Mellar
From the Lyorn Records of the Dragaeran Empire
Mellar was a member of the Jhereg Council who stole 9 million gold from the Jhereg Treasury. This led to The Demon hiring Vlad Taltos to assassinate him. (Jhereg)
His real name was Leareth.
[edit] History
Mellar was born a crossbreed. His mother was herself a Dragon-Dzur crossbreed prostitute, and his father was a member of House Jhereg. Because of the stigma the empire puts on crossbreeds, Mellar was a virtual outcast, looked down upon by everyone. To get his revenge, he came up with a plan to humiliate all three houses that had contributed to his heritage, and beat each of them at their own strengths, to add insult to injury.
In his youth, Mellar worked freelance for the Jhereg as an assassin, usually taking relatively small or mediocre jobs. He saved his money while he worked on his plan.
A preliminary stage of his plan was to use witchcraft to infect the wife of Lord Onarr with some sort of plague, and then cure her using witchcraft. Onarr was grateful enough that he agreed to train Mellar in the art of swordfighting. Mellar became sufficiently proficient that he was able to defeat seventeen Dzurlords in combat (including the Dzurlord Keleth), which enabled him to become a member of House Dzur. After two years, he gave up his Dzur titles and joined the House of the Jhereg. This caused a huge scandal in House Dzur, who were insulted that one of their members would give up their rank and title to join the Jhereg (the Jhereg being the lowest-ranking House, except for the Teckla).
As a member of the Jhereg, Mellar rose quickly through the ranks, and in ten years managed to take out Terion (although Terion was apparently not permanently killed), and occupy his place on the Jhereg Council. At the time of Jhereg, Mellar had just absconded with 9 million gold in Council operating funds, effectively crippling a large portion of the Jhereg activities. Far more important, however, was the risk to the Jhereg reputation. It is not impossible to steal from the Jhereg; the House's power is rooted in the absolute assurance that it is impossible to survive to enjoy it.
After humiliating both House Dzur and House Jhereg, and with the money in hand, the next part of his plan was to start another Dragon-Jhereg War, using the legendary pride of the Dragonlords as the trigger. He made his way to Castle Black. Some years earlier, he had stolen a book from Morrolan e'Drien's library, and with this book, he made his way to the castle with the promise of returning the 'found' book to Morrolan. As a token of his generosity, Morrolan offered Mellar an invitation to stay within Castle Black for seventeen days, as Morrolan's guest.
Once in Castle Black, Mellar knew that Morrolan would not allow him to be harmed. All guests in Castle Black have protection as per an oath taken by Morrolan, and anyone—even an entire House—who would violate that protection would be subject to Morrolan's wrath. Mellar also knew that the Jhereg could not countenance the impression that there was any force in the world that could thwart their vengeance; to be publicly unpunished for even seventeen days would be an unacceptable show of weakness. Therefore, the Jhereg would have to attack him while he remained under Morrolan's protection, which would inevitably start a crippling war between the two Houses.
Vlad managed to defeat Mellar's plan and avert the war by way of a complicated ruse which involved goading him into attacking Aliera e'Kieron with a Morganti dagger. This deceived Mellar into believing he had killed her, violating his status as a guest, and caused him to panic and flee Castle Black—and Morrolan's protection. Mellar's hasty teleport to the jungle included Vlad, who had was disguised as one of Mellar's bodyguards. Vlad managed to disable Mellar's other bodyguard, and fight Mellar well enough to keep him busy and eventually (with the help of Rocza) kill him before Mellar could return to Castle Black or escape elsewhere.
