Malthus / Thomas Dawson (Inactive)
Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2025 6:46 am
Created 2014, Backstory 2017, Inactive
Malthus
First Name: Thomas
Last Name: Dawson
Appearance:
This man is in his 30's. But the wrinkles in his face, brow, and his graying hair show that he has aged beyond his years. His most striking feature is his bright golden eyes. He has an intense stare due to his unnatural color, and his tendency to only seldom blink. It almost appears as if he was staring into your very soul. His voice is naturally deep and condescending. Adorning the man's body is a silver mithral breastplate. It covers his torso, with lockings of leather where the breastplate meets his arms, they come all the way down to blackened wool gloves.
Race: Tiefling
Age: 32
Height: 6'4 ft.
Weight: 200 lb.
Eyes: Golden
Hair: Dark Brown, Gray Hairs
Facial Hair Style: Full Beard
Personality Profile: Malthus is serious, and a loner by nature. He is cynical and condescending towards people that he considers inferior intellectually. Even when he is polite, there is something about Malthus that makes him unlikable.
General Health: Pinnacle of health, Malthus has the relentless endurance of a high-ranking devil.
Deity: Faithless, reveres Mephistopheles
Initial Alignment: Lawful Evil
Profession: Scholar, Destroyer of Chaos, Ex-Mercenary
Base Class & Proposed Development: Warlock/Hellfire Warlock/Dragonslayer
Habits/Hobbies: Destroying evil and chaos with a side of reading. Mocking Edward Drath.
Languages: Common, Infernal, Sylvan, Abyssal.
Weapon of Choice: Hellfire
Background:
Sigmund Drath was a struggling mage and small-time merchant in the city of Athkatla. He practiced magic in secret in order to gain a profit, but was eventually caught and arrested. In his cell, waiting for his demise, a harvester devil came to him. The devil talked of the signing of a pact, and that Sigmund Drath would be used as one of many tools for the devils to gain influence in Athkatla. He explained that Sigmund carried with him the ancestry of a devil and that signing a pact would be beneficial to both parties. While Sigmund was skeptical, he was more afraid of death. He used his skills as a merchant to better his deal. Sigmund agreed on a contract with the devil, he would receive a fortune of gold and an escape from the prison in exchange for his services and soul to the Archdevil Mephistopheles. To his surprise, the devil came through with the deal. The town guard released him from his cell, and let him go free. With the gold he acquired from harvester devil, he ventured to build a better business.
It took only a couple of years before Sigmund's business flourished and he became one of the more successful merchants in Athkatla. Drath began using his connections as a merchant to gather other mages and merchants under his wing. They began to create summoning circles for devils; their business was to gather those who were weak and desperate enough to make pacts. Sigmund's daughter married into the Dawson family, a family of accomplished scholars who ran an academy for wealthy families that could afford the tuition. The Blackwood Academy, as it was called, was built on bribe money funded by Sigmund to illegally train children how to use arcane magic. This was a guise used to fool the corrupt politicians who allowed the academy to exist in Amn. Using his merchant guild and the Blackwood Academy as a front, Sigmund Drath, the Dawsons, and their associates began the start of a new Mephistopheles' cult in Amn.
Thomas, the third son of Siegfried Dawson, was born with golden eyes. This was taken a sign of fiendish heritage from many generations before. Siegfried sought Thomas' great-uncle, Kristofer Drath, to ask for a celebration. They thought that he would be a protege child, a true instrument of Mephistopheles. The truth would end up disappointing them. Siegfried was abusive to his family, especially towards Isabel and his children. Seeing the cruelty done to the two children she had before Tom, Isabel decided to raise Thomas in such a way so that he would have the ability to choose his own path. She would take him out to the streets and the two would perform acts of kindness and charity. In his young teenage years, Thomas grew skeptical of his family and outright refused to follow his father's wishes, seeing them as cruel. Seeing the influence Isabel had on Thomas, Siegfried decided it would be best to dispose of his wife completely. While his father dragged his mother away, Thomas begged and pleaded with his father to not take her away. Siegfried had one condition to his request: he would spare Isabel under the condition that Thomas would follow his orders and live up to his family name. This led Thomas to hate his father's guts, he would follow orders but remain obstinate against him.
