Editing Gorgon (section)

===Birthright===
A notable exception is the [[Birthright]] setting, where the Gorgon is one of the top [[BBEG]]s.  Once Prince Raesene, eldest son of the first lord of House Andu, he always resented that his illegitimacy meant he would never take the throne himself, despite still being loved and respected by his parents and brothers.  Ultimately, Azrai saw the growing envy and lust for power in his heart and corrupted him into his service, seducing him into betraying his family and taking his core retainers into battle alongside the dark god.  

After the other gods blew themselves up to take Azrai with them at the Battle of Deismaar, Raesene absorbed more of the gods' essence than anyone present who did not then immediately go on to become a nascent god themselves.  In the coming years, he carved out his own kingdom in the north, discovered bloodtheft, and began cultivating and "harvesting" bloodlines to increase his own strength.  He ultimately killed his brother's descendant, Michael Roele, in battle, but in the process Michael may have managed to turn the tables on him, warding the majority of his power to weaken Raesene, confining him to his keep so that he doesn't dominate the entire campaign setting.

Either way, there's not much humanity left in Raesene, who is now called the Gorgon.  A stone-skinned, horned monster with digitigrade legs and spikes sticking out of his flesh everywhere, the Gorgon is the greatest swordsman in the world, master of the strongest holding in the world, has access to huge reserves of mystical power and a gaze attack that can kill or petrify anyone without the saves to shrug it off up to twice in a round. While unlike many awnsheign the Gorgon can be killed in a straight-up fight (assuming you have magical weapons of sufficient potency to penetrate his immunity), he is unaging and terribly, terribly patient.  He is driven by a lust for power and thwarted ambition, and hungers to become emperor of the entire continent, then, perhaps the entire world.  He also has a court full of equally-deadly and capable figures, and he is in an alliance with the Magian and the Raven, inasmuchas they agree they'll need to bring the other, more chaotic awnsheigh to heel before battling one another for control of the continent.