Race: Half-Elf
Sex: Male
Faction: Cult of the Absolute
Rating: 7.4
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Arena Status: Active (S3)
Ketheric Thorm stands as one of the most tragic, fearsome, and thematically rich antagonists in the late-Fifth Edition era of the Forgotten Realms. His story stretches across centuries, across multiple gods, and across multiple identities. In the mortal world he was a warlord, prophet, and fallen father. In the divine realm he was a weapon, a pawn, and eventually an avatar of one of the most terrifying powers in Faerûn: Myrkul, Lord of Bones. His rise and fall shape the central conflict of Baldur’s Gate 3, where he emerges as the most complex member of the Absolute’s triumvirate. His power, influence, and despair weave together a narrative that merges personal tragedy with apocalyptic ambition. The layers of Ketheric Thorm’s story demand careful unpacking, not only to understand his role in the Absolute Crisis, but to probe how grief, devotion, corruption, and divine manipulation can reshape a man into something unrecognizable.
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| General Ketheric Thorm |
Who Is Ketheric Thorm? A Complete Lore Overview
Ketheric Thorm begins his long life as a devout worshipper of Selûne, a man deeply rooted in family tradition and the moon-touched rituals of his ancestors. His early life is not one of conquest or ambition, but one shaped by profound love. The Thorm line had served the Moonmaiden faithfully for generations, and Ketheric embraced that legacy. He married, raised a daughter he adored beyond measure, and maintained the ancestral holding of Moonrise Towers. Every description of his early years paints him as a loyal husband, proud father, and pious servant. Nothing about him foretold the devastation he would one day bring to the Western Heartlands.
The transformation begins with loss. “He had… everything,” Ketheric later recalls, speaking not as a general or chosen, but as a grieving man. The deaths of both his wife Melodia and his daughter Isobel fracture him completely. He cannot accept their absence. He cannot bear the weight of memory. In that grief he turns away from Selûne’s light and into the embrace of Shar, the Lady of Loss, whose dominion includes precisely the oblivion he seeks. Shar strips him of suffering, but also of the love that anchored him. He becomes her chosen and her warlord, and for the first time in his life Ketheric Thorm marches to war.
What Happened at Reithwin and Moonrise Towers? The First Fall of Ketheric Thorm
The Shadow-Cursed Lands, so central to Baldur’s Gate 3, are not the product of Myrkul’s necromancy, but of Ketheric’s earlier life as a champion of Shar. In 1373 DR, he musters an army of Dark Justiciars, raising them from beneath the Thorm family mausoleum. His conquest is swift and merciless, spreading Shar’s dominion across the Western Heartlands. Yet even in these victories, something hollow resides within him. Shar has numbed his grief, but she has not healed it.
His campaign ends when the Harpers, led by Khelben Arunsun and supported by the Emerald Grove druids, launch a counteroffensive. Among their ranks are Jaheira and Halsin, names that will echo forward more than a century later. The conflict culminates outside Moonrise Towers in a devastating battle. Casualties mount on both sides. The Harpers attempt diplomacy, offering surrender terms to prevent further loss. Ketheric refuses. The fighting continues, but eventually the Harpers and druids defeat him.
As he dies, Ketheric utters a final curse in Shar’s name. What follows is one of the most catastrophic magical events in the region’s history: the shroud of the shadow curse, a creeping, eternal twilight that claims Reithwin, the forest, the surrounding villages, and eventually the lives and sanity of many Thorm family members. His defeat does not end his influence. In death, his sorrow becomes a wasteland.
How Did Ketheric Thorm Return? The Bargain with Myrkul
Major spoilers from Baldur’s Gate 3
Ketheric’s resurrection is the darkest moment in his long story, because it exposes the last remnants of the man he once was. Myrkul, the Lord of Bones, appears to him with a single offer: the restoration of his beloved daughter Isobel. After a century of torment trapped in the curse he helped create, Ketheric accepts. He does not hesitate. He does not resist. He gives Myrkul everything—his body, his soul, his agency—if it means holding Isobel again.
