Artor Morlin

Artor Morlin, also known as The Baron of Blood, was a vampire Lord who saw Waterdeep as his own personal hunting grounds and brooked no challenges from rival vampires to his domain.

Personality
As an immortal creature who had been living in the same place for well over four centuries, Artor had to create several personalities for himself to remain incognito. In this, he lacked imagination as every one of his personae was a mercenary captain.

He was a wary individual, He would try to observe his foes and send his vampire spawn or other minions to deal with threats instead of confronting them himself. He therefore preferred to avoid notice wherever possible and maintain his public identity so that he could spend his free time hunting. After his expulsion from the Dungeon of the Crypt, he spent the next three decades anxiously waiting and watching for signs that people had forgotten about the existence of the Dungeon and that he was still out there.

Artor spent a small fortune on bloodroot in order to suggest an addiction to the drug. The purpose of this was to suggest a weakness that enemies would think to exploit and thus reveal themselves. The ploy was successful in drawing out the Malar worshiping vampire, Dhusarra yr Fadila el Abhuk.

He was a pragmatic tactician and strategist who was determined to never lose a fight. He would never intentionally put himself in a position where there was any doubt of his absolute victory. He spent a small fortune and several years of unlife researching all of the inherent weaknesses of a vampire's condition just so he could cover all of his bases if an opponent ever tried to exploit even one of them.

However, if ever he found himself in a situation where he had to draw sword and enter the fray, his bloodlust took over and he reveled in the chaos and blood of combat.

Relationships
Artor didn't maintain many relationships for a centuries-old person. He preferred to kill his allies after a certain number of years and make new ones rather than keep the same ones around for a long time. He maintained a coterie of vampire spawn, the last of whom that were documented being Arrick Kaarvol, Fhang, Rorrina of Clan Stoneshaft and a medusa named Medechai who was his favorite.

He had made several acquaintances in his time, including Halaster Blackcloak, whom he first met before he became undead when Halaster was still known as Hilather. Of his true friends though, there were very few, though it was known that Durnan was one.

Through Fhang, Artor had a connection to the Unseen. He also had connections within the Church of Loviatar and the Shadow Thieves.

He was closely connected to the Gost family of Waterdeep, in a relationship dating back for centuries. In the late 14th Century DR, Djarrus Gost was his dominated puppet (a fact that would've shocked Djarrus' vampire-hunting half-sister Corinna Lathankin if she'd ever found out). Artor maintained dominated servants that were connected to the church of Lathander in order to supply information to the church about rival vampires which would then be destroyed by church-sponsored vampire hunters.

Possessions

 * Artor wielded a +2 vampiric two-bladed sword in combat that he named Shoonfangs. He frequently coated it in purple worm poison. It was also the key to a portal that linked the Fireplace Level to the Morlin Catacombs underneath Castle Daggerford - Morlin's emergency escape route.
 * Artor wore a mithral chain shirt called Artor's Armament.
 * He also kept a 6 inch (15 cm) bloodstone gem, carved into the shape of a bowl that would fill with blood on command.
 * Artor's coffin was finely carved black marble and worth thousands of gold pieces to a collector.
 * Artor acquired one of two known copies of the Workbook of Lhoril Delhiirnyn that contained extensive research on summoning demons and a list of treasures seen in Ahghairon's Tower before it was spellwarded.
 * A pair of boots of elvenkind.
 * A kiira that contained the spells analyze dweomer, contact other plane, moment of prescience, scrying, and vision.
 * Twin daggers of venom decorated with jewels, stolen from the noble Sultlue family of Waterdeep.
 * A book describing religious rituals of the yuan-ti.
 * A pair of dueling swords won by defeating a young scion of the Silmerhelve noble family. Artor posed as a rival and acquired a rapier of puncturing and a luck blade (with no wishes left).
 * Artor had a large collection of treasures from the time of the Shoon Imperium including a suit of red dragonhide full plate armor once worn by a helmed horror made by the Shoon court mages.

Biography
The first documentary evidence of Artor Morlin placed him as a loyal mercenary guard in the court of Qysar Shoon III at Shoonach. Despite being quite aware of the Qysar's younger brother wishing to supplant his employer, Artor, through no fault of his own, was too late to save the Qysar's life during the coup against Shoon III in the.

