30 Lords of Terrasquestone

1. The Gray Lord

The Gray Lord is an ancient, educated, and blessed not-quite-man. His lore in magic and connection to his own magical domain have granted him long life, and an equally long beard. When people say the term High Lord, they are invoking the image of the Gray Lord, with staff and robes, a wizard's hat, and a penchant for speaking in riddles, laughing softly to himself, and keeping council not with the other Lords, but with the common folk. He also is the most likely to have friends and allies from among the non-human races, though he is no friend to dragons, dragonlovers, or the forces of darkness or evil.

The Gray Lord is older than the Council of Lords, and comes and goes as he pleases.

2. The Lord of Prophecy and Lost Causes

This Lord is a middle-aged woman, one who has aged with grace and beguiles others who think her far younger than she is. Her connection to the power is great, but not overwhelming. Her strength resides in her faith in the causes she pursues, as well as being a keeper and chronicler of prophecies. She follows the great and terrible prophecies, disrupting the fell ones and doing her best to make sure heroes arrive on time, magic swords are found when needed, and young men coming of age are not tempted to evil for the lack of a mentor.

The Lord of Lost Causes is a daughter of nobility, but gave her claim to a throne in favor of seeking out magic power, and then was recruited to serve the Council of Lords, and then joined them. 

3. The Boar Lord

The Boar Lord is a great fat man with a great wiry beard. His personality is larger than life, and is widely popular with the people of the entire region, though much less so among the noble houses, the clerical orders, and other power brokers. While he seems to waste his time and energy on tournaments, feasts, carousing, and generally living like a fleshy god, most of what he does is kneecapping, undermining, and breaking up power trusts to ensure that Terrasquestone isn't drawn into another war. The Boar Lord, famous for his boar hunting, should really be much more famous for the decades of widescale peace that marked his tenure.

But, most people remember he was fat, a womanizer, and that he sired a legion of bastards across the realm.

4. The Lord of Chaos

The Lord of Chaos had an interesting start, middle, and end to his tenure on the Council of Lords. He started as a common-born shepherd in the mountains before being caught up in an attack by dark ones. He survived, but due to a freak accident with magic, formed a conduit to a long lost past life, and started presenting memories and abilities he should not have had. This past life was a sorcerer-king of Palisander, and most of the time he was a scared kid, but sometimes he would unload the arsenal of a centuries-old warrior mage from a long-dead Empire and just level unholy hell on his opponents.

He ascended to the Council of Lords when the city was on the cusp of war against a staggeringly powerful evil force. He solo fought dreadlords among the enemy host, drawing them out into duels, traps, or ambushes. He had strong allies who seemingly inherited similar forces through him, allowing them to feel fragments of their own past lives, for good or ill. He eventually sat the high throne as the High Lord taking an unprecedented four of the Holy Treasures as his regalia, including the Sword, the Ring, the Staff, and the Crown.

The Lord of Chaos met the incarnation of Evil in Lichelight, and fought the avatar on the slopes of Mount Ruin after summoning the Terrasque and sending it against the gates of Doomguard. The gates broken, and the Avatar of Darkness was slain, and so was the Lord of Chaos. There was a massive ceremony in Terrasquestone, a year long period of mourning and recovering, and the Banner of the Dawn was furled and placed over his casket as he was placed in the Vault of the Hallowed Dead.

He actually survived the battle and very quietly retired back to his sleepy home village, taking his childhood friend as his wife, and living out an unremarkable life.

5. The Paragon Lord

The Paragon Lord is largely considered to be the greatest of the Lords who sat the council, and was a man of wisdom and action. He repeatedly tried to join the army, then the guard, and each time was rejected. He pushed himself and plumbed the depths of the Gyre and found the strength to match his courage and purity of spirit. He emerged as a near superhuman in terms of physical abilities, and his spirit even greater. The armor, cowl, and shield he emerged with were also potent beyond reckoning. He ended up becoming the Lord-General of the Armies of Terrasquestone and then the Lord-Marshall over a covenant of allied forces and led a spearhead invasion of Lichelight, bringing the host against the black walls of Doomguard and breaking them for the first time in their long history. His alliance of Lords, nobles, kings, knights, and mage orders left the Black lands in wrecked shambles and then oversaw its repair and rebuilding. Black fortresses were cleansed and repurposed, new watches were raised, and the deep places were warded, closed off, and otherwise had their power broken.