What he receives is a perversion of that wish.
Myrkul resurrects Isobel not as a mindless undead, but as a living aasimar whose soul is bound to Ketheric through a soul-cage ritual devised by the necromancer Balthazar. More horrifying still, the celestial whose essence is drained to grant Ketheric immortality is Dame Aylin, Isobel’s lover in life. Ketheric imprisons not only a holy daughter of Selûne, but the woman his own daughter loved most. Isobel’s revulsion is immediate and permanent. In trying to reunite his family, he destroys it beyond repair.
But the bargain grants him powers beyond mortal comprehension. Ketheric becomes invulnerable. He shrugs off blade and arrow and spell. He cannot die so long as Aylin remains trapped. He becomes the commander Myrkul intended, and the world bears the cost.
What Role Does Ketheric Play in the Cult of the Absolute?
The Absolute Crisis emerges from a pact made by the three Chosen of the Dead Three: Orin the Red of Bhaal, Enver Gortash of Bane, and Ketheric Thorm of Myrkul. Their plan appears unified, but their motivations diverge dramatically. Ketheric is the most genuine believer. Myrkul’s will is holy to him. His loyalty is absolute. His grief is weaponized at every turn.
From his restored seat of power in Moonrise Towers, Ketheric raises an undead army bolstered by goblinoids, cultists, and shadow-twisted monstrosities. His campaign is designed to crush the Sword Coast in a tide of undeath. Gortash sees him as a useful pawn. Orin sees him as competition. Only Myrkul sees him as he truly is: a man too broken to resist divine intention.
How Does Ketheric Thorm Fall? The Apostle of Myrkul
Ketheric’s defeat at the hands of the player’s party in BG3 occurs in two stages.
First, he is defeated within the mind flayer colony beneath Moonrise Towers. Mortally wounded, he pleads to Myrkul for salvation. Myrkul answers. Ketheric casts himself into a brine pool and emerges transformed into the Apostle of Myrkul, a towering, skeletal avatar channeling the raw, necrotic force of a death god.
“That is the power my Lord Myrkul has granted me,” he declares. “Command over the immeasurable legions of the dead.”
This second battle represents the final severing of Ketheric’s identity. The general, the father, the man—all fade. What remains is a vessel.
Yet he is defeated once more, and this time permanently.
When he dies, he expresses sorrow not for his actions, but for Isobel. It is the single remaining thread of humanity in a being otherwise consumed by divine corruption.
Why Is Ketheric Thorm Considered One of the Most Tragic Villains in the Forgotten Realms?
Ketheric is not driven by lust for power or conquest. He is not driven by cruelty for its own sake. He is driven by grief. Everything he becomes—Shar’s chosen, Myrkul’s chosen, the architect of the shadow curse, the absolute general—is rooted in his refusal to accept the deaths of those he loved. His tragedy lies in the fact that he keeps choosing gods who weaponize that vulnerability rather than heal it.
In this, he mirrors some of the greatest tragic villains in high fantasy: those who begin with love and lose themselves seeking to reclaim what cannot be restored.
Ketheric Thorm is terrifying because he is hollow. He is tragic because he is human.
Ketheric Thorm's Raw Power
Ketheric Thorm’s raw power reaches a level that places him in the upper reaches of high-tier fantasy threats, although not in the realm of true cosmic or apocalyptic entities. His strength, magical potency, and battlefield lethality as both a Chosen of Shar and later a Chosen of Myrkul create a portfolio of abilities that overwhelms most mortal and semi-mortal opponents. The height of his power, achieved during his Myrkulite rebirth, transforms him into something functionally immortal, immeasurably physically resilient, and saturated with necromantic divinity. His combat capabilities are not limited to any one domain. They span martial force, spellcasting breadth, and divine empowerment. Despite this, Ketheric’s ceiling remains short of the absolute extremes seen among the most mythic beings, which keeps his score grounded at 8.0.
