Editing Darklord (section)

==Sir Tristen Hiregaard/Malken==
The "Jekyll & Hyde" Darklord of Nova Vaasa. Sir Hiregaard is a staunch, gruff but sincerely righteous man who is dedicated to his people and his land. However, he also plays host to Malken- an alternate personality that takes over Tristen's body, warping it into [[Caliban (Ravenloft)|a form so hideously ugly one can't recognize they're the same person]] and who delights in killing anyone who stands in the way of Hiregaard's repressed desires.

Strangely, Tristen did nothing at all to earn the position of Darklord; Malken is an entity born from a curse that was placed on Tristen's ''father'' by Tristen's mother Romir that compelled him to kill every woman he loved and any man who crossed him; Hiregaard Senior was an intensely jealous man and killed his wife and the man teaching her how to waltz in a fit of rage, thinking she was having an affair with him. When he killed himself to escape the curse, the curse passed to Tristen instead. Six years and nine killings after the curse first manifested itself in him, Tristen was taken into the mists and the secret jealousies and angers born from the curse coalesced into the being known as Malken. Tristen is only partially aware of Malken's existence, just enough to have his guards lock him into his personal chambers when he feels a fit of jealousy or anger coming on. For years he has assumed this has kept Malken in check, but as of late he is starting to suspect that Malken is too clever to be thwarted by mundane confinement despite the latter's attempts at keeping his influence a secret. Were he to discover the whole truth, he would be willing to do anything to end the curse. 

This curse is the key to Malken's immortality; if Tristen is killed, then Tristen's eldest living male descendant will be possessed - and Malken will keep going down the chain each time his host dies, meaning that unless you find "the right way" to kill him, Malken can only be stopped by massacring Tristen's entire family line... which the players could potentially belong to. However, if Malken's host is killed by a woman genuinely in love with that man, then Malken will be dragged screaming into whatever hell-hole awaits him. And given that this would be a massive act of betrayal on that woman's part, she would likely end up becoming the new Darklord herself.

It should also be noted for DMs that "the struggle within his soul" prevents Malken from achieving the proper focus to Close the Borders of his domain, so if you want to run a session or campaign focussed around Nova Vaasa, you had better have a compelling in-universe reason to keep the PCs from simply up and leaving, since canonically DMs can't force the issue and simply lock the PCs into Nova Vaasa like they can with most other Darklords. It's possible that if Malken possesses a more evil host, he might just be able to Close the Borders then, but the form such a closed border would take has never been revealed in canon.
<gallery>
tristen hiregaard The Awakening.jpg
tristen hiregaard Domains of Dread.png
</gallery>

===5e===
5e genderswaps AND raceswaps tristen, replacing him with '''Myar Hiregaard'''. Mentioned only in passing as the Darklord of the revised Nova Vaasa, she's basically a female Genghis Khan with a dash of Jekyll & Hyde; she was originally a female chieftain who united the nomadic plains-dwelling tribes of Nova Vaasa into a single culture, but she proved to be a terrible peacetime leader because she craved bloodshed and excitement. She tried to stave off her boredom with, quote, "brutal games" for a time, but ultimately she couldn't resist the thrill of war: she began fostering disputes amongst her vassal tribes so she had an excuse to lead her forces to crush both sides. This eventually got her claimed by the mists, and now she switches between two personas and possibly two bodies: as Mya Hiregaard, she rules with "strict fairness", but when she gets too bloodlusty, she transforms into her alter-ego of Malken and "sows discord across the plains".

Whatever else you may think of it, her backstory is arguably better than Tristen's "My dad got cursed and died, so I inherited his curse and became a Darklord without ever having to do anything to actually earn it".