He would eventually stand on the precipice of defeat, before leading the charge that turned the tide, with other powerful lords. He took a wondrous weapon the Artificer Lord had crafted and then used epic tier magic to walk back in time so that the stones of Terrasquestone would be set and would have time to grow into a proper citadel and center of social, cultural, and magical power to have the strength to push back against the Demigod Dreadlord.

6. The Arcane Lord

The Arcane Lord was a dark man, with a dark aura, commanding, exacting, unforgiving. He enhanced people with his potent magic, making them improved versions of themselves and making him wealthy. As he sought more skill in the arts of fleshcrafting, He broke through the barrier, created the first conduit to a warren, and discovered the power it contained, and it almost destroyed him. He vanished for years before reappearing on the noble scene. When he did, he was no longer the egotistical shaper, he was an archlord, a magus of transcendental power. He opened portals to travel, banished and summoned strange beasts, he could make inanimate objects come to life and serve his will, and most impressively he bound the mighty Terrasque to the citadel that now bears its name, and more so, attached it to the Core in the depths of the Gygaxian Gyre.

Legend speaks that it was the Arcane Lord who raised the first iteration of the Citadel and the inner wall.

This is false, the great accomplishment of the Arcane Lord was connecting the Dungeon Core to the surface, allowing it to expand into the existing vestigial fortress that was in place, and facilitating the core's expansion. The Arcane Lord placed spells, stele, markers, and sigils all over the place, allowing the Core to expand its influence to the surface, and quickly assimilating the then township of Oscoln Flat, and the associated goblin fort to become part of it. 

7. The Lord of Honor

The Lord of Honor was not always a wise man, but he was ever noble, honorable, and courageous.

The Lord of Honor's tenure was brief, as Terrasquestone was rife with intrigue, the different nations vying with the neutral city-state, each seeking to annex it, or see it destroyed. Having fought in a previous war in his cold homeland, the Lord of Honor sought to parlay with the most powerful of the city's enemies and was tricked by nobles within the city itself. They desired his seat for their own, and being a man of honor and not politics, they succeeded easily, ousted him, and saw the Lord of Honor jailed deep beneath the castle. He was eventually taken out, paraded through the streets while the threat of siege loomed against the city, and was beheaded.

8. The Lord-Father

The Lord-Father was an orphan, having lost his entire family in a violent border war. When the war was over, many of the survivors of razed villages and sacked towns were encouraged to go to Terrasquestone, and let that city handle their welfare, rather than the different kingdoms spending their own coin and effort rebuilding and resettling the devastated regions. The Lord-Father was raised in the Terrasquestone orphanages, and upon coming of age, joined the Guild of Champions, to become an adventuring hero. He did well at this, especially excelling in hunting rare game, bringing down dangerous felons, and keeping a rotating group of close allies through all of it. His last mission involved traveling all the way to the edge of Lichelight to raid an inverse tower (a steep pit in the ground, reinforced to prevent intruders from getting in) and rescuing a lost child of prophecy.

After saving the child, and returning, he watched the mages of the city take the youth and he was left without a purpose. The Council of Lords gave him one, and rather than becoming drawn into the games of state and power, he became a Lord of few words, but a strong love of children. During his tenure, the childcare systems were strengthened, the orphanages saw their funds bolstered, and the guilds were brought to peace with each other, rather than being at each other's throats over gold and access to the Gyre.

A statue was built in front of the largest orphanage in the city in his likeness, holding two children by their hands, and carrying a third on his shoulders.