Strength
Ketheric’s physical strength fluctuates across his life, but in his Myrkulite form it becomes one of the most striking elements of his power. While not a brute in his early years, the transformation into Myrkul’s chosen grants him capabilities well beyond any conventional half-elf physiology. He survives direct impalement, crushing force, and catastrophic bodily harm long enough not only to function but to retaliate immediately. His musculature, whether magically enhanced or reconstructed, enables him to wield heavy plate armor and a massive warhammer with casual ease. The fact that he can continue fighting with injuries that should instantly kill a mortal grants his strength a supernatural dimension, moving it far into the realm where physicality is fused with divine preservation. It is not that his musculature alone is responsible, but that his body is treated as a divine instrument.
Magical Ability
Ketheric’s magical ability represents the central pillar of his raw power. His spellcasting spans three distinct domains: his early Selûnite gifts, the shadow-twisted powers granted by Shar, and finally the necromantic divinity bestowed by Myrkul. This layering creates a uniquely hybridized magical portfolio. As Myrkul’s Chosen, Ketheric’s necromantic casting becomes overwhelming. He commands death as an elemental force. He raises legions of undead in moments, envelops entire regions in shadow, and manipulates the boundary between life and death with casual authority. His invulnerability is itself the result of a planar-scale magical ritual involving the siphoning of divine power from a bound celestial. Ketheric’s magic allows him to ignore mortal limitations entirely, granting him regeneration at impossible speeds and resistance to nearly all forms of magical harm. Although he is not a deity, the magnitude of the magic flowing through him allows him to behave as one in combat.
Combat Prowess
Ketheric combines battlefield discipline with divine enhancements in a way that makes him supremely dangerous. Before becoming a chosen, he was already an experienced soldier and commander, accustomed to physical combat and tactical engagements. After his transformations, those martial foundations fuse with his supernatural endurance and magical violence. He closes distances with unstoppable momentum, outlasts seasoned warriors, and interweaves spellcasting with melee strikes. His fighting style shifts depending on which divine power dominates him. Under Shar, he employs shadow magic, illusions, and deceptive positioning. Under Myrkul, he fights like an inexorable juggernaut, advancing through fire, steel, and spellwork with no regard for his own safety because he has no reason to fear harm. His final form, the Apostle of Myrkul, amplifies his prowess to monstrous levels. He becomes a towering skeletal avatar whose attacks channel divine necrotic force capable of annihilating hardened adventurers instantly. In this state, his combat identity becomes inseparable from the death god he represents, making him less a warrior than a living embodiment of battlefield entropy.
Ketheric Thorm's Tactical Ability
Ketheric Thorm’s tactical ability reflects a lifetime spent navigating political, military, and divine conflict. His decisions are shaped by personal tragedy, religious transformation, and his eventual service to a death god. The result is a tactician who is formidable but imperfect, capable of orchestrating large-scale campaigns, improvising under pressure, and leveraging unique supernatural resources. His score of 7.0 reflects that he operates above most powerful commanders in fantasy fiction, yet does not consistently achieve the multidimensional or reality-bending foresight associated with the highest tactical strata.
Strategic Mind
Ketheric demonstrates a well-developed strategic mind rooted in decades of martial and religious leadership. Even before becoming a Chosen of Shar or Myrkul, he was recognized as a capable commander who could unify disparate followers under a coherent vision. His campaigns during the Shadow Curse conflict show a layered understanding of battlefield position, supply control, and morale manipulation. The manner in which he fortified Moonrise Towers and transformed Reithwin into a labyrinth of cursed terrain reveals a consistent ability to shape geography to his advantage. His later involvement with the Cult of the Absolute shows another facet of strategic depth. He positions himself as a military pillar of a broader tripartite plan, aligning his undead legions with political manipulation and assassination orchestrated by allies. Even so, Ketheric’s long-term planning is constrained by his emotional fixation on resurrecting and protecting his daughter. His obsession narrows his strategic scope at times, causing him to emphasize objectives tied to personal meaning instead of optimal military outcomes.
