the sceptre of rulership may be held by only one hand.
By sharing it three ways they were weakened, and thus destroyed by the
peasants who feared and envied them.

Two decades ago came the second attempt, the Sceptre Uprising.  The
Order of the Sceptre, trying to prove that those who had the power to
take command were best suited for command, succeeded in proving they
were not so empowered.  They had a clearer notion of what was needed
to achieve a truly stable government where those best equipped to rule
ruled, but they erred in not consolidating their power rapidly enough.
They wove their net of deception and control over the King Rashid, but
failed to account for the power of their Heirophant, and the
possibility of betrayal from the Crown Warriors.   That was their
failing, and their error caused more damage to the Realm than even
they could ever have guessed, for the monarchy of Rashid was divided,
carved into separate niches of power, each filled by a newly elected
Peer.  Where before one hand stood strong, now five vie for power and
negotiate and argue.  Is it any wonder the Realm has been so weakened
that the Eastern devils have remained an enemy?  Is it any wonder they
continue to slay your people?

Of course, at the time there was little you could do.  You were then a
student, continuing the studies you had begun at the feet of the man
who was more than a father, more than a teacher; from the only man you
ever had deigned to call master.  This you learned from the shadowed
monk who called himself the Dark Master, who trained you in the
secrets of your body and the strengths you could find within it.
Further, he showed you how to see the true path of history, the one so
few seem to be able to follow.  He made you see the history of man,
written in blood, written in war, written in revolution.  But you were
a different person from your master; where he saw that history as a
battleground where a strong man could stake a claim, you saw it as an
inefficient legacy of barbarian ancestors, a legacy that you swore to
end.

For those who study history, and can truly see, some things become
apparent.  Five centuries ago, the power in the Realm was that of the
Gods, and they ruled through the High Priests, their puppets and
pawns.  And when the time came, they destroyed their pawns with their
own divine struggles, and nearly destroyed the Realm with them.  The
Realm was saved only by the arrival of the Godstalker, the first mage,
who learned to tap the unalligned power of Nairaphi's plane.  

The second great threat to the Realm was from the first Order of the
Sceptre, who were pawns of magic just as much as the priests were
pawns of the Gods.  In that war, the Realm was protected by groups of
men, the Crown Warriors, who learned the power of working together
in a group, despite the orders of their superiors. 

Now, the third great threat arises, from the Table of Peers, who have
become slaves to their own group structure and autonomy.  If the Realm
is to survive this challenge, it must be taken in hand by one who
relies on the power inherent in her own self, eschewing Gods and
otherworldly powers, superceding councils and committees.  And you,
Ezakiel Leah, Dark Master of your time, will be that woman.

There is a certain irony to your position, for the tools you shall use
to achieve that end are the remains of both the Order of the Sceptre
and the Church of the Trinity itself!  

The latter will be the most difficult, but the most crucial.  Among
the many things your master taught you was the lore of the M'kraan
crystal, an artifact forged at the dawn of time, attuned to the powers
of the Three Gods.  It was the M'kraan crystal, you learned, which was
the power behind the Church of the Trinity, a keystone to the power of
the Three Gods.  You learned, also, of the laws of sorcery that held
that a being can be bound forever by the power of a being of higher
rank, or one who holds a key to such power.  As a keystone to the
Three Gods, the M'kraan Crystal was stronger than any God, and could
thus be used to bind the gods themselves!

The more you studied history, the more it became obvious such a step
was necessary.  In small, subtle ways the gods have manipulated man
over the centuries, towards what end you are uncertain.  Hidden
records, ancient ruins, all point to the establishment of not one, but
several Churches within the Realm, each of which has been destroyed by
an agent of divine power.  Whispered stories, old-wives' tales,
legends long forgotten scream to you that the High Priests are still
abroad in the World, still seeking to further their gods' ends.  

Your master taught you, also, of the Artmaster, a post passed on from
generation to generation, the keeper of which was charged by the Elder
Gods to keep the crystal in hiding for all eternity, lest men discover
it and use its power against them.  For centuries, the Artmaster has
acted to oppose your master and his predecessors, who sought the
Crystal, so as to free mankind from the tinkerings of the gods.  And
it was your master who, nearly forty years ago, almost achieved that
goal when he discovered a clue as to the crystal's location and
tracked it to an apprenticeless Artmaster.  It was a great danger for
an Artmaster to be without an apprentice, to root him in the details
of reality -- without one, he became lost in the intricacies of the
Crystal and failed to defend himself adequately.  The Dark Master
killed him with the Dragon's Blood, a potent nerve toxin known only to
those of your line, and took the Crystal.  

