Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience.
 
 It is said that power corrupts, and that absolute power corrupts
absolutely. The wizard Beckinthul had left his vast libraries and
laboratories to serve as Mage General in the last pitched battle of the
Second Great War leaving his apprentice, Mirkan the mageling, and the
scullery boy, Osgood, to tend his Tower during his absence.  Beckinthul was
not a war wizard however.  Beckinthal was a researcher, a worshipper of
invention and creation, not a spell slinger.  He was replacing the mightest
Mage General the worlds had ever known, who had fallen during the sixth
decade of the War.  The War raged another dozen years, and ended in The
Catastrophe, which cracked the earth and swallowed a continent.  In the
bleak years following the War, the known world sunk further into dark
times. Famine reigned, fell creatures stalked the lands, the warlords who
once protected farm and village were virtually wiped out.  There was no
order anymore.  Cities and villages disappeared after plagues ripped
through the lands, and the squalid remains of the once flourishing
civilizations were picked clean by carrion birds.  Groups of survivors
clung together, under the protection of isolation, bandit lieges, or rare
relics of a once glorious past, like the Tower.

   Mirkan held his master's trust for the decade he was gone.  After The
Catastrophe, he played protector to a small band of refuges who formed a
village within sight of the Tower.  This calm and order lasted another half
decade.  Osgood grew into a man of two dozen years, and continued to serve
Mirkan.  Mirkan, however, eventually grew curious of his former master's
tomes.  Beckinthal had instructed Mirkan to the Second Circle of Power
before he departed, and Mirkan had access to enough ancient texts of glyphs
and runes to advance himself to the Fourth Circle during the years he
waited.  Pride, boredom, or curiosity finally grove Mirkan to crack the
sealed vault that contained books Beckinthal had forbidden Mirkan to read
before his return.  A magical trap nearly took Mirkan's life as he entered
the vault, but he lived.  Within a few years of Mirkan's entrance into the
vault, much changed.

   The Power was too great.  It drove Mirkan insane.  In his paranoia,
Mirkan forbid the villagers ever approach the Tower, and Osgood became his
only contact with the outside world.  Mirkan's thirst for Power grew
deeper, but he needed an apprentice to delve further into the mysteries of
magic.  Eventually Mirkan commanded Osgood into his service, reaching for
the only person he trusted before his fear of people overwhelmed even that
choice.  Osgood was changing too.  Submission and service to the mages
since childhood had been tainted by the fear and respect he commanded from
the villagers he visited for a levy of food and other supplies each week.
Osgood grew to resent his mage lord, and then to hate him.  Mirkan treated
Osgood like the scullery boy he had been since he was a child, but steeped
him in the art of magic to the Third Circle of Power as his apprentice and
assistant.  Mirkan created the very means of his own destruction in the
form of Osgood, the mageling.  Osgood waited for his time, and meditated
for inspiration to act.  Eventually a plan sprouted from an evil seed in
his mind.  He set it into motion over a period of years.

   At first, Osgood made casual and passing mention of events in the
village to Mirkan.  Mirkan, when not consumed in the moment of his work,
still paid little heed to any utterance Osgood made.  But Osgood knew his
words were like the fall of night rain on the rooftop, ignored into
oblivion but always heard as a background in the black stillness. 
Eventually Osgood began weaving in hints of false events to his idle
remarks.  Hints became passing stories, and those stories wove into a
tapestry of falsehoods that gained the substance of reality in Mirkan's
mind.  Falsehoods which created an illusion of a terrible threat, just like
one of the mage's spells, but with no magic to detect and nothing to
counter the fear it created.  Osgood told Mirkan that the villagers may
eventually be gathering to strike against the Tower, to overthrow the mages
and destroy Mirkan's magical works.  Mirkan became obsessive in his deep
seated paranoia.  He knew the villagers were plotting his demise, and he
worked feverishly on defenses to counter them.  His first creation was
sloppy, but took little time to raise.  They were once used nearly a
hundred years ago to guard the fields during harvest from birds who came to
feast on the grain.  The body was made from husks and bark, twine and
ragged cloth, with branches for bones and a carved pumpkin for a head.  The
creature was to be animated through magic, and its face lit from within by
the flame of a magical black candle that was the source of its power.  A
field golem, which Mirkan quickly dubbed Jack.

