Canonfire! Forums-viewtopic-Easan the Mad

Sat Apr 09, 2016 3:20 pm Easan the Mad

I was thinking about ways to tie the darklord Easan the Mad, from the Ravenloft setting, more firmly to the Greyhawk setting that he ostensibly originated in. In the Ravenloft Monstrous Compendium the ties were very faint: Ahmi Vanjuko, a ranger from Greyhawk City, encountered Easan's manor house somewhere in Oerth's wilderness and got pulled into the Demiplane of Dread at the same time as Easan; later he was experimented on by Easan and forced into a mechanical golem body. Domains of Dread gave Easan more detail, saying he was a wood elf from "a small elven kingdom on the borders of an evil kingdom known as the Land of Iuz" where he managed to convince his skeptical brethren to launch a war against Iuz, only to be abducted and infected with demonic madness before the war could begin. From that clue he's probably either from the Vesve/Highfolk or the Fellreev, both of which have many wood elves. Looking through Iuz the Evil and The Marklands, either origin might work, but Highfolk has a lot more detail and prominent NPCs that help make Easan's story more interesting and more tied to existing canon.

The biggest stumbling block is Domains of Dread's statement that the mystics of Vechor (an otherwise unknown land on Oerth, now destroyed; its Greco-Roman culture makes some fans associate it with the Tharquish Empire, however) managed to keep Easan's fiendish possessor dormant for "several decades." Assuming "several" means three or more, that would suggest that Easan's time was during Iuz's original rise between 479-505 CY rather than after his return in 570 CY. That's not impossible and most of the elven NPCs would have been around then, but it makes Easan's fall less of a tragedy for the people around him. Since Iuz was imprisoned by Zagyg and his cohorts in 505 CY, nothing Easan could have done would have made much difference except to get a lot of elves killed. Iuz was imprisoned anyway and it would be another 65 years before he was again a threat. It's unlikely the elves would have managed anything more effective than what Zagyg, Murlynd, Kelanen, and St. Cuthbert could do, so who cares if Easan got his war or not? On the other hand, if Easan is placed in the present day when the Vesve is under siege, being burned and desecrated by Iuz's minions while the squabbling elves are unable to present a unified front, the tragedy of Easan is more compelling. A unifier like Easan is exactly what they need right now, plagues of madness are being sent by Iuz right now, and it's less "75 years ago we had someone who almost united us in a similar situation" and more "this present situation is because we lost Easan." And Domains of Dread phrases things in such a way that "Easan would have been effectively cured for several decades if Vechor hadn't been destroyed" is almost as valid a reading as "Easan was cured for several decades, then Vechor was destroyed."

So anyway, I decided to put Easan in the early 570s, just after Iuz's return, rather than making him an older figure. Probably, from a strictly canonical standpoint, making him an older figure is the better reading, but I think it's a less interesting one. I'm less concerned with worrying about how long the domain of Vechor has existed in Ravenloft, since Ravenloft's denizens have false memories and the demiplane does strange things with time. It's likely that from the perspective of Vechor's inhabitants, the domain has been around forever whether Easan actually arrived 20 years ago or 100 years ago.

I also decided to incorporate Keak, one of Iuz's Boneshadow introduced in Gary Gygax's novel Artifact of Evil. Keak is a high elf in the novel, but a grey elf in Iuz the Evil, which has him wandering Perrenland, Highfolk, and Veluna (Keak says he's from Highfolk in the novel). If he's a grey elf from Highfolk, he fits very well in helping to explain some things about the current situation. Gygax describes him as "fratricidal": I thought of having him literally kill his own brother as part of his betrayal but inventing a brother for Keak seemed to interrupt the flow of the narrative. Having him betray his cause and his fellow elves seems fratricidal enough.

Easan the Mad

In the 570s CY, the threat of Iuz became greater and greater to the realm of Highfolk. Easan, a skillful wizard of the wood elves, believed that only by uniting his people with other peoples of the Vesve would Iuz be defeated and the threat ended. After years of argument, he managed to persuade Kashafen Tamarel, lord of the high elves, and "Keak," son of high priestess Calandryen of the grey elves, that his cause was just.

And then Keak betrayed them all. With the aid of demons the grey elf, who went by a different name in those days, abducted Easan and brought him to the City of Skulls, Dorakaa. From his throne of bones, Iuz demanded to know why such as Easan would wage unprovoked war on a poor country like Iuz, still rebuilding itself after the Old One's long imprisonment. Easan responded that a demon like Iuz could never understand him, and Iuz smiled.

Iuz caused a possessor demon called a guecubu to inhabit Easan's mind, muttering and controlling and sabotaging the wood elf at every turn. Iuz linked the guecubu telepathically to his own demonic intellect, strengthening the possessor against all attempts to exorcise it. Though Iuz gleefully set Easan free from his city of skulls, the wood elf was continuously tormented by his demon passenger and soon began to go insane. With his own arcane abilities no use against the invader, he went to holy exorcists of St. Cuthbert, but they were unable to help him. In the isles off the far western coast of Oerik, in the lands of the Tharquish Empire, Easan came to an island called Vechor, where the local mystics used spells of protection against evil to make the fiend lie quiescent in Easan's body for several years. Easan might have had peace for decades, but a mysterious cataclysm (perhaps sent by agents of Iuz) destroyed the island and its mystics, leaving Easan again demon-haunted, the only survivor.

Far away from any civilization, Easan built an elegant manor house protected by fierce brambles, periodically abducting creatures to use as test subjects, hoping to learn enough about the nature of their spirits to learn how to finally extricate the demonic spirit from his own soul. He created twisted broken ones and half-golems who spent their short lives with mechanical parts painfully grafted on to their living bodies. Eventually, chill mists surrounded him and pulled him into the Demiplane of Dread.

Back in Highfolk, Keak's betrayal and Easan's abduction had shattered the fragile alliance. The wood elves want nothing to do with the grey elves who dragged one of their own clan leaders to the Evil One, while Calandryen is more distant and otherworldly than ever; with the defection of her son she seems to have given up on the physical world entirely, trusting only in her obscure mysticism and magic to slowly make things right over a span of time only an elf can comprehend. As of 585 CY, only Kashafen Tamarel continues to seek to forge an alliance against Iuz, but with no allies among the other elven races he has had little luck. And Iuz has only grown stronger.

Wed Apr 13, 2016 8:35 am

The Vesve was only briefly covered in Marklands and its nice to have a background narrative that connects the various groups and NPCs mentioned there. It is also a great explanation why the elves might remain fractured despite the threat posed by Iuz. Thank you for all these posts which help connect and reconcile disparate characters and events related to Greyhawk.