Resourcefulness
Ketheric’s resourcefulness becomes most apparent during periods when he operates with limited conventional support. After his initial defeat and death in Shar’s service, he rebuilds his strength not through armies or political influence but through his ability to navigate divine opportunity. His pact with Myrkul arises from a combination of desperation and adaptive thinking. He recognizes that resurrection magic alone will not restore his daughter in the form he desires, leading him to negotiate directly with a god in order to obtain a structurally different source of power. When the soulcage ritual is performed, Ketheric turns a single bound celestial into an anchor for his immortality and battlefield invulnerability. This is an extreme form of improvisational problem-solving, transforming an isolated divine being into a strategic resource with battlefield applications. Even at a mundane level, Ketheric’s ability to marshal undead labor, reorganize his forces after setbacks, and pivot to new operational goals demonstrates practical adaptability. His weakness lies in the rigidity that emerges once he commits to a vision. The deeper he falls into the orbit of Myrkul, the less flexible and improvisational he becomes, narrowing his resourcefulness to necromantic tools exclusively.
Resource Arsenal
Ketheric’s resource arsenal is extensive and unusually diversified for a single commander. In his mortal life, he already possessed political authority as the head of a respected family. As a servant of Shar, he accessed arcane knowledge, shadow-empowered troops, and underground networks dedicated to the Lady of Loss. Under Myrkul, his arsenal expands dramatically. He gains command over undead legions who never tire, never question orders, and can be replenished endlessly. His immortality gives him the ability to wage prolonged wars with no risk of permanent loss. The soulcage binding Aylin functions as both a power source and a hostage, allowing him to manipulate events across both the Material Plane and the Shadowfell. Ketheric’s alliances further augment this. His collaboration with Balthazar gives him a necromancer capable of executing rituals beyond even his expertise. His partnership with other Chosen during the Absolute Crisis grants him a coordinated multi-front campaign. Despite these advantages, his arsenal is specialized. It excels in attrition warfare and psychological domination, but lacks the broad spectrum multi-plane capabilities that would elevate him to the highest tactical tiers.
Ketheric Thorm's Influence
Ketheric Thorm’s influence is rooted in the complex interplay between his personal charisma, his reputation as both a war hero and a terror, and the supernatural authority granted by his divine patrons. His score of 7.0 reflects meaningful strengths across all subcategories. While not occupying the absolute pinnacle of influence seen among the most transcendent figures in fantasy, he stands well above the majority due to his ability to shape the beliefs, loyalties, and fears of entire communities across multiple eras of Forgotten Realms history.
Persuasion
Throughout his early life, Ketheric demonstrates an ability to persuade through conviction rather than manipulation. As a respected member of a long-standing Selûnite family, he was once regarded as a stabilizing figure whose leadership inspired loyalty. His later conversion to Shar does not diminish this skill but instead shifts its tone. His grief-driven rhetoric becomes more zealous, yet his followers still rally behind him because he articulates a worldview that resonates with those who experience loss or despair. Even before acquiring supernatural backing, he persuades a significant number of citizens around Reithwin and Moonrise to embrace his cause.
Ketheric’s persuasion relies heavily on emotional weight. The authenticity of his suffering lends credibility to his appeals, making his promises of protection or salvation feel deeply personal. In his later years, persuasion becomes intertwined with necromantic power, but there remains a distinct sense that individuals choose to follow him even before they are compelled to obey. This distinguishes him from figures who rely exclusively on domination or magical coercion. However, his persuasive power narrows dramatically as his obsession with controlling Isobel and resurrecting Melodia hardens into fanaticism. He becomes increasingly incapable of understanding dissent as anything other than betrayal, which ultimately reduces his effectiveness in appealing to those outside his established sphere of influence.
Reverence
Ketheric’s reverence score is his strongest area of influence. Before ever attaining immortality, he commands a level of respect born from generations of local prominence. The Thorm name carries weight, and Ketheric inherits and expands that authority through acts of service and military leadership. When tragedy strikes his family, his transformation from grieving father to chosen warrior of dark gods only amplifies his mythic stature. He becomes an object of fear, awe, and morbid veneration. His followers view him not simply as a commander but as a figure destined to reshape the fate of Reithwin, Moonrise, and eventually the whole Sword Coast.
