# Corvath Moonstar ![[CorvathMoonstarPathfinder-v4.webp]] _Outlawed heir of [[House Moonstar]] | [[Old Skull Tor]]_ ## Summary Heir to [[House Moonstar]] of [[Waterdeep]] sixty years ago, outlawed in open court by his own sister after he burned a temple of [[Selûne]]. He has held [[Old Skull Tor]] ever since, and [[Tashara]] has allied with him there (S92). %% ## Now Holds the hierophant's seat at Area 15 and keeps the temple as he has for thirty years — the candles, the rounds, the lamps in an empty building. He has never had a vision, and nothing has ever come through the mirror behind him. Three weeks ago [[Tashara]] walked into his temple and told him his god could be restored, and he believes she was sent. For thirty years he wanted to die and could never do it; refusing to feed was the closest he got. That is over. She gave him his faith back and his appetite came with it — the five [[Red Wizards]] he ate eight days ago were the first since the massacre. He is a convert three weeks in, hot and certain and working, and he has given her everything she has asked for except the sarcophagus at 31. Bats from the roosts brought him word of intruders in the temple (S92). He does not know who they are. [[Nyxavar]] is dead, killed by the heroes at Area 26 (S93). He knows, and he is enraged. ## Appearance Tall, close-cropped grey, a face that was handsome and is now only severe. Thirty years starved and eight days fed — the color has come back and the hands are steady again. ## Personality Courteous, patient, and entirely certain. A host — he rebuilt this place and had a congregation, and the forms are still in him. He offers visitors a seat and clean water from the fountains at 16, in a mountain of corpses. He is not mourning. Thirty years of that ended when [[Tashara]] walked in, and what is left is a convert's heat: energized, purposeful, and back at work. He talks about [[Ilvessa]] constantly, in sixty-year-old detail, and cannot get near the massacre — he arrives at the edge of it and goes somewhere else mid-sentence. Pressed on [[Nyxavar]] or the sarcophagus, he leaves the room. He occasionally answers someone who is not there; play it flat and do not signpost it. He asks the party for news, having had none in thirty years, and would never admit how much he wants it. Nothing moves him by argument. Tell him [[Orcus]] is dead or that [[Tashara]] is lying and he will kill you — he murdered a hundred people rather than hold that thought once, and he is fed now. ## Quote _"I was told to sit with her and let her go. I have never once wished I had."_ ## Connections **[[Ilvessa]]** — his wife. He damned them both to save her, then sealed her in her own tomb and has not opened it in thirty years. **[[Nyxavar]]** — [[Sarravel]] when he was alive, his oldest friend, who died defending him. He raised him. He will not talk about it. Destroyed by the heroes (S93). **[[Tashara]]** — three weeks in his temple. He believes she is a gift from [[Orcus]] and does not know what she is. **[[Alathene Moonstar]]** — his sister, who had him outlawed in open court. ## Background **The expedition.** Sixty years ago he took [[Ilvessa]], the mage he loved, and [[Sarravel]], a silver dragon who had been his friend since boyhood, somewhere he shouldn't have gone. [[Ilvessa]] came back with something [[Selûne]]'s priests could not touch. **The bargain.** [[Orcus]] does not cure anyone; he offers the alternative to dying. The price was both their souls and they took it together. They came out of it the same thing. **The burning and the outlawry.** They burned the temple that failed her. [[Alathene Moonstar]] had him outlawed, and he went north with everyone still loyal and rebuilt the ruined Tor into a cult on the family's money. **[[Sarravel]].** The dragon followed him north and argued with him for fifteen years. Then [[House Moonstar]] sent the first of its parties to end him, and [[Sarravel]] died stopping it. Corvath raised him where he lay, out of the only reflex he has. **The massacre.** Thirty years ago [[Orcus]] died at [[Zelatar]] and Corvath lost his faith and his mind in the same hour. He killed the congregation, all hundred of them, because if the god was gone then everything they were was a lie and he could not stand witnesses to it. The spawn he could not destroy he nailed into their coffins. [[Ilvessa]] he sealed behind a slab of iron in her own sarcophagus. **The thirty years.** He kept the temple — made every candle in it, walked the rounds, held the seat — in a mountain of his own dead, and refused to feed. ## Secret He does not know that [[Tashara]] is a dead woman driving a stolen body, and he does not know she invented everything she told him. She said his god could be restored and that both of them would be richly rewarded, and she made all of it up to get a fortress and an army before [[Valindra Shadowmantle]] found her. It held because she was telling a man who had waited thirty years to be told he was right. Days ago she had a real vision of [[Orcus|Tenebrous]], and she has not told him. ## Stats **Base:** [[Vampire Lord Blackguard (MME)|Vampire Lord (Blackguard)]], reskinned as Corvath. Use the existing CR 19 stat block without changes. %%