Moros Malik

Few know the truth behind Moros Malik's gruff demeanor, how he earned his limp, or why his hands sometimes tremble when the Arena horns sound in the distance. Some say he was once a champion battle mage who was nearly killed when the arena's runes failed and the manifestations turned lethal. Others say he was crippled fighting against the legions of Chaos when they opened the rifts and invaded the Splinterlands. Others say no, he fought for the Chaos Empire and was crippled during a skirmish with the Riftwatchers. Still more say he was once a powerful necromancer who could bend darkness itself to his will, but something he summoned—to kill an enemy, to protect a loved one, to grant him wealth, to earn him peace; the stories differ—turned against him and crippled him, not just in body but in mind. Even more say he simply slipped and fell while mopping the floors and that's what crippled him.

Stories surround his raven, Shadow, as well. It's a fragment of his lost power. It's a spirit of someone he loved. No, it's a spirit bound by grief. No, by guilt. No, it's just an ordinary slagging bird.

Whatever happened to Moros Malik, it happened a long time ago, and outside of perhaps Headmaster Bimblenok himself, no one other than Moros knows what it was that carved such deep furrows into his soul and left him not only unable to return to the life he once knew, but pretty damn irritable as well.

As caretaker of Waur Medge Academy, Moros prowls the corridors, attuned to any hint of laziness, recklessness, or disrespect for the institution and its professors. He maintains the grounds with meticulous care and, over the years, he's become as much a fixture of the academy as its stone walls. Students find him insufferable with his constant reprimands and his unsettling habit of appearing exactly when they don't want to be found, Shadow the raven perched on his shoulder like a dark omen.

Yet his sternness comes not from cruelty but from the knowledge of what carelessness costs. He sees in every cavalier young mage the ghosts of his past, and his harsh discipline is the only way he knows to protect them from repeating his mistakes.