A Visitor's Guide to Nokt: Old Town: The Vulgar Unicorn

Kieran the Perturbed is a hero of the Great War who settled back into life at Nokt once the Mind Flayers were repulsed. Kieran was originally a shop owner in Mid Town Nokt, who sold his business and joined with a roaming group of heroes (who counted amongst their number Alaric the Twice-Dead, Azriel Half-Demon and Tybbaal the Slayer). When the war concluded, he purchased a building in Old Town, right off the market square, and set up a new magic shop (The Vulgar Unicorn) in direct competition with the owner of his old shop. Kieran was able to run his competitor into the poorhouse in short order, due to his recent fame and clout from the War.

Kieran still runs his shop, even twenty years after the war. He is a rather weak man whose face is obscured by some rare magic item that covers his entire body like an entirely black second skin, and he garbs himself in magic robes that make him extremely resistant to magic.

Custom magic items ordered through Kieran’s shop generally cost slightly more than “market price” would be, but Kieran is able to deliver them in one-tenth the time that any of his competitors are able to – even when making an item from scratch. Despite his premium prices for custom items, the demand is steady and he is never at a loss for work – if you want an item and you want it as soon as you can, you talk to Kieran… but have your gold ready.

Unknownst to all of Nokt, Kieran is evil (Lawful-Evil alignment), though that is obscured through his use of a magic ring of Non-Detection. He uses several custom-designed magic items that he built before the War, whose function is to draw out and accumulate experience points from the victims of the item for use in creating additional magic items. These stones are, essentially, batteries, and Kieran uses them to pay the XP costs associated with creating magic items – so that he never loses his own Experience Points. Sadly, the target of a stone never survives the ordeal, so the Town Guard is sometimes confronted by strange murders that they have no idea how to solve...