Make them more interesting: Merigall

Of all the key players in Raven’s Purge, Merigall is the one whose entry in this series could conceivably be titled “make them less interesting”. They’re apparently involved in everything: they helped Zygofer find and open the nexus, were involved somehow in Martea and Marga’s flight, thoroughly defanged the threat of Krasylla (arguably twice), created Zytera, ended the Blood Mist, have all the goodies you need to kill Zytera, oh and know about Stanengist and the Maligarn sword as an added bonus. They’re mentioned as a potential encounter in three of the eleven adventure sites, and live in the final one. And their children might be anywhere.

And yet, what has Merigall done for us lately? The Maligarn Sword, containing the heart jewel for Viridia, Merigall’s greatest love, has been lost for three hundred years, and Merigall still hasn’t found it, let alone made a replacement body for Viridia. Turning Zygofer and Therania into Zytera may have bought Merigall time to find their life essence, but that search has also been a complete failure.

So, what happened?

Maybe Merigall was never as impressive as we’re lead to believe?

The most obvious answer is that a creature as charming, captivating, compelling as Merigall may have claimed for themselves actions that in truth they had little to do with.

Maybe Merigall wasn’t as central as we thought?

When Martea fled from Alderstone in 852 AS (GM’s Guide, p. 28), Raven’s Purge (p. 35) wants you to believe that Merigall helped her, but in truth it’s hard to understand why that would have happened. Merigall had only been in the Ravenlands for a couple of years, and it was precisely Zygofer and Merigall’s experiments with demons that made Martea fall out of love with her husband. A Merigall with a few decades of security of being Zygofer’s right-hand-demon would have had a relationship with Martea, and been interested in shaking things up for the lulz; but a Merigall new to this world would have been prioritising their political position in Zygofer’s nascent court.

Similarly: the Blood Mist is almost tailor-made to annoy Merigall, who loves beauty and sentient creatures’ intense emotions: pent-up anger reaching its breaking point, betrayals, vengeance, passionate and sudden love being fantastically reciprocated, or rejected in a way that leads to a roaring rampage of vindictive revenge. Those are great emotions: very saturation, many primary colour, wow. But if everyone is in lockdown and you can’t travel anywhere, there can’t be any mysterious beautiful strangers turning up and disrupting things. If things are by necessity the same as they have been for the last twenty years or more, people will either be boringly happy (magnolia), or afflicted by low-grade ennui (taupe).

And yet the blood mist lasted for two and a half centuries; two centuries after the Rust Brothers discovered it wasn’t necessarily a death sentence. So while Merigall may well have tried to do something about it, the odds are good that this ultimately didn’t help in any significant way, and most people who have been tracking what Merigall was up to during all this time (Zytera, Krasylla, Kalman Rodenfell, maybe other people who wrote it down) are well aware of this.

Was Merigall merely Zygofer’s research assistant?

It is said that Zygofer and Merigall, together, investigated the nexus in 850 AS (GM’s Guide p. 27), produced misgrown in 869 AS (ibid. p. 29) with the help of Therania, sealed the nexus to a trickle in 877 AS (ibid. p. 31), and then the three of them created Zytera (ibid. p. 32), although it almost went terribly wrong until Merigall found a giant spider he could stick Zygofer and Therania to.

If you look at official stats, both Zygofer and Merigall have maxed out the paths of Blood and Death (Merigall has also supposedly mastered Shapes and Signs, which seems unlikely). But arguably Zygofer had to struggle harder to master unfamiliar magical arts than Merigall, who as a demon should have a natural affinity for them; and maybe he has a deeper understanding of them as a result? When adults learn foreign languages, through conscious study, they make different mistakes from native speakers; but knowing multiple languages gives you insights into how languages as a whole work, including your native tongue, that people who learned a language “naturally” as a child might not have.

So maybe their relationship is that Zygofer is a brilliant theoretician of magic, while Merigall just knows how it works for the same reason that fish understand water. Merigall showed up early on when Zygofer was trying to understand how demons and the undead worked, was able to answer some crucial early questions, and parlayed their way into a position of eminence. Over time they’ve possibly enhanced their knowledge of demonic and undead magic by learning from Zygofer; but even if they were always that good, it was because of a natural felicity, not because of a full understanding of how the magics worked.

This explains the near-miss when constructing Zytera: this is possibly the most complicated task Merigall has ever had to carry out, and they almost failed.

