Dauriel Versus Amalchi (History)¶
Spoilers Ahead!
This entire page is meant as DM information. If you're not the DM, you should probably not be reading this!
Thirty-five years before his birthday party, Dauriel Aldarion was traveling through the town of Cauldin's Point to his nearby adventuring guild west of town when he was approached by a woman who asked him for his help. Slung around her neck and supported in her arms seemed to be a child, closely cradled to her chest. She explained that she followed her husband down a cave, which lead into an underground complex. There, she saw him and four others perform a blood sacrifice around the naked body of a man.
Dauriel followed the woman to where she entered the cave, but before he entered, he could already feel a dark and evil energy coming from within. He turned around and told the woman that he'd be back soon and went off to gather his party. Once he and his party returned, the woman was gone, but the cave was still there and radiating energy.
Unbeknownst to him, the woman was the deity Bhreia in disguise as a human woman, trying to stop her brother 🔐 Amalchi from doing what he was about to do.
The party entered the cave and after a few hours breached into an underground complex, just as the woman had explained. There were old structures, much like buildings, carved into the stone. At its center was a spire that lead upward towards the surface. The party concluded that they were somewhere right underneath Cauldin's Point.
They went up the spire and found a man inhabited by a powerful entity. The man warned them to stay away and leave him be or he would have to fight them. The party sensed the entity's strength, and everyone but Dauriel decided to leave to get backup. Dauriel felt betrayed by his party and decided to fight Amalchi alone. Amalchi laughed and struck him down hard enought to almost kill him. Near death, he knew he had only one trump card left. A type of necromancy he learned off the books while studying lichs. He would trap part of this entity's life force in an orb, but casting the spell would take a heavy toll. As he cast it, even though they were far down the spire already, his fellow party members felt their energy draining from their bodies and began running away. But it was too late. As they exited the bottom of the spire, they fell to the floor as their life force was drained. They crawled on their hands and feet as they slowly wasted away and died face down in the dirt.
Dauriel had nearly enough life force gathered to complete his spell, but had to use some of his own to complete the spell. He focused the collective life forces of his party and himself and was able to split the conscious and unconscious parts of the entity and trap the conscious part in an orb that acted as a prison. It wasn't perfect, but it would hold the entity until Dauriel could figure out what to do with it.
The threat was neutralized and the body of the man who was inhabited by the entity fell to the ground. Alive, but unconscious. Dauriel was weakened, but managed to bring him to the surface where he awoke. He had no memory of anything that had happened in his life with the sole exception of knowing his own name: Moreus.
As Dauriel nursed Moreus back to health in town over many weeks, they fell in love. Dauriel decided to leave town, but when he suggested this, Moreus objected. Somehow, he felt connected to Cauldin's Point and didn't want to leave. Dauriel feared that there was some kind of physical connection keeping Moreus there. Maybe it was a side effect of the lich-inspired necromancy spell that he used. Either way, he was in love, relented, and they stayed in town.
Over the years, they purchased the land that contained the cave leading to the subterranean complex and built a mansion on top of it. This way, Dauriel could stay closeby and monitor the strange magic that bound his now husband to this place.
Having used much of his life force, Dauriel was forced to retire from adventuring and relinquish control of his company over to his second in command.