Marteaus

Marteaus's High Woldian Symbol.

Ethos	"He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper." - Edmund Burke
Domains	Death, Destruction, Disease, Evil, Magic
Prestige Classes	The Diseased, The Tempered, The Refined
Holy Days	Day of the Dead, Day of Darkness (celebrating the triumph of Marteaus over Domi), Summer and Winter Solstices
Sacrifices	Gold culled from the weak and sick, Time spent wandering the Wold spreading a disease
Favored Weapon	Scythe: Infect them all and watch the strong survive! Clerics of Marteus gain proficiency with the scythe that they may separate the wheat from the chaff.

[Marteaus is not available for PCs to worship]

Marteaus is the ruler of the Gods of Testing. He strives to bring suffering through disease upon the Noble Races of Wold. It is only through true suffering that one discovers his true need and the way to fulfill that need. Disease breaks the strong and culls the weak so that the strong survives to rise up to accomplish their need. Those who have suffered are the only ones who are capable of truly ruling the races, being focused through the weakness of disease and want.

His need is now an obsession. Marteaus is obsessed with the need to provide the Races of the Wold with the answer to the Gods of Wold and the weakness and indecision that they represent. Only the Gods of Testing can show the true way to power and success within the Wold. The Gods of Testing are the answer to the needs of the races of Wold.

The God of Disease

Godly Powers

Marteaus can inflict both normal and magical diseases upon any creature. He never kills outright and uses this ability to help the recipient find his Great Need. His possession of the Rings of Ascension during the Year of Ascension has given him the knowledge of how each of the Cult Gods achieved Godhood and what it would take to remove any of them from godhood. This Power helped forge the Cult Gods into an effective group and ensures their loyalty to him. He cannot heal a sick person, but may remove the source of the disease and thus allow the person the chance to slowly return to their normal health. He has the ability to grant Godhood to any that he feels are worthy of joining the Cult Gods Pantheon. Any gods he creates must join the Cult Gods.

Appearance

Mortal Form -- In his mortal form, Marteaus appears as an unusually healthy man, but with many scars. He has jet black hair with a trim moustache and short cropped beard. He is lean and of average height.

Avatar Form -- In pictures, in ritual, and in stories, he incorrectly is pictured by outsiders as leprous and full of sores. In his own temples, however, he appears as a nondescript humanoid figure with red glowing eyes as bright as beacons giving everything in sight a reddish hue. He has a feral grin with teeth filed into points.

Divine Form -- In dreams and legend, when his Painful Clarity drives the Cult Gods, Marteaus appears as a Demon Nightmare, fearful to behold, which bring the pain of truth to the Arrogant Races of Wold. Symbolically he appears as a searing hot poker, dripping white hot metal.

Worship

The worship of Carriers begins with violence and pain. Worshippers help each other focus on their Great Need by inflicting pain and Cause Disease spells on one another. After a time, these inflictions are healed and the remainder of the service is very positive and goal oriented as speeches designed to spur the worshippers on to greater and greater achievements in life are given.

Services are held in the coldness of midnight and in the sickening heat of day. Prayers for guidance and continued purification occur afterwards. All who suffer or have suffered in the past are welcome to partake of the service; and although participation is encouraged, worshippers may simply observe.

Holy Symbol

From the ancient High Woldian glyph symbolizing disease has emerged the modern version of Marteaus' Holy Symbol seen above.

Priests' Appearance

The clerics of Marteaus normally wear robes of gray with full hoods. Their hands are sometimes covered with scars. Many carry spoiled pieces of food to drop in wells and other sources of water. Some file their teeth into points and have a feral appearance about them. It is not uncommon for clerics of Marteaus to be followed by lepers seeking the truth found in pain.

Clerics in Society

Known as Carriers of Marteaus, these priests travel the Wold spreading disease and misery to help the Arrogant Races find their true need. They educate and demonstrate how pain can bring clarity and let a being focus on their true reason for living. They strive to show by example their superiority and mastery over pain and sickness. They war against the misguided need for health and fitness that the Shepherds of Alemi espouse. They look perfectly healthy, except when undergoing a personal trial, and even more so when they are the carrier of an especially deadly disease.

Carriers also strive to carry disease to the magical lands of the Wold. It is their intent to infect every plant and creature that they can to combat the unfortunate goodness of the Gods of Wold. Carriers lead the battle of the Cult Gods to conquer the Wold for its own good so that the strong may flourish and strive for that that is determined to be their true need. They also inflict the Arrogant Races with sicknesses of the mind. Planting falsehoods and madness via magic and misinformation, they seek to cause the needed suffering of the Arrogant Races.

