Maris

BACKGROUND

A talented healer and medical researcher, Maris went off the rails while acting as a plague doctor during the affliction of Theymarsh. She spent her family fortune treating the dying, and eventually resorted to extreme measures in search of a cure. Though her desecration of corpses and single vivisection proved effective, she was effectively exiled from her order for her crimes. She travelled, convinced the plague had been of mortal creation, searching for answers. 

MORTAL LIFE

She found them, in the lich leader of the Cult of the Demogorgon, who offered her apprenticeship and lichdom. The lich was forced to flee before Maris could give a proper answer. Later, she reconciled with her Order, demonstrating her skills creating a cure during the biological attack on the Order's base in Waterdeep. She gained the rank of Whitehawk, and her teacher took the rank of Head Councilman of the Order. Though she had gained support and influence, she still felt very much alone in her fight against the Cult and their master Asmodeus.

She gained posession of both the Ruby of Asmodeus and almost all the pieces of the key to his planar prison. The combination of these artefacts allowed her to telepathically communicate with Asmodeus. While protected from outright possession by a ring of mind shielding, an inheritance from her teacher's teacher, a traitor and trickery cleric named Dawlin, Asmodeus' words fed her paranoia and isolation. When one of her companions betrayed her, possessed by brief contact with the Ruby, Maris withdrew entirely. Trusting no one, the tenative bonds she had built with her party evaporated. 

She accompanied them for a time, drawing away from all but her closest friend - the necromancer Klaus. When he was placed at risk with his family by their group's actions, she helped him pursue his missing brother and backed him when they allied with said brother in a conflict against the family's plans to raise an evil demigod. Along the way, they encountered the Pelorian paladin August, who took an interest in Maris when he could not identidy her moral alignment. When she singlehandedly turned back a tide of undead sent by the demigod, she felt her power had far outstripped that of her companions. A mixture of this arrogance, and her wounded pride when they failed to recognise her achievements, served to finally push her away from the party.

She left, believing the only way she could defeat both Asmodeus and the Klaus demigod was alone. 

In the process thereof, she became a lich, losing her holy powers but gaining new darker magic in its stead. She successfully destroyed the Cult, razing Asmodeus' followers from the material plane. She gathered all their relics and knowledge and hid them away, becoming the only being on the material plane that could contact Asmodeus. She gained yet more power by way of many magical relics and new knowledge, and put this power to use sealing all knowledge of how to free Asmodeus away. She was, of course, disowned by the Order and her faith. She resented her god abandoning her, but could not easily abandon her faith. She continued to fight to protect the innocent and prevent suffering. 

ASCENSION

Over the next decade she accrued great power, eventually crushing the demigod who had enthralled the Klaus family and taking his power for her own. Time passed, she fought greater and more dire battles. She made deals with mortals, becoming a Pact Lord to a handful of faithful warlocks who sought the greater good and were willing to sacrifice their own morality to achieve it. She gained a title - the Patron of Last Resorts.