Full name:Viktor Kindroth Volkov Galanodel.Epithet:Doomed Hunter, Beast of Mulmaster.Age:44.Race:Half-elf (damaran human / wood elf).Sex:Male.Date of birth:1315 DR - Year of Spilled Blood.Place of birth:Harrowdale.Alignment:Neutral Evil.Patron deity:Malar.Profession: - Scout (formerly).
- Fiend Hunter (formerly).
- Bounty Hunter (currently).
- Adventurer (currently).Classes (planned build):
- 3 ranger (hunter kit).
- 11 warlock.
- 8 assassin.
- 8 wilderness stalker.Primary language:
- Common (fluent).
- Damaran (fluent).Secondary languages:
- Elven (fair).
- Animal Empathy (good).
- Shadow Cant (fair).
- Abyssal (basic).
- Infernal (basic).Theme Music: - Night Stalker - Carpenter Brut - Corrupted by Design - Perturbator
Physical description:
Viktor stands a height of 5'10" and possesses a lean and athletic physique composed of wiry muscle. From a distance he might pass for a full blooded elf, though his fair skin tone would be closer in tone to his damaran mother. He possesses high cheek bones, chiseled features and could be considered fairly attractive.
Though capable of growing a short beard, the half-elf would typically maintain a five-o'clock shadow covering of stubble.
Two prominent scars would mark his features, one running through his eye-brow and another the side of his mouth.
Viktor's once thick, lustrous brown hair became white and brittle following his pact to Bél-Khazmuth. He has since then maintained the practice of keeping his head fully shaved all the time.
His years spent out the wilderness operating as a scout and bounty-hunter have made him exceptionally nimble and he would move with a smooth, practiced and almost predatory gait when out hunting his prey.
Psychological description:
Joyless, stoic and gloomy would be suitable words to describe the half-elven bounty-hunter. Viktor is an introverted loner content in his own company and at peace hunting in outdoor places.
He is usually distrustful of others he meets due to growing up in Mulmaster and being exposed to it's vices and criminal underbelly in his younger days, betrayed numerous times in various dangerous scenarios but managing to otherwise survive.
Having seen the disparity in wealth of the city instilled the half-elf with an inherent sense of exploitative hierarchy existing in every structure of the world, including all civilized cities and amongst all the beasts of the wilds, where the strong are born prey on the weak.
He greatly values self-reliance and not relying on the strength and charity of others where possible.
Whilst Viktor doesn't readily seek out conflict, but would have no problem betraying others for personal gain and using verbal provocations to manipulate their emotions. The half-elf hunter would generally lack empathy for the plight of others in pain, supporting and helping them only if serves him in the long run.
He would also show an uncanny lack of discomfort/hesitation in the matter of killing and taking another person, creature or beast's life due to his training as a bounty hunter and a killer for hire.
Warlock Pact:
Bél-Khazmuth A cruel and powerful Nabassu who manipulated a Viktor into accepting a warlock pact. Bél-Khazmuth's rapacious thirst for life-force and souls drives Viktor forward in an endless pattern of hunting and killing. The mature nabassu would differ from other fiends of it's kind due to possessing an unusual level of patience - for a demon at least.
The half-elf would harvest life-force for his patron every time he'd slay an opponent in battle or hunt particularly dangerous prey. By using his soul reaving aura invocation and his vampiric blade, 'Life Drinker', the nabassu would siphon this essence back to itself to continuously gorge upon.
Viktor first encountered the dark entity in the ruins a long-abandoned tomb nestled within the Earthspur Mountains, near Ironfang Keep and to the south of Mulmaster. Now the lair of a rogue mage thought long dead, this powerful summoner sought to bargain with the sleeping evil sealed within it's depths.
Traveling in a team of thirteen hunters, Viktor and the group was sent by the Brotherhood of the Cloak to eliminate the mage, motivated with promises of a handsome reward upon their return.
Though warned in advance of the danger they would face, the over-confident hunters would pay for their hubris with their very lives. Facing many powerful fiends the mage had summoned to defend herself, both hunter and demon were slaughtered in a blood-bath. Viktor would be the the last of them to die, as the youngest and most inexperienced of them he was shielded from much of the fighting though still suffered deadly wounds.
Weakly attempting to stagger out of the tomb as he bled out, the half-elf was instead lured to the ante-chamber the mage and her fiends had been guarding by a whispering voice in his mind. Within the unadorned chamber he beheld a raised plinth of stone marked with a circle of abyssal runes and sigils of power whose meaning he didn't understand - the seal of the demon, Bél-Khazmuth and it's ancient prison.
