Being a gypsy from a long line of fortune tellers, Marik can easily read people's minds and manipulate them. This helped him win the favor of blood-thirsty Valdemar whom he now serves. Marik was born in the Kingdom of Ind where he was raised in the circle of nomadic, gypsy sorceress. He was very gifted and learned fast. In his early adulthood he already realized he surpassed the knowledge and skills of his masters and he wanted more! Simple magic, charms and fortune telling were simply not enough for young Marik. There was another thing that separated him from the bright nomadic society and made him a black sheep - his perverted fascination with all things dead, which he fetishized.
It is believed that at some point in his early life his path crossed with Al-elib Iblis, a mad necromancer traveling in a chariot filled with putrid corpses. The madman was fascinated by the boy whom he caught sniffing the carcasses of small animals behind the graveyard gates. Al-elib saw in a boy a kindred spirit who shared his obsession for everything dead, rotten and putrid and who reminded him of himself as a little boy. The boy enjoyed his little bag filled with corpses of small animals just as much as he did his corpse cart loaded with rotting bodies. By all accounts he took young Marik under his wing and introduced him to arcane necro magic. Like his elders before, Al-elib was impressed by the speed at which Marik was learning, but this time the dark arts. After traveling together for many years and spreading terror all across the Old World, they finally arrived as peers in Sylvania and went separate ways. Marik was a grown man at this point but looked way older then his age. Hunched, with cold grey eyes and rotten teeth he truly was personification of death. Today he serves Valdemar Von Todtstein, a vicious vampire whom he helped win many battles by raising endless waves of animated corpses. Impressed by his loyalty and service, Valdemar presented him with an unique gift, an ancient artifact – Soul Furnice. This magical crown belonged to the legendary necromancer Melkhior. It sucks the souls of recently deceased into its core, where they are being devoured and channeled as potent arcane energy into the body of its wielder, making the caster of necro magic far more potent and dangerous. When the vast undead army lead by Kruger Wargner himself faced the army of Averland at Kleiberstorf, Marik Varma and Al-elib Iblis got reunited on the battlefield and wreak havoc on long lines of enemy archers and artillery by casting the Akar'aran spell, making the ground open to reveal a portal through which long-dead knights rode to do battle. This was the first time, but will not be the last that these two powerful necromancers, a father and son almost, meet on the battlefield.
