August Dougal-The Pallid King
Such courage, such honor! The caliber of your character is absolutely impeccable, let there be no doubt. I do hope those virtues linger on my tongue for a while. Consider yourself blessed, few mortals are truly worth... savoring.
It is thankfully a rare thing for Tairos to combine a depthless capacity for depravity with an intellect so sharp as to border on prescience. The Pallid King of Clan Dougal perfectly demonstrates why such pairings are a heinous blight upon the land.
August Dougal, Patriarch
The leader of Clan Dougal was born with a great destiny upon his shoulders. His mother gave birth to him beneath an auspicious summer moon and sticky, stagnant, night sky. When his parents held him up to the moonlight to see for the first time their son they found one of his eyes to be little more than a pale, milky, orb. Dead and blind. Such a defect would be cause for sorrow in many other cultures but to the Dougals this was an omen of greatness. They gave him the name of the clan's founder, August, but to most he was Mooneye Dougal... the anointed by night. From his earliest days he was reared on rich mother's milk and promises of great providence. His parents told him he would grow to be the strongest giant who ever lived. That he would lead their people back into the north to scatter the Frostmerites and bring low the walls of Ghal Ankhar. They believed he would be the savior of Clan Dougal. They could never have imagined he would instead usher in the end of their old ways and become the progenitor of a race of butchers.
When August's father, Clarion Dougal, was slain by Stormlanders during a raid it became his turn to rule. He chose to move the clan's territory further inland away from the reach of coastal raids and other dangers. While some considered it a sign of weakness at the time and challenged the young lord's rule the majority of the clan understood that they were a dwindling people. Raids from the Stormlands were becoming more frequent, casualties among them were growing and birth rates dwindled. Leaving for a more isolated territory was the only way to stem the steady decline.
August Dougal, Conqueror
The land the clan lord chose was deeper into the marshes along the many splintering branches of the Tairos River's northeastern reach. This tangled region had always been avoided by the civilized nations of the region because the many dangers that lurked there and the hushed rumors of hauntings and plague. Basilisks, cockatrice, wyverns and goblin tribes all called the flooded mire home while the land itself offered nothing of value in exchange. Thus, it was left untouched until August Dougal lay his claim.
The most feral and deadly creatures were either forced out of their territory, domesticated or slain. The cockatrice flocks swarmed west to infest the lands near Ghal Pelorand were soon followed by the Basilisks that nested in the areas around Lake Tairos. The wyverns were brought to heel, becoming little more that skyborn hunting dogs for their new masters. It is the goblins that chose to stand their ground. The many tribes banded together in an attempt to repel the invaders. For them, their numbers were always their greatest weapon and these swamps were filled with countless of dim-witted warriors which the tribes hoped to use to drown the Dougals in a green tide.
These tribes had never faced anything like a clan of true giants though. Their experience was only with hunting beasts and bringing low the occasional ogre or troll. A giant at war is an awe-inspiring and terrible thing. The goblin extinction was swift and total. The swamps belonged to Mooneye Dougal and his kin now.
August Dougal, Prophet
Among the tribal lands that belonged to the goblins; clan Dougal found many precious treasures but the most valuable wasn't stored away in some locked chest or hidden nook. It was something they had buried under earth, rock and crude holy glyphs. An obelisk made of ancient, gnarled, wood that seemed to dance on the knife's edge between stability and complete decay. Ages untold within the rotting mud seemed to sunder this relic and even as they pulled it from the ground and set it straight the old wood only groaned but did not break. Within its blackish bark were runes that looked to be carved with a dull blade and shaky hand. The clan's most senior scholars had never seen such markings before but August, armed with his own academic wisdom, saw something familiar in the carvings. The promise of destiny he was raised on rung heavy in his mind as he examined each and every symbol. His destiny delivered his people to safety and now it led him to what must surely be the means of their return to power.
Mooneye Dougal had his people built his personal hut around the obelisk (and many other relics found buried with it) so that he could study its mysteries day and night. He emerged less and less as days turned into weeks and then months. Soon, he was directing the actions of his clan from a small sliding slot panel built into his hut, whispering commands from the shadows inside. His people would deliver meals to him through that same slot in ever increasing frequency. Soon, August's requests for food devolved from his usually high-born palette to a ceaseless demand for any no matter how raw or spoiled. The smell from his hut grew as well and the chorus of flies that started clinging to the walls arrived in ever-increasing numbers.