(If you wonder why Zytera doesn’t trust Merigall, well, here’s an additional answer. “I almost died because of your incompetence” is one hell of a grievance.)

Why does Merigall know about Stanengist sending demons mad?

It could be that Merigall knows about that sort of thing because they’ve seen rifts open into worlds before, and knows that it never goes well for demons.

But it could also be that when Merigall was running away from the Stillmist, and trying to juggle a sharp sword, a very valuable crown and an even more valuable (to them) heart jewel, along with all of their other stuff, and they’re running out of hands, Viridia said the most important thing she’s ever said to them.

“Don’t put the crown on your head.”

Has Merigall run out of ideas?

OK, so Zytera’s learned all they can from Merigall, but that’s fine because Merigall has parlayed that into being his right-hand demon. What else can Merigall do?

Shapeshifting is pretty much a bust now

I really like the huge fairy tale vibe of how Merigall can shapeshift into anything, no matter how large or small, but the eyes always remain the same unusual yellow colour. I also like the idea that demons must always have a weakness, like it’s a point of honour for them: if there’s a chance of their plan being thwarted, no matter how unlikely, then it’s not cheating, is it? Someone sees a horse they don’t recognise in the stables, clocks the yellow eyes, says “you are Merigall and I claim my five pounds”, and the horse promptly shifts into a humanoid form, laughing and applauding them for their insight.

And that still works for PC groups, or other adventurers new to it all. (Maybe that’s why Raven’s Purge suggests that Merigall could turn up, disguised, near three separate adventure sites, just when the players are wondering whether they should explore. It must be boring as hell, waiting for someone to turn up, in a world as empty as the Ravenlands; but maybe it’s worth it for the payoff when Merigall reveals that it was them all along?)

But anybody who is anybody knows that Merigall exists and always has yellow eyes. They might not know that Merigall has children who also have yellow eyes, so they might think that Merigall is his children, but that doesn’t help Merigall much: people still know to be suspicious of people with weird eye colours. (Maybe not that weird if you’re an orc, as they can also have pale yellow eyes; but Viraga know how to count, and will pay attention to extra yellow-eyed orcs turning up out of nowhere.) Any ruler of anywhere significant will either have been warned of this personally by their predecessor (e.g. if the position is hereditary, or passation of power is peaceful and voluntary), or should be able to read up about it if their culture has decent record-keeping.

If you want a reason for why Merigall decides to turn up in the Bitter Reach, this is it: it’s a way to reset, to be the new guy again, where someone saying “watch out, that’s Merigall” doesn’t immediately scupper their plans.

Maybe being a shapeshifter isn’t conducive to long-term planning?

Another massive fairy tale and fantasy trope is that if you change yourself into a bird, dragon or some other kind of savage beast, and you’re not wise enough to change back soon, you can get stuck, and forget that you were ever anything else. Maybe Merigall has a strong-enough personality that can survive their constant transformations; but the demon prides themself on the veracity of their impersonations, and like any actor must surely get lost in the performance from time to time, and truly believe that they are the person they’re playing.

So while the core of their personality remains, is it certain that all of their memories remain intact? All of their insights, all of their plans, all of the more-or-less-conscious thoughts that in a normal person will eventually result in a plan days, weeks or months later? Or might just enough of Merigall’s thoughts be wiped away, every time they decide to become someone else, that cumulatively a shapeshifting Merigall will end up achieving in fifty years what a stable Merigall could have done in ten?

On top of Merigall’s well-known epicurian desire to live in the now, favouring hedonistic pleasure-seeking over the sort of focused plotting that Zytera and Krasylla enjoy, this may well explain why Merigall has done basically nothing since their ascent to power stopped at being Zytera’s number two.

Having children must be a distraction

The elves poured Merigall into Lake Harga (Raven’s Purge, p. 23), and he never wants that to happen again, so now he has children that he can use to travel to and survive death (ibid., p. 36).

That’s got to be a distraction. Merigall has twelve children, so let’s back-of-the-envelope it: if they spend just half an hour a week talking to each one, that’s six hours per week, or roughly a working day, so Merigall is probably 20% less productive now that they have to keep track of all their children.

