Nicklaus

The visionary statesman known to later generations as the “Holy King Carlos” was the founder of the Kingdom of Lasir, yet his untimely death still left his people relatively unprepared for the incursions of other powerful city-states. Lasir eventually crumbled in time to might of the up-and-coming Hirschbuck Empire, which had quickly expanded into the neighboring kingdoms with overwhelming might. The former superpower of Lasir had been reduced to a mere vassal state of the empire and Nicklaus, a direct descendant of the Holy King, was forced to curry favor with the imperial court from a young age in order to guarantee his people’s safety.

Nicklaus proved a capable right-hand man to his fatherly duke: strong, confident, and keen of mind with grand ambitions of recovering Lasir’s lost glories. Nicklaus even develop something of a following among the Imperial Guardsmen during his long stint as a Captain in the Hirschbuck Regiment as appropriate to the son of a ruler of any subservient vassal state. Nicklaus’ military command, experience on the field and the statecraft offered by his trusted advisor, the High Pontiff Valeria, saw Lasir’s fortunes rise quickly in comparison to its “mother” empire and engineered its upgrade to a “duchy republic”. Unfortunately, the Duke’s newfound popularity later became a wretched thorn in the side of the young new Emperor Nero, who was keenly aware that the internecine squabbles of the Court could make his position highly vulnerable at the first sign of weakness. The Emperor hatched a plan to deprive the Duke of his wife and daughter, and then had him removed from imperial command and his regiment in humiliating fashion. Even then Nicklaus’ fate had been somehow bound up already with the dark power beyond the seal near his ancestor’s tomb – whether because of the deeds of the Holy King or some other reason. Nicklaus began to hear faint voices, whispers in the dead of night encouraging him on a path of vengeance and further and further away from the ideal concept of the ruler set down by the Holy King. The sword of the Imperial Guard hung perpetually over the Kingdom of Lasir like a knife at the people’s throat, and so desperate was Nicklaus for a solution to his troubles that he gave ear to Valeria’s most sacrilegious and terrible scheme.