When not personally leading his armies, Styphon has a strong need for order and stability within his lands. Every city on the Maud’Madir has envoys, and there isn’t a corner of the world left untouched by his spies. The sheer scope of his ambitions include factors from across the entire continent, and how they will most efficiently be used. Every assault ordered is remembered, every strike is planned well in advance. The Black Dragon needs neither a war council nor a cadre of sycophantic advisors. Should a Champion or Cleric be captured in battle, Styphon will personally take the prisoner into the dark tunnels leading within, and for reasons unknown, the Gods will immediately abandon any of their followers that are dragged into its depths. From the outside is constantly guarded by only the most loyal and dedicated of Styphon’s Army, and even then only the Dragon himself is permitted to enter. The Black Tide does not wash upon its shores, and with the Shadowlands it exists as a vast void of light that even the great Darkness fears to approach it. It is a hole in reality – a blank void in this plane that crosses with no other. The most advanced and sophisticated scrying stares into that forbidden place, but finds nothing. Powerful mages have dedicated their lives to understanding what lies within, and die of old age as confused as when they began. Many mystics have tried to peer within, only to be taken over by madness, screaming in terror.
It is a place that even the Gods cannot peer into. No soldier of the army will speak of it, and no ambassador or spy will even admit it exists. Within the heart of his mountain is a chamber of unknown size and depth. Armed with the Orb of Power, Thade, The Army of the Black Wyrm, and his unending legions of the undead, the Ealdor-Banum prosecutes an eternal battle against the deceitful Gods, and the so-called delusions of the Light and Dark. Each of these words can find their root in his ancient name: Ealdor-Banum.įrom the Donjon of the stronghold Atol-Gyryn, built from the basalt and granite bones of Mount Dracos, Styphon wages an endless war of attrition against the mortal kingdom of Tiefanue. Every culture on the Maud’Madir has a word for something unthinkably abhorrent, something truly unforgivable. In the common tongue, the word ‘evil’ itself is derived from his own name, dating back to the original languages spoken in the first mortal city. Beyond all concepts of morality and empathy, right and wrong, good and bad, Styphon is a creature of endless and uncompromising Evil, on such a scale it can no longer be conceived by sane, mortal minds. These comparisons and words, they are just concepts – ideas and imagery concocted by the mortal races of Arthos in a meaningless attempt to understand what He truly is. He is not like Malagant, who foolishly sees Necromancy as an end, but not the means. He is no oppressive politician, or an executioner lost in the ennui of untold murders. He is unlike the Fae, to whom all creatures are playthings, to be discarded when their novelty has faded. He is unlike the demon-kind, who frolic in grotesque and bloody flesh rending rituals. Styphon is not sadistic or cruel neither bloodthirsty nor a tyrant.
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