The Drath family had an alliance with a group of merchants working for the Thayan Enclave. One of the Thayans, a Red Wizard named Peltak Thomolios, served as a tutor for some of the Drath boys. One of their caravans in the Underdark had acquired a group of slaves caught fleeing from their drow captors. One of the slaves was a tiefling named Vera. The Drath family purchased her as Infernal blood was treasured and (besides Thomas), otherwise unheard of in the cult. Unlike Thomas however, Vera had full control of her infernal blood, being a natural warlock. She claimed she was the descendant of a mighty devil under Mephistopheles and that it was because of her magical power that she was able to escape from the drow. Vera was seen as being more dangerous, cruel, and loyal to Mephistopheles even compared to the most devout of the Drath cultists. Thomas was afraid of Vera, who had teased him for being a weakling. Knowing how afraid of Vera his son was, Siegfried decided it was best to have Thomas and Vera work together so that she could keep an eye on him and so that Thomas could see what it meant to be proud of his heritage.
Making a pact was a coming-of-age ceremony. It was not required to make a pact, but most of the family did. Many of the Draths make the Faustian pact in order to become smarter or better in their field. It is only a select-few that become warlocks, the practical uses of infernal magic have little use in a city such as Athkatla where magic is banned. Therefore, the seldom few who do pact for such a power are usually sent out to acquire Infernal artifacts or books for the Blackwood Academy. Vera pushed Thomas to choose the warlock's pact. She convinced him that she needed his help in order to further her goals and that if he took the pact, he would be as far from his father as possible.
To avoid being arrested and hanged for consorting with fiends, Vera and Thomas hid their identities. Thomas called himself Malthus, a professor with a celestial background. Meanwhile, Vera claimed to be a demon-blooded tiefling that wanted nothing more than to just be a normal girl. Their false objective was an impossible goal, to find a way to turn Vera human and break her pact. In reality, the objective given to them was to further the influence of the Drath Cult. Vera had other plans, however. She believed that it would be better to start her own cult with Malthus at her side.
It was clear that Vera was miles ahead of Malthus in terms of power. During combat, he would always hide invisible, being too weak to fight the creatures that they would come across on the Sword Coast. Despite learning the properties of Hellfire granted to him by his pact, he hardly used the powers granted to him. He was too afraid that summoning devils would draw too much attention, and hellfire was too much of a risk. Because of this, he came reliant on Vera who used hellfire freely. She was more clever, more skilled, and more powerful than he. She did not care for Malthus' weakness and treated him poorly. Whenever Vera stopped pretending to be her nervous persecuted persona, Malthus was too afraid to ever say anything against her. He had to repress any feelings that she could berate him for.
Malthus met his second cousin, Edward Drath, in the graveyard of Baldur's Gate. Only Malthus knew the connection between the two, having recognized the name. Edward did not recognize him, had only seen his cousin once when he was very young. Malthus instigated a rivalry with Edward by lecturing him about everything, like Vera had done to him. Malthus took out his weakness on Edward Drath, mostly because he saw in Edward the things he hated most about himself - his self-doubt, his weakness, his inability to express his true feelings.
Malthus introduced Edward to Vera, and the three of them occupied their time trying to start a new cult using a guild of question mages called the Inner Circle. It was their plan to use the guild as a front for their cult, but the idea crumbled when the guild ultimately disbanded. For reasons unknown, Vera disappeared, leaving Malthus without a partner. Malthus lost hope in starting a cult without her, meanwhile, Edward Drath sought out other ventures such as joining Candlekeep and starting his own merchanting business. Feeling that Edward Drath was becoming everything that he wanted to be and more, Malthus left on his own so that he could find his purpose.
Months and months Malthus wandered, he picked up a sword to become a mercenary and almost never used his warlock powers. Purpose came to him. Rather, it was a devil. In the sixth month of being a mercenary, it became clear to whatever dark powers that held Malthus' soul that he was becoming useless. The court of Mephistopheles ordered agents of the Nine Hells to go after Malthus - if he would not serve Mephistopheles of his own volition, it would be best to dispose of him so that he could go straight into Baator. Knowing of one of Mephistopheles' plots, the pit fiend Mephasm saw an opportunity in Malthus that the others did not. He came to Malthus before the other devils could, and persuaded him to quickly return to Athkatla to repent.