And it could be worse. Merigall and their children are linked, so there could well be some kind of mental or psychic link between them, effectively enforcing some kind of law of conservation of brilliance. Maybe if Merigall’s children are to be allowed to do interesting things, that means Merigall ends up being less individually-impressive? After all, if demons are conglomerations of random stuff, then it would follow that Merigall creating a child would involve sharing some of their brilliance and personality. (Is this why the death of a child is such a casus belli? Because it’s killing part of Merigall?)

Why is Merigall failing now, at the things they care about most?

It’s hard to disrupt things when you’re one of the most important people in the land. Let’s look at the things Merigall has cared about since the end of the Fourth Alder War cemented their position of pre-eminence.

Why doesn’t Merigall have their life essence?

I’ve previously postulated that the standard explanation of where Zytera keeps Merigall’s life essence is stupid. Regardless, it’s been almost three hundred years since Zygofer retrieved Merigall and their life essence from Lake Harga, and Merigall still hasn’t found where Zytera is hiding it.

I’ve just spent a fair amount of time pointing out that Merigall is a dilettante and over-rated; and Zytera is, if anything, under-rated. For that matter, Merigall might not be as sharp without their life essence, like how Sauron is diminished by not having his ring. And of course Merigall might actually have found out where their life essence is years or decades ago, but decided not to steal it yet because that would tip their hand. Fine.

But an intriguing other possibility is that hiding Merigall’s life essence right by the sea is effective because, since Merigall was dissolved in Lake Harga for 10-15 years, they now fear large bodies of water. And that might extend to any of their children that he’s sent out to scout coastal villages.

Why hasn’t Merigall found the Maligarn Sword?

Canonically, the Maligarn Sword is with Marga and Martea in the Stoneloom Mines, but that’s stupid, because Zertorme or Merigall would have gone there and spoken to them. No way it stays lost if it’s there.

In my campaign I decided that when Merigall cast the “if I can’t have them, nobody can” spell on the Maligarn Sword and Stanengist, the Maligarn Sword ended up in the swamps of Lake Varda. That’s a good-enough reason for Merigall not to have gone sniffing around there: he just doesn’t like lakes. But you may have put Maligarn somewhere else.

A more intriguing explanation is that Viridia doesn’t want to be found by Merigall.

Yes, Viridia and Merigall were lovers when Viridia answered her sister Gemelda’s call to parlay in the Stillmist (Raven’s Purge, p. 22), but Merigall had only been around for at most 15 years, which is nothing in elven terms. They were a useful “definitely not connected with the other elves” third party, but even then it was clear that Merigall was a close associate of Zygofer.

And maybe once Viridia had been robbed of her flesh and could only talk to Merigall mentally, or however it is that talking swords talk to anyone, they were less able to deceive her; or maybe she just had had more time to figure them out?

Because you have to wonder: if the way to kill Merigall is to dissolve his body in acid, and then either mix the resulting life essence with lye or pour it into the sea, why is it that the Redrunners did almost exactly that? This is not a standard way of dealing with someone who suspect might recover from being killed! Chopping their head off, yes, and maybe dismember them a bunch more just to be sure; burning them on a pyre, sure. Dissolving them with acid and pouring the resulting goo into a lake? Really? (Where did you get the acid? Do Redrunners carry industrial quantities of acid around with them at all times?)

A tantalising possibility is that Viridia learned how Merigall knew they could be killed, and almost managed to tell the other elves before Merigall spirited her and Stanengist away.

Why Merigall knows how they can be killed is easy: it’s really important for an almost-immortal being to narrow down what this suspicious “almost-” prefix means, and there must be other demons back in Churmog that are like Merigall and have the same weakness. (Maybe Merigall killed a few themself.) How Viridia worked it out: she’s been talking to Merigall a fair bit, and she is an ancient elf of the Heart of the Sky; a decent warrior is one who can think, and use words as precisely as weapons. How she told the pursuing elves: come on, they’re all elves, and the redrunners were looking for an elven ruby, so of course they were ready and able to talk to it.

Even if this didn’t happen, and the elves got like 66% of the way there by pure luck, Viridia will since have become aware, to some degree, that there was a flood of demons, then two and a half centuries of weird demonic lockdown, and that Zytera is still around. This will not endear her to his right-hand demon Merigall.

All of this implies that if Merigall does get their wish and save their beloved Viridia, Viridia will turn around and tell them to go to hell, which is exactly the sort of emotion that Merigall loves to inflict on other people. For drama and irony, I think you owe it to yourself to make this happen.

Why hasn’t Merigall made a body for Viridia?