The reverence he inspires becomes even more profound once Myrkul elevates him. His apparent invulnerability creates legends in real time. Tales circulate about arrows piercing his skull without killing him, about axes buried in his chest that leave no lasting wound. To the soldiers and cultists of the Absolute, he becomes a living emblem of inevitability, a champion whose victory feels preordained. Even his enemies speak of him with a reluctant respect, recognizing the magnitude of the divine power shielding him. This reverence does not extend universally across Faerûn, but within his sphere of influence, it is overwhelming and sustained across multiple generations.
Willpower
Ketheric’s willpower is defined by two opposing forces, both equally intense: his devotion to his family, and his willingness to submit to divine power in pursuit of that devotion. His emotional resolve is nearly unbreakable. The death of his daughter devastates him, yet instead of collapsing, he fragments and reforms around a singular purpose. He embraces darker gods because his resolve to undo loss outweighs fear, morality, or self-preservation. This is a form of willpower that manifests as self-destruction and remaking. He withstands not only mortal hardship but the direct psychic and spiritual consequences of serving Shar and Myrkul. His identity erodes under these pressures, but his agency does not. He chooses each transformation, even when those choices cost him his humanity.
In battle, his will is ironclad. He continues to fight long after any mortal commander would falter, driven by an internal force that grows more intense each year he spends as an immortal champion. His mental rigidity, however, comes with a drawback. His will becomes so singular that he loses the ability to accept alternative paths, making him susceptible to manipulation by those who promise the resurrection he desires. Even so, in the strict sense defined by this category, his ability to resist external influence is formidable, and he rarely yields except when doing so serves his obsessive objective.
Ketheric Thorm's Resilience
Ketheric Thorm’s resilience is one of his defining attributes, shaped equally by divine intervention, unnatural endurance, and a psychological tenacity that borders on pathological obsession. His score of 8.0 reflects a level of durability and survivability that places him among the upper echelon of fantasy characters, though he falls short of the absolute apex occupied by beings who cannot be killed, undone, or meaningfully diminished under any circumstances. His resilience is multifaceted, expressed through layers of physical endurance, formidable magical protection, and an unnaturally extended life built upon both tragedy and sacrilege.
Physical Resistance
Ketheric’s physical resistance is elevated far beyond the capabilities of mortals due to the ritual binding that links him to the imprisoned celestial Aylin. This connection renders him functionally invulnerable during his period of service as a Chosen of Myrkul. Descriptions of his combat feats consistently highlight the grotesque ease with which he absorbs injuries that would be instantly fatal to nearly any other being. An arrow through the eye, a deep cleaving wound to the torso, or catastrophic blunt-force trauma all fail to produce permanent harm. The moment of impact may inconvenience him, yet the wound rapidly seals or becomes irrelevant due to the necromantic power coursing through him.
This invulnerability is not merely a matter of enhanced endurance. It is a form of sustained negation, a barrier between his flesh and the natural consequences of violence. Ketheric’s relationship to physical damage becomes symbolic of his broader relationship to death. He moves across the battlefield with the certainty of a figure who knows pain cannot topple him, a man whose body has become a conduit for divine protection. Even before his transformation into the Apostle of Myrkul, he displays a staggering degree of stamina, continuing to fight long after exhaustion or injury would have crippled a mortal general.
His resistance is not limitless, but it is exceptional. He can be forced into retreat, overwhelmed through overwhelming pressure, or bound through specific magical rites. Yet his resilience in physical combat remains one of the strongest elements of his profile and justifies a high score in this subcategory.
Magical Resistance
Ketheric’s magical resistance reflects the same divine entanglement that grants him his physical invulnerability. Spells that would cripple, erode, or unravel the life force of typical humanoids frequently fail to affect him, dissipating against the necromantic aura imbued by Myrkul. His presence radiates a palpable dampening of arcane and divine intervention, making him notably difficult to restrain or incapacitate through external magical means.
