Alastair Anglesey

Alastair Anglesey is the eldest son of the Earl Anglesey, ruler of one of the only Lost Houses to survive the Scourge. He currently serves as the Lord Commander of the Knights of the Viridian Braid, and is a member of the Imperial retinue. His skills in combat and passion for justice are both legendary among his subjects. Even at the tender age of 20, he is considered one of the legendary champions of Anglesey.

Early Life and Education
Alastair was born in the last years of the Scourge, and raised on tales of the suffering and heroism borne by his city over the last three hundred years. Starting at a very early age he began his training as a knight, learning the way of the bow, the blade, the shield, and the lance. Gilbert Fannon, the Anglesey Master at Arms was his primary teacher, though many of the Knights of Viridian Braid also took part in his training.

From a very early age, Alastair saw himself as a soldier. He spent his time among the knights and common troops, developing a true affection for the men that would one day be under his command, and an appreciation for their struggles. His father imparted in him a deep sense of the obligations he faced as the Viscount and eventual Earl of the domain, but it was from the knights and soldiers that he acquired his rigid sense of honor. When he was sworn in as a Knight of the Viridian Braid at age 13, he took the additional step of swearing an oath to the Knight's Code - an inflexible code of conduct to which only a few individuals ever succesfully adhere, especially when the oath is sworn at so young an age.

In the case of Alastair, however, those around him saw the deep conviction he carried, and took the oath for what it was - a sincere commitment to the safety and success of his shield brothers and his city. Gilbert Fannon continued his training, focusing on the defensive skills required of one who has sworn the oath. He was also taken on as a squire by one of the elder Viridian Braid brothers, Sir Orlof Ferelden. Sir Ferelden had sworn the Knight's Oath at the age of 23, and had never broken it, despite a lifetime spent at war in the name of the Earldom. As a result, he was ideally suited to induct Alastair into the subtleties of his life as a knight. The young Viscount could not have had a better teacher.

For three years, Sir Ferelden and Fannon honed Alastair into a finely tuned instrument of war, until finally, at the age of 17, it came time for his Proving.

Life as an Adventurer
The Proving has been a tradition since early on in the Scourge, when Angelsey faced threats at every turn. Every son and daughter of the house of Anglesey is expected to endure a Proving at the age of 17. Most choose to do so by venturing forth and slaying some particular monster that has proven particularly difficult for the city to deal with. At times of relative safety, when no particular beast has reared its ugly head, other scions of the royal house have simply ventured out into the world, determined to seek a new challenge and return with tales of heroism, new allies, or the head of a great enemy.

The time of Alastair's Proving came during a period of relative peace for the realm. The Scourge had begun to abate, and the monsters that continued to menace the city were decreasing in numbers and power. The more subtle evils of the Scourge had retreated a decade or so ago. Rumors swirled of a gathering orc horde deep in the mountains, but without any solid information Alastair was hesitant to embark on a hunt for an enemy that might not exist. Instead, he turned his horse south, hoping that some remnant of the Empire his family served had survived.

As luck had it, he encountered a group of Imperial adventurers only a few months later. The party had ventured hundreds of miles north from the capitol islands, by way of the Viti caer, only to find themselves under attack by a group of elves riding giant spiders. Alastair charged into battle without a second thought, helping to dispatch the evil elves in short order and immediately earning the trust of his new companions.

He and his new friends continued north to the ancient dwarven city of Ndango. There, Alastair had his first taste of Imperial politics when Crowley Crane arranged an attack on the compound of the party's hosts, during which several Brightblade clan dwarves and the young adventurer Augustine were slain.

After this, Alastair invited his new friends and a delegation of Brightblade clan dwarves to accompany him back to Anglesey. On the way, the party encountered a half-orc druid who warned them that an orc warlord named Gripash had joined forces with the traitorous elf necromancer Vignar. The two had conspired to secure Gripash's place as the head of the Green Skull tribe, and had issued a Hording Call. Thanks to Vignar, the call had not only been succesful - it had drawn an army of monsters larger than any Anglesey had faced since being besieged by giants during the Scourge. Returning to Anglesey with this grim news, the party was immediately sent back out on a mission to reconnoiter the horde and, if possible, slay Vignar.

