You have to know, this, before anything else. I was drafted by Connor. He told me that he needed me to write villains. So I did. The first villain I wrote wasn't a villain, but I wanted people to think he was. This was Ivan. Ivan was the anti-hero who took down the first villain I ever wrote up, Fiot'n'bar the Fierce. Fiot'n'bar was a munchkined out evil sorceror. Originally he was a good man, and he had a utopian realm that recruited honorable and valorous people from all around the world. But when his wife fell ill and died, he raged against the gods and all of life. He became a lichlord and had invented various spells, all of which were seriously overpowered. I blame the Xanth novels. But he scared the bejeezus out of the teenagers I ran games with, so he was a good enough villain for me. So I figured that the only way I could defeat a hero-turned-villain is with a villain-turned-hero. Ivan and Drake had been Fiot'n'bar's apprentices. All Ivan had ever wanted was a simple life on the sea. But Fiot'n'bar saw in him talent and kidnapped him at a young age. He was forced to learn all the secrets of necromancy and darkness of his master. And his companion was a perverted dragon who chose to walk in human form yet had a soul blacker than any human who ever lived, save Fiot'n'bar himself. Ivan had been sitting in my mind unbaked until Connor's call. When I came in and rescued the previous roleplay, I figured that I needed a couple of high-powered character to tidy up the high-powered munchkin mess that was there before. So in came Ivan. Drake came shortly thereafter, since Ivan needed a foil and the characters needed a true bad guy. Fiot'n'bar got his comeuppeance (his soul was stripped of its evil by the gods and what was left of his mana effused many of the shards he had drained of life.) The heroes prevailed, and I was ready to drop Ivan. But the players weren't. They were shocked that I had just made him up on the spot... they thought that I had RPed with him for several years. So I guess Ivan had to stay. He is on a boat somewhere, on the sea, the endless sea. He travels from villa to villa fighting for good... shadowed by the memories of the dark past he had no control over. He still quests for atonement.
