Grandmaster Rathe Lore

Grandmaster Rathe was the son of a blacksmith who taught him all he knew about the art of forging. However, he didn’t share his father's interest in large weapons and heavy armors; he preferred those that were small and light, like daggers and other blades that could be concealed on one's person. He also didn’t want to spend his entire life around the forges. They were hot, the hammers were heavy, and the work was hard.

Sometimes at the end of the day the townsfolk would build huge bonfires and fill the night with songs, dance, and laughter. It was these moments that Rathe enjoyed most, listening to exciting stories about the world beyond his little village.

Driven by a desire for adventure, Rathe eventually ran away. He had no plan, but he knew he wanted to travel the world and experience the kinds of stories that he had heard.

Eventually, however, he ran out of food, and at the next town he came to, he sold the only thing left that reminded him of home: a small dagger he had forged with his father.

He was surprised how easy it was to barter and profit. The watchman who purchased the dagger paid three times what it was worth. That's when Rathe decided what he wanted to do with his life. He would become a merchant.

He started with a small hut and a makeshift forge in the woods, but in time, he gathered the funds to build a master forge and crafted beautiful and sophisticated weapons, traveling to local fairs and markets to sell his goods. He gave up on his dream of seeing the world and instead focused on his profits.

One day, while traveling through the Crystal Forest on his way home from Shimmer City, he caught a young girl stealing food from his cart. She was dressed in rags and wore a necklace crafted into the likeness of a dragon.

Her name was Mina. When he asked about her dragon necklace, she couldn't remember where she got it. She was an orphan, with no friends or family, so he offered her food and shelter and, eventually, took her in as his own child. She became the most precious thing in the world to him and the daughter he would otherwise never have had.

When the mysterious illness known as the Burn spread across Khymeria, Rathe found himself one of its many victims. The disease manifested in different ways, but in his case it began by fogging his thoughts. Heliostones were known to suppress its symptoms, but when he asked a priest of the Silvershield for help, the man told him there were more important people than Rathe who needed these rare stones.

His condition got worse, and he could no longer focus on his work. At first, he made small mistakes but soon found himself mumbling nonsense and forgetting things. He couldn't sleep, and he began to hear voices that whispered all manner of perverse thoughts in his head.

For some reason, the Burn spared Mina. His daughter tried her best to calm and soothe him. She was always hopeful. She gave him food and medicine when he could no longer work. All these years, he had raised her and kept her safe, and now she did the same for him.

One night, the pain and the voices got so bad that Rathe could no longer take it. Their supplies were running out, and he was unable to provide for his daughter. If he was gone, maybe Mina could move on instead of sinking into ruin here with him.

The next time she left for the market, Rathe drew a knife, intent on taking his life.

But as fate would have it, his daughter returned early. He never knew why. Maybe she had forgotten something. In any case, she interrupted his suicide and tried to take the knife from him. The voices raged in his head. He flailed blindly at them and, in his madness, he unwittingly drove the blade into his daughter's stomach. She stared at him in shock as the blood and life poured from her.

Rathe did not know how long he had knelt on the ground. The room was dark and still. His glossy eyes stared at the only spot of color, the red blood on his hands. It was a stark contrast against the gray around him.

His eyes flicked up to the limp body on the floor. His daughter. His Mina. She lay unmoving, a knife protruding from her stomach. A hollowness settled inside of him. His spark of life, the thing that made every day special, lay dead before him by his own hand.

You are a murderer.

What have you done?

You should take your own life for this.

It was the voices again. This horrible effect of the Burn had driven him to the brink of insanity. Mina had paid the price. A sob escaped him, hot tears rolling down a face sunken from his sickness.

"My girl…" His whisper was hoarse and shaky.

He crawled toward her, barely noticing the hardness of the wood floor on his knees. In the flicker of bone-white moonlight coming through the curtains, Mina's necklace glimmered. It was a beautiful thing in the shape of a dragon. She’d had it since he first met her.

