Azorn the Unscathed's page

hobgoblin tyrant's crown (headband of alluring charisma +6/band of the stalwart warrior),
belt of physical might (Str/Con) +6,
vaulting boots (jaunt boots/boots of speed),
gloves of arcane striking,
amulet of natural armor +4,
juggernaut's pauldrons,
Azorn's Conquest (+3 keen furious flaming burst adamantine heavy flail),
handy haversack,
folding boat,
instant fortress,
ring of survival (ring of protection +4/ring of evasion),
ring of free travel (ring of freedom of movement/ring of sustenance),
fogcutting lenses,
versatile vest,
+1 silver handaxe,
lesser metamagic rod of silent spell,
2,000gp of granite and diamond dust

mundane gear (bedroll, blanket, hunting knife, waterskin, rope, grappling hook, hammer)

4,629gp

Azorn has lived and breathed his entire life in the same mountain range. Born to a small and unsuccessful tribe of hobgoblins, Azorn's early life was a constant struggle for survival, as he was expected to help battle the ogres with which his tribe battled for land as soon as he could hold a weapon. He knew from the time that he was very young that it was wrong that his tribe was made to suffer like this. Hobgoblins were better, more fierce, more cunning, than the ogres, the stone giants, and indeed the humans who dominated the mountains in which they all lived.

When he became an adult and a true warrior, Azorn went seeking for a weapon which would bring his people out of the muck and the gutter. He had heard of terrible magics constrained in an old ruin a week's hike from his home. He gathered up a small group of fellow warriors and hiked down to it. It was once the manor home of a wizard, now dead for thousands of years, though its magical defenses were still active. It was guarded by golems of all types, traps which hurled intruders into other planes of existence, and rooms which filled with elemental energy, scouring all life within. Somehow, Azorn and a handful of his warriors reached the center of the manor's basement after about a week of delving, though they lost many allies in the process. At the center of the manor was a furnace with a connection directly to the core of the Elemental Plane of Fire. The arrogant wizard had made this portal in order to power his appliances and heat his home, though the calcified and mummified corpses that littered the old manor testified that something apparently had gone wrong. Azorn too was arrogant, and strode directly into the furnace, unheeding of the calls of his allies. He felt a call to the portal, and he reached out to it, and it reached out back. There was a brilliant flash of light, and a whirlwind of fire, and Azorn's allies slammed the heavy metal furnace door on him to protect themselves while Azorn himself screamed.

Moments later the door melted off of its very hinges, and there in the now-empty room stood Azorn. Azorn the Unscathed, as he would now be called, had absorbed the power of the ancient device and now a fire glowed within him. With his now-exultant allies, he returned to his tribe. When there, he rallied them under his own flag and invaded the ogres' home caves. He obliterated them completely with blade and fire and expanded his tribe's home territory greatly in one swoop. The survivors were taken as slaves and directed to begin turning the savage caves into a mountainside fortress. A base worthy of a warlord such as Azorn and his soldiers. Meanwhile, the hobgoblin matrons of the tribe turned gladly to raising as many new and young warriors as they could.

Azorn enjoyed fifteen years of conquest after conquest, expanding his empire out to the edges of the mountains, scouring all who opposed him from the face of the globe. Slaves drove the hobgoblin engine of industry in underground strongholds and in valley farms, while hobgoblin armies harried the human kingdoms of the plains. Azorn and his forces were a name and a concept to be feared throughout the land. Azorn married and fathered children of his own, as all tyrants are wont to do. Though he had a harem, his favorite wife was the witch Dola, a hobgoblin changeling of uncertain parentage, and she accompanied him on his last raid. When the hobgoblins arrived at the walls of the great city of Pari, it was suspicious that its defenders were absent, but when they broke through the gates to find the city inundated by a mysterious smoke filled with powerful undead, it only strengthened the goblins' bloodlust. Finally, opponents stronger than the thin-skinned humans of the plain! Azorn gladly leapt into combat with them, and took little heed when his soldiers began to falter and then fall under the effect of the miasma. When he himself began to weaken, it was already too late.

Dola cast a spell to encase him in ice just as a monstrous devourer began to come for her. The spell took effect, whisking him away from his lone wife and to a far-away land. Alone and weakened, Azorn took a few days to recover before finding a nearby human who would tell him where he was. When he got his bearings on a map, he used shadow walk to return to his mountain fortress, but he was too late by the time he arrived. His homelands were inundated with the strange necromantic miasma, his soldiers turned to mindless undead warriors, his harem ripped to shreds by unliving claws. Though he slaughtered a great many undead, Azorn was alone and was forced to retreat back into the Shadow Plane. He returned to civilized lands soon after to find that this was a worldwide problem, and that the reach of the miasma was widening every day.

His teeth grinding into nibs, Azorn vowed to see the end of those who created the mist, and immediately joined the call for any "heroes" who were going for a last-ditch attempt to end it. He would have his revenge, or he would die trying.