Inside, August dreamed. The runes upon the obelisk told their story clearly to him, a story about Tairos' only true native deity. They taught him how to brew intoxicating concoctions who's fluids and fumes would take take him on hypnotic vision quests or unveil the twisting possibilities of the future. With each dream the droning, chittering, and buzzing hum in the blackness behind his dreams grew louder. It was the voice of his new god, Krutilix The Plagued.
Outside, mutation and disease were beginning to slither into the Dougals. The nearby civilizations had learned to avoid this swamp due to the stories of sickness and tormented spirits many travelers told. The goblin tribes managed to survive by seeking out the strange artifacts that seemed to be the cause of these disturbances and burying them beneath dirt and protective magic. The Dougals outside of August's hut were just now learning what the goblins had known all along and suffering the consequences of their brash ignorance.
While sickness and insanity worked its way through the ranks of the clan August made a simple demand from his sliding panel; his voice more raspy and quiet than any had ever heard it before.
Forty. Forty to bear witness. Forty strong souls to sing for me. Bring them
His servants did as they were asked and brought forty bound victims to August's panel and pushed them them through. Most were citizens of small trading villages or wagon caravans... people who would not be missed, people whose vanishing wouldn't draw undo attention.
For forty days the hut echoes with the screams of those brought to August. And, each day those screams grew softer by one voice till finally, on the fortieth day there was silence. His clan feared that their lord may have succumbed to disease as well so they opened the hut for the first time and what lay beyond the thick fog of buzzing flies drove many to madness.
August Dougal The Pallid King
Inside the hut August was gone. Replaced by a massive cocoon made of the stitched-together flesh and bones of the forty victims brought to him. This massive, undulating, sack crawled with pestilent insects while surrounded by a pool of rotting corpse debris.
The Dougals gathered around the cocoon, chanted to it, prayed to it and honored it with fresh blood to keep the sack nourished and moist. Another forty days would pass. Forty days of revels, forty days of increasing degeneration... the last forty days of anything resembling clan Dougal.
Under a pale moon the ripe flesh of the cocoon finally split open like a ruptured cyst. Something larger than any giant who ever lived was born from that blasphemous sack and into swamps of Tairos. Bloated, massive and hungry was the new Anointed of Krutilix. A crown of deformed bone and antlers grew from his wretched head marking him as the Pallid King of the deformed giants that were once clan Dougal. When he emerged the last of the clan's fragile sanity left them and their wretched, hollow hearts were left open for the teachings of Krutilix.
Dougal "farms" began to spread all across the swamps. These hovels were a mixture of church, fortress and prison and cattle ranch where the people of nearby townships would be brought become feed or the canvas upon which the Dougals "gave praise" to their god.
So came to be the Butcher Yards of Clan Dougal and the reign of their Pallid King.
Pallid King by Antti Hakosaari
Physical Description
General Physical Condition
Though August appears to be consumed by decay he is in fact fueled by the power of an old god and many magnitudes more powerful than a typical giant
Body Features
Generally changing all the time as the form of rot infecting his form changes
Mental characteristics
Gender Identity
Male
Education
Received the highest level of education his clan had to offer and once anointed by Krutilix he gained access to many occult secrets far beyond any mortal sage
Mental Trauma
The Pallid King, while possessing genius-levels of intellect, is also stricken with intense cravings to feed almost constantly. The longer he goes without feeding the more Krutilix's maddening thoughts rend at his sanity.
Intellectual Characteristics
Philosophical, pious, intelligent, gourmand
Morality & Philosophy
All things rot, all things succumb to decay. All flesh ultimately belongs to the god of flies, Krutilix
Personality Characteristics
Motivation
Kill gods if they still live and give Tairos over to Krutilix. Help his god find a way to nest within the Leylines
Personality Quirks
Almost always eating
Hygiene
Terrible. August Dougal is a living hive of diseases, seeping sores and putrefying viscera
Alignment
Chaotic Evil
Species
Ethnicity
Children
Height
27 feet
Weight
34000 LBS
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