Mordun

Mordun is one of the Elder Gods and is known as the Forger and the Self-Forged. Mortals revere him as the god of creation, wisdom, knowledge and discovery. He is a dwarf by birth, but his body is a metallic shell powered by steam, clockwork and arcane energy. He dwells within his Library of Ages in Sazandora, although he spends large amounts of time travelling the Earth in pursuit of knowledge.

Beginnings


The Self-Forged was born Mordun Baumeister in Ermenberg, Sonndalin, in the year 2:3377. He is the son of Morkald Baumeister and Valdrynn van Silberbart and studied alchemy under Asymmetrisch Zahnherz in Midian for ten years.

Lleimilla and Stormhold
In the summer of 2:3419, Mordun was sent by his mentor to Teldorthan after the Winterchild brothers sent word that they needed a dwarf alchemist for an expedition to Lleimilla. Sturmhalters Syarae Skyrend and Watson Gregory also accompanied the brothers.

The party successfully recovered an ancient blade from the largest temple to the lleimillan god of death. During the great war between Belor and Svargrad centuries earlier, the blade had been used by the belorian military to raise fallen soldiers from both sides as undead warriors at the service of Belor.

Upon the party's return to Teldorthan, Baumeister was told by noblewoman Leyla Nightcrest that the Winterchild brothers had been hired and the expedition to Lleimilla funded by Trava Devian, a corrupt adviser to the king of Stormhold. Devian wished to use the blade to raise a dead dragon and use it to drive the dwarves from Stormhold; according to Nightcrest, Devian's plans also included a possible invasion of Sonndalin. Unfortunately, the blade had already been delivered to the adviser, so infiltration into Teldorthan Castle was necessary to either recover it or expose Devian's plans.

Baumeister and Gregory managed to sneak into the castle but found no signs of the adviser or the blade. Instead, they encountered an expectant body of guards. Gregory escaped, but Baumeister was captured and sent to Spellhold to be executed. However, Gregory, disguised as a guard captain, rescued him and took a ship back to the capital.

They found Teldorthan burning and most of its inhabitants dead. Devian's undead dragon, which was out of the adviser's control, was raining destruction upon the city. Infuriated, they killed Devian and taunted the dragon into the castle, which the town guards collapsed on top of the dragon using the defence ballistas atop the sentry towers along the city walls. Baumeister escaped, but Gregory and the dragon were trapped beneath the castle ruins. Baumeister, who believed Gregory to have died, returned to Midian with the surviving dwarves from Teldorthan.

Neresse
Five months after the destruction of Teldorthan, odlander Tabata, who was then a common thief living in Midian, broke into Baumeister's house. The dwarf convinced her to accompany him to Neresse, where he planned to learn elven alchemy. On the way there, they met odlander Zahar, who saved Baumeister's from certain death. A pack of wolves was attacking Baumeister and Tabata, and Zahar raised the one they had killed and used it to scare the rest of the pack away. Uneasy by the stranger's use of necromancy --which he had witnessed firsthand less than half a year earlier-- but indebted to him, Baumeister allowed Zahar to accompany them south.

In Vulantia, Mordun learnt about the Aesilaine, two devious elves who planned to destroy the Earth to make way for the Fairwood, a "perfect" world they intended to create. He also encountered his old friend Watson Gregory, who had survived the collapse of Teldorthan Castle, albeit an arm and an eye short, and relocated to the elven capital. Gregory, who had apparently lost his mind and insisted on being called Vekumm, had substituted his eye and his hand with horrendous protheses crafted from pure alchemical energy with the help of an elf warlock.

Intent on stopping the Aesilaine, the party of four broke into their manor near the outskirts of the city and managed to forge a temporary alliance with them, secretly intending to betray them after Baumeister and Zahar had learned what they could from them.

Saving the world
Baumeister convinced the Aesilaine to travel with his companions and him to Midian, where they could allegedly work better. They travelled there, but on the way they were attacked by the Tarasque and Ailanna Aldaval, one of the Aesilaine, was killed. They slew the legendary beast, and Zahar raised it and used it as a mount to get to Midian faster.