With the power of the Crystal, he shared his triumph with you, but he
was not fated to see that triumph through to its conclusion.  Before
your mind's eye, you saw the flash of light that signalled a
teleportation, and within the cavern that housed the Crystal appeared
a robed mage your master recognized as Kalerege, the Great Wizard.
You were in his mind throughout that battle, and felt, rather than
saw, the ball of flame that ended your master's -- your @i(uncle's) --
life!  

You saw no more, of course, but even now you can reconstruct the
details.  Kalerege, seeing in the Crystal yet another source of power,
took it to his Castle in the Sky, where none could reach him, and used
it to remove himself from the affairs of mortals.  And he has
succeeded in that for more than thirty years, surely confident that
with both Masters of the Crystal dead, there were none to challenge
him.  But he is wrong, for you are now the Dark Master, and you will
make the wizard pay for his effrontery, and retrieve the Crystal, with
which you shall end the interference of the gods in the affairs of
men.  

You could have become bitter, feeling the loss of your only family and
the only man you ever respected, or the slipping through your grasp of
the tool you needed to free yourself and your fellow humans from the
shackles of divine manipulations.  But you had been trained well, and
sought refuge instead in action.  For nearly two decades you continued
your studies, strained your senses, sharpened your skills, and sought
to find the touch of the Crystal in the ethers.  But there was only
the one such touch, 34 years ago, and then the Crystal vanished from
your mind's eye.  And when you learned of the Order of the Sceptre's
ill-executed attempt to rule the Realm, and saw the danger of the
Realm's disintegration, you saw the pattern of history repeating
itself and knew it was time to act.

You found the remains of the Order of the Sceptre through fortune, in
the form of your childhood friend Arammas ello-Lene Casade, deprived
of their precious magics, with little difficulty.  They were a
pathetic bunch, holding to dreams of magic they could no longer use,
convinced that the power to control the Realm lay in that
unpredictable, otherworldly power of spellcasting.  Still, the
Sceptre's goal, to place in power those who were best suited (by their
flawed measures) to hold it, was concordant with your own for the
time, and so you decided to use them.  As the Crystal, keystone to the
Gods' power, would serve to free mankind of the Gods, so too would the
Order of the Sceptre, symbolic of magic's attempt to control man, be
used to free man of dependence on magic.

Soon, you proved the superiority of personal power over the power of
other worlds by defeating the Sceptreholder and taking his place.  As
leader of the House (a rather ironic position for a non-mage, you
always thought), you established a new takeover strategy, and began to
tie these broken and defeated old men back into an efficient fighting
force.

You realized that there was no need to @i(destroy) the House of Peers,
when you could far more readily use it for your own purposes.  Thus
Leannot Hiram became a useful agent, for with your help he managed to
attain the position of advisor to the Table.  Through him, you gained
a considerable understanding of the new Table of Peers and their
attitudes, and came to understand how they would lead, in the course
of history, to the Realm's dissolution.

Recently, under your orders, Hiram began a subtle campaign within the
Table to declare magic a licensed profession.  This is crucial to your
plans, for it will drastically weaken the Wizard's Conclave, currently
the greatest threat to your eventual victory, while placing the blame
on the Table.  Severing relations between the Table and the Conclave
will make both organizations that much riper for takeover, while
maintaining the Sceptre's secrecy.

Secrecy is very important at this time, for your organization's
intentions are well-known to all.  Only the common assumption that it
was destroyed has kept your enemies from banding together against you.
You have no intention of allowing that to be the case with the House
of the Sceptre.  Secrecy is your prime weapon.

However, on occassion an active hand is necessary.  As the
interminable and energy-draining debates began between the Peers, you
began to see a disturbing pattern.  Iared, it seemed, was the only one
of the Peers in favor of the magic licensing bill.  Jonah was
extremely ambivalent and officially neutral.  However, Seth and Enoch
were both violently against it.  This boded ill, since they were the
two most experienced Peers and carried a great deal of influence.  

