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Boss Monsters: Lord Antoine Baccha, Vizier de Guise

By: Rob Bartel

Young Antoine Baccha, wealthy lord of a country estate, was famed for his dashing manners and his endless revelries. On one such drunken night, he led his friends on a merry hunt through the moonlit forest only to be felled and gored by the very boar that they were hunting. Confined to his bed by the resulting wounds, he grew maudlin and morose, slowly realizing he was growing old and that his youthful frenzy could not last forever. It was Antoine's father, gravely concerned, who sent a family friend to his son's bedside.

Halaster Blackcloak was the friend's name, still young himself and not yet touched by the madness that would bring him fame. It was Halaster who first diagnosed young Antoine as a lycanthrope, infected by the hunt. When Antoine confided in the wizard his fear of growing old, Halaster offered him a potion of youth, but warned him that it carried a heavy cost, as it would poison him and the "cure" would need to be taken on a regular basis. Antoine took it and regained his strength and former cheer beneath Halaster's ministrations. In the centuries that have passed, Halaster slowly went mad and withdrew into Undermountain. Now fully populated by lycanthropes and shapeshifters of every sort, Lord Antoine's coterie followed so their merry leader might be closer to the cure. But they bristle within Undermountain's clammy depths and long to return their festivities on the surface and the moonlit revelries of a bygone age. What Lord Antoine needs is a recipe for the cure, that he might brew his own and once more have his freedom, no longer under the eye and thumb of his long-dead father's maddened friend.

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