During his time as the leader of the cult, he withstands enchantments, radiant assaults, curses, and psychic pressures with an almost unnerving calm. The soulcage binding not only keeps him alive but also bolsters his magical defenses, feeding him energy siphoned from a celestial source. The result is a being who stands at the intersection of life and undeath, resistant to purification and immune to many of the magical effects that typically exploit mortal vulnerabilities.
As the Apostle of Myrkul, his magical resistance increases even further. The transformation grants him layers of divine armor that counter both mundane and mystical attacks. Though he is not immune to every form of magical influence, the amount of force needed to affect him is far beyond what most spellcasters can muster. His defenses can be breached, but rarely without extraordinary effort.
Longevity
Ketheric’s longevity is less a natural extension of his half-elven heritage and more a consequence of the bargains he makes with powers that thrive on entropy and despair. After his death at the end of his first life, he returns not as a traditional undead but as something purpose-built for endurance. Myrkul’s gift assures his continued existence so long as the soulcage remains intact, and his resurrection marks the beginning of a second life that is effectively timeless.
This form of longevity is deeply tied to purpose. Ketheric cannot die because his mission cannot be abandoned. His devotion to restoring Isobel becomes a sustaining force, and Myrkul shapes that devotion into an engine of immortality. Even destruction on the battlefield does not end him; instead, he transforms into the Apostle of Myrkul, an avataric form imbued with divine authority. This transformation reflects an existential resilience that few beings achieve. He does not simply return from death—he returns elevated.
Yet his longevity contains a flaw. Because it depends on divine power and the imprisonment of Aylin, it is conditional. When that power source is severed, his resilience collapses. He is monumental, but not eternal. This limitation is the primary reason his score, while high, does not reach the upper extremes reserved for beings who endure across cosmic cycles without dependency.
Ketheric Thorm's Versatility
Ketheric Thorm occupies an unusual place on the versatility spectrum. His power set is formidable, yet narrowly defined by his devotion to Myrkul and the necromantic rituals that sustain him. While he is capable of adapting to different forms, circumstances, and battlefields, much of his effectiveness is tied to specific conditions, artifacts, or allies. His rating of 7.0 reflects a character who is undeniably dangerous across varied contexts but lacks the broad utility or multivalent flexibility possessed by the most versatile beings in fantasy. Ketheric can change roles from general, to immortal juggernaut, to avataric manifestation, yet these transformations remain iterations of the same theme rather than true expansions of capability.
Adaptability
Ketheric’s adaptability is shaped by his long life, religious transformations, and complex evolution as a warrior, leader, and divine instrument. He has served multiple gods across his existence, shifting from Selûne to Shar and finally to Myrkul. These pivots illustrate a willingness to alter his worldview when circumstances demand it, though each shift is driven by grief rather than open-mindedness. His adaptability is reactive, emerging from desperation instead of strategic willingness to diversify his abilities or methods.
In battle, he demonstrates surprising flexibility. He commands undead legions, shifts between frontline combat and strategic oversight, and seamlessly incorporates both martial and magical tools. When confronted with defeat at Moonrise Towers, he does not break; instead, he adapts by becoming something new. His transition into the Apostle of Myrkul is the clearest demonstration of his ability to evolve in response to existential threat.
However, Ketheric’s adaptability remains constrained by emotional fixation. His motivations always return to his family, and his decisions are funnelled through that singular obsession. This thematic narrowness limits the ceiling of his adaptability compared to characters capable of shifting goals, techniques, or fundamental nature with greater fluidity.
Luck
Ketheric’s luck is complicated because it manifests through divine intervention rather than statistical fortune. He is not favored by random chance so much as by cosmic bargains. His survival beyond death is not luck; it is the engineered outcome of a pact with Myrkul. His acquisition of a netherstone is not luck; it is deliberate alignment with powerful conspirators.
Where fortune does play a role is in the coincidental confluence of events that revive, empower, and situate him for catastrophic impact. Myrkul’s arrival at the moment of Ketheric’s existential collapse is a moment of unnatural timing. The rise of the Absolute cult provides a structural opportunity perfectly suited to his abilities. Even the success of the soulcage ritual depends on a fragile sequence of events that could easily have gone awry.
