Harlin the Malevolent was an evil wizard of Serenia. He lived in a castle in a land somewhere north of the continent of Serenia in the Northern Sea. He was defeated by the legendary individual only known as The Wanderer. He suffered his own defeat, thanks to a time travel paradox of his own creation.
History[]
Harlin once kidnapped the fair Princess Priscilla of Serenia, locking her in a tower of his castle and transformed her into a frog. Using his magic, he called upon the elements to reshape the world and place obstacles in front of anyone who might try to reach her -- chasms, deserts, and mountains that would be insurmountable.
The father of the princess King George IV declared the whoever could rescue his daughter would gain half of his kingdom. A multitude of adventurers accepted the challenge, but only a few even made it near to Harlin's Castle -- until the Wanderer (a barbarian who had traveled back in time from the future) heard the proclamation from the village of Serenia.
Harlin had underestimated the wanderer's resourcefulness. The Wanderer managed to, through resourceful or luck, overcome each obstacle. Harlin had summoned up a menagerie of terrible creatures but the Wanderer bypassed each one. With the adventurer nearly at Harlin's Castle, the evil wizard took refuge behind his magic, but the Wanderer outsmarted each of these tricks too. As a last effort to escape, Harlin transformed into a bird -- not knowing that the Wanderer had learned to change into a cat. The adventurer entered the feline form and devoured the bird (the evil wizard never had the chance to discover the identity of his assassin).
Ages passed and much of this was forgotten. But Harlin's power had survived defeat, and the Wizard grew powerful again. He sought to remove his defeat from history, and using his twisted magic he managed to do just that. In order to prevent the Wanderer who had bested him, he found a brave soul from the future and placed him in the shoes of the Wanderer. Little did he know that this was the same adventurer who would defeat him just as he had been defeated before -- creating a paradox in which Harlin ensured his own defeat.
Non-Canon[]
Cray's KQ Companion[]
The Wanderer only defeated Harlin once in this timeline of events, but that was all that was required.
Real World[]
Harlin the Malevolent is a character from The Wizard and the Princess and its re-release Adventure in Serenia. There are two parts to the manual and backstory for Harlin, from the back of the box/manual in original versions of the game (which discusses happy wanderer entering the village from the desert and hearing the king's missive), and an additional prologue added to later releases on the inside pages of the box/manual.
According to later and additional prologue story for Wizard and the Princess' (reprinted in the Roberta William's Anthology manual) Harlin somehow regenerated from having been killed and eaten the Wanderer (while he was in the form of a cat). In the distant future, he using the sands of time he turned back time in hopes he could prevent that outcome from happening again. He sent an adventurer into the past who became 'the wanderer' of legend, the happy wanderer mentioned on the back of the box/manual from the game who then entered the town hearing the king's missive. Thus history was fulfilled (he had inadvertently created the means of his own defeat).
This created a classic grandfather paradox with a causal loop (predestination paradox or bootstrap paradox). The events only happened once, but on a non-linear order of events spanning time.