They succeeded, but also learned that before he had died, Vignar had supplied to Gripash the means to infect Anglesey with a virulent magical disease - the only cure for which was to be found somewhere in the haunted keep of the ruined mountain holdfast of Balbannon. Venturing there, the group of adventurers encountered a host of vampiric orcs and other savage undead, losing several members of their party in battle and nearly falling victim to the master vampire - the former Baron Balbannon himself. Despite their losses, the party managed to secure the cure for the disease, clear the keep of vampires (or so they thought), and return to Anglesey in the company of a pair of emissaries from the Ta-Den lands across the mountains to the east.

Back in Anglesey, the party soon found themselves part of the hurried preparations to survive a siege, interrupted only briefly when it became apparent that the vampiric Baron Balbannon had somehow accompanied them back to the city. Alastair and his friends hunted and killed the vampire, and then, when it was time, led the defense of the city against Gripash's horde.

Sadly, Gripash was not the only enemy of Anglesey. A string of murders led Alastair and his friends to discover a plan to betray the city and breach the wall during the siege; but that plan was merely a diversion from the true treachery. Unknown to any of the its defenders, the cult of Vecna had somehow infiltrated the city. They sought an artifact from the castle's Forbidden Room known as the Talisman of Ultimate Evil. Even as the Heroes of Anglesey killed the saboteurs at the wall and saved the city from certain doom, an agent of the Vecnan's siezed the Talisman and activated it, destroying one of the castle towers, and killing the Lord Commander of the Order of Heironious and St. Anglesey and the Order of Illumination agent Eulia Dran.

Gripash was forced into ever more desperate gambits by the failure of his assault on the walls of the city. His coalition of monsters began to disintegrate as first the yak folk left, and then the vast forces of goblins began to drift away, frustrated by the lack of blood and plunder. Finally, Gripash called his tribe's most powerful clerics together and called down a boon from the demonic powers they served. A bloody sacrifice gave him the chance to teleport himself and his strongest warriors directly into the heart of the city. But once again, Alastair and the Heroes of Anglesey were there to stop him. He fell to their blades, and his horde drifted away shortly afterward.

With the siege broken, the Heroes of Anglesey were free to continue on their mission bringing the mysterious rod once carried by Augustine to the gnome city of Ap'Lei in the far west. First, they journeyed to the cave of the ancient silver dragon Kierkas - one of the few remaining ancient dragons in the world, and an ally of Anglesey. With the return of the horn he had long ago gifted to the rulers of the city, Kierkas was free to pass into the next world, which he shortly did.

The adventurers continued north to Belix, where Alastair negiotated a renewed trade relationship with the eastern gnomes. They then took ship for the long sea voyage west to Ap'Lei. Once there, they established contact with the elderly gnome Order of Illumination agent Errmil Shandock. Once confronted with his real name and the rod, he revealed that he had been charged as a very young man at the beginning of the Scourge to protect the slumbering body of the last of the Imperial line. Deep within a hidden section of the Ap'Lei caer a cavern gaurded by golems and elementals contained a magical chamber that had held the Emperor in suspended animation for hundreds of years - and the rod was the only thing that could awaken him.

Emerging with the Emperor in toy, Alastair and his friends found themselves confronted once again with Crowley Crane, this time leading a contingent of Ap'Leian warforged. Shandock was killed and his library burned in the ensuing fight, but the Heroes of Anglesey and the Emperor escaped. They fled down to the harbor, where they comandeered the Regency airship Sky Treader, leaving Crane and his men stranded.

Upon his return to Anglesey with the risen Emperor, Alastair was made Knight Protector of Anglesey, and the domains of the city were extended by an Imperial grant of the abandoned lands of Merchial to the southwest. Messengers were sent south, announcing the return of the Emperor, and requesting the Council of Regents' submission and abdication. At the same time, on the advice of Alastair's friends who had grown up on the capitol islands, Anglesey began preparing to march south in force to enforce the Emperor's claim.