Artor became an infamous Shoon outlaw who worked as a mercenary from the 2 to 10 century Dale Reckoning. Famed for his hatred of all things Calishite, he took to harassing Calishite trade caravans. He built Morlin Castle on what is now the site of the town of Daggerford and proclaimed himself Baron of Steeping Falls and Lord Protector of the Sword Hills in the.

At some point, he fell to evil and became a powerful vampire. He continued to harass Calishite caravans in the south, seemingly uncaring that his realm disintegrated in 403 DR, he allowed his castle fall to ruins during the Second Trollwar in the, around which time he disappeared. He only returned when he heard that Castle Daggerford was being built on top of the ruins of his home in 947 DR. Artor, discovering the burgeoning settlement of Waterdeep, ignored Daggerford's development and instead moved his coffin to Waterdeep.

Artor was the first vampire to take up residence in Waterdeep and built the Dungeon of the Crypt just north of the City of the Dead.

In, Artor made a deal with Open Lord Ahghairon in which he promised to keep Waterdeep free of vampires other than him himself, in exchange for assurances that he would have a say in how the city was ruled. As a result, Artor would become one of the Masked Lords of the city.

In the, Artor found himself fighting an undead horde in the Fields of the Dead that almost destroyed the city of Baldur's Gate. Here, he encountered the grisgol form of Hazamir al Aktorral, whom he abducted and entombed within his lair.

He dwelt in the Dungeon of the Crypt for almost four centuries, keeping the citizens of Waterdeep safe from other vampires per his agreement with Ahghairon. In the though, the Company of Crazed Venturers chanced upon and defeated him. Artor managed to stay just out of reach of the adventurers in the Fireplace Level and eventually moved his coffin there. After a decade had passed, he had a vampiric servant move back into his old lair to test whether people would actually remember that he was never destroyed or not. Every five years he would kill his servant, create another and send them to perform the same task. The fourth such servant, a doppelganger named Fhang, was intended to be the last such imposter before he would return in person to the Dungeon of the Crypt. However, in the, a vampire of Undermountain, Dhusarra el Abhuk, decided to challenge Artor for the privilege of using the city of Waterdeep as a private hunting ground. In Dhusarra's ignorance, she failed to comprehend her blunder, but in so doing, had invoked the divine interdiction of a Malarite High Hunt, trapping herself in the city along with Artor, who was a far more powerful vampire than her. When Dhusarra realized her mistake, she managed to get another group of powerful adventurers involved to save her own hide by hunting for Artor.

Like with the Company of Crazed Venturers, Artor survived his encounter with the adventurers sent after him, but he decided to abandon his old redoubts and eventually moved into the crypts beneath the Gost mausoleum in the City of the Dead. Another century passed. In 1492 DR, the leader of Bregan D'aerthe, the drow Jarlaxle, learned of the existence of a powerful potential rival based out of the Gost crypts. Rather than be distracted trying to learn more about this rival, and expend resources getting rid of them himself, Jarlaxle commissioned numerous fake treasure maps that lead to the mausoleum, and distributed them to other treasure hunters and adventuring types, banking on his rivals eliminating each other for him. Artor eventually decided to allow one of these groups sent against him to live with the knowledge of his undead state, in exchange for them stopping the distribution of the fake maps to his lair, confident that he could murder them if betrayed. These agents were successful, but enough maps remained in the city that Artor decided that he had to find another new lair.

At first, he decided that he would move into the Dungeon Level of Undermountain, and temporarily moved to Skullport while that was being set up, but troubles with other undead in Undermountain eventually caused him to settle on making the far deeper level of Shadowdusk Hold his new lair.

His last secondary lair was a reserve crypt beneath the villa of the Gost family.

Appearances

 * Adventures
 * Dungeon #128: "The Fireplace Level"
 * Board Games
 * Lords of Waterdeep
 * Organized Play & Licensed Adventures
 * Beneath the City of the Dead • Dock Ward Double-Cross • A Wrinkle in the Weave • Purging the Blood • Into the Dark • Crypt of the Dark Kiss • Fangs and Frogs • The Vampire of Skullport • Forge of Fangs

Trivia

 * Artor was intended to appear in Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, with several new pieces of concept art created, but wasn't included in the final version. Instead, he became a major NPC in Season 8 of the Adventurers League