Real Name: Daryl Walter Jefferson
Alignment: Villain
Faction: The Rot
Months had passed; Daryl Jefferson was no more, now he was Grimoire. Through that time, he remained in his small apartment, poring over incantations, treatises, and forbidden knowledge. Through it all a whisper followed him: “Soon.”
Years passed, his inheritance dwindled, sleep became a temptation, but Daryl pressed on. On the eight hundred and eighth day, revelation struck. Every fragment, every hidden code, coalesced into the ultimate understanding. He began the chant he had pieced together with painstaking precision.
Emerald light erupted from the tome, illuminating the apartment in ghastly hues, throwing Daryl’s residence into chaos. Then darkness claimed the room. When he emerged, he was no longer merely Daryl Jefferson. His mind was consumed, his will bound to the book. He was Grimoire, and the city would tremble beneath his new power.
Grimoire’s crimes grew over the years, both his solo operations and working with other supervillains. His name and his power became feared by mortal citizens of Empire City.
His last scheme would be the one that unwittingly changed the world and would unmake Daryl Jefferson. With cultist followers he established a base within the abandoned Gramercy Casino. Dark rites were enacted, with homeless people abducted from the city streets and alleys used as unwilling sacrifices to the darkest of powers. Grimoire craved ultimate power, and any and all would be used as fuel for the crucible where that power would be forged.
Grimoire used influence and his criminally acquired wealth to have the Q-Mob ambush and incapacitate The Hessian. The super-powered mobsters did their job well. They brought the old, unspeaking, unliving pumpkin-headed villain to the decayed casino. There, Grimoire invoked binding rites to render inert the unyielding spirit of deathly vengeance.
At last Grimoire unleashed his grand design. Gathered with his cultists, and the last sacrifices made, he summoned and twisted darkness to manipulate The Hessian’s inert body, lifting it into the air like a ghoulish marionette on umbral threads. Manically, he began the incantation to invoke the Null-Ego Precept, a spell he believed would grant him limitless power.
But The Hessian was undead, indestructible, unknowable—a vessel corrupted in ways even Grimoire had not foreseen. The spell warped, twisting around and within its host, feeding off its unnatural durability. The shadows and whispers intensified, and the air itself seemed to bend in anticipation. Grimoire laughed, unbound and unbidden, as he unleashed a force of dark potential whose reach would extend beyond any world that dared exist
Even the attempted interference of the vigilante called Ace did not stop what Grimoire had unwittingly begun.
The Null-Ego Precept had been corrupted by the use of The Hessian as its vessel, allowing the architects of its creation passage to the earthly plane. Grimoire fell prey to the malign influence of the Many-Angled Ones. The last vestiges of his and the tome’s will crumbled before unfathomable alien consciousness. Grimoire was gone. Then he began to feast, a vessel for the limitless hunger of his masters. Liber Mortis was born, The Rot began.
“I am death, and the power to unleash the end times!”
Liber Mortis – The Rot #2