Legion of the Chimera

This is a /v/ related article, which we tolerate because it's relevant and/or popular on /tg/... or we just can't be bothered to delete it.

The Legion of the Chimera was a short-lived organization from the Forgotten Realms setting of Dungeons & Dragons. They appeared in the Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition videogame Icewind Dale II as the primary antagonists of the game. Their symbol is a three-headed chimera facing a line of five stars.

Goal

The Legion's original goal was simple: the promotion of tolerance and acceptance for halfbreed races and interspecies relationships. They were concentrated in the Icewind Dale region and sought to create a safe haven where halfbreeds could live in peace. In essence, they hoped to build an eleventh town, one where beings of mixed blood could live in freedom.

After becoming disillusioned in the face of extreme intolerance despite their initial peaceful overtures, they became obsessed with forcing others to accept them. Allying themselves with the Church of Iyachtu Xvim, they began enslaving and torturing perceived "bigots", as well as attempting to increase the number of crossbred individuals in the world through both forced acts of interspecies breeding and through fleshcrafting.

Membership

Membership in the Legion was open to all hybrids, or beings willing to accept hybrids as equals, or presumably creatures with a particular interest in interspecies breeding, such as orcs and goblinoids. As the Legion fell into evil, they also began supplementing their ranks with other evil beings eager to take advantage of their desire to found a new homeland through conquest.

Known races present in the Legion include:

• Barghests
• Driders
• Drow
• Duergar
• Fey'ri
• Goblins
• Half-Dragons
• Half-Fiends
• Half-Goblins
• Half-Orcs
• Harpies
• Humans
• Lizardfolk
• Neo-orogs
• Orcs
• Yuan-ti

Notable Members

Isair and Madae: twin fey'ri born to an elf-maid named Ilmadia in Kuldahar, the products of her rape by the Baatezu Belhifet during his attempted conquest of Easthaven and the rest of the Ten-Towns. Their mother committed suicide soon after they were born, and although they were brought up by a priestess of Ilmater in Kuldahar, the town literally drove them out at spearpoint the instant they found the twins burying their adoptive mother after she died of natural causes. They fled to Luskan, and fell in with the Arcane Brotherhood, which used them as servants and killers, before ultimately sending them as emissaries to the Lower Planes. Here, they met with their father, who used them as living weapons in the Blood War - horrified to realize they weren't accepted even in the infernal realms, the twins escaped back to Faerun and founded the Legion of the Chimera, hoping to find tolerance with others of similar nature and to spare them the pain they underwent. When the mayor of Bryn Shander responded to their overtures of peace by trying to assassinate them, they led the Legion into violence. They were ultimately the last of the Legion's major members to fall, sucked into Limbo by a backfiring mythal. Isair was a Fighter/Wizard, whilst Madae was a Fighter/Cleric.

Callabus: A goblin wizard with a love of fire magic. Slain by the defenders of Targos.

Cedra: One of a sizable band of female yuan-ti halfbloods born to human women who were kidnapped from Kuldahar and raped by the yuan-ti worshippers of the marilith Yxunomei during her attempt to conquer the Ten-Towns. The girls and their mothers were literally forced to flee from Kuldahar or be butchered by the mensfolk; only the intervention of the local druid Iselore prevented them from being slaughtered, and even then they were forced to live in the Dragon's Eye, the lair where they had been conceived. Understandably, they were quick to join the Legion of the Chimera, with Cedra as their representative. Slain by the defenders of Targos.

Phaen of the Rags: An outcast human wizard originally of the Arcane Brotherhood. May have been a spy for that organization. Slain by the defenders of Targos.

Sherincal: A female half-dragon (blue) who despised her human heritage for the abuse she faced from humans. Slain by the defenders of Targos, she was considered such a champion of the Legion that they brought her back as an undead version of herself... and she was promptly slain again by her killers.

Saablic Tan: A male human and former Red Wizard of Thay, this master Transmuter spent a prolonged period forcibly transformed into the shape of an Umber Hulk and wandering Dorn's Deep; he actually met the heroes who defeated Belhifet during their expedition there on relatively good terms. Restored to his human form by the Legion, he became a true believer in their cause, and eagerly shared his powerful alteration magic to assist them. He is known to have invented an artifact called the Viciscamera; a masterpiece of fleshcrafting that could be used to artificially transform drow into driders. True, they came out as savage, bestial monsters, but he legitimately stole a power normally held only by the goddess Lolth - give the man credit! Slain by the defenders of Targos.

Ginafae Despana: A female drow turned into a drider by Lolth, she led a number of other driders to ally with the Legion of the Chimera in hopes of finding acceptance. She came to regret her decision, however. Ironically, she was not slain by the defenders of Targos; instead, she allied herself with them, and they brought her to her brother, Malavon, who had led a movement that had successfully overthrown the theocracy of Lolth in their home city. As such, he changed her back into a drow.

Founding

The Legion of the Chimera was founded in circa 1306 DR, after Isair and Madae escaped from the Lower Planes and returned to Faerun. Over six years, they began assembling a group of assorted halfbreeds and crossbreeds, trying to found a fledgling town in the Fields of Slaughter - a region in the Spine of the World that had once belonged to elves, but had been left empty after the elves were annihilated in battle with a great orc horde. As they consolidated their numbers, they tried to reach out to the Ten-Towns in hopes of forging pacts of nonaggression and trade.

Downfall

Unfortunately, some people in the Ten-Towns were less than willing to make peace with the Legion. Around 1312 DR, the emissary representing Bryn Shander delivered a personal present from his mayor to Isair and Madae; finely crafted cakes and pastries. Unfortunately for the emissary, these were part of a ploy by the mayor to assassinate the fey'ri twins, as each had been baked with holy water. The sanctified foodstuffs painfully burned their consumers, who understandably took this attempt on their lives poorly; the last of a lifetime of too many straws, they declared war upon the Ten-Towns.

They began by besieging Targos, which sought aid in the form of mercenaries recruited from Luskan, and attempted to turn the mythal of the ruined fortress known as the Severed Hand to their advantage, seeking to bolster the structure's defenses and augment their own fiendish might. Unfortunately, Madae's conversion to the dark god Iyachtu Xvim proved their downfall - invoking his malevolent power as part of their efforts to mold the mythal destabilized the spell-structure, which responded by latching onto another plane to try and stabilize itself. As it began to bind itself to Limbo... things didn't exactly work out.

A band of Luskan mercenaries fought off the siege of Targos, and began killing their way through the ranks of the Legion's upper echelons, destroying their plans before ultimately confronting the fey'ri twins in battle. At the height of the conflict, the mythal completely attached itself to the Chaos Plane. Isair and Madae, weakened as they were from battle and as connected as they were to the defenses on the Hand, were dragged into Limbo. Their pained screams echoed throughout the collapsing stronghold; they were never heard of again.

Any survivors of the Legion promptly fled, and the group has never risen since, its reputation completely soiled.