Highprince Marren (Merren Vethar)
Status: Deceased. Extremely, satisfyingly deceased. Relationship: Theren’s boyhood rival, and the man who made sure Theren grew up with a body count to avenge instead of a father.
Overview
Every party needs a grudge with a name and a face, and Marren was Theren’s: the childhood rival who grew up to murder Theren’s father and walk off with the family Shardblade like it was a party favor. He resurfaced at the Vedenar docks mid-heist, cornered Theren, summoned the stolen blade, and did what every good villain does right before losing — he gloated. Big mistake. Nucko, mid-escape and freshly having sworn his First Ideal, lit up the sky with Illumination and wore the face of Theren’s very dead father. Marren did not stick around to workshop his feelings about that. He fled the docks screaming “NO! NO NO NO! I killed you, you can’t be alive!” — which, for the record, is a genuinely excellent review of Nucko’s illusion work, and possibly the single most honest thing Marren ever said.
Key Moments
- Killed Theren’s father, stole the family Shardblade, and spent years being the reason “Vethar” was a curse word in Theren’s house.
- Cornered Theren at the Vedenar docks, summoned the blade, and taunted him — right up until Nucko’s borrowed face of a dead man sent him sprinting into the night, shrieking.
- Resurfaced later commanding an army against the party, got unceremoniously dumped into a sinkhole courtesy of Kael, took further punishment from Kael and Theren both — and then, in one of the campaign’s more absurd footnotes, got his throat slit by Tink, a hired mercenary who genuinely believed Marren was his rival, the mythical “Chungledown Bim.” Tink claimed the Shardblade as his prize.
- Theren, deep in the grip of the Thrill, did not take kindly to a random mercenary stealing his kill and his father’s blade in the same breath. He killed Tink on the spot and reclaimed it — closing out the rivalry with more collateral damage than closure, which tracks for this campaign.