The Lord of Pride

The first of the Lords of Sin

Habitat: Kale, Kale CIty, Lair; Treasure: Armaments

Thuldin the Fallen, the Lord of Pride, was an ancient yet still hale dwarf. In his previous life, he was the son of Thundin Greathammer, King of the Dwarfhold Khallin in the Northern Teeth. Thuldin was mighty, bold, and gifted, but all his virtues were poisoned by pride. He believed the dwarven race superior to all others, not merely in craft and endurance, but in right. To him, the lesser peoples existed to admire dwarven greatness, submit to dwarven judgment, or be broken beneath dwarven hammers.

While still a prince of Khallin, Thuldin convinced his father to turn against the neighboring human barbarian tribes. Trade was ended. Old agreements were cast aside. In time, Khallin's armies attacked the tribes and forced tribute from them. Thuldin called this strength and prudence, but in truth it was arrogance dressed in the language of policy. He wanted Khallin to stand alone, needing nothing and no one, a monument to dwarven supremacy.

His fall began when an ancient green dragon began to harry the Dwarfhold. Against his father's wishes, Thuldin led a force of three hundred dwarves into the wilds to hunt the beast. He meant to return in triumph, dragging glory behind him like a chained captive. He meant to prove, before his father and all his kin, that dwarven courage could humble even the great wyrms of the world.

The dwarves found the dragon and wounded it, but their victory ended there. The beast's wrath fell upon them like poison and storm. The proud expedition was destroyed, and of the three hundred only Thuldin escaped. Wounded, shamed, and half-mad with rage, he staggered back toward Khallin. Yet when he came within sight of the gates of his father's hold, he could not enter. His boasts had been false. His father had been right. His warriors were dead. His pride, unable to bear judgment, curdled into contempt. He turned away from Khallin without warning them of the approaching dragon, vowing to leave his people to their fate.

The dragon soon came for vengeance. With Khallin's defenders slain and her gates left open, the Dwarfhold fell. Thuldin lived, but the prince of Khallin died in all but name. In hatred and humiliation, he shaved his beard, the deepest sign of contempt he could show for the race whose greatness he had once proclaimed. Yet this act did not free him. It only bound him more tightly to the sin that had destroyed him.

Thuldin wandered for many years, nursing his grievance against the dwarves and against the world that had witnessed his failure. In time he came to the Pass of Doom, where he was captured and taken to the Nameless City. What was done to him there is not fully known, but the dwarf who eventually emerged was no longer merely fallen. He had become the Lord of Pride.

The mind of Thuldin was a knot of contradiction. He hated dwarves, yet he could never cease exalting dwarven achievement. He despised the race that had, in his mind, failed him, yet he remained obsessed with its ancient glories, especially its mastery of stone and metal. His hatred was not the opposite of pride, but its final, diseased form. He could not forgive the dwarves because he could not forgive himself.

During the dominion of the Seven Lords, Thuldin ruled Kale, the weakest of the Seven Kingdoms. Its weakness was not wholly his doing. The policies of the other Lords strangled it. Saithith, the Lord of Gluttony, had no coherent economic policy at all, while Brathelathor, the Lord of Lust, treated Thuldin with open cruelty and contempt. Brathelathor refused meaningful trade with Kale while heavily taxing all goods that passed through his kingdom from the East. Thus Kale, already burdened by its master's bitterness, was made poorer still by the malice and indifference of its neighbors.

Thuldin's reign ended in the year 8161 F.R., when he was slain by Valanduil the Elf and Bartarius the Barbarian. So perished the Lord of Pride: not as the champion of dwarven greatness he had once imagined himself to be, but as a broken thing, destroyed by the very sin that had first taught him to mistake arrogance for strength.

The Dark Will: Each Lord of Sin has been instilled by the Book of Seven with a power that has come to be known as the Dark Will, the ability to send general orders to all dark folk in his respective domain. The Will cannot give specific orders, such as to recover a certain item, but it can direct groups of dark folk to head in a certain direction or gather in a certain spot, to go to war, to harry travelers, or to loot and burn. When dark folk (except Oluks and Hobgoblins) under the dark will are directed to go to war, they begin to breed at an increased rate, producing massive amounts of soldiers for the evil armies; their gestation period is reduced by one to three months depending on the race.