In Midian, Baumeister enlisted the help of Zahnherz, his old mentor, and the two of them convinced King Thorsden to let them use the Forge of the All-Father, the sacred place at the heart of Midian from which, according to old dwarven mythology, the dwarven god of creation had crafted the world and the creatures in it in the First Age. There they worked for four years to create the tools necessary for the Aesilaine's destruction of the world and creation of the Fairwood: the Axe of Extinction, the World-Rending Hammer and the Orb of Worlds.

Elendir Falaron, the surviving Aesilai, betrayed the others, pushing Zahnherz into the magma pit at the back of the Forge of the All-Father. The others, who would come to be known as the Elder Gods, fought Falaron to protect the Earth; Tabata's pet dragon, Shar, fought alongside them. Baumeister ultimately unleashed a powerful burst of arcane energy to throw the elf into the magma pit, after which Vekumm dealt the killing blow with Falaron's own Axe of Extinction, thereby making the elven race extinct.

Baumeister's energy burst also sent the World-Rending Hammer flying towards one of the inner walls of the Forge, which would cause the Earth to be destroyed within seconds. Together, Baumeister, Zahar, Vekumm and Shar shattered the wall in which the Hammer had stuck, shattered the Orb of Worlds, and cast the Hammer into the nascent Fairwood, destroying it instead. The resulting explosion killed Shar, but Zahar performed a true resurrection on it, bringing it back to life instead of merely animating its body in undeath.

Self-forging
In the months between his return from Teldorthan and his voyage to Vulantia, Baumeister had the idea of replacing his mortal organic body with an immortal metallic shell. Although he replaced his forearms, hands and eyes with mechanical versions during this time, it was not until he began to work alongside Elendir Falaron that he began to truly work on his project. By the time the Aesilaine's tools were completed, Baumeister had succeeded in replacing every organic body part with a mechanical analogue and transferring his mind to an extremely complex artificial brain he had built. This earned him the nickname The Self-Forged, while his many clockwork creations earned him the nickname The Forger.

The Library of Ages
After teaching Tabata alchemy for a few years, Mordun left Midian and carved a large mountain into a city-sized abode for himself with a carefully controlled surge of arcane energy. This became the Library of Ages, which was to serve as both his sanctuary from the world's dangers and his compendium of all the knowledge he possessed at the moment and all the knowledge he would come across or discover on his own in the following years.

The near-simultaneous ascension of the four saviours of the Earth to immortality triggered a new wave of religions which denied the old gods, whose existence had never been conclusively proven, in favour of these four new godlike, immortal beings. Mordun quickly tired of the mortals who worshipped him, though, primarily because they never listened when he explained that they should not worship him because he had started as a mortal like them and because the origin of his immortality was technological, not mystical. As a result, he locked himself in his Library and filled it with deadly traps and mind-testing puzzles, granting audiences only to those mortals intelligent enough to surpass these obstacles.

The Library is operated entirely by its internal clockwork, which Mordun enhances continuously. It is surveyed by several thousand constructs, all of Mordun's creation. Mordun himself dedicates his time to research, whether within the Library's halls or out in the wild.

Dungeons & Dragons monster sheets
The duplicate of Mordun has half of Mordun's total hp. It has Mordun's abilities, skills, defences, senses, movement modes and resistances. It has no bonus to saving throws and no action points. It has all of Mordun's traits except the Arcanist aura, all of Mordun's powers, and mundane copies of Mordun's equipment (a black cloak, a leather armour and an orb implement). Although it can summon the same constructs as Mordun and its uses of Summon battle construct and Summon miniature clockwork soldiers do not count towards Mordun's uses of those powers, it cannot use Summon battle construct to summon another duplicate of Mordun.

Mordun's clockwork assistants have half of Mordun's total hp. They have Mordun's abilities, skills, defences, senses, movement modes and resistances. They have no bonus to saving throws and no action points. They have no traits or attacks, and they will flee the moment they are attacked, trying to alert battle constructs or Mordun himself of the danger.