We got ourselves a Faceless One

I really wish my debtors would stop winding up dead or otherwise incapacitated. I mean, technically the last one was a set up with a body procured by a lich, but this time it really happened. I sent a few people to track down a Forsaken who owed me some gold. I knew he was spending time around the Bloodmoon Isle in Grizzly Hills, researching the worgen curse, probably on behalf of the Banshee Queen, although he’d never officially admit it. So I got a few people together and sent them through a portal to Grizzly Hills and told them to look for that Forsaken. After interrogating some starving trolls, they learned he hid in a nearby crypt (what is with Forsaken and crypts?) and went in to investigate. Lo and behold, the Forsaken was dead and had no gold on him. But this is where the fun part starts.

When they were approaching the final resting place of my 500 gold pieces, they noticed something run by in the darkness. When they checked out the corpse anyway, and pilfered some books from it, Aeresham was assaulted by something from the dark. Turns out, Lunk just got a new photography obsession and decided to snap a picture of the situation, revealing in a flash the source of the dark energy was a Faceless One. They got scared of course, but they tried to fight it, only to be overwhelmed by the mind-bending powers of such a creature. What the Faceless One did not predict was that there is so little mind in Lunk’s head, his spells didn’t have any noticeable effects on the ogre. And Lunk being Lunk, decided to hug the creature out of pity.

The others used the distraction to their advantage and began assaulting the creature, when finally Aeresham called upon the trees and caused them to bury their roots through the roof of the room they were in, collapsing the whole room. They ran just in time and for a moment, they thought they succeeded. Then, the Faceless One burst from the ruins again… only to collapse and start talking in Thalassian. This is where I called them up on a gnomecorder and Ballough informed of what happened, and that their assailant appears to be a former elf. This brought up some of my recent research about using my Elixir of Clarity on other types of cursed creatures. Curse of Sethe is, after all, not dissimilar to the Old God-induced madness and I thought it was my chance to test it. Against their protests, I had them bring the Faceless One back to the tower.

Mehrzad, who was standing guard outside the crypt during the fight, immediately left in disgust. Most of the others didn’t want to have much to do with my experiment either, unsurprisingly. But I got Menrim to act as my hands, still being weak after the Infinite invasion, and together we began the test. The Faceless One got chained to the wall and since the creature has no mouth, Menrim had to inject it with the Clarity Elixir. It worked shockingly well, surprising even me. After the initial confusion of the memories of its past mortal life clashing with its current form, the Faceless One revealed to have once been a high elven magister called Theramas, sent to Northrend to look for Nerubian artifacts. He got himself captured by no other than Herald Volazj and then turned into the monster he is now – Frlngath the Unbroken. (I can’t believe I successfully typed that down – I just call him Gath)

He is now recuperating. Although he still sounds very depressed and conflicted about his current state, such as reconciling having his morality back and at the same having to feed upon sentient beings, I think he will be quite an asset. Imagine this, he knows about the botani, he identified a creature from K’aresh Shazaad conjured up. He knows about other worlds and planes of existence. All the forbidden knowledge of the Old Gods is now contained in the body of a creature doing my bidding. With the capacity to restrain his destructive urges, as well as a way to protect myself from supernatural madness, I will gain knowledge most mortals can only dream of. It doesn’t matter if I’ll have to send a couple of feral worgen or death row criminals to a gruesome and painful death, the total benefit for us all will outweigh the costs.