As part of that preparation, Alastair and the Heroes of Anglesey were sent west again, this time to the ruins of Aksum, with a list of artifacts and items to retrieve from the workshop of the pre-Scourge wizard Daern. Penetrating the swirling weather wall that isolated the destroyed city, they found not dead and empty ruins, but a savage society ruled over by an army commanded by the vile Hykksmoth. They also discovered that Daern, though killed in the destruction of the city, had actually survived as a lich, and even thrived as a servant to the daemon king of the city.

Alastair and his companions penetrated the black tower at the heart of the city hoping to kill Daern and free the mutated slaves under his mental control. Instead, they discovered that Daern himself was a slave to Hykksmoth, and struck a deal with the lich that would allow them to save many of the remaining humans in the city. Daern also promised to turn over to them the Tome of Becoming, one of the artifacts that had come in search of.

Ascending higher in the black tower, the heroes engaged and destroyed Hykksmoth's bodyguard and shattered the heartstone that kept the tower standing and maintained the punishing weather wall that isolated the city. Hykksmoth himself escaped the battle even as the tower collapsed, and one of Daern's Fleshers siezed the lich's phylactery (which Hykksmoth had held hostage to ensure his loyalty) and lept to his death to return it to his master.

With the tower collapsed, the heroes joined the surviving human slaves, Daern, and his army of Fleshers on the rim of the crater holding the ruins of the city. As Daern organized the camp and the heroes tended to the sick and wounded among the humans, Hykksmoth rallied his surviving daemons. Within hours, another battle was joined - a clash of armies above the drowned and dust-choked ruins of a dead city.

Hykksmoth's demons teleported directly into the midst of the human defenders, hoping to draw out the heroes and overwhelm them as they tried to protect the weak and malnourished slaves. Hoping to stop the battle before too many casualties occured, the heroes instead assaulted Hykksmoth directly, killing the last of his bodyguard, and slaying him. With his controlling influence gone, the daemon army broke before Daern's Fleshers. A few days later, anticipating the return of the Sky Treader at any time, Alastair and his his friends lured Daern out into the desert away from the Flesher army, and assassinated him, hoping to find and destroy his phylactery. Sadly, the artifact remained hidden, guaranteeing the lich's return.

Alastair and his companions next journeyed to the nearby ruins of the abandoned city of Besiktas. There, they found a small contingent of survivors sealed in a pocket dimension in part of the old castle in which time moved far slower than on the Prime Material Plane. Freeing the survivors, they assisted in emptying the rest of the city of the undead that infested it, and negotiated an agreement under which the Aksumi refugees could resettle the empty city. In addition, Alastair used the leverage he had gained by negotiating a peaceful resolution to an earlier conflict in Belix to secure gnome help in rebuilding the city and rehabilitating the Aksumi survivors.

Having acheived all of these things, and with Anglesey rapidly preparing to march south to war with the Regency, Alastair chose to retire from adventuring life and join his father in commanding the Imperial army.

Imperial Advisor and Scion of Anglesey
Upon his return to Anglesey, Alastair was made second in command of the Knights of the Viridian Braid under Lord Commander, Sir Charles Firth. In addition, as one of the few high-ranking Imperials to have encountered Regency troops in the field he was made part of the Emperor's War Council. In this capacity, he returned to Ndango and negotiated a greatly expanded trade in adamantine with the dwarves in exchange for a military alliance resulting in a large contingent of dwarven infantry being added to the army. Likewise, it was Alastair who sent messages to the Ta-Den, bringing a large number of mercenaries south to join the Imperial effort against the Regency.

In his new role, Alastair has proven an able administrator and a skilled negotiator. He joined Sir Christopher Chadwick to lead the construction of New Viti, helping to turn a small farming village into a growing but clean and peaceful military encampment with a minimum of disruption to the local people. He also led the Knights of the Viridian Braid as the vanguard of the Imperial army on its march south, commanding them against the dark elf settlement and the formian infestation in the forest south of Angle lands. His command of the battlefield allowed his men to break the drow with minimal casualties, and his tactical expertise ensured that the formian infestation was all but wiped out.

He is currently serving as an advisor to the Emperor in the campaign against the Regency.