[center][h1][color=662d91][b]MARGOT DESDEMONA[/b][/color][/h1]
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[img]https://i.imgur.com/Xohvfmq.jpg[/img]


[b]Also know as the ‘Black Tanoness’, the ‘Blind Tanoness’, the ‘Sightless Sorcerous’, and the ‘Unseeing Mistress’.

To the orcs she is Glûm-Meruh, the ‘Gloom Woman’.[/b]


[h2][color=662d91][b]THE LEGEND[/b][/color][/h2]

The Legend of the Black Tanoness is well known among both men and elves. The story first dates back several decades ago when Tanon Erik Desdemona died of an unusual illness after mere days of sickly struggle. His wife - Margot - assumed the throne as Tanoness of Greywold immediately after. 

Tanoness Margot was met with mixed reception among the folk of Greywold and the surrounding fief. The nobility in particular cared little for her as she gave them less ear and leeway than her husband and also raised taxation and ordered them to commit more soldiers to the frontier and countryside. This would eventually lead to a growing conspiracy against the Tanoness.

Just short of two years after taking the throne Margot would lose the support of most of the nobility after having three noblemen’s sons jailed for reasons that remain unclear. This paired with a recent heavy conscription of more troops to be sent west to fight the orcs as well as wild accusations of witchcraft and other depravities would also see the Tanoness lose most of her remaining support in the fief. Only her closest retainers and the people of Greywold itself remained loyal.

One evening on her return from visiting her cousin in neighboring Kenverhold the Tanoness was assaulted in the entry hall of the castle by a combination of armed conspirators and hired assassins. Tanoness Margot was unharmed but she lost several of her best vanguard as well as her castle steward in the attack. The attackers were all killed save for one man who was tortured for information, eventually giving up the remaining conspirators who were all arrested and publicly beheaded.

This did not put an end to the discontent however and several months later Margot was poisoned via a tainted chalice of wine. She survived but was rendered blind from the attempt on her life and her body was noticeably weakened from the poison. Margot’s elder cousin Chlodio and several of his allies managed to have her ousted, playing on both her waned health and the falsities they had sent to the king and other prominent nobility painting the Tanoness as an unstable tyrant. After taking the throne Chlodio had his cousin Margot exiled to the wilderness to fend for herself. It is here that man’s knowledge of the woman before comes to an end.


The Faegafn - or ‘wood elves’ to man - of the south tell tales of a black clad human in years past woman who came to them and met with their elders, sharing tea and walking the forests. The stories speak of her being blind ‘and yet never tripping over root nor stumbling into a tree or down a hill’. When asked of her name she would always call herself as ‘the Black Tanoness’. Some elves recognized the title of nobility and when questioned about why she wondered the woods alone and did not sit in the lap of human privilege she would never answer.

The elves speak of the woman using magic, her knowledge of the arcane matching that of even the elders. The stories say for short of a decade the woman visited seasonally and then after one winter she was never seen again. The elves presumed she had perished, returned to her kind, or simply moved on from the forest.

And then many years later the Black Tanoness would return. Her skin pale as the moon and her voice bearing the icy chill of something beyond humanity, she demanded the fealty of elves and that they give her all the knowledge and relics of their clans. They sent her away, venom on their lips. The next day the clans came under attack by a horde of orcs and goblins with the Black Tanoness in their midst, the orc chieftains bending their knee to her command. The Black Tanoness has since waged war on the elves, her hordes ravaging the forests and driving the Faegafn further to the south leaving rivers of blood and accosting the elves their ancestral forests. 

And now - with the discovery of the Fell Crystal - the Black Tanoness has turned her hordes north and east to the lands of man. Her armies have swollen in size and strike fear into the hearts of the people. Orcs, goblins, barbarians, ogres, undead and many other horrors call her their mistress now and kill and conquer at her command.

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