Togron the Conjoined

In Kaerok’s Barony of Mochmargen, at the Baron Marghart’s pastoral estate, lived two Ogryn brothers, Toglurr and Wakron. Toglurr was the older, though smaller in stature: clever and level-headed, but gruff. He had a knack for cuisine, and served as the estate’s head chef. Wakron, the younger brother, simple-minded but kind, was Toglurr’s provisioner, in charge of gathering ingredients. In contrast to his older sibling, he was a hulking figure. He retrieved vegetables, cheeses, dried meats, and grains from the fields and root cellars to meet the constant demands of Toglurr’s kitchen. He was also a skilled butcher, but that was the limit of what he could accomplish with his meager intellect. Toglurr scolded Wakron when the younger Ogryn misbehaved or misunderstood an order, but was also his biggest advocate. Toglurr insisted that he would not work without Wakron by his side. One year, Baron Marghart invited a scholar-mage to the estate to advise him on the use of spellcraft to increase his farm’s productivity. This wizard, Lahzarc, was disliked by the staff. His humor was dark and disturbing, and his air was dour and faintly predatory. When not muttering incantations over pregnant sows and tracing arcane glyphs into seedbeds, Lahzarc roamed the grounds eyeing the servants, sometimes smirking mysteriously as if at some imagined jest at that person’s expense. While Lahzarc was permitted to magically experiment on plants and animals, the Baron warned him to cast no spells upon people, on pain of death. But the servants feared Lahzarc nonetheless, and held little faith in his promises. After weeks of residency, having achieved some modest improvements upon crops and livestock by his spells, Lahzarc’s interest turned to the Ogryn brothers. Their personalities and their loving but fractious working relationship, fascinated him. He approached them both in turn to converse, and they were obliged by their status as servants to make at least a perfunctory reply to him, their guest. In passing, Toglurr told Lahzarc he wished his brother was easier to keep an eye on. Having just bungled a task, Wakron mentioned wishing he could have his clever brother always there to advise him. Lahzarc, that enigmatic grin again upon his face, thanked them for their time. A few days later, Lahzarc could no longer please himself with plants and animals. A sickness was in him, a sociopathic and detached curiosity. It was trivial for Lahzarc to lure Wakron to a little-used barn and stun him with a burst of stupefying magic. Toglurr arrived later, searching for his missing brother, and Lahzarc likewise ensorcelled him into a comatose state, then began his ghastly work upon the two Ogryn. Lahzarc weaved his spell more strongly, so that the brothers were all but dead, their hearts stopped and their minds frozen, sustained only by a trickle of magic. Then, with the tools of the barn and some of his own personal equipment and supplies, Lahzarc chopped them apart while they yet lived, and reassembled their components. The smaller Toglurr was largely discarded, but his head would certainly be quite useful on Wakron’s hulking frame. Easier to control… always properly guided… surely, thought Lahzarc, he had created a far superior servant. The scholar-mags was discovered within hours, spattered in Ogryn blood, but it was time enough for his macabre experiment to succeed. He did not flee when the screams of horror roused the attention of the baron’s men-at-arms, and did not resist when they dragged him to the dungeons. Instead, he raved with praise at the magnificence of his own creation, and confidently awaited the Baron’s pardon. Instead he was stripped and searched, and upon his breast was discovered the brand-scar of dread Ireth, city of mad flesh-twisters and necromancer-princes. Such a brand was the mark of a failed student and exile from that abominable place. Lahzarc was swiftly put to death and his body burned, on charge of murder and dark magic. But what of the Ogryn brothers? Unbeknownst to the baron and his troops, the Ogryn’s two-headed body survived, flesh knitted together and regenerated by Lahzarc’s mad biomancy. But their individual minds had not withstood this horrific rebirth. No longer Toglurr and Wakron, the new entity that called himself Togron emerged from the scraps of the two Ogryn’s personalities. In the chaotic weeks that followed, Baron Marghart fell from grace and inquisitors of the Sacred Order swarmed the estate to ensure Lahzarc’s madness was totally purged. But they were thwarted — the servants had helped Togron flee out of fondness for who the brothers had been, and sympathy for what they had become. It is said Togron now hides in the ruins of Narbuk, still equipped with his giant cooking tools, hunting rats and other creatures. Perhaps on some level, he remembers his old talents.