9. The Lord of Fear

Much like the Lord-Father, the Lord of Fear came from a shattered home, had no father, was raised in slavery, and then liberated but at the cost of knowing his mother was left behind still in irons. He was taken to Terrasquestone and raised by the people of the Guild of Adventurers Upon Return, who saw great potential in him. They were correct, and he grew to be a powerful swordsman and emotionally potent sorcerer. They found this a bit unsettling as they were more bookish and wizardly in their magic and generally considered emotions something to master and control, not ride like a wave or wildfire. A tumultuous youth, he grew into greater strength, was brought under the quiet sway of an unknown Dreadlord, and then fell in love with a spirited warrior princess. The Dreadlord encouraged his reckless behavior. War came, splitting the continent into a realm-wide civil war. Castles were felled, cities burned, armies marched, and the war was vast, though largely mundane in scope. The Lord of Fear secretly wed the Warrior Princess, was disciplined by the Guild, and was increasingly infuriated by their dismissiveness towards him. Each accomplishment he made, they would rebuke, or give credit to another, and refused to advance him beyond journeyman.

The Lord of Fear was swayed to the side of evil after he surrendered to despair.

In the shadow of Mount Ruin he was raised as a Dreadlord, and returned to Terrasquestone and hewed down the leadership of the Guild of Adventurers-Upon-Return, and took command of their forces. He rallied the city guard to his banner, and the levies remaining in the city saw their banner general leading an attack on the citadel itself. They knew what flag they followed, and in a day, the impregnable fortress fell, it gates wide and flames licking from open windows. The Lord of Fear battled the Council of Lords, but not alone. His Dreadlord master came as well, and the Council was defeated and the survivors were scattered to the wind, and the Black Flag of the Dreadlords would fly over Terrasquestone for a generation before the Lord of Fear was defeated and his master slain.

10. The Lord of Bastards

The Lord of Bastards is not fondly remembered, as she was a cold, cruel, and calculating woman who coerced and blackmailed her way to a seat on the Council and eventually through machinations ended up with her hands on the Rod and the Crown. Through her short reign, she amassed a great amount of wealth for her house, sending much of it to those distant coffers, stoked hostilities with Krakenport until war broke out with the maritime nation. After losing a number of coastal battles, the Lord of Bastards broke off talks with the Wizard's Cache (the bank) and diverted funds to building a fleet of warships, all the while hosting lavish parties and festivities in the city to keep morale up. She was well divorced from the common people and was not aware of how there was growing famine in the region, sparks of rebellion were rising, and discontent with the Council was on the verge of overflowing.

After the intercession of the Wizard's Cache against Terrasquestone, funding was cut off, and the Guilds blockaded the dungeon, cutting off that supply of gold as well. The Tarasceen fleet sailed with the intent of burning Krakenport but was scattered by a storm, and then the ships were hunted down and destroyed by Krakenport warships, as they were much better at seacraft than the green Tarasceen sailors and their brand new ships. The Lord of Bastards was caught up in a city-wide revolt and was pulled down from her seat. She screamed as the power she had fled her, the Dungeon withdrawing its blessings, it had what it wanted from him, three bastard children spawned from her dalliances with the avatar of the dungeon, and the violence of the revolt allowed it to make a large number of changes easily. The Lord, stripped to nothing, was forced to walk naked from the Lord's Tower in the great council, through the inner city, the middle city, and eventually to the Gate of Despair.

She was cast down into the Devouring Deep at the base of the Gate of Despair, where the sucking morass pulled her down screaming into the darkness. Her daughter and two sons would go on to be exceptional leaders, gifted in great magical power.

11. The Lord of Wolves

The Lord of Wolves came from a rural village where he thought he would become the village blacksmith, marry the village baker's daughter, and continue his family line. This changed when he took up an axe and a hammer and slew monsters that sought to burn his village, kill the men, and carry off the women and children. His power awoke and he summoned wolves to his aid. He avoided his magical potential for as long as possible, only seeking training after his forgework started drawing on his power and he exploded his third anvil.

An impulsive man, he didn't accept a lordship, but rather it was thrust upon him. As an apprentice, he was sent on a mission with another Lord as part of the retinue. Things went about as poorly as possible, including the Lord being slain, and the Lord of Wolves taking up his Lord's Staff and immediately putting the wood to work shattering skulls and turning a fell troll into a pillar of flame and ash. Upon returning to Terrasquestone to report the loss and failure, his bearing of the staff proclaimed him a Lord, as a non-Lord cannot command power through or from the staff, and he was found worthy in the Test of the Staff.

