The Awakened

Piracy was not Luthor Harkon’s initial career choice. The Vampire, whose origins are shrouded in mystery, was travelling in his sarcophagus across the Great Ocean, aboard an Empire merchant ship, when it was attacked by a band of savage Norscan raiders. Unfortunately for them, in their rabid scramble for loot they prised open Harkon’s burial chest, awakening him from his dreamless slumber. By the time the ship broke up on the rocky Lustrian coastline, all the ‘surviving’ crew had undergone something of a change, in both their allegiance and their vital signs… Since that day, Harkon has ruled the region now known as the Vampire Coast, setting sail upon the Great Ocean in search of loot, plunder, and fresh recruits to raise into his service. As leader of a pirate fleet crewed exclusively by the dead and damned, he holds sway over a sea region of high winds and perilous currents that have proven to be incredibly treacherous to many unwary vessels, swelling his horde of Undead mariners with the reanimated corpses of shipwrecked unfortunates. Luthor Harkon teeters constantly on the very brink of insanity due in no small part to his colossal pride and greed, qualities which on one devastating, fateful occasion led him to almost lose his life as well as his mind, and certainly lost him all of his magical abilities short of the power to raise his minions and bind them to his inexorable will. The story goes that, while on a fateful quest to further augment his already not-inconsiderable might, Harkon attempted to use his Dark Magic to enter a chamber inside a Lizardman temple buried deep within the deadly Lustrian jungle. Powerful glyphs barred his way, but he pushed onwards in spite of the barriers and driven by his fatal flaw – his great arrogance and hubris - causing the magical seals to retaliate and drain his magical power and then his lifeforce, whilst the walls of the ancient ritual chamber began to crumble. With supreme effort, Harkon managed to break free and stagger outside as the passageway collapsed behind him, but the damage had been done – his connection to the Winds of Magic was severed and his mind was shattered, leaving his personality fractured into a dozen different facets which to this day battle for dominance in his mind. In the years since, the only common goal that Luthor Harkon’s various personalities have been able to work towards is that of finding a cure for his condition. To this end, the Pirate King of the Vampire Coast has bent his obsessions to seizing Slann artefacts in the hope that their power can heal his damaged psyche!