D&D: An Adventurer’s Guide to Dr. Viktra Mordenheim, Darklord of Lamordia
A mad doctor, driven by the need not just to create life, but defeat death itself—Dr. Viktra Mordenheim will show them all!
In the shadowy lands of Lamordia steepled with gothic parapets, lies the secret to life and death itself. Like many things in Ravenloft, it is a secret tinged with tragedy. But even in this land of mists and gloom, there’s no denying the triumphant glow of an Unbreakable Heart. The heart created by Lamordia’s tormented Darklord with all the furor that love can muster.
It is an act she may never repeat. Because Dr. Viktra Mordenheim is a brilliant scientist, but in Lamordia in Ravenloft? She is as tortured as the subjects she unwittingly reigns over.
Viktra Mordenheim–Child Prodigy
Even in her earliest days, Viktra Mordenheim was fascinated by the complexities of the humanoid body. And as a child prodigy born to a minor noble household, the young Mordenheim had considerable resources at her disposal. Tutors were at her disposal, yes, but she quickly outgrew them.
She taught herself medicine at nine years of age, and in her early teens, earned both a doctorate and appointment as a preeminent researcher to a local university. Many lauded her insights and understanding. But some whispered that the young Dr. Mordenheim’s understanding of the workings of life bordered on the unnatural.
And the young doctor certainly made few friends during her tenure. She was focused. Driven. Her detractors would say she lacked empathy, compassion, and moral qualms. But as Dr. Mordenheim would say, the pursuit of life drives us, whatever it costs.
Even so, she pursued medicine and science solely to satiate her own curiosity, never with the thought of how it might aid her patients. This was her greatest flaw. The hubris that would bring her low.
Life, Death, and Elise
Dr. Viktra Mordenheim pursued her studies to the exclusion of almost all else. She was convinced she could do more than create life—her goal was nothing less than to overcome death itself! She would breathe sentience into dead flesh, and create sturdier vessels for her creations than the fragile, temporary mortal shells given by distant, capricious gods.
Thus she began experimenting with corpses. And to come by her subjects, she employed body snatchers to steal corpses for her tests. This was how she came to meet Elise.
Elise was reckless and dangerous. Free-spirited and spontaneous. And she was the most beautiful woman that Viktra had ever seen. Spontaneity met cold, methodical progress, and the opposites attracted. Dr. Mordenheim knew love. But alas, it was not to last.
Not long after their relationship blossomed, Elise began showing signs of an incurable wasting disease. Here was the first time that either woman knew the sting of despair. And here, Dr. Mordenheim’s drive became an obsession. Driven by fear and love in equal measure, Dr. Viktra Mordenheim’s research became desperate and hasty. Now she had one goal: defeat death for Elise’s sake.
Her experiments were no longer limited to the dead. The living were tested. On her operating table, victims were killed, raised, and died again as Mordenheim sought out the secrets hidden in that moment of death.
And one moonless night, Elise fell into a sleep from which she wouldn’t wake. It took all of Dr. Mordenheim’s work, but she instilled in Elise her masterwork: an artificial organ called the Unbreakable Heart.
Waking in Ravenloft
When the last stitches were put into place, constables from the nearby town burst into her lab, accusing the doctor of facilitating a number of murders and worse. Dr. Viktra Mordenheim fought against her would-be captors but to no avail.
In the ensuing scuffle, her laboratory filled with smoke and arcing electricity. Before Dr. Mordenheim lost consciousness, the last thing she saw was Elise, rising from the table, the golden glow from the Unbreakable Heart shining from within.
When Mordenheim awoke, she was in Lamordia. An unfamiliar land whose genius was celebrated, though she did not know why.
Though the surrounding towns hail her as a noble hero, Dr. Mordenheim has no time for the people of Lamordia. Instead, she seeks only to recreate the miracle of scientific immortality she discovered with the Unbreakable Heart. Despite all her attempts, she will never repeat it.
This is Ravenloft’s torment. Elise, too, is out there somewhere, wandering the mists. And though Dr. Mordenheim spends her every spare resource searching for the woman she saved—it is not in the name of a love lost and possibly reunited. She only seeks Elise so that she might once again understand the mysteries of the Unbreakable Heart.
Then she’ll show all those fools who doubted her, she’ll show them all!