Yet despite these moments of anomalous fortune, Ketheric is repeatedly undone by misfortune. His family’s deaths, the collapse of Reithwin, the betrayal of the Dark Justiciars, and the resurgence of the Harpers each serve as stark counterweights. Luck is not his ally; it is the catalyst for his tragic transformations. His luck rating therefore remains moderate, reflecting neither extraordinary fortune nor consistent calamity, but a turbulent balance that shapes his narrative.
Shaved Knuckle in the Hole
Ketheric’s greatest hidden advantage is the existence of the soulcage and the celestial bound within it. This secret renders him invulnerable, unkillable, and nearly unstoppable until the cage is discovered and destroyed. It is an asset unknown to enemies, incomprehensible to mundane observers, and central to his strategic leverage. So long as Aylin remains trapped, Ketheric exists outside the normal consequences of warfare, assassination, or attrition.
This advantage drastically alters the dynamics of any conflict involving him. His enemies can defeat him in combat but cannot end him. They can surround him, overwhelm him, and even outmaneuver him, but he will rise again, fully restored, because the true source of his life is elsewhere. It is a trump card not in the sense of a final attack or burst of power, but in the way it negates defeat entirely.
His transformation into the Apostle of Myrkul serves as a second, equally potent hidden reserve. Even when stripped of his mortal form, he becomes a divine manifestation capable of extraordinary destructive power. This final metamorphosis ensures that even discovering the soulcage does not fully remove the threat he poses.
However, both advantages share a fatal flaw: dependency. They are extraordinary, but conditional. True shaved-knuckle mastery requires advantages that function under any circumstance. Because Ketheric’s trump cards can be dismantled by disrupting the external structures that empower him, they remain powerful but not absolute.
Ketheric Thorm's Alignment
Ketheric Thorm’s moral and behavioral trajectory is among the most tragic and complex in modern Forgotten Realms storytelling. Once a devout servant of Selûne and a loving husband and father, he ultimately descends into fanaticism, atrocity, and undeath. His alignment crystallizes into Lawful Evil, with particular emphasis on the rigid, hierarchical, and doctrinal systems he embraces under Shar and Myrkul. Although his demeanor can feel chaotic due to grief-driven acts, the underlying structure of his worldview reveals a consistent reliance on order, discipline, and obedience to dark divine authority. His race, that of a half-elf (moon elf–human hybrid), influences his extended lifespan and the prolonged suffering that shapes his psychological decline. His factional ties—to Selûne, Shar, Myrkul, and the Cult of the Absolute—exemplify the alignment shifts he undergoes, yet all roads eventually lead him toward the inflexible cruelty and utilitarian logic characteristic of Lawful Evil.
The foundation of Ketheric’s alignment lies in his earlier life. As a half-elf raised within a devout Selûnite community, he grew up inside a moral framework built around structure and tradition. His disciplined upbringing, combined with his later prominence as a community leader, reveals someone predisposed toward systemic thinking. His initial goodness is real, but it is upheld through order rather than moral spontaneity. When tragedy strikes with the deaths of his wife Melodia and his daughter Isobel, the moral dimension collapses while the structural dimension remains. He does not become anarchic; instead, he seeks a new authority capable of rewriting reality to restore order to his shattered life. This explains his eventual turn toward Shar, the deity of loss who promises a framework for suppressing grief, and later Myrkul, who offers resurrection at a definitive cost.
As a Chosen of Myrkul, Ketheric channels his alignment into militant hierarchy. His armies are disciplined, ritualistic, and defined by necromantic structure. His undead legions move with obedience rather than improvisation. His actions throughout the Shadow-Cursed Lands illustrate this ethos clearly. He does not revel in chaos for its own sake; rather, he wishes to impose a bleak but ordered stability where his family remains protected by force and undeath. Even the horror of binding Aylin inside a soulcage is executed with cold rationality. It is a monstrous act, but a systematic one, serving a clear and terrible objective rather than impulsive cruelty. This is the language of Lawful Evil: harm and domination through rigid control and unwavering ideology.
