Garan

Garan was the first character I created for a truly...interesting Forgotten Realms campaign; he was shuffled to the side shortly after the initial adventure, but I got to bring him back a couple of times, when my primary character and secondary character didn't fit-which, ultimately, didn't end well for him.

Garan True Name: Mirdyr Th'lok
Basic Information
Aliases	Arioch, Khydin, Zalbar, Tagar the Dark
Former home(s)	Bezantur
Gender	Male
Race	Gnome
Occupation	Adventurer
Rules Information
2nd Edition Statistics Alignment Chaotic Good/Chaotic Evil Class 8th Level Illusionist Strength 11 Dexterity 16 Constitution 13 Intelligence 15 Wisdom 10 Charisma 12 HP 23

Description

Garan's true form is that of a gnome, with grey hair and brown eyes. He usually has a sarcastic smirk on his face, but in private moments, one can see the haunted look in his face. He usually dresses as a merchant.

Personality

Garan is a sarcastic, and intelligent man. There are few things he likes better than conversations full of innuendo and half truths. Garan is capable of manifesting many different kinds of personalities, each appropriate to the time and place.

There are few things he dislikes worse, however, than an unimaginative and closed mind. Garan is not above dealing with evil characters. While he abhors them, he certainly has no qualms with making deals with them if he thinks the end result will be worth it.

A driving force in Garan's life is an intense fear of death. After having experienced it twice, he wants to do everything he can to avoid the dark prophecy in his nightmares every night. By beginning a peaceful business, and keeping tabs on his place in Thay, he hopes to avoid dying by the great evil.

Later, Garan questioned his motives, and decided that he was not avoiding evil, but being a coward. However, he has also developed a death wish-even sane men would quake before a lich, but Garan was determined to confront what might have been the great evil of his nightmares. Garan, at the end, was a pawn in forces stronger than he. His own will only surfaced rarely, and was not strong enough to influence his actions to any real extent. He was only able to hold back on his magic to avoid killing the party outright.

Now, Garan is a dealing with multiple personalities, with one part of his self being his ordinary self, and the other being a possessed madman, seeking to further the ends of the Tanar'ri. It is unknown if he can be cured.

Abilities

Weapon Proficiencies: Staff, dagger

Nonweapon Proficiencies: Spellcraft, seamanship, navigation

Possessions

Equipment: 5 rings; map case&parchment; weasel's head medallion (don't ask); Neighborhood watch card (don't ask on this either)

Magic Items: Figurines of Wondrous Power: Golden Lions, named Death and Destruction; Wings of Flying; Cloak of Invisibility; three Darts of the Hornet's Nest

History

The true history of the gnome going under the name of Garan is unlikely to be ever known. However, according to knowledge gained by Elminster the Sage, and Funreal the Third, a partial history has been gained.

Garan was the last born of his family-with five other siblings. He has not disclosed names or genders of the five. He was born in the city of Bezantur, the largest city in Thay-supposedly as large as Waterdeep. Interestingly enough, he was born in a lab of a powerful Red Wizard, possibly the Zulkir of Illusions. But that is just speculation.

The most horrifying outcome of his birth is known, however. Ever since he first came to awareness, he has been plagued with nightmares every night. Each and every night, he is shown how he will die his final death. Much of it is in symbolic form, but the gnome has concluded that he is destined to die fighting a great evil.

Garan was first introduced into the power of magic when a trio of visitors arrived at his home near the human equivalent age of six. One was a mage, and Garan was entranced by the illusions that he used. But the visitors left, and for days the young gnome was crushed. Until he discovered that the three had left behind a sealed spellbook....

After several years, he found the courage to open the spellbook. Not surprisingly, he could not understand the gibberish therein. That was when the wizard Funreal found him. Funreal taught the gnome his first spell, Read Magic. With that spell, Garan began to learn the magics of illusion. Funreal disappeared about a year later. It was some months later that Funreal turned up again in another part of the Realms, to influence a young boy named Gilraen.

But that is another story.

