History
Born into an already poor farming family in Westfall, the outlook of the family became even worse with the invasion of the Old Horde into Westfall. The young Tathdyl family fled with other refugees to Stormwind, where they raised their son for two peaceful years. Unfortunately for them, as they were rebuilding their lives, Anna Tathdyl discovered she was with child again and the Horde invaded Stormwind. A five-year-old Saran kept only the vaguest memories of the city burning around them as his parents fled with him, barely managing to escape the city with their lives onto one of the ships organized by Anduin Lothar. Later that year, as refugees in Lordaeron, Mara Tathdyl entered the world.
The next year, William Tathdyl – who had since become a drunk – went out for a job somewhere on a nearby farm and never returned to his family. Alone with two young children, far from her home, Anna Tathdyl did the best she could but they had no other family. Given her skill as a seamstress, she managed to find enough work amongst the other refugees to keep her children fed but barely. Desperate to help his struggling mother, Saran began teaching himself how to steal and pick pockets. Due to their own status as refugees, he never targeted the desperate but always those who seemed like they had enough.
By the time Saran was ten, the Tathdyls returned to Stormwind as its reconstruction began. Mara, then five, had always been a sickly child but the return journey to their once home seemed to make it all the worse. Anna Tathdyl always blamed their time as refugees for her daughter’s ill nature and tried desperately to afford the money to buy her medicine. Again desperate to help his mother and sister, ten-year-old Saran joined a gang of young crooks and thieves that had formed in the poorer parts of the slowly reviving city. It was here that he met his best friend, Gillian Addington.
For three years, Saran, Gilli, and their gang ran around Stormwind and stole most anything valuable that they could get their hands on. Anna Tathdyl eventually knew what her son was doing but didn’t try to stop him – she couldn’t turn away the help – and instead became a mother figure to many of the children in the gang. Her position with them remained even after Saran was arrested at thirteen, the only one who was caught after a theft went wrong. When a SI:7 representative showed up in the room he was being interrogated in and gave him a choice besides being thrown into the Stockade for a few years for theft, he took it. At the chance to expunge his record, have a real income to support his mother and sister, and live free, Saran jumped at the offer. Then he was picked by “Killer” Red Barlow to train as an assassin.
Although his assassin training was harsh – he would often come back cut and bruised and end up in his old gang hideout where Gilli would see to his wounds – he ended up becoming quite good at his job, if cold about it. Mara remained sickly through the years and Saran began trying to find other ways to help her. When the potions and tonics he bought didn’t help, he turned to doing favors off the books, trying to buy enough of it to earn something more. The Defias Brotherhood somehow got wind of his efforts just as he started to arrange a deal to get her to a real healer and blackmailed him, telling him that they would ruin all of the good favor he had won and turn over evidence to SI:7 of what he had been doing off books. Fearing his efforts being lost, Saran gave in and began passing information to the Defias about SI:7 actions and other details about Stormwind. When he stopped caring about the Defias turning him in to SI:7, they threatened to kill his sister in order to keep him under their thumb.
Eventually, either through him slipping up or the Defias deciding they didn’t need the complication, SI:7 found out what he had been doing and arrested Saran. He was accused of not only being the direct hand behind several deaths in Stormwind but of also being a member of the Defias, citing his birthplace as Westfall being one of the reasons of the suspicion. They branded him on the inside of his right forearm as a traitor (the brand consists of dual downward-angled blades behind a skull) and threw him into the Stockade to await execution. However, because he had spent the majority of his life sneaking about Stormwind, Saran knew how to escape the Stockades. Using a lockpick they thankfully did not find when taking his gear, he escaped out an exit set into the cliffs below the Mage District and stowed away onto a ship. Unfortunately for him, the ship was going north to fight the Scourge and he ended up in the heart of their territory. Snuck up on by bandits and stabbed in the lungs and heart, Saran slowly died while listening to the sound of ghouls eating the bandits alive. That was his last thought as a living soul. What he did not know at the time, was that the grain he had stolen earlier had been tainted by the plague.
When he came back to himself in the middle of a field, Saran was coated in blood and gore, and the memories of what he had done crashed into him. Despite knowing he hadn’t been in control, it felt like he had been and he spent the next two years wandering the wilderness in a haze, weakly making attempts to kill himself. When he was found by Caren Bloodwolf in Stranglethorn Vale, he was nearly non-verbal from his time as a ghoul and a lack of contact with people. After she convinced him that he didn’t want to die and that there could be something left for him in his new life, he followed her and chose the new name Necronim.
Since that time, Necronim has reunited with not only his friend Gilli but also his sister. Someone (though he has never discovered who) sent a healer that solved Mara Tathdyl’s illness and allowed her to live a life, so he discovered that she had married Cord Bowman, a sergeant in the Stormwind infantry, and had several children. Despite insisting that it was too dangerous, his sister was adamant and managed to slot her brother into her new family. After his brother-in-law’s death during the Battle for Shattrath against the Iron Horde, he has remained close since he promised Cord that he would look after them if he died. Before his death and after, he has also never broken a promise when his sister was involved and he has no intention of starting now.
Notable Connections
To be added.
