Birth and Early Life

Johannes Mahler was born in the outskirts of Serensia 43 years before the Age of Cobbleton. His mother was Frieda Mahler, a weaver. He shared his name with his father, who had been a soldier in the Serensian army before losing his arm in battle. His mother wished that he would follow her craft, not wanting her son to end up maimed like her husband. Still, Johannes' father taught him the art of swordsmanship. There were many arguments over this fact, but Johannes was far more interested in the sword than the loom.

It might not have gone any farther had a group from the temple of the False God of Valor not passed through Johannes' village. The priest with the group, Ian, took one look at the boy and knew he had a destiny before him. The family was given no option. At the age of 12, Johannes would be coming to Austaura to train as a paladin.

Training

Never before had Johannes been to such a city as Austaura. Even now, in the Empire's decline, the city held a rich beauty that few could rival. And the temple, the glorious temple, was like nothing Johannes could have imagined. This place was to be his home.

Ian, priest of the God of Valor, saw to it that Johannes had the best trainers in the temple. As for Johannes' religious and academic education, Ian saw to this himself. The two became close, more like father and son even than Johannes had been with his own father.

Johannes proved to be every bit as astounding as Ian predicted. In battle, he was unstoppable. On the field of war, his strategies cunning and unpredictable. His command of theology was exceeded only by the master clergy. Johannes was the temple's finest student in ages.

Family

Johannes never saw his mother and father again, nor did he care to. It was a world to which he had never belonged, and seeing them would open up wounds that were only now healed. As for making his own family, Johannes could not imagine that he would ever have the time for such a thing.

Yet on the Festival of Days, Johannes met Alatriel, an elf from Hamani. The two talked for hours as they drank wine and watched fireworks. For some reason neither Alatriel nor Johannes could understand, they then retired to his home and made love. It was not common for an elf and a man to come together at all, let alone in such a fashion.

Alatriel conceived. Faced with a child, Johannes did the only noble thing he could: marry Alatriel and raise their coming child properly. When his daughter was born, Johannes named her Katrina Mahler after one of the many ancient paladins in his studies. He felt an unexpected happiness with his family, a happiness he would never again feel in his life.

The Great War

When the Army of the Wyrm came across the mountains to attack Austaura, it was Johannes who rose to the challenge. While the ministers of his empire advised making terms with the Reapers, Johannes pressed for open war. He succeeded, and raised the best army he could manage before setting out to stop their enemy at the Celestia River.

When his tactics finally broke the back of the Reaper army, he went against this Emperor's commands and pursued them into their homeland. This was the last the world saw of the hero Johannes Mahler. When he emerged again, it would be at the head of the very army he defeated.

Preparations

Johannes was seen outside of the Reaper lands only twice. The histories typically note only one of these appearances, when 6 years before the Battle of Cobbleton he returned to his wife and daughter. It is often written that this was when the terrible curse that would later lead to the Purge of the Gods was placed on Katrina, and when Alatriel was told of the nature of the world. This is true, but this was actually the second of these appearances.

The first is rarely reported because most of those who saw him returned with him to the Wyrmlands. In -16 c.e., Johannes came to his mentor Ian and told him the truth of what he had seen in the [Temple of the Rift](Wyrm Temples). Ian did not believe him, but out of love for his former student, he followed Johannes back to the Temple. Here, Ian spoke with the Wyrm and became one of its most loyal servants.

Though no others saw Johannes and lived, he left his lands frequently in the decade before the Battle of Cobbleton, in search of artifacts and knowledge, hoping to amass more power than he could ever need to win his war. This search took him to the tower of one a long-dead wizard, where he sought the location of a set of powerful items: dark perversions of Cassandra's gifts. He managed to find only one of these: The Dark Heart, before the time for war had come.

The End All Things

Johannes, his beliefs shattered by the Wyrm's revelations, aimed to end creation, to shatter the world's illusory existence. To do this, Johannes began a complicated ritual known as the Rite of Return, created long ago to give a god physical access to a world they were meant to only touch spiritually.

Yet in a a world so driven by the dualistic forces of creation and destruction, no power such as Johannes could go unmatched. Champions were raised, chosen by the remnants of Cassandra and sent against Johannes' new army.

Johannes' own inner circle - the fallen Angel Verita and the Eretai King Ming Ta - moved against Cobbleton while Ian began the Rite of Return. Johannes' plan was the distract the nations with a brutal war while the Wyrm were brought into this world, causing a reaction that would finally end this world.

Johannes and his companions faced their opposites during the Battle of Cobbleton. The battle was hard fought, but Johannes' enemies could not be stopped. Sensing the end had arrived, Johannes ended his own life, pouring his sacrifice into the Dark Heart in an effort to take his foes with him. In this, though, he was thwarted by the greater power of Cassandra's own gifts. His remains were consumed in the sacrifice, and no funeral was ever performed on his behalf in the temple he once served.