Aetheric III

Aetheric III was the emperor of Doegan in the Utter East in the late 14 century.

Description
Because of the curse of the Doegan bloodforge, Aetheric III looked like a twisted monstrosity. He resembled a giant aquatic creature with scaled tentacles, huge jet black eyes but in a beautiful face, and rash-covered skin over damaged, rotting flesh.

Personality
Aetheric III was ruthless and amoral but had always in mind the interests of his country. He always spoke with the honorary we.

Relationships
Ikavi Garkim was the aide and personal agent of Aetheric III, and the only being that the emperor trusted. His main enemies were the cultists of the Fallen Temple.

History
The young Aetheric III was a normal Ffolk human until an invasion from an army of fiends forced him to use the bloodforge to create basal golems to repel it, like his father before, and he become an aberrant being, forced to live inside a giant water tank filled with the black poisonous liquid secreted by his skin. He later raised a magic wall that protected the capital Eldrinpar from the fiends. He did not show his face in public since.

At one point, Aetheric III allied with and sponsored the pirate fleet known as the Doegan Dogs in order to hunt down ships from the opposing countries of the Five Kingdoms: Ulgarth, the Free Cities of Parsanic, and Konigheim.

After he sensed the use of great psionic power at work, he managed to recruit the young Mar psionicist Ikavi Garkim. He grew to be his personal agent, even gaining a place among the lords of the Chamber of Councilors as the Councilor of Internal Investigations.

In the, he devised a devious plot: using the gate in the Stone Arch, Aetheric III sent an army of basal golems to the far country of Waterdeep in northwest Faerûn in order to abduct Eidola of Neverwinter, the soon-to-be wife of Piergeiron Paladinson, in order to lure great armies from Faerûn to the Utter East to help them against the fiends and the cultists of the Fallen Temple.

That year, just after Ikavi Garkim had eliminated a cell of the Fallen Temple, some people arrived from Waterdeep: a group of paladins led by Miltiades of Phlan. Quickly, Aetheric III sent Garkim to greet them. During a welcoming meal, Aetheric III invited the paladins to an audience with him. They were shocked by his appearance and the emperor shared with them that the cost of using the bloodforges was not just draining the land and its people of life, but also altering their bodies. Aetheric III was altered the most because of his heavy bloodforge use. The emperor also told them that the bloodforges were created by the Mar's ancestors to seal otherworldly forces and influences on the region away and use of the artifacts weakened the barriers. Aetheric III revealed that Eidola had been hired by the Fallen Temple, which used to follow Tyr, now also known as the Temple of the Broken Hammer. The Emperor asked Miltiades for help against the common enemy and after a communion with his deity he agreed to destroy the enemies of Doegan.

Once the paladins departed, the emperor explained to Garkim that among the enemies of Tyr were the Fallen Temple, the bloodforges and also the emperor himself. Garkim was tasked to be ready to assassinate the newcomers if they moved against the emperor.

After the paladins fought against a team of mercenaries led by Artemis Entreri in front of Eldrinpar's Fountain of the Kraken, Ikavi Garkim and his guards, the few not suffering from the Gray Malaise, arrived to tidy the mess and recover information about the event but Aetheric III informed him via mind communication that he had saw everything.

Soon after, the Emperor summoned Garkim to explain that he was the one who'd abducted Eidola and told him all about his plot to attract more armies to the Utter East to help them, and it had worked worked with the group of paladins and the group of mercenaries, but Aetheric III need more and greater armies for his plan to eradicate the fiends.

Later, Enteri and his mercenaries managed to sneak into the palace and found Aetheric and his poison-filled impregnable water tank. However, Entreri used a magical item to create a small silver portal in the tank's wall. This injured the emperor and flooding the castle with the tank water and his grotesque tentacled body. As that happened, the magical barriers around Eldrinpar failed, flooding the city with fiendish monsters, hordelings, and tanar'ri.

After the bloodforge was stolen from cultists from the Fallen Temple, Ikavi Garkim decided he needed to follow the mercenaries Entreri, Sharessa Stagwood, and Ingrar Welven together with paladins Trandon and Kern Desanea. However, Ingrar sensed the Mar chancellor of Doegan following them with his guards and they stopped to speak with him.

Offering a temporary alliance in order to save his city from the fiends, Garkim joined the assembled group of mercenaries and paladins. Using a secret passage built by the Mar and known to Garkim, they managed to exit the palace without a fight and told the others that the cultists had installed the bloodforge inside the Temple of Umberlee. So they entered the Fallen Temple's hideout to stop the devious plot of the cultists to summoned their deity Ysdar and Entreri and Sharessa attempted to claim the bloodforge as their own, but they were stopped by now-monstrous Aetheric III. In the process, the deity Tyr revealed himself through his new Chosen—Ingrar Welven. The deity manifested himself through ominous red skies and collapsed part of the temple's dome. Disgusted by the cult that claimed to be his worshipers, Tyr incinerated many and forced the survivors to flee. Then the injured Aetheric III surged from the foaming water, totally crazy and speaking only gibberish. He tried to recover his bloodforge from inside the temple, not caring if this killed the people around it. The Emperor fought against Enteri and defeated him, but Enteri created a new basal golem to killed Aetheric.

Appearances

 * Novels
 * Errand of Mercy
 * Conspiracy
 * Uneasy Alliances