Malthus went to the Drath Estate in Athkatla to look for his father. To his surprise, in his father's office, he came across two charred corpses. A guard on patrol came to the room and saw Malthus standing over the two corpses. He ran to sound an alarm. Mephasm stood in the darkness in the corner of the room as the guards came rushing in. The guards went to try to arrest Malthus, who resisted. The mind of Malthus was racing, for years he had followed his father's orders so that his mother would be spared. He had hated his father every waking moment since he was a child. He was now full of regret, thinking that his weakness was what brought him to this point. If only he had been powerful, if only he had not been afraid - he could have been the one to dispose of his father. The regret began to turn into rage. If he could no longer kill his father, then at least he could destroy his father's legacy - the only thing that his father ever cared about. A fire lit in Malthus' hand and soon began to circle around his legs. It was a flame hotter than any other. Hellfire. He began to blast and burn away at the guards who tried to overrun him. He was once afraid of this power, but now, there was no time to be afraid. Without any regard to the consequences that hellfire would have on his body, he relentlessly burned away at the Drath Estate. The building crumbled around him, the wood and the bodies now ashes.
Malthus woke with Mephasm at his side. He had healed him during the battle so that Malthus would not pass - there was much more work to be done on the material plane. It was explained that the Drath Cult had betrayed Mephistopheles so that they could serve Asmodeus, and that it was Siegfried Dawson that led them. For his work in destroying his traitorous family, Malthus would be allowed to live for a time. To Malthus, this was clear: Mephistopheles had given him the opportunity to destroy the last thing that he truly hated. Malthus did not owe anything to anyone - not his father, not the Draths, not Vera - the only loyalty he had was to Mephistopheles.
Goals:
Find any books related to Infernal, Abyssal, or Sylvan Lore.
(One such book is the Book of Brimstone written by the Monk Andros. Non-Canon, Dungeon 140)
Find any Infernal Artifacts for research.
Faithfully advance the agenda of Mephistopheles.
Gather or join a cabal of infernal warlock to further devil-kind.
Destroy any traces of abyssal presence: demons, races created by demons (gnolls), related magic items, etc. on the Material Plane.
Create a lawful evil society.
Possible Plot-Hook Ideas and Misc Facts:
Surviving members of the Drath Family might come after him.
Malthus has respect for followers of the Triad, despite disagreeing with their methods. He is currently friends with some of them.
Malthus truly believes that devils are the pinnacle of law. If not for devils, demons would have already destroyed this world.
Because of his convictions, many PCs believe that Malthus is a celestial warlock. He has never confirmed nor denied this. He does not consider this far from his belief that devils are destined to be destroyers of chaos.
Malthus
First Name: Thomas
Last Name: Dawson
Appearance:
This man is in his 30's. But the wrinkles in his face, brow, and his graying hair show that he has aged beyond his years. His most striking feature is his bright golden eyes. He has an intense stare due to his unnatural color, and his tendency to only seldom blink. It almost appears as if he was staring into your very soul. His voice is naturally deep and condescending. Adorning the man's body is a silver mithral breastplate. It covers his torso, with lockings of leather where the breastplate meets his arms, they come all the way down to blackened wool gloves.
Race: Tiefling
Age: 32
Height: 6'4 ft.
Weight: 200 lb.
Eyes: Golden
Hair: Dark Brown, Gray Hairs
Facial Hair Style: Full Beard
Personality Profile: Malthus is serious, and a loner by nature. He is cynical and condescending towards people that he considers inferior intellectually. Even when he is polite, there is something about Malthus that makes him unlikable.
General Health: Pinnacle of health, Malthus has the relentless endurance of a high-ranking devil.
Deity: Faithless, reveres Mephistopheles
Initial Alignment: Lawful Evil
Profession: Scholar, Destroyer of Chaos, Ex-Mercenary
Base Class & Proposed Development: Warlock/Hellfire Warlock/Dragonslayer
Habits/Hobbies: Destroying evil and chaos with a side of reading. Mocking Edward Drath.
Languages: Common, Infernal, Sylvan, Abyssal.
Weapon of Choice: Hellfire
Background:
Sigmund Drath was a struggling mage and small-time merchant in the city of Athkatla. He practiced magic in secret in order to gain a profit, but was eventually caught and arrested. In his cell, waiting for his demise, a harvester devil came to him. The devil talked of the signing of a pact, and that Sigmund Drath would be used as one of many tools for the devils to gain influence in Athkatla. He explained that Sigmund carried with him the ancestry of a devil and that signing a pact would be beneficial to both parties. While Sigmund was skeptical, he was more afraid of death. He used his skills as a merchant to better his deal. Sigmund agreed on a contract with the devil, he would receive a fortune of gold and an escape from the prison in exchange for his services and soul to the Archdevil Mephistopheles. To his surprise, the devil came through with the deal. The town guard released him from his cell, and let him go free. With the gold he acquired from harvester devil, he ventured to build a better business.