The Lord of Wolves is pragmatic and to the point, often unsettling many nobles who are accustomed to the Dance of Courts and the Games of Thrones, deception and intrigue, and all that.

12. The Lord of Cats

The Lord of Cats went from a young socialite to being a caretaker of children, to being a professor of magic at one of the important academies of magic, and eventually retired from teaching children evocation, transmutation, and abjuration magic. After her retirement, she was offered a seat on the Council of Lords, which she reluctantly accepted, expecting the Lords to be more difficult to be around than a classroom full of students barely capable of spellwork or containing their own mana. Instead, she found herself running the Council with even the High Lord deferring to her guidance and wisdom, while she would put one of her celican (fae) house cats.

She had a strong hand in keeping the Council cohesive and the city under steady leadership in the tumultuous years following the Children's War. She remained an avid keeper of cats, and showed no preference for a favorite, regarding a common street cat with the same affection as a winged fluttercat. 

13. The Fell Lord

The Fell Lord came from a noble family in Lichelight, having been hidden away by servants who brought him to the green hills of Terrasquestone as a babe. He would have followed a commoner's path except his blood was potent with magic and within a short amount of time he found himself as a ranger adept, using magic reflexively to augment his tracking and his bow. He surrendered notions of common life when he was abducted by agents of his distant father, brought back to Lichelight, where he was forced into tutelage as a Dreadlord. He learned dark lessons, and would have taken an unusual wife, a succubus who would have given her heart to him, but his father executed her, and attempted to use the Fell Lord in a ritual. The Fell Lord slew his own father, triggered a cataclysm of fire, and escaped to the green lands.

Expecting to be taken into custody, or even executed for being who he was, the Fell Lord was welcomed. He was raised to the Council of Lords despite his young age. He would serve the Council for many years, but never escaped the shadow of his experiences in the land of shadow and flame, and was ever vigilant against incursions from those dark places, even into his own heart.

14. The Artificer Lord

The Artificer Lord was a maker of items of wondrous power, and clockwork devices, and was a realm-wide renowned armorsmith. He was born and raised in a merchant household where his quick skill in crafting made him even more wealthy on top of generational wealth from years of the family arms, armor, and mercenary trade. Following an attack on his life, with raiders taking him hostage, he renounced the arms trade and tried to take the family to more humanitarian aims. His reward was another attempt on his life by an extended family member who had been like a father to him. After prevailing, he took up building arms and armor again, but for defense and protective purposes. He grew in power and influence and was invited to become one of the Lords of Terrasquestone. He accepted reluctantly because such a post of responsibility ran counter to his wealthy womanizing rake lifestyle.

The Artificer Lord had a hand in crafting the Holy Treasures of Terrasquestone, the Lord's Staves, and designing the armor worn by the Tarasceen Guard. He was one of the first Lords of the City, and learned the secrets of the Keep and the Gyre, and refused to serve the Dungeon but did protect the city and the people within it, and eventually gave his life to destroy a Dreadlord demigod and his black host of invaders by using a powerful weapon that slew him as well.

15. The Lord of Excess

The Lord of Excess was not a healthy man. No amount of magic could reverse the cursed blood that flowed in his veins, even as the blood gave him the tremendous power he commanded. The Lord of Excess came at the end of the long period of peace and prosperity in the region, which had allowed degeneracy and opulence to become the watchwords of the day, and he himself was the unfortunate byproduct of dalliances with incest and diabolism, his parentage being something of a question. He was raised to Lord during this period of decadence and then was exiled by his cousin who sought to remove him so that he himself could become Lord and fast-track himself into being the High Lord. The Lord of Excess used his sorcery and an allied fleet of ships from Krakenport to make a landing on the coast near Terrasquestone, overthrow his cousin, rescue his fiance, and then decide that traveling was more fun than the endless tedious balls, parades, and parties of the effete wealthy nobles of the city, and let his cousin take over as the Lord Regent in his absence.

