Archmage Arugal

Full History

Arugal’s story began with a problem common to the shattered human north: the Scourge seemed beyond the power of surviving soldiers to resist. A mage with access to forces poorly understood by ordinary people sought a weapon powerful enough to defeat that enemy. The worgen appeared to offer an answer. Their strength and ferocity could kill undead, but the price of calling them into the world was not fully reckoned with by the man who used them.

The summoned creatures did not remain a dependable army. They spread through Silverpine and overtook the stronghold once associated with Baron Silverlaine. Arugal retreated into the fallen castle, now known as Shadowfang Keep, where the worgen and ghosts of the previous household became part of its terror. Nearby Pyrewood suffered in another way: its inhabitants took on monstrous forms after dark and returned to human appearance by daylight. Their predicament was not a separate plague of undeath but a curse born from uncontrolled arcane intervention.

Arugal embodies the tragedy of a defender becoming a danger. The magic he turned against the Scourge made the region less secure and left ordinary villagers trapped between fear of invasion and fear of their own transformation. The cursed keep and its suffering neighbor remained as warnings of the damage that uncontrolled magic could bring upon an already devastated kingdom.