Religious Views:
The Beastlord and the Doombringer
Viktor wouldn't pray to many gods offering only minimal lip-service dependent on circumstance. The exceptions to this would be Malar and the demi-god, Hoar though he would not be especially fervent in his devotions.
Whilst acknowledging and conceding that even the 'good' gods cover important aspects of life he would ultimately find Malar's self-serving dogma of survival-of-the-fittest as closest to his own personal, amoral philosophy.
The bounty hunter would have taken to worshipping the Beastlord after time spent with the bounty hunter group to have trained him, occasionally making offerings at various altars across the lands before embarking on hunts.
Viktor would later learn of Hoar during his time in the Heartlands, learning of the deity through various groups opposed to the Zhentarim. The Doombringer's teachings would align to his dark desire for revenge against the elven supremacist group to slay his father and the mages serving the Brotherhood of the Cloak in Mulmaster.
In his youth he'd have been lightly aware of the Seldarine, specifically Rillifane Rallathil, but his worship of them ended after his father was slain.
In recent times he'd also become more aware of Helm, the Watcher through his dealings with the holy warrior, Ravenna Ouspenskaya.
Biography:
Family:
Halgondas Galanodel - Viktor's deceased father [N/NG]. A wood-elf trader and scout of the Elven Court (Semberholme). The elf was decidedly less aloof than most wood elves in openly communicating with outside races. He would later pay for his example at the hands of the Eldreth Veluuthra whom he was openly critical of amongst his people.
Inessa Volkov - Viktor's mother [N/LN]. An artist supporting her brother's mercantile operation by making pottery and clothing that is popular with the nobility of Mulmaster. She is the only person Viktor possesses unconditional affection toward despite their strained relationship. Upon forming his pact with Bél-Khazmuth, he left Mulmaster to spare her the knowledge of his doomed fate.
Maksim Volkov - Viktor's uncle [LN]. Viktor shares a cool business-like relationship with the merchant and former adventurer, who is grimly aware of the darker relationships Viktor maintains within Mulmaster. After several failed attempts to help reform the half-elf, he has instead quietly persuaded him to keep his distance from the family until he can change his ways.
Delshandra Galanodel - Older half-sister living in the Elven Court [NG]. The wood-elf only met Viktor a handful of times in his youth helping him better understand the elven language. As such Viktor isn't aware of their real connection and no relationship currently exists between the two. It would also be unknown to him if she ever sought to find him after the death of their father.
Cormanthor - The Elven Court
History:
Viktor's youth in Harrowdale was fairly peaceful and uneventful. His mother had once lived in Mulmaster and moved to the Dalelands in her youth where she fell in love with an elven trader from the Cormanthor forest, the two lived on the boundary of the dale and Viktor would be taught how to live off the land, hunt and fish by his father, who'd slowly introduce him to the ways of the fair folk. During this time, Viktor would also be exposed to human culture in the Dalelands (he would be true neutral in alignment at this point).
Later in his life, Viktor's father tragically died in attack on their home by the Eldreth Veluuthra when he and his mother were visiting Harrowdale. The basic reasons for the attack were out of the group's condemnation for his father's partnering with a human and teaching the ways of their people to a half-breed 'abomination.' Viktor and his mother, Inessa subsequently fled the Dalelands and moved to Mulmaster to live with her brother, Maksim.
Both became quietly embittered people despite living in a relatively safer area of the city and well provided for by his uncle. His mother would remain a widow and rarely smile after the loss of Halgondas only finding minor pleasure in the craft work she enjoyed.
Viktor found himself struggled to fit in with the humans around him in Mulmaster becoming a gloomy and reclusive figure to his family. Despite the small amount of information he knew around his father's demise and the racist motivations of the group to kill him, he found he did not feel hatred toward elves collectively, however, he would feel utterly alienated from anything elven.
In his efforts to find connection amongst the humans living in Mulmaster, his curiosity found him becoming exposed to all their their cruelty and vices in the dark, crime-ridden backstreets. Having lived a comparatively simple and pure life in the Dalelands he now found himself becoming far less naive, ruthless and distrustful of others (would then become neutral evil alignment).
Despite his mother's protests, Viktor thought to use the skills taught to him by his father in the Dalelands as a scout in order to put distance between himself and the city, eventually becoming a member of a group of hunters with different specialisms. The hunters were employed occasionally by the Brotherhood of the Cloak as agents for quiet operations requiring a more physical approach.
