Meirgin Windtalon

Meirgin "Daggers" Windtalon was a cleric of Cyric with the rank of Dark Hand who resided in the Dark God Reformed temple in Voonlar circa the Year of Wild Magic, 1372 DR.

Description
Meirgin was tall and thin, with smouldering good looks. When he spoke, it was obvious that he was well educated, speaking rapidly with very little hesitation in his phrasing. His nickname came from the way he looked at people who displeased him, giving them sidelong glances that dripped with poison.

Personality
He was a very organized and patient person that never forgot a slight. He was often successful at manipulating merchants or adventurers that passed through town into doing something that improved his standing or was detrimental to his enemies. His specialty was whimsically inveigling intoxicated people into attacking a person, place, or thing that he disliked, until the Dark Patriarch Gormstadd rebuked him for being unsubtle.

Abilities
In the temple, Meirgin was a master of ceremony, courtesy, and ritual, performing all his duties with flair. He was a skilled writer who used his style to encode&mdash;by word choice and phrasing&mdash;personal notes into temple documents and communications that only he would understand.

Activities
In addition to his priestly duties, Daggers was in charge of record-keeping and written communication for the Dark God Reformed.

Relationships
Gormstadd never completely trusted anyone and was especially wary of his two Dark Hands, Meirgin and Bastabar Yulgont. Meirgin and Bastabar never had a warm relationship, but Gormstadd fomented a rivalry between them and fanned the flames until they developed an intense hatred for one another, ensuring that they would never collude to oust him. Gormstadd gave the responsibility of record-keeping and written communication to Meirgin, but watched him closely.

In the temple, all the lower-ranked priests regarded Daggers as the central figure that kept the temple running. The Fingers of Cyric (the temple guards) considered him to be the de facto leader of the temple.

Among the townsfolk, Meirgin and his fellow Dark Hand Bastabar were justifiably feared and early on folk had dubbed them "the Bloody Hands". After a few reprisals against those who spoke the nickname within their hearing, the villagers shortened it to "the Blood", which was either more acceptable or beneath the notice of the Dark Hands. The citizens were aware of the intense rivalry between the two and gleefully exacerbated the conflict because it made good theater and hoped it would result in the removal of one or both from Voonlar, or Toril.

History
Meirgin Windtalon was originally from Selgaunt, a younger son of a family with ambitions of nobility. He was well educated but without any realistic chance at wealth or a title and was firmly guided to seek out his own destiny elsewhere.