Merlock Wood

Merlock Wood is an Adelartian revolutionary and leader of the Free Territory of Adelart since 987, when the County of Greifwald gave the people of Adelart indepedence and the Sheriff-led Governate of Adelart was abolished. A revolutionary leader in the bandit group, "The Forest Brothers", from 982 to 987, Merlock Wood sought to reorganize the government of Adelart among libertarian socialist and collectivist lines, making deals with the Old Believers and a variety of local, decentralized groups to establish the first Congress of People and Peasants in 987, where thousands of religious groups, townships, and even mercenary bands sent representatives to eventually elect Merlock Wood as their first and to date, only, leader.

Born in 959 to a poor, farming family in Lissay, Merlock Wood became a farmhand to a religiously devout Greifwaldian noble family, which left him soured toward religious hierarchy and nobility for the rest of his life. After becoming 18, Wood, with the wishes of his parents, went to the city of Eagleton to become an apprentice for a metalworker. A few years after that, however, he was arrested by the city for siphoning metalworker funds to pay for revolutionary underground organizations that he had allied with. Fleeing the city a criminal, Merlock Wood joined the Forest Brothers, an outlaw group dedicated to the idea of popular sovereignty, propaganda of the deed, and collectivist politics. Sabotaging Greifwaldian loyalist strongholds and redistributing funds to the peasants, the Forest Brothers soon became a very popular group in Adelart, and when Greifwald declared independence from Aquileia, the main resistance group to their rule.

During the Second Adelartian Revolution of 987, Merlock Wood became the de-facto commander of the Independent Armies of Adelart, after the death of revolutionary commander Jan Roycen in 983 during the First Adelartian Revolution against the rule of the pro-Greifwaldian sheriff. Fiercely anti-archon and anti-monarchist, Wood's actions during the revolution have been the subject of much debate by historians, with many believing he committed outright genocide, if not rapes and murders, against Archon supporters, with the help of the leader of the Old Believer sect in Adelart. Many historians, on the other claw, blame many of these alleged atorocities on the griffons serving under him, and the most radical of Wood supporters proclaim that most of them had been fabricated by Greifwaldian authorities for the intent of slandering the Adelartian revolution.

An anti-authority leader above all, Wood abolished the rule of the Sheriff and established a unique decentralized, democratic system, which aimed to give every community in Adelart a say. Wood became the chairgriff of the Congress and People and Peasants, and was declared the first Representative of the People of Adelart soon after.