Luther Mortanas was a vampire nobleman, one of the founders of the government of Entwood, and the figure behind a centuries-long program of soul harvesting conducted for Veshar. He originally pursued stability and prosperity for Entwood and helped establish the system that became the Council of Entwood, allowing the rulers of its eight enduring noble families to become vampires so that experience and political continuity would survive beyond a mortal generation. His later actions were shaped by the loss of his wife and daughter and by the bargain he made in response.
Mortanas fathered two children despite reproduction by vampires ordinarily being considered impossible. One was Phelps, who later became a member of the Brass Blades. The other was Rose, whose death drove Mortanas into the arrangement that defined the final centuries of his life.
Bargain with Veshar
Mortanas bargained directly with Veshar for Rose’s continued life. In return, he was required to deliver mortal souls to Vharath according to a quota that doubled at each required interval. The obligation grew slowly enough that Mortanas could meet it for centuries, but its exponential increase ensured that each later payment was vastly more difficult than the last. By 8753 SE, the required quota had reached 393,216 souls.
The arrangement was exceptional even by infernal standards. Mortanas had independently discovered a means of seizing human souls without first obtaining an infernal contract or the victim’s consent and could convey those souls to Vharath. The effect resembled the way demons can prey upon mortal souls, but Mortanas’s method was his own. Veshar did not grant the ability, and no surviving record explains how Mortanas accomplished it.
That distinction was central to the bargain. Veshar could not simply seize unwilling mortal souls without violating the Concord of Creation, and a devil acting under his delegated authority could not safely be used to evade that restriction. Mortanas was a creature within Creation, acting through a capability he had discovered there. Veshar’s involvement was therefore personal and exceptional rather than part of the ordinary infernal hierarchy.
Mortanas’s method was never recovered or reproduced. The experiments and procedures he later conducted on kidnapped citizens of Elgaard were part of an attempt to expand the scale of his harvesting operation, but they did not leave behind a usable explanation of the process.
Conflict with the Brass Blades
The Brass Blades first became entangled with Mortanas while investigating the disappearance of a member of the Ariessus family. Mortanas retaliated by having the Brass Bastion burned, killing most of the members involved in the investigation. The surviving Blades eventually uncovered the scope of his operations, learned that he had been sending stolen souls into Vharath, and traced the arrangement back to Veshar.
The Blades confronted Mortanas again in 8753 SE when they needed a component for Abendigo’s temporal ritual. During that confrontation, Phelps learned the truth of his relationship to Mortanas and Rose. Mortanas was defeated before he could fulfill the vastly expanded soul quota, allowing Rose to pass on to the afterlife and ending the bargain’s purpose.