The Lord of Excess adventure, and then had the nerve to look surprised when his cousin forced his fiance to be his unwilling bride and declared himself High Lord absolute and that the Lord of Excess was AGAIN exiled and banished from Terrasquestone on the pain of a long and painful death. With a sigh, the Lord of Excess rallied his magical forces, assaulted the city again, and after a bitter campaign that left many dead on both sides, was forced to pursue his cousin down into the Gyre, where they eventually confronted each other in the presence of the Core and an audience of monsters, dungeonlords, and worse where the Lord of Excess finally killed his treacherous cousin, but not before he executed the Lord of Excess's violated former fiance.

The Lord of Excess cursed the Dungeon Core and took his leave, never returning to Terrasquestone, leaving what remained of the Lords to restore order and repair the damage done.

16. The Mastermind Lord

The Mastermind Lord had a rare and unusual sort of magic at his command. He was a seemingly slightly sub-average man in most regards, easily overlooked and discounted until he discovered he could use his power to increase the abilities of the people who swore to serve him. This took a long time to figure out, because the fealty/ownership element was an implicit requirement of his power, he couldn't change things that weren't his. Once he discovered this, he became something disliked in Terrasquestone, he became a slave owner. The people he bought he could change as he saw fit, and he did so, creating a host of superpowered warriors, and super sexy harem women, and turning mundane weapons and armor into magic items.

His rise to power made him an economic force in the city, pushing the other guilds out of the limelight. He had slaves, and he could use his strange power to reduce things he owned to dust to harvest their latent potential value to further power his abilities. This brought him into conflict with the Guild of Champions, and then the Guild of Heroes, but he had the backing of the Dungeon Guild, which had no qualms over slavery but thought his power was pretty neat. There was a shadow war between the Mastermind's Civic Guild of Slaves and a coalition of other guilds and a faction of paladinic busybodies who saw his rise on the back of slavery as something really fucking problematic. The Mastermind won the war, but overall agreed the slavery thing was, in his own words, Kinda Icky.

He entered himself on the Council of Lords, and within two years was appointed as the High Lord. While never formally banning slavery, he did do a lot to remove the practice, but did so by leaning hard into Axiomancy, legalistic magic that made magically binding and geas level contracts, so while in form he had servants, if still in practice they were still his property.

The Dungeon Core absolutely LOVED the Mastermind Lord.

17. The Beast Lord

The Beast Lord was a large man of noble bearing and he had a single great passion in life, hunting. Even once he ascended to the seat of Lord, he kept up his hunting, seeking ever and more dangerous prey. Eventually, he went too far, entering a fae domain and pursuing a potent beast that he did not know, seeking to slay it and add it to his wall of trophies. Instead, the beast turned on him, revealing itself to be a fae lord itself, and cursed the Beast Lord, changing him from a man to a hybrid of man and beast and to return home on foot. He was almost slain when he returned to Terrasquestone as he was unrecognized, and if it were not for knowing words of powers and secret phrases, they would have indeed slain him.

He returned to his seat as the High Lord and would spend a long reign that oversaw a long decline in the prosperity of the city-state. Many of its fields were overgrown, many moved to greener fields, trade slowed to a trickle, and the great Terrasquestone was almost reduced to a footnote in history. The might of the Beast Lord was such that he resisted attempts to slay him or oust him from the High Lord's seat. This filled the Core with frustration and hostility, and even the Other Council was unable to move or change the Beast Lord.

Eventually, a woman appeared at the gates, and was made a guest, and through the power of her womanly charms, she broke the curse over the Beast Lord, and likewise, the Fae Curse laid against Terrasquestone. Now older and wiser, the Beast Lord considered sacking the Fae realm in retribution but decided the best course of action was to pretend it never happened, he had a sweet piece to take up his attention.

18. The Ranger Lord

The Ranger Lord came from a long line of rangers, people tasked with the protection of the borders of a fallen kingdom. He was the blood of the king of that land and would have remained a ranger of local fame, but nothing more if not for the appearance of the Gray Lord and his retinue on a mission of great importance. The Ranger took their quest as his own, and carried the fight through until the end, eventually leading a host against the forces of evil and in the process restoring his land. The Ranger Lord was unique in that he was a King in another land, but a member of the Council of Lords, his land remaining ever loyal to the ideals of Terrasquestone, the Lords, and the ancient lineage of his blood.