Sometimes action has to prove the better part of valor, and so you
established a plan to remove the two threats to your goals, while
simultaneously advancing the Sceptre's position in another respect.
Hiram had become close friends with Chaim, Seth's son, whom it seems
had inherited much of his father's political savvy.  However, Chaim
had no love for most of the Peers, or for the wizards of the Realm,
and Hiram's manipulations have come close to bringing him over to your
way of looking at things.  

Thus, eradicating his father would serve your purposes quite nicely.
Of course, out and out murder would tip your hand very quickly, so you
had to be subtle.  You chose the Dragon's Blood, a nerve toxin that,
in small doses, results in rapid deterioration of the nervous system,
leading to senility at best, insanity at worst.  For a man of Seth's
age, this would cause no comment.  Hiram has been slipping Dragon's
Blood into Seth's meals for three weeks now, and the results have been
promising.  Soon, the Peers will have no choice but to remove him from
the Table.

Dealing with Mahalael Enoch was far more of a task.  He was too
shrewd to be attacked directly -- indeed, you have yet to discover
anything particularly useful about his past -- but being attacked
through his son, that was another matter.

Mahalael Jeremiah was clearly opposed to your ends, and was highly
placed in the Wizard's Conclave besides.  With him, you had to be more
devious, and dangerous.  Among the remembered spells of one of your
agents was a powerful and versatile spell of disguise, which could
bestow upon its subject the appearance, in every particular, of
another person.  Sight, sound, patterns of speech and action, magical
aura, all would be bestowed.  Even the mimicked entity's knowledge, to
some degree, would be absorbed by the subject.  The spell required a
great deal of power to cast, but less to maintain, and once cast was
nearly undetectable by other forces.

Using this spell to mimic Jeremiah was a considerable risk.  At first
you considered using it on Enoch himself, but there was too much
possibility of one of his fellow Peers seeing through the illusion.
Still, you probably would never have gone ahead with Operation:
Doppleganger if it hadn't been for the Peace Summit.  You discovered,
through Hiram, that the Peers were planning to vote on the bills
before the treaty was signed or vetoed.  Your timetable had to
accelerate.  

And so your agents kidnapped Jeremiah, and performed the disguise
spell on Anannim Isachar, probably the only other trustworthy and
competant agent you have.  He will have to be competant, for your time
shortage resulted in some shortcuts in the ritual that might interfere
with its full effects.  In particular, it is uncertain whether the
Sign of the Peers, a magical symbol that passes on to the eldest
surviving member of the family line upon the death or retirement of a
Peer, would pass onto Jeremiah.  Without a host to carry to, the
symbol remains in the ether.  You'll have to deal with that for the
mimicry to be useful.  And, of course, Issachar doesn't have a link to
the Wizards Conclave's Orb, but it shouldn't be too difficult for him
to convince the Heirophant to reestablish it, given a suitable story
about the link being severed while he was kidnapped. 

You currently have only those two agents on the Castle, and with the
teleport platforms nonfunctional it looks like you'll have to manage
with just those two.  Still, if you can complete your plans you will
have placed two of your agents on the Table of Peers, weakened the
Conclave, and shackled the Gods -- without a doubt, you will then be
able to usher in a new age of mankind.  You can think of no better
legacy to leave your master and uncle.

@newpage

@section(Items and Ablities)

You begin the game with the following items:

@begin(itemize)

Two doses of dragon's blood

Five shuriken

Several gold and silver nuggets

Two mythril chunks

One small ruby

One small emerald

A portable smelting apparatus

@end(itemize)


You have the following abilities:

@begin(itemize)

Hide Self

Compound Dragon's Blood

Martial Arts 4

Teach Martial Arts

Awareness

Knowledge of History
@end(itemize)

@include(/mit/abstract/Guides/lore.creation.mss)
@include(/mit/abstract/Guides/lore.m'kraan.mss)
@include(/mit/abstract/Guides/guide.realm.mss)

@section(Organizations)
@include(/mit/abstract/Organizations/house.guilds.mss)
@include(/mit/abstract/Organizations/house.sceptre.mss)