DUNGEON DEGENERATES LORE 7 - LORD SCROTT

Lord Scrott was a royal man that lived in a lonely tower in the foothills. He was very tall, he had to have things specially made to accommodate his extraordinary size. He wore sorcerer’s robes, grew his hair long, kept a beard & was wild eyed. Even though he was not magically gifted, he looked the part. Lord Scrott was desperate to develop magical powers. Lord Scrott used his extreme wealth & privilege to collect as many works on the occult & built up one of the largest libraries of these materials as could be found. He would send out his emissaries to scour bookshops & even hire thieves to steal books from libraries. He was constantly on the alert for books he didn’t have. Lord Scrott would not just collect these books but he read every single one in his extra large wingback chair that overlooked the rolling hills of the Highlands.

He believed that in order to crack the code, absorb & understand enough knowledge, then he would be able to use some of the hidden powers he knew existed beyond the wall of the mundane. Out of desperation Scrott worked with the Holy Order, to capture magic users & torture them to divulge their occult secrets, his scribes taking furious notes all the while. Even with his personal dungeon & graveyard bloating with an ever-growing number of wizards, witches, warlocks, sorcerers, alchemists & shamans & his library having stacks of books on the floor he was no closer to this talent.

As his hope dwindled, Scrott started to experiment on himself. He would alter his consciousness if he could not unlock some hidden talent with knowledge. Scrott again used his wealth to hire a battery of alchemists to make new drugs that would alter his perception. His emissaries searched all corners of the Würstreich to find any drugs they could. They would bring these drugs back & synthesize them in the laboratory. Scrott started to ingest all manner of these intoxicants, spending all day under a blanket of drugs, becoming more & more detached from reality. The tower grew filthy as every piece of money was shifted into the creation & use of drugs. Lord Scrott started to visit this immense temple that haunted his hallucinations.

The temple lay in a miasmal void that felt claustrophobic & infinite at the same time. It squeezed the brain to try & perceive it. It smelled sweet, attractive like some kind of spiced meat. The temple was shaped like a skull, a bizarre skull, but a skull of something close to a human, but not human. An enormous, wrinkled skull that emerged from a pit & portruded a bridge from its mouth like a tongue. Enormous spikes erupted from its eye sockets, & brow, protruding from large holes. The surface of this temple was crustaceous & colored smoke belched from all of its crevices. A tower continued from the crown of its head. The tower had many windows that were little more than holes, arranged geometrically in patterns, they looked infected, the whole thing was topped off with a conical roof. The temple would throb & pulsate, seeming to breathe. Scrott felt drawn to it, it called to him even when he was not intoxicated.

Scrott wanted to be inside the temple, but he could only circle it, see it from every angle & then it would disappear when he left the distorted world of hallucination. Years passed & his desire to be inside the temple grew & grew. He was possessed, he had heavily detailed notebooks diagramming the temple, so he could think about it when he was conscious.

Eventually he had an idea that seemed like the answer. Lord Scrott would have Blight spores injected through his nose, into his brain. His brain would bloom & he would be able to enter the Temple. He would take a heroic dose of Scratch in order to not feel this pain & to help transition into that realm. However, none of Scrott’s employ would perform this insane experiment & he couldn’t bring himself to do the injection while sober enough to do such a delicate maneuver.

Lord Scrott had to find someone loyal enough to him to possibly end his life. He no longer trusted his servants so he started to wander the countryside in search of someone trustworthy. He would consume enormous amounts of drugs & wander the land in search of this new partner. One night the moon was full & the air was piquant. Scrott came upon a cloaked man at a crossroads. This stranger was tall too, his face was hidden, he clinked when he walked as if his shoes were made of metal. Scrott asked this stranger if he could help him, he whispered “Of course, brother”.

Scrott & the stranger returned to his tower. Unseen, they entered his laboratory. Scrott ingested a large bag of Scratch & he lay on his operating table, waiting for it to take hold. “When I give the signal you must inject me through the nose, into my brain with that syringe over there.” He said, gesturing to a table of surgical implements.

Scrott’s most loyal assistant Herr Klumpfuss heard Lord Scrott talking as he walked the dark halls to use the lavatory. Surprised to hear Lord Scrott, he knocked on the door. No one answered. He knocked again. Again, no answer so he barged in the room. Lord Scrott lay on the operating table, drool pouring from his mouth, his eyes wide open, staring straight forwards, a slight smile on his face.