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Dr. Benjamin T. Longhorn



In the Jomtrak year of 1798, Douglas Veradict was born to Melhan and Rose Veradict on a plane of existence that few know in around. This plane has no name, but those that know of it simply call it the Plane of Weakness. It’s a plane of existence that runs perpendicular to the Prime Material Plane. Anyway, Melhan and Rose were both Surface Elves that did a lot of dangerous work for the Lord Byron Rohalan, a very powerful, yet clandestine, scholar. One of their trained specialties was interdimensional travel (yes, they were from the Prime Material Plane). Recently, about seven months into pregnancy, Rose was told to go to the Plane of Weakness with her husband in order to aquire some vital information from the inhabitants there. Lord Rohalan was at this point being blackmailed by a very dark, dismal person that lived in another part of Jomtrak and was known for his dealings with chaos. So they went, since the mission was not considered dangerous enough to harm the unborn child. When they got to the very unexplored plane, they found that it was inhabitied by Sub-Goblins. They started living with the Sub-Goblins in the hope of talking to the Sub-Goblin leader. After two months, the child was born. Shortly after his birth, Melhand and Rose met with the Sub-Goblin leader, Gerganaka-khan, or Gary for short. They spoke with him of Lord Rohalan’s problems and Gary was more than happy to help. He told them everything they needed to know.

As Rose listened to what Gary thought was harmless and uneventful news, though, she realized that it was more important than even Lord Rohalan thought and made plans to quickly return to speak with him. Because Douglas was still young, he could not handle the strain yet of travelling across the dimensions so Melhand stayed behind with him until he would be old enough to cross on his own.

And so Rose left. After a few months, Melhand had still heard no word from her and realized something must be wrong so he left young Douglas (only about four months old) with Gary and went back to the Prime Material Plane to check on his wife. He planned to return in a few days since it was close to the time that Douglas would be able to make the dimensional cross, but when he didn’t come back in a few months, they were considered possibly lost in transport. Douglas was considered an orphan and grew up with Gary as his adoptive father. During the next few years, he lived with the Sub-Goblins. They taught him many skills that they possessed and he learned much about them. Amazingly, the Sub-Goblins were master healers and taught him his abilities in curing magic. Gary was even very good at spell casting and taught him the mystic abilites of sorcery. One particular Sub-Goblin taught him how to dodge attacks that were coming at him that he wanted to avoid.

And so Douglas lived with the Sub-Goblins for the first fifteen years of his life, learning their ways and learning all about them. But this wasn’t all. Douglas was a very bright young lad, especially as Elves go and even on his own away from his own kind, he managed to pick up a little of his natural abilities of resisting sleep and charms. On his fifteenth birthday, Gary took Douglas aside and began to tell him about his parents and what possibly happened to them (at this point, he had known very little). After hearing the story, Douglas wanted to return to his true plane to search for them and possibly talk to Lord Rohalan about them. The Sub-Goblins knew a great deal about interdimensional travel but were hesitant to use it now because most of the people they sent out never came back and those that did told amazing horror stories to chill one’s bones. But he trained a little more and quickly knew how to return to the Prime Material Plane. He soon made preparations to leave with the promise that he’d return to tell Gary and the others what had happened once he found out.

Once completing the transfer, Douglas found himself in the woods outside a nearby castle. From the looks of things, the castle was very run down as if it had not been well kept for the last few years. He soon began to realize that this was probably Lord Rohalan’s castle and walked around it to find the way in. He finally found the main entrance, but realized that it would be difficult to do so since it was closed up. He finally used some of his magical abilities to help him inside and started roaming the halls.

The whole place looked as if it had been completely deserted on very short notice. He saw no sign of anyone in the castle as he did his search and was near to giving up hope of finding any clues there when he heard a faint scraping that was definitely not a rat. He followed its sound and found a very frail and nearly dead man. The man was chained to the wall with little clothes on and the food, if you could call it that, nearby looked unfit for anything living. After talking to the person for a while, he found that this was what was left of Lord Rohalan, and though he had been taken care of, barely, he was finally dying of malnutrition. Lord Rohalan did manage to tell Douglas what had happened. Shortly after his parents left to the plane of the Sub-Goblins, the person who was blackmailing him came along and made good on his threat. He overtook the castle and locked him in it, dismissing all the servants and subjects in it that didn’t flee in fear. When Rose returned to this plane and the castle, she was captured before she had a chance to even guess what was going on and was taken back to the enemy’s castle.

When her husband had finally returned, he was taken also, but was killed before he left Rohalan’s castle. Just before Rohalan died, he told Douglas that the mage enemy was named Dacalus and could be found somewhere north, in the Tocalus region. On his way out of the castle, Douglas stopped in the library to see if he could find more information there and found Lord Rohalan’s journal which told even more of Dacalus. As it turned out, Dacalus was a shape-shifting mage, one of the most sinister in existence. Normally, he was roaming around Tocalus doing various things, impersonating various people. One name that Douglas, whether in relations (good or bad) to Dacauls or one of his personalities, he was uncertain, picked up was Iladius Morgan Skrywd.

And so Doulgas left the castle in search of Dacalus. If nothing else, he could at least get vengeance for his parents, and possibly find his mother, if she was still alive. He arrived in the Tocalus Region at the age of twenty-five and began his search.

He spent much time in the southern area but all to no avail. As he moved from province to province, he changed his name. He got the most work done under the names of Merlin, Gandalf, and Allanon. As Merlin, he learned that there was a man by the name of Nomed running the town of Nintos in the Calar province. As Gandalf, he learned that Nomed was rumored to have some sort of relations with Dacalus. But it was as Allanon that he got the most information.

He finally ended up in a province called Mariposa. Here, he managed to get in good with the leader of the Scorpion Army, in the year 1880. He learned of Iladius Morgan Skrywd, a townsperson in Clanthia of the Calar province, near to Nintos. It seemed that Mr. Skrywd had a run-in with Dacalus long ago and had won. He knew much more about Dacalus than anyone in the area and he would be best to go to for help. Shortly after finding this information, Douglas helped overthrow the remiander of the army and then made his way into Calar in search Iladius Skrywd.

Immediately upon arrival in Finis, he hid away for the next few months, gathering information around Our Blessed Order and working up his newest disguise. He finally decided to impersonate a clerical priest and also rename himself Dr. Benjamin T. Longhorn, making the story that in his clerical times, he became a good healing doctor. Not wanting to arrouse suspicion since he had been asking a lot of questions lately, he decided to lay low and did odd jobs around the town and Order for a while, keeping a low profile. While working around there, he expanded his magical abilities a little more and finally, in the year 1950, he moved to Nintos.

He spent the next 35 years in Nintos, trying to gather information again. In all those years, he was never able to get a converstation with Nomed and learned practically nothing. But still he bided his time. Finally, though, in 1985, he moved to Faukenhausen where he stayed living peacefully for another 13 years. In that time, he decided to take a short break from his search and write his disertation on sub-goblins, which he entitled Strength in Weakness: A Guide to the Sub-Goblin Race. It was published by Our Blessed Order and made it’s way around the region, gaining him a little fame under his title of doctor. Finally, though, he moved to Clanthia in 1998, renewing his search for Dacalus and his parents, hoping that Mr. Skrywd can be of some assistance to him and eventually he can extract the vengeance nessecary for his father, and hopefully save his mother from whatever horrow she’s been in for the past 200 years.

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