Victor Mordenhein is a mad doctor from Ravenloft, the horror setting of Dungeons & Dragons. He is the creator of Adam, the intelligent flesh golem who became darklord of Lamordia.
Description[]
Doctor Mordenheim, a scientist and surgeon, appears to be thirty-four years of age. He is six feet tall and has a wiry, if not athletic, stature. His sharp, pronounced features belie an aristocratic background. Though his face is still relatively young, an intense obsession with his work has grayed his hair, so only a few streaks of the original brown remain. A meager diet and reclusive lifestyle have left his skin pale. His blue eyes are tired and muddied, rarely blinking, and he has a constant preoccupied look about him.
Tension plagues Dr. Mordenheim. His tight facial muscles sometimes twitch, and his lips never relax in a smile. The tendons on the back of his hands are taut and raised, and the thin dry skin covering his knuckles is as white as the bones below. He is a man on the edge, but even when extremely agitated, he never loses his temper.
Mordenheim in his laboratory garb
Mordenheim wears only simple, practical brown woolen suits, never any of the frills or embellishments others of his social status might acquire. In his lab, he dons a surgical gown to protect his garments from blood and other fluids. He wears no jewelry other than a ring with his family crest and a gold watch that was given to him by his wife.
History[]
Mordenheim is a gifted scientist and surgeon who became obsessed with the pursuit of knowledge at an early age. While other boys played make-believe, Victor studied the sciences, both modern and arcane. He disdained magic, however, deeming it "a diversion from Truth".
At age twenty-one, Mordenheim married Elise von Brandthofen, much to the surprise of his family and his handful of friends. Were it not for Elise's own persistence, he would never even have met, much less married, her. She was an unusual and intelligent young woman who shared his interest (though not his passion) for chemistry. Unfortunately, she was barren and could not give him children.
Only a few months after marrying Elise, Victor began his research into the resurrection - or more appropriately, the creation - of human life. Thirteen years later, he accomplished his goal and created a monster. Still, although Mordenheim discovered virtually every piece of the puzzle he pursued, the actual spark, the true wonder, was not of his own accomplishment. He was dabbling in the work of gods, and the gods, in turn, dabbled in his.
Mordenheim neither worshiped nor believed in any power higher than man. He was a learned atheist who accepted only that which could be proven. If he revered anything, it was knowledge. At other times, the gods might have tolerated such blasphemy, but Mordenheim had become a festering sore to their sensibilities. So fierce became his desire to create life, so strong his denial of their existence, that the gods decided to grant his wish. They imbued his foul corpse with a twisted, troubled soul, rife with evil intent.
On the night the monster first drew breath, Ravenloft's misty fingers began to tingle with anticipation. In the months that followed, they settled into the soil about Mordenheim's castle, until at last they rose from the earth and surrounded it in a kind of deathwatch. When all hope of Mordenheim's redemption was past, the Mists withdrew from that primal realm, taking with them the castle and all the players in Mordenheim's deadly plot.
Victor delighted in his creation, regarding "Adam" as the child he and his barren wife could never have, but Adam showed an unnatural affection for Elise that terrified and repulsed her. Even when, two years after Adam's creation, Victor introduced a playmate to his creation (a seven-year-old, half-starved orphan whom he had found in an alley near Ludendorf's docks), the situation did not improve. Adam seemed jealous of the attention young Eva (as Mordenheim had named her) received. Such was his antagonism toward the girl that Elise threatened to leave her husband and take Eva away if his attempts to encourage Adam's "social adjustment", using Eva as an experimental tool, were not stopped.
An ordinary man might have heeded the pleas of his wife, but Victor was drunk with the power of his newfound knowledge. His attempts to socialize and educate Adam continued.
One night, Victor's world came crashing down upon him. Awakened by screams, he rushed to Eva's bedroom, only to find the girl missing and his wife in a crumpled heap beside the bed. Looming over her was the monstrous Adam, holding a bloody scrap of Eva's nightgown. Then, with a furious roar, Adam disappeared into the misty night.
Victor worked feverishly, trying to restore Elise to health. Despite all his efforts, he was barely able to keep her alive. She remained little more than a ragged corpse, in need of ever more complicated machinery to sustain her.
Current era[]
Since the incident, by the local inhabitants, Dr. Mordenheim is seen as a fiendish madman who conducts unholy experiments in a castle by the sea. They fear him and credit him with powers he does not actually possess. They also credit him with crimes he does not commit. It is true, however, that he robs the graveyards and haunts the hospices in search of newly-dead, feminine bodies. He has, perhaps, even arranged a gentle death or two, using poisons that cause no pain and leave nary a trace. Still, he does not kidnap specimens that are yet warm. That, unknown to most of the populace and even Mordenheim himself, is the work of his brainchild, the monster he named Adam.
Victor's days (and many of his nights) are still devoted to his science, but he no longer seeks to revive the dead. He seeks to restore the living. Elise - or what is left of her - still breathes in his laboratory. Compelled by remorse, and what must truly be madness, he intends to provide her with a new body that all but surpasses perfection. She has regained consciousness only twice since her fateful encounter with Adam. In those brief, moments she cried out for her adopted daughter Eva (whom the monster kidnapped after he attacked Elise) and begged Victor to release her from torment. Her heart continues to beat, but not of its own accord. She lives solely through the intervention of Mordenheim's contraptions. Thanks to the dark powers, he has been striving to revive Elise for centuries now, something which the Lamordians seem strangely unaware of. It is as though they don't notice that Mordenheim remains in his thirties while generations come and go.
Since his creation of Adam, Victor has never again truly revived the lifeless or completely reconstructed the hopelessly maimed. While he has been able to construct several lesser beings - twisted and dimwitted flesh golems - he has not been able to match the success he had with Adam, nor has he been able to create the vision of loveliness he wants to build for Elise. Without the intervention of the gods that spurn him, he never will. Perhaps some part of him knows this, but in his selfish quest for the perfect body and his eternal wait for the perfect moment, he is able to deny the truth: His work is a failure, Elise is gone from him forever, and he is as much her murderer as the wretch who struck her down.
Powers & abilities[]
Doctor Mordenheim is not likely to start a fight. He is a surgeon and has no weapon skills. However, his link to the monster has given him a strange defensive ability. He cannot die unless the monster dies. In fact, he has the hit points of the monster, and his body will similarly regenerate from the slightest piece of flesh. Meanwhile, the pain from his wounds is simultaneously felt by the monster. If Mordenheim's body disintegrates completely, his spirit will seek out the fresh corpse of another human male. Within a week, the new body will change to look just like Dr. Mordenheim.
Trivia[]
- Mordenheim is based on the character Victor Frankenstein.
- It is unknown what his connection with Viktra, the new darklord of Lamordia, is.