Ten years later, Garan left Thay for good, and joined an adventuring party. He thought he could evade the prophecy of his death. But he was wrong. In a great battle in the town of Suzail, he was slain by a warrior using a Sword of Wounding. He was raised from the dead, but to this day, he still has an incurable wound in his lungs, which only bothers him now in times of great stress. It was in Suzail that he learned that his nightmares were a part of his ancient family curse. The family had thought they had eradicated the curse some centuries ago. Garan was proof that they were wrong.

In the years that followed, Garan began to cultivate extensive aliases, in order to maintain contacts in every city he visited. In Amn, he gained the trust of some guardsmen, as Arioch. In Thay, he was able to set up a small shop of curiosities as a human known as Khydin. Royalties are set up in a private fund. In Waterdeep and Cormyr, he set himself up as a trader of rare goods, an unassuming halfling named Zalbar. It was in this area that he gained his favorite magical items, the gold lions Death and Destruction. But his most amazing accomplishment was in Zhentil Keep. Sheerly by accident, he stopped the assassination of a prominent wizard there. On the spur of the moment, Garan created the alias Tagar the Dark. This alias earned him a brief period of notoriety there.

As for his adventuring alias, he chose the rather vague name of Garan. This alias he used primarily in the Shadowdale area, which got him in trouble. He got involved in the quest to recover the Ring of Mutations. There, he was almost slain by the party thief, who was mutated into a great weasel. Feeling that he had just narrowly missed the fulfillment of his prophecy, he left the party. Unfortunately, he fell into one of the defenses of the caverns, and was gated into an unknown land. Needing some quick cash, he managed to join a small band of people trying to man a small garrison in a tower defending a town. But the threat involved thousands of enemies, and Garan left, too aware of his mortality.

What followed remains unclear. When he was next seen, he indicated that he had been traveling in other planes of existence, and had lost his lens of detection as well as his scrolls. He had, however, gained a cloak of invisibility. He ran into Tymerain, one of the members of the band who recovered the Ring of Mutations. Garan traveled with him and his party briefly, before the two had a violent disagreement concerning a man from Zhentil Keep. Garan refused to continue working for someone he called, "So blatantly stupid".

On his way to Hillsfar, however, he ran into the bard Trast, with his company. Unfortunately, he had contracted lycanthropy. With the bard's help, he used his illusions to defeat the lycanthrope. After a truly unpleasant encounter with the demon-son, Cralicon, he went to Shadowdale as a stone statue, but cured of lycanthropy. He was restored to flesh, and memory wiped of the events after leaving Tymerain. After being informed of the imminent invasion of Shadowdale, he left that area.

Not too long after that, Garan became involved with the movement to retake the Dalelands. Meeting up again with Kalitash, a cleric from one of the myriad dimensions he had visited, he helped complete a reconnaissance of enemy troops, and, despite being nearly killed, he stayed on. With Kalitash and other reinforcements, he went to the Occupied lands yet again. He proved effective in the combats he was in. But that all ended after Garan decided to keep an eye on a new member of the party, an evoker called Victor.

The mage was in reality a demonlord called Vextalor, who crushed the spirit and mind of the illusionist, and replaced it with his own. Under his control, Garan attempted to take the amulet of Graz'zt, by slaying all in the adventuring party. He nearly succeeded in this, and was only stopped by what could only be called divine intervention. The party took steps to shred apart the corpse, leaving no chance of reincarnation.

Rumors and Legends

It is said that the interference of the wizard Funreal did the impossible. With the final wish in a ring he possessed, it is said that he revived Garan-but the curse and the possession of Vextalor drove the gnome insane. Feigning gratitude, he allowed Funreal to help him relearn vital spells, before finally fleeing and burning down the wizard's tower, and has not been seen since. Perhaps this is true. Perhaps not.

Legend has it that the Th'lok family had been cursed by a gnome woman who had been assaulted and brutally murdered by one of Garan's ancestors. Her final words were a curse that no member of that family would ever know a night's rest without nightmares.

Some believe that a revived Garan would eventually throw off the influence of Vextalor-perhaps only temporarily-and had obtained the forgiveness of the ghost left behind by the woman.