Mazdamundi Character Overview

When the enigmatic entities known only as the Old Ones came to the planet later known as Mallus, their will was conveyed through the toadlike mage-creatures known as the slann. These immortal emissaries, the first batch of which was personally crafted by the very hands of the Old Ones, were born from the purest of waters in five distinct generations, each of which was made for a distinct purpose in the grand design of the Old Ones. From the comparatively young Fifth Spawning, which still retain some measure of youthful vigor at eight thousand years old, each successive generation is older and stronger than the last, and rarer too for that - the slann have dwindled much from their lofty heights, and though not even the mightiest of mortal mages may even hope to contest a slann of the Third Spawning or beyond, it is rare, if ever, that those venerable titans stir from their slumber of ages.

It is this, more than anything, that makes Mazdamundi, eldest slann of the Second Spawning and ruler of Hexoatl, City of the Sun, an anomaly as of late - where the other mage-priests have largely retreated into centuries-long meditative comas, He Who Lights The World has awoken to exert his will upon the material plane more and more often in recent decades, and his current period of wakefulness has lasted several years with no signs of retreating. The fiery energy of the Old One Chotec fills Mazdamundi's veins, supposedly granting him his reddish skin, and it is with this vigor that he intends to end the long isolation of his people and set the Great Plan to rights.

As the oldest of the Second Generation, Mazdamundi was instructed for centuries by Lord Kroak, the first slann ever made, in the art of magic and his role in the Plan of the Old Ones. He was an able student, and studied diligently until the day when everything went wrong and the Old Ones fled the world. The Polar Gates, great silvery portals the Old Ones had constructed to connect their work site to other worlds, collapsed in mutagenic storms as the malevolent Ruinous Powers of Chaos, having discovered the vulnerability the Gates represented, sent a tide of daemons to sweep over the world. Mazdamundi joined his fellow slann in holding off the infinite legions of hell, smiting them with every magical discipline he had learned. The [[lizardmen]] were placed under siege for subjective eternities as the flow of time broke, standing alone against the unending tides of warpspawn. Eventually, the world was saved, but not wholly by the [[lizardmen]] - the elves of Ulthuan, who possessed more creativity and free will than the biological servitors that were the lizardmen, created the Great Vortex, an inverted storm of power that sucked magical energy out of the world, draining the essence the daemons of Chaos needed to survive. Though none now living know it, the only reason the elves had enough space to craft the Vortex was due to the lizardmen occupying the brunt of the daemonic legions. Though it has been forgotten, their stubbornness saved the world.

After the Vortex was erected and the Great Catastrophe officially over, the slann began to fall into centuries-long states of fugue, Mazdamundi included. Occupied by complex formulae, they would drift into deep states of contemplation and not interact with the world outside their temples for ages at a time, even as the once-proud empire of the lizardmen began to crumble around them. Mazdamundi too was afflicted with this malaise, until destiny conspired to raise him by the means of having a particularly stubborn Tilean mercenary, El Cadavo, construct a settlement named after himself unacceptably close to the temple-city of Hexoatl. Twice did Mazdamundi's skink attendants scurry to his side and ask permission to drive the warmbloods away, and twice did the elder slann give sleepy assent. On the third such awakening in less than a decade, Mazdamundi read the stars and foresaw that he would be disturbed yet again if he did not deal with El Cadavo. His temper roused, Mazdamundi raised a mighty war host and flattened the settlement of El Cadavo for a third time, then used his mighty magics to sink the land on which it had been founded into the mantle. He attempted to return to his contemplations, but found that his vigor had been raised by the exertions, and he could no longer sleep.

Mazdamundi is extraordinarily stubborn, even for a lizardman, and possesses an overwhelming force of focus and will that has allowed him to stave off the mysterious slumber afflicting the elder toad-mages. His resolve allows him to wield the devastating power of geomancy, a magical discipline that grasps the very fabric of reality and commands it to rearrange itself in tune with the will of the caster. Few slann are capable of grasping the art of world-shaping to its fullest extent, and none who still live have delved as deep into it as Mazdamundi has. Where an ignorant outsider may look at him and see only a fat, catatonic blob of red flesh shaped vaguely like a toad, reclined in slumber over a floating stone palanquin, and assume him to be a mere sessile figurehead, anyone with magesight who manages to get close to him (without being eviscerated by his watchful Eternity Warden) will see the true, multifaceted intellect furiously working at all hours of the day and night.