Mortemdefieir Titans, also called Draconic Titans are powerful and intelligent undead. Created by the Walled City of Graves, Liskaldreth, at least two Mortamdefieir Titans were sealed underneath the High Passes behind the First Doors. By the standards of the modern era, they are classified as "Old Ones."
Appearance[edit | edit source]
A Mortemdefieir Titan stands at 40 feet tall[1] and bears Drakish traits. Its hands have seven fingers each. While dismembered, it is eyeless and its flesh is so rotted that that it is green and black, and the only recognizable Drake trait are the decayed neck spines on its head.[2] As its bodyparts reassemble, it gains healtier-looking traits, such as growing scales.[3]
Powers and Abilities[edit | edit source]
One Titan is a monster strong enough to crush people, able to cast Tier 6 spells without preparation, reanimate the dead, fashion a blade out of corpses, and create plagues and swarms of insects as a byproduct of its killing aura. It is highly magic resistant, such that even sustained bombardment from a Walled City can barely force it to regenerate.
Its regeneration is fueled by seith cores within its body. These cores are as big as a Hobgoblin's torso, able to be moved inside the titan's body, and due to the titan's magic resistance need Tier 6 spells to be damaged, making it preferable to break them through mundane force.[1] These cores can also use death magic to defend themselves, such as casting deathbolts, creating whips of death, and send waves of death magic of such force that they can not only dissolve incoming spells but send them back as a necromantic version. In desperation, they can also create a death field that will even kill and reanimate the Titan's own insects, but they can only do so once and the expenditure of magic leaves them weaker. Destroying the cores does not kill the Titan, it just removes its ability to regenerate.[3]
In a dismembered state, it is much weaker but still highly dangerous. The rotten flesh fallen from its bodyparts can still create insects, and it leaks and can expel poisonous and diseased ichor from itself. Its heart can drain life from anything that comes near if they don't have [Deathward]. The fingers from its arms can dislocate and even detach to attack independently, and sprout red strands of sinew from its claws which will target the brain of its victims. Most dangerous of all is the head, which can still cast freeform magic and hear the thoughts of people nearby.[2][3]
Even once it is definitively killed, its remains can create plagues and lesser monsters.[4]
Weaknesses[edit | edit source]
When two bodyparts meet to reassemble, they expose their cores to synchronize them, shielded only by the swarms of insects they created. They are even more vulnerable if the limbs are from two different titans, as the two intelligences will attempt to subsume one another, leaving their cores exposed for longer.[1]
Chronology[edit | edit source]
Before the creation of the Mother of Graves, the Mortemdefieir Titans were created by Liskaldreth as an attempt to match Dragons, made with rituals on par with level 70 [Alchimagus]. At least one of them were subserviant to the Mother of Graves while she was protected by her three guardians: Skinner, Snatcher and Stalker.[1] While there were noble Titans, the worst and cruelest of them, the war criminals of the Draconic Titans, are sent into the deeps, to make war against the Dwarves, the Trolls, and the Gnolls. The last of the Draconic Titans where said to be mad tyrants drunk on power.[5] At some point, the Titans were dismembered and sealed away underground, near the Kingdom of Deep and Song.
During the battle of the Winter Solstice, the fight between Zeladona, Cauwine, Silvania, Czautha’qshe, Rhisveri, and Visophecin unleashed a devastating slash across Izril north of Liscor. This slash damaged the door sealing the titan, allowing most of it to escape. One head, torso, arm, and leg of one titan and the arm of another made their way through the Troll kingdom, seeking to reassemble. The Trolls were unable to destroy or permanently stop the limbs, and so approached the Flooded Waters Tribe for aid. Rags was unable to destroy any limb either, but knew they had to be or the titan would destroy her tribe.[2]
Rags and Mrsha used the [Palace of Fates] to learn more about the Mortemdefieir Titan and formulate a plan to kill it while avoiding a catastrophic outcome.[4][1] Rags eventually settled on the following plan: exploit the meeting of the titan's leg and the second titan's arm to expose their cores, ambush them with a group of elite Goblins, Ogres and Trolls to destroy the cores and kill the limbs, leaving the titan weak enough to be destroyed by Teriarch without too much risk.
Rags managed to destroy the leg's core. However while she was executing her plan, the force of the Halfling on the moon's descent caused tremors that collapsed tunnels and made the titan rush to reassemble in response to the danger. This turned Rags' ambush into a deathtrap as she would not be able to escape the head and two limbs hunting her. She was saved by an alternate Rags from a simulated timeline leaving the [Palace of Fates], who used her Skill to get the Forgotten Wing Company's aid. The Great Company unleashed its wall spells through the Skill, killing the leg and forcing the other two bodyparts to flee. The Forgotten Wing then informed Pallass of the danger.[3]
Trivia[edit | edit source]
- "Mortemdefieir" translates to Death Defiler.[1]
- Curiously, it's never mentioned as having a tail despite being based on a Drake, neither as whole with its missing leg regenerated nor as a separate limb.