Race:Human
Nationality:Karliege was born inside the borders of the Justinian Imperium.
Occupation:Sorcerer
Religion:Karliege knows that there are beings greater than man, but doubts that there are any who deserve worship.
Appearance:Karliege is a man of average height, but of a skeletal and waif like build. He has not seen his thirtieth year, but bears many of the hallmarks of a much older man. His pale face is lined and worn. His long dirty blonde hair is brittle and streaked with grey. His eyes are of a similar shade of misty grey, deep bags hang beneath them and along with his general air of weariness confirm that Karliege sleeps little each night. The features upon his gaunt and drawn face are fine and effeminate, though still relatively handsome. Handsome that is were it not for a crooked broken nose and an unsightly tangle of burn marks upon his left cheek: a branding mark, one that denotes him as excommunicated from the light of the God-King Justinian and his Church.
He dresses in various hues of faded blacks, covered by a hooded great cloak clasped with a silver ring pin. Around Karliege's neck hangs more silver, a great thick chain of silver links from which dangles a blue topaz the size of a child's fist. It seems to glow unnaturally in darkness. His right arm is bound and bandaged beneath his cloak and he walks with a slight limp in his gait. A stout iron shod staff of pale yew wood assists his movement.
Personality:Karliege is cold and reserved, not in a cruel or uncaring way, but as if separated from all others around him by an immense unseen chasm. Distant is probably the lasting impression that he leaves on others. Even when he is direct conversation with his peers he has a habit of gazing off into the middle distance, almost as if he’s looking right though someone to something beyond. He’s quiet, in particular about himself and his history, and when pressed upon a subject he does want to discuss will shut down completely and withdraw. If he were to smile it would be a sad one. He sleeps little, haunted by nightmares that make him wake in fits of terrible screams.
There is madness in him as well, one that consumes him in periods of frantic mania followed by deep and dark depressions. During his mania he will often rant and rave about Justinian, theology, demonology and the nature of divinity. His eyes burn with consuming passion and its one of the few times Karliege truly seems to enthuse upon a subject. During his inward periods he becomes even more uncommunicative, scarcely eating or even moving until the fugue has passed.
Biography:What happens to the children born within Justinian's Empire who are cursed with magic? Some repress their unnatural powers, others may embrace them. Karliege was one such child.
He was the son of a wool merchant who traded between the imperial core and the eastern marcher lords. Neither noble nor serf his family were comfortable, but not accustomed to the privileges of the aristocracy. Perhaps it was this liminal station between the great divide of feudal society that led Karliege to question the world around him. He was inquisitive and curious from an early age and showed great talent for book learning and the scholarly pursuits - something that was only encouraged by his parents who would have relished the opportunity to have a younger son enter the ranks of the Clerisy.
It was as Karliege approached the cusp of manhood that his magic awoke within him. At first he was shocked and saddened. How could he, one who was training for life in the priesthood of the great God-Emperor Justinian, be afflicted with the scourge of magic? But the more he dwelled upon his situation and the more he learned about magic, the more doubts began to creep into his mind. In the empire, magic was reviled, but the miracles attributed to Justinian were celebrated and revered. How did Justinian, a man, become a God, unless through the use of magic?
He continued his training as an official of the church, but most nights he trained in other arts. He learned from whatever sources he could lay his hands on. He read accounts of inquisitors who purged the land of magic and ancient tomes detailing defence against magic users. He would slip into the restricted sections in the dead of night and read books that had been saved from the pyre that had once belonged to witches and warlocks. He even found a trader who brought scrolls from across the southern deserts, for extortionate prices of course.
It was through this Karliege learned of the art of demonology, and the summoning of higher beings of magic with great power and knowledge. It was with this that he would discover the truth he so desperately craved, the truth of Justinian's divinity and the whether or not Karliege had pledged his life to a lie.
Alone one night in his sleeping cell surrounded by candles and using all he had learned, Karliege summoned one such demon. And it told him everything he had been taught was false. Justinian was no God, magic was natural, and the Clerisy was merely a tool to make sure none would ever rise to challenge Justinian's power. Karliege was shaken. He had always doubted some of the teachings of the Clerisy and had wondered at the nature of Justinian's divinity, but this was too much. He served an unjust warlord who proclaimed himself a God and would kill those who would use the very same powers. It was wrong, and Karliege believed it was his duty to tell the people.
He wrote pamphlets by candlelight detailing what he had been told by the demon and would slip them under doors or between shutters on long pre-dawn walks around the city. Naively, he believed that if the people knew, they would rise and somehow Justinian and the Clerisy would be cast down. He was wrong. Instead he was apprehended by the Inquisition and tortured in a cell deep beneath the altars he had once worshipped at.
They made him a sign a confession that he had been lured astray by dark powers, that all he had written was lie and that Justinian was a true and just God. They hauled him into the streets for public penance. Bloody and broken they marched him from square to square he be pelted with stones and spat at. He was stripped, both physically and of his position in Clerisy, and branded him with the mark of Excommunication. He would be bared from every church and temple, chased from towns and settlements, and shunned by any good God-fearing citizen of the Imperium. If they had discovered he was a sorcerer, they would have killed him.
For many years Karliege travelled, first south, then east in search one who could teach him more in the ways of magic. He had lost everything, his life, his family, his home, his mind even. All that remained to him was his magic and he honed it into a weapon to be feared. In the wastes of Nagath he served as apprentice to one of the greatest sorcerers of this generation, Colndil the Terrible, a dark wizard of sinister repute who was said to even be able to bind demons to his will. Karliege endured much, and learned much under the man. He now travels the wastes once again, claiming that Colndil is dead, and he is the greatest sorcerer of the east.
Equipment:Karliege carries little accept a belt knife, a waterskin, his cloak, his staff and his amulet. Called the Eye of Daigon, it once belonged to Karliege's slain master Colndil and is reputed to have been amongst the crown jewels of the ancient Kingdom of Nargath before being re-purposed into a necklace.
Skills:Karliege is intelligent and learned in many areas, but most of all he is a dangerous and powerful user of magic. His greatest power is that which he learned from his master Colndil, the art of binding a demon to a mortal's will. Karliege possesses one such demon, named Sarcen. It appears as a second shadow following Karliege, or perhaps a single white flame hovering in the air. It is incredibly powerful and dangerous, but it is also unpredictable and continuously fights its master in an effort to possess Karliege's body.
Motivation:Karliege once thought if he told the citizens of Justinian's Empire that their God was a lie they would rise up and destroy it. Now he knows they must be shown that Justinian is a lie. He intends to show them that. He intends to kill a God and burn his church to the ground.