His association with the Cult of the Absolute further reinforces this alignment. Though the cult’s leadership structure includes unpredictable and violent actors, Ketheric occupies the role of the methodical general, raising and maintaining an organized army from Moonrise Towers. His loyalty to Myrkul is absolute, his adherence to ritualistic necromancy is unwavering, and his justifications for atrocity are always framed through doctrine and cosmic obligation rather than personal whim.
Thus, Ketheric Thorm stands firmly as Lawful Evil. His half-elven heritage gives him the longevity needed to carry his grief across centuries, and his factional identities—faithful of Selûne, convert of Shar, Chosen of Myrkul, and warlord of the Cult of the Absolute—reflect the increasingly rigid systems he embraces. He is a villain defined not by chaos, but by the horrific stability of a world he tries to force into alignment with his grief-driven vision. Pride and Prophecy keeps an updated character alignment matrix across all planes of existence.
Ketheric Thorm's Trophy Case
Arena Results
Titles & Postseason Results
Halls of Legend Records
Overall Conclusion on Ketheric Thorm and Position Across Planes of Existence
Ketheric Thorm’s final power score of 7.4 places him squarely within the upper tier of formidable entities across fantasy universes, yet meaningfully below the echelon of reality-breaking, cosmology-defining beings. His strength lies not in singular overwhelming force, but in a combination of divine empowerment, battlefield immortality, necromantic command, and an unyielding psychological core shaped by grief and fanaticism. Taken together, these elements grant him a level of threat that far exceeds typical mortal adversaries, while remaining anchored to the limitations inherent to a chosen champion rather than an independent cosmic force.
Ketheric’s rating reflects the duality at the heart of his story. As a Chosen of Myrkul, his raw combat output is extraordinary, especially in his invulnerable state. He demonstrates the capacity to ignore what would be instantly lethal injuries, regenerate nearly without delay, and continue fighting with the relentless inevitability of a siege engine. On the battlefield, this makes him a near-perfect attrition monster, capable of wearing down even elite opponents through sheer endurance. Yet this invincibility is conditional. It depends entirely on the binding of Aylin within the Shadowfell soulcage, an externalized power source rather than an intrinsic attribute. Once this tether is severed, Ketheric’s body and soul reveal their mortality again, and despite his resilience, he can be defeated decisively. This dependence on borrowed divinity is a major factor preventing him from reaching the higher tiers of your cross-universe rankings.
His necromantic command is comparably potent. As Myrkul’s chosen warlord, he wields the authority to raise and marshal vast undead legions, including high-grade monstrosities and shadow-blighted horrors birthed from the curse he himself unleashed. These troops are not mindless fodder; they are functional components of a coordinated military apparatus that expands his reach across the Shadow-Cursed Lands. His ability to sustain a territorial occupation against multiple factions, including Harpers, druids, and adventuring parties, demonstrates the scale of influence he exerts when his armies operate at full strength. However, this influence remains regional rather than planar. Even while empowered by Myrkul, Ketheric does not exert interplanar sway, and his authority does not extend beyond the material conflicts he is embedded in. This limitation reinforces his placement at 7.4: widely dangerous, but not cosmologically defining.
The transformation into the Apostle of Myrkul represents the apex of his power, yet even then, he operates as an extension of a greater deity rather than as an independent avatar capable of shaping the weave of reality itself. His final form heightens his deadliness and grants him more devastating necromantic abilities, but it does not elevate him to the level where he can challenge pantheons or rewrite metaphysical laws. He stands as a terrifying emissary, not an architect.
Ultimately, Ketheric’s rating recognizes the lethal synthesis of divine favor, undead military dominance, and personal indestructibility, while acknowledging the ceilings that arise from his reliance on external entities and his confinement to localized spheres of influence. He is a towering figure in mortal-scale conflicts, a perilous champion of Myrkul’s will, but not a multiversal apex predator. Pride and Prophecy keeps an updated power ranking across all planes of existence. This will only be sortable on desktop viewing. The below table shows a summary within the same plane of existence of this article.