The Ranger Lord took an elf-maiden as a wife and ensured a long alliance between his land and the elves of the Beithigh region.

19. The Sonorous Lord

The Sonorous Lord was known for his dour monotone voice, his penchant for cutting words, and many people thinking he was possibly allied with the dark powers. Formerly a professor at a prestigious magic academy in the city, where he excelled in abjuration, alchemy, and logic, his ascent to the rank of Lord was unexpected. He only became a Lord after refusing the appointment to the headmaster of his academy. Preparing to leave Terrasquestone, he was caught up in a magical incursion against the city and was part of the ad hoc defense which had been organized by of all people, one of the magical fraternities at his old school. Often referred to as the Children's War, he barely survived, and was made a Lord afterwards. Made. He was not allowed the chance to refuse.

20. The Maiden Lord

The Maiden Lord had a torturous path to the Council of Lords. She was born to common folk, was captured in a slaver raid, and was sold into slavery where she was turned into a slave-mage, a living weapon. She eventually escaped, but not before participating in the rebellion that left the Slave culture in burning wreckage, its nobility broken, its slave industry burnt, and her own previous owner left in the care of the surviving slavers, a collar around her neck and locked in a cage. She followed a path of prophecy to Terrasquestone, made a joke of the magic academy's curriculum, and proved to be stronger and more competent in channeling magic power than everyone at the academy.

She was raised to Lordship to serve as a figurehead, her handlers thinking her an easily manipulated girl-child, she used to be a slave so it should be second nature to submit to their heavy-handed demands. She saw them chained in the dungeons, before being put to public works or conscripted into the Tarasceen Guard, and eventually rose to stand as High Lord before she was 25. Her reign was brief as it was glorious. She initiated multiple purges of infernal cabals, dread-cults, and founded the Tarasceen Inquisition, and set them to the task of finding undead, feral shapeshifters, friends of evil, and the machinations of Dreadlords.

She ended up working a miracle of magic to protect Terrasquestone from the most powerful Dreadlord in a thousand years, casting a powerful paling over the entire city. The sheets of flame that fell from the sky boiled against the shield, the rocks in the air burst into dust, and all the energy was bounced back as something creatures of flame and evil cannot bear, cold. The host was frozen, the dreadlord was struck by a focused counterstrike that didn't just defeat him, it slew him completely and irreversibly, and turned his corpse into an effigy of ice that persisted for a year before melting. The Maiden Queen was turned into blue crystal and remains at the highest point in the Lady's Garden, facing north.

21. The Wandering Lord

The Wandering Lord was born the youngest son of the High Lord of the city, with an astounding eleven brothers and seven sisters. He inherited a great deal of magic potential, material wealth, and the aegis of being a Tarasceen noble to go where he wanted and when. He was considered a wastrel son, and as the youngest, nothing was expected of him so long as he stayed out of trouble. So he mostly did, traveling from city to city, kingdom to kingdom. He explored dungeons, brothels, and the secret gardens of noblewomen, gambled, smoked, drank, and most famously was a quick hand at cards. Then came the Secession. The High Lord vanished, and the eldest brothers dispersed through the power structure of the city and turned on each other to see who would become the new High Lord. Several coups took place, there was fighting and bloodshed inside the castle and a few riots across the city. The Wandering Lord, afield in another city busy smoking pipes and carousing women, was almost slain by an assassin sent to kill him so he wouldn't come to anyone's aid in the growing conflict in the castle.

He returned cross beyond words and picked up his old circle of drinking buddies, gambling pals, and others who were completely over the Brother's War. The struggle lasted a month and ended with half of his brothers either bound to his will, or in the gaol, and the other half in the ground. Only one sister survived the tragedy, and he sought to have the old Council of Lords restored. To his absolute disbelief and abject horror, the people of the city not only supported his restoration of the order his father oversaw, but they made him the new High Lord, ending his days of lechery and misbehavior. 