They believe that a sick mind is the first step to clarity. One must experience sickness of mind and fight ones way back to sanity to achieve total clarity of purpose. Much can be overcome if the Arrogant Being has clarity of thought won through suffering. Some Carriers run Sanitariums and Hospitals under the guise of being Shepherds and use such places to bring about the needed change in their subjects toward Clarity and Singleness of Purpose.

Carriers believe that one must be an evil person by choice to be truly effective in reaching one's goals and needs. This is a hard state to achieve in a life filled with the ease and comfort that the Gods of Wold have provided the Arrogant Races for so many millennia. So they teach, and live by example, breaking down the spirit Noble Races through disease in order to let them be more focused than could otherwise be possible in the pursuit of their Great Need. Carriers believe in manipulation and good planning rather than brute force to further their great needs.

Most low-level carriers are still fine-tuning their Great Need. Higher-level Carriers are very focused and exude leadership and confidence. They have left the Huddled Masses behind and now ride their tightly focused Great Need to greater and greater success.

History and Relationships

Marteaus was created, along with his twin Kevintar, by Gargul formed from his own divine essence. Both were created to be the Punishers of the Gods before the 2nd Cataclysm which dealt with the Arrogance of The Noble Races. The Gods of Wold first unleashed them to perform the 2nd Cataclysm to break The powers and ascendancy of the Noble Races. Both twins worked side by side at their task and the Gods of Wold were pleased with the Punishers.

However, by the time of the 3rd Cataclysm, when mages were ascending to near godlike levels of power, their natures had matured some and each had developed his own interests. Marteaus reveled in the act of punishment and the pain and anguish that followed. Soon, he was so cruel when carrying out the punishments of The Gods that they were loathe to send him until the situations in the Wold were dire indeed and in fact self-destructive.

So the Gods of Wold would send out Kevintar to warn the Noble Races again and again until there was no hint of repentance. Finally they unleashed the twins upon the Wold and the great Kingdoms of Magic, of which the greatest was Fey Skymeir, were cast down. Unable to stomach Marteaus' levels of extreme violence, Kevintar refused to participate, instead running before Marteaus trying to urge the Noble Races to repent before the Gods of Wold as their doom was at hand.

During the 3rd Age, Marteaus' had became discontented with being a punisher. He petitioned Alemi and then Gargul again and again to make him a God instead of just an immortal. Marteaus felt that The Gods of Wold needed balance. He was balance. The Noble Races needed something to fear so that they would not again need to be struck down by the Gods in order to prevent their self destruction. Refusing, The Gods decided to teach Marteaus a lesson. He was made into a mortal!

There he suffered! He wandered the lands preaching that life was long-suffering. One was born into the Wold through the pain of childbirth, lived to see one's body fail him and fall apart, and then died painfully where one faced the mental anguish of judgment by the very gods who forced such suffering upon the races to begin with. While upon the Wold, he lived in squalor. He grew to revel in his suffering. Hearing of an outbreak of the Magical Wasting Disease, he sought it out, hoping that by contracting the sickness his misery would end. However, the disease was a catharsis for him. He began to revel in it. It brought clarity of thought and renewed his drive and ambition. Before he had thought that simple pain and suffering was the best punishment. Punishments were needed to keep the Arrogant Races, as he began to call the Noble Races, in line and disciplined so that they would not destroy themselves through their foolish schemes. Now, he experienced something that was better. Sickness! Disease! It brought the high and mighty low and disciplined them. Those who survived were stronger. Disease also tended to cull the weak and leave the powerful.

Marteaus began to fight the disease. As he conquered the Magical Wasting Disease, he focused his ambition. This process renewed and confirmed his great need: the need to be a god.

Then he discovered the great need of those suffering around him. They also needed him to be a god: a god that punished the Noble Races to purify them and save them from themselves. He now needed to show the Gods what he had discovered: that suffering through disease was the best way to keep the Races from self-destructing.

When he could, he lent aid to various Cult Gods, making them a more potent force and thus causing them to be noticed quicker by both The Gods and the Noble Races. Heroes would cast down the temples and bring the evil priests to judgment. The Gods of Wold would quickly send Kevintar to warn them to repent, causing them to disappear for a time and go into hiding.

Eventually the Gods grew tired of this game and brought Marteaus before them once more. Marteaus told The Gods of Wold about his revelation. The Gods of Wold laughed at him. They mocked him. They returned him to the care of Gargul his purpose of being a punisher.

Then Gargul began to change. He grew weary of the connection between evil and death. Death did not have to be evil. It was not Marteaus' turn to scoff. Gargul needed to experience the clarity of suffering through disease. He told Gargul this. He said he's prove it by uniting the "scum" of the earth with purpose. He'd unite Demikind: orcs, goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears, etc. into a purposeful force. He'd make them as driven as the Noble Races, through disease and suffering.

