Vhul'xo

He Who Conquered The Shadow

Abilities

"All of us laugh in the face of Haroch, but Vhul'xo elevates our immortal taunting to an art form" - Telío Alori 

As Lord of Undeath, Vhul'xo is the Republic's highest archmage of necromancy, capable of raising and commanding thousands of undead at once. He has established strict rules for which corpses can be reanimated along with time limits for how long they are allowed to be used for before being put to rest permanently, and enforces them ruthlessly; any necromancers caught breaking these rules without good cause are punished by a century of undead servitude followed by permanent execution.
Other than his incredible mastery over his skeletal hordes, he has vast amounts of dark magic at his disposal, and is said to be the only entity other than Death himself that can permanently bar a creature from being resurrected, even by divine intervention or arcane wishes.

Appearance

Adorned in ornate but ancient, heavy looking robes, Vhul'xo is a tall, skeletal being with blackened bones. Nearly always surrounded with a pale green fog, everywhere he travels life around him flees or falls to it, with grass turning dark and small birds falling from the sky. Even for those accustomed to his appearance and strong enough to not fear his deathly aura, the silence that arrives with him is enough to put any on edge.

Personality

Judging by appearance and skillset alone, Vhul'xo would be a good fit for any dark legend featuring heroes slaughtered by all-powerful liches. And yet in truth, he is the most generous Immortal, donating his time and that of his numberless army to large-scale construction efforts across The Republic. His words are well considered and respectful, and he does his utmost to honour agreements made. In his personal time, he has an avid interest in archaeology and history, using his workforce to uncover the secrets of the world that were lost to time.

History

Colosseum of Chyreum

In the early days of Aesk's project to turn Chyreum from a humble town into a grand Capital of the region, they reached out to Vhul'xo for aid with mining and construction. Vhul'xo agreed happily, and when he was asked to help construct the largest Amphitheatre in the known world, he agreed then too. In the almost two hundred years since then, the Colosseum has been a central hub for entertainment in the Northern Varolian, able to seat a hundred thousand spectators and have the internal terrain magically transformed to suit any style of battle.

Grand Aqueducts of Kanios

Kanios has long been the breadbasket of The Varolian, with it containing the second largest river on the continent and plenty of open space for farmland. But for a long time it struggled due to encroaching monsters from the nearby steppe, and years when the river ran drier than usual would lead to mass panic and possible famines. Around 20 years ago, Vhul'xo took it upon himself to organise a huge, nation-wide effort involving hundreds of mages to solve the problem.
Over the course of a few years, the landscape was transformed by the construction of hundreds of miles of aqueducts and canals designed to carry freshwater from the mountains safely and reliably. At the same time, the mages worked together to cull and exterminate the rampant monster problems, either completely wiping out the most problematic creatures or at minimum driving them far into the steppe where they would no longer be a threat. Since then, the risk of a poor harvest in Kanios has disappeared, and The Republic has eaten well.

Details

Race: Undead
Gender: N/A (He, they)
Age: 400+
Aliases: The Great Master, Lich-King, Lord of Undeath, The Wooligoo, He Who Has Conquered The Shadow