I’ve previously postulated that Kalman Rodenfell might be interested in making an elf body that Zytera could use. Merigall’s problem is similar, albeit the opposite: they can make plenty of demonic bodies for their children, but sticking an elf ruby in one of those bodies is harder.

Merigall might be experimenting with fragments of elf rubies (e.g. Mard, Raven’s Purge p. 210), but they have competition from Zytera, and as we’ve established Merigall is neither a scientist nor focused on anything for long.

So Merigall may also be trying to establish themself as a friend of the elves, and trying to parlay that in turn into an invitation into the Stillmist. But that’s a tough ask, because while “hey, you and I, we go back a long way, right?” is a decent conversation starter, the natural reply “we have hated demons since you, a demon, personally helped flood our lands with them” would tax the best of diplomats, even if the addendum “also, why is it that you didn’t stay dead after we dissolved your body and poured it into a lake?” wasn’t coming quickly on its footsteps.

Also, if Merigall remembers that Viridia tried to get them killed, or otherwise postulates in his more reflective moments that she might not be a huge fan of them any more these days, that’s not the sort of thing that’s going to spur them into doing the hard work of mastering an unfamiliar type of magic.

What’s up with Merigall’s children?

Still, Merigall has created children, and that makes them pretty much immortal unless you find their life essence (which Zytera already has). What does that mean for the world?

Where are Merigall’s children?

The dreadful fiction at the beginning of Raven’s Purge (pp. 8-11) postulates that Merigall has a bunch of completely ordinary children scattered around the Ravenlands. This seems like a terrible waste, unless Merigall is deliberately trying to keep them them secret.

If instead you think that Merigall has children so they can travel the Ravenlands easily, and keep track of what people are doing in the most important population centres, then you’d expect there to be at least one child of Merigall’s in Vond (so Merigall can get home), then one in Haggler’s House, Amber’s Peak, the Eye of the Rose and Stonegarden; maybe another in another dwarf city in Belderand.

As mentioned above, the local rulers will be well aware that these children are effectively Merigall’s ambassadors, so it’s unlikely they’ll be welcome anywhere where elves or elvenspring are in command, which rules out Kalman Rodenfell’s base, Farhaven and Pelagia.

Raven’s Purge says Merigall has three children in Vond rather than one (p. 194 and pp. 202-203), which doesn’t change much.

This still leaves room for some children in quirkier places. If Merigall is trying to get their life essence back, and has learned enough about Zytera’s plans that they reckon that the life essence must be guarded by some kind of cult near the sea, then there’s a child of theirs roaming the fishing villages of the Eastern coast. And there could easily be a child of Merigall in the PCs’ starting village, or nearby, if you want to introduce Merigall, or the idea of a mysterious yellow-eyed person, early.

How does Merigall having children even work?

Merigall makes his children, somehow: two of their children in Vond are still somewhat incomplete and with no set purpose yet. And we know that they all have yellow eyes: either because everything Merigall makes has to have that revealing mark, or because Merigall has embraced it and used it as his maker’s mark.

Beyond that, we know very little. They’re probably made of mog, but does that make them demons, or something else? Could someone cut a finger or a limb off one of Merigall’s children and then have an interesting bit of Merigall- or Merigall-child-flesh they could do interesting magics to? Can the children have children of their own (in which case do their children also have yellow eyes)? Presumably they can’t shape-shift, at least at first, but could they learn to develop this power, at least somewhat, as they get older and more powerful?

Do they even age? If they age, do they eventually die, or do they just become increasingly decrepit, like Tithonus? Does Merigall have to destroy his ancient children and remake them? If they remake them, does Merigall remake them as they were, or is this a time to make a completely new child? Or maybe are there some children that they consistently remake, because they are particularly dear to them?

Merigall says they love all of their children dearly, and the campaign is interested in you feeding some of them to Krasylla to make Merigall angry and turn against Krasylla (ibid., p. 203). But there’s no reason this has to be always true. If Merigall decides that they need a reason to go up against Krasylla, they could deliberately make a child intended to be fed to Krasylla, making the entire sorry affair Krasylla’s fault (“Now I can say I was provoked”). And conversely, why should it follow that all of Merigall’s children should love them unconditionally? Does this kind of family worship feel like a proper child of Merigall?

What is Merigall good for?