22. The Gambling Lord

The Gambling Lord came from common stock, and his family was involved in the wool trade. A war saw him conscripted into a mercenary band where instead of perishing as so many peasant levies do, he ended up in a leadership position and then ownership of the company. He was well-liked by the men as his luck was legendary, leading them from battle to battle with few losses, many victories, and some incredible stories of good timing, good luck, and unbelievable circumstances. He was discovered to be a powerful innate magic user, his power expressing itself through luck and probability. His company was signed by a Tarasceen noble, and then fell under the command of the Council of Lords, where he was 'captured' and his magic nature was discovered.

The Gambler would eventually be elevated to Lord status after his mercenary company was disbanded following a particularly vicious campaign against a breach in the mountains north of Terrasquestone. He became the roving Lord-General of the Tarasceen army until it was demobilized and dispersed a decade or so later. His attendance at Council meetings is legendary, managing to avoid almost every sitting meeting of the Council. 

23. The Strange Lord

The Strange Lord had a long beard, favored long robes, and had a rock garden where he would sit on a large rock, smoke a pipe, and contemplate the wonders and mysteries of the universe. He was considered strange because he seemed to operate with a logic that made sense to anyone but himself, a sort of if you take the color of the number two, multiply it by the storm coefficient, and then solve for what day of the week it was, and he would accurately predict what was going to be on the dessert tray at the banquet and where he would need to sit to get the specific pie he wanted. He was also known for being found with no clothing on.

His magic was powerful, but he seldom used it as it was never really under his control and he might try to heat a cup of tea gone cold and instead turn it into a tea tree, or blow the room apart with a lightning bolt. He was quoted as saying magic was a crutch for people who didn't know how to use their brains.

24. The Lord of the Fall

The Lord of the Fall was a warrior-chaplain in his years before being raised to a Lordship, early in the life of Terrasquestone. The early years were fraught with perils and dangers, war was more common, and it was a camp, then a humble grassland town, long before the great citadel was lifted. A great host came out of the west, greenskins in vast numbers and they were intent on sweeping humanity out of the region, claiming it for themselves. Many kingdoms were toppled, ruins were ravaged further, and it seemed that the time of man would come to a much earlier end than any expected. The Lord of the Fall and his brothers in the long since vanished Black Hammers went to work. They organized holding actions, ambushes, and diversionary raids while the people retreated and started raising wooden palisades and looking to the Gygaxian Gyre like it might be a more forgiving way to escape or a cleaner way to die. The battle was long and fierce, with the Black Hammers taking a bloody toll from the greenskins.

The host was broken, and other knightly orders arrived to take pressure off the defenders. They had held the greenskins long enough that the other humans were able to rally and organize, sending cadres of war mages, armored cavalry, and more to push back. After the battle was done and the dead were accounted for, the Lord of the Fall was the last Black Hammer left, the end of the order. He became a melancholy man, and a dour Lord who remained at martial readiness as he watched the first earthworks start, and the first stone walls lifted while the engineers considered the best way to build a defensive castle, and how they could incorporate access to the Gyre as part of it.

The Lord of the Fall holds the first space in the Vault of the Hallowed Dead, and the inscription on his stone vault reads that when the time of the Last Battle (of mankind), he will rise, along with the other Hallowed Dead, and the Valorous Dead, and they will leave Terrasquestone in a host and travel to Castle Armathaine where the last stand will be made.

25. The Lord of the Gyre

The Lord of the Gyre was the first man to plumb the depths of the Gygaxian Gyre, finding his way through its twists and turns, and then through the labyrinthine passages of the dungeon itself. The Lord of the Gyre was an assassin by trade and found caves relaxing mentally, and visited the Gyre long before the castle was built. He made several trips into the dungeon, attempted to map it out, discovered and parlayed with the Wights rather than attacking them on sight, and found the Core. He would meditate in the presence of the Core, and replenish his supernatural assassin skills, sharpening them in that rarified place of almost poisonously condensed essence.

The Lord of the Gyre was one of the first Lords, found the entire concept laughable, and dangerous.