   Mirkan planned to use Jack as vengance on the villagers, but Osgood
interceded.  Osgood convinced Mirkan that while Jack would punish a few, it
would surely be destroyed by the militia who would then obviously lay seige
to the Tower.  Had Osgood known anything other than Power and fear, he
would surely realized that even the two score militia raised by the village
could never seige the Tower.  Osgood had been the son of a laborer killed
during the Tower's construction, and had heard them say it would take more
than a thousand well trained men to breach these stones walls.  But Power
clouded Mirkan's mind along with the bitter brew of poison Osgood's mouth
poured into Mirkan's ears.  "Give me the Word," He requested Mirkan, "And I
will use Jack to sow doubt and fear into their ranks until the time comes
for their destruction at your hand m'Lord." Osgood needed the Word of Power
that would bind the golem to his command.  After weeks of coaxing and
soothing, Osgood gained the Word and Jack was his.  Mirkan then set out to
create a truly fearsome creature that would bring down his vengeance on the
village.  Osgood dutifully served him in the workshop, and served him teas
to bring his master peaceful slumber.  In those moments Osgood stole to the
libraries in search of the tomes that contained clues to the Words of
Power. He finally knew where to begin, using Jack's true name.

   It was a race between Osgood in his secret research and the creation of
the new weapon.  Fearing his plan would be ruined, Osgood sabatoged the
process at a critical juncture to gain more time.  Mirkan was suspicious,
but his assistant was vital to the process, and he promised himself that
the upstart scullery boy would be the first victim of the new creation. 
And then, finally, one day the time came.  The golem was done.  It stood
ten feet tall, and at broadest nearly six.  A roughly hewn monster of rock,
a magical creature that could not be burned or drowned, pierced or pulled
apart.  This beast had the strength of a battering ram, the lumbering gait
of one too, but that was surely a fair price to pay for its incredible
destructive energy.  Mirkan was proud of his creation.  He called his stone
child "Wrath" and went to breathed life into it with the Word.  Which
Osgood uttered before Mirkan could.  Mirkan was stunned, shocked beyond
comprehension.  His confusion was short lived however, as Osgood's first
command for Wrath was to crush the Mage Lord's skull like a bull's hoof
would a grape.  Mirkan's crumpled form spelled Osgood's triumph, and the
beginning of a reign of absolute terror.

   Osgood maintained the illusion of order by continuing his visits to the
village for supplies.  The village prospered under the Tower's protection,
yet the last threat had been years ago and swiftly dealt with by the
militia alone.  The Tower was a symbol of power, and that power afforded
the common man the sense of ease and saftey.  Osgood began his own quest
for Power.  Having witnessed his former master's insanity from drinking too
deeply from the well of knowledge, Osgood tempered his own studies.  He
rose from the Third to the Seventh Circle of Power, but was careful to
avoid the mysteries that were clearly beyond his own ability.  What was
within his reach he practiced with a discipline born from the drugdery that
had characterized most of his life as a kitchen servant.  That discipline
refined his control of magic, and his mastery of the lower Circles created
further opportunity to develop his power.

   Within a decade, Osgood reached the summit of the mountain of knowledge.
By his He acheived the capabilities of a Tenth Circle wizard, shortening
the process that mages before the War spent in decades of apprenticeship in
needless waiting and dues paying before their aristocratic mentors
condescended into allowing even the smallest progress.  At two score of
years in age, Osgood had power to burn, and his tastes in magic were
growing as corrupt as his murderous soul.

   Osgood created a golem of bones, of Mirkan's bones to be precise.  The
golem amused him.  He even called the construct by the proper name,
ensuring Mirkan's soul spent eternity wandering in a damned state without
rest.  The golem had an old wolf's skull for a head, since Mirkan's had
been turned to pulp by Wrath.  Jack's magic preserved its body from
disintegration by age, even if it was fragile to fire and force of arms. 
Jack, Mirkan, and Wrath were three creations among the many Osgood planned
to create.  However, many of the supplies needed to manufacture such beings
were in thin supply in the Tower's workshops.  Osgood needed to replenish
some rare and valuable materials, and to do that he would either have to
leave his lair or send for the items.  Dreading a usurper or thieves,
Osgood knew he could not venture far from the source of his learning for
very long.