Paralad

Paralad's 800 folk suffer the rule of the appalling Count Mardral Ishenvan. Mardral is one of Ivid's botched attempts at creating an animus; one of the initial guinea pigs when the process had not been perfected. Unfortunately, Mardral's mind was shattered, and he is virtually autistic. In his fortified mansion house north of the village, Mardral has a huge tabletop model of Paralad and tiny stick figures of everyone living there. These enable him to re-enact battles he has taken part in (very few) or heard of. The majority of figures represent the local villagers.

Unfortunately, during these battles some of the figures break. When one does, Mardral at once orders the execution of the villager represented by the figure. His troops try their best not to carry these orders out, since sometimes the victims are their relatives, but of late Mardral has ordered the victims brought to him so that he can see that they are executed in the right way. Horribly, Mardral has them tied to great wooden stakes which are then smashed in exactly the same way as the stick models were. As a result, many villagers already have fled, and half of Mardral's troops have deserted also. The rest only remain out of fear, or until they have acquired enough gold to pay for a berth on a barge headed far away—to Jalpa, perhaps, or to Sarndt and on to Nulbish.

Visitors (save for rivermen) had best beware: the soldiers here are desperate to rob anyone with significant amounts of money. If Mardral should espy the visitors, he will regard them as an invading army and construct stick models of them for his stick villagers to fight. He might order his own troops to round up such intruders and visit his home to play wargames with him. If he loses, he will sweep the figures from his table in a rage. If any figures representing the PCs are broken, Mardral will expect that the PCs in question offer themselves up for execution as a matter of etiquette.

DM Note: Mardral has the profile of an animus, save that he lacks the special powers of regeneration, command, fear, and has but a 17 Strength. He suffers triple damage from any silvered weapon which successfully strikes him—a side-effect of what was done to him.