26. The Black Lord

The Black Lord was infamous for three reasons, she was an uncommon female Lord, she always wore black, and she was an assassin by trade. The Black Lord came from distant Gianthome/Mammothguard and had a thickly accented command of the Tarasceen language, a brusk manner, and vampish behavior. Her robes were trimmed in black fur, and she was a lethal hand-to-hand warrior who demonstrated no magical aptitude, favoring hand strikes, daggers, and short swords. She did have magic powers, but hers were all passive in nature and involved charisma and agility buffs, regeneration, and the ability to vanish from plain sight.

The Black Lord had a debt she called the Blood Ledger and used it to record the consequences of her actions as a list of names, the people who died at her hands, or because of the decisions she made. 

27. The Quiet Lord

The Quiet Lord is considered one of the more frightening and intimidating people to serve the Council of Lords. He was a large man with silvery-white hair, and golden eyes, and was known for refusing robes in favor of a swordsman's leathers, a cloak, and his long-handled sword. He was a weary foe of monsters, and outsiders, and harbored neither love nor trust for magi, including the other Lords. His name came from the fact that he seldom spoke more than a few words at a time, and never addressed the Council, only waiting until he had heard enough to go and handle whatever matter had come up. He was a man of action and violence and had a belief that a foe without a head wasn't a danger anymore, and then the Council could get back to dithering and debating without him being present.

The Quiet Lord came from a monastic order of monster slayers, and he delved the Gyre to the bottom, and as near as anyone can tell, was unimpressed.

28. The Lord of Denial

The Lord of Denial is not from Cridhedun. He was caught in the warp and weft of the Numinous Road and found himself on the banks of a river in the green land, where he was rescued and taken to the Citadel. He was cured of a horrific wasting disease and found he was invested with wild magic he had almost no control over. He found himself the focus of a Dreadlord, who claimed to be the instrument of his summoning so the Dreadlord could steal the wild magic from him and conquer the world. The Lord of Denial was forced to seek out the dungeon's core after a perilous travail through the Gyre, and was left a spiritually rent man. The Lord of Denial refused to believe Terrasquestone was real, and he was only in a sort of fever delirium, but he could not deny the reality of the DungeonVerse.

The Lord of Denial was granted honorary status on the Council of Lords, and then was catapulted to position of High Lord, and the opposite of the Lord of Chaos, he took none of the Holy Treasures as a symbol of his power, instead refusing everything and being all but forced into the position. He was drawn into a Warren by the Dreadlord and called on the Wild Magic, blowing up the Dreadlord, bursting the Warren like a rotten melon, and seemingly vanishing back to where he came from.

29. The Short Lord

The Short Lord was a man of diminutive stature but a huge personality and equally impressive intellect. Sometimes called the Half-Lord, he filled every room he entered and like the Boar Lord was well known for his appetite for wine, women, and song. This belies his great contributions to Terrasquestone. He was an artificer and engineer, a planner, and a builder, and he oversaw the construction of many roads, stone bridges, guard outposts, towers, and rebuilding the defenses of the Great Citadel and raising the outmost wall of the city. His plan of dredging a canal to the sea never came to fruition, and ships were ever the bane of his tenure, along with constant simmering hostilities with Stormfort and Krakenport, who saw him as a weak link and a Lord to be tested to breaking.

The Short Lord also was an epic traveler and visited the other kingdoms and castles regularly, and some welcomed him to the point of allowing him to join their circles of advisors, sitting on their small councils, and otherwise being more than a traveling Lord, but a friend returning to bring stories, and share his sharp wit.

30. The Bumbling Lord

Some people joke that old men with long white beards are as common as pigeons in Terrasquestone, and the Bumbling Lord kinda plays into that. He is quite tall, but also wizened and very old. He wears the traditional long wizard's robes, but favors a wand above all other tools, and has spent many years in service as an instructor, and later headmaster of young magi at one of the prestigious. He was sort of pushed onto the Council of Lords where he is seen as something of a lame duck, considering he frequently pauses so long in conversations people think he's stopped talking to them, loses his train of thought, and has a habit of inventing new words, conjuring up the weirdest of small magics, and that sort of nonsense.

All that being said, he is a man of deep convictions, vast patience, and the mind of a dragon, sharp and keen if easily distracted when nothing of importance is occurring. He is frequently on the lookout for chosen ones, and supporting intramural magic sports.