A hideous man, with a personality to match, Klau-doth is a brute with a terrible strength of both mind and body. His left leg is shriveled and almost non-functional due to a pox that he had as a child, and his mind is as scarred as his body from the torment he received from other children for being an "ugly cripple". While he can reign his distrust and distaste of other people in long enough to work with them when necessary, it is a constant effort for him. He does understand the value of allies, though, as it is a harsh world, and surviving alone is an almost impossible task... at least without a certain level of power. Once he attains that power though, he will only have servants, not allies...
He believes that "mankind" has failed in its ability to rule itself, and so like an unruly child it must be disciplined and controlled. Those who have defiled the lands must be destroyed, and all the rest must be brought to heel under the rule of the nature priests and druids. Only they have the proper understanding of how the ebb and flow of elements and magic sustains the world, and only they can be trusted to rule. Their primary purpose is not to rule nature itself, but to keep mankind in check so that it never again despoils the planet as it has. Any who cannot or will not abide by such rule must be destroyed along with the defilers and sorcerer-kings.
Klau-Doth grew up in a large, poor family. His father, Petra, was a stone-mason, and struggled to provide for his family's basic needs, and his mother, Agnasia, was a morose woman who often sat inside their small house and cried all day, while her children ran wild in the streets. Always a bit droll and uncharismatic, Klau-Doth was stricken by a crippling disease as a child which left him with only partial use of one of his legs. Thus even his own siblings tormented him as a child, thinking of him as a useless, plodding cripple. This mistreatment fostered within him a bitter hatred and mistrust of pretty much everyone, which only festered and worsened as time went on. Although his great physical strength was obvious even at a young age, few who knew him as a child understood that he also possessed a phenomenal strength of mind. This is no doubt what has led him to strive to overcome his own limitations, and to grasp at the power which would allow him to awe and cow others into treating him with respect. He believes that only power and fear can command respect, and that those who will not respond to those are to be disposed of through treachery.
At a young age, Klau-Doth knew that he would leave his home and seek out fortune and power elsewhere, as it was obvious that a life of drudgery and toil led only to misery for all of those involved. With his obvious strength, he had little trouble joining a caravan setting out to cross the desert as a guard. One day while crossing the desert, his caravan stumbled upon an ancient ruin which had been unearthed by the desert winds. As such ruins are rumored to contain ancient treasures from the Old Kingdoms, those more adventurous among the guards of his caravan decided to venture into this temple and see if such rumors were true. Klau-Doth, although curious, was careful to take up a position at the rear of the group, using his lameness as a reasonable excuse.
His caution proved warranted, as the first three adventurous guards were killed by a volley of poison-tipped arrows which fired from the walls as they set off a long-dormant trap. Klau-Doth grimly stepped over the remains of his former comrades, and went on into the ruin by himself, eventually reaching the altar at the center of this ancient temple. Within, he found an enormous statue of a being that was half-man and half-snake. Surrounding it was an ancient moat of fetid water. As he climbed up to take one of the enormous ruby gemstones that made up its eyes, he slipped and fell, landing in moat, which he discovered to his horror was filled with the corpses of countless sacrifices given to the long-forgotten god.
Overcome by panic, he splashed for the edge of the sacrificial pit, but the ancient, fleshless limbs clung to his clothes, threatening to pull him down to same watery fate that they'd met. In his fear, he cried out to the elemental lords of water, begging them to spare him. Perhaps his prayers were answered, for somehow he did manage to grasp the slippery side of the moat and drag himself out of the murky depths. Still coughing up the dank water, he thanked them for allowing him to find such a bountiful treasure of the precious liquid, and promised to help bring it forth so that the lands might flourish again.
Still terrified, he fled from the temple, but could not forget the experience he'd had there. He came to believe that he truly had been spared, and found that with prayers and sacrifices to his new masters, came power... a power which he had always craved, a power which he knew he could use to gain respect and fear from those who once ridiculed him. And so, Klau-Doth was changed forever.
(for inspiration and reference. That game was using some pretty extreme houserules that
punished casters... but I was still determined to play one.