It took only a couple of years before Sigmund's business flourished and he became one of the more successful merchants in Athkatla. Drath began using his connections as a merchant to gather other mages and merchants under his wing. They began to create summoning circles for devils; their business was to gather those who were weak and desperate enough to make pacts. Sigmund's daughter married into the Dawson family, a family of accomplished scholars who ran an academy for wealthy families that could afford the tuition. The Blackwood Academy, as it was called, was built on bribe money funded by Sigmund to illegally train children how to use arcane magic. This was a guise used to fool the corrupt politicians who allowed the academy to exist in Amn. Using his merchant guild and the Blackwood Academy as a front, Sigmund Drath, the Dawsons, and their associates began the start of a new Mephistopheles' cult in Amn.
Thomas, the third son of Siegfried Dawson, was born with golden eyes. This was taken a sign of fiendish heritage from many generations before. Siegfried sought Thomas' great-uncle, Kristofer Drath, to ask for a celebration. They thought that he would be a protege child, a true instrument of Mephistopheles. The truth would end up disappointing them. Siegfried was abusive to his family, especially towards Isabel and his children. Seeing the cruelty done to the two children she had before Tom, Isabel decided to raise Thomas in such a way so that he would have the ability to choose his own path. She would take him out to the streets and the two would perform acts of kindness and charity. In his young teenage years, Thomas grew skeptical of his family and outright refused to follow his father's wishes, seeing them as cruel. Seeing the influence Isabel had on Thomas, Siegfried decided it would be best to dispose of his wife completely. While his father dragged his mother away, Thomas begged and pleaded with his father to not take her away. Siegfried had one condition to his request: he would spare Isabel under the condition that Thomas would follow his orders and live up to his family name. This led Thomas to hate his father's guts, he would follow orders but remain obstinate against him.
The Drath family had an alliance with a group of merchants working for the Thayan Enclave. One of the Thayans, a Red Wizard named Peltak Thomolios, served as a tutor for some of the Drath boys. One of their caravans in the Underdark had acquired a group of slaves caught fleeing from their drow captors. One of the slaves was a tiefling named Vera. The Drath family purchased her as Infernal blood was treasured and (besides Thomas), otherwise unheard of in the cult. Unlike Thomas however, Vera had full control of her infernal blood, being a natural warlock. She claimed she was the descendant of a mighty devil under Mephistopheles and that it was because of her magical power that she was able to escape from the drow. Vera was seen as being more dangerous, cruel, and loyal to Mephistopheles even compared to the most devout of the Drath cultists. Thomas was afraid of Vera, who had teased him for being a weakling. Knowing how afraid of Vera his son was, Siegfried decided it was best to have Thomas and Vera work together so that she could keep an eye on him and so that Thomas could see what it meant to be proud of his heritage.
Making a pact was a coming-of-age ceremony. It was not required to make a pact, but most of the family did. Many of the Draths make the Faustian pact in order to become smarter or better in their field. It is only a select-few that become warlocks, the practical uses of infernal magic have little use in a city such as Athkatla where magic is banned. Therefore, the seldom few who do pact for such a power are usually sent out to acquire Infernal artifacts or books for the Blackwood Academy. Vera pushed Thomas to choose the warlock's pact. She convinced him that she needed his help in order to further her goals and that if he took the pact, he would be as far from his father as possible.
To avoid being arrested and hanged for consorting with fiends, Vera and Thomas hid their identities. Thomas called himself Malthus, a professor with a celestial background. Meanwhile, Vera claimed to be a demon-blooded tiefling that wanted nothing more than to just be a normal girl. Their false objective was an impossible goal, to find a way to turn Vera human and break her pact. In reality, the objective given to them was to further the influence of the Drath Cult. Vera had other plans, however. She believed that it would be better to start her own cult with Malthus at her side.
It was clear that Vera was miles ahead of Malthus in terms of power. During combat, he would always hide invisible, being too weak to fight the creatures that they would come across on the Sword Coast. Despite learning the properties of Hellfire granted to him by his pact, he hardly used the powers granted to him. He was too afraid that summoning devils would draw too much attention, and hellfire was too much of a risk. Because of this, he came reliant on Vera who used hellfire freely. She was more clever, more skilled, and more powerful than he. She did not care for Malthus' weakness and treated him poorly. Whenever Vera stopped pretending to be her nervous persecuted persona, Malthus was too afraid to ever say anything against her. He had to repress any feelings that she could berate him for.
