Ahriman Fer’zaad
Ahriman Fer’zaad is an Iron Islander who was born a slave. He is a member of the Morenar.1
The magister's apprentice
As a slave boy, Ahriman served a cruel magister and showed an immense interest in his master's work on extraplanar beings. The magister found the boy's fascination with the arcane amusing and let him watch his studies of conjuration magic.2
The magister was cataloguing the anatomical differences between demons from different layers of the Abyss, and one day he summoned demon after demon. After every summoning, black tar, the ichor of the demons, clogged the engraved magic circle and ran into the vats beneath it. By the ninth summoning the engravings were full of ichor, and the magister tried to call up a powerful demon.2
The demon tore through the fabric of the world and stepped into the circle. It radiated heat, boiling the ichor left by the earlier demons, and the tar hardened under its feet and weakened the circle's defences. The demon hurled itself at the magister and killed him instantly.2
The names of demons
The moment the demon struck, Ahriman leapt into the circle and, with a ritual blade, cleared the engravings and opened the clogged vat. Now he was trapped inside, with a raging demon outside, his master's notes from the earlier summonings, and somewhere on those bloodstained pages the name of the demon that had killed his master.2
Reading the notes, Ahriman saw a link between the physical forms of the demons his master had summoned. He worked out a rough method of finding a demon's true name from its layer of origin and its physical form alone; it was not perfect, but it was close enough. The weight of this secret began to change his mind. It was torture for a mortal mind to grasp, yet he endured: his eyes bled, his mouth filled with demon ichor, and voices began to whisper names to him.2
Among those names was the name of the demon outside the circle, and Ahriman spoke it. The demon trembled and fought to keep its will from him, and failed. He commanded it to hand over its amulet, engraved with its true name, and it did so unwillingly; then he banished it to the Abyss. He was free of his master, but cursed with knowledge: he felt the anger of thousands of demons, furious at him for discovering their names.2
Flight to the Empire
Taking his master's belongings, Ahriman fled to the Empire, knowing he could escape his fate there. When he reached the shores of Neptun, he was met by Marcus Gaius, who had learned of Ahriman's discovery from a devil and wanted him in the ranks of the Morenar.2
Ahriman joined hesitantly. He knew this too was slavery, and that this time his master was crueller. But this master could keep him safe from his pursuers, and with this master, at least, he shared a common foe.2
Powers
Ahriman is no adventurer and has no training in combat, but his mind, steeped in planar magic, has given him an otherworldly resilience. He summons demons not by casting spells but by bending the magical energies around him; his deep understanding of the demonic plane grants him this power, much as demons can summon lesser demons. In battle he stays back and lets his summoned demons do the fighting.2
Notes
Sources
This article draws on:
- MCMercenary Compendium(Bad Badger Games, 2024), pp. 11, 20
Images in this article
Mercenary Compendium (Bad Badger Games, 2024), p. 21. Art by the Bad Badger Games team.
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