Thane

Thane is a character in The Gradual Massacre.

Biography:
Thane is the son of a great hero called Pery. Pery had been born into a time of great oppression by a Dark Overlord, who ruled over the kingdom, oppressing and controlling all. He trained and became a great warrior and eventually destroyed the Dark Overlord and dismantled his Dark Empire freeing the people from his psionic grasp. He was praised by the people and held in regard as one of the greatest heroes ever. Eventually he fell in love and had a son, Thane. Thane spent his life living in his father’s shadow. He sought to prove that he was just as much a hero as his father had been. He trained hard, becoming a great warrior, an average psion and frankly a mediocre magic-user. He grew resentful of his father, for he would never have an opportunity to live up to his momentous reputation. No matter how hard he trained, how much he pushed his body and mind he would never accomplish anything like what Pery had, simply because the land had been rid of the great evil that had plagued it. Though he was to be a great hero he would have no great villain to fight. The world was at peace and would have remained so for a long time had Thane not done what he inevitably did.

At some point he came to believe that if there was no great villain for him to fight, or no great evil for him to right then he would have to create one himself. He planned to bring about an evil so awful that in it’s defeat he would finally overshadow his father. He delved into the dark arts, learning more and more, planning to summon forth greater evils with every page he read. He would show his father that he was not worthless, he would show the entire world how capable a fighter he was. He would save them all, just like his father had, only better. Eventually he had decided. He collected the equipment and the reagents he would need to carry out a very old ritual. The ritual required a sacrifice of power and he saw no better option than his own father, the hero of the entire land who would have to die so that it could be saved again anew. He took this equipment and his father, under false pretence to an old stone circle where reality was weak and there he carried out the ritual and opened a way into the world for the Great Old One Yt’hroloth.

The terrifying abomination, as tall as a building, was made of flesh and bone and rotting sinew, his body was adorned with countless faces of the dead. Countless disgusting tentacles probed the stone circle feeling this way and that. Old dead eyes as large as his head stared blankly at him and scores of mouths opened up to address him. Thane tried to reason with the Old One, to strike a bargain that Thane would allow Yt’hroloth to become feared and powerful before he would strike it down. The Elder God laughed in his face and reached out with it’s mind and made Thane it’s vessel. It twisted and corrupted his body to resemble the Old Ones. It took control of him, leaving his mind intact so that he could see the horror that he had wrought upon the world and to experience the abominations that Yt’hroloth would, with his own body, commit. Yt’hroloth placed a part of it’s mind permanently inside him, to control him as his dark lieutenant, and sent him off to wage war upon the world. It is years later, when Yt’hroloth has all but conquered Thane’s world that Thane mysteriously vanishes, even from Yt’hroloth’s sphere of comprehension.

Description:
Thane’s body is twisted and disgusting. His head is unnaturally shaped, his mouth gone and replaced by a couple of long prehensile tentacles. His eyes are black and stare vacantly, his nose is flattened out into just a pair of nostrils on his pallid white face, he is completely bald, his hair long since torn out in angry white clumps. He wears nightmare black and dark green plate armour and carries a corrupted soulsword (a blade from his world, bound to the one for whom it was forged, was corrupted when he was taken over by Yt’hroloth), this shows physical signs of being corrupted; a dark green taint and unnatural curve in the blade.

Items/Abilities:
Thane carries a corrupted soulsword which is very proficient with. He has reasonable psionic abilities to cause people to see nightmarish visions or drive them slowly insane. He communicates telepathically.

Development
He hurt his arm. It was an issue. So he became a cyborg. I don't know what happened next because I am behind on GradMass, but I assume it culminated in sunshine, puppies and hugs for everyone.

Death
Burned alive or something?