Malthus met his second cousin, Edward Drath, in the graveyard of Baldur's Gate. Only Malthus knew the connection between the two, having recognized the name. Edward did not recognize him, had only seen his cousin once when he was very young. Malthus instigated a rivalry with Edward by lecturing him about everything, like Vera had done to him. Malthus took out his weakness on Edward Drath, mostly because he saw in Edward the things he hated most about himself - his self-doubt, his weakness, his inability to express his true feelings.
Malthus introduced Edward to Vera, and the three of them occupied their time trying to start a new cult using a guild of question mages called the Inner Circle. It was their plan to use the guild as a front for their cult, but the idea crumbled when the guild ultimately disbanded. For reasons unknown, Vera disappeared, leaving Malthus without a partner. Malthus lost hope in starting a cult without her, meanwhile, Edward Drath sought out other ventures such as joining Candlekeep and starting his own merchanting business. Feeling that Edward Drath was becoming everything that he wanted to be and more, Malthus left on his own so that he could find his purpose.
Months and months Malthus wandered, he picked up a sword to become a mercenary and almost never used his warlock powers. Purpose came to him. Rather, it was a devil. In the sixth month of being a mercenary, it became clear to whatever dark powers that held Malthus' soul that he was becoming useless. The court of Mephistopheles ordered agents of the Nine Hells to go after Malthus - if he would not serve Mephistopheles of his own volition, it would be best to dispose of him so that he could go straight into Baator. Knowing of one of Mephistopheles' plots, the pit fiend Mephasm saw an opportunity in Malthus that the others did not. He came to Malthus before the other devils could, and persuaded him to quickly return to Athkatla to repent.
Malthus went to the Drath Estate in Athkatla to look for his father. To his surprise, in his father's office, he came across two charred corpses. A guard on patrol came to the room and saw Malthus standing over the two corpses. He ran to sound an alarm. Mephasm stood in the darkness in the corner of the room as the guards came rushing in. The guards went to try to arrest Malthus, who resisted. The mind of Malthus was racing, for years he had followed his father's orders so that his mother would be spared. He had hated his father every waking moment since he was a child. He was now full of regret, thinking that his weakness was what brought him to this point. If only he had been powerful, if only he had not been afraid - he could have been the one to dispose of his father. The regret began to turn into rage. If he could no longer kill his father, then at least he could destroy his father's legacy - the only thing that his father ever cared about. A fire lit in Malthus' hand and soon began to circle around his legs. It was a flame hotter than any other. Hellfire. He began to blast and burn away at the guards who tried to overrun him. He was once afraid of this power, but now, there was no time to be afraid. Without any regard to the consequences that hellfire would have on his body, he relentlessly burned away at the Drath Estate. The building crumbled around him, the wood and the bodies now ashes.
Malthus woke with Mephasm at his side. He had healed him during the battle so that Malthus would not pass - there was much more work to be done on the material plane. It was explained that the Drath Cult had betrayed Mephistopheles so that they could serve Asmodeus, and that it was Siegfried Dawson that led them. For his work in destroying his traitorous family, Malthus would be allowed to live for a time. To Malthus, this was clear: Mephistopheles had given him the opportunity to destroy the last thing that he truly hated. Malthus did not owe anything to anyone - not his father, not the Draths, not Vera - the only loyalty he had was to Mephistopheles.
Goals:
Find any books related to Infernal, Abyssal, or Sylvan Lore.
(One such book is the Book of Brimstone written by the Monk Andros. Non-Canon, Dungeon 140)
Find any Infernal Artifacts for research.
Faithfully advance the agenda of Mephistopheles.
Gather or join a cabal of infernal warlock to further devil-kind.
Destroy any traces of abyssal presence: demons, races created by demons (gnolls), related magic items, etc. on the Material Plane.
Create a lawful evil society.
Possible Plot-Hook Ideas and Misc Facts:
Surviving members of the Drath Family might come after him.
Malthus has respect for followers of the Triad, despite disagreeing with their methods. He is currently friends with some of them.
Malthus truly believes that devils are the pinnacle of law. If not for devils, demons would have already destroyed this world.
Because of his convictions, many PCs believe that Malthus is a celestial warlock. He has never confirmed nor denied this. He does not consider this far from his belief that devils are destined to be destroyers of chaos.