So he went down to the land named Izen, which in the language of the dwarves meant refuse and built Bone Tower as a base of operations and a calling card for demikind. They flocked to him as they do to all leaders who promise conquest and plunder. He rewarded them with the Magical Wasting Sickness. His research into magical sicknesses produced a strange brand which actually transformed the sick into a perverse imitation of the visage of elves. This added to the confidence obtained by those who survived. It became a matter of course for each of his followers to undergo the sickness upon reaching adulthood. It was a Rite of Passage.

The result was that the demikind in Izen grew very determined and stuck with their goals and found their great need. They would serve him and conquer the Noble Races. In pursuit of this goal, Orcs, and others of the demi-races learned the discipline to begin advancing in levels for the first tine in the history of their races. Marteaus was proving his point! His philosophy and revelation was working! He renamed Izen and called the area The Badlands.

He then set about accomplishing his great need: to become a God. His research spoke of 4 Rings worn by Domi during the God Wars of the First Age. Supposedly they existed on the battlefield where the mortals fought the Gods of Yore during the First Cataclysm. He purposed to find this battlefield and obtain these rings, the rings used by The Jericho to create the Wold. To his surprise, he found that they had been released upon the Wold, but all four were in hiding. He searched. Quickly he found the Ring of Earth. The Ring of Fire fell to Parnoth, the Dragon Ruler of the Emerald Kingdom. He quickly got this ring as well from those Parnoth sold it to. The Water Ring he obtained from some foolish adventurers in exchange for the lives of their village-folk. The Fourth Ring was not so easily obtained. In fact, it looked like it would remain beyond his grasp.

So he instead, conspired to take a quicker different route. He began to make alliances with the various Cult Gods he had assisted during his mortality. As each Cult God joined his alliance, they offered him a piece of power for the power obtained from being a member of the group. All were soon swearing loyalty to him and were put through his trial of disease to find their great need. All except for Ga'al, that is.. This god was more powerful than the rest of them added together. In fact, the only god capable of defeating him was Domi, the God of Courage.

Marteaus knew what he had to do. He must by hook or crook defeat Domi and kill him. He made his plans. He knew that Domi was the best in battle of all the gods. He would have to plan and manipulate his way to victory. Using some a recently recruited organization of mages known as the Sons of Dread, he created a arcane machine that drained life-force from the people around it. Using invitations with suggestion spells cast upon them, he filled the Arena for a great Cult God gathering of Worshippers. Except that the worshippers were there by means of Suggestion. He began draining them of their life-force and then began calling on Domi to come save them.

He came. Marteaus, then appealed to Domi's sense of fair-play and proposed to him that they fight on an equal footing, by Domi granting him half of his power for the combat. Domi agreed. Marteaus and Domi then fought a great battle with Marteaus continually growing stronger as he drained the audience of their life force. Eventually Marteaus won!

With the power of Domi within him, added to the life force of the people and his current levels of power obtained from the 3 Rings of Ascension and the Cult Gods who had joined him, he had enough power. He was a god.

The Cult Gods then went to Ga'al and he quickly joined them to prevent them from becoming his enemies. The Cult Gods were complete. The mortal year that followed was called The Year of Ascension. During this year, he finally obtained the last ring, the Water Ring of Ascension from the High Council of New Elenna who had received it from an adventuring group named The Storm Dragons who had taken it from the Drow.

During this year, Godly combat between the Gods of Wold and The Cult Gods was fought. Eventually only Alemi, Gargul, and Marteaus were left. The three met at the Oshirr house where The Jericho created the Wold and where Alemi lived as a mortal for the final battle. Quickly, Alemi was dispatched and he turned to Gargul, the final god to finish his triumph. In the end, though, it was not a god that won, but the Noble Races. Adventuring groups and heroes came from every land, aware somehow of the location of the battle and prepared do to their own carnage.

Marteaus laughed at them, thinking how foolish it was for them to get in the way of gods in battle. He struck at some of their leaders and discovered that he couldn't hurt them. They carried with them Gargul's power over life and death in the form of the Imp named Gimp. Not only that, but they had all also voluntarily become undead or living dead as some say. This prevented Marteaus from harming them in any way. Unable to hurt Marteaus, either, they distracted Marteaus while the two gods battled. Eventually both gods fought to a standstill, with Marteaus unable to harm Gargul with the Power of Life and Death residing in Gimp and Gargul unable to defeat Marteaus due to his great power.

Both gods locked in death grips were picked up by the Heroes of the Noble Races and dropped over the edge of the Wold to oblivion. When The Jericho recreated The New Wold, Marteaus was appointed to be the Supreme God of The Pantheon of Testing, the new pantheon of evil that would stand against the Gods of Wold and provide balance. Marteaus need was filled.