It is during this time that Viktor was trained by one of the leaders of the hunter group to effectively hunt and slay small fiends, such as imps and quasits as well as tutoring him in the arts of assassination as demons and devils would be occasionally summoned in the depths of Mulmaster by rogue spellcasters wishing to escape the notice of the Brotherhood (or act against it). The hunters would then be sent to eliminate the spell casters and their summoned fiends.
- This is the reasoning for his single favoured enemy of outsiders and his assassin levels / bounty hunter background.
Mulmaster - The City of Danger
Future:
In entering into a pact with a demon, Viktor is aware that he himself would be targeted by the Brotherhood of the Cloak as a dangerous magic user were he to linger in Mulmaster. He now decides to travel and keep a far distance from the city in an attempt to both appease his patron and learn how to better control his new abilities.
Sharing a telepathic link and using it's dark power to peer into his dreams, Bél-Khazmuth would enjoy tormenting Viktor with vengeful ideas and reminding the hunter of his weakness - both against the Brotherhood who used him as an expendable asset and the group to have slain his father.
Fully aware of the fiend's manipulations, the bounty hunter would certainly feel no remorse in claiming the souls of his father's killers and the mages of the Brotherhood to slake Bél-Khazmuth's endless thirst but make them painfully suffer in the process.
Viktor is also acutely aware that the fiend owns his very soul, wishing on one hand to be free from his servitude to it but on the other, entirely reluctant to relinquish the dark powers he now has at his disposal that make a formidable bounty-hunter to be feared.
For now, he travels from place to place across the Heartlands pondering his vengence, typically spending extended period in Soubar to dwell amongst the other misfits who'd call the place their home.
Heirloom items:
◈ Bounty Hunter's Hat - A brown capotain hat given to Viktor when joining the hunter group in Mulmaster.
◈ Panther Pelt Cloak - Fashioned from the body of ferocious panther and blessed by Malarite priests.
◈ Elven Medallion - An old mithral amulet of elf make. Once the possession of his father.
Plot hooks:
◈ Plot hook idea #1
Perhaps Viktor can eventually get his vengence against members the Eldreth Veluuthra or the Brotherhood mages who trapped him and feed their souls to his patron.
◈ Plot hook idea #2
Perhaps Viktor can find away to break free from his pact and keep his soul. However, the bounty hunter seems reluctant to lose his warlock powers.
Last edited by Doomed Hunter on Thu May 25, 2023 1:05 am, edited 16 times in total.
As I lay here in the shadows of ancient ground... Close to death, the promise of final release... Or something darker.
Then comes the cold whisper in my skull.
Uninvited. Malevolent. Alien.
YOU ARE BLEEDING OUT MORTAL... THERE IS NO ESCAPE...
It's words resonate in my mind. The echo of my failure.
Even as the pain fades and time slows.
I CAN TASTE YOUR SORROW... YOUR ANGER... YOU SHALL PERISH HERE...
The others were slain and I wonder if am the last even as it taunts me.
Murky images are recalled in my dying mind. Gathering in the backstreets of Mulmaster with the other hunters. Standing before the council's agent to discuss our plan. The lantern light dancing on her face.
I feel it's cold, terrible presence claw into my mind. Seeing what I see. As I bleed out in the darkness.
YOU WERE DECEIVED MORTAL... YOUR MASTERS STAKED YOUR LIVES TO SEAL ME HERE...
The image twists in my mind and I see the figures of three elderly men in Brotherhood robes. Together raising their hands before the shadowy entrance of the ruin, shaping mystic runes of force and chanting their ancient words of power.
The chill presence stirs unbidden and the image twists in my minds-eye like oil in water. The lifeless remains of the demons, as well the other twelve hunters to lay around me. Twisted and torn, battered and broken. The blood from their corpses seeping out... Ebbing away into the cold ground.
With my life hanging by a thread, the unholy presence explains everything to me, showing me further visions.
The Brotherhood mages instructing us to investigate the ruin. Our sacrifice and spilled blood intended to empower the ancient sigils holding the presence here. And then finally the mages using their arcane magic to destroy the entrance of the crypt, sealing us in here forever to bleed out in the darkness.
The presence conveys it's desire to escape and offers me... gifts.
VENGENCE... POWER... Over and over, the words throb in my mind. All while the conditions of it's proposal are woven and explained.
It wishes to become... Part of me. I need only let in. Let it take control for a moment.
VENGENCE...
POWER...
If I yield to it... Just for a moment... I'll be strong again. I will hunt down all my enemies. All of my betrayers. I will bring death to them.
My instincts wrestle with my desires. It knows... It knows I want this. I want this power...