All of this means that Merigall isn’t amazing. It doesn’t mean there’s nothing they can do. They’re still plenty interesting, especially in those parts of the world where they’ve spent time building up their power base, just not in an Earth-shattering way.

Merigall is a powerful figure in Zytera’s court and others

As well as power and influence, Merigall has a number of advantages over their rivals at court. They can go anywhere, unlike Krasylla and to a certain degree Zytera; they’re smart and can do magic, unlike Kartorda; and they’re not the natural focus of hatred of thousands of humans who have been oppressed by Rust Brothers for hundreds of years. The elite of the Ravenlands may be well aware of Merigall, but the general populace aren’t.

Merigall’s network of children and shapeshifting abilities mean that they can bamf to most major population centres in the Ravenlands, and then turn into a peregrine falcon or fast horse or dolphin and get to most other places pretty quickly.

And while the smarter rulers will be immune to their wiles, and those of their children, not everyone in other rulers’ courts will be. Even a 20% scheme success plan is pretty good for an immortal, and it makes those moments where Merigall deceives people who knew what they were likely to be doing and how they should thwart them that much sweeter.

More generally, Merigall knows about both the psychology of mortal Kin and the magical nature of demons in a way that nobody else does.

Merigall knows things and has stuff

Merigall was there for most of the Alder Wars, and has learned about the major events of the previous ones since then. They have the ear, if not the trust, of Zytera, Krasylla and Katorda, and know most of their secrets. If in a good mood, they may even tell the PCs some of this, especially if it contradicts what Kalman Rodenfell has told them.

And they should meet the PCs: early and often. Remember, one of the most important things about Merigall is that they’re bored, and they want to shake things up. If they can’t contribute too much mayhem these days, because everybody who’s anybody knows who they are and doesn’t trust them, all the more reason to latch on to the PCs or other adventurers, because these are the people who are disrupting things these days. Merigall wants to be a recurring NPC, and you should let them. This will let them pretend that things are like in the good old days, before they were famous and powerful. Talking to the PCs is a way of ignoring annoying voices from their consciousness pointing out uncomfortable truths like “all political careers end in failure”.

Canonically they have Asina (good for chopping Zytera in half), one of the Arrows of the Fire Wyrm (also good for killing Zytera), and Ivelde (not good for much if you’ve decided that Merigall’s life essence isn’t where he could easily get it). Even if you decide that they’ve only got Asina, that’s a campaign-ending magical weapon right there. And they could easily have other things; e.g. one of Tvedra’s Twin Rings (GM’s Guide, p. 142), or anything that tickles your fancy.

If the players find Merigall’s life essence, that will set the cat among the pigeons

If you agree with the campaign that Merigall’s life essence is in a bunch of statues right next to where they live, it’s possible that the PCs will infiltrate Vond early on, at a time when they know that Zytera is away on a diplomatic mission, and find the stone guardians (Raven’s purge pp. 205-207 and 210). They can either quietly take them apart by making sure they’re all wearing silver hauberks so don’t get attacked, throw Ivelde into the room and wait for the statues to all kill each other, or just flat-out kill them (the guardians have hefty armour, but as long as the PCs have enough willpower to pour into armour-ignoring talents they should be fine).

Or if Merigall’s life essence is hidden away in a coastal village, the PCs could stumble upon it, and maybe not even know what it is that they have for quite some while.

Either way, once word starts to spread that the PCs have Merigall’s life literally in their hands, all sorts of people will be interested. Most obviously Merigall will want to be their best friend, and Zytera will want it back, but it can get more interesting. Krasylla will volunteer to be a neutral third party, for instance (the PCs should spot that she’s not quite as disinterested as she claims), and Zertorme will be tempted to pose as a friend of the PCs’ who can keep it safe on their behalf, only to immediately turn around and demand that Merigall help get rid of Brinhelda for him.

What’s even more fascinating is if Merigall’s life essence ends up being yeeted into the sea, accidentally or deliberately. This isn’t quite as Earth-shattering as Zytera dying, but it’s still going to provoke a huge power vacuum. Do the remaining demons in the Ravenlands mourn the passing of Merigall as a triumphant figure of demonkind, or a disgraceful Uncle Tom? Have the PCs made enemies of Merigall’s children, if they even survived? What are Zytera, Krasylla and Kartorda going to do now?

How many plans of mayhem and disruption might Merigall have set up in the event of their death, as part of one last vast, unexpected, monumental hurrah?