It's an ugly necklace. Destroy it.

Ignoring the voices, he shakily pulled the necklace over his daughter’s head and placed it around his neck.

Immediately the voices silenced. Blinking in surprise, Rathe glanced around the room as if the answers were hidden in the dark. Grasping the necklace, he ran his fingers over the scaled surface of the dragon, leaving behind a streak of Mina's blood.

In this new clarity, his depthless melancholy was replaced by a burning anger.

"The priest," he seethed.

If that priest had given him the Heliostone for the illness as he'd asked, Mina would still be alive. Rathe's hand clamped so hard around the necklace that the dragon's scales cut him, mixing his blood with Mina's on the medallion.

Rathe would see vengeance done for Mina's death. This priest would know the suffering Rathe felt. He would take everything from him.

Standing up, Rathe took in a deep breath and centered himself. He glanced the room to his collection of daggers, and then back to the body on the floor.

"My daughter," he said, "the night is young. And I have much work to do."

Rathe swore to himself he would never lose control and never feel powerless again. With his daughter's necklace, the Burn no longer controlled him. Instead, it gave him strength.

He began to plot his revenge.

He spent the next several years studying in the Library of Enlightenment and searching for the hidden laboratory that contained the ancient Khymerian book of wisdom known as the Kavyata. After years of fruitless searching, he finally found it. Within the Kavyata, he discovered a ritual that would bind his soul to a Heliostone and contain the Burn within it. He tore these pages from the Kavyata and left.

Rathe obtained one of these precious stones months later when his mercenaries raided a Silvershield convoy. At his forge, he fused the Heliostone to the emerald eye of Minas's dragon necklace. Next, he performed the ritual described in the Kavyata, binding his soul to the Heliostone, confining the Burn within it, and giving him the ability to harness the disease's power and use it against his enemies.

The necklace became his greatest weapon, but it was also his greatest weakness; if it was destroyed, it would also mean his death. Moreover, its effects were often much more powerful than he intended. Rathe vowed to only use it as a last resort.

He did, however, get his hands on the Silvershield Priest that once rejected his call for help and cost Mina her life. Using the water from the Whispering Pool of Visions in the Light Monastery, Rathe created a powerful potion that shrank the priest and, to this day, keeps him captive in a little jar as a reminder to never let someone else’s power stand in his way.

Using the knowledge he had gained during his studies in the library and the trading relationships he had created over the years, Rathe slowly built an underground empire and has been pulling strings from the shadows ever since. The dragon with an emerald eye became the symbol of his organization, and its members used it to identify themselves to one another.

After years of work, Rathe came to control most of the trades going in and out of Khymeria. He shipped tools, weapons, and fabric to Anumun. He smuggled Heaven’s Brew, Cromp, and other potions, beverages, and drugs to every corner of the realms. He employed bandits to rob his competitors and added pirates, spies, politicians, mages, and many others to his payroll. To this day, no one knows how far his network goes.

To secure his claim on Praetoria, he founded the M.G. Exploration Company; while the public has been led to believe that M.G. stands for “Mothrook Goathelm,” those within Rathe’s inner circle know it to be “Mina’s Glory,” named in memory of his daughter. Rathe also funded the Quillton Field University’s research expedition to Praetoria and gave one of its botanists, Doctor Alastair Lexington, a Heliostone in a necklace to ward against pirates and other dangers during the voyage.

Today, Rathe continues to operate from the shadows. If he wants someone killed or taken care of, he will find the right person to handle it for him. In the rare instance when someone doesn’t take him seriously, the fight ends very quickly. He is a master forgesmith with skills that far surpassed his father’s years ago. He wears inconspicuous weaponry and armory, hidden-blades, and reinforced clothes; even his cloak turned out to be impenetrable when a goblin tried to put an arrow in his back.

When the Chaos Legion came, Rathe knew he had to take a side… and he chose his own. Regardless of who wins this war, he plans to grow more powerful than ever from it.