Lord Champfort

King Tayba assumed Kaerok’s throne during a troubled time, at a troubled age. His father was murdered by Dark Elven assassins, leaving the seventeen-year-old Tayba to don the crown and try to bring together a kingdom close to fracturing. While they had showed proper respect for king and kindred at court, the Banner Lords had spent the last century indulging in all manner of petty disputes, moving boundary stones, questioning bloodlines, throwing insults, brawling, and, again and again, the escalations would not stop until blood was spilled. Only one held himself above it all: Lord Champfort, the King’s Blade. Lord Arohn von Champfort was not born to great influence, but was trusted enough to train and care for the young Prince Tayba up until the king’s death. Then, in his first act after being crowned, King Tayba made Lord Champfort his right hand: the King’s Blade, trusted with the king’s life and the peace of the realm. Within a year of Tayba’s coronation, Lord Champfort had quelled six territorial disputes that had escalated to bloodshed. Barons, dukes, and viscounts had fought over woodlands, rivers, and mines, killing hundreds of peasant levies in pointless battles. Lord Champfort ended each conflict with the edge of his blade, and noble heads rolled in his wake. But that was only part of Champfort’s duties. King Tayba had not forgotten the murder of his father. Everyone knew that Dark Elves were only mercenaries and King Tayba was convinced that a Banner Lord had paid for his father’s death, and he would not allow them to escape justice. A few years after assuming the throne, King Tayba called upon the Sacred Order to find the traitor. They sent a group of inquisitors, who became known as the Eyes of Kaerok. Lord Champfort was the Eyes’ chief liaison with the crown. He searched for the traitor with vigor, without success, and as the years rolled into decades Lord Champfort met a new problem: the theft of his wits. Lord Champfort was only in his fifties when he began to suffer from serious memory lapses and unpredictable bouts of confusion. As the symptoms worsened, terror gripped his heart, and so great was his desperation that he made the pilgrimage to the temples among the ruins of Narbuk. He prayed for an answer, a way to continue serving his King. His prayers were answered in the form of a cleric: a woman who could brew a potion that could stave off his madness. The potion cleared away the clouds from Lord Champfort’s mind, even sharpened it… but only briefly. He needed regular doses. The cleric returned to Kaerok with him to produce more, and Lord Champfort became dependent on it and on its brewer. It was something he came to regret. Champfort otherwise returned to his duties. The Eyes of Kaerok suggested that the men responsible for the murder of King Tayba’s father were slain during Lord Champfort’s purges, but King Tayba refused to believe it. Forced to continue the search, Lord Champfort found another use for the Eyes of Kaerok: the destruction of any who opposed the king. Nobles he accused were stripped of lands and titles, keeping the Eyes occupied and consolidating Lord Champfort’s power. But that power, once consolidated, could be leveraged by more than himself. After ten years, Lord Champfort stumbled upon a secret meeting between the cleric and a dark figure clad in blackened steel – a Knight Revenant. Lord Champfort reached for his blade, but the black-clad knight and the cleric only laughed. Without the Knights Revenant, there would be no more potions, they said. Lord Champfort would lose his mind in days. He would do as they asked, or he would go mad. Champfort could have wept from the strength of his fury, but his terror won out. Madness was too terrible for him to face. His heart heavy, Champfort did as they asked. The Knights Revenant acted quickly. A potion of a different sort was brewed en-masse – a potion of complete mental domination. Champfort had it smuggled to the Eyes of Kaerok so the Knights Revenant could take control of them. These now puppet-judges quickly directed King Tayba’s vengeance to the Free City of Arnoc — war was clearly the Knights’ goal, but Lord Champfort could not understand why. Once King Tayba was convinced that Arnoc had plotted his father’s death, though, not even his daughter Valerie could stop the army’s march. Lord Champfort could do nothing at all. And so Champfort sat in Kaerok Castle, left to watch over an empty throne, standing side-by-side with guards who swore allegiance to Siroth instead of their king. He realized, far too late, that he should have died before betraying his realm. He should